January 22, 2025 • 48 mins
Today on the show, more listener questions! Why are crow and raven beaks covered in feathers? What the heck is up with carrion bees? Dog sneeze democracy, tales of curly hair, and a ramble about animal neurodivergence!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Creature Feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Mini Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show it's another listener's Questions episode.
Every week, well not every week, but you know occasionally
I do these. You write to me your questions, and
(00:28):
I try to answer them the best that I can.
Thank you so much for your emailed questions. If you're
listening to this and you're saying, hey, I have an
evolutionary biology question, a question about animals and parasites and
so on that I would like answered, you can write
to me at Creature Featurepod at gmail dot com. So
(00:49):
let's get right into your questions. Hi, Katie. I found
a new subreddit called Crowbro. There's lots of cute stories, pictures,
and videos of people friending or feeding corven. I saw
this lovely post, and I guess I have never seen
ravens up close before. They're beautiful. It looks like they
(01:10):
have feathers coming from their face down their beaks a bit.
Is there any reason evolutionarily why they would need feathers
on that part of their beak? Is this normal for
more or all birds asking the true bird lady, do
you think it would benefit to get rid of those
stragglers or to keep them or get more. I'm not
sure why I'm surprised to see it, but truth be told,
I don't look at birds too closely because well, they're
(01:32):
flight risks. Some screenshots attached in case it gets removed
or anything. Thank you Chloe Story. So, first of all,
that's an incredible subreddit. I'm very much in favor of
befriending ravens and crows with photographs and tasteful snacks, and
this is an absolutely fantastic observation and wonderful questions about
(01:53):
the feathers around their beaks. So both ravens and crows
have feathers that covered the tops of their beaks allthough,
so in general, raven beak feathers and also their little
throat feathers, like their little beards, tend to be shaggier
than crows, but they both have them. So interestingly, those
feathers do cover their nostrils, which is something that isn't
(02:16):
found in all birds, so that seems like that might
be giving us a hint as to what they're for
the fact that they are so far down on their
beaks that it's also covering their nostrils. Then again, many
other birds don't have any feathers covering their nostrils, so
what gives, Like, what is going on here? So what
(02:37):
are those feathers? Those feathers on top of a crow
or raven's nose are called Richdal bristles. They're present in
other birds, but in many bird species they're smaller and
less noticeable, maybe even absent. But some of them have
them where they're just kind of like whiskers above their beaks.
So their purpose seems to be widely very in birds,
(03:01):
having evolved and been lost multiple times. Some birds seem
to use them as sensory organs, similar to cat whiskers,
and there has been a study that found that species
who are active in low light conditions grow longer Rickdal bristles.
But that's a bit different from this question in terms
(03:23):
of the corvids, because their bristles aren't long in the
sense of like cat whiskers, where they're sort of sticking
out as sensory organs. They're long and then flat against
their bills. So I'm not sure if using them as
a sensory organ is the answer there in terms of
our crows and ravens. So you'd think that the fact
(03:46):
that ravens and crows and other corvids have a high
density of richtal bristles over their beak would be easily
explained like kind of a standard crow fact, standard raven fact.
But actually no. So the purpose of richt ol bristles
and the reason for the differences and their shape and
density is somewhat debated, and it seems somewhat understudied. So
(04:13):
let's look into this. Let's try to come up with
some theories and think through what might make sense. So
why might they be covered? Let's compare them to other birds.
Let's look at sort of features of crows and ravens
and try to figure out what are some of the
possible theories for these these feathery beaks. So the first
(04:37):
thing I thought of was like, well, does this have
something to do with them being carrion birds? So while
it is true that crows and ravens do eat carrion,
it seems like, so you know, maybe the covered beaks,
maybe that's some kind of protection keeping stuff out of
their nostrils, keeping pathogens out of their nostrils as they
(04:58):
root around in carrion, and that could be the case,
and there is certainly an incentive to heap like blood
and guts and stuff out of their nostrils or to
help protect their nostrils from pathogens. But there are other
carrion birds, like many species of vultures and condors, that
have relatively naked beaks, whereas there's other carrion raptors like
(05:24):
bearded vultures who feed mostly on bones, who do have
beaks that are covered in bristles, kind of similar to
ravens and crows, which is really interesting. So you have
both both of these kind of styles. Most of these
fashions and birds who eat carrion where some of them
their beaks are covered, some of them are uncovered. So
(05:45):
I'm not exactly sure whether eating carrion has anything to
do with the state of feathers on their beaks. So
bearded vultures, crows, and ravens who do have covered nostrils
do live in environments that can get really cold, so
you know, I looked into other birds, like birds who
are cold specialists. It does turn out that penguins who
(06:08):
live in cold environments also have nostrils that are covered
in like these velvety feathers, which may help them with
temperature regulations. So that's one possibility, right, Like the feathers
on their beaks helps keep them warm in the cold,
But there are plenty of birds who live in cold
environments who do not have feathers covering their bills. This
(06:32):
doesn't necessarily mean that the feathers aren't used to help
in the cold. Different species can approach problems from different
evolutionary angles, of course, but maybe some winter birds such
as cardinals who don't seem to have a ton of
feathers covering say their nostrils, have different techniques to stay
warm in the winter, and their behaviors are going to
(06:54):
be different from ravens and crows. So these these little
birds that often feed on seeds, they may have seed
stores which might require less exposure of the beak to
the cold, snowy forage. Like they're probably not getting into, like, say,
a frozen carcass with their beaks so much because they
eat seeds instead. And they have a different bill shape
(07:16):
which is kind of like a bit thicker and broader,
which is great for cracking seeds. So you know, maybe
they have a different technique for staying warm in the winter,
that doesn't require them to have as much coverage over
their bills. But you know, it could also mean that
the feathers over the beaks for ravens and crows has
nothing to do with staying warm in the cold. Interestingly,
(07:41):
rooks are a species of corvid with a distinctively bald beak.
Like this is a characteristic that if you're curious, like, hey,
why does this crow seem to have a white, sort
of featherless area around its beak, It's like, well, that
is actually probably a rook. So understanding why why rooks
are featherless might help us understand why crows and ravens
(08:04):
do have feathers on their beaks. So juvenile rooks actually
do have feathers on their beaks, just like crows and ravens,
but as they mature at around six months, they lose
these feathers. So often when there's a difference between juvenile
and adult morphology, it's either due to a vulnerability that
(08:25):
the juvenile has, or behavioral difference or sexual selection. So
a lot of say like penguin baby penguins have a
lot more down, a lot sort of fluffier. They're not
really built to say, swim around so much, but they
are built to be able to stay warm because they're
(08:45):
going to be a lot more vulnerable to the cold.
They won't need to swim because their parents are going
to be feeding them. And then they grow in the
feathers that are more specialized for keeping them dry and
hydrodynamic as they grow older. Now, some birds also don't
develop their adult coloration until they are mature, so any
(09:09):
sorts of ornamentation, any kind of feather patterns that would
help for sexual selection, don't develop until they're older. So
these feathers on their beaks, there's like a few possibilities
right for why they have them when they're young but
not as adults. Like it could be that that bald
beak is a feature of sexual selection. It could be
(09:32):
that juveniles are more vulnerable to say, the cold, or
maybe to pathogens, and so having those feathers over their beaks,
over their nostrils is much more important for the young
rooks than for the adults, which, you know, it still
kind of presents this mystery because having a covered beak
(09:54):
as an adult seems like it could also have benefits.
So why did rooks lose this this covering, whereas other
corvids like ravens and crows seem to have these feathers
all over their beaks, you know, pretty far down. Actually,
it is quite noticeable once you do see them up close,
because it's true their feathers are black and it kind
(10:15):
of blends in with their beak. But then once you
see it, you can't really not see it anymore. They
have these very fluffy beaks, especially ravens, because their feathers
a little shaggyar, so you can really notice that beak fluff.
So that's kind of all to say that I don't
necessarily have a really precise answer for you, not yet.
(10:38):
At least I will continue to look for when I've
reached out to some crow experts, some corvid experts, and
if I find a really compelling answer, like maybe some
new research or some really compelling theories, I will definitely
share them with you. This is just such a good
question because it's such a good observation, first of all,
(10:58):
to notice, yeah, they do have these feathers on their beaks,
and then also to think of like, hey, you know,
is this a normal thing for birds? What are those feathers?
What purpose could they serve you are definitely thinking like
an evolutionary biologist, that's a fantastic question. And yeah, it
is surprising to me always that sometimes there's a lot
of there are things that seem relatively like, yeah, we
(11:21):
should have an answer for that, but you know, it's
hard for me to find like a definitive study or
a definitive answer that seems to indicate exactly what those
that feature of the animal is. So in a way
that's exciting, right, Like, there's still things that are left
to figure out. So I will keep you updated. I
will continue to reach out to corved experts and see
(11:42):
if I can find out exactly why they have those
feathers on their beaks. My guess would be it's a
form of protection of some kind, Like it either keeps
their beaks warmth, or it's protecting their nostrils from say
dust or pathogens or something similar to say like eyelashes
on a human, right like, or nose hairs, right like,
(12:03):
something that is a part of like maybe their passive
immune system, right like they're keeping stuff out maybe because
they're so they have to be so omnivorous, so like
they'll they're definitely not above eating carrion, but they have
to eat different kind of weird things, so maybe that's
to help protect them. Whereas maybe a vulture that doesn't
have feathers on its beak has a different, like different
(12:26):
techniques for keeping pathogens out, like a maybe a different
part of their immune system that's a lot stronger. They
have highly acidic stomachs, things like that. So you know,
it's it's it is a really interesting thing. It's a
really interesting observation. So thank you so much for that question.
All right, next listener question. This person received a newsletter
(12:48):
from dog Juice. I don't know what dog juice is,
but it sounds delicious, said Hi Katie. I received a
newsletter in my inbox from dog Juice today and found
this to be particularly interesting here to share jessec So
she links to a study called Sneeze to leave. African
wild dogs like on Pictus, use variable quorum thresholds facilitated
(13:12):
by sneezes in collective decisions. So this is a study
I'm actually familiar with. I think it's really really cool.
So just a kind of brief summary of it is
that this study found that African wild dogs engage in
sneeze democracy if one of them wants to move on
from somewhere, she will sneeze, and you know it's a
(13:36):
controlled sneeze, Like if you have a dog, you might
kind of know what this is. Like a dog can
kind of like do this sort of like a like
sneeze on command apparently, and like my dog does so
frequently when she's trying to tell me something. So and
these are African wild dogs who are not domesticated. They
are wild animals. They will they live in pack structures
(13:59):
with as a hierarchy. But interestingly they also seem to
really kind of rely on group decision making. So one
dog sneezes, and then maybe her neighbor agrees like yeah,
I want to move on, and then her neighbor sneezes,
and then if there's enough sneezing, like a critical mass
of sneezing, the pack will move on. It's like basically
(14:20):
like hey, who wants to get out of here and
go somewhere else? Dominant dogs in the pack might get
more clout for their sneezes. It's not maybe exactly one dog,
one sneeze vote, but it really does depend on the
other dogs agreeing. So if you have a domesticated dog,
you will know that they're highly social and they use
(14:42):
their sneezes to communicate to each other as well as
to us humans. Sneezes and dogs can mean distress or
a desire to play, maybe just to get your attention frustration.
Sometimes my dog loves to sneeze loudly and wetly into
my face when I'm not paying enough attention to her,
like when I'm writing my responses to listener questions for example.
(15:08):
All right, onto the next listener question. This is from
Scott M. Have you discussed carrion bees yet on the pod?
They are super cool bees that are adapted to eat meat.
So hey, Scott, you know what. I cannot remember if
I have discussed them or not, but even if so,
they are worth more than one mentioned because you are correct.
(15:28):
They are super cool and I could talk about them,
probably in their whole episode, but why not spit some
carrying bee facts right now? These are bees found in
South America in rainforests. They're also known as vulture bees,
and as both their names suggest, they feed exclusively on
(15:50):
dead animals, which is called obligate necrophagi, so that means
they have to eat dead meat. And that is what
they are involved to do. As honeybees are nectivorous, they
are flesh chivorous. That is not a real word, but
I just said that. So there are three species of
(16:11):
carrion bees. They're all very closely related, very similar. So
as creepy as it sounds, they're actually harmless to the living.
They don't have stingers. They're stingless type of bee. Like
honey bees. They live in use social colonies with defined
social structures, rolls and a queen. So yeah, they're essentially
(16:35):
like honey bees, but they don't have stingers, and they
eat you know, rotting flesh instead of nectar. So carrion
bees will find a carcass, just as a honey bee
would find a flower, and signals to other members of
the colonies to come join them. So they will crawl
into sort of orifices in the carcass to get to
(16:57):
soft tissue. One of their favorite places to climb up
in apparently is the eye socket, which you know, lovely
cute little bees. So they will start to chew little
bits of flesh away and they don't eat it right away,
they will carry it back to the colony. Now, this
is the point at which some of the research is
(17:19):
a little threadbare about these bees. We're not exactly sure
how they process these pieces and meats, but there's a
couple theories. So they The thing that researchers know is
that they steal the meat away and these little wax pots.
What they don't know is whether they do some kind
of pre processing, like pre digesting with like a special
gland or some enzymes, and then spit it into the
(17:43):
wax pots, or if they just place it directly without
doing any kind of digestion, and then inside the little
wax pots is where sort of all of the processing happens.
All the processing happens. So either way, the meat goes
through some sort of breakdown process in these wax pots
(18:04):
and it turns into a nutritional paste that the bee
can easily consume and digest over the course of a
few days. So at first people thought that this was
just honey right from like flowers, weird honey or like,
but it's actually kind of it's meat honey. It is
a nutritive substance made out of flesh rather than the
(18:27):
proteins found in plant pollen. So a study charmingly called
why did the bee eat the chicken, symbion gain loss
and retention in the vulture. Be microbiome examined the gut
microbiome of carrion bees versus nectivorous bees and found a
shift in what sorts of digestive bacteria live in the
(18:50):
carnivorous bees, So their guts are more acidic in general,
protecting them from pathogens that might be present in carrion.
So these bees have evolved from being nectivores, you know,
sipping nectar to eating meat, and meat can be a
lot more dangerous in terms of pathogens that can be found,
(19:12):
like bad bacteria that can be found growing on the meat,
and so if you eat that and you consume that
you don't have any defense against it, you can get
really sick. That's one reason that humans like our whole
thing is that we developed an ability to cook our meat,
which not only protects us from pathogens, but it also
(19:32):
helps process the meat a bit, which helps us digest
it more efficiently. And so that cooking has been really
important for us. And these bees have a double kind
of a double pronged approach here. Not only are their
guts more acidic, allowing them to digest meat better, they
also process it by putting it into these little wax pots.
(19:54):
So you know what, we really share a lot with
carnivorous bees. You think about it onto the next listener question. Hi,
I just listened to the episode about ear mites and
dog hair and have an allegory with photo receipts. I
adopted my dog Milly when she was seven months old
and she had short, straight fur. The first time she
(20:17):
went into heat, her fur grew about one and a
half inches and went full curly. Sue. She'll be three
on Valentine's Day and she looks like an orange and
white shag carpet. Love the show, especially when there's a
story about animals who do crimes or get sweet sweet revenge.
And this is from Michael, and I got photos of
smooth Milly and fuzzy Milly. I love so cute. Thank
(20:40):
you for sending me this very adorable and very important
case study of Milly's fluffiness. First of all, adorable, she's
adorable with both hairstyles. Tell her that she's beautiful no
matter what she does with her hair. And although I
do have to say I love the shag carpet version
of Milly, you know, thinking about it. Actually, my dog
(21:02):
went through something similar, not quite as dramatic as Milly.
But when she was a younger dog, when she was
a puppy, her hair was smooth, short and straight until
you know, I don't know exactly, but I would I
want to say, like when she was about a year old,
maybe she got a lot fluffier, with a few curls
(21:24):
here and there. So like, hormones are really wild in
how much they can affect the body. As for animals
who get revenge, there's a few stories that I love.
Of course. One is that the fact that crows can
remember the faces of those who have wronged them, or
(21:45):
even the faces of those that they simply do not
like and find to be suspicious and questionable of character,
so that there have been these amazing studies by researchers
who will provoke them by holding up dead taxidermine crows,
which not surprisingly crows don't like. They don't like it
when you do that. But the researchers wore masks to
(22:08):
product their real identity, because the crows were able to
recognize their faces, the masked faces, and they would attack them.
They'd get really agitated and go on the offense against them,
which they had this behavior for many years, Like they
would learn to hold grudges for years and they would
(22:28):
teach it to their young. So I mean to be
fair though to these crows. I think that's completely justifiable.
If someone holds like a dead crow out to a
group of crows and they're also wearing this super scary
mask and they're like, hey, crows, what's up, Like you're
gonna not make friends with the crows? Like this is
(22:49):
the opposite, Like Listener mentioned the Crowbros subred out where
it's like you offer tasteful snacks and you take photos
of how pretty the crows are. That's how to befriend
a crow. This is how to the enemy a crow.
And you probably don't want to do that unless you're
a researcher whose identity is being protected by the Witness
Protection Service, because these crows will remember you and they
(23:12):
will attack you. So that's I do love that story
of animals holding onto a grudge, another fun act of revenge.
Actually bringing up another sort of creature that we talked
about today. Bees, different types of bees Asian bees, and
(23:34):
they have evolved to having a defense against Asian giant hornets.
So we had this big scare in the US where
we had some invasive Asian giant hornets, and it was
very concerning because the bees that live in North America
do not have defenses against Asian giant hornets. So these
these hornets who prey on bees were just going hogwild
(23:56):
on bee hives, and so and kind of intervention had
to happen in terms of trying to get rid of
these giant hornets. And in contrast, bees that are in
the sort of natural environment of Asian giant hornets, ones
that have co evolved with these hornets, do have defenses
(24:19):
against these murder hornets. So what happens is these bees
will surround the hornet and wiggle their cute little bodies,
generating a massive amount of heat. So, like one bee
wiggling might not generate a lot of heat, but if
you form a bee ball, a bunch of bees cramped
together like in a mosh pit, like all jiggling and
vibrating and beating their little wing muscles, they can actually
(24:42):
generate quite a bit of heat. That literally, once they've
completely ensconced this hornet, they can boil the hornet alive
and don't feel too bad for the hornet, because if
she had her way, she'd be beheading and eating scores
and scores of bees. You know, yeah, these these bees
have developed a strategy to counter the incredible ferocity of
(25:06):
Asian giant hornets. So real David and Goliath situation, except
it's like hundreds of Davids, all like Towerking to defeat Goliath,
which sounds fantastic. I'd love to see that. Also, I'm
sure that you've heard of orcas ramming boats, so I
would love to think that this is revenge against loud,
(25:30):
annoying motor boats in their territory. But according to whale biologists,
they're probably just being curious and having fun, which I
don't know. Maybe so Orca researchers like to point out
that if orcas really wanted revenge against boats, they could
do a lot more damage, and that they're most likely
(25:51):
playfully investigating their environment. On the other hand, I don't know,
Maybe these orcas are sending us a message anyways, don't
underestimate the orcas. If they wanted to mess with us,
I'm sure they could figure out a way to capsize
a boat. But doctor Deborah Giles, who is an orca
researcher thinks that an orca matriarch probably discovered how fun
it was to ram a boat and then taught the
(26:14):
boat ramming behavior to her family, and the tradition has
just spread. It's like basically a hot new Orca fad.
Because intelligent animals, especially social animals that learn from each other,
can have fads. Things catch on among them and they
do behaviors. That's kind of like the Japanese macaques that
(26:34):
learned how to wash yams and salt water. There's a
lot of behaviors that can become sort of go viral
among animals, and so apparently boat ramming is one of them.
So good job Orca's focus on the yachts. I say,
all right, onto the next listener question. Hi Katie, I
love your show and how much you managed to cover
the years while keeping an interesting Well, thank you. I
(26:57):
have a subject that I found interesting, and that's the animal.
So with autismo, CDADHD, depression or other symptoms that are
usually related to humans, are there enough studies to cover this?
We'd love to hear about our fellow suffering creatures. Happy holidays, Arena,
Hi Arena, I definitely do think that animals can be
neurodivergent or suffer from mental illness in the same way
(27:17):
humans do, which is typically a mixture of physiology, so
something that sort of brain structures that you're born with
and environment, which is sort of the way in which
your brain structures sort of inact interact with your environment,
and then your environment in turn shapes your brain. So
it's very much kind of a complex recipe here where
(27:41):
it's not you know, the whole nature nurture debate in
terms of brains. It's like, in my opinion, based on
the evidence that I've read, like it's very much a
interwoven mixture. Like you have environment that has a very
strong role in brain development, but a lot of people
are actually born with certain structures that are much more
likely to respond to their environment in specific ways. So
(28:06):
given that animals also have brains and interact with an environment,
I think it is almost a certainty. And it actually
has been documented in a lot of animals that some
of them are either neurodivergent or have mental illness. Now,
the sort of definitions of neurodivergence mental illness is very
(28:27):
much on one's experience, right, So like if you're a
neurodivergent you may not have, Like, your neurodivergence may not
be necessarily a problem, but the ways in which the
nerdivergent might make it difficult to say in you know,
(28:49):
socialization or something, or to interact with society. There may
be specific aspects of that neudivergence that can manifest as
like say, a mental illness. Like for instance, if if
you're neurodivergent with autism, I would say autism, in my opinion,
is not really a mental illness, but if you are
(29:10):
depressed or anxious, like if you have a lot of
social anxiety, because your way of thinking makes it more
difficult to say, interact with others than that anxiety, and
that depression is the mental illness where it's you know,
the autism is a form of neurodivergence. And so I
kind of, you know, it's interesting because I have OCD
(29:32):
and OCD is generally accepted as a mental illness. But
I would kind of in my opinion, just as you know,
and I'm very open to people disagree with this, I
feel like OCD itself, this sort of the different kind
of way of processing information is not necessarily always disordered.
(29:53):
So like sometimes the way my brain works, the way
my brain processes information is can be quite helpful, say
if I'm writing something and sort of making unusual connections
or something that can be helpful to me, when it's
not helpful with like making connections that don't make any
sense or are interfering with my life, like say rituals,
(30:14):
where with OCD you have a couple you have both rituals,
say like oh, if I don't do X, like maybe
turn on and off a light switch or something, then
something bad is going to happen. And that's a ritual
attached to an intrusive thought. There's also purely intrusive thoughts
when it comes to OCD. So maybe a thought you
can't get out of your head that's unpleasant, or you
(30:37):
can start thinking things like making kind of I guess
like say you have an anxiety about something like oh
is this a freckle a mole or like skin cancer,
and then you just cannot stop thinking about it and
no amount of reassurance seems to help quiet that thought.
All of that can fall under the umbrella of OCD.
And so while obsessive compulsive disorder refers to sort of
(31:01):
the maladaptive behaviors, right, like the things that cause suffering
and difficulty for whoever's having it. I think the other
the sort of like other features of it, Like I
think it's probably there's sort of a different kind of
sensory processing brain that is like maybe behind the OCD
(31:23):
that to me would not necessarily I don't even it
probably doesn't really have a specific label other than neurodivergence.
But to me that part is not really mental illness,
because you know, when I have sort of maybe a
unique way of looking at things that isn't causing me suffering,
that's not causing me problems, if anything, that can be
(31:43):
useful for me. So you have both elements, and we're
just talking about humans now. So with animals it's a
lot more difficult to kind of bought these things and
understand what's going on. Because with the human a human
being can generally communicate, right, Like I can say like, yeah,
(32:04):
my OCD rituals cause me distress, cause me anxiety, interfere
with my life. I'm saying that as an example. I
actually I used to suffer from a lot of OCD
rituals as a child, as an adult. Most of them
are under control, but like a lot of people with
OCD will have say, rituals, like things repetitive tasks that
(32:28):
they don't really want to do, but if they don't
do them, they get really anxious. And so this causes distress.
It can cause anxiety, depression, It can just sort of
in terms of your daily routine, interfere with your life
because you're spending time on these things. In terms of animals,
they may be engaging in OCD rituals, but we can't
(32:48):
really ask them what amount of distress it's causing them.
We can only really guess. But there are some cases
in which I think we can pretty I would say
with a lot of confidence say like this is kind
of like an OCD ritual, and it does seem to
be done in a situation where the animal is anxious
or distressed or bored or something. So the most documented
(33:12):
cases are in places like zoos because we can absorb
the animals more, but also because zoos presents an environment
that can be I think, more likely to produce like
mental illness and animals, so animals will get We don't
really call it like OCD in animals necessarily, but in zoos,
(33:34):
like when an animal engages in a repetitive ritualistic behavior.
It's called a stereotype. So it's a repetitive compulsive behavior
like pacing, excessive grooming. The grooming can even be so
excessive it results in baldness or skin irritation, and really
extreme cases, it can even be things like slamming against
walls and self injury. So this is usually due to distress.
(33:59):
It could be due to loneliness, to boredom. It could
be due to lack of proper socialization, lack of space,
or stimulation, or conversely, it could be over stimulation or
being housed with an animal with whom they don't get
along and so they're suffering a lot of anxiety. Now,
(34:20):
this is not like a thing where it's like all
animals in all zoos suffer in this way. This is
specific to certain situations in zoos, So not all zoos
are bad. There's a lot of really good zoos. San
Diego Zoo is a good one in terms of taking
really good care of their animals, trying to make sure
(34:42):
that they're in good spaces. I do think that certain
animals probably are never going to be in an ideal
situation in a zoo. Something really big and really intelligent,
say like an elephant. I think that it's going to
be really tough to ever have a good environment for
an elephant in a zoo, just because they in their
natural environment, so much of their natural behavior involves like
(35:06):
roaming over long, long distances, and you simply cannot recreate
that in a zoo. But you know, what you see
is animals that if they are in a situation in
a zoo where they really don't have the right type
of environment, they will sometimes engage in these stereotypees, especially
because there's not really escape sometimes. So a lot of
(35:28):
times in nature, say like if an animal is having
a conflict with another animal, it can like go off
find its own space and then kind of cool down
a bit. But in a more kind of confined environment,
maybe they can't do that. So either that could result
in fights amongst the animals, or you could have some
kind of behavior like excessive grooming, excessive self soothing that
(35:51):
turns into kind of like an OCD behavior, And so
this would I would think that, you know, this would
be sort of a form of animal mental illness that
is definitely environmentally influenced. But the other question is, like
could an animal be born with, say like autism or OCD,
(36:11):
and you know, like like born with sort of a
a neural like structures that are more likely to end
up with sort of some some neurodivergence or some disorder.
I think it's really hard to exactly map human labels
onto animals, like say like this dog has OCD or
(36:34):
this cat is autistic. I don't know that we can
really do that because autism and OCD, all of the
definitions that we have are based on human behavior. It's
based on human emotions, human behaviors, human socialization. So you know,
we would really kind of need to come up like
and I have seen, like, you know, some attempts by saying,
(36:54):
like in papers to come up with sort of specific
terms for animals, like compulsive disorders rather than like obsessive
compulsive disorder, right, Like stereotype ES is another one, which
is like, you know, this is a ritualistic behavior, because
you know, an animal's mental sort of landscape is going
(37:14):
to be a lot different from a human and so
the types of you know, using like a human sort
of diagnostic manual for an animal doesn't make a lot
of sense. But you know, I think that we can
definitely make these connections, right, like saying like, hey, this
is quite similar to OCD in humans, or this is
similar to anxiety or ADHD in humans, even if it's not,
(37:36):
doesn't like map on you know, directly onto the animal.
Most of our observations about say an animal being born
with a sort of different brain is going to be
documented best in pets, domesticated animals, animals in captivity because
we just get to observe them more. Right, if you
have a dog, you're going to notice if the dog
(37:58):
seems to excessively groom groom himself or herself when she's
when she's anxious, right, Whereas we're maybe not going to
be able to see that as much as in say
like a wild dog like or a wolf or a
coyote or something, because like if we see a coyote
and it's got a bald spot on its butt, be like, well,
(38:19):
that could be mange, that could be from a fight.
We don't know. So without constant observation, you wouldn't know
if that coyote is doing some kind of nervous excessive
grooming on its butt. So but you know, like I
think everyone who has a pet, even if your pet
doesn't have any sort of specific issues. I think you've
all sort of experienced, like an animal having maybe a phobia, right, like,
(38:43):
which is really common in humans too, Like having a
phobia is like one of the most common you know,
mental health issues and people, really common in animals and pets.
Because it kind of makes sense, like phobias are a
it's an exaggerated response to something that's seen as a danger. Oh,
(39:03):
and it is something that is probably really useful for
survival and animals and people, right Like something scares you,
you have traumatic experience, or you know, something seems dangerous
to you and you learn like, hey, this thing is scary.
That could save your life. But in the terms, in
terms of phobia, a phobia is defined by the fact
that it is not a reasonable response to something. It
(39:27):
isn't rational, and it is causing you distress. Right Like
if you if you have a normal fear of like
spiders or snakes, but it's not really in you know,
causing you any distress, Like you can see a photo
of a spider and you're fine, you just don't want
to like hold one. That's I don't think that would
generally be described as a phobia. It's really only once
(39:47):
it's causing you distress, Like if you see a photo
of a spider, you start sweating, you start getting really anxious,
and uh, it's causing you distress. Then then that would
be like a phob and these are often treated in
humans with like exposure therapies. Like by the way, if
you have a phobia and you're afraid of treatment or
(40:09):
you feel like there's no way for it to be treated,
phobias are one of the most treatable disorders, like mental
health issues in people through you know, I think it
can be really and I used to have a phobia
of graveyards actually, and anything that had to do with
(40:29):
like graveyards or death like coffins, gravestones, mummies, all these
things I had a very severe phobia of and it
was causing me issues and I went through sort of
a I would say, very gentle exposure therapy. But like
you know, so I would say, like, if you are
dealing with that, it is treatable. The treatment is often
(40:50):
basically like slowly and carefully introducing you to the the
thing that makes you scared in a safe environment so
that you learn that nothing bad happens to you. So
it's it is. It is treatable. But the point that
I'm bringing this up is that in animals it can
be quite common. So, like, maybe you have a cat.
(41:13):
This is just an example, none of I'm not speaking
for any of the cats in my life, but maybe
like a pillow, like he was sleeping on a pillow
and had a nightmare, or a pillow like fell on
him at one point, Like and it's a specific pillow,
say it's like a blue, fluffy pillow, and now this
cat is like terrified of this pillow. The pillow never
hurt the cat. The pillow is not a threat to
(41:34):
the cat. It's just the cat has made some negative
association with this pillow, and now the cat's terrified of
this pillow. And anytime it's in the room with this pillow,
it freaks out, it panics and runs away. I'd say
this cat does have a phobia of this pillow, because
the pillows never actually hurt the cat. The cat's just
developed this extreme fear responds to a pillow, and despite
(41:56):
the fact that it's seen the pillow numerous times and
nothing bad has happened, the cat is retaining the phobia.
Another example, so my dog when she was young, was
attacked pretty severely by another dog, And even though we've
made a lot of progress over the years, she still
has serious trust issues and anxiety around other dogs, which
is pretty similar to say, like a phobia or a
(42:20):
sort of PTSD, right like in humans. So like, even
though we can't like I can't ask my dog, like, well,
how do you feel when you're around another dog? I
can see her body language, right Like, we've gotten to
the point where she can go on walks and she's
not constantly agitated, but I can see like if she
sees another dog, her body language indicates she's anxious, right
(42:43):
like her her tail may drop sort of below her feet,
her ears are back, you know, she her posture is
a little more stiff, or she gets defensive, right like
her hair stands on end. The opposite, like, there's there's
different ways a dog can show anxiety. Sometimes it's more
sort of like like inward anxiety or like passive anxiety,
(43:04):
where tail is down, ears are back, you know, posture stiff.
Or it can be kind of a more aggressive version
of anxiety where it's like tails straight up, fur is up,
you know, ears are up, postures stiff, but more like
that that's kind of more of a defensive or offensive posture,
where it's like I will bark and bite you if
you like come near me, because like I'm not joking,
(43:26):
whereas the other posture can be like I'm I'm scared
and I'm acting submissive and I'm a little bit nervous here,
but I really don't want you to, you know, Like
it's both kind of a form of communication of the
dog warning the other dog or saying like, look, I'm
I'm really not here to make friends right now. I'm
not I'm not super happy about this situation. And there's
(43:46):
a lot of subtleties with dog body posture, like sometimes
a tail can be up, ears can be up. Posture
can be kind of like alert, but it's not the
dog's not being aggressive or defensive. You kind of have
to look for other cues right Like it's the first
standing on in like look at their face, like is
the face friendly? Or are they like is are their
lips pulled? Back? Like? How stiff is the tail? How
(44:07):
stiff and rigid is their posture? Like? Because they can
be alert and interested and curious without actually being aggressive.
I digress, I don't want to get too much on
the topic of just interpreting dog micro expressions, but anyways,
the point is, yes, I absolutely think that, you know,
(44:29):
neurodivergence and mental illness can be present in animals. I
think that it would be different from human like the
way that we categorize human mental illness. I mean to
be honest with you, Like we're constantly changing the sort
of diagnostics for human mental illness. We're also changing what
we consider to be mental illness versus neurodivergence, and there's
(44:52):
a lot of sort of gray area between the two, right,
So it makes stands to reason that it'd be the
same thing with animals. And also, like you like say
you could have some kind of diagnostic criteria for say
a dog, that's gonna be different for a cat, right
like you have every species of animals, and also animals
in different situations, like a domesticated animal versus a wild animal,
(45:16):
They're just gonna have a whole different kind of mental
and emotional landscape and so behave a behavior that is
normal for an animal, like certain animals will like eat
their own young, right like if if if a human
did that, not normal, not not good, not normal. So yeah,
(45:36):
so it's gonna be different standards for animals. Depends on
the species, depends on the animal situation. But yeah, when
we do have these observations over long periods of times,
like in zoos and domesticated animal situations and pets especially,
I think the sort of stuff that we get in
terms of like ve veterinarians writing about clients and pets
(46:00):
is really interesting because I think that for the most part,
at most, a lot of these pets that come in
presenting with say mental health issues, are being treated well
by their owners. Usually an owner who brings in a
pet is like, I'm concerned my dog is anxious. It's
going to be treating that dog pretty well, even if
there could be some mistakes that they're making, right, It's
(46:20):
not like the dog is being abused. But like, that's
very interesting to me because that seems more applicable to
sort of like the range of human mental illness, because
mental illness can definitely be caused by environment in human beings, right, Like,
I mean we see this, Like you know, I could
go on a whole soapbox about say, like prison systems
(46:43):
can exacerbate or cause mental illness because of the way
that like say, captivity can harm human being mental health, right,
so that's a big problem. And so you know, with
animals you can see the same thing in them, but
with pets, you know, like it's it is really interesting
to me because I think that it does show us
(47:05):
that you can have a lot of similar say like
mental health issues or mental differences in pets, and they're
not necessarily suffering in their lives in the sense of
like you know, they're not being mistreated horribly or anything,
but they just might be more sensitive to their environments.
(47:26):
So something like the sound of a car might really
make them anxious, even if it's not even if they've
never been hurt by a car or something like that.
And so you know, I definitely think there's strong evidence
that animals have the same kinds of issues, in the
same kinds of like mental diversity that humans do. It's
just a little bit tricky to study that in wild animals,
(47:49):
but we can definitely see it in the animals that
we live with. So thank you guys so much for
all your questions. If you have a question, you can
write to me at reach your feature Pod at gmail
dot com and I'll either try to answer on the
show or through email. Next week should be a normal episode,
so we're getting right back into it. And thank you
(48:13):
guys so much for listening to the show. Hope you're
all doing all right and I will see you next week.
Thank you so much to the Space Posics for their
super awesome song XO. Lumina Creature features a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit
the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts, or Hey, guess what where
(48:34):
have you listened to your favorite shows? I do not
judge you. I'm not your mother, and I can't tell
you what to do except that, Hey, kids, if you're
sticking your face and some carrions, be sure that your
microbiome has adapted to that first, and wash your hands.
See you next Wednesday.
Welcome to Creature Feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Mini Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show it's another listener's Questions episode.
Every week, well not every week, but you know occasionally
I do these. You write to me your questions, and
(00:28):
I try to answer them the best that I can.
Thank you so much for your emailed questions. If you're
listening to this and you're saying, hey, I have an
evolutionary biology question, a question about animals and parasites and
so on that I would like answered, you can write
to me at Creature Featurepod at gmail dot com. So
(00:49):
let's get right into your questions. Hi, Katie. I found
a new subreddit called Crowbro. There's lots of cute stories, pictures,
and videos of people friending or feeding corven. I saw
this lovely post, and I guess I have never seen
ravens up close before. They're beautiful. It looks like they
(01:10):
have feathers coming from their face down their beaks a bit.
Is there any reason evolutionarily why they would need feathers
on that part of their beak? Is this normal for
more or all birds asking the true bird lady, do
you think it would benefit to get rid of those
stragglers or to keep them or get more. I'm not
sure why I'm surprised to see it, but truth be told,
I don't look at birds too closely because well, they're
(01:32):
flight risks. Some screenshots attached in case it gets removed
or anything. Thank you Chloe Story. So, first of all,
that's an incredible subreddit. I'm very much in favor of
befriending ravens and crows with photographs and tasteful snacks, and
this is an absolutely fantastic observation and wonderful questions about
(01:53):
the feathers around their beaks. So both ravens and crows
have feathers that covered the tops of their beaks allthough,
so in general, raven beak feathers and also their little
throat feathers, like their little beards, tend to be shaggier
than crows, but they both have them. So interestingly, those
feathers do cover their nostrils, which is something that isn't
(02:16):
found in all birds, so that seems like that might
be giving us a hint as to what they're for
the fact that they are so far down on their
beaks that it's also covering their nostrils. Then again, many
other birds don't have any feathers covering their nostrils, so
what gives, Like, what is going on here? So what
(02:37):
are those feathers? Those feathers on top of a crow
or raven's nose are called Richdal bristles. They're present in
other birds, but in many bird species they're smaller and
less noticeable, maybe even absent. But some of them have
them where they're just kind of like whiskers above their beaks.
So their purpose seems to be widely very in birds,
(03:01):
having evolved and been lost multiple times. Some birds seem
to use them as sensory organs, similar to cat whiskers,
and there has been a study that found that species
who are active in low light conditions grow longer Rickdal bristles.
But that's a bit different from this question in terms
(03:23):
of the corvids, because their bristles aren't long in the
sense of like cat whiskers, where they're sort of sticking
out as sensory organs. They're long and then flat against
their bills. So I'm not sure if using them as
a sensory organ is the answer there in terms of
our crows and ravens. So you'd think that the fact
(03:46):
that ravens and crows and other corvids have a high
density of richtal bristles over their beak would be easily
explained like kind of a standard crow fact, standard raven fact.
But actually no. So the purpose of richt ol bristles
and the reason for the differences and their shape and
density is somewhat debated, and it seems somewhat understudied. So
(04:13):
let's look into this. Let's try to come up with
some theories and think through what might make sense. So
why might they be covered? Let's compare them to other birds.
Let's look at sort of features of crows and ravens
and try to figure out what are some of the
possible theories for these these feathery beaks. So the first
(04:37):
thing I thought of was like, well, does this have
something to do with them being carrion birds? So while
it is true that crows and ravens do eat carrion,
it seems like, so you know, maybe the covered beaks,
maybe that's some kind of protection keeping stuff out of
their nostrils, keeping pathogens out of their nostrils as they
(04:58):
root around in carrion, and that could be the case,
and there is certainly an incentive to heap like blood
and guts and stuff out of their nostrils or to
help protect their nostrils from pathogens. But there are other
carrion birds, like many species of vultures and condors, that
have relatively naked beaks, whereas there's other carrion raptors like
(05:24):
bearded vultures who feed mostly on bones, who do have
beaks that are covered in bristles, kind of similar to
ravens and crows, which is really interesting. So you have
both both of these kind of styles. Most of these
fashions and birds who eat carrion where some of them
their beaks are covered, some of them are uncovered. So
(05:45):
I'm not exactly sure whether eating carrion has anything to
do with the state of feathers on their beaks. So
bearded vultures, crows, and ravens who do have covered nostrils
do live in environments that can get really cold, so
you know, I looked into other birds, like birds who
are cold specialists. It does turn out that penguins who
(06:08):
live in cold environments also have nostrils that are covered
in like these velvety feathers, which may help them with
temperature regulations. So that's one possibility, right, Like the feathers
on their beaks helps keep them warm in the cold,
But there are plenty of birds who live in cold
environments who do not have feathers covering their bills. This
(06:32):
doesn't necessarily mean that the feathers aren't used to help
in the cold. Different species can approach problems from different
evolutionary angles, of course, but maybe some winter birds such
as cardinals who don't seem to have a ton of
feathers covering say their nostrils, have different techniques to stay
warm in the winter, and their behaviors are going to
(06:54):
be different from ravens and crows. So these these little
birds that often feed on seeds, they may have seed
stores which might require less exposure of the beak to
the cold, snowy forage. Like they're probably not getting into, like, say,
a frozen carcass with their beaks so much because they
eat seeds instead. And they have a different bill shape
(07:16):
which is kind of like a bit thicker and broader,
which is great for cracking seeds. So you know, maybe
they have a different technique for staying warm in the winter,
that doesn't require them to have as much coverage over
their bills. But you know, it could also mean that
the feathers over the beaks for ravens and crows has
nothing to do with staying warm in the cold. Interestingly,
(07:41):
rooks are a species of corvid with a distinctively bald beak.
Like this is a characteristic that if you're curious, like, hey,
why does this crow seem to have a white, sort
of featherless area around its beak, It's like, well, that
is actually probably a rook. So understanding why why rooks
are featherless might help us understand why crows and ravens
(08:04):
do have feathers on their beaks. So juvenile rooks actually
do have feathers on their beaks, just like crows and ravens,
but as they mature at around six months, they lose
these feathers. So often when there's a difference between juvenile
and adult morphology, it's either due to a vulnerability that
(08:25):
the juvenile has, or behavioral difference or sexual selection. So
a lot of say like penguin baby penguins have a
lot more down, a lot sort of fluffier. They're not
really built to say, swim around so much, but they
are built to be able to stay warm because they're
(08:45):
going to be a lot more vulnerable to the cold.
They won't need to swim because their parents are going
to be feeding them. And then they grow in the
feathers that are more specialized for keeping them dry and
hydrodynamic as they grow older. Now, some birds also don't
develop their adult coloration until they are mature, so any
(09:09):
sorts of ornamentation, any kind of feather patterns that would
help for sexual selection, don't develop until they're older. So
these feathers on their beaks, there's like a few possibilities
right for why they have them when they're young but
not as adults. Like it could be that that bald
beak is a feature of sexual selection. It could be
(09:32):
that juveniles are more vulnerable to say, the cold, or
maybe to pathogens, and so having those feathers over their beaks,
over their nostrils is much more important for the young
rooks than for the adults, which, you know, it still
kind of presents this mystery because having a covered beak
(09:54):
as an adult seems like it could also have benefits.
So why did rooks lose this this covering, whereas other
corvids like ravens and crows seem to have these feathers
all over their beaks, you know, pretty far down. Actually,
it is quite noticeable once you do see them up close,
because it's true their feathers are black and it kind
(10:15):
of blends in with their beak. But then once you
see it, you can't really not see it anymore. They
have these very fluffy beaks, especially ravens, because their feathers
a little shaggyar, so you can really notice that beak fluff.
So that's kind of all to say that I don't
necessarily have a really precise answer for you, not yet.
(10:38):
At least I will continue to look for when I've
reached out to some crow experts, some corvid experts, and
if I find a really compelling answer, like maybe some
new research or some really compelling theories, I will definitely
share them with you. This is just such a good
question because it's such a good observation, first of all,
(10:58):
to notice, yeah, they do have these feathers on their beaks,
and then also to think of like, hey, you know,
is this a normal thing for birds? What are those feathers?
What purpose could they serve you are definitely thinking like
an evolutionary biologist, that's a fantastic question. And yeah, it
is surprising to me always that sometimes there's a lot
of there are things that seem relatively like, yeah, we
(11:21):
should have an answer for that, but you know, it's
hard for me to find like a definitive study or
a definitive answer that seems to indicate exactly what those
that feature of the animal is. So in a way
that's exciting, right, Like, there's still things that are left
to figure out. So I will keep you updated. I
will continue to reach out to corved experts and see
(11:42):
if I can find out exactly why they have those
feathers on their beaks. My guess would be it's a
form of protection of some kind, Like it either keeps
their beaks warmth, or it's protecting their nostrils from say
dust or pathogens or something similar to say like eyelashes
on a human, right like, or nose hairs, right like,
(12:03):
something that is a part of like maybe their passive
immune system, right like they're keeping stuff out maybe because
they're so they have to be so omnivorous, so like
they'll they're definitely not above eating carrion, but they have
to eat different kind of weird things, so maybe that's
to help protect them. Whereas maybe a vulture that doesn't
have feathers on its beak has a different, like different
(12:26):
techniques for keeping pathogens out, like a maybe a different
part of their immune system that's a lot stronger. They
have highly acidic stomachs, things like that. So you know,
it's it's it is a really interesting thing. It's a
really interesting observation. So thank you so much for that question.
All right, next listener question. This person received a newsletter
(12:48):
from dog Juice. I don't know what dog juice is,
but it sounds delicious, said Hi Katie. I received a
newsletter in my inbox from dog Juice today and found
this to be particularly interesting here to share jessec So
she links to a study called Sneeze to leave. African
wild dogs like on Pictus, use variable quorum thresholds facilitated
(13:12):
by sneezes in collective decisions. So this is a study
I'm actually familiar with. I think it's really really cool.
So just a kind of brief summary of it is
that this study found that African wild dogs engage in
sneeze democracy if one of them wants to move on
from somewhere, she will sneeze, and you know it's a
(13:36):
controlled sneeze, Like if you have a dog, you might
kind of know what this is. Like a dog can
kind of like do this sort of like a like
sneeze on command apparently, and like my dog does so
frequently when she's trying to tell me something. So and
these are African wild dogs who are not domesticated. They
are wild animals. They will they live in pack structures
(13:59):
with as a hierarchy. But interestingly they also seem to
really kind of rely on group decision making. So one
dog sneezes, and then maybe her neighbor agrees like yeah,
I want to move on, and then her neighbor sneezes,
and then if there's enough sneezing, like a critical mass
of sneezing, the pack will move on. It's like basically
(14:20):
like hey, who wants to get out of here and
go somewhere else? Dominant dogs in the pack might get
more clout for their sneezes. It's not maybe exactly one dog,
one sneeze vote, but it really does depend on the
other dogs agreeing. So if you have a domesticated dog,
you will know that they're highly social and they use
(14:42):
their sneezes to communicate to each other as well as
to us humans. Sneezes and dogs can mean distress or
a desire to play, maybe just to get your attention frustration.
Sometimes my dog loves to sneeze loudly and wetly into
my face when I'm not paying enough attention to her,
like when I'm writing my responses to listener questions for example.
(15:08):
All right, onto the next listener question. This is from
Scott M. Have you discussed carrion bees yet on the pod?
They are super cool bees that are adapted to eat meat.
So hey, Scott, you know what. I cannot remember if
I have discussed them or not, but even if so,
they are worth more than one mentioned because you are correct.
(15:28):
They are super cool and I could talk about them,
probably in their whole episode, but why not spit some
carrying bee facts right now? These are bees found in
South America in rainforests. They're also known as vulture bees,
and as both their names suggest, they feed exclusively on
(15:50):
dead animals, which is called obligate necrophagi, so that means
they have to eat dead meat. And that is what
they are involved to do. As honeybees are nectivorous, they
are flesh chivorous. That is not a real word, but
I just said that. So there are three species of
(16:11):
carrion bees. They're all very closely related, very similar. So
as creepy as it sounds, they're actually harmless to the living.
They don't have stingers. They're stingless type of bee. Like
honey bees. They live in use social colonies with defined
social structures, rolls and a queen. So yeah, they're essentially
(16:35):
like honey bees, but they don't have stingers, and they
eat you know, rotting flesh instead of nectar. So carrion
bees will find a carcass, just as a honey bee
would find a flower, and signals to other members of
the colonies to come join them. So they will crawl
into sort of orifices in the carcass to get to
(16:57):
soft tissue. One of their favorite places to climb up
in apparently is the eye socket, which you know, lovely
cute little bees. So they will start to chew little
bits of flesh away and they don't eat it right away,
they will carry it back to the colony. Now, this
is the point at which some of the research is
(17:19):
a little threadbare about these bees. We're not exactly sure
how they process these pieces and meats, but there's a
couple theories. So they The thing that researchers know is
that they steal the meat away and these little wax pots.
What they don't know is whether they do some kind
of pre processing, like pre digesting with like a special
gland or some enzymes, and then spit it into the
(17:43):
wax pots, or if they just place it directly without
doing any kind of digestion, and then inside the little
wax pots is where sort of all of the processing happens.
All the processing happens. So either way, the meat goes
through some sort of breakdown process in these wax pots
(18:04):
and it turns into a nutritional paste that the bee
can easily consume and digest over the course of a
few days. So at first people thought that this was
just honey right from like flowers, weird honey or like,
but it's actually kind of it's meat honey. It is
a nutritive substance made out of flesh rather than the
(18:27):
proteins found in plant pollen. So a study charmingly called
why did the bee eat the chicken, symbion gain loss
and retention in the vulture. Be microbiome examined the gut
microbiome of carrion bees versus nectivorous bees and found a
shift in what sorts of digestive bacteria live in the
(18:50):
carnivorous bees, So their guts are more acidic in general,
protecting them from pathogens that might be present in carrion.
So these bees have evolved from being nectivores, you know,
sipping nectar to eating meat, and meat can be a
lot more dangerous in terms of pathogens that can be found,
(19:12):
like bad bacteria that can be found growing on the meat,
and so if you eat that and you consume that
you don't have any defense against it, you can get
really sick. That's one reason that humans like our whole
thing is that we developed an ability to cook our meat,
which not only protects us from pathogens, but it also
(19:32):
helps process the meat a bit, which helps us digest
it more efficiently. And so that cooking has been really
important for us. And these bees have a double kind
of a double pronged approach here. Not only are their
guts more acidic, allowing them to digest meat better, they
also process it by putting it into these little wax pots.
(19:54):
So you know what, we really share a lot with
carnivorous bees. You think about it onto the next listener question. Hi,
I just listened to the episode about ear mites and
dog hair and have an allegory with photo receipts. I
adopted my dog Milly when she was seven months old
and she had short, straight fur. The first time she
(20:17):
went into heat, her fur grew about one and a
half inches and went full curly. Sue. She'll be three
on Valentine's Day and she looks like an orange and
white shag carpet. Love the show, especially when there's a
story about animals who do crimes or get sweet sweet revenge.
And this is from Michael, and I got photos of
smooth Milly and fuzzy Milly. I love so cute. Thank
(20:40):
you for sending me this very adorable and very important
case study of Milly's fluffiness. First of all, adorable, she's
adorable with both hairstyles. Tell her that she's beautiful no
matter what she does with her hair. And although I
do have to say I love the shag carpet version
of Milly, you know, thinking about it. Actually, my dog
(21:02):
went through something similar, not quite as dramatic as Milly.
But when she was a younger dog, when she was
a puppy, her hair was smooth, short and straight until
you know, I don't know exactly, but I would I
want to say, like when she was about a year old,
maybe she got a lot fluffier, with a few curls
(21:24):
here and there. So like, hormones are really wild in
how much they can affect the body. As for animals
who get revenge, there's a few stories that I love.
Of course. One is that the fact that crows can
remember the faces of those who have wronged them, or
(21:45):
even the faces of those that they simply do not
like and find to be suspicious and questionable of character,
so that there have been these amazing studies by researchers
who will provoke them by holding up dead taxidermine crows,
which not surprisingly crows don't like. They don't like it
when you do that. But the researchers wore masks to
(22:08):
product their real identity, because the crows were able to
recognize their faces, the masked faces, and they would attack them.
They'd get really agitated and go on the offense against them,
which they had this behavior for many years, Like they
would learn to hold grudges for years and they would
(22:28):
teach it to their young. So I mean to be
fair though to these crows. I think that's completely justifiable.
If someone holds like a dead crow out to a
group of crows and they're also wearing this super scary
mask and they're like, hey, crows, what's up, Like you're
gonna not make friends with the crows? Like this is
(22:49):
the opposite, Like Listener mentioned the Crowbros subred out where
it's like you offer tasteful snacks and you take photos
of how pretty the crows are. That's how to befriend
a crow. This is how to the enemy a crow.
And you probably don't want to do that unless you're
a researcher whose identity is being protected by the Witness
Protection Service, because these crows will remember you and they
(23:12):
will attack you. So that's I do love that story
of animals holding onto a grudge, another fun act of revenge.
Actually bringing up another sort of creature that we talked
about today. Bees, different types of bees Asian bees, and
(23:34):
they have evolved to having a defense against Asian giant hornets.
So we had this big scare in the US where
we had some invasive Asian giant hornets, and it was
very concerning because the bees that live in North America
do not have defenses against Asian giant hornets. So these
these hornets who prey on bees were just going hogwild
(23:56):
on bee hives, and so and kind of intervention had
to happen in terms of trying to get rid of
these giant hornets. And in contrast, bees that are in
the sort of natural environment of Asian giant hornets, ones
that have co evolved with these hornets, do have defenses
(24:19):
against these murder hornets. So what happens is these bees
will surround the hornet and wiggle their cute little bodies,
generating a massive amount of heat. So, like one bee
wiggling might not generate a lot of heat, but if
you form a bee ball, a bunch of bees cramped
together like in a mosh pit, like all jiggling and
vibrating and beating their little wing muscles, they can actually
(24:42):
generate quite a bit of heat. That literally, once they've
completely ensconced this hornet, they can boil the hornet alive
and don't feel too bad for the hornet, because if
she had her way, she'd be beheading and eating scores
and scores of bees. You know, yeah, these these bees
have developed a strategy to counter the incredible ferocity of
(25:06):
Asian giant hornets. So real David and Goliath situation, except
it's like hundreds of Davids, all like Towerking to defeat Goliath,
which sounds fantastic. I'd love to see that. Also, I'm
sure that you've heard of orcas ramming boats, so I
would love to think that this is revenge against loud,
(25:30):
annoying motor boats in their territory. But according to whale biologists,
they're probably just being curious and having fun, which I
don't know. Maybe so Orca researchers like to point out
that if orcas really wanted revenge against boats, they could
do a lot more damage, and that they're most likely
(25:51):
playfully investigating their environment. On the other hand, I don't know,
Maybe these orcas are sending us a message anyways, don't
underestimate the orcas. If they wanted to mess with us,
I'm sure they could figure out a way to capsize
a boat. But doctor Deborah Giles, who is an orca
researcher thinks that an orca matriarch probably discovered how fun
it was to ram a boat and then taught the
(26:14):
boat ramming behavior to her family, and the tradition has
just spread. It's like basically a hot new Orca fad.
Because intelligent animals, especially social animals that learn from each other,
can have fads. Things catch on among them and they
do behaviors. That's kind of like the Japanese macaques that
(26:34):
learned how to wash yams and salt water. There's a
lot of behaviors that can become sort of go viral
among animals, and so apparently boat ramming is one of them.
So good job Orca's focus on the yachts. I say,
all right, onto the next listener question. Hi Katie, I
love your show and how much you managed to cover
the years while keeping an interesting Well, thank you. I
(26:57):
have a subject that I found interesting, and that's the animal.
So with autismo, CDADHD, depression or other symptoms that are
usually related to humans, are there enough studies to cover this?
We'd love to hear about our fellow suffering creatures. Happy holidays, Arena,
Hi Arena, I definitely do think that animals can be
neurodivergent or suffer from mental illness in the same way
(27:17):
humans do, which is typically a mixture of physiology, so
something that sort of brain structures that you're born with
and environment, which is sort of the way in which
your brain structures sort of inact interact with your environment,
and then your environment in turn shapes your brain. So
it's very much kind of a complex recipe here where
(27:41):
it's not you know, the whole nature nurture debate in
terms of brains. It's like, in my opinion, based on
the evidence that I've read, like it's very much a
interwoven mixture. Like you have environment that has a very
strong role in brain development, but a lot of people
are actually born with certain structures that are much more
likely to respond to their environment in specific ways. So
(28:06):
given that animals also have brains and interact with an environment,
I think it is almost a certainty. And it actually
has been documented in a lot of animals that some
of them are either neurodivergent or have mental illness. Now,
the sort of definitions of neurodivergence mental illness is very
(28:27):
much on one's experience, right, So like if you're a
neurodivergent you may not have, Like, your neurodivergence may not
be necessarily a problem, but the ways in which the
nerdivergent might make it difficult to say in you know,
(28:49):
socialization or something, or to interact with society. There may
be specific aspects of that neudivergence that can manifest as
like say, a mental illness. Like for instance, if if
you're neurodivergent with autism, I would say autism, in my opinion,
is not really a mental illness, but if you are
(29:10):
depressed or anxious, like if you have a lot of
social anxiety, because your way of thinking makes it more
difficult to say, interact with others than that anxiety, and
that depression is the mental illness where it's you know,
the autism is a form of neurodivergence. And so I
kind of, you know, it's interesting because I have OCD
(29:32):
and OCD is generally accepted as a mental illness. But
I would kind of in my opinion, just as you know,
and I'm very open to people disagree with this, I
feel like OCD itself, this sort of the different kind
of way of processing information is not necessarily always disordered.
(29:53):
So like sometimes the way my brain works, the way
my brain processes information is can be quite helpful, say
if I'm writing something and sort of making unusual connections
or something that can be helpful to me, when it's
not helpful with like making connections that don't make any
sense or are interfering with my life, like say rituals,
(30:14):
where with OCD you have a couple you have both rituals,
say like oh, if I don't do X, like maybe
turn on and off a light switch or something, then
something bad is going to happen. And that's a ritual
attached to an intrusive thought. There's also purely intrusive thoughts
when it comes to OCD. So maybe a thought you
can't get out of your head that's unpleasant, or you
(30:37):
can start thinking things like making kind of I guess
like say you have an anxiety about something like oh
is this a freckle a mole or like skin cancer,
and then you just cannot stop thinking about it and
no amount of reassurance seems to help quiet that thought.
All of that can fall under the umbrella of OCD.
And so while obsessive compulsive disorder refers to sort of
(31:01):
the maladaptive behaviors, right, like the things that cause suffering
and difficulty for whoever's having it. I think the other
the sort of like other features of it, Like I
think it's probably there's sort of a different kind of
sensory processing brain that is like maybe behind the OCD
(31:23):
that to me would not necessarily I don't even it
probably doesn't really have a specific label other than neurodivergence.
But to me that part is not really mental illness,
because you know, when I have sort of maybe a
unique way of looking at things that isn't causing me suffering,
that's not causing me problems, if anything, that can be
(31:43):
useful for me. So you have both elements, and we're
just talking about humans now. So with animals it's a
lot more difficult to kind of bought these things and
understand what's going on. Because with the human a human
being can generally communicate, right, Like I can say like, yeah,
(32:04):
my OCD rituals cause me distress, cause me anxiety, interfere
with my life. I'm saying that as an example. I
actually I used to suffer from a lot of OCD
rituals as a child, as an adult. Most of them
are under control, but like a lot of people with
OCD will have say, rituals, like things repetitive tasks that
(32:28):
they don't really want to do, but if they don't
do them, they get really anxious. And so this causes distress.
It can cause anxiety, depression, It can just sort of
in terms of your daily routine, interfere with your life
because you're spending time on these things. In terms of animals,
they may be engaging in OCD rituals, but we can't
(32:48):
really ask them what amount of distress it's causing them.
We can only really guess. But there are some cases
in which I think we can pretty I would say
with a lot of confidence say like this is kind
of like an OCD ritual, and it does seem to
be done in a situation where the animal is anxious
or distressed or bored or something. So the most documented
(33:12):
cases are in places like zoos because we can absorb
the animals more, but also because zoos presents an environment
that can be I think, more likely to produce like
mental illness and animals, so animals will get We don't
really call it like OCD in animals necessarily, but in zoos,
(33:34):
like when an animal engages in a repetitive ritualistic behavior.
It's called a stereotype. So it's a repetitive compulsive behavior
like pacing, excessive grooming. The grooming can even be so
excessive it results in baldness or skin irritation, and really
extreme cases, it can even be things like slamming against
walls and self injury. So this is usually due to distress.
(33:59):
It could be due to loneliness, to boredom. It could
be due to lack of proper socialization, lack of space,
or stimulation, or conversely, it could be over stimulation or
being housed with an animal with whom they don't get
along and so they're suffering a lot of anxiety. Now,
(34:20):
this is not like a thing where it's like all
animals in all zoos suffer in this way. This is
specific to certain situations in zoos, So not all zoos
are bad. There's a lot of really good zoos. San
Diego Zoo is a good one in terms of taking
really good care of their animals, trying to make sure
(34:42):
that they're in good spaces. I do think that certain
animals probably are never going to be in an ideal
situation in a zoo. Something really big and really intelligent,
say like an elephant. I think that it's going to
be really tough to ever have a good environment for
an elephant in a zoo, just because they in their
natural environment, so much of their natural behavior involves like
(35:06):
roaming over long, long distances, and you simply cannot recreate
that in a zoo. But you know, what you see
is animals that if they are in a situation in
a zoo where they really don't have the right type
of environment, they will sometimes engage in these stereotypees, especially
because there's not really escape sometimes. So a lot of
(35:28):
times in nature, say like if an animal is having
a conflict with another animal, it can like go off
find its own space and then kind of cool down
a bit. But in a more kind of confined environment,
maybe they can't do that. So either that could result
in fights amongst the animals, or you could have some
kind of behavior like excessive grooming, excessive self soothing that
(35:51):
turns into kind of like an OCD behavior, And so
this would I would think that, you know, this would
be sort of a form of animal mental illness that
is definitely environmentally influenced. But the other question is, like
could an animal be born with, say like autism or OCD,
(36:11):
and you know, like like born with sort of a
a neural like structures that are more likely to end
up with sort of some some neurodivergence or some disorder.
I think it's really hard to exactly map human labels
onto animals, like say like this dog has OCD or
(36:34):
this cat is autistic. I don't know that we can
really do that because autism and OCD, all of the
definitions that we have are based on human behavior. It's
based on human emotions, human behaviors, human socialization. So you know,
we would really kind of need to come up like
and I have seen, like, you know, some attempts by saying,
(36:54):
like in papers to come up with sort of specific
terms for animals, like compulsive disorders rather than like obsessive
compulsive disorder, right, Like stereotype ES is another one, which
is like, you know, this is a ritualistic behavior, because
you know, an animal's mental sort of landscape is going
(37:14):
to be a lot different from a human and so
the types of you know, using like a human sort
of diagnostic manual for an animal doesn't make a lot
of sense. But you know, I think that we can
definitely make these connections, right, like saying like, hey, this
is quite similar to OCD in humans, or this is
similar to anxiety or ADHD in humans, even if it's not,
(37:36):
doesn't like map on you know, directly onto the animal.
Most of our observations about say an animal being born
with a sort of different brain is going to be
documented best in pets, domesticated animals, animals in captivity because
we just get to observe them more. Right, if you
have a dog, you're going to notice if the dog
(37:58):
seems to excessively groom groom himself or herself when she's
when she's anxious, right, Whereas we're maybe not going to
be able to see that as much as in say
like a wild dog like or a wolf or a
coyote or something, because like if we see a coyote
and it's got a bald spot on its butt, be like, well,
(38:19):
that could be mange, that could be from a fight.
We don't know. So without constant observation, you wouldn't know
if that coyote is doing some kind of nervous excessive
grooming on its butt. So but you know, like I
think everyone who has a pet, even if your pet
doesn't have any sort of specific issues. I think you've
all sort of experienced, like an animal having maybe a phobia, right, like,
(38:43):
which is really common in humans too, Like having a
phobia is like one of the most common you know,
mental health issues and people, really common in animals and pets.
Because it kind of makes sense, like phobias are a
it's an exaggerated response to something that's seen as a danger. Oh,
(39:03):
and it is something that is probably really useful for
survival and animals and people, right Like something scares you,
you have traumatic experience, or you know, something seems dangerous
to you and you learn like, hey, this thing is scary.
That could save your life. But in the terms, in
terms of phobia, a phobia is defined by the fact
that it is not a reasonable response to something. It
(39:27):
isn't rational, and it is causing you distress. Right Like
if you if you have a normal fear of like
spiders or snakes, but it's not really in you know,
causing you any distress, Like you can see a photo
of a spider and you're fine, you just don't want
to like hold one. That's I don't think that would
generally be described as a phobia. It's really only once
(39:47):
it's causing you distress, Like if you see a photo
of a spider, you start sweating, you start getting really anxious,
and uh, it's causing you distress. Then then that would
be like a phob and these are often treated in
humans with like exposure therapies. Like by the way, if
you have a phobia and you're afraid of treatment or
(40:09):
you feel like there's no way for it to be treated,
phobias are one of the most treatable disorders, like mental
health issues in people through you know, I think it
can be really and I used to have a phobia
of graveyards actually, and anything that had to do with
(40:29):
like graveyards or death like coffins, gravestones, mummies, all these
things I had a very severe phobia of and it
was causing me issues and I went through sort of
a I would say, very gentle exposure therapy. But like
you know, so I would say, like, if you are
dealing with that, it is treatable. The treatment is often
(40:50):
basically like slowly and carefully introducing you to the the
thing that makes you scared in a safe environment so
that you learn that nothing bad happens to you. So
it's it is. It is treatable. But the point that
I'm bringing this up is that in animals it can
be quite common. So, like, maybe you have a cat.
(41:13):
This is just an example, none of I'm not speaking
for any of the cats in my life, but maybe
like a pillow, like he was sleeping on a pillow
and had a nightmare, or a pillow like fell on
him at one point, Like and it's a specific pillow,
say it's like a blue, fluffy pillow, and now this
cat is like terrified of this pillow. The pillow never
hurt the cat. The pillow is not a threat to
(41:34):
the cat. It's just the cat has made some negative
association with this pillow, and now the cat's terrified of
this pillow. And anytime it's in the room with this pillow,
it freaks out, it panics and runs away. I'd say
this cat does have a phobia of this pillow, because
the pillows never actually hurt the cat. The cat's just
developed this extreme fear responds to a pillow, and despite
(41:56):
the fact that it's seen the pillow numerous times and
nothing bad has happened, the cat is retaining the phobia.
Another example, so my dog when she was young, was
attacked pretty severely by another dog, And even though we've
made a lot of progress over the years, she still
has serious trust issues and anxiety around other dogs, which
is pretty similar to say, like a phobia or a
(42:20):
sort of PTSD, right like in humans. So like, even
though we can't like I can't ask my dog, like, well,
how do you feel when you're around another dog? I
can see her body language, right Like, we've gotten to
the point where she can go on walks and she's
not constantly agitated, but I can see like if she
sees another dog, her body language indicates she's anxious, right
(42:43):
like her her tail may drop sort of below her feet,
her ears are back, you know, she her posture is
a little more stiff, or she gets defensive, right like
her hair stands on end. The opposite, like, there's there's
different ways a dog can show anxiety. Sometimes it's more
sort of like like inward anxiety or like passive anxiety,
(43:04):
where tail is down, ears are back, you know, posture stiff.
Or it can be kind of a more aggressive version
of anxiety where it's like tails straight up, fur is up,
you know, ears are up, postures stiff, but more like
that that's kind of more of a defensive or offensive posture,
where it's like I will bark and bite you if
you like come near me, because like I'm not joking,
(43:26):
whereas the other posture can be like I'm I'm scared
and I'm acting submissive and I'm a little bit nervous here,
but I really don't want you to, you know, Like
it's both kind of a form of communication of the
dog warning the other dog or saying like, look, I'm
I'm really not here to make friends right now. I'm
not I'm not super happy about this situation. And there's
(43:46):
a lot of subtleties with dog body posture, like sometimes
a tail can be up, ears can be up. Posture
can be kind of like alert, but it's not the
dog's not being aggressive or defensive. You kind of have
to look for other cues right Like it's the first
standing on in like look at their face, like is
the face friendly? Or are they like is are their
lips pulled? Back? Like? How stiff is the tail? How
(44:07):
stiff and rigid is their posture? Like? Because they can
be alert and interested and curious without actually being aggressive.
I digress, I don't want to get too much on
the topic of just interpreting dog micro expressions, but anyways,
the point is, yes, I absolutely think that, you know,
(44:29):
neurodivergence and mental illness can be present in animals. I
think that it would be different from human like the
way that we categorize human mental illness. I mean to
be honest with you, Like we're constantly changing the sort
of diagnostics for human mental illness. We're also changing what
we consider to be mental illness versus neurodivergence, and there's
(44:52):
a lot of sort of gray area between the two, right,
So it makes stands to reason that it'd be the
same thing with animals. And also, like you like say
you could have some kind of diagnostic criteria for say
a dog, that's gonna be different for a cat, right
like you have every species of animals, and also animals
in different situations, like a domesticated animal versus a wild animal,
(45:16):
They're just gonna have a whole different kind of mental
and emotional landscape and so behave a behavior that is
normal for an animal, like certain animals will like eat
their own young, right like if if if a human
did that, not normal, not not good, not normal. So yeah,
(45:36):
so it's gonna be different standards for animals. Depends on
the species, depends on the animal situation. But yeah, when
we do have these observations over long periods of times,
like in zoos and domesticated animal situations and pets especially,
I think the sort of stuff that we get in
terms of like ve veterinarians writing about clients and pets
(46:00):
is really interesting because I think that for the most part,
at most, a lot of these pets that come in
presenting with say mental health issues, are being treated well
by their owners. Usually an owner who brings in a
pet is like, I'm concerned my dog is anxious. It's
going to be treating that dog pretty well, even if
there could be some mistakes that they're making, right, It's
(46:20):
not like the dog is being abused. But like, that's
very interesting to me because that seems more applicable to
sort of like the range of human mental illness, because
mental illness can definitely be caused by environment in human beings, right, Like,
I mean we see this, Like you know, I could
go on a whole soapbox about say, like prison systems
(46:43):
can exacerbate or cause mental illness because of the way
that like say, captivity can harm human being mental health, right,
so that's a big problem. And so you know, with
animals you can see the same thing in them, but
with pets, you know, like it's it is really interesting
to me because I think that it does show us
(47:05):
that you can have a lot of similar say like
mental health issues or mental differences in pets, and they're
not necessarily suffering in their lives in the sense of
like you know, they're not being mistreated horribly or anything,
but they just might be more sensitive to their environments.
(47:26):
So something like the sound of a car might really
make them anxious, even if it's not even if they've
never been hurt by a car or something like that.
And so you know, I definitely think there's strong evidence
that animals have the same kinds of issues, in the
same kinds of like mental diversity that humans do. It's
just a little bit tricky to study that in wild animals,
(47:49):
but we can definitely see it in the animals that
we live with. So thank you guys so much for
all your questions. If you have a question, you can
write to me at reach your feature Pod at gmail
dot com and I'll either try to answer on the
show or through email. Next week should be a normal episode,
so we're getting right back into it. And thank you
(48:13):
guys so much for listening to the show. Hope you're
all doing all right and I will see you next week.
Thank you so much to the Space Posics for their
super awesome song XO. Lumina Creature features a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit
the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts, or Hey, guess what where
(48:34):
have you listened to your favorite shows? I do not
judge you. I'm not your mother, and I can't tell
you what to do except that, Hey, kids, if you're
sticking your face and some carrions, be sure that your
microbiome has adapted to that first, and wash your hands.
See you next Wednesday.
Creature Feature News
Host
Katie Goldin
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