Listener Q's: Pee Science & Epigenetics

I answer your questions, from epigenetics to dog pee studies! 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Creature Feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show, it's another Listener Questions episode.
On these episodes, you write to me. I read what
you wrote, and usually it's questions, and then I answer

(00:28):
those questions on the show. And it is a great
way for me to delve into topics that maybe I
don't talk about so much, or do some new research,
or you know, just get to know you the listener
and what you are interested in hearing. And so I'm
very excited for this week's listener question episode. There were

(00:50):
some really interesting questions that made me study. So make
me be a nerd, make me study. If you have
a question that you'd like to ask me, you can
write to me at Creature featurepot at gmail dot com.
Without further ado, let's get right into your questions about
evolutionary biology. Is there any evidence of genetic memory and animals,

(01:13):
specifically in fish like bluegills. I have access to this
little beach on a lake and have swam there every
summer since I was a baby. I am probably the
person who swam there the most frequently in the last
thirty years or so, and all that time there have
always been very curious bluegills who swim with me. I've
noticed that when I get in the water, they kind
of flocked to me, but are more reserved with guests.

(01:35):
I must have swam with generations and generations of these fish,
and I was wondering if they could possibly remember me,
or is it more like with dogs? And that I'm
totally comfortable with them, so they're pretty comfortable with me.
Thanks for reading all this. You're awesome, Phyllis. Thank you, Phillis.
And then here is a related question. I think it
would be really cool to talk in Layman's terms about

(01:56):
epigenetics and evolution, since a lot of folks misunderstand and
the degree to which epigenetics drives long term evolutionary change.
And this is from Stellachou. So two excellent questions, and
they are very related. We are trying to get to
the bottom of two ideas. Could an organism pass a
memory or association to its offspring genetically instead of say,

(02:21):
teaching the offspring. And what is epigenetics and how does
it influence evolution? So a little background first, a bit
of history of our understanding of evolutionary biology. In the
early eighteen hundreds, a man named Jean Baptist Lamarque came
up with a theory of inherited characteristics. The theory was

(02:43):
that acquired traits by the parent could be passed on
to the offspring. The famous example is how giraffnecks purportedly
would work. An early giraffe would stretch its neck in
an attempt to get some tasty leaves, lengthening and strengthening
its neck muscles, and then it would pass on a
longer neck to its offspring, and so on until we

(03:06):
have giraffes with very long necks. Similarly, Lamarck believed that
in humans, physically acquired traits could be passed on to children.
If you built up a lot of muscle, you could
pass on that strength directly to your child. When Mendelian
genetics came along, you know the guy with all the
pea plants, and those were more demonstrably proven as well

(03:29):
as Darwin's theory of evolution, Lamarchism was abandoned as being
junk science, and it was wrong essentially. But now scientists
think that there may be certain ways in which environment
can affect gene expression and how that might also impact
gamets and the genetic information passed on to offspring. So,

(03:52):
in terms of Phyllis's question about bluegill fish making a
positive association and passing that onto its offspring, well, I
have no idea about these blue gill fish specifically. It
could be that you are just a fish whisperer, like
after many years of swimming, you your body language is

(04:13):
soothing to these fish. Could be that they learn from
their parents, they're the previous generations seeing that they're comfortable
with you, and then the younger ones are more comfortable
with you. Or there is a small but not zero
chance that this could be a case of epigenetics. So

(04:34):
there was a study that found that mice seemed to
be able to pass on negative associations of a smell
to their offspring without potentially teaching them. So the study,
which was published in Nature in twenty thirteen, looked at
whether olfactory learning, so that's the learning that has to

(04:55):
do with smell, could be passed down in mice genetically.
So in the study, the mice were made to smell
a fruity smell called acetophenone and then were given a
mild electric shock to their foot because researchers like to
bully mice, so the mice learned to be fearful of
the smell and would show startle behavior to that specific

(05:17):
fruity smell and not to other smells and would startle,
whereas control mice who were not trained with this shock
method would not have that reaction. A previous study had
also found that the learned fear of smell changed the
neural structure of the mouse's nose. So the change in
the mouse's behavior in terms of learning to associate this

(05:42):
shock with this smell is so far not surprising, and
they also found these same structural changes in these mice
in terms of their nasal neural networks in their brains.
Again not too surprising, right, Like, you have some kind
of environmental impact onto you directly, and that can change you,
can change your brain structure, can even change the neurons

(06:03):
around your nose. That is sort of that's not too strange,
not too unexpected. The surprising result of the twenty thirteen
study was after they allowed these mice to mate, their offspring,
who had never been exposed to the scary smell, showed

(06:24):
a startle reflex to it, just like their parents had.
They also examined the new generation of mice's nose and
olfactory bulbs again that part that is the part of
the brain that processes smell, and they found that just
like the mice's parents, the new generation had more neural
structures and their noses and olfactory bulbs dedicated specifically to

(06:47):
detecting that scary fruity smell as compared to controls. So
the researchers wanted to make sure that these mice were
not somehow learning it from the other mice, so they
trained male mice to be fearful of that fruity smell.
Then they sent their sperm to an entirely different lab
to female mice, and they did in vitro fertilization, and

(07:12):
then those mice then gave birth to offspring who also
showed the same areas of the brain and nose with
those increased neural structures for that fruity smell. Unfortunately, it
seems they didn't also do a behavioral test on these
mice to see if they have the same startle reflex,
apparently because of some limitations on how that other lab

(07:33):
would do behavioral studies. Which I think is really disappointing,
especially for such a bizarre and groundbreaking study. I think
that I would like to see Judge Katie would like
to see this replicated and also see the behavioral reaction
of the mice replicated in the in vitro fertilization. Regardless,

(07:57):
though the results are really really interesting, the fact that
you still saw these changes in the neural structures of
the brain and nose is really really interesting. So does
this experiment show that animals can inherit memory. Not really,
It doesn't prove that exactly. So what it shows is
that environmental factors that can change the structure of a

(08:21):
mouse's olfactory bulb and nasal neural structures seem to be
able to pass something on that also changes the structure
of their offspring's olfactory bulb and nasal neural structures. So,
sort of condensed into more Layman's terms, a change to
the parent mouse in terms of its response to a

(08:43):
smell seems to be reflected in its offspring structurally, in
its brain and in its nose. And this study, I
think is I mean, it is really interesting and I
would like to see many more studies along the same
lines because I think that is really necessary to see

(09:04):
exactly what's going on. You could define this as a
sort of memory, right, Like it could be that they
inherit some fear of the smell, but it could just
be that they inherit a sensitivity to the smell. It
may have not too much to do with fear. So
it's hard to know exactly what they are cognitively or

(09:25):
instinctively inheriting. But I think it is still really really
a surprising and interesting results. So I'm sure a lot
of you as I also question how can you pass
on a trait you acquired from your environment to your offspring.
So this is where we get into epigenetics, which seems

(09:47):
really weird and a little bit scary, but it's not
so scary, but it is still pretty weird. So epigenetics
looks at how cell functions can be changed without a
mutation or change in the DNA sequence itself. So the
DNA sequence has not mutated or been altered like in
the actual sequence of the amino acids, but there has

(10:13):
been a change that creates a difference in cell functions.
So how can you have a change in self function
without an alteration of the DNA One way is gene expression,
which is the way in which DNA gets copied into RNA,
which can either be used directly. That RNA can be

(10:35):
used directly or can further be used as instructions to
build another protein that will then be used for self function.
So you can, without fundamentally changing the DNA structure, change
how the DNA is converted to RNA, and how that
RNA is converted into proteins, and that will change the

(10:57):
function of the cell. So there are three main ways
in which this is accomplished. There is DNA methylation, histone modification,
and RNA mediated processes. That sounds really scary and complicated,
don't worry. That also sounded really scary and complicated to

(11:18):
me when I was studying up on this, But in
very simple terms, DNA methylation is when a methyl group
molecule attaches itself to sites on the DNA strand and
that affects how the DNA is transcribed into RNA. It's
like you have a cookbook and you have some instructions

(11:41):
in the cookbook of how to bake a cake, and
you don't like tear anything out. You don't change the
cookbook itself, but you paste on top of it some
kind of new instructions or something that will affect how
you read it. Or you put like a little bit
of wide out over part of the recipe and now
it changes how you read the recipe, even though underneath

(12:02):
the white out the recipe remains the same. So the
other method in which genetics works is histone modification. So
histones are the spools that DNA winds around, so it's
kind of like a spool of thread to keep the
DNA sort of from getting knotted and tangled. It is

(12:24):
wound around a histone, and if the histone is modified,
it can also change how the DNA strand is transcribed.
And apparently this is actually a key factor in the
brain when it comes to addiction. Like this, the modification
to the histones can affect how your cells function, especially
in your neural cells when it comes to addiction. So

(12:47):
the last one is RNA mediated processes. In extremely overly
simplified terms, this involves modifications or markers on RNA that
changes how they create proteins, and when it changes how
they create proteins or how the RNA functions, that will
also change how these cell functions. So to pass down

(13:10):
an epigenetic change, the epigenetic tag or marker either the
methyl group attached to the DNA the histone modification or
marker on the RNA, must somehow also be copied and
passed on in reproductive cells. So transgenerational epigenetic inheritance, which

(13:31):
is the inheritance of some kind of epigenetic change from
parent to offspring to another offspring, so like to grand
offspring and great grand offspring, is largely understood to exist,
even though it's not well understood exactly how these mechanisms work,
and it's still a question as to how influential epigenetics

(13:55):
is on behavior and also how it affects long term
evolutionary changes, which gets into listener Stella Chow's question about
explaining epigenetics and long term evolutionary changes. So much of
evolutionary change is driven by DNA mutations, So these are

(14:17):
random alterations to the DNA that happens as reproductive cells
are formed and reassembled into offspring, and then you have
selective pressures that may mean certain mutation get passed on
and others don't. So the mutations themselves are random, but
the process of natural selection is not at all random

(14:39):
it is, it's very much driven by selective pressures, and
that's how from random mutations you can get very useful structures.
So the role that epigenetics has to play in terms
of long term evolution is a very debated topic among
evolutionary biologists. So many of lutionary biologists are very skeptical

(15:02):
as to how long and inherited epigenetic trait could last.
Maybe it sticks around for a few generations and then
kind of wears off, But there's still the possibility that
epigenetics has some influence on long term evolution, But it
doesn't seem like there's been any definitive research proving such
an influence. So until there's a larger body of research

(15:25):
on the topic, you know, I don't think that researchers
really know whether epigenetics plays much of a role in
long term evolutionary changes, you know, And I certainly don't
feel like enough of an expert to state my opinion
on it. I just think that there hasn't really been

(15:46):
evidence that is convincing that epigenetics has played a big
role in long term evolution. But I don't think it's
impossible that it has. That it has played some role
in evolution. In fact, there is some there worried that
epigenetics in general, the ability to have some kind of
epigenetic change, is a result of evolution, which is to

(16:10):
allow for a brief change in organisms in a response
to environment, one that's not necessarily permanent, because like, if
the environment is rapidly fluctuating, you know, you want to
kind of be able to rapidly change with the environment
instead of having, you know, this longer process of getting

(16:33):
having to rely on random mutations in order to adapt
to changes. So I know that saying like, we don't
know exactly is kind of an annoying cop out of
an answer, but I think it's also really important to
remember how new a lot of sciences and how many
questions about evolutionary biology still exist and need answers, And

(16:56):
sometimes researchers are going to get it wrong. Sometimes they're
going to get it right. Sometimes they're going to think
that they got it completely wrong, and then later on
they're like, actually, part of this may have been sort
of right. It's just the whole process. It's a living science.
So onto the next listener question. Dear Katie Golden, thanks

(17:18):
always for your superb show. Thank you so much. Being
an old I've lived through decades of human recitations about
why non human animals aren't as advanced, animate, or worthy
as we are, and decades of these distinctions being found
do not actually exist tool use being uniquely human for instance,

(17:38):
that is not true. My take on that is that
humans as a species clearly have hierarchical anxieties, and ere
we are at the elusive possessing a theory of mind.
My related query is about the distinction between instinctive and
rationally decided behavior. Is this just something people like saying

(17:58):
or are there any effect of definitions? And how are
habitual learned behaviors taken into account if they are. Thanks
in advance for reading and thinking about this from Mary Anne. Also,
I got a related question post on Twitter Great minds
think alike you guys. So here's the similar question. How
much do we know about the role genetics plays in

(18:21):
passing on instincts, especially those instincts with complex urges that
had no way of being taught. For example, animals going
to a specific place to reproduce. And this is from radia.
So these are also summert related to previous questions on epigenetics,
but I think that scientists do have a much better

(18:43):
understanding of the genetics of instincts. So I think the
main way to define instinct versus rational behavior is that
instinct is something you are preprogrammed with and can start
using right out of the box, right out of the
egg or woomb crying, for instance, is an instinctive response.

(19:03):
You don't have to learn how to cry. It just
you're ready to go with that preloaded. A startle response
to something sudden, or to a snake or spider is
potentially an instinct, like you don't have to be trained
necessarily to have a startle reflex to a spider. In
baby sea turtles, as soon as they hatch, they can

(19:26):
start to crawl towards the light of the moon reflected
in the water, and this is an instinct right out
of the egg. They haven't been taught anything. They just
know they got to go towards the light reflected in
the water. Or they get eaten by a bird or something,
but they try to get to that water as fast
as possible. They start zooming as soon as they can

(19:48):
right out of the egg. That's instinct. Rational behavior is
responding to a situation and instead of having a pre
prepared response having to come up with one through cognitive
ps sesses your instinct maybe to flinch at a snake,
and so that may be an instinctive response, but what
you actually do in that situation either picking up a

(20:11):
rock and bonking the snake on the head, which I
do not recommend, be nice to snakes or avoid them
if they're venomous, or you could look at the color
of the snake to see if you really should be
afraid of it, using reasoning and cognitive processes. So either
of these responses, right, like a violent response to the
snake or a more thoughtful response, These are actually both

(20:33):
quote unquote rational behavior. These are you're using some kind
of reasoning about what you should do about the snakes.
So you have an initial instinctive reaction of like, oh,
a snake, and then you start to reason like, well,
I will I will smash the snake, or I will
look at the snake and hey, maybe it's just a

(20:54):
harmless snake and I don't have to worry about it.
Either of those are behaviors that have arisen from cognitive processes,
and this is not a uniquely human behavior. I want
to emphasize many animals use cognitive processes to think their
way through a response. In fact, I would say most

(21:16):
animals have that ability, have that ability to use some
form of cognition to come up with a response that
the most animals do not behave purely on instinct, and
they can either reason through something or they can learn
behaviors from their parents or peers. Sometimes I would say

(21:37):
instinct interacts with learning or rational responses in interesting ways.
So songbirds, for instance, are born with a built in
song learning structure in their brains and will instinctively pay
attention to songs, but they're also dynamically learning how to
sing that song. So you have this initial instinct that

(22:00):
kind of grows into more complex learned cognitive processes. So
you know, instinct and rationality. While I think that there
is a distinctive definition for both, that doesn't mean that
they don't kind of interweave with each other when you
actually look at how these behaviors happen in real animals.

(22:22):
So instincts are passed down genetically, so or as we
discussed earlier, perhaps they could be passed down epigenetically, like
those mice that have that increased sensitivity to that fruity smell.
But in general, something like the sea turtle who like

(22:42):
goes towards the moon, it is passed down genetically. This
kind of pre programming that comes in the brain. I know,
it's kind of like spooky, this idea that a brain
can come preloaded with a set of instructions of how
this organism should behave, But that's absolutely the case. It
is like the way that babies know to suckle when
presented with a nipple. You don't really have to teach

(23:04):
them that. I mean, you can't. I guess that in
some cases, like you can kind of like help teach
a baby how to like latch on or something, but
generally speaking, the baby, once it is given a certain
set of stimuli, it will start to do this suckling behavior,
just like a baby calf or something knows to suckle
on the utters. Because you can't, you need to have

(23:27):
some behaviors that are preprogrammed and ready to go so
that newborn baby, that fresh baby can survive and can
communicate that it's hungry and that it can actually act
on its hunger. And that's important because otherwise, if you
have to wait too long to learn or acquire some
kind of behavior, then you're not going to survive because

(23:48):
you need you need to eat, You need to eat
fresh out of the box. So we are going to
take a quick break and then when we get back,
we're going to answer some more listen our questions. So
here's the listener question about my dog Cookie. Dear Katie,
thanks so much for all your work, love both your shows.
Thank you. I was wondering if you could address some

(24:10):
questions on your next mailbag show. One what is Cookie's
greatest fear? Two? What is Cookie's highest aspiration? Three? What
is Cookie's greatest achievement? For what is Cookie's cutest habit?
I know these are deeply personal, but the listeners simply
need to know. Thanks again, quote unquote Rusty shackle Ford,
thank you for the question. Quote Rusty shackle Ford. Here

(24:32):
are all the Cookie facts that you need to know. One.
Cookie's greatest fear is being ignored. Two Cookie's highest aspiration
is to bark at every single pigeon in the entire city.
Three Cookie's greatest achievement is the time she found an
entire chicken leg and managed to eat it, bone and
all before we could get it from her, And she
spent days in smug satisfaction while we worried and sifted

(24:55):
through her poop to make sure she passed the bones safely.
Four Cookie's cutest it is that she likes to play
hide and seek with her toys and will stand up
on her hide legs to get a better visual on
her surroundings to find her toys. So those are all
the cookie facts that you need to know. Relate a
dog question from another listener. I was looking after Hamish.

(25:15):
He mishes a dog by the way this weekend. When
he smells other dogs pee, what does he know? Can
he tell if they're male or female, or how big
they are, or if they're sick? Could he even have
some idea what they look like? He definitely knows something,
and he's not telling gary D. Thanks gary D. So
dogs have exquisitely sensitive noses and can smell all sorts

(25:38):
of things that are beyond our human noses. That said,
they may not know what they're smelling exactly. So a
dog can be trained to detect cancer cells, but it
doesn't mean the dog understands that those are cancer cells
or even a sign of illness. They have to be
trained to kind of use that as a diagnostic material.
They have to go to dog medical school. What I'm saying, so,

(26:01):
what do dogs determine by sniffing the peepee of other dogs? Well,
they can determine the sex, the maturity, and reproductive status
of the other dog, and all those things have been
I think pretty much confirmed by research. But they can
also potentially understand what their own brand of urine is.
And this has been used in studies to try to

(26:22):
see if dogs have a sense of self. So often
we will use the mirror study to see if an
animal has a sense of self. So you show an
animal it's reflections, then you modify something about the animal,
like you at a red dot on its face or something.
And then if the animal looks in the mirror and
scratches at its own face, it seems to be that

(26:43):
the animal is making the connection between itself and the
image in the mirror, which one could interpret as having
a sense of self or at least understanding that itself
exists and it can use the mirror to guide itself
to change an aspect about itself. But dogs fail at
the mirror test mostly because they have no interest in mirrors,

(27:06):
and so we could say, like, well, dogs don't have
a sense of self. They fail the mirror test. But
I think this is a limited perspective because mirrors make
sense for people like humans, because we have we're very
very visual animals. But other animals don't necessarily only rely

(27:27):
on their site, or don't primarily rely on their site
to experience the world, and dogs really rely on their
sense of smell. They love smells. They do have a
sense of sight, and they do have a great sense
of hearing, but smells to them, it's just like a buffet, like.
They are really really good at detecting smells. And for them,

(27:49):
like the variety of smells that they can detect, in
the extent to which they can detect them is probably
more precise and more colorful than say, just their vision.
And so because they love smells, especially urine smells, researchers wondered, like, hey,
maybe instead of trying to get a dog to look

(28:10):
in a mirror like it's a little person, maybe we
should try to kind of meet the dog halfway and
see if the dog can do a version of the
mirror test but with its urine with smells instead of sight.
So can a dog understand what its own urine smell
is and react and surprise if its urine is somehow modified.

(28:32):
So in a study done on dogs smelling urine, the
researchers found that the dogs spend more time smelling their
own urine when it was modified compared to just their
own urine, and they showed more interest in their urine
mixed with the modifier smell than just the isolated modifier smell.
So it wasn't just that they were responding to novelty.

(28:54):
They seemed especially interested in their own urine when it
was mixed with this modifier. Oh, do dogs pass the
pe mirror test? Maybe I personally would like to see
a comparison of whether dogs react differently to their modified
urine versus the urine of another dog and a urine
of another dog that's been modified. So what I'm saying

(29:17):
is we need more smelly pee tests for dogs, And
I think the dogs would also be thrilled with this,
because I bet these dogs love these studies. They love
smelling peepee, and if they get to go to a
study and smell pepe, I'm sure they would enjoy that.
By the way, most dog behavioral studies these days are

(29:40):
using pet dogs, so they just go into the lab
for a day. It's not generally dogs that are like
held captive in the lab for their lives. So that's
that's nice. I like it when studies are ethical with
respect to animals, especially when we're trying to learn about
animal behavior. I think it's it's nice to be respectful
towards the animal. Doesn't always happen, but I think it

(30:03):
is happening much more frequently now that we are really
taking into account the animal welfare when it comes to
behavioral studies. So yeah, more PPE tests for dogs. They
love smelling p. I know my dog loves smelling P.
I try to litter do it. It's gross, but you
know what, that's how she enjoys life. So I'm not
going to shamer I'm not gonna judge her. Here we

(30:26):
are another listener question. Hey, Katie, I've always been in
us versus then person when it came to parasitic organisms,
be it humans or otherwise. That's not to say I
don't find them fascinating, and you've covered quite a few.
What I've long wondered, though, is what's the scientific opinion
on whether or not they're an important part of the ecosystem.
Are they part of the balance that keeps some others

(30:48):
in check, or could we remove them all and be
better off for it. Of course, I assume it's not
all that black and white, and my guests would be
that those that have been here for a while evolutionarily speaking,
couldn't just be quickly removed without consequences. But then also
there might be some newer ones that are more detrimental overall.
But these are just guesses. Any thoughts, PK, great question.
You know. I love parasites, and partially it's because they're

(31:13):
really fascinating, but they are also an important part of
our world, in our ecosystem, even if they are detrimental
to a specific host, so obviously everything is a balance.
I would say that it's not so much about the
newness of a parasite evolutionarily speaking, but it could be

(31:33):
like if a parasite is introduced to an ecosystem, right,
like an invasive parasite, that could be quite bad for
the ecosystem. But in general, parasites can keep things in balance.
They may keep the population of a certain host species
in balance, and if that host species were too successful,
then they might take too many resources or prey upon

(31:56):
too many other species, so they cannot help maintain a
balance in an eco system. They may also help drive biodiversity,
forcing adaptations and animals. Another important thing for parasites is
that they are a food source for many species, and
they can also compel animals to adapt pro social behavior
like cooperation cooperative grooming from any animal from fish to apes.

(32:22):
So like part of ape cooperation, some of the ways
that apes bond, primates bond is through grooming parasites. And
who knows this could have shaped like the pro social
nature of primates. Maybe we humans have parasites in part
to think for our evolution as being very pro social.

(32:44):
So in short, parasites are awesome and important, but maybe
not so fun if you individually have a parasite. And
just because they're important for the environment doesn't mean you
should feel compelled to keep a tape worm inside of you.
It's okay to go to a doctor and get rid
of a parasite. I'm not saying you personally have to
be the host of many parasites, even though I am so.

(33:10):
Before we go, I would like to go over something
very important. It's the mystery animal sound game called Guess
who Squawking every week I play Mystery Animal Sound in you,
the listener, try to guess who is making a sound.
It could be any animal in the wild. And if
you think you know who is squawking, you can write

(33:33):
to me at Creature featurepot at gmail dot com. Again,
you also have a question, feel free to write it
to me. And by the way, there are no dumb questions.
You may think your questions like, I don't know, this
might be too basic, this might be too silly. Nope,
I'm gonna say no. Sometimes the most obvious questions are
the ones that make me kind of scratch my head

(33:54):
and go like, oh, I gotta hit the books. I
have to study up on them. So hit me with
all those questions. And now, Auntie the mister analysts sound game.
Last week's hint was this you wouldn't want this around
your neck? So can you guess who is making that sound? Well,

(34:25):
congratulations to the three fastest guess theer's Laura W, Bryce V,
and Auntie B who all guessed albatross, and special congratulations
to Chris B, who not only guessed albatross, but guessed
the correct species, the black footed albatross. So the albatross

(34:46):
is a sea bird with an incredible wingspan. The black
footed albatross is a sea bird found in the North
Pacific which has an InCred credible wingspan of around six
to seven feet or one hundred ninety to two hundred

(35:06):
and twenty centimeters. And they are this lovely gray color
with sort of white ombre on their face and indeed
black feet and the sounds you just heard are probably
either fighting over food or kind of courting or both. Honestly,

(35:28):
kind of sounded like both to me. That you got
a little bit of squabbles over food and you got
a little bit of romance going on. And speaking of romance,
they will form long term pair bonds that typically last
for their entire life. So these are faithful boyds. And

(35:49):
then they both take part in the care of their
chick and they will actually take turns incubating the eggs.
We love to see it. We love to see see
successful co parenting in birds. Onto this week's mister Ann
will sound the hint this foxy little filler loves bananas.

(36:26):
Bonus points if you can guess why it's making the sound.
The answer it's very cute. Well, thank you guys so
much for listening. Thank you so much for your fantastic questions.
I love them every time. They often send me on
rabbit holes of studying and I truly appreciate the thoughtfulness.

(36:47):
And if you have a question again, write to me
at Creature feature Pod at gmail dot com and I
will answer them to the best of my abilities. Thank
you so much for listening, and thanks to the Space
Classics were their super awesome song Exolumina. Creature features a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you
just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or Hey

(37:09):
guess what where have you listened to your favorite shows?
Seed x Wednesday