January 25, 2023 • 26 mins
I answer your amazing questions, including one about milking pigs, animal drunkenness, anime style critters, too many legs, rat facts and bird aliens.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:06):
Welcome to Creature Feature Production of I Heart Radio. I'm
your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. He studied psychology
and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, it's a
listener questions episode. You can write to me your questions
and I answer them. If you've got a question, you
can write to me a Creature Feature Pod at gmail
dot com and I'll either try to respond to you
(00:28):
there or hey sometimes on the show, like I'm doing
right now today. So let's get right into it with
the first listener question. What foods are toxic two pets
and which ones aren't. I know not to give chocolate
to dogs, but that's about it, and no alcohol. Are
some animals immune to alcohol? I've read about elephants getting
(00:48):
drunk Steven M Hi Stephen. So to answer your first question,
there are actually tons of foods and substances that are
toxic two pets. So it's always a good idea to
you only feed them something if you've already looked it
up and check to make sure it's not toxic. But
just in addition to some of the more well known
(01:08):
foods toxic to dogs, like chocolate, some surprising ones are
that you should not let them eat grapes, raisins, or currents,
because these can actually cause life threatening kidney damage. It's
thought that it's the tartaric acid and grapes that causes
kidney toxicity and dogs, but not in humans. There's also
another surprising thing that you shouldn't let your dog eat,
(01:30):
which is zylatol, which is the artificial sweetener often found
in sugarless gum, sugar free ice cream, or even some
brands of sweetened peanut butter. In dogs, zylatol is quickly
absorbed by the blood stream and triggers a massive release
of insulin, which is an effect that does not occur
(01:50):
in humans. This can dangerously fast track the absorption of
blood sugars, causing a blood sugar crash a k a.
Hype glycemia, and this can be life threatening. So yeah,
there are actually a lot of other things you should
not feed your dog, and I'm not a vet, so
I don't feel comfortable giving advice or the whole list
(02:12):
of what you shouldn't feed your dogs, So always check
with your vet or a trusted source before you let
the meat stuff that's not dog food or dog treats.
So cats also you need to be careful with in
terms of what they get to eat. A surprising thing
to me about cats is that essential oils can actually
(02:33):
be quite dangerous to them. So essential oils can cause
liver damage when a cat ingests it or gets it
on their skin. There are a bunch of essential oils
that are bad for cats, including but not limited to,
peppermint oil, citrus cinnamon oil which I didn't even know,
cinnamon cane in oil form, but there it is, uh
(02:55):
tea tree oil, and others. So don't use a cential
oil products on your cat. Um, keep them out of
your cat's reach. Talk to your vet, like if you
if you have essential oils that you use, you can
talk to your vet about like, you know, making sure
that they're not dangerous to your cat and there's no
cross contamination. Um. Yeah, just be just be all careful
(03:19):
with the kiddies because it's super concentrated stuff and they
cannot handle that. So onto drunk animals, So stories of
drunk elephants maybe apocryphal. There's not really any solid evidence
of elephants eating enough rotting fruit to get drunk, and
(03:39):
they seem to prefer fresh fruit. UM. And they're so
big it would take a lot of fermented fruit to
actually get them drunk. But uh, that doesn't mean a
big animal cannot get drunk. So however, moose definitely do
get drunk because they will happily eat a bunch of
fermented apples, will get drunk, and they have sometimes been
(04:02):
found to crash into trees while drunk moss ng which
I don't know if that's a crime, um, but you
know that is what happens. So in terms of whether
some animals are immune to alcohol, there are some that
have incredibly high alcohol cool tolerances, such as tree shrews.
(04:25):
So the pin tailed tree shrew is a mouse like
arboreal mammal, meaning it lives in trees. Um from Malaysia,
So they are these little mouse sized shrews. They have
a tail where the hairs on the end, these white
hairs stick out like a feather pin and that's why
(04:47):
they're called pin tailed. They're very cute. They can fit
in the palm of your hand, and they can hold
their liquor much better than a mouse. So they love
to drink nutrient rich fer mint to nectar that comes
from the bertram palm tree. Uh in the paper with
a title that I Love Chronic intake of fermented floral
(05:09):
nectar by wild tree shrews. The researchers found that these
tree shrews, if scaled up to say a human woman size,
could drink nine glasses of wine in twelve hours without
showing any signs of intoxication. For me, I can do
like one glass. Uh and yeah, so twelve glasses of
(05:32):
wine scaled up is what they can handle without showing
any signs of intoxication. And that's not healthy for humans,
but it works for the pin tailed tree shrew due
to adaptations to their metabolism that allows them to efficiently
process alcohol and limit the concentration in their brain and bloodstream.
(05:55):
Now onto another question, also from Stephen. I did a
Google search for coming from animals other than cows. It
seems pigs just don't like humans milking them, and I
kind of understand why nobody wants to try to get
hippopotamus milk, But what about other mammals? Have people ever
try to get milk from them? Do cats and dogs
produce too little milk for people to be interested? So
(06:17):
domesticated dairy cows, sheep, and goats were selected and bred
for high milk yield. Cows who came from the extinct
wild oroc were able to be selectively bred into docile,
high yield milk producers, and frankly, their teeths are easy
to grab onto to milk. Like trying to milk a
(06:37):
dog or a cat. Their teeths are really small and
there's not gonna be much there. It's just not worth it. Also,
cow milk is high and fat, it separates well into
cream and milk, and it has a mild taste, all
making it very ideal for human cultivation. But that doesn't
(06:59):
mean that there aren't there animals that people can and
do try to get milk from, including camels, horses, water
buffalo and uh. Pigs do not like you to milk them.
They are very ornerary. But apparently there are some chefs
that are trying to figure out how to get pigs milk. Um.
Good luck with that pig. They're not docile and they
(07:21):
do not want you up in their business like that.
Next listener question, Hi, my son Max has been listening
since the first episode. He is a spooky kid. He
has asked me to write and suggest some spooky topics.
One animals that could be in the Aliens franchises a
(07:42):
Ka Xenomorphs too. Animals that could be the subject of
the SCP Foundation that is a meta fiction about anomalies
that should be secured, contained or protected by a fake
government agency. Three. Max would like to know what animals
seem like they should be from crypto Zoology, especially moth Man.
For are there animals that seem like they should come
(08:05):
from anime, especially JoJo's Bizarre Adventure? So if you have
podcaster block, Max is happy to share ideas. Also, we
recently went to Africa and saw a bachelor heard of
Kate Buffalo's several were staring us down while shake urinating.
The guide informed us that that's a sign of aggression.
We said, yes, mean mugging while shakepea translate as a
(08:26):
aggression across species. We then spent the next week giggling
about how fast you would call the police if someone
walked in our bar and was shakepeaing. Sorry for the
random story, Thanks for encouraging my son somewhat inappropriate but
very funny love of animals. Thanks Sonya, f Hi, Sonia
and Max. First of all, yes, I feel like a
buffalo peeing aggressively at me would be threatening. It basically
(08:49):
anything peeing aggressively in your direction is threatening. Message received. Uh.
Now onto Max's ideas. I love these. I may indeed
do an episode to use your ideas. Max. In the meantime,
A little appetizer for some of these animals I think
fit the bill. Uh. The bobbit worm is one that
(09:10):
I think is scarier than the alien from the movies Aliens.
It is a worm that lives on the ocean floor,
actually burrows down into the substrate and the ocean. It's
got many segments, these very dangerous looking pincers, and it
will pop out of a hole and grab a fish
and pull it down into this hole in the ocean,
(09:33):
and it is It's very scary. Uh. And it looks
very alien. Um. Now, in terms of animals that look
like they come from an anime, um, this is one
that I think is really interesting and kind of cute
in a weird way. The Cicada parasite beetle family are
(09:55):
species of beetles whose larva are parasitoids of cicada nymphs.
The adult beetles will lay their eggs in the same
holes in trees created by cicadas for their offspring, and
the beetle larva will feed off of the cicada nymphs.
So as dastardly as they are, the adults are actually
really cute. Their antenna look like these incredibly feathery antlers.
(10:19):
They have these big round eyes, and in my opinion,
they look pretty cute, like if someone crossed a moose
in a beetle um. More bugs that I think look
like they come from an anime or maybe even from
the movie Aliens. This one, I think looks like an
alien robot. They are the trilobite beetles. They are a
genus of beetles, where the adult males look pretty boring.
(10:42):
They just look like a standard beal beetle, but the
females and juveniles look like weird segmented alien robots. They
have a triangular head segment to trapezoidal segments, and then
a bunch of tail in segments with spikes or barbs
coming off of them. Some species have bright orange markings
(11:04):
or yellow but the weirdest and most alien looking species
to me plate oh drillists. Ruficollis is found in Malaysia
and has black, shiny markings on its back that looked
like a bunch of weird alien eyes. Seriously, it is crazy.
Look that up uh platow drillists ruficulis. If you want
(11:26):
cuter animals uh that look like they come from an anime,
look no further than the mouse sized lowland streaked tenric
of Madagascar, who is bright yellow and black coloration and
incredible hedgehog like spikes. Would put it right at home
in many anime art styles. Besides, it's also got a long,
(11:48):
boopable snoot, and it will shake its quills together to
create a sound. The only mammal known to do strigulation,
as strigulation is the production of sound by rubbing body
parts together. So quite an amazing little animal. I think
it could definitely be a pokemon uh, and there are
many more like that. So maybe in the future I'll
do a whole episode using some of your ideas. Max,
(12:10):
and I hope you enjoyed these animals in the meantime.
Next listener question, Hello Katie, I could barely contain my
excitement when I heard you got to the question about
whether there's more eyes or legs in the world. I've
made an estimate based on current research earlier this year
and the Reddit sub our biology. In short, shrimp are
(12:30):
overwhelmingly many, mostly as zooplankton. They're pretty much the deciding group,
and the result is therefore that there's a lot more
legs than eyes. These calculations were made from numbers including
estimates of species not yet found, but of course we
don't know if something completely new turns up. I did
not include o'celli in this calculation, so o'celli. Side note,
(12:51):
listeners are very primitive, almost eye, sort of like sensory cells,
but not really eyes. But anyway, um back to the email.
I did not include ocelli in this calculation. My definition
of I is that it has to be able to
discern shape as well as light, and for legs they
need to directly bear the body. I remember that there
(13:13):
were some blunders in this calculation, but nothing that would
skew the results really. I remember that I went down
a rabbit hole with us and learned a lot both
about the vast amount of unidentified fish in our oceans,
how many worms there really are, and a lot of
cool facts about eyes. Thank you, as always for a
great show. Saga e Hi Saga. This was an amazing
thing to look at all of your calculations. Um, thank
(13:35):
you so much for that. I agree with you. I
think legs would win in a landslide. And even if
we were to count o'celli as eyes, which I agree,
I don't know that they really count as eyes, but
if we did that, only to be fair, we should
count podia or tube feet as legs as well. So
(13:57):
podia are these tiny tubes bound on the body ms
of like starfish and other kindoderms that work as these
tiny legs to move them around. They can also use
them for things like grabbing onto food and pushing it
into their mouths. The podia actually use hydraulics to move,
so water being pumped in and out of them, and
(14:19):
they have a sticky adhesive that they use to attach
to a substrate. And a starfish can have over ten
thousand tube feet each. So if you loosen the definition
for what an eye is to like an o'chelli, one
of those just simple light sensing cells, then you'd have
to loosen the definition for what a leg is to
(14:39):
one of these podia, And in that case, I think
the legs are gonna win in a total landslide. Speaking
of lots of legs. Millipedes are famous for having tons
of legs, and there's a newly discovered millipede, e Persephone,
which has broken the record for most legs on an animal.
(15:00):
It has been recorded with one thousand, three hundred legs
spread over three hundred thirty body segments. It's actually the
only known millipede to live up to its name Millie
meaning one thousand and peede derived from feet in Latin.
It was found deep in an Australian mining area, about
fifty to two hundred feet or fifteen to sixty meters underground.
(15:25):
It is eyelis and it has this hair like body.
It's around nine point four centimeters long a little under
four inches and about one millimeters or point zero four
inches thick. So millipedes are interesting in that you can
figure out how old they are by counting how many
segments they have. It's kind of like with rattlesnakes. You
(15:47):
can figure out how old they are by counting how
many segments is on their rattle because they grow them
at sort of a constant rate as they age. Millipedes
grows segments throughout their life. Uh So, if you know
about out how many segments. Species of millipede grows per
unit of time. You can add them up to figure
out how old they are. The e Persephone specimen, found
(16:11):
with over one thousand, three hundred legs, is suspected to
be around five to ten years old based on average
growth rates of other species of millipedes um, which is older.
Usually millipedes only lived to be around two years old,
so that if this is true, this is quite an
older living millipede that lives deep, deep underground in the minds. Uh,
(16:36):
certainly nothing spooky about that. I think that if for humans,
if we added a new pair of legs as we
got older, that'd be very interesting. We'd have much more
I guess, eventful birthdays, and I feel like I would
finally appreciate birthday gifts of socks like a lot more.
(16:59):
M next listener question on Hi Katie, I'm Mino, a
listener from Italy and my pronouns are they them? After
the latest listener questions rounds the fact about the single
double serings has left me wondering. Has the double tone
of the double serings ever been used for voicing alien
creatures and movies. I immediately thought about elves when you
(17:22):
described it because of their nature being adjacent to human
but not exactly after hearing it, I think it would
be befitting for most alien creatures in one way or another.
What do you think? Second, much broader question, what can
you tell us about pet rats? I was scared of
them when I was a kid, but now I have
three of them and they're the cutest furry potatoes. Thank
you for your amazing work, Mino, and I did get
(17:44):
pictures of the rats. I can confirm that they're very cute,
so thank you so much for your question. Mino. Firstly,
I do love rats. They're very sweet, they're very smart,
and my favorite thing about them is that they are ticklish.
Uh and perhaps the best rats study ever. In Canberra, Australia,
researchers are tickling rats to see if it improves their happiness.
(18:08):
The goal is to find out how to better handle
rats and improve their quality of life, even in laboratory settings.
But apparently there is a finesse to tickling rats. In
an interview with Yen Huan of The New York Times,
Carly Motley, a lab technician at the University of Wollongong,
(18:30):
explains that you have to learn how best to tickle
a rat. You can't just go in too hot. You
gotta be gentle, you gotta you gotta have some skills there.
So here are some tips from Carly. You gotta tickle
the rats neck with light movements. You can gently flip
the rat onto its back and tickle the rat between
(18:51):
its front legs on its chest while it's rolled over.
You do not want to tickle the tail or rear
haunches because those are area is where they are sensitive
to being nipped by other rats. It's like where other
rats might nip them when they're being aggressive. So they
don't necessarily like to be touched there. Um, but yes,
they do like it between his front legs, on its
(19:12):
back or on their neck. You can actually get certified
in rat tickling. You can google rat tickling certification and
take an online course on rat tickling. And this is
not a trick. I'm not joking. I'm actually gonna go
there right now. Let's see rat tickling certification. I see it. Uh,
(19:34):
it's a dot org dot UK website, so it's from
Purdue University. Um, okay, let's see if I can get
certified in rat tickling. Start the course. Oh my God,
this is a two hour course, so I might do
(19:54):
this later. Uh, get my certification in rat tickling later.
But that is incredible. So rat tickling, when done correctly,
can improve the bond between a rat and a human.
It is thought that rat tickling mimics the playful wrestling
between rats, and it's just fun for the rat, just
(20:15):
like when we tickle each other as humans. So if
you own a rat and you want to connect more
with your pet rat, consider learning how to tickle them,
maybe even get certified. Now onto your other question, you know, uh,
in terms of whether bird sounds could be used in
movies as aliens and that double SEARINGX of songbirds being
(20:38):
kind of a kind of an alien sound. So yeah,
I think bird sounds are used all the time in
movies to be the sounds of like mysterious creatures to
create a spooky ambient environment. Um. But first, I actually
want to make a bit of a clarification to the
episode Listener Cues Muse blues Deer who Choose Uh, which
(21:01):
is a title I didn't think I'd have to say
out loud, but here I did it. I guess I
deserved that, so uh. In that episode, I talked about
double versus single searings and birds, um, but I want
to add a little bit of nuance to that. So
in case you think there's like two synxes, it's kind
of considered one organ. So the seringx is a single organ,
(21:23):
but in many birds it in many birds it's bifurcated
or double barreled, so it's kind of this upside down
y shape. The difference between parrots and songbirds isn't so
much that parrots have one serins and songbirds have two seringxes,
although I kind of oversimplified it this way last time,
(21:44):
but that parents use more of a tracheal synx, whereas
songbirds use a tracheo bronchial serings. So if you're like,
what is that, I will try to explain. So, parrots
have one set of vibrating membranes and strong muscles surrounding
the trachea. Uh, the fact that it is not so
(22:08):
like they're they're sort of sernx muscles aren't so focused
on where the tricky branches off into these bronchi means
that they are mostly using that single the single trachea,
that single sort of tube, and uh, they only have
one set of muscles surrounding the trachea. Uh, this makes
(22:31):
it a little bit more similar to a human larynx. Then, say,
if you compare a human larynx to the songbirds synx,
which is, instead of just being a tracheal serinx, is
a tracheo bronchial sernx. So the songbird synx has more
muscle activity where it branches off into that uh, those bronchi,
(22:55):
so it's more double barreled than the parrots syrinx. They
have several pairs of syrngeal muscles instead of a parrot's
single pair, and they can make use of two independently
controlled sound sources inside their stynx, allowing them to sing
two notes at once. Um. So I just wanted to
(23:18):
kind of add a little bit more nuanced little clarification
to what I said earlier in terms of songbirds being
used in movies for spooky sounds. I don't know specifically
of songbirds being used as aliens. Um, but if there
are are any movie nerds out there who do know
about that, please write to me. I do know that
(23:40):
in the movie Prometheus, uh, pet parrot was used to
make some alien sounds, So even just the even though
the parrots uh starynx is more human like, it is
certainly not the same as a larynx, and so they
can still produce some eerie interesting sounds. Also, last I'm
(24:00):
on Creature Feature for the Mystery Animal sound game, I
played this sound, which I think is hauntingly beautiful. Last
(24:24):
week's hint with that sound was whoever named this animal
was being a bit judgmental. But because this animal sound
goes so well with your question, I will give you
another hint before revealing the answer next week. Here's my
second hint for the sound. This is often used in
movies to create a spooky, haunted atmosphere, even when it's
(24:46):
inaccurate to do so. Uh So, Yeah, that is a
sound you may recognize from a lot of movies that
tries to give it this spooky eerie, maybe even a
prehistoric ambience, But it is in fact a very real
animal that is not so scary. So um, thank you
(25:09):
guys so much for all of your questions. Again, if
you have a question that you would like to hear
me answer, or maybe even send you an email response,
you can write to me at Creature Feature pod at
gmail dot com. Yeah, and I really appreciate all of
your emails, all your animal pictures. Your pets love to
(25:32):
hear from you guys, so yes, feel free to email
me just to even say hi if you want. And
thank you so much for listening. I guess I'm gonna
go and try to get certified in rat tickling uh.
And I will see you guys next week. And thank
you so much to the Space Cossics for their super
awesome song. Excelumina. Creature features a production of I Heart Radio.
(25:55):
For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit
the I heart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or Hey guess what?
Why have you listen to your favorite shows? See you
next Wednesday. M
Welcome to Creature Feature Production of I Heart Radio. I'm
your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. He studied psychology
and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, it's a
listener questions episode. You can write to me your questions
and I answer them. If you've got a question, you
can write to me a Creature Feature Pod at gmail
dot com and I'll either try to respond to you
(00:28):
there or hey sometimes on the show, like I'm doing
right now today. So let's get right into it with
the first listener question. What foods are toxic two pets
and which ones aren't. I know not to give chocolate
to dogs, but that's about it, and no alcohol. Are
some animals immune to alcohol? I've read about elephants getting
(00:48):
drunk Steven M Hi Stephen. So to answer your first question,
there are actually tons of foods and substances that are
toxic two pets. So it's always a good idea to
you only feed them something if you've already looked it
up and check to make sure it's not toxic. But
just in addition to some of the more well known
(01:08):
foods toxic to dogs, like chocolate, some surprising ones are
that you should not let them eat grapes, raisins, or currents,
because these can actually cause life threatening kidney damage. It's
thought that it's the tartaric acid and grapes that causes
kidney toxicity and dogs, but not in humans. There's also
another surprising thing that you shouldn't let your dog eat,
(01:30):
which is zylatol, which is the artificial sweetener often found
in sugarless gum, sugar free ice cream, or even some
brands of sweetened peanut butter. In dogs, zylatol is quickly
absorbed by the blood stream and triggers a massive release
of insulin, which is an effect that does not occur
(01:50):
in humans. This can dangerously fast track the absorption of
blood sugars, causing a blood sugar crash a k a.
Hype glycemia, and this can be life threatening. So yeah,
there are actually a lot of other things you should
not feed your dog, and I'm not a vet, so
I don't feel comfortable giving advice or the whole list
(02:12):
of what you shouldn't feed your dogs, So always check
with your vet or a trusted source before you let
the meat stuff that's not dog food or dog treats.
So cats also you need to be careful with in
terms of what they get to eat. A surprising thing
to me about cats is that essential oils can actually
(02:33):
be quite dangerous to them. So essential oils can cause
liver damage when a cat ingests it or gets it
on their skin. There are a bunch of essential oils
that are bad for cats, including but not limited to,
peppermint oil, citrus cinnamon oil which I didn't even know,
cinnamon cane in oil form, but there it is, uh
(02:55):
tea tree oil, and others. So don't use a cential
oil products on your cat. Um, keep them out of
your cat's reach. Talk to your vet, like if you
if you have essential oils that you use, you can
talk to your vet about like, you know, making sure
that they're not dangerous to your cat and there's no
cross contamination. Um. Yeah, just be just be all careful
(03:19):
with the kiddies because it's super concentrated stuff and they
cannot handle that. So onto drunk animals, So stories of
drunk elephants maybe apocryphal. There's not really any solid evidence
of elephants eating enough rotting fruit to get drunk, and
(03:39):
they seem to prefer fresh fruit. UM. And they're so
big it would take a lot of fermented fruit to
actually get them drunk. But uh, that doesn't mean a
big animal cannot get drunk. So however, moose definitely do
get drunk because they will happily eat a bunch of
fermented apples, will get drunk, and they have sometimes been
(04:02):
found to crash into trees while drunk moss ng which
I don't know if that's a crime, um, but you
know that is what happens. So in terms of whether
some animals are immune to alcohol, there are some that
have incredibly high alcohol cool tolerances, such as tree shrews.
(04:25):
So the pin tailed tree shrew is a mouse like
arboreal mammal, meaning it lives in trees. Um from Malaysia,
So they are these little mouse sized shrews. They have
a tail where the hairs on the end, these white
hairs stick out like a feather pin and that's why
(04:47):
they're called pin tailed. They're very cute. They can fit
in the palm of your hand, and they can hold
their liquor much better than a mouse. So they love
to drink nutrient rich fer mint to nectar that comes
from the bertram palm tree. Uh in the paper with
a title that I Love Chronic intake of fermented floral
(05:09):
nectar by wild tree shrews. The researchers found that these
tree shrews, if scaled up to say a human woman size,
could drink nine glasses of wine in twelve hours without
showing any signs of intoxication. For me, I can do
like one glass. Uh and yeah, so twelve glasses of
(05:32):
wine scaled up is what they can handle without showing
any signs of intoxication. And that's not healthy for humans,
but it works for the pin tailed tree shrew due
to adaptations to their metabolism that allows them to efficiently
process alcohol and limit the concentration in their brain and bloodstream.
(05:55):
Now onto another question, also from Stephen. I did a
Google search for coming from animals other than cows. It
seems pigs just don't like humans milking them, and I
kind of understand why nobody wants to try to get
hippopotamus milk, But what about other mammals? Have people ever
try to get milk from them? Do cats and dogs
produce too little milk for people to be interested? So
(06:17):
domesticated dairy cows, sheep, and goats were selected and bred
for high milk yield. Cows who came from the extinct
wild oroc were able to be selectively bred into docile,
high yield milk producers, and frankly, their teeths are easy
to grab onto to milk. Like trying to milk a
(06:37):
dog or a cat. Their teeths are really small and
there's not gonna be much there. It's just not worth it. Also,
cow milk is high and fat, it separates well into
cream and milk, and it has a mild taste, all
making it very ideal for human cultivation. But that doesn't
(06:59):
mean that there aren't there animals that people can and
do try to get milk from, including camels, horses, water
buffalo and uh. Pigs do not like you to milk them.
They are very ornerary. But apparently there are some chefs
that are trying to figure out how to get pigs milk. Um.
Good luck with that pig. They're not docile and they
(07:21):
do not want you up in their business like that.
Next listener question, Hi, my son Max has been listening
since the first episode. He is a spooky kid. He
has asked me to write and suggest some spooky topics.
One animals that could be in the Aliens franchises a
(07:42):
Ka Xenomorphs too. Animals that could be the subject of
the SCP Foundation that is a meta fiction about anomalies
that should be secured, contained or protected by a fake
government agency. Three. Max would like to know what animals
seem like they should be from crypto Zoology, especially moth Man.
For are there animals that seem like they should come
(08:05):
from anime, especially JoJo's Bizarre Adventure? So if you have
podcaster block, Max is happy to share ideas. Also, we
recently went to Africa and saw a bachelor heard of
Kate Buffalo's several were staring us down while shake urinating.
The guide informed us that that's a sign of aggression.
We said, yes, mean mugging while shakepea translate as a
(08:26):
aggression across species. We then spent the next week giggling
about how fast you would call the police if someone
walked in our bar and was shakepeaing. Sorry for the
random story, Thanks for encouraging my son somewhat inappropriate but
very funny love of animals. Thanks Sonya, f Hi, Sonia
and Max. First of all, yes, I feel like a
buffalo peeing aggressively at me would be threatening. It basically
(08:49):
anything peeing aggressively in your direction is threatening. Message received. Uh.
Now onto Max's ideas. I love these. I may indeed
do an episode to use your ideas. Max. In the meantime,
A little appetizer for some of these animals I think
fit the bill. Uh. The bobbit worm is one that
(09:10):
I think is scarier than the alien from the movies Aliens.
It is a worm that lives on the ocean floor,
actually burrows down into the substrate and the ocean. It's
got many segments, these very dangerous looking pincers, and it
will pop out of a hole and grab a fish
and pull it down into this hole in the ocean,
(09:33):
and it is It's very scary. Uh. And it looks
very alien. Um. Now, in terms of animals that look
like they come from an anime, um, this is one
that I think is really interesting and kind of cute
in a weird way. The Cicada parasite beetle family are
(09:55):
species of beetles whose larva are parasitoids of cicada nymphs.
The adult beetles will lay their eggs in the same
holes in trees created by cicadas for their offspring, and
the beetle larva will feed off of the cicada nymphs.
So as dastardly as they are, the adults are actually
really cute. Their antenna look like these incredibly feathery antlers.
(10:19):
They have these big round eyes, and in my opinion,
they look pretty cute, like if someone crossed a moose
in a beetle um. More bugs that I think look
like they come from an anime or maybe even from
the movie Aliens. This one, I think looks like an
alien robot. They are the trilobite beetles. They are a
genus of beetles, where the adult males look pretty boring.
(10:42):
They just look like a standard beal beetle, but the
females and juveniles look like weird segmented alien robots. They
have a triangular head segment to trapezoidal segments, and then
a bunch of tail in segments with spikes or barbs
coming off of them. Some species have bright orange markings
(11:04):
or yellow but the weirdest and most alien looking species
to me plate oh drillists. Ruficollis is found in Malaysia
and has black, shiny markings on its back that looked
like a bunch of weird alien eyes. Seriously, it is crazy.
Look that up uh platow drillists ruficulis. If you want
(11:26):
cuter animals uh that look like they come from an anime,
look no further than the mouse sized lowland streaked tenric
of Madagascar, who is bright yellow and black coloration and
incredible hedgehog like spikes. Would put it right at home
in many anime art styles. Besides, it's also got a long,
(11:48):
boopable snoot, and it will shake its quills together to
create a sound. The only mammal known to do strigulation,
as strigulation is the production of sound by rubbing body
parts together. So quite an amazing little animal. I think
it could definitely be a pokemon uh, and there are
many more like that. So maybe in the future I'll
do a whole episode using some of your ideas. Max,
(12:10):
and I hope you enjoyed these animals in the meantime.
Next listener question, Hello Katie, I could barely contain my
excitement when I heard you got to the question about
whether there's more eyes or legs in the world. I've
made an estimate based on current research earlier this year
and the Reddit sub our biology. In short, shrimp are
(12:30):
overwhelmingly many, mostly as zooplankton. They're pretty much the deciding group,
and the result is therefore that there's a lot more
legs than eyes. These calculations were made from numbers including
estimates of species not yet found, but of course we
don't know if something completely new turns up. I did
not include o'celli in this calculation, so o'celli. Side note,
(12:51):
listeners are very primitive, almost eye, sort of like sensory cells,
but not really eyes. But anyway, um back to the email.
I did not include ocelli in this calculation. My definition
of I is that it has to be able to
discern shape as well as light, and for legs they
need to directly bear the body. I remember that there
(13:13):
were some blunders in this calculation, but nothing that would
skew the results really. I remember that I went down
a rabbit hole with us and learned a lot both
about the vast amount of unidentified fish in our oceans,
how many worms there really are, and a lot of
cool facts about eyes. Thank you, as always for a
great show. Saga e Hi Saga. This was an amazing
thing to look at all of your calculations. Um, thank
(13:35):
you so much for that. I agree with you. I
think legs would win in a landslide. And even if
we were to count o'celli as eyes, which I agree,
I don't know that they really count as eyes, but
if we did that, only to be fair, we should
count podia or tube feet as legs as well. So
(13:57):
podia are these tiny tubes bound on the body ms
of like starfish and other kindoderms that work as these
tiny legs to move them around. They can also use
them for things like grabbing onto food and pushing it
into their mouths. The podia actually use hydraulics to move,
so water being pumped in and out of them, and
(14:19):
they have a sticky adhesive that they use to attach
to a substrate. And a starfish can have over ten
thousand tube feet each. So if you loosen the definition
for what an eye is to like an o'chelli, one
of those just simple light sensing cells, then you'd have
to loosen the definition for what a leg is to
(14:39):
one of these podia, And in that case, I think
the legs are gonna win in a total landslide. Speaking
of lots of legs. Millipedes are famous for having tons
of legs, and there's a newly discovered millipede, e Persephone,
which has broken the record for most legs on an animal.
(15:00):
It has been recorded with one thousand, three hundred legs
spread over three hundred thirty body segments. It's actually the
only known millipede to live up to its name Millie
meaning one thousand and peede derived from feet in Latin.
It was found deep in an Australian mining area, about
fifty to two hundred feet or fifteen to sixty meters underground.
(15:25):
It is eyelis and it has this hair like body.
It's around nine point four centimeters long a little under
four inches and about one millimeters or point zero four
inches thick. So millipedes are interesting in that you can
figure out how old they are by counting how many
segments they have. It's kind of like with rattlesnakes. You
(15:47):
can figure out how old they are by counting how
many segments is on their rattle because they grow them
at sort of a constant rate as they age. Millipedes
grows segments throughout their life. Uh So, if you know
about out how many segments. Species of millipede grows per
unit of time. You can add them up to figure
out how old they are. The e Persephone specimen, found
(16:11):
with over one thousand, three hundred legs, is suspected to
be around five to ten years old based on average
growth rates of other species of millipedes um, which is older.
Usually millipedes only lived to be around two years old,
so that if this is true, this is quite an
older living millipede that lives deep, deep underground in the minds. Uh,
(16:36):
certainly nothing spooky about that. I think that if for humans,
if we added a new pair of legs as we
got older, that'd be very interesting. We'd have much more
I guess, eventful birthdays, and I feel like I would
finally appreciate birthday gifts of socks like a lot more.
(16:59):
M next listener question on Hi Katie, I'm Mino, a
listener from Italy and my pronouns are they them? After
the latest listener questions rounds the fact about the single
double serings has left me wondering. Has the double tone
of the double serings ever been used for voicing alien
creatures and movies. I immediately thought about elves when you
(17:22):
described it because of their nature being adjacent to human
but not exactly after hearing it, I think it would
be befitting for most alien creatures in one way or another.
What do you think? Second, much broader question, what can
you tell us about pet rats? I was scared of
them when I was a kid, but now I have
three of them and they're the cutest furry potatoes. Thank
you for your amazing work, Mino, and I did get
(17:44):
pictures of the rats. I can confirm that they're very cute,
so thank you so much for your question. Mino. Firstly,
I do love rats. They're very sweet, they're very smart,
and my favorite thing about them is that they are ticklish.
Uh and perhaps the best rats study ever. In Canberra, Australia,
researchers are tickling rats to see if it improves their happiness.
(18:08):
The goal is to find out how to better handle
rats and improve their quality of life, even in laboratory settings.
But apparently there is a finesse to tickling rats. In
an interview with Yen Huan of The New York Times,
Carly Motley, a lab technician at the University of Wollongong,
(18:30):
explains that you have to learn how best to tickle
a rat. You can't just go in too hot. You
gotta be gentle, you gotta you gotta have some skills there.
So here are some tips from Carly. You gotta tickle
the rats neck with light movements. You can gently flip
the rat onto its back and tickle the rat between
(18:51):
its front legs on its chest while it's rolled over.
You do not want to tickle the tail or rear
haunches because those are area is where they are sensitive
to being nipped by other rats. It's like where other
rats might nip them when they're being aggressive. So they
don't necessarily like to be touched there. Um, but yes,
they do like it between his front legs, on its
(19:12):
back or on their neck. You can actually get certified
in rat tickling. You can google rat tickling certification and
take an online course on rat tickling. And this is
not a trick. I'm not joking. I'm actually gonna go
there right now. Let's see rat tickling certification. I see it. Uh,
(19:34):
it's a dot org dot UK website, so it's from
Purdue University. Um, okay, let's see if I can get
certified in rat tickling. Start the course. Oh my God,
this is a two hour course, so I might do
(19:54):
this later. Uh, get my certification in rat tickling later.
But that is incredible. So rat tickling, when done correctly,
can improve the bond between a rat and a human.
It is thought that rat tickling mimics the playful wrestling
between rats, and it's just fun for the rat, just
(20:15):
like when we tickle each other as humans. So if
you own a rat and you want to connect more
with your pet rat, consider learning how to tickle them,
maybe even get certified. Now onto your other question, you know, uh,
in terms of whether bird sounds could be used in
movies as aliens and that double SEARINGX of songbirds being
(20:38):
kind of a kind of an alien sound. So yeah,
I think bird sounds are used all the time in
movies to be the sounds of like mysterious creatures to
create a spooky ambient environment. Um. But first, I actually
want to make a bit of a clarification to the
episode Listener Cues Muse blues Deer who Choose Uh, which
(21:01):
is a title I didn't think I'd have to say
out loud, but here I did it. I guess I
deserved that, so uh. In that episode, I talked about
double versus single searings and birds, um, but I want
to add a little bit of nuance to that. So
in case you think there's like two synxes, it's kind
of considered one organ. So the seringx is a single organ,
(21:23):
but in many birds it in many birds it's bifurcated
or double barreled, so it's kind of this upside down
y shape. The difference between parrots and songbirds isn't so
much that parrots have one serins and songbirds have two seringxes,
although I kind of oversimplified it this way last time,
(21:44):
but that parents use more of a tracheal synx, whereas
songbirds use a tracheo bronchial serings. So if you're like,
what is that, I will try to explain. So, parrots
have one set of vibrating membranes and strong muscles surrounding
the trachea. Uh, the fact that it is not so
(22:08):
like they're they're sort of sernx muscles aren't so focused
on where the tricky branches off into these bronchi means
that they are mostly using that single the single trachea,
that single sort of tube, and uh, they only have
one set of muscles surrounding the trachea. Uh, this makes
(22:31):
it a little bit more similar to a human larynx. Then, say,
if you compare a human larynx to the songbirds synx,
which is, instead of just being a tracheal serinx, is
a tracheo bronchial sernx. So the songbird synx has more
muscle activity where it branches off into that uh, those bronchi,
(22:55):
so it's more double barreled than the parrots syrinx. They
have several pairs of syrngeal muscles instead of a parrot's
single pair, and they can make use of two independently
controlled sound sources inside their stynx, allowing them to sing
two notes at once. Um. So I just wanted to
(23:18):
kind of add a little bit more nuanced little clarification
to what I said earlier in terms of songbirds being
used in movies for spooky sounds. I don't know specifically
of songbirds being used as aliens. Um, but if there
are are any movie nerds out there who do know
about that, please write to me. I do know that
(23:40):
in the movie Prometheus, uh, pet parrot was used to
make some alien sounds, So even just the even though
the parrots uh starynx is more human like, it is
certainly not the same as a larynx, and so they
can still produce some eerie interesting sounds. Also, last I'm
(24:00):
on Creature Feature for the Mystery Animal sound game, I
played this sound, which I think is hauntingly beautiful. Last
(24:24):
week's hint with that sound was whoever named this animal
was being a bit judgmental. But because this animal sound
goes so well with your question, I will give you
another hint before revealing the answer next week. Here's my
second hint for the sound. This is often used in
movies to create a spooky, haunted atmosphere, even when it's
(24:46):
inaccurate to do so. Uh So, Yeah, that is a
sound you may recognize from a lot of movies that
tries to give it this spooky eerie, maybe even a
prehistoric ambience, But it is in fact a very real
animal that is not so scary. So um, thank you
(25:09):
guys so much for all of your questions. Again, if
you have a question that you would like to hear
me answer, or maybe even send you an email response,
you can write to me at Creature Feature pod at
gmail dot com. Yeah, and I really appreciate all of
your emails, all your animal pictures. Your pets love to
(25:32):
hear from you guys, so yes, feel free to email
me just to even say hi if you want. And
thank you so much for listening. I guess I'm gonna
go and try to get certified in rat tickling uh.
And I will see you guys next week. And thank
you so much to the Space Cossics for their super
awesome song. Excelumina. Creature features a production of I Heart Radio.
(25:55):
For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit
the I heart Radio app Apple Podcasts, or Hey guess what?
Why have you listen to your favorite shows? See you
next Wednesday. M
Creature Feature News
Host
Katie Goldin
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