November 6, 2024 • 43 mins
Moo Deng! Pesto! What do they have in common? They're big babies!! We talk about these giant babies, and also, the tiniest babies who grow to enormous sizes. I'm joined by comedy writer Lydia Bugg!
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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 Fat Babies, we're talking about
some of the biggest babies around, everyone's favorite Internet hippo
Moo Dang, as well as the enormous, gargantuan, fluffy and
(00:31):
incredible baby king penguin Pasto. I am so excited to
talk about these I really wanted to sort of have
a full discussion about mood Dang, the internet sensation and
what is she, how does she function, why is she
and also the interesting conversation about how we treat animal celebrities.
(00:53):
Joining me today to talk about these enormous babies is
writer for one nine hundred, Hot Dog, the comedy website,
and of the horror novella Healthy Choices, Lydia bug. Hi.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
You actually suggested this topic to me because you mentioned Pesto,
the incredible baby king penguin, who is just apparently growing
bigger and bigger. He's not going to stop until essentially
he is the size of a building. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I told my husband it's like me having a baby,
and it being six feet tall. Yes, that's what it
reminds me of.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
It's wild, it's very wild. So, but first, I do
want to talk about Moodang. You are familiar with Moodang,
I would presume, Oh, my.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Gosh, yes, obviously I'm obsessed with all of the fat
baby animals. There's a TikTok talker who does the Knights
of the rotund Table, which is all of the fat
baby animals that are at Zeus. And uh yeah, Moodang
is like the King Arthur of the Knights of the
Road Hunt.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yes, she's incredible, So let's talk about her first. So Mooding,
it's the internet's favorite juvenile pigmy hippo. Pigmy hippos hail
from West Africa. Let's talk about this species a little
bit before we talk about mood Dan. Specifically, they are
one of two living species within the hippo family. The
(02:26):
other is the common hippo, which is much larger. That's
the hippo we know in love. That's the one that
does the ballet in Fantasia. They are quite big now.
Adult pigmy hippos grow to be around four hundred to
six hundred pounds, which is one hundred and eighty to
one hundred and seventy five kilograms, which sounds like a
(02:48):
lot maybe until you realize that common hippos average over
three thousand pounds. Oh my god, one five hundred kilograms.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Right, dainty.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Pygmy hippos are tiny compared to common hippos. Like the
largest kind of individual common hippos can weigh in to
be over five thousand pounds or over two thousan two
hundred kilograms, so that compared to say, amax size of
six hundred pounds. Pygmy hippos are little. You know, they're
(03:21):
pigmy hippos and they're little. They're the Chihuahuas of the
hippo world.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Did we like breathe them like teacup chuahuas to be
tiny or they're just like.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Fortunately, no, they are just naturally like that.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Because if someone wants a house hippo, that's really not good.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, that's probably. I love the idea of a little
lap hippo, but it's not gonna ever happen ethically. So,
pigmy hippos only grow to be a little over three
feet tall about a meter, so yeah, they are truly
the cute little cousins of common hippos. They are similar
(03:57):
in some ways to the larger hippos. They are semi aquatic,
although they are a lot more terrestrial than common hippos.
They spend more time on land. They're also less aggressive
than common hippos. They're a lot more shy.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Really because Moodang is spicy.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Mood Dang is very sassy, but contrary, she's not murderous.
I would say, like pygmy hippos are sassy. They will
go after you if they feel you are, you know,
bringing down the mood harshing their mellow, but they won't
kill you. I can't. I couldn't find a case of
a pygmy hippo over killing anyone, whereas common hippos regularly
(04:37):
kill people. They're very dangerous, they are very aggressive.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
I feel like I heard once they were like one
of the most dangerous animals on Earth. Is that true?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
They're They're not the like one of the most dangerous
animals on earth. They are far more dangerous than say,
sharks in terms of killing people. That's crazy. The most
dangerous animals on Earth are mosquitoes, dogs, and snakes, and
in descending order of badness, I think or no, I'm
(05:10):
not anyways, regardless, those are the three ones that cause
the most human deaths of sort of animals, right, Like,
obviously bacteria and pathogens can cause more death.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
That makes sense because those are prolific animals.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yes, yes, so. And it's also like with mosquitos, it's
unintentional they carry disease. Dogs, it's rabies, uh and in
a lot of countries where there is not as much
of a successful campaign against rabies. And then snakes obviously
with their venom they actually can cause a good number
of human deaths. But but you know, like common hippos
(05:49):
are up there, they are more dangerous than sharks, but
they but pygmy hippos not so much. They are not
that aggressive. They will fight back, as we know from Moodang,
who is a spicy little sausage. So the pigmy hippos
(06:10):
are more shy than common hippos. They form smaller social groups,
usually family units like a mother and the calves. They
avoid confrontation with other pigmy hippos. They don't really fight
so much, and they like to rest in the river
during the day and then they come out at dusk
to feed. And so you know they are overall a
(06:34):
bit more shy, a bit more introverted, a bit more chill.
And so the way I interpret mood Dang's behavior is
that she's annoyed at all the attention and just wants
to be left alone.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
I get it, relatable. I just want to chill in
a river and come out at night to feed. Like, yeah,
that sounds like the life.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
If like, I could just bite someone's leg every time
I feel socially exhausted, my life would be so much
more simple.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, that's why we love Mudang. She's the people's pigmy hippo.
We're all like, I get it.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, I've said this. I think I've said this before
on this show. But like, I had a plumbing disaster
that a few weeks ago, just as Moudang was spiking
in popularity. And what happened was I filled my sink
up with dirty dishwater. Well not intentionally, My sink was clogged.
There was a clog deep down somewhere and I I
(07:31):
was filled with dirty dishwater. So me smart took out
the u trap of the sink and I did put
a bucket under there, but it was a small bucket,
not enough bucket, and also the water came out really
fast because it was under pressure, and I did get
blasted with dirty dishwater. The bucket overflowed and I flooded
(07:53):
our kitchen and I was wet and mad. And when
I saw Moodang, I was like, well, sister, I get it,
but you do look.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Like me the most relatable in that moment.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, wet and mad? Yeah, uh so, yes she is.
I think that the fury of the little hippo is
very relatable.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
And she's just always doing normal things and the zookeepers
are like bothering her. Like I saw one where she
was sitting in her mother's food bowl, which genius. Like
if I were tiny and could fit into a food bowl,
I would sit in it and eat like that sounds great,
And her mom was trying to eat like around her. Yeah,
zookeepers were like, get out of that food bowl, and
then she was like, no, I'm gonna bite you.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah, very reasonable, she should. I used to it when I
was a kid. I would like to take cereal into
the bath, and sometimes the cereal would fall into the
bath and I thought, huh, I'm basically swimming in a
bowl of cereal. Because my cereal is now my bathwater.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Oh my god. I love eating in the bathtub, Like
I feel like that's good. It's such a hick thing
to do, but I love it.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
I had a setup where in my parents' bathroom, if
I opened the door, I could like turn on the
TV from the other room and incredible, watch the TV
from the bath and take a bubble bath and then
eat eat fruity pebbles in the bubble bath. And it
was sort of the best thing that's ever happened in
my life. I can't say anything has ever topped that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
No, Like at my old house, I had a jet
bathtub and I had enough space to put my laptop
at the edge of the tub, and I was willing
to like live dangerously and do that. I remember at
Christmas once Bridgerton had just come out and I was
like in the bathtub watching Bridgerton. I had some kind
I think, like a bottle of sparkling wine and some cheese.
(09:38):
This is incredible.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
I mean, this is the thing. Like, yes, mood dang
is highly relatable. We like to swim around in our
in some water, have food out the ready, and we
don't want people to interrupt our good times. One cute
habit that pigmy hippos share with common hippos that they
like to do poop fan So they will poop vigorously
(10:05):
and then helicopter their tail and just spread the dung around.
And it's not that they like whole papers have been
written about exactly what they're trying to achieve with this,
like it's basically thought to be marking sort of trails
or territories, but it is just it's, you know, it's
a pooh tornado that they like to produce.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
That's great. I think I've seen videos of hippos and
zoos doing that and people being like horrified.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
That's It's just a normal behavior for them.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I love it, and they know. I'm sure that people like, hey,
people think this is terrifying. I'm gonna do it, yes,
like everybody check this out. All the chorists are like.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Oh my god, no, yeah, they probably they probably get
a kick out of it. They do sometimes do it
like at each other in the wild, not necessarily pigmy
hippos but common hippos, So there can be some poop
poop fan aggression going on. So I wouldn't be surprised
if sometimes it is used towards visitors to be like, hey,
get out of here.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Is poop fan the scientific name?
Speaker 1 (11:09):
You know, it's not not scientific. So that is the
background on pygmy hippos. Let's talk a little bit more
about Moodang specifically. She was born in July of this year,
twenty twenty four. She's a juvenile pygmy hippo living at
kau Ko Open Zoo in Thailand. Her antics are looking
(11:32):
perpetually annoyed and soaked in water. She has two siblings,
Nadette and Mutuan, though like the Baldwin brothers, they are
not as famous. So and my favorite thing about her
is that her name Moodang roughly translates to bouncy pig.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Oh, that's so cute.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
She really is that she is a bouncy pig. Yeah,
she looks like an overstuffed cushion. I love her. Her
popularity actually doubled the number of visitors to the zoo,
which can in some ways be good, right, but in
other ways it's proved to be a challenge. Some of
these visitors took it upon themselves to try to harass
(12:18):
Moodang by throwing water or objects at her. I believe
that all of these visitors should be lined up and
receive a bite from Mudang, like just be like, all right,
you did this, you get bitten.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, you receive if.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
You if you violate Moodang's boundaries, you should be willing
to receive. Moudang's retribution is Mike.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
I can't I can't even imagine what goes through a
person's head that makes them want to throw something, I mean,
at any animal, but especially at the cutest animal on friggin' Earth.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah, they're trying to think because they're trying to provoke
a reaction, probably to get like a photo or a
video for social media, that would be my guess. But
the zoo has responded, I mean by definitely scolding people,
but also they become more protective of her and they
only allow visitors like five minutes to gaze upon MoU
(13:12):
Dang other because like, she's just become so wildly popular
and they've got to protect her. And you know, but
I think it's a very interesting example of how weird
animal celebrity gets. You know. I love this little hippo,
I get it, she's adorable.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
But it's also a.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Little concerning sometimes because she is a wild animal. She's
not gonna appreciate or like the excess attention that she's
actually getting like in real life.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, I have this exact same like worry about because
zoos know that these little animals are huge money makers
now ever since like Fiona, I think was the first
big celebrity hippo, and I wonder if they're being ethical
about how many babies they're having because of how much
money they can bring into the zoo. Like, I had
(14:03):
lots of questions about this. It's because I love it,
But I'm like, am I is it bad that I
love this so much?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
You know, it's a good question. I don't have it
as simple answer for this. You know, there's a lot
of really good zoos that do a lot of good
conservation work. I think that overall zoos can be a
positive thing both in terms of conservation, rehabilitation, education, research.
All of these things can make zoos actually I think
(14:31):
a net benefit for the for animals, for the environment.
But you know, I think that in cases like this
it is a definite gray area because on one hand,
uh pigmy hippos are endangered and Moodang has now brought
(14:52):
a huge amount of attention to pygmy hippos. Now everybody
knows what they are. They see her, they find her
really key. And so if you tell them, like, look
this type of hippo, like they're endangered, people make care more.
Right due to her fame and her popularity. On the
other hand, it's an we do kind of like it
(15:13):
concerns me obviously the people who throw stuff at the
at her should just be fired off into the sun.
But like it's also now that she gets so many visitors,
I wonder how much that stresses her out right, because
like I said, they're basically crepuscular, borderline nocturnal, like they
they you know, usually rest in rivers during the day
(15:35):
and then at night is when they like at dusk
is when they come out to feed. So be getting
that much attention during the day, I wonder how much
that affects her stress and her health, right, Like, I
just hope that you know, she is being protected so
(15:55):
that she can stay moisturized in the lane.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah, Like I was psyched to hear that they took
her off display except for five minutes a day, because
if you're having if that's like you know, if they're
having these issues. That's what needs to be done obviously,
is to like mainly have her be protected and doing
her own thing, and then every once in a while
people can look upon her like.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Right, yeah, I think it might be five minutes of visitor.
Let me check on that, visitors.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
I remember reading about that.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Oh no, it's good, you're right. It's like for only
five minutes. Visitors could see mooding for only five minutes
on Saturdays and Sundays. I think it might be on
Saturdays and Sundays, each visitor, like you know, like you're
in a line and basically you're ushered forward, so you
only get about five minutes to look at her. But
it is it is limited to Saturdays and Sundays.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Okay, that's not so bad, like, you know, because that
keeps the crowds smaller too, so she's not dealing with
Like when I went to see Fiona, there was like,
you know, sixty people like pressed to the glass.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Yeah sure, sure.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
It's less stressful to have two people at a time
kind of staring at you.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah yeah, uh yeah, yeah. I think it is really
important to kind of balance the I mean, of course,
I don't blame anyone for wanting to see her in person.
I'd love to see her in person. Who wouldn't an
adorable little hippo. That's not necessarily the problem. It's that
we do need to balance sort of the fun of
(17:24):
it all, like, which is like, you know, I mean
having fun internet stuff about her. There's no harm in
that that I can really see. But yeah, just making
sure that doesn't bleed over into you know, I don't
want people thinking like that she's basically like a pet
or a toy or you know, that she's anything other
than a wild animal who isn't a zoo obviously, but
(17:46):
that deserves respect and deserves to be treat, you know,
not treated like a form of entertainment, but rather as
a living creature.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, you don't want the zoo to like stage mom
mood day, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Now, I'm just thinking about those hippos and Fantasia, the
ballet hippos, and like, yeah, they had to go through
dance moms.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah, you don't want Mudang to go through what Jojo
Siba went through.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Oh no, no, oh man, no ah, Yeah, that's that's
just Moodang in a sparkly bikini drinking to Pila. I'm
not gonna end up well, all right, well we're gonna
take a quick break, and then, much to Lydia's delight,
we're gonna talk about Pesto the Penguin.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I've been dying to talk to anyone about Pasto that
will listen, So.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
All right, so we are back, and Lendy, you actually
suggested this one to me. This is about Pesto the penguin.
What drew you towards this little penguin or probably shouldn't
say little penguin?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
No, thank you for asking. So I think what's so
special about Pesto is the fact that a lot of
big baby animals just look like a slightly smaller version
of that animal. So if they're born really big, you
can't really tell how big they are. But the fact
that Pesto has his like penguins have that fuzz when
they're born, and then they get their like oily slicker feathers,
(19:12):
you can really tell, like, this is a baby, and
it looks like a baby, but it's taller than all
of the adults. So it makes me picture, like I said,
a six foot tall, like two year old, yeah, walking
around a house, and how much destruction that would bring.
And it makes me like smile and laugh every single time.
And I have heard like an origin story for Pesto
(19:34):
that is very cute, but I don't know if it's true,
and I don't know if you know it's true. But
do you do you want me to tell you what
it is?
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah? Tell me?
Speaker 2 (19:40):
I okay, all right. I heard that his dad was
like one of the biggest king penguins ever in Captivity,
and he was very old and he passed away either
pre Pesto's birth or when he was very young.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And his mother also has passed away. And so Pesto's
two dads, he says, two dads, and that's the penguins
he hangs around with. And they're smaller penguins. So part
of why he also looks so big is because he's
hanging out with these two smaller penguins all the time.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah, So I think at least part of that is true.
So he is.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Like I thought. I thought it was sus so I
didn't google it because I liked it so much.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
So his his father is one of the oldest and
largest penguins at the zoo. I don't know that his father,
Blake is actually dead. He is being raised by foster parents.
So like the the foster parents are Tango and Hudson.
(20:42):
I'm not sure that these are these are I don't
know if they're They might be gay penguins. There's so
I would like, Yeah, I believe it's so. Yes, I
believe so so and but yeah, I don't know. I
haven't really seen anything specifically about the mother. I don't
(21:04):
know that the mother's actually died. I think it may
just be that the father's really old. Raising a penguin
is kind of a two penguin job, and so they
wanted to try out. They wanted to give this egg
to Hudson and Tango to raise, to see how that
if that would work out well, and it did work
(21:25):
out really really well. It worked out super well, well
cared for. So Pesto he's a juvenile king penguin, not
an emperor penguin, so we're not talking about happy feet here.
Happy feet penguins are emperor penguins. King penguins are slightly smaller,
so Pesto is enormous. He was hatched January twenty twenty
(21:48):
four at Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium, and like most baby penguins,
he grew a fluffy brown coat that started to lighten,
and eventually, as an adult it will molt in favor
of that black, yellow and white coloration that you're familiar
with of penguins. But currently I think he's sort of
(22:09):
a fluffy gray, sort of light gray. He started out
as a dark brown gray. That coat lightens, gets a
little thinner as they age, and then they'll molt and
then have their adult colors. But Pesto is unique because
Pesto is absolutely enormous. He towers over his gay foster dads.
(22:30):
So for a frame of reference, adult king penguins typically
average around thirty five pounds, so that's about sixteen kilograms.
In September of this year of our Lord and Savior
King Penguin twenty twenty four, Pesto weighed forty six pounds.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Lord almighty.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Thirty five pounds is the average. He's forty six pounds
and it's just baby, and he's a baby, and that's
about twenty one kilograms. He was eating twenty five fish
a day. He's the largest baby king penguin in the
aquarium's history, and he's only getting bigger. Last time I checked,
it's looked like he was maybe fifty pounds at least.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, every time he's on TikTok. You know, the search
bar of TikTok has what everybody else is searching every
single video of Pesto without fail. The search bar is
why is Pasto so big? Why is Pesto so big?
We need to know?
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Well, the according to the zoo, it's partially genetics. His
father was one of the biggest penguins in the zoo's history,
or the in the aquarium's history. Part of it, they say,
is because of his parents. The foster parents are incredibly attentive,
so feeding him a lot. So like both both genes
and environment mean he is enrm uh, but they do
(23:54):
say the caretakers do say that he'll drop and wait
after fledging, so like once he finally molts as an
adult to around thirty three pounds or fifteen kilograms, so
dropping down to somewhere in the average. But I'm so skeptical, Idia, Yeah,
I believe.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Them he's got twenty pounds of feathers that he's gonna drop.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Okay, no, no, And I mean part of it could be,
like the metabolism changes a little bit, But like I'm
also very skeptical, Like in I tried to sort of
hunt this down. In the wild, it looks like, in
good conditions, pre fledgling king penguins have an average weight
of about twenty eight pounds or thirteen kilograms. Remember, Pesto
(24:36):
is like fifty pounds right now, But let's say the
weight is higher, right, Like in the wild they may
be thinner, right because they're getting less nutrition. Let's say
they're heavier on average in captivity. Even then, like let's
say they're like, you know, instead of twenty eight pounds,
they're like thirty eight pounds or something. Pesto is fifty pounds,
(24:57):
So like there's still this like vast difference in weight.
Like I I want to place bets, Like what do
you think he's gonna weigh as an adult?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I think what was his father's weight? Do we know
it was forty something?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Oh we don't. Yeah, I don't know what his father's
weight is. Let me see, But I mean he was big.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Right, I think he's going to be bigger than even
his dad, which is the largest. So I think he'll
definitely be the new largest in captivity. I guess he's
still he's still going to weigh forty three pounds.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
That's very close to my guess, which was just forty pounds,
because it's a nice round number.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Yeah, but we'll.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
See, we shall see. In the wild, king penguins are
one of the biggest species of penguin, outmatched only by
emperor penguins. They're just a sleeker, slimmer version of emperor penguins.
They're found in the South Atlantic in South Indian Ocean
on these Subantarctic islands. Typically they live in warmer conditions
(26:07):
than the emperor penguin. So it is it's almost as
if someone like slipped in an emperor penguin egg into
the enclosure and is just like trying to pass it
off as.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Wow, that would be a hilarious twist in this someone
just put the wrong egg in the wrong place and
they're like, oh god, oh.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
No, yeah, so just got the egg switched. Fun fact
about pesto, Oh no, we already we already covered that.
But yeah, the pesto is being raised by these foster parents,
and it is really cute because penguins are very attentive.
They there's a good chance that if you give them
an egg, they're just gonna be like, hey, free kid
(26:50):
and raise that egg as their own.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Incredible. These are half off this.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Month, so yeah, and parental care is quite significant for penguins,
including king penguins. The like I said, males also caretake
for the eggs and for the offspring. Once the egg
has hatched, that baby is very vulnerable. Even though they
(27:19):
grow that really fluffy, brown, downy coat, eventually, when they
are newly hatched, they barely have any feathers or any
down at all, so they're very vulnerable to freezing to death.
So what the parents have to do is they sort
of tuck them under their tummy. They have this thing
called a brood pouch that they can tuck either over
(27:41):
the egg or once the chick is hatched, they can
tuck it over the chicken. They balance the egg sort
of like on their feet and then tuck the pouch
over so they're nice and snugly and warm.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Oh that's so sweet. It's kind of like a reverse
kangaroo pouch. Then it's like an Audi pouch.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
It's an Audi pouch. I love that. But but yeah,
and I mean, like because that's one reason like that.
I mean, there's like in every species, every species of
animals will have gay animals, Like, that's just basically something
that will happen if there is an animal that sexually reproduces,
(28:19):
I think it's almost guaranteed that some of them will
be gay. And so penguins are not unique in being gay.
Penguins are unique in that we have them in captivity
a lot so we can observe them, and also that
they are such good and loving dads. So that's why
we get these unique situations where we have we get
(28:40):
to see like loving gay parents raising a foster a
foster pesto. So because and because you know, the fathers
do really invest just as much care into raising the
chicks as the females do, which is something that is
more common in seabirds, it seems, because the demands of
(29:02):
the environments are so harsh that you really need both
parents to be involved.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Yeah, I think that's so great. That's some good, great
gay representation, because like I mean, how big a baby
penguin is has to be a metric for like how
well you're taking care of it. So it's like these
are amazing fathers. Yes, yeah, they're killing it. We shouldn't we.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Shouldn't need to like point to penguins to encourage people
to support gay rights.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
But you know, but this penguin said gay rights.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
This penguin didn't say gay rights. Yeah, it just it
makes me think about like here in Italy, I think
there's just a law pass that makes it illegal to
it effectively bans gay people from adopting or becoming parents,
which I think is disgusting that this is happening in Italy,
and it is, you know, it's just like it's so weird, right,
(29:57):
like that we come up with all these laws and
hang ups. Meanwhile, penguins are just like, we've just raised
this baby to be the world's largest pain one large.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
We're literally, statistically the best penguin.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Parents, statistically the best penguin parents. Like you have ever
seen witness our enormous child.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Yeah, he's the miracle penguin baby, and Italy is just
ignoring it.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yeah, make that movie DreamWorks with Disney, I dare you.
All Right, So we're gonna take a quick break, but
when we return, we are going to talk about or
we're gonna do a little change up. We're gonna kind
of do the opposite the tiniest babies that grow into
the biggest adults.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
That sounds great.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
All right, so we are back and we're going to
talk about the world's any bittiest baby. But the twist
is that they grow into very large animals. So this
is about some of the greatest growths from birth weight
to adult weight in the animal kingdom. And so my
(31:15):
two favorite examples of this are the red kangaroo and
the sunfish, two very different animals. Let's start with the
red kangaroo. I like that you brought up earlier, the
fact that the penguin brewed pouch is like an Audi pouch,
like a kangaroo pouch but Audi, and we are going
to talk about kangaroo pouches here. So red kangaroos are marsupials,
(31:39):
and like other kangaroos, they're actually the largest kangaroo. And
when they give birth, their joeys start out incredibly tiny.
They are basically like fetuses at this point, and they
are like the size of a tiny bean, and they
(32:00):
crawl their way out of the vaginal canal up into
the mother's the mother kangaroo's pouch. It's this like incredible
journey that takes them. It's actually surprisingly fast. It takes
like around five to ten minutes for them to crawl up.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
They do it themselves. They do it themselves. Yeah that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Yeah. They And then once they're inside the pouch, they
have to latch onto a teat and then they stay
there until they start growing. So adult red kangaroos, like
I said, they are the largest roo, biggest rou and
they weigh anywhere from around ninety pounds or forty kilograms
(32:40):
if female, or up to two hundred pounds around ninety
kilograms if male. Guess how much the newborn babies weigh, man,
I've seen.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
A baby kangaroo before, and they are teeny tiny, like
the size of a mouse. So I'm gonna say like
a pound.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah that's because you see it after it started developing
a little bit. The newborn babies are like a single gram.
They are like they are smaller than a bean, which
means that they grow around ninety thousand times their birth
(33:18):
weight when they reach adulthood.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Man, kangaroo's got it made. I'm jealous of kangaroos, I.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Know, right, Like when I think about having children, it's
just like, why wasn't I born a kangaroo? Yes, although
I guess they get a squirming toddler like attached to
your stomach pouch all the time, although that just happens
with us.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
We do that, we do that to us and carry
them around, and that's when they're the most peaceful, honestly,
is when they're like like super pressed to their mother's body.
They usually just sleep. So dang kangaroos. God loves kangaroos.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Have you ever seen like people who are like kangaroo rescuers, Like, say,
the kangaroo babies are being raised in sort of a
rescue organization. They can just like hold out like a
bag and the little kangaroo will come up, the joey'll
come up and just like flop right into the pack.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
It's so cold, that's amazing. Oh, they're so portable.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
They really are the most the most I would say
convenient baby. Another convenient baby is the baby of the sunfish.
Oh wait, no, no, no, I have something really cool
to say about the red kangaroo. First, so one fun
little thing with that might either make you jealous or not.
(34:37):
I'm not sure, but like female red kangaroos are almost
perpetually pregnant. Now that sounds bad, I'm off ford, I'm afward.
Their bodies can actually freeze the development of the embryo
if she senses that she currently has a Joey in
her pouch, so essentially she can control when she gives
(34:59):
birth to the new Joey, which again is gonna be
like a teeny tiny bean. And then once the older
Joey like moves out of the pouch, like moves out
of his old room, then she starts up the the
birthing process that the like the embryo continues to develop,
is born and then crawls into the empty pouch.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Can if they sense that there's like not enough resources
or something around, can they just not have a baby
at all? Or does it always have to be sort
of in some in some way in that process? I
guess does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Like I would imagine that if there's other environmental cues,
right that like she can hold she can can continue
to hold off on giving birth, right like like you
pull it in essentially in a way, in a way.
But yeah, that's a very good point, like resource, uh, like,
(35:55):
if there's your resources, yeah, she might she might also
continue to halt the embryonic development, but yeah, and there
could of course, there could also be like miscarriage type
type situation, which is like sort of a natural abortion
that would be in cases where your body is very
stressed and so it aborts the baby to you know,
(36:17):
prevent there from being a pregnancy during a time that
is not good for it.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
So so interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Yeah, yeah, it sounds convenient to me. I'm very jealous. Now.
So the other one that I love are sunfish. Have
you ever seen a sunfish?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
I know they're very big. Yes, are they big? Are
they big? Flat guys?
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yes, you have seen them. Yes, they're enormous, weird flat
fish with big bulging eyes. They're very strange looking. They
weigh up to one thousand kilograms or two thousand, two
hundred pounds.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
In contrast, the babies that hatch look like teeny tiny
spikey stars and they weigh less than a gram. Uh,
they're almost like planked in it, like they're just a
few millimeters wide. Oh wow, Yeah, it's wild. Many of
them will not reach adulthood. They're so tiny. They're like
(37:17):
an easy snack for a lot of things. But it's fine.
It's fine because mom can carry around three hundred million eggs.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Okay, so you really don't want her to have all
of those babies, or we would just there would be
no ocean, there would be no sunfish.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
You could just walk on on all these sunfish. Yeah. Uh.
The ones that do survive increase their birth weight by
a factor of a million. It is an incredible change.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yes, that's so crazy, Like how do you even have
enough cells in your body to construct?
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Well, you don't start out with them, you make it.
They start dividing, myosis, my toe, my god.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
And like I think about how much like when you're
a teenager you have growing pains like I had bad
and pains, and.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yeah, especially in the legs. Well they don't have legs,
so maybe it's fine.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, they just they just kind of go out.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, flat pancake. Well, uh, before we go, we do
have to play a little game. It's called the Mystery
Animal Sound game. Every week I play a mystery animal
sound and you the listener, and you the guest, try
to guess who is squawking' wow, let me take that again. Uh,
(38:43):
and you the guests try to guess who is squawking.
Let's guess who's squawking. So last week's mystery animal sound,
the hint was this happy hollow Wayne from this loud
little aquatic gentleman. All right, we're able to hear that.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Yeah, is that a bat?
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Uh? That's a very good guess. It does sound a
little bit like a bat, But no, this is the
lesser water boatman. Uh. Micro Netta shalt seal. That is
that there's a lot of consonants in this name. It's
Microta schultzee. So it is an oval aquatic insect only
(39:35):
around two millimeters long that produces an incredibly loud sound
by rubbing its penis against its abdomen. It's kind of like,
you know, like a spoon and a washboard kind of thing,
or one of those like weiro instruments that you played
as a kid in elementary school.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
But it's a penis on an abdomen.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
But it is a penis on an abdomen. Uh. This
is something called stridulation. It's similar to what crickets do,
but in this case it's with a penis.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
And you're so beautiful.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
It's glorious, it's beautiful and it is you know, I
dig it. This musical singing penis can reach volume up
to ninety nine decibels. That's very loud. That's like, you know,
that's almost jackhammer loud. Fortunately, the water protects us from
(40:32):
being subjected to the sound at full volume, so we
really don't hear it like that loud. It's always underwater
when it's making these stridulations. So but yeah, that is
the You know, it's kind of fun when a guy
just serenades you, but with his wiener, with.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
His wiener, you know, and it's so loud that it's
the sound like the sound of a jackhammer.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Just imagine a guy playing a violin in a very
specific way.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Yes, oh god, all right, it is horrifying. Thank you
for that image in my head.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
You're very welcome. I thought that we could wash down
all of the cute babies stuff with like horrifying piece
instrument from above. Yes, get here, Yes, all right, onto
this week's mystery animal sound. The hint, Well, first of all,
this is an animal I learned from my guest Kara
(41:29):
Jaimo about an episode or so ago. And the hint
is this holy ray fins Batman. All right Lydia got
any guesses?
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Is it a sting ray Ooh, that's a good guess.
I definitely did say rayfin in there. That is a
very good guess. Well, I won't reveal the answer or
not yet. You gotta wait around until next week's Creature feature. Lydia,
thank you so much for joining me today to talk
(42:12):
about Moo Dang and Pesto and our beautiful little bean kangaroos.
Where can people find.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
You on social media? I'm at, you know, Lydia on
pretty much everything. It's yo you k and ow Lydia.
My biggest platform is probably TikTok.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Hey, yeah, I should figure out how that website works.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Just skip right past it and go to Snapchat. That's
where everybody is now.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Seriously, yes, I'm such a grandma. I can't like. I'm like, oh,
do we see how these tiktoks work? And it's like,
now everyone's on Snapchat. Now you missed it. You missed it?
All right, Well, thank you guys so much for listening.
If you're enjoying the show, you can leave a rating
or review. I read all the I appreciate all the reviews.
I got that mixed up. I read all the reviews,
(43:05):
and I appreciate all the ratings. Someone's gonna leave a
rating like cannot distinguish between reviews and ratings. One star
stars and thanks to the space Cossics for their super
awesome song x Alumina. Creature features a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit
the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts, or Hey, guess what? Why
(43:27):
have you listen to your favorite shows? I don't judge you.
You live your own life, you follow your own dreams,
give birth to two tiny beans, and you know, be
like Pesto enormous. See you next Wednesday.
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 Fat Babies, we're talking about
some of the biggest babies around, everyone's favorite Internet hippo
Moo Dang, as well as the enormous, gargantuan, fluffy and
(00:31):
incredible baby king penguin Pasto. I am so excited to
talk about these I really wanted to sort of have
a full discussion about mood Dang, the internet sensation and
what is she, how does she function, why is she
and also the interesting conversation about how we treat animal celebrities.
(00:53):
Joining me today to talk about these enormous babies is
writer for one nine hundred, Hot Dog, the comedy website,
and of the horror novella Healthy Choices, Lydia bug. Hi.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
You actually suggested this topic to me because you mentioned Pesto,
the incredible baby king penguin, who is just apparently growing
bigger and bigger. He's not going to stop until essentially
he is the size of a building. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (01:28):
I told my husband it's like me having a baby,
and it being six feet tall. Yes, that's what it
reminds me of.
Speaker 1 (01:34):
It's wild, it's very wild. So, but first, I do
want to talk about Moodang. You are familiar with Moodang,
I would presume, Oh, my.
Speaker 2 (01:44):
Gosh, yes, obviously I'm obsessed with all of the fat
baby animals. There's a TikTok talker who does the Knights
of the rotund Table, which is all of the fat
baby animals that are at Zeus. And uh yeah, Moodang
is like the King Arthur of the Knights of the
Road Hunt.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Yes, she's incredible, So let's talk about her first. So Mooding,
it's the internet's favorite juvenile pigmy hippo. Pigmy hippos hail
from West Africa. Let's talk about this species a little
bit before we talk about mood Dan. Specifically, they are
one of two living species within the hippo family. The
(02:26):
other is the common hippo, which is much larger. That's
the hippo we know in love. That's the one that
does the ballet in Fantasia. They are quite big now.
Adult pigmy hippos grow to be around four hundred to
six hundred pounds, which is one hundred and eighty to
one hundred and seventy five kilograms, which sounds like a
(02:48):
lot maybe until you realize that common hippos average over
three thousand pounds. Oh my god, one five hundred kilograms.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
Right, dainty.
Speaker 1 (03:00):
Pygmy hippos are tiny compared to common hippos. Like the
largest kind of individual common hippos can weigh in to
be over five thousand pounds or over two thousan two
hundred kilograms, so that compared to say, amax size of
six hundred pounds. Pygmy hippos are little. You know, they're
(03:21):
pigmy hippos and they're little. They're the Chihuahuas of the
hippo world.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
Did we like breathe them like teacup chuahuas to be
tiny or they're just like.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
Fortunately, no, they are just naturally like that.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
Because if someone wants a house hippo, that's really not good.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
Yeah, that's probably. I love the idea of a little
lap hippo, but it's not gonna ever happen ethically. So,
pigmy hippos only grow to be a little over three
feet tall about a meter, so yeah, they are truly
the cute little cousins of common hippos. They are similar
(03:57):
in some ways to the larger hippos. They are semi aquatic,
although they are a lot more terrestrial than common hippos.
They spend more time on land. They're also less aggressive
than common hippos. They're a lot more shy.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
Really because Moodang is spicy.
Speaker 1 (04:13):
Mood Dang is very sassy, but contrary, she's not murderous.
I would say, like pygmy hippos are sassy. They will
go after you if they feel you are, you know,
bringing down the mood harshing their mellow, but they won't
kill you. I can't. I couldn't find a case of
a pygmy hippo over killing anyone, whereas common hippos regularly
(04:37):
kill people. They're very dangerous, they are very aggressive.
Speaker 2 (04:41):
I feel like I heard once they were like one
of the most dangerous animals on Earth. Is that true?
Speaker 1 (04:46):
They're They're not the like one of the most dangerous
animals on earth. They are far more dangerous than say,
sharks in terms of killing people. That's crazy. The most
dangerous animals on Earth are mosquitoes, dogs, and snakes, and
in descending order of badness, I think or no, I'm
(05:10):
not anyways, regardless, those are the three ones that cause
the most human deaths of sort of animals, right, Like,
obviously bacteria and pathogens can cause more death.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
That makes sense because those are prolific animals.
Speaker 1 (05:26):
Yes, yes, so. And it's also like with mosquitos, it's
unintentional they carry disease. Dogs, it's rabies, uh and in
a lot of countries where there is not as much
of a successful campaign against rabies. And then snakes obviously
with their venom they actually can cause a good number
of human deaths. But but you know, like common hippos
(05:49):
are up there, they are more dangerous than sharks, but
they but pygmy hippos not so much. They are not
that aggressive. They will fight back, as we know from Moodang,
who is a spicy little sausage. So the pigmy hippos
(06:10):
are more shy than common hippos. They form smaller social groups,
usually family units like a mother and the calves. They
avoid confrontation with other pigmy hippos. They don't really fight
so much, and they like to rest in the river
during the day and then they come out at dusk
to feed. And so you know they are overall a
(06:34):
bit more shy, a bit more introverted, a bit more chill.
And so the way I interpret mood Dang's behavior is
that she's annoyed at all the attention and just wants
to be left alone.
Speaker 2 (06:48):
I get it, relatable. I just want to chill in
a river and come out at night to feed. Like, yeah,
that sounds like the life.
Speaker 1 (06:55):
If like, I could just bite someone's leg every time
I feel socially exhausted, my life would be so much
more simple.
Speaker 2 (07:04):
Yeah, that's why we love Mudang. She's the people's pigmy hippo.
We're all like, I get it.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
Yeah, I've said this. I think I've said this before
on this show. But like, I had a plumbing disaster
that a few weeks ago, just as Moudang was spiking
in popularity. And what happened was I filled my sink
up with dirty dishwater. Well not intentionally, My sink was clogged.
There was a clog deep down somewhere and I I
(07:31):
was filled with dirty dishwater. So me smart took out
the u trap of the sink and I did put
a bucket under there, but it was a small bucket,
not enough bucket, and also the water came out really
fast because it was under pressure, and I did get
blasted with dirty dishwater. The bucket overflowed and I flooded
(07:53):
our kitchen and I was wet and mad. And when
I saw Moodang, I was like, well, sister, I get it,
but you do look.
Speaker 2 (08:03):
Like me the most relatable in that moment.
Speaker 1 (08:06):
Yeah, wet and mad? Yeah, uh so, yes she is.
I think that the fury of the little hippo is
very relatable.
Speaker 2 (08:15):
And she's just always doing normal things and the zookeepers
are like bothering her. Like I saw one where she
was sitting in her mother's food bowl, which genius. Like
if I were tiny and could fit into a food bowl,
I would sit in it and eat like that sounds great,
And her mom was trying to eat like around her. Yeah,
zookeepers were like, get out of that food bowl, and
then she was like, no, I'm gonna bite you.
Speaker 1 (08:33):
Yeah, very reasonable, she should. I used to it when I
was a kid. I would like to take cereal into
the bath, and sometimes the cereal would fall into the
bath and I thought, huh, I'm basically swimming in a
bowl of cereal. Because my cereal is now my bathwater.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Oh my god. I love eating in the bathtub, Like
I feel like that's good. It's such a hick thing
to do, but I love it.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
I had a setup where in my parents' bathroom, if
I opened the door, I could like turn on the
TV from the other room and incredible, watch the TV
from the bath and take a bubble bath and then
eat eat fruity pebbles in the bubble bath. And it
was sort of the best thing that's ever happened in
my life. I can't say anything has ever topped that. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (09:17):
No, Like at my old house, I had a jet
bathtub and I had enough space to put my laptop
at the edge of the tub, and I was willing
to like live dangerously and do that. I remember at
Christmas once Bridgerton had just come out and I was
like in the bathtub watching Bridgerton. I had some kind
I think, like a bottle of sparkling wine and some cheese.
(09:38):
This is incredible.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
I mean, this is the thing. Like, yes, mood dang
is highly relatable. We like to swim around in our
in some water, have food out the ready, and we
don't want people to interrupt our good times. One cute
habit that pigmy hippos share with common hippos that they
like to do poop fan So they will poop vigorously
(10:05):
and then helicopter their tail and just spread the dung around.
And it's not that they like whole papers have been
written about exactly what they're trying to achieve with this,
like it's basically thought to be marking sort of trails
or territories, but it is just it's, you know, it's
a pooh tornado that they like to produce.
Speaker 2 (10:27):
That's great. I think I've seen videos of hippos and
zoos doing that and people being like horrified.
Speaker 1 (10:32):
That's It's just a normal behavior for them.
Speaker 2 (10:36):
I love it, and they know. I'm sure that people like, hey,
people think this is terrifying. I'm gonna do it, yes,
like everybody check this out. All the chorists are like.
Speaker 1 (10:46):
Oh my god, no, yeah, they probably they probably get
a kick out of it. They do sometimes do it
like at each other in the wild, not necessarily pigmy
hippos but common hippos, So there can be some poop
poop fan aggression going on. So I wouldn't be surprised
if sometimes it is used towards visitors to be like, hey,
get out of here.
Speaker 2 (11:06):
Is poop fan the scientific name?
Speaker 1 (11:09):
You know, it's not not scientific. So that is the
background on pygmy hippos. Let's talk a little bit more
about Moodang specifically. She was born in July of this year,
twenty twenty four. She's a juvenile pygmy hippo living at
kau Ko Open Zoo in Thailand. Her antics are looking
(11:32):
perpetually annoyed and soaked in water. She has two siblings,
Nadette and Mutuan, though like the Baldwin brothers, they are
not as famous. So and my favorite thing about her
is that her name Moodang roughly translates to bouncy pig.
Speaker 2 (11:52):
Oh, that's so cute.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
She really is that she is a bouncy pig. Yeah,
she looks like an overstuffed cushion. I love her. Her
popularity actually doubled the number of visitors to the zoo,
which can in some ways be good, right, but in
other ways it's proved to be a challenge. Some of
these visitors took it upon themselves to try to harass
(12:18):
Moodang by throwing water or objects at her. I believe
that all of these visitors should be lined up and
receive a bite from Mudang, like just be like, all right,
you did this, you get bitten.
Speaker 2 (12:31):
Yeah, you receive if.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
You if you violate Moodang's boundaries, you should be willing
to receive. Moudang's retribution is Mike.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
I can't I can't even imagine what goes through a
person's head that makes them want to throw something, I mean,
at any animal, but especially at the cutest animal on friggin' Earth.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah, they're trying to think because they're trying to provoke
a reaction, probably to get like a photo or a
video for social media, that would be my guess. But
the zoo has responded, I mean by definitely scolding people,
but also they become more protective of her and they
only allow visitors like five minutes to gaze upon MoU
(13:12):
Dang other because like, she's just become so wildly popular
and they've got to protect her. And you know, but
I think it's a very interesting example of how weird
animal celebrity gets. You know. I love this little hippo,
I get it, she's adorable.
Speaker 2 (13:30):
But it's also a.
Speaker 1 (13:31):
Little concerning sometimes because she is a wild animal. She's
not gonna appreciate or like the excess attention that she's
actually getting like in real life.
Speaker 2 (13:42):
Yeah, I have this exact same like worry about because
zoos know that these little animals are huge money makers
now ever since like Fiona, I think was the first
big celebrity hippo, and I wonder if they're being ethical
about how many babies they're having because of how much
money they can bring into the zoo. Like, I had
(14:03):
lots of questions about this. It's because I love it,
But I'm like, am I is it bad that I
love this so much?
Speaker 1 (14:09):
You know, it's a good question. I don't have it
as simple answer for this. You know, there's a lot
of really good zoos that do a lot of good
conservation work. I think that overall zoos can be a
positive thing both in terms of conservation, rehabilitation, education, research.
All of these things can make zoos actually I think
(14:31):
a net benefit for the for animals, for the environment.
But you know, I think that in cases like this
it is a definite gray area because on one hand,
uh pigmy hippos are endangered and Moodang has now brought
(14:52):
a huge amount of attention to pygmy hippos. Now everybody
knows what they are. They see her, they find her
really key. And so if you tell them, like, look
this type of hippo, like they're endangered, people make care more.
Right due to her fame and her popularity. On the
other hand, it's an we do kind of like it
(15:13):
concerns me obviously the people who throw stuff at the
at her should just be fired off into the sun.
But like it's also now that she gets so many visitors,
I wonder how much that stresses her out right, because
like I said, they're basically crepuscular, borderline nocturnal, like they
they you know, usually rest in rivers during the day
(15:35):
and then at night is when they like at dusk
is when they come out to feed. So be getting
that much attention during the day, I wonder how much
that affects her stress and her health, right, Like, I
just hope that you know, she is being protected so
(15:55):
that she can stay moisturized in the lane.
Speaker 2 (15:59):
Yeah, Like I was psyched to hear that they took
her off display except for five minutes a day, because
if you're having if that's like you know, if they're
having these issues. That's what needs to be done obviously,
is to like mainly have her be protected and doing
her own thing, and then every once in a while
people can look upon her like.
Speaker 1 (16:17):
Right, yeah, I think it might be five minutes of visitor.
Let me check on that, visitors.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
I remember reading about that.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
Oh no, it's good, you're right. It's like for only
five minutes. Visitors could see mooding for only five minutes
on Saturdays and Sundays. I think it might be on
Saturdays and Sundays, each visitor, like you know, like you're
in a line and basically you're ushered forward, so you
only get about five minutes to look at her. But
it is it is limited to Saturdays and Sundays.
Speaker 2 (16:46):
Okay, that's not so bad, like, you know, because that
keeps the crowds smaller too, so she's not dealing with
Like when I went to see Fiona, there was like,
you know, sixty people like pressed to the glass.
Speaker 1 (16:59):
Yeah sure, sure.
Speaker 2 (17:00):
It's less stressful to have two people at a time
kind of staring at you.
Speaker 1 (17:03):
Yeah yeah, uh yeah, yeah. I think it is really
important to kind of balance the I mean, of course,
I don't blame anyone for wanting to see her in person.
I'd love to see her in person. Who wouldn't an
adorable little hippo. That's not necessarily the problem. It's that
we do need to balance sort of the fun of
(17:24):
it all, like, which is like, you know, I mean
having fun internet stuff about her. There's no harm in
that that I can really see. But yeah, just making
sure that doesn't bleed over into you know, I don't
want people thinking like that she's basically like a pet
or a toy or you know, that she's anything other
than a wild animal who isn't a zoo obviously, but
(17:46):
that deserves respect and deserves to be treat, you know,
not treated like a form of entertainment, but rather as
a living creature.
Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, you don't want the zoo to like stage mom
mood day, you know.
Speaker 1 (18:03):
Now, I'm just thinking about those hippos and Fantasia, the
ballet hippos, and like, yeah, they had to go through
dance moms.
Speaker 2 (18:11):
Yeah, you don't want Mudang to go through what Jojo
Siba went through.
Speaker 1 (18:15):
Oh no, no, oh man, no ah, Yeah, that's that's
just Moodang in a sparkly bikini drinking to Pila. I'm
not gonna end up well, all right, well we're gonna
take a quick break, and then, much to Lydia's delight,
we're gonna talk about Pesto the Penguin.
Speaker 2 (18:34):
I've been dying to talk to anyone about Pasto that
will listen, So.
Speaker 1 (18:39):
All right, so we are back, and Lendy, you actually
suggested this one to me. This is about Pesto the penguin.
What drew you towards this little penguin or probably shouldn't
say little penguin?
Speaker 2 (18:51):
No, thank you for asking. So I think what's so
special about Pesto is the fact that a lot of
big baby animals just look like a slightly smaller version
of that animal. So if they're born really big, you
can't really tell how big they are. But the fact
that Pesto has his like penguins have that fuzz when
they're born, and then they get their like oily slicker feathers,
(19:12):
you can really tell, like, this is a baby, and
it looks like a baby, but it's taller than all
of the adults. So it makes me picture, like I said,
a six foot tall, like two year old, yeah, walking
around a house, and how much destruction that would bring.
And it makes me like smile and laugh every single time.
And I have heard like an origin story for Pesto
(19:34):
that is very cute, but I don't know if it's true,
and I don't know if you know it's true. But
do you do you want me to tell you what
it is?
Speaker 1 (19:40):
Yeah? Tell me?
Speaker 2 (19:40):
I okay, all right. I heard that his dad was
like one of the biggest king penguins ever in Captivity,
and he was very old and he passed away either
pre Pesto's birth or when he was very young.
Speaker 1 (19:54):
Uh.
Speaker 2 (19:54):
And his mother also has passed away. And so Pesto's
two dads, he says, two dads, and that's the penguins
he hangs around with. And they're smaller penguins. So part
of why he also looks so big is because he's
hanging out with these two smaller penguins all the time.
Speaker 1 (20:11):
Yeah, So I think at least part of that is true.
So he is.
Speaker 2 (20:17):
Like I thought. I thought it was sus so I
didn't google it because I liked it so much.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
So his his father is one of the oldest and
largest penguins at the zoo. I don't know that his father,
Blake is actually dead. He is being raised by foster parents.
So like the the foster parents are Tango and Hudson.
(20:42):
I'm not sure that these are these are I don't
know if they're They might be gay penguins. There's so
I would like, Yeah, I believe it's so. Yes, I
believe so so and but yeah, I don't know. I
haven't really seen anything specifically about the mother. I don't
(21:04):
know that the mother's actually died. I think it may
just be that the father's really old. Raising a penguin
is kind of a two penguin job, and so they
wanted to try out. They wanted to give this egg
to Hudson and Tango to raise, to see how that
if that would work out well, and it did work
(21:25):
out really really well. It worked out super well, well
cared for. So Pesto he's a juvenile king penguin, not
an emperor penguin, so we're not talking about happy feet here.
Happy feet penguins are emperor penguins. King penguins are slightly smaller,
so Pesto is enormous. He was hatched January twenty twenty
(21:48):
four at Sea Life Melbourne Aquarium, and like most baby penguins,
he grew a fluffy brown coat that started to lighten,
and eventually, as an adult it will molt in favor
of that black, yellow and white coloration that you're familiar
with of penguins. But currently I think he's sort of
(22:09):
a fluffy gray, sort of light gray. He started out
as a dark brown gray. That coat lightens, gets a
little thinner as they age, and then they'll molt and
then have their adult colors. But Pesto is unique because
Pesto is absolutely enormous. He towers over his gay foster dads.
(22:30):
So for a frame of reference, adult king penguins typically
average around thirty five pounds, so that's about sixteen kilograms.
In September of this year of our Lord and Savior
King Penguin twenty twenty four, Pesto weighed forty six pounds.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
Lord almighty.
Speaker 1 (22:51):
Thirty five pounds is the average. He's forty six pounds
and it's just baby, and he's a baby, and that's
about twenty one kilograms. He was eating twenty five fish
a day. He's the largest baby king penguin in the
aquarium's history, and he's only getting bigger. Last time I checked,
it's looked like he was maybe fifty pounds at least.
Speaker 2 (23:14):
Yeah, every time he's on TikTok. You know, the search
bar of TikTok has what everybody else is searching every
single video of Pesto without fail. The search bar is
why is Pasto so big? Why is Pesto so big?
We need to know?
Speaker 1 (23:28):
Well, the according to the zoo, it's partially genetics. His
father was one of the biggest penguins in the zoo's history,
or the in the aquarium's history. Part of it, they say,
is because of his parents. The foster parents are incredibly attentive,
so feeding him a lot. So like both both genes
and environment mean he is enrm uh, but they do
(23:54):
say the caretakers do say that he'll drop and wait
after fledging, so like once he finally molts as an
adult to around thirty three pounds or fifteen kilograms, so
dropping down to somewhere in the average. But I'm so skeptical, Idia, Yeah,
I believe.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
Them he's got twenty pounds of feathers that he's gonna drop.
Speaker 1 (24:14):
Okay, no, no, And I mean part of it could be,
like the metabolism changes a little bit, But like I'm
also very skeptical, Like in I tried to sort of
hunt this down. In the wild, it looks like, in
good conditions, pre fledgling king penguins have an average weight
of about twenty eight pounds or thirteen kilograms. Remember, Pesto
(24:36):
is like fifty pounds right now, But let's say the
weight is higher, right, Like in the wild they may
be thinner, right because they're getting less nutrition. Let's say
they're heavier on average in captivity. Even then, like let's
say they're like, you know, instead of twenty eight pounds,
they're like thirty eight pounds or something. Pesto is fifty pounds,
(24:57):
So like there's still this like vast difference in weight.
Like I I want to place bets, Like what do
you think he's gonna weigh as an adult?
Speaker 2 (25:11):
I think what was his father's weight? Do we know
it was forty something?
Speaker 1 (25:16):
Oh we don't. Yeah, I don't know what his father's
weight is. Let me see, But I mean he was big.
Speaker 2 (25:22):
Right, I think he's going to be bigger than even
his dad, which is the largest. So I think he'll
definitely be the new largest in captivity. I guess he's
still he's still going to weigh forty three pounds.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
That's very close to my guess, which was just forty pounds,
because it's a nice round number.
Speaker 2 (25:42):
Yeah, but we'll.
Speaker 1 (25:44):
See, we shall see. In the wild, king penguins are
one of the biggest species of penguin, outmatched only by
emperor penguins. They're just a sleeker, slimmer version of emperor penguins.
They're found in the South Atlantic in South Indian Ocean
on these Subantarctic islands. Typically they live in warmer conditions
(26:07):
than the emperor penguin. So it is it's almost as
if someone like slipped in an emperor penguin egg into
the enclosure and is just like trying to pass it
off as.
Speaker 2 (26:19):
Wow, that would be a hilarious twist in this someone
just put the wrong egg in the wrong place and
they're like, oh god, oh.
Speaker 1 (26:27):
No, yeah, so just got the egg switched. Fun fact
about pesto, Oh no, we already we already covered that.
But yeah, the pesto is being raised by these foster parents,
and it is really cute because penguins are very attentive.
They there's a good chance that if you give them
an egg, they're just gonna be like, hey, free kid
(26:50):
and raise that egg as their own.
Speaker 2 (26:53):
Incredible. These are half off this.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
Month, so yeah, and parental care is quite significant for penguins,
including king penguins. The like I said, males also caretake
for the eggs and for the offspring. Once the egg
has hatched, that baby is very vulnerable. Even though they
(27:19):
grow that really fluffy, brown, downy coat, eventually, when they
are newly hatched, they barely have any feathers or any
down at all, so they're very vulnerable to freezing to death.
So what the parents have to do is they sort
of tuck them under their tummy. They have this thing
called a brood pouch that they can tuck either over
(27:41):
the egg or once the chick is hatched, they can
tuck it over the chicken. They balance the egg sort
of like on their feet and then tuck the pouch
over so they're nice and snugly and warm.
Speaker 2 (27:52):
Oh that's so sweet. It's kind of like a reverse
kangaroo pouch. Then it's like an Audi pouch.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
It's an Audi pouch. I love that. But but yeah,
and I mean, like because that's one reason like that.
I mean, there's like in every species, every species of
animals will have gay animals, Like, that's just basically something
that will happen if there is an animal that sexually reproduces,
(28:19):
I think it's almost guaranteed that some of them will
be gay. And so penguins are not unique in being gay.
Penguins are unique in that we have them in captivity
a lot so we can observe them, and also that
they are such good and loving dads. So that's why
we get these unique situations where we have we get
(28:40):
to see like loving gay parents raising a foster a
foster pesto. So because and because you know, the fathers
do really invest just as much care into raising the
chicks as the females do, which is something that is
more common in seabirds, it seems, because the demands of
(29:02):
the environments are so harsh that you really need both
parents to be involved.
Speaker 2 (29:08):
Yeah, I think that's so great. That's some good, great
gay representation, because like I mean, how big a baby
penguin is has to be a metric for like how
well you're taking care of it. So it's like these
are amazing fathers. Yes, yeah, they're killing it. We shouldn't we.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
Shouldn't need to like point to penguins to encourage people
to support gay rights.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
But you know, but this penguin said gay rights.
Speaker 1 (29:33):
This penguin didn't say gay rights. Yeah, it just it
makes me think about like here in Italy, I think
there's just a law pass that makes it illegal to
it effectively bans gay people from adopting or becoming parents,
which I think is disgusting that this is happening in Italy,
and it is, you know, it's just like it's so weird, right,
(29:57):
like that we come up with all these laws and
hang ups. Meanwhile, penguins are just like, we've just raised
this baby to be the world's largest pain one large.
Speaker 2 (30:08):
We're literally, statistically the best penguin.
Speaker 1 (30:11):
Parents, statistically the best penguin parents. Like you have ever
seen witness our enormous child.
Speaker 2 (30:17):
Yeah, he's the miracle penguin baby, and Italy is just
ignoring it.
Speaker 1 (30:24):
Yeah, make that movie DreamWorks with Disney, I dare you.
All Right, So we're gonna take a quick break, but
when we return, we are going to talk about or
we're gonna do a little change up. We're gonna kind
of do the opposite the tiniest babies that grow into
the biggest adults.
Speaker 2 (30:45):
That sounds great.
Speaker 1 (30:54):
All right, so we are back and we're going to
talk about the world's any bittiest baby. But the twist
is that they grow into very large animals. So this
is about some of the greatest growths from birth weight
to adult weight in the animal kingdom. And so my
(31:15):
two favorite examples of this are the red kangaroo and
the sunfish, two very different animals. Let's start with the
red kangaroo. I like that you brought up earlier, the
fact that the penguin brewed pouch is like an Audi pouch,
like a kangaroo pouch but Audi, and we are going
to talk about kangaroo pouches here. So red kangaroos are marsupials,
(31:39):
and like other kangaroos, they're actually the largest kangaroo. And
when they give birth, their joeys start out incredibly tiny.
They are basically like fetuses at this point, and they
are like the size of a tiny bean, and they
(32:00):
crawl their way out of the vaginal canal up into
the mother's the mother kangaroo's pouch. It's this like incredible
journey that takes them. It's actually surprisingly fast. It takes
like around five to ten minutes for them to crawl up.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
They do it themselves. They do it themselves. Yeah that's crazy.
Speaker 1 (32:19):
Yeah. They And then once they're inside the pouch, they
have to latch onto a teat and then they stay
there until they start growing. So adult red kangaroos, like
I said, they are the largest roo, biggest rou and
they weigh anywhere from around ninety pounds or forty kilograms
(32:40):
if female, or up to two hundred pounds around ninety
kilograms if male. Guess how much the newborn babies weigh, man,
I've seen.
Speaker 2 (32:50):
A baby kangaroo before, and they are teeny tiny, like
the size of a mouse. So I'm gonna say like
a pound.
Speaker 1 (32:56):
Yeah that's because you see it after it started developing
a little bit. The newborn babies are like a single gram.
They are like they are smaller than a bean, which
means that they grow around ninety thousand times their birth
(33:18):
weight when they reach adulthood.
Speaker 2 (33:21):
Man, kangaroo's got it made. I'm jealous of kangaroos, I.
Speaker 1 (33:25):
Know, right, Like when I think about having children, it's
just like, why wasn't I born a kangaroo? Yes, although
I guess they get a squirming toddler like attached to
your stomach pouch all the time, although that just happens
with us.
Speaker 2 (33:40):
We do that, we do that to us and carry
them around, and that's when they're the most peaceful, honestly,
is when they're like like super pressed to their mother's body.
They usually just sleep. So dang kangaroos. God loves kangaroos.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Have you ever seen like people who are like kangaroo rescuers, Like, say,
the kangaroo babies are being raised in sort of a
rescue organization. They can just like hold out like a
bag and the little kangaroo will come up, the joey'll
come up and just like flop right into the pack.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
It's so cold, that's amazing. Oh, they're so portable.
Speaker 1 (34:16):
They really are the most the most I would say
convenient baby. Another convenient baby is the baby of the sunfish.
Oh wait, no, no, no, I have something really cool
to say about the red kangaroo. First, so one fun
little thing with that might either make you jealous or not.
(34:37):
I'm not sure, but like female red kangaroos are almost
perpetually pregnant. Now that sounds bad, I'm off ford, I'm afward.
Their bodies can actually freeze the development of the embryo
if she senses that she currently has a Joey in
her pouch, so essentially she can control when she gives
(34:59):
birth to the new Joey, which again is gonna be
like a teeny tiny bean. And then once the older
Joey like moves out of the pouch, like moves out
of his old room, then she starts up the the
birthing process that the like the embryo continues to develop,
is born and then crawls into the empty pouch.
Speaker 2 (35:20):
Can if they sense that there's like not enough resources
or something around, can they just not have a baby
at all? Or does it always have to be sort
of in some in some way in that process? I
guess does that make sense?
Speaker 1 (35:33):
Like I would imagine that if there's other environmental cues,
right that like she can hold she can can continue
to hold off on giving birth, right like like you
pull it in essentially in a way, in a way.
But yeah, that's a very good point, like resource, uh, like,
(35:55):
if there's your resources, yeah, she might she might also
continue to halt the embryonic development, but yeah, and there
could of course, there could also be like miscarriage type
type situation, which is like sort of a natural abortion
that would be in cases where your body is very
stressed and so it aborts the baby to you know,
(36:17):
prevent there from being a pregnancy during a time that
is not good for it.
Speaker 2 (36:22):
So so interesting.
Speaker 1 (36:24):
Yeah, yeah, it sounds convenient to me. I'm very jealous. Now.
So the other one that I love are sunfish. Have
you ever seen a sunfish?
Speaker 2 (36:35):
I know they're very big. Yes, are they big? Are
they big? Flat guys?
Speaker 1 (36:39):
Yes, you have seen them. Yes, they're enormous, weird flat
fish with big bulging eyes. They're very strange looking. They
weigh up to one thousand kilograms or two thousand, two
hundred pounds.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
In contrast, the babies that hatch look like teeny tiny
spikey stars and they weigh less than a gram. Uh,
they're almost like planked in it, like they're just a
few millimeters wide. Oh wow, Yeah, it's wild. Many of
them will not reach adulthood. They're so tiny. They're like
(37:17):
an easy snack for a lot of things. But it's fine.
It's fine because mom can carry around three hundred million eggs.
Speaker 2 (37:27):
Okay, so you really don't want her to have all
of those babies, or we would just there would be
no ocean, there would be no sunfish.
Speaker 1 (37:35):
You could just walk on on all these sunfish. Yeah. Uh.
The ones that do survive increase their birth weight by
a factor of a million. It is an incredible change.
Speaker 2 (37:47):
Yes, that's so crazy, Like how do you even have
enough cells in your body to construct?
Speaker 1 (37:54):
Well, you don't start out with them, you make it.
They start dividing, myosis, my toe, my god.
Speaker 2 (38:04):
And like I think about how much like when you're
a teenager you have growing pains like I had bad
and pains, and.
Speaker 1 (38:11):
Yeah, especially in the legs. Well they don't have legs,
so maybe it's fine.
Speaker 2 (38:16):
Yeah, they just they just kind of go out.
Speaker 1 (38:19):
Yeah, flat pancake. Well, uh, before we go, we do
have to play a little game. It's called the Mystery
Animal Sound game. Every week I play a mystery animal
sound and you the listener, and you the guest, try
to guess who is squawking' wow, let me take that again. Uh,
(38:43):
and you the guests try to guess who is squawking.
Let's guess who's squawking. So last week's mystery animal sound,
the hint was this happy hollow Wayne from this loud
little aquatic gentleman. All right, we're able to hear that.
Speaker 2 (39:07):
Yeah, is that a bat?
Speaker 1 (39:09):
Uh? That's a very good guess. It does sound a
little bit like a bat, But no, this is the
lesser water boatman. Uh. Micro Netta shalt seal. That is
that there's a lot of consonants in this name. It's
Microta schultzee. So it is an oval aquatic insect only
(39:35):
around two millimeters long that produces an incredibly loud sound
by rubbing its penis against its abdomen. It's kind of like,
you know, like a spoon and a washboard kind of thing,
or one of those like weiro instruments that you played
as a kid in elementary school.
Speaker 2 (39:54):
But it's a penis on an abdomen.
Speaker 1 (39:56):
But it is a penis on an abdomen. Uh. This
is something called stridulation. It's similar to what crickets do,
but in this case it's with a penis.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
And you're so beautiful.
Speaker 1 (40:08):
It's glorious, it's beautiful and it is you know, I
dig it. This musical singing penis can reach volume up
to ninety nine decibels. That's very loud. That's like, you know,
that's almost jackhammer loud. Fortunately, the water protects us from
(40:32):
being subjected to the sound at full volume, so we
really don't hear it like that loud. It's always underwater
when it's making these stridulations. So but yeah, that is
the You know, it's kind of fun when a guy
just serenades you, but with his wiener, with.
Speaker 2 (40:50):
His wiener, you know, and it's so loud that it's
the sound like the sound of a jackhammer.
Speaker 1 (40:56):
Just imagine a guy playing a violin in a very
specific way.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Yes, oh god, all right, it is horrifying. Thank you
for that image in my head.
Speaker 1 (41:09):
You're very welcome. I thought that we could wash down
all of the cute babies stuff with like horrifying piece
instrument from above. Yes, get here, Yes, all right, onto
this week's mystery animal sound. The hint, Well, first of all,
this is an animal I learned from my guest Kara
(41:29):
Jaimo about an episode or so ago. And the hint
is this holy ray fins Batman. All right Lydia got
any guesses?
Speaker 2 (41:51):
Is it?
Speaker 1 (41:52):
Is it a sting ray Ooh, that's a good guess.
I definitely did say rayfin in there. That is a
very good guess. Well, I won't reveal the answer or
not yet. You gotta wait around until next week's Creature feature. Lydia,
thank you so much for joining me today to talk
(42:12):
about Moo Dang and Pesto and our beautiful little bean kangaroos.
Where can people find.
Speaker 2 (42:24):
You on social media? I'm at, you know, Lydia on
pretty much everything. It's yo you k and ow Lydia.
My biggest platform is probably TikTok.
Speaker 1 (42:35):
Hey, yeah, I should figure out how that website works.
Speaker 2 (42:41):
Just skip right past it and go to Snapchat. That's
where everybody is now.
Speaker 1 (42:43):
Seriously, yes, I'm such a grandma. I can't like. I'm like, oh,
do we see how these tiktoks work? And it's like,
now everyone's on Snapchat. Now you missed it. You missed it?
All right, Well, thank you guys so much for listening.
If you're enjoying the show, you can leave a rating
or review. I read all the I appreciate all the reviews.
I got that mixed up. I read all the reviews,
(43:05):
and I appreciate all the ratings. Someone's gonna leave a
rating like cannot distinguish between reviews and ratings. One star
stars and thanks to the space Cossics for their super
awesome song x Alumina. Creature features a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit
the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcasts, or Hey, guess what? Why
(43:27):
have you listen to your favorite shows? I don't judge you.
You live your own life, you follow your own dreams,
give birth to two tiny beans, and you know, be
like Pesto enormous. See you next Wednesday.
Creature Feature News
Host
Katie Goldin
Show Links
RSSAbout Creature FeatureTheme SongPopular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
My Favorite Murder with Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark
My Favorite Murder is a true crime comedy podcast hosted by Karen Kilgariff and Georgia Hardstark. Each week, Karen and Georgia share compelling true crimes and hometown stories from friends and listeners. Since MFM launched in January of 2016, Karen and Georgia have shared their lifelong interest in true crime and have covered stories of infamous serial killers like the Night Stalker, mysterious cold cases, captivating cults, incredible survivor stories and important events from history like the Tulsa race massacre of 1921. My Favorite Murder is part of the Exactly Right podcast network that provides a platform for bold, creative voices to bring to life provocative, entertaining and relatable stories for audiences everywhere. The Exactly Right roster of podcasts covers a variety of topics including historic true crime, comedic interviews and news, science, pop culture and more. Podcasts on the network include Buried Bones with Kate Winkler Dawson and Paul Holes, That's Messed Up: An SVU Podcast, This Podcast Will Kill You, Bananas and more.
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.