Listener Questions: Wormy Delights!

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:07):
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 questions episode.
This one I am particularly excited about. I went down
a rabbit hole. First, some amazing questions that I got

(00:28):
from you guys. I always love these because these send
me on research journeys. And so if you hear these questions,
you're like, wait a minute, I have a question and
I want to hear the answer to it. Well, you
can always email me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail
dot com and I will answer your question. So let's

(00:51):
get right into it. First listener question, Hey, Katie, this
blew my mind. So this listener sent me a link
to a YouTube video by Ben Jordan. Ben Jordan's channels
seems to be devoted to music things about music, technical

(01:13):
things and you know, interesting stories about music and sounds,
sound production and so cool stuff. Let's look into what
this listener email is actually about. So the linked YouTube
video that was sent to me by this listener is
about animal perception and about how animals view the world.

(01:38):
And in the video you see these this approximation of
how animals see things or hear things, and the thesis
of the video is basically that animals experience life sometimes
slower or faster than human beings. So like maybe a

(01:59):
dog experiences things like kind of slowed down, where as
something like a cat might experience things sort of sped
up to a certain degree. So the listener asks me,
is this true? Is Ben's fascinating study on animal perception
a bit too visual centric or is this on the

(02:21):
right track. The most fascinating part to me is that
a lizard could adjust its perception of time by adjusting
its metabolism depending on what's needed. Also, the facts that
apparently elephants see us buzz along super fast as they
watch weather patterns developing. Would love to learn more about
what biologists know about this. And this is from p K.

(02:44):
So I watched this video and I found it very interesting,
And so the question is is this video accurate? Is
this actually how animals perceive the world, Maybe like dog
seeing things kind of more slowly than humans, or an
elephant seeing things really slow, so we kind of just
or elephants seeing things sped up, So humans just kind

(03:07):
of flitting around like we're like we're flies or something.
So this kind of time time difference in terms of
how animals perceive time. Of course, I think what this
YouTuber is doing is he's trying to approximate things. I
don't think he's making any big claims that he absolutely
knows what animal how animals perceive the world, but he's

(03:29):
trying to sort of do a representation of how they
might see things or hear things based on a concept
known as critical flicker fusion rates. So what is critical
flicker fusion rate? I looked into this, looked into what
biol just had to say about this, what bird researchers,

(03:51):
sound experts, and physicists had to say about this whole
idea of animals perception of time. So biologist doctor Kevin
Healey I was interviewed by the BBC four channel in
a segment called a Sense of Time, which I highly
recommend if you are interested in learning more about this topic.

(04:12):
So what is flicker fusion rate? So flicker fusion rate
is the rate at which you can see flashes of light. Essentially,
so flashing a light to see a what point you
stop being able to differentiate between flashes and then at
what point, those flashes actually fuse into a single beam,

(04:36):
or at least they fuse in your brain, so it's
still flashing. The light is still flashing, but your brain
can only perceive it as a steady light because it's
going too fast for you to perceive the difference between flashes.
So if you flash a light slowly, you can see it. Right.
Even if you flash light relatively quickly like a strobe light,

(04:58):
we can see that. We can see that flashing. But
if you flash it way way too quickly, we will
stop being able to perceive it as flashing, and it's
just going to look like a steady light. So humans
can see at around sixty frames per second, but above
that we can't see the flashes. It just looks like
constant light to us. So I looked into what evolutionary

(05:23):
biologist doctor Kevin Heally had to say about animals critical
flicker fusion. Right, So he was interviewed by the BBC
four channel in a segment called a Sense of Time,
which I highly recommend if you're interested in learning more
about this topic. So, different animals have different critical flicker

(05:45):
fusion rates. Some are higher and some are lower than humans.
So certain deep sea fish species can only see about
one to two frames per second, so you can be
moving around, but to this fish it would be like
a slide show. Pied flycatchers, a type of bird, can

(06:09):
see around one hundred and forty five frames per second,
so this is well over twice the number of frames
per second. Then we could see something like a blowfly
can see around two hundred frames per second, which is
bananas bonkers. And so if you wonder, like why can't

(06:32):
I swat a fly? Fly can see things coming and
process things quickly, so our fast movements to them, they
can actually process that. They can see our movements and
you know, quite quite easily. But one of the downsides
to this really high frame rate is actually that they

(06:55):
when you move slower, it's really hard for them to
perceive that movement. So really slow movement is going to
be super super slow to them, and it may not
even come off as movement to them. So like you
may find that trying to catch a fly, if you
try to swat it quickly, it doesn't work, but if
you very slowly, calmly grab it, it doesn't even realize

(07:19):
that you are going for it. So you know, the
question of why certain animals have different critical flicker fusion
rates than others. Why wouldn't we all just have really
fast flicker fusion rates so we could all see things
happening at this faster rate, meaning that like the ideas

(07:41):
that maybe if you can see things at this faster rate,
right like two hundred frames per second, you can perceive
a lot more and your ability to react to it
may be enhanced or something. Well, having super fast eyesight
costs a lot of energy and brain processing, so it
doesn't really make sense to have for all animals, and

(08:04):
it's not so like something that may seem useful right
to all animals to have, Well, it's costly, and you
can get by with a slower flicker fusion rate if
you have cognitive processes that allow you to do other things.
So it is or if you have a bigger body,
for instance, like a fly has a very tiny body,

(08:27):
very simple brain, and so its ability to avoid getting
eaten by any number of frogs, reptiles, birds, every basically
everything wants to eat these guys. Being able to have that,
you know, that high level of perception being a little
see two hundred frames per second, Being able to have

(08:51):
that kind of like bullet time. It maybe really really
valuable to it it's survival because it's so small and
such a tasty snack for everything. Interestingly, some animals can
actually turn up and turn down the flicker fusion rate
as if going into bullet time, like Neo from the Matrix.

(09:11):
So swordfish can do this by heating up an organ
near their eye, which can increase their flicker fusion rate,
which they might do while hunting to improve their performance.
So it's like Keanu Reeves, but a fish. So according
to physicist Carlo Rovelli as well as evolutionary biologist doctor

(09:34):
Kevin Healey, the idea that animals perceive time differently is
not so bizarre. So time is not time is a
thing in physics, but the perception of time happens in
the brains. So the perception of time is not an objective,

(09:56):
physics based universal truth. It's based on the biology of
our brains and how they function, how quickly they can
process the events as they occur, how quickly we can
process sounds or visuals, how many frames per second our
brains work in. And you know, both this physicist and

(10:19):
this evolutionary biologists believe that it is credible that animals
can perceive time differently. In terms of empirical evidence of this,
there is, there's some. I mean, it's always hard, right,
So why you have to keep in mind whenever you're
thinking about animal perception is we cannot avatar into an
animal head. We can't make an assumption about what it's

(10:43):
like to be that animal just based on our empirical
observations of this animal. But we can, we can guess,
we can make these estimates. So some empirical evidence on
this biological time slovidone is actually in birdsong. So bird's
song is lovely, sometimes it's shrill, and sometimes it sounds unpleasant,

(11:08):
just like sort of chaotic screaming. But when you slow
down birdsong sometimes you can perceive more notes than you
were able to with birdsong being played in real time.
So birdsong has many more notes per second than our
human brains can process. And when we slow down the birdsong,
we actually can hear more of the notes. And so

(11:31):
Bob Dueling, an auditory scientist at the University of Maryland,
as well as Norah Prior, who is a postdoc researcher
on birds talked on this BBC four program about whether
birds can hear more, can hear more in the birdsong
than humans, So like when you slow it down, there

(11:51):
are more notes, But does this mean that birds can
actually perceive these greater number of notes? So their research
on birds do indicate that birds can just doing these
subtle changes within a single note that humans can't. So
these birds may be able to distinguish these notes by
perceiving things slower than a human with that higher critical

(12:14):
flicker fusion rights. So yeah, I would say that it's
always going to be hard to know exactly, Like I
don't I imagine that when you have such a different brain, right,
you're an animal, you have a very different brain imagining
the world is Just like when we look at these
videos that Ben Jordan made, which I think are it's

(12:35):
a really interesting video and I'm not I don't want
to be too critical of it because I think it's
really fascinated and he presents the information really well. I
think that like when you the problem, right is that
we are looking at a video that's been slowed down
or sped up, or you know, the colors changed, the

(12:56):
sounds changed. To kind of estimate what this animals perception
is based on, you know, some math based on their
flicker fusion rate, the frames per second that they can
hear or see in. But we are a human being
with our human brain looking at a video, So we're
filtering all of this information through our human brain and

(13:20):
trying to imagine what that is like as a dog,
as a cat, as a fish, as a reptile, and
so that it's it's we're kind of trapped in a
prison of our own brains, so we can't directly experience
what it's like to be that animal. So we can't
ever really know what is that direct experience of that
animal and what amount of it is being filtered through

(13:44):
our human brain. Looking at this video of going like, oh,
it's kind of like if I'm a dog, it's kind
of like I live in this like blue and gray,
blue and gray and brown world with like humans, but
the humans are kind of moving a little slower and
their voices are slowed down. Well maybe, but it's also
again that's been filtered through our human brains, our human cognition.

(14:06):
But I would say, you know, I think it is
very plausible, very very plausible that animals. I mean, first
of all, I do think animals are conscious and experience things,
And so I think that this idea that animals could
sort of experience things in this maybe slowed down experience

(14:28):
or something like an elephant would perceive things as kind
of like flittering around a little faster. Yeah, I think
that's very credible. It's something we I don't know if
we'll ever have the technology to know exactly what it's
like to be in an animal brain, because how do
we escape the prison of our own brains? But it
is really fascinating and I love that question. So we're

(14:49):
going to take a quick break, but when we get back,
we are going to actually talk more about bird song.
So we are back, and speaking of birds, I have
another listener question, a short and a sweet one with
a long and hopefully also sweet answer. Why can some

(15:10):
birds imitate human voices and other birds don't? Our pigeons
and sparrows not smart enough? Or is there an anatomical reason?
Thanks sincerely, Stephen High Sincerely, Stephen, As you've guessed, both
brain and the vocal structures are involved in being able
to mimic human voices in birds. So when you think

(15:32):
about it, like our brains are the software and the
hardware are things like our larynx. For birds, this is
actually the syrinx. So birds who are able to mimic
human voices have to have both the right physical structure,
so the hardware of the syrinx that's the bird version

(15:56):
of a larynx, and they have to have the right
cognitive ability is the right software. So a bird's ability
to remember different songs or bird calls is a repertoire.
Birds vary in their complexity of repertoire size. There are
some birds like thrashes that have a wide repertoire of

(16:19):
complex songs, whereas maybe a bird like a seagull has
different calls for sure, and these calls can be complex
and that they mean different things, but they don't have
the number of like different songs different calls is say
a thrush or something like a brown thrasher, which is
a songbird that has thousands of different songs. So a

(16:41):
wide repertoire, however, doesn't mean a bird is like the
smartest bird or even the best able to mimic human speech.
So a raven, for instance, has a smaller repertoire than
something like a brown thrasher, but ravens that were studied
had around a dozen calls versus like the hundreds or

(17:04):
even thousands of songs that a songbird can memorize. However,
ravens are very very intelligent, they're great puzzle solvers, they're
highly social, and ravens can actually mimic human speech, whereas
a thrasher can't. So corvids including ravens, but other other

(17:25):
types of birds such as parrots. There are also starling's,
lyre birds and minas. These all can mimic human speech.
There may also be other species of birds who can
mimic human speech, but they just don't spend enough time
around humans for us to really see that. So what
sets apart the birds that can mimic human speech from

(17:47):
the birds who can't? So also, I want to look
at why birds can mimic human language but something like
our closest relatives like chimpanzees or binobos can't, because it
seems like they should be able to write. They have
brains more similar to ours, They have larynxes more similar
to ours. They have lips, But whereas a bird doesn't

(18:08):
have a lips, doesn't have a lipts, they don't have lips.
Birds don't have lips, So what is going on. So
let's look at parrots first. Parrots are a really good
example of a bird who's very good at mimicking human speech,
and they have a few things going for them. It's
the syrinx and tongue structure in terms of their hardware.

(18:28):
So parrots have really strong tongues that can manipulate sounds,
and the muscles controlling their synx are concentrated around this
single tube before the seringx branches off into these two
bronchial structures, and so this makes it a little more

(18:48):
similar in structure and functionality to a human larynx than
a lot of birds who have whose muscles in their
serings are sort of more concentrated where the se splits
off into these two tubes. So you know, they have
the hardware to be able to mimic human speech, and corvids,

(19:09):
liar birds, starlings, and mina's are also they also have
hardware to greater less extent in terms of like being
able to mimic human voices. I think parents are, like,
I mean, it's kind of arguable, like who's the best.
I guess parents are sort of the best at doing
it strictly speaking, But yeah, all those other birds do

(19:31):
have the hardware where they can to some capacity mimic
human voices. So now let's talk about the software the brain,
so repertoire size, the number of songs that a bird
can learn, like I mentioned before, doesn't necessarily mean that
a bird is the smartest or able to mimic things

(19:53):
the best. So a lot of this has to do
with how birds learn songs and sort of the may
it's maybe line, maybe they're born with it. So a
lot of songbirds will indeed learn songs, but they could
be optimized to learn songs of their own species. And

(20:13):
this is useful because learning the songs of their own
species their conspecific so conspecific means a member of your
own species helps them do things like mate or defend territory.
There are birds, a lot of birds actually, that are
innate singers, so they are born with being able to

(20:34):
recognize their own species songs and able to sing it.
And there's a lot of sort of gray area here.
There are birds who are born with the innatability to sing,
but by hearing it and sort of practicing it, they
get better at it. There's some birds who are born
basically with the structure these these sort of template structures

(20:58):
that enable them to better learn and hear their own
species songs, but they actually have to learn this larger repertoire.
So it's this really interesting I mean, bird's song is
studied a lot by like linguists, by cognitive scientists because
the language acquisition of birds, or the song acquisition of

(21:18):
birds is very interesting in terms of this some of
it being an innate characteristic they're born with this programming,
and then some of it being learned this like plasticity,
or they have to learn things listen, practice, develop muscle memory.
So it's really really interesting and complex area of research.
So some songbirds are selected for a large repertoire, which

(21:42):
may help males attract females mates. It could also help
to then territory. Sometimes both males and females also sing
to each other, but often songbirds like these, these mating
songs can become very complicated. They can get these large repertoires,
and there could be a fitness reason for why females

(22:05):
like larger repertoires, where maybe it indicates a males more fit,
but it could also be an example of runaway selection.
So we know with birds they are often selected for
their beauty for these amazing ornamentations on birds, which doesn't
necessarily translate to fitness, like in terms of being able
to you know, survive better. A bird with a huge

(22:28):
tail is not necessarily going to be better at flying.
In fact, sometimes it hinders these birds. But the females
really like these signals, and so this is potentially an
example of runaway evolution where there's some reason that this
female is drawn to or notice is better the males
that develop these greater repertoires, and then because the females

(22:51):
are drawn to it, it's selected for more, until like
it's more and more and more and more complex, just
like you have in terms of bird ornamentation, like large
repertoires are the sort of auditory version of peacocks in
terms of that amazing splendid visual display that they do
for females. So this is all basically the complexity of

(23:16):
the birds repertoire is due to selective pressures, and some
birds may not have the same selective pressures, so they
may not need a larger repertoire, but they may need
a lot of cognitive skills to figure things out. Like
parrots are highly social and they have to maybe get
nuts or grubs out of tree. So they have these

(23:37):
like these you know, good cognitive skills. It's just not
based on like having this wide song repertoire. But birds
like parrots, liar birds, even birds like mocking birds or
birds like corvids may have a more of more plasticity,
so they're able to learn and mimic sounds that are

(24:01):
not necessarily just their own species sounds, and so they
have more flexibility in the kinds of sounds that they
can learn, even though they don't maybe have the capacity
to learn the like thousands of songs that songbird may
be able to learn. They have more flexibility. They aren't

(24:22):
sort of preprogrammed with this framework that is specific to
types of songs that are unique to their species. So
something like a liarbird can mimic a variety of sounds
like lawnmowers or a camera shutter. So like these kinds
of this kind of like plasticity in terms of being

(24:44):
able to mimic a sound that does not come from
its own species is something that was selected for in
these birds but maybe not in songbirds. And in addition,
these birds with the more plasticity are have the hardware
of the hardware ability to produce these sounds. And so

(25:04):
think about it, like if you hooked a game Boy
that was loaded with like Super Mario Brothers cartridge, and
you hooked that up to a set of speakers. The speakers,
which is like the syrinx or larynx, could technically play
the sound of a violin if a iPod was hooked
up to it. I guess people don't use iPods anymore.

(25:25):
It's all iPhones now, I'm so old. So but these
speakers could play a sound of a violin, but not
when a game Boy with Super Mario Brothers is plugged
into the speakers, it is only going to play Super
Mario Brothers sounds, whereas like if you plugged in a
computer to the speakers, it could play basically anything. So
this is probably this is like the difference between these

(25:47):
like different birds in terms of these sounds. They're able
to produce a mimic. Of course, if you plugged in
like a computer to something like a you know, I
don't know, gramophone, it's not I mean, that's not going
to work. That's not how computers is. I'm not a
computers professor, but I know that's not how computers is anyways,
you get the idea. It's both hardware and software. So

(26:11):
birds that can mimic human sounds have the unique brains
that are plastic enough and good at learning novel sounds,
plus the hardware such that they can actually mimic our
human words. But why can't something like a chimpanzee do it?
So it has this smart chimp brain and a larynx
that's more similar to our own. So why could something

(26:33):
like a parrot mimic human speech but a chimpanzee can't.
So it's not about intelligence. It's not that parrots are
smarter than chimps, or chimps are smarter than parrots, you know.
Like again, like animal intelligence is somewhat relative, and it
depends on what that intelligence is geared towards. So chimpanzees

(26:54):
are very intelligent, but their intelligence is directed in a
specific way that is advantageous to them. And so in
the same way that a human is very intelligent, But
we can't slow down time in the way that maybe
a blowfly can. It doesn't mean the blowfly is smarter

(27:16):
than us. It just means that the blowfli's brain has
to put a priority on a high frame rate so
that it can react quickly, whereas with humans, we don't
need that high frame rate to function in our brains
are more geared towards cognitive processing, learning, puzzle solving, social interaction,

(27:37):
so very complex stuff. Just it's a different type of
intelligence and it is geared in a different way. And
so chimpanzees lack the brain structure to learn speech outside
of the chimpanzee vocalizations, whereas a bird like a liar
bird or a parrot does have the brain structures that

(28:00):
are optimized to learn and mimic sounds. So it's thought
that humans and close human ancestors had genetic mutations that
allowed us to learn specific syntax and develop language. So
human language is really unique because while birds are able
to have a syntactical structure, there's not much evidence that

(28:22):
they can learn language and use it in the same
symbolic way that we do, where words have these nested
meanings and you can put words together to form sentences
that means something different, and put sentences together to mean
something that forms something even more different. So this kind
of like nesting of concepts within words seems to be

(28:43):
quite unique to human language, So there are there is
some evidence that something really smart, like an African gray parrot,
which is one of the more intelligent of the bird species,
and it can talk. They can see to make some
associations between words and objects, so they can potentially learn

(29:04):
what the name of an object is or even learn
to differentiate between like what a plastic object is versus
what a felt object is. But there's kind of a
debate to what extent they understand the meanings of words
and language, and their ability to kind of have this
extent to which we nest concepts, putting a concept inside

(29:27):
a concept inside a concept seems pretty unique to humans. Dogs,
for instance, can learn to associate words with like a
toy or food, or going outside or the v et,
but it doesn't necessarily mean they have the capacity to
understand language in the same way that humans can. They
have associated a specific sound with a specific meaning, which

(29:48):
sounds like, well, hey, that's just a word, right, But really,
our human language is a lot more complex in terms
of how we fit a lot of concepts inside, say
a word, and then it has a lot of re
related concepts, and we're able to kind of do this
modular as symboling of language and words to give them
new meaning. And that's quite unique, and that's quite special.

(30:11):
It does, I think, make us a little bit different
from other animals, even animals that can communicate. That's not
to say that animal communication is not complex. It's just
ours is quite ridiculously, ridiculously complex. So we are going
to take a quick break, and then when we get back,
we're going to answer some of our listener questions. Okay,

(30:41):
so I am back, and this one is actually more
of a story that I am going to share because
it was I think very interesting. And so here is
this listener's story. Hi, Katie, thank you so much for
the hours of animal entertainment. Your podcast brings me so
much joy and education. I'm a dork and harass my

(31:03):
fellow employees with animal facts, and I've learned that I've
learned from your show. I just got done with your
drunken Animal part of your listener Maile episode. Here's my
intoxicated animal story. I have a fifty pound pit bull
and a three pound Chihuahua and a sixty pound Dingo
shepherd mix. Yes I did say dingo, and yes we
did do a DNA test, and yes, she was very strange.

(31:23):
She had oscillating wrists and an intense devotion to me,
and ended up being my service animal due to her
ability to sense when I was going to have an
epileptic seizure. But to my point, we lived in a
mobile home with a gas furnace, water heater, and a
neighbor that had an overhanging apple tree. My wife and
I had really bad headaches one evening, and the Pity

(31:45):
and the chihuahua started acting strange and falling while they walked.
The dingo seemed fine, loll The dingo slept in a
cold area of the house because she was tough, but
the other two slept near us our heater ducks, even
if we moved their bed. Our reasoning went to carbon
monoxide poisoning because of recent gas work done in the home.

(32:07):
We called the fire department, not knowing fully what was
about to happen. I communicated everything I told you, and
the fire department told us to leave the house immediately,
don't open any windows or doors so that they could
test the air quality inside. So me and my wife
and our dogs, two of which are acting crazy, in
a smaller trailer park of less than one hundred homes

(32:29):
all of a sudden, an ambulance for humans, one for animals,
which is rich people's stuff, not for our money. Class
four police cars, one small fire truck and one ladder truck,
and a hazmat team with full suit protection and detection gear,
all with lights and sirens blazing. At one thirty am,
we worked restaurant hours. The hazmat team inspected our home

(32:51):
and four others while waking up residents to get them
to evacuate their homes. So now we have twenty to
twenty five people standing in the street. In November, at
one thirty eight m the fire department did a full
inspection for raid on carbon monoxide and dioxide inspections on
five homes around us. They didn't leave until four thirty am.
After my wife and I passed every emergency test outside,

(33:13):
they decided to see why our dogs were messed up.
Turns out that our neighbor's apples had dropped into our
yard and our greedy dogs got smashed on apples. My
sweet Lola hated sweet food, so she was fine and
that's why she indicated to the other two. I don't
know how many apples the big or little guy must
have had, but they definitely got drunk. The fire department

(33:38):
and ambulance and police laughed at the mistake but praised
us for our vigilance about the dangers of carbon monoxide poisoning.
Plus we got a home inspection for free from the
hazmat team before we sold the house. Do with that info?
What chew? Well? And I hope my waisted pit and
chihuahua story makes you smile. Hope my dogs getting hammered
makes you laugh. Also, just imagine a trailer park in

(33:59):
the middle of no We're suddenly looking like a chemical explosion,
where everyone knows your name, lots of questions to be answered.
Two dogs like sweets, and Lola wanted nothing to do
but take care of her friends. I hope you have
a great day. And I hope I made you laugh
because your show puts a smile on my face every time.
Peace Maddie. Gee, that was very, very funny. Yeah, I

(34:19):
mean that is I would have done the same thing
you did. I would have been very concerned about carbon
monoxide if I had been feeling bad and if my
dogs were woozy and acting strange. Yeah, that is scary.
I'm glad it turns out it was just fermented apples
that your dogs got drunk on. That is incredible. Yeah,

(34:40):
I mean there are It is funny because like you
may see an animal acting loopy, and it's scary because
there are all sorts of things that go through your head,
like it could be raybies, it could be some kind
of horrible thing happening. But then yeah, on occasion, it
turns out that they have eaten something fermented and gotten drunk.
In fact, a lot of these wildlife bird centers have

(35:03):
to deal with birds in the winter who get drunk
because they eat berries that have been frozen and fermented,
and then they crash into windows and then they have
to go to kind of a bird drunk tank and
get healed rest up before they get released. So it
does happen. So here's another listener email that is more

(35:25):
of a story than a question, and this one is
in reference to the pololo worms that we discussed in
the episode mosh Pit. So to remind you, pololo worms
are a type of polykeete marine worm that live in
coral reefs, and so they will attach themselves to the
reefs and then when they reach sexual maturity, they actually

(35:48):
detach their lower obdomens, so they attach their butts, which
then autonomously swim to the surface. So all these butts
just like swimming to the surface where they mate with
the other detached butts in a big soup of reproductive parts.
If you want to find out more, you should definitely
check out the mosh Pit episode. But also, these pololo

(36:10):
worms are a delicacy in certain Pacific island cultures, and
it is the detached part of the worm. The in
segments of the worm that come up to make that
are collected as a delicacy. And because these worms actually
follow a very strict schedule, only appearing at night for
a couple of hours based on the moon cycle, it's
a rare treat, so keep that in mind for this email. Hi, Katie,

(36:36):
I was excited to hear you talk about pololo worms
on your mosh Pit episode because I had been meaning
to write to you for ages to see if you
could explain to me what the heck I ate. In
late twenty nineteen, I took a trip to Samoa and
it happened to coincide with the October full moon and
the pololo night. I heard about it for the first

(36:57):
time while on the island and managed to convince a
local woman I met to let me tag along. It
helped that I had a higher car so I could
drive her and her friends to the good beach. We
gathered on the beach in the middle of the night,
and pretty much all of Samo was on the beach,
just chatting quietly and making last minute repairs to their nets,

(37:18):
waiting for the right time to get in the water.
The ocean was just lousy with palolo worms. You could
basically just scoop a cloth through the water and come
out with a bunch, squish them into a bucket, trying
not to squish them too much, and then go back
for more. Everyone was out doing this until the sun
came up. It was pretty lovely, with multigenerational families out

(37:40):
there and all lighting their way with small lanterns, the
tiny lights all up the coastline, looking like stars that
had fallen into the sea. Wow, this is a this
email writer is a very good rider. Walking back up
to the beach, everyone was comparing catches and the women
I was with were explaining to me how much each

(38:00):
catch was probably worth, and it was outrageous. I was
trying to understand if it was expensive just due to scarcity,
or if there were other properties which contributed to this.
But it was hard to get a satisfying answer, probably
because I speak no Samoan, so communicating was challenging. But
some people did say they were taking it for their
sick grandmother, etc. So there are at least some beliefs

(38:23):
of medicinal or restorative properties. The other thing I had
been trying to get someone to explain to me was
what these worms actually were. I had terrible internet connection there,
so my research only got so far as disembodied reproductive
organ But asking complete strangers on a beach in the
middle of the night if they are actual worms or

(38:44):
escaped penises doesn't get you far when you have limited
common language, and I suspect the intensely Christian culture and
Samoa mint modesty stopped many people talking about animal genitalia
with a stranger darn, so I am glad to have
finally gotten a satisfying answer. Anyway, I got to take
a small sample from our catch back to my accommodation

(39:07):
and asked the chef in the kitchen to cook it
up for me. It was served to me like a
kind of caveat, I guess although I have never had that.
It was sauteed in butter and served with toast. It
reminded me of snails, and that it was an unfamiliar
texture and the taste was just whatever it had been
cooked in, so it was just salty from the ocean

(39:27):
and very buttery. I only had a little served, but
I couldn't pick any distinctive or memorable flavors, thankfully, not
something I personally will crave for the rest of my days.
Usually when I eat adventurously on holiday and end up
with worms in my belly, it is unintentional, so it
was nice to at least go in with my eyes
wide open this time. I've attached a couple of photos

(39:48):
and there's a video on my Instagram if you want
to see them wiggling about and briefly. In the same episode,
you also said crabs have bug energy. I hope you
know that there are several crustaceans here in Australia with
such bug energy that they are called Moreton Bay bug
and Ballmain bug. They are wonderfully buggy and much tastier
than disembodied sex organs. Love your work, Katie from Melbourne,

(40:12):
thank you so much for your story, Katie. I love
how many interesting foods there are out in the world
and the lengths to which we will all go to
get a good meal and interesting flavors. The images that
you sent me actually look quite appetizing. It kind of
looks like a pesto or a spinach dip. Although I'm
pretty sensitive to textures any kind of like, I don't know,

(40:35):
I just there are certain textures that I can hardly
even swallow. It's some kind of just psychological thing, I think.
So in addition to the pololo worms, here are some
of my favorite worm or warm like dishes from around
the world. So I haven't actually eaten these, I do
love the concept of them. Again, I wish I wasn't

(40:58):
so picky about textures, because I definitely like to try this.
But if you out there have tried any of these
that I've described or something similar, I'd love to hear
from you about what it's tastes like, what the experience
is like. So with that said, let's look at some
of the culinary worms from around the world. Now these
are not all actually worms, these are just kind of

(41:20):
worm like animals. So first, the fat innkeeper worm aka
the penis fish, not to be confused with the candero fish,
which is that tiny Amazonian fish that is rumored to
swim up people's urethras, and the evidence on that is
kind of mixed. It's potentially an urban legend. Potentially, maybe

(41:43):
it's happened like once or twice. Anyways, that's not what
we're talking about. We are talking about the fat innkeeper worm,
which is quite big. It is actually another polykeete marine worm,
like the palolo worm. So fat innkeeper worms look a
bit like a wiener, which earns them the name the

(42:04):
penis fish. They are pinkish and floppy, and you know, yeah,
they kind of look like ding dogs or at least
like floppy sea hot dogs. In South Korea they are
eaten with chili paste and in China they are stir
fried or they can also be ground up into umami seasoning.
I love umami. So from the Philippines there are woodworms

(42:28):
or shipworms. So these are not actually worms, but a
type of mollusk that feeds on rotting wood using symbiotic
bacteria in their guts, similar to termites. They are the
bane of ships, but for people who live near mingrove
forests in the Philippines. They are a long and linguini

(42:49):
like delicacy, similar in taste to other mollusks like oysters
and so people have described these woodworms as having a
creamy and salt see texture and they're apparently really good
with lime juice. So onto terrestrial worms, which they're not
really worms. These are larva. So meal worms are the

(43:11):
larval stage of the yellow mealworm beetle. The beetle itself
is actually black. The larva is a sort of golden brown.
You've probably seen meal worms or those little little guys,
a little segmented sort of brown light brown worms. And yeah,
the I for me, the texture is not great. I
think I've now Have I had that? Or did I

(43:34):
have a cricket? I'm trying to remember, but yeah, not
necessarily my favorite thing, but um, you know, they are
very nutritious. And there are also oh wichitty grubs, so
whichitty grubs are the larva of various wood eating malves.
The larva are large and fat. Think that seen in

(43:56):
The Lion King where Simba's learning to eat grubs. These
are the are quite juicy grubs. So they have been
used as food by Aboriginal Australians for centuries. They can
be eaten raw or cooked. So when they're raw they
apparently taste a little bit like almonds, sort of a
sweetish taste to them, that almondy taste. But when cooked,

(44:18):
the inside has the consistency and color of a fried egg,
while the skin gets crispy. I've said this before on
the show, but I think it's too bad that, like
in certain cultures, were taught to have such an aversion
to bugs or squirmy food sources. Like, imagine how many
more food options we'd have if we weren't socialized to

(44:39):
be so fussy about like, oh, but that's a larva,
or you know that that looks strange. And I say
this as someone who is a very picky eater. I
cannot eat mayonnaise without gagging, and I'm very sensitive to textures.
So I totally get being very picky and not wanting
to eat something like an insect. Yeah, yeah, I struggle

(45:01):
with it too. I just kind of wish that we
didn't socialize ourselves to be grossed out by it, because
I think it is, you know, both in terms of
practicality and also just culinarily. It seems like it'd be
nice to have those as options. So yeah, I think
it's really interesting to see these foods that you we

(45:22):
just wouldn't have in our culture. But it's not really
for any reasonable reason that we don't have them. So
onto the mystery animal sound segment. So last week's mystery
animal sound, the hint was it's something no lemur wants

(45:42):
to hear. Oh, all right, so that is definitely a
horrifying sound that lemurs don't want to hear. Also, I
don't want to hear it. That's scary. So I got
so many people riding in with a correct answer. I'm

(46:03):
really blown away. I'm so impressed and proud of everyone
for getting this right. That said, the three fastest guessers
were Tim m Antibe and Laurel l Congratulations and congratulations
to everyone else who guess correctly that this is the fossa. So,

(46:24):
the fossa is a predator found on the island of
Madagascar who looks like a brown cat with a head
like a weasel cross with a dog. And they are
a I would say, medium sized sort of animal. They
are not as small as like a domesticated cat, but
they're not as big as say, a cougar. They're kind

(46:46):
of you know, they're they're a little bigger than a bobcat.
But yeah, so they're you know, they're about six feet long,
a little over around maybe the thirty pounds, so yeah,
it's it's not small, but it's not huge. So the
fuss is in the Philoformia sub order, but many of

(47:10):
its catlike features are an example of convergent evolution with
cats in the Philodaye family. So it may look like
a wildcat related to maybe a cougar or something, but
it is actually probably just they may have started out
with a common ancestor, but then they had this like

(47:32):
convergent evolution. So Fussa love to eat lemurs, and they
love to scream and make horrifying noises while mating, as
you have just heard. And they love to eat one
of the cutest primates on the planet, the gray mouse lemur,
who is a couple ounces of big eyed cuteness and

(47:55):
apparently a delicious snack for a fossa. I think, oh,
this is this was a long time ago, but that
movie Madagascar, I think that, yeah, the fossa were the
the bad guys in that movie. And I think one
of the little lemurs on the one of the lemurs
I think is a ringtail lemur, and then the other

(48:16):
one it was a gray mouse lemur. I'm pretty sure.
I'm yeah, that movie came out a long time ago,
but yes it was they were They were correct, though,
the fossa is a predator to lemurs. So onto this
week's mystery animal sound. The hint it's not a cool
refreshing Italian treat, but a lip smacking animal. Nonetheless, if

(48:47):
you think you know who is making that sound, you
can write me an email at Creature featurepot at gmail
dot com. And if you have questions that you would
like to hear me answer on the podcast, you can
write to me there as well. Thank you guys so
much for listening. I will be back next week with
another episode of Creature Feature and thanks to the Space

(49:09):
Cossacks for their super awesome song Exo Lumina. Creature features
a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one
you just heard, is the iHeart Radio app Apple podcast
or Hey Guess what Raby listen to your favorite shows.
See you next Wednesday,