Octo-Cowboy!

An octopus riding a shark! I'm joined by comedian and writer Ella Yurman as we discuss the evolutionary biology concept of "phoresis," the symbiotic act of one organism riding another. Yeehaw! 

Footnotes 

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
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, we're talking about animals who
ride on top of other animals, like a poodle on
a horse at a rodeo, except you know, not messed up.
Let's explore the exploits of octopuses, the tiniest and the

(00:28):
largest passengers, and we'll answer the age old question. Are
oxpeckers jerks joining me Today's comedian, writer and journalist who
has done work for some More News as well as
teen Vogue, Ella Yeerman. Welcome, Hi Katie, Hey, it's good
to see you.

Speaker 2 (00:46):
Thanks for having me.

Speaker 1 (00:47):
Of course, I'm super excited. I the whole reason I
picked this topic was I saw a very serious article
in the New York Times about an octopus writing a
shark like a pony, and you know, I it was.
It's just one of those beautiful moments where our world
is still messed up right now, but out there in

(01:09):
the ocean there's a little orange octopus riding a shark
and everything's copasetic and wonderful.

Speaker 2 (01:16):
That's really beautiful. Yeah, the octopus doesn't know anything about
Donald Trump or or anything that's going on in the world.

Speaker 1 (01:22):
Despite being orange, knows nothing about orange. Yeah. So, quote
unquote researchers otherwise known as perverts were stalking an innocent
mac o shark off the coast of New Zealand when
they spotted an orange blobby hat that the shark was wearing.
It turns out the hat was a Meori octopus. These

(01:44):
are large octopuses that grow over six feet so that's
nearly two meters in European and they can weigh almost
thirty pounds, which is around thirteen to fourteen kilograms. So
they're not tiny octopodes. That's not that's not what you
call them. They're not tiny octopus. But I don't know.
I there's it is. Actually the plural of octopuses is octopuses.

Speaker 2 (02:09):
It's not octopus, not octopy because it's it's Greek and
not Latin.

Speaker 1 (02:13):
It's something like that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, some like something
like that.

Speaker 2 (02:17):
I used to I used to know. I used to
know how that works.

Speaker 1 (02:21):
Yeah I I I do my best to know as
little about grammar as I possibly can and still function. Sure,
but yeah, so it is a it is an an
octopus that seem to be cool with writing on the shark,
Like neither the shark nor the octopus seemed to be
in distress, which is interesting, right it was it didn't
seem like the octopus was like, oh crap, like I

(02:45):
need to stay very still otherwise this shark is going
to notice me. In fact, researchers think that the shark
was probably aware of the octopus, given that it has
sensory organs along its body that can sense pressure changes
and vibrations. So it's not like the ark didn't know
it was there because it can't see it. Also, the
shark could very easily like knock the octopus off of

(03:07):
its body just by swimming a little faster. So researchers
are saying, like it kind of seems like the shark's
okay with the octopus on it, and the octopus it
seems to intentionally be like riding on the shark, So
that that is the observation that was made.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
That's awesome. It's it's like the opposite of the scorpion
and the toad story, right and sad. But this is
like if they if the scobeen the toad actually shook
hands and decided to cross the river right together.

Speaker 1 (03:37):
Right, they crossed the river together. Everything's fine, they shake
it fine, and then the frog's like, oh crap, wait
a minute, and the scarp's like, oh dang, dude, why
did you just shake and it's his tail and you
know anyways, uh yeah, no, I mean, this is a
it is it is unusual. It's it's also unusual given
that these are not like these species don't interact very often.

(03:59):
So they the maco shark kind of is close usually
dwells closer to the surface of the water, whereas the
octopus spends most of its time near the seafloor. So
they don't they aren't like, they're neither sort of natural
like predator prey. They're also not natural like buddies. Right.

(04:21):
They don't. They don't spend a lot of time. It's
not sort of like a little Mermaid thing where the
shark's playing the octopus like a guitar or something, right, Like,
they don't. They don't hang out a lot. So the
fact that they have this really strange interaction where the
octopus is just hanging out on them like a surfboard
is super weird. It's also very weird that we happen

(04:43):
to see it, because it's really hard to observe stuff
in the ocean, Like, right, the ocean is so big,
it's so big, and we can't I mean, it's very wet,
so we can't be there a lot because we gotta
breathe and we can't just like hang out in the
middle of the ocean indefinitely, And so a lot of

(05:04):
live animal behavior in the ocean is hard to observe.
Like you'd think we'd know everything about sharks and whales
because they're so big, but we actually don't, because they
are so difficult to observe, if you, like, even if
you put a boat out there, right and have a
bunch of people sitting on the boat, researchers as these were, right,

(05:25):
Like these are researchers out on a boat doing research,
probably not anything related to sharks and octopuses, but they're
out there and they happen to see some behavior. It's
just going to be a tiny fraction of the total
behavior that you see.

Speaker 2 (05:38):
Because, right, maybe this happens all the time, right.

Speaker 1 (05:40):
We don't know, like maybe there's a whole sort of
a shark octopus uber system that.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
We're unaware I of.

Speaker 1 (05:50):
Uber.

Speaker 2 (05:51):
The octopuses are treating the sharks like an uber, and
the sharks are treating the octopus as like a new
fashion trend. Right, it's very hip and cool if you
have an octopus.

Speaker 1 (06:00):
Hat, it's a it's sort of a symbiosis of the
octopus getting transportation and the shark getting sort of high fashion,
high fashion, high frashion.

Speaker 2 (06:15):
Yeah, only the most popular sharks to wear octopus are right, exactly. Well,
it's funny that makes sense that you say, like it's
really rare that we see stuff in the ocean, because
I was I'm like scrolling through this relatively short New
York Times article and it does sort of feel like
the whole article is like, isn't this cool that this happened?

(06:35):
And I was thinking, like, it's funny that this even
qualifies as New York Times worthy news.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
They are desperate to find something that'll make anyone smile.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
Sure, right, like, look a cool octopus octopus on a shark.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Guys, everyone calmed down, all the markets, all the markets
need to calm down. We're all gonna be okay. There's
an octopus writing a shark.

Speaker 2 (07:00):
Maybe this is why, Maybe this is why the tariffs
are Oh no, the timeline doesn't line up. Maybe this
is why the tariffs went back.

Speaker 1 (07:08):
The dead cat bounces because of the the it's the
octopus on a shark bounce.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (07:14):
I don't know it literally anything about investment, So I
can't like it's illegal to give advice, But I can't
do it either because I am good at it and
no one should listen to me.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
But I can't even quite make jokes about it because
I I don't know enough of the right words.

Speaker 1 (07:33):
Yeah, I'm like, hah, line goes up, line goes down.
That's that's funny. It's right funny.

Speaker 2 (07:41):
How That is how I felt when when the game
stop stuff was happening in the news too, is like
I'm sure this is really funny if you understand it,
But I.

Speaker 1 (07:49):
Don't, right, you know, I'm like, yeah, stucks, right, just
those bulls and those bears. You know, does a bear
poop in the Woods stock market? I don't.

Speaker 2 (08:02):
I don't know exactly.

Speaker 1 (08:04):
Yeah, I don't even do it, But I do feel
like this is a good omen like that's you know,
like it has to be somewhere like if you if
you go back to Nostradamus and his writings on the
stock market, Like he must have had something in there
about it. If an animal of eight legs rides upon, uh,

(08:27):
the sharp toothed non dolphin of the sea, the stocks
better will be. I don't know, I'm just I'm just saying,
maybe it's a good sign.

Speaker 2 (08:38):
I do think the world would be in a better
place if we went back to making our decisions based
on like omens and cool things that we saw in
the world. Like, yeah, hundreds of years ago, if if
someone had seen this, they would have said this, I
have to change my entire life, like this is this
is the gods speaking to me and I I have
to I have to make a big change. And now

(08:59):
now we get in your Times article about it, and
maybe we should go back to basing all of our
personal and geopolitical decisions on the whims of the animals.

Speaker 1 (09:07):
Agree, like very much. Agree. Like imagine if Alan Green
Span God rest his soul. Wait, I assume he's dead.
I don't know actually if he is, but you know,
just like made prognostications based on like the chirps of
crickets or something. I feel like we would be a
lot better off because Honestly, that seems more stable than

(09:28):
our current situation.

Speaker 2 (09:29):
That dude is ninety nine years old and alive.

Speaker 1 (09:32):
What, well, you know what, it's all those it's all
that you know math. Math is good for you.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
That's what they say, right. Being a Republican, I think,
is also good for your life span. It seems those
guys live forever.

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, you know, it's a I think it's something to
do with sort of like when you eat enough McDonald's.
Not saying only Republicans eat McDonald's, I know libertarians do
as well, but it's like enough McDonald's that it forms
like sort of like a protective line, you know, like
how old pipes like, there's like like kind of a

(10:15):
weird lead coating, but then it it gets so covered
in another coating of minerals that the lead actually the problem,
right exactly. I think it's like that. But with Max.

Speaker 2 (10:28):
The problem with supersized me is that he didn't go
far enough. If he had just exactly eating McDonald's, it
would have circled all the way back around to be exactly.

Speaker 1 (10:35):
So that's two things you shouldn't listen to me about
on this podcast. Finances or eating food. Eating food, habits,
so ella. The behavior that we've observed in this octopus
is technically called faesis, which sounds kind of gross, but

(10:57):
all it means is when one organism attacks which is
itself to another for travel. So this is a type
of symbiosis. Usually it is a commensalistic which just means
that it doesn't hurt the host, but it doesn't help
the host either. It's just kind of like like with

(11:18):
this octopus writing this shark. It doesn't seem like the
octopus is doing the shark any harm, but it might
not be benefiting the shark in any way unless the
shark is lonely. We don't know, but yeah, yeah, so
this is most common among insects. There are many species
of insects who will do with this. We'll talk about

(11:40):
that a bit later. But the sort of more famous
example when it comes to sharks is not octopuses, which
we don't know if this is a trend. This could
be just one weird little octopus pervert who is into there.
We don't know, but we do know about remort also

(12:00):
knows as also known as suckerfish, who will attach themselves
to sharks. They also attach themselves to whales, dolphins, even
sea turtles, so even a raithin like a manta raise
And there are many different species of ramoras, and those

(12:23):
are those little kind of like flat looking fish that
you'll often see kind of like attached to a shark,
and it's seen as as kind of like interesting thing
of like, whoa, the shark's really scary and dangerous, but
here's this little fish that's just like kind of attaching.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
And you're saying they're not doing I always assumed they
were doing something for the shark. There was a reason
the sharks were putting up with them. That's right.

Speaker 1 (12:46):
No, it's a really good question actually, because the the
answer to that is complicated, and the the summer is
we don't really know exactly what's going on. So there's
different species of remorras with different preferred hosts, from whales
to turtles. The first thing is they don't actually suck

(13:08):
onto the shark with their mouths, like I think that
there's a there might be a misconception that they're sort
of like attached by their mouth. They don't suck the
shark's blood at all or anything like that. It's actually
there the tops of their heads, so their dorsal fin
is modified into a sucker shape, and they it's almost

(13:29):
like if you put like a plunger on top of
your head, sort of like but inverted, so you could
sort of hang onto a wall from your head.

Speaker 2 (13:40):
That's awesome.

Speaker 1 (13:41):
Yeah, So that's how they work. So it's like a
hat with a plunger on it that they can use
to stick onto a shark and then they just like
ride on the shark. And the what they're actually doing
there is up for a little bit of debate. There's
a few behaviors that researchers have seen. Some speculate that

(14:04):
they're eating bits of food that are left over from
the shark feeding. Right, that's a simple enough thing, so
like they have transportation, but they also get a little
bit of food. Other observations include them eating shark poop,
which you know, it happens sometimes animals eat other animals poop.
We can all be adults about it. But it's not

(14:26):
like the observations have been consistent enough for that to
be established as the true meaning of it's about to say, Christmas,
the true meaning of the remoras attaching themselves to sharks.
And there's also some theories about how they might be
able to maybe loosen parasites from their skins. So maybe

(14:48):
the remra's presence on the shark skin somehow helps reduce
the amount of parasites on their skin, but that also
isn't very well known, and there's even theories that the
remorras might be harmful by reducing the shark's speed. Certainly
in the case of dolphins, there's an idea that the

(15:11):
presence of the remras, because dolphins like to travel pretty
quickly in their pods like that, the remors might be
introducing a lot of drag to the dolphin and the
dolphin doesn't like this. And there's even an idea that
one of the reasons dolphins jump out of the water
so much is.

Speaker 2 (15:29):
Too to get rid of those those damn fish.

Speaker 1 (15:31):
Yeah, exactly, as well as any other parasites that they
might have on their bodies. But again, these are all
kind of speculations. It's not like there's one kind of
there's not one theory in terms of whether they are
good or bad for sharks or neutral, right, neutral is
a totally valid option where it could just be they're

(15:55):
not hurting the sharks, but they're also not helping the sharks,
and the sharks are just like, I got other problems,
so I don't need to spend a lot of time
trying to remove them. Although there are sharks that sometimes
will sort of like lunge out of the water, and
like one of the theories is like maybe they're trying
to loosen remorras once in a while when there's too
many of them on there. So, yeah, it's a kind

(16:17):
of unsatisfying answer because it's a it's a a lot
of cases where there's a symbiotic relationship between two animals,
it can actually be really hard to determine at what
point is this harmful or helpful and is an animal
tolerating it because they have no other choice, or is

(16:37):
the the symbiote actually helping them.

Speaker 2 (16:41):
At what point does a symbiote become a parasite or
is that a sub Are they subcategories of the other?

Speaker 1 (16:48):
Yes, so that's a very very good question. Symbiosis just
means a long and sustained relationship between two organisms to
two species, and the uh there. It can be parasitic, mutualistic,
or commensialistic. Said, well, it's it's but it bears repeating

(17:10):
because parasites actively harm their host for their own benefit.
In mutualistic relationships, they both get something, and in commensialistic relationships,
the symbio, the one that is attaching itself to the
host or involved with the host, may get something, but

(17:31):
it's not hurting and it's not helping the host. So
there's there's three options. But and it would be really
nice if animals always just fell into one little category
and made things easier for us, but they don't, and
it can be really difficult to actually tell the difference
between like, hey, is this symbiotic relationship parasitic or is

(17:52):
it mutualistic? It can be genuinely difficult to know what's
going on.

Speaker 2 (17:57):
Yeah, well, it's interesting that it's seems like so much
of what we're talking about today is the advantage is
like migration or like like travel, because I feel like
we see that a lot in plants, Like plants are
always using animals to move around, and we don't think
of that as weird because plants can't really move by themselves,
So it's it's just interesting to see it in a

(18:19):
like a fish that can probably it probably can swim
on its own, but like not nearly as as far
as this shark.

Speaker 1 (18:27):
Yes, so it's a really that's a really really good observation.
You're absolutely correct. Actually, plants that attach themselves to animals,
say like a plant that, let's sit seed burs attached
to your dog's fur and then it has all these
little burrs on it.

Speaker 2 (18:42):
All the time.

Speaker 1 (18:42):
Actually, yeah, that is actually an example of paresis where
it is it is a plant using the animal as
a type of transportation. So plants can also be in
parasitic or symbiotic relationships with either animals or other plants,
and so the use like riding attaching themselves onto a

(19:06):
dog's coat is an example of symbiosis. Either. I would
say that's probably example of a commensalistic relationship because I don't.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
Think I'm not sure the dog is getting much out
of it.

Speaker 1 (19:18):
It's not getting anything out of it, but it's also
not really hurting the dog.

Speaker 2 (19:21):
Sometimes the birds go in his paws and then it
hurts him.

Speaker 1 (19:25):
Maybe that then in that case, that plant is being
a big jerk.

Speaker 2 (19:32):
Yeah, thank you, and thank you for saying that. Not
on the people have been standing up against against plant
jerk plant.

Speaker 1 (19:39):
Right, I know, I'm like very compassionate towards h life
on earth. I'm a huge hippie. When it comes to like, oh,
a little spider, I will help you outdoors rather than
crush you beneath my feet. When there's like any kind
of like parasite on my dog, I turn into like
Jigsaw from absolutely from uh from Saw Saw, and I'm like,

(20:05):
you're going into this tube of alcohol and I will
watch you die. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (20:11):
No, tics that are that attached to my dog or
to me, to be honest, right, it's I'm gonna I'm
going to to drown you in in rubbing alcohol.

Speaker 1 (20:19):
I'm way more tolerant of ticks that attach themselves to
me because I'm like, well, I have a fighting chance
because I got fingis.

Speaker 2 (20:26):
You got fingers, you got medicine for exactly.

Speaker 1 (20:29):
When they attach themselves to my dog, I'm like, she's
just a little baby. She's a little baby.

Speaker 2 (20:35):
She doesn't know about tics.

Speaker 1 (20:36):
No, she can't do anything, she doesn't have fingis, and
she's a little baby. So I get so angry. Anyways,
your your other your other question about like the remorras,
why do they attach themselves to sharks? Uh? It really
is about being able to travel over long distances without

(20:56):
having to go to the energy. I mean, it's the
same reason we riding cars or bicycles or not go pros.
That's not a that's not a vehicle. You know, go carts,
go carts, that's a vehicle. Yeah, have our scooters whatever
we've got going on out there these days. So they

(21:19):
are Actually there's another aspect, which is that it helps
them breathe. They are ram ventilators. So ram ventilators are
a type of fish that breathes by moving through the water.
And as they move through the water, the water enters
through gill slits, runs over their gills, and then that

(21:42):
that their gills allow for the transfer of oxygen from
the water into their bloodstream. They are not obligate ram ventilators.
It sounds like I'm getting into weird like engineering, but this.

Speaker 2 (21:56):
Is no I'm you know, I'm like, I'm about.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
To sell you an HVAC system for your house.

Speaker 2 (22:01):
But you want an obligate ventilator or do you.

Speaker 1 (22:04):
Want to put I'll put an obligate ram ventilator in
there for you, ma'am. But you know this is a
obligate ram ventilators are fish, usually sharks. There's just a
few species like this where they have to keep moving,
like this is the only way that they can breathe.
So that's that's where that sort of myth that sharks

(22:26):
have to keep moving or they'll die. It's not all sharks.
A lot of sharks hashtag not a sharks, not all
sharks hashtag uh. And some of them actually do have
a different method of breathing, so like they it's the
same thing as remoras actually, so remoras can do ram ventilation,
but they can also do essentially active ventilation, so doing

(22:52):
it manually pumping the water through their gills while remaining.

Speaker 2 (22:57):
Sort of like like breathing, like sort of like breathe.
They don't have lungs, I assume, but like some mechanism
to yeah.

Speaker 1 (23:03):
It's pull exactly. It's it's by they basically pumping the
water over their gills rather than letting it passively flow
over their gills. And there are a lot of shark
species that can do this too, where they can they
can just pump the water over their gills. There are
a few species that do essentially need to keep moving
because their obligate ram ventilators. But it's not like they

(23:25):
will die as soon as they stop moving. That that
part is a myth, Like that's just a you know.

Speaker 2 (23:32):
I've heard that myth and I never really like thought
to question it, to be honest, I was just I think,
I don't even know if I associated with breathing in
my head. I was like, oh, yeah, shark stops moving,
they will just sink to the bottom of the ocean
and not be able to move it, like they won't
be able to start moving again. Right, it's a momentum thing.

Speaker 1 (23:48):
Yeah, it's like someone set just shoves the shark in
emotion and it's like, well guess I'm going now, right.
But yeah, so it's it's actually so breathing underwater is
a lot harder than breathing outside of water, which sounds
like I'm being kind of stupid here, but it's it
is true. So like transferring oxygen from water to your

(24:09):
lungs is, or for a fish, like transferring water the
oxygen in the water to their blood stream is really
hard in sure comparison to breathing air. Like mammals kind
of have it going on because we can like take
in a breath get a bunch of oxygen really easily,

(24:30):
Like breathing is not that big of a deal for us,
for fish, for sharks, like for other marine animals, like
transferring oxygen to their blood stream, it takes energy more
so than us. It's less efficient. That's one of the
reasons actually whales are so ope in terms of being

(24:50):
sure ginormous. Is they breathe air. They don't have to
deal with the transferring of oxygen from water into their lungs.
They just take a huge breath of air and they
store it in their massive, massive collection of blood that
they have, and then they have a bunch of like
richly oxygenated blood that can last for hours.

Speaker 2 (25:11):
It's wild well, and that's that's why animals used to
be bigger, right There used to be more oxygen in
the atmosphere. Is that true or did I make that up?

Speaker 1 (25:19):
It's one factor for why insects may have been bigger
is that there was more oxygen. There were a lot
of other factors, though. That makes it a little bit
difficult to separate it out because for insects, they breathe
through spiracles, which are these little holes that kind of
run through their bodies. So having more oxygen in the

(25:40):
atmosphere definitely makes it easier for them to breathe but
the other factor was that we didn't have birds around.
Literally that was it. Like once birds got on the scene,
it was like, oh damn, Like these giant dragonflies could
not compete with the birds with the power of birds.
So birds really messed things up for insects, out competed them,

(26:01):
kind of took over the niche that the insects were inhabiting.
But the huge amounts of oxygen definitely helped so for
these remorras, because getting oxygen from underwater can be kind
of a drag they know no pun intended physics drag
with anyways. So like if they are attached to a shark,

(26:23):
basically the shark is breathing for them by moving through
the water. The water flows over the remora's gills, and
the remorra doesn't have to do anything. So they're just
they got it going on. Someone's breathing for them, someone's
moving them around. Possibly they're getting food from sort of
the sharks leavings or from their poop. They they have

(26:44):
worked out a wonderful system of just passively living on
a shark.

Speaker 2 (26:51):
That's beautiful. It is, really, I mean, I I that's
something I sort of aspire to. I think is figuring
out a system of passively living. Yeah, it's next to
a larger organism.

Speaker 1 (27:04):
If someone could like breathe for me, if I didn't
have to think about it, and like, would like just
move my eyelids to like blink for me as well,
that would be super right.

Speaker 2 (27:13):
If I could. If I could figure out a weekend
at Bernie's situation where I could be Bernie, but I
don't have to, like I can just sort of lie.

Speaker 1 (27:20):
There exactly, you know exactly what I'm talking about, like
being sort of a living puppet where the puppet teers
are doing what I want them to do, right.

Speaker 2 (27:31):
Right, but I don't have to think or exert any energy, right.

Speaker 1 (27:34):
Like I'm a kermit, but with a mind of my own,
and so the puppeteers are sort of doing my bidding right.

Speaker 2 (27:45):
And just I sort of what I'm saying is I
want to be a Roman emperor and sort of carrying
around on a palette all.

Speaker 1 (27:51):
Day, right, and then like and then also have people
move my hands for me while I eat grapes and
drink wine and stuff. No, exactly, that sounds great. We're
going to take a quick break because I want to
eat some grapes, and then if we're to get back,
we're going to talk about some of the smallest furants

(28:11):
and largest florants. Which is a great word, super cool
sounding or furant all right, So just as a reminder
of furant is an animal or plant or organism that
engages in horesis, which is the act of using another
animal or plant as a form of transportation. And it

(28:35):
happens a lot in insects, particularly in some of the
smallest insects, which are mites. You've probably seen mites before.
They're itty bitty little things. They kind of look like
they're related to and they sort of look like, say,
a tick, but they're not a tick. But they're just

(28:57):
like these little tiny little dots and move around and
there's the I forgot the poem, but it's like something
like little bugs have littler bugs to bite them. Yeah,
you know, this is kind of this is kind of
the thing. Mites will often be on top of other bugs,
other insects, other arthropods. Mites are a type of arthropod

(29:22):
and there's many, many, many different species of them, and
some of them are just straight at parasites. They'll be
on another insect and kind of be feeding on them.
But some of them are a little more benign. They
are just there basically to hang out and have free
transportation public might transportation. So one example of this is

(29:47):
a big word coming up, uh po kilo kairis mites,
pochairis mites. I don't know if that's no one's here
to fact check me out on that.

Speaker 2 (29:58):
It looks right, and you get it with enough confidence
that I believe you.

Speaker 1 (30:02):
Yes, the you know, of course, the Pokeylo kiris mites.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
Of course, of course everyone knows about the iris mites exactly.

Speaker 1 (30:10):
Oh you said that, good, I'm impressed.

Speaker 2 (30:12):
I don't Well, you did it three times first, so
I got to listen.

Speaker 1 (30:15):
Column pea mites from now on. So these are tiny
orange little dots, less than a millimeter big. They're so
tiny a bunch of them can fit on the back
of a beetle. And indeed they do like to ride beetles,
not you know, the car beetles, but you know the
actual insect, specifically carrion beetles. So carrying beetles locate and

(30:39):
burry small dead animals and lay their eggs on them
so that their larvae can grow with a you know,
not entirely fresh supply of meat, but a supply of
meat nonetheless. There this is a beautiful example of parental
care and insects that is really rare. Like usually insects
just kind of like, ah, you're an egg on a

(30:59):
leaf some where, good luck. But carrion beetles take care
of their larva by providing them with this carefully prepared
larder of like a dead mouse or a dead vole.
And mites take advantage of this situation by riding on
the carrion beetle like a bus that takes them directly

(31:20):
to dead rodent buffets. So again, just they've really got
it worked out. Like it's just like a bunch of
people from the retirement home loading onto the shuttle to
go to Golden Corral or something, except Golden Corral is
a dead mouse.

Speaker 2 (31:41):
Do the mites also eat the carrion like the like
the beatles do?

Speaker 1 (31:47):
Yes, exactly, so they are not there to harm the
carrion beetles, larva or anything like that. They go and
they feed on the carrion. So when an an animal,
this is where it gets kind of complex of like
are they hurting or helping the beetle. Technically, an animal

(32:07):
that steals another animal's food is called a klepto parasite.

Speaker 2 (32:12):
So it is.

Speaker 1 (32:13):
Yeah, it's such a good. It's easily applied in so
many human situationships. I just said situationships. I meant situations,
but I guess situations situation right either way.

Speaker 2 (32:28):
So in a klepto parasitic situationship.

Speaker 1 (32:32):
Exactly right, it's it's we've all been through it. So, uh.
The the klepto parasite will steal food from another animal.
A classic example of seagulls. Those are jerks. They'll like
steal fish right from another animal. You may have even
been a victim of a seagulls stealing your chips or
your sandwich or your hot dog. And they do it

(32:54):
in the wild too, So they'll like steal fish from
other seabirds, from other animals. So they are kleptoparasites. So
you could say that this might could be a kleptoparasite.
Where it gets kind of tricky is does the presence
of the might actually reduce the amount of food that

(33:15):
the carryon larva need. That's not very clear. The other
problem is that the mites might be able to help
the larva by protecting the beetle larva from other kinds
of like microarthropods that might actually be parasites. So by

(33:35):
kind of being there on the meat and competing with
any other kind of mites that might want to directly
feed on the larva. The p mites might be I
know what I'm saying, mte a lot. I'm saying, might
like a lot a lot. You know, they could possibly
could be protecting the beetle larva thesaurus for some other

(34:00):
word than my So it's not really known if these
are parasites, if they're a mutualists, or if they're commensalistic. Again,
these relationships are really hard to definitively determine because you
have there's so many potential countervailing issues that are happening
that the say the mites. There's like some studies that

(34:24):
tried to look at this relationship between carrying beetles and
the pe mites, and it was kind of a mixed bag.
On one hand, it seemed like they did disrupt some
of the presence of maybe more predatory micro arthropods, but
another aspect was that it didn't seem like they were
actually increasing the number of larva that would reach adulthoods.

(34:50):
So it's it's it's still kind of a question mark
another way.

Speaker 2 (34:54):
Like I'm looking at this picture, there are so many
mites on this one beetle, Like does it not bother
the beetle or like weigh them down?

Speaker 1 (35:03):
It could if there's enough of them, right, like that
could start to hinder the Beatles movement. So it can
vary from having just like you know, five of them
on there to what I showed you in this picture,
which is like I don't even know how many there are,
maybe one hundred.

Speaker 2 (35:19):
It's yeah, like an upsetting amount of money.

Speaker 1 (35:21):
It's yeah, it's like this is not for people to
look at. If you have what is it tripophobia where
you don't like to see yeah, things I try to
look at.

Speaker 2 (35:30):
Do you have that?

Speaker 1 (35:31):
Like this looks like one of those like gross things
on YouTube where I'm trying to look for ASMR or
relaxing sleep sleepy time videos and then they're like, would
you like to see a face with a bunch of
like worms on it? And I don't, Oh, yeah, happen? Okay,
does that happen to you?

Speaker 2 (35:49):
You're looking for like the opposite of that, and it.

Speaker 1 (35:53):
Right, And I was wondering like, is it like does
YouTube think I'm a freak? Like did I do something?
Did I mess up my algorithms somehow for them to
think that this is what I want to see?

Speaker 2 (36:04):
But I think it's I just think it's I think
it's what the it's all of the algorithms, to be honest, like.

Speaker 1 (36:09):
Yeah, they seem to push those weird thumbnails because I
turned off all the cookies I did like private browsing
to like try to get away from that. Not for
anything gross, don't worry, but like it was it. It
kept showing up, and it's like, I guess people are
looking like is this just they're very popular videos to
see like maybe the shock factor. I don't really know that.

Speaker 2 (36:31):
I bet the clickbait does really well. I don't know
what the thought. I don't that's interesting. Yeah, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (36:37):
Anyways, YouTube is really scary and looking at these beetles,
it makes me think of those weird videos.

Speaker 2 (36:42):
That get it does feel like that, yeah, algorithm.

Speaker 1 (36:44):
But it depends so in some cases, yes, they can
get laiden down with enough of these mites that it
could hinder their movement and in that case it is harmful,
that would be a parasitic relationship. Sometimes it's just a
few of them. And another interesting thing is that when
it is just a few of them, I couldn't find
any research that would confirm this behavior. But like, the

(37:05):
mites are sort of this orange color, and the carrion
beetles have these orange bands, and when they arrange themselves
over the orange bands, they blend in really well, which
makes me wonder if their color is meant to be
sort of a form of camouflage where they can sit
on this beetles back without being seen by potential predators.

(37:29):
But I couldn't find any confirmation about that. That might
not be true at all. But again, it's just there's
so much about these you'd think again that it's like, hey,
we would know everything about this relationship.

Speaker 2 (37:42):
Is so much going on, so.

Speaker 1 (37:44):
Much going on, it's a whole situationship.

Speaker 2 (37:48):
Exactly.

Speaker 1 (37:50):
So. Another example of mites are mites that are on bumblebees.
So bumblebees are my favorite little doufist just fuzzy, clumsy,
the adorable airplanes of the mite world. They are, I
think because bumblebees have all that nice sort of fuzz.

(38:11):
They're kind of big, and they're a little doo fear.
They've got their they've got their life a little less
together than say, honey bees certainly wasps, so bumblebees are a.

Speaker 2 (38:24):
Little more certainly.

Speaker 1 (38:26):
Was Yeah, bumblebees are kind of bimbos, a little bit
himbos and bimbos. So I think that might take advantage
of this to use bumblebees as a free taxi service.
And the mtes will actually hang out on these flowers
like their airports and go off and on bumblebees and

(38:46):
travel around, and then they'll go to bumblebee nests because
there are bumble bees that live in in a sort
of collective living where it's a there's like a queen
bumblebee sort of like a honey bee colony, but usually
quite a bit smaller.

Speaker 2 (39:02):
And the like a polycule situation.

Speaker 1 (39:06):
Yeah, something like that exactly, and a polycule polycule honeycomb situation,
and so the the depending on the species and also
depending on the live stage, which is wild. So like
mites will go through different life stages from sort of
nymphs to adults, and depending on their life stage, some

(39:29):
life stages they're more kleptoparasitics, so they actually like steal
pollen from the bumblebees. Sometimes they're more neutral or even helpful,
like in their adult stages, they might actually be helpful
because like, for example, the there's a parasiteliscorum, which sounds
really bad, but actually this little brown mite will eat

(39:54):
the eggs of other micro arthropods in the bumblebee nest.
So basically it's helpful to the bumblebees to have in
their nests. So but then in other life stages it
might do more harm where it's like eating pollen so
of stealing food. So it's just it's just very strange
because sometimes there's like a whole a species that might

(40:15):
be helpful to the bumblebees, or like it's only helpful
like once once it's at a certain stage of its life.
So very strange situation.

Speaker 2 (40:24):
Yeah, both bumblebees were the the animals I was thinking
of first when when we were talking about like the
way plants are symbiotic with like like the way that
that pollen and gets spread around to planate flowers. So
it's good to know that that bees are just sort
of the the of the insect.

Speaker 1 (40:47):
Oh, it's so true. It really is. Everyone there the
town bicycles.

Speaker 2 (40:53):
Right, exactly everybody wants to ride. And that's okay. I'm
not judging.

Speaker 1 (41:01):
No, we're not. We're not shaming the bees. Uh we're saying,
heck yeah, bees, you get your you get your freak
on with all those flowers. So, uh, Eli, can you
guess what the largest furant is because we've talked about
the tiny furants the mites, Like, what do you think
is the largest furant? Meaning the largest sort of symbiote

(41:25):
that uses another animal as transport?

Speaker 2 (41:28):
Is it when I picked my cat up and put
her around my neck like a scarf. She doesn't like it,
but she'll stay there for a little bit. You know that.

Speaker 1 (41:39):
It's that that's definitely giving this sort of shark wearing
the octopus as a hat vibe. Yeah that you know
you're you're close because it does involve humans. This is
one of those stupid answers where it's like humans, it
is men, it's man. The true monster was man all.

Speaker 2 (41:56):
Along, the true the largest furant largest.

Speaker 1 (42:00):
For all along, twas us, twas us, that was the
real beast. Anyways, who are we?

Speaker 2 (42:10):
Who are we riding a top of horses? Oh? Duh,
of course.

Speaker 1 (42:17):
Yes, cars from the movie Cars.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
Parasites in the Cars, right, We're like that.

Speaker 1 (42:24):
We're like the herpes of the Pixar Car universe.

Speaker 2 (42:28):
Right, and Cars is actually set in the world where
they've cured They've cured their parasites, right, right.

Speaker 1 (42:33):
But like humans are still like sort of an std
where you can catch humans from another car. Please please
check out my entire series of Pixar's Car fan fiction.
It's very PG thirteen are rated.

Speaker 2 (42:50):
Yeah, it sounds, it sounds incredibly titillating.

Speaker 1 (42:54):
It's nasty. So we actually humans are considered four rounds
because we ride on horses and we're the largest four
aunt in the world. We may have actually started riding
horses five thousand years ago, which is according to new
evidence found in the skeletons of ancient Yamnaya people in Eurasia,

(43:15):
who essentially like archaeologists do kind of bone magic where
they're like, oh, I can tell based on stress of
the bones that this skeleton rode a horse. I mean
like the Sorry, it's not the skeleton wasn't riding the
horse like a spooky, spooky Halloween ghost.

Speaker 2 (43:37):
That would be cool, but it was it packed up
their bones to ride a.

Speaker 1 (43:42):
Horse exactly exactly, so you could see like, hey, this
has horsemen syndrome, which also sounds like some of my
fan fiction. But anyways, the the bones had like certain
stress patterns caused by stress like on the muscle tissue
that would then be reflected in these marks on the bones.

Speaker 2 (44:03):
It's like, how when they find my bones, they're gonna
be able to tell I spent twelve hours a day
on my laptop.

Speaker 1 (44:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, they're gonna be like, ah, they have
the classic podcaster syndrome. You see, you can see from
the curvature of the spine and the stress impact on
the butt that this person was not mobile for most
of the day. Yeah exactly. But yeah, horses themselves like
were wild before they were domesticated. So now there's only

(44:31):
one wild horse species that's still living. It's called the taxies.

Speaker 2 (44:36):
For a second, I thought you were gonna tell me
there was only one wild horse.

Speaker 1 (44:39):
There's a little one horse. Guys, there's one horse left.
I don't know if you know, like if people have
been paying attention to problem, but we've like literally lost
all the horses.

Speaker 2 (44:50):
One horse. He's the most special horse there is and
we have to take care of him.

Speaker 1 (44:54):
He's so tired. But yeah, no, there there there's one
extant meaning living species of wild horse called the Taki,
So I have to clarify between there's a lot of
feral horses, so there's a difference between wild horse species

(45:14):
and feral horses. So feral horses used to be domesticated
and then we're like, I'm tired of people, and then
they pieced out and rewilded themselves by going back out
into nature and then creating a feral population. So there's
a ton of faral horses all over the world which

(45:35):
were like they used to be domesticated, but for hundreds
or even thousands of years, they've now been rewilded, so
they're wild horses now, but they're still considered like feral
horses because they used to be domesticated invescated, whereas the Takis,
the Mongolian wild horses, have never been domesticated. Some of

(45:55):
them might have been tamed, right, so there's a difference
between domestication and taming. So like you take I'm a
wolf and we've domesticated dogs. So the Taki species of
horses have not been domesticated because they have not been
selectively bred to be more amenable to us using them
as transportation. But yeah, they look interesting, because so these

(46:16):
are the takis? Are not I keep saying talkies and
it's making me hungry. So the Takis are not the
ancestor of modern domesticated horses, but they're close relative and
they share a common ancestor. We don't actually know exactly
what the ancestor is to domesticated horses. We don't like

(46:40):
have sort of the exact fossil record of it.

Speaker 2 (46:44):
But what do we know? It seems like we don't
know shit.

Speaker 1 (46:46):
Yeah, you know, we don't know a whole lot.

Speaker 2 (46:49):
Honestly, like we walk around, we as a species walk
around with a lot of confidence for how little we know.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
We do know based on cave drawings, actually that the
the original horses that we probably started domesticating, we're probably
very similar to the Taki horses, the Mongolian wildhorse, at
least in appearance. Based on genetic information. We don't think

(47:17):
that the that these are like the direct ancestors, but
that they're like a later relative because of you know,
genetic shenanigans in terms of like branching off at a
certain point. But yeah, we think they're very similar to
the og horse in terms of their like these tan
they're kind of like they're like sort of chunkier. They

(47:39):
have short manes, and they have more like mule like faces,
more rounded faces. They're they're rounder, they're kind of cute.
I think I like them a lot. They're very cute looking.
And so that's that's like what horses used to be
before we messed with them.

Speaker 2 (47:59):
That makes sense. Are we like what type of what
category of symbiotic are we with horses?

Speaker 1 (48:09):
That's a super good question. It's hard to answer. I
would say, you know, it's it's complicated because we've actually
created a new species of right horse, which is the
domesticated horse. And I would yeah, I mean, I think

(48:31):
it kind of depends on your perspective because in some sense,
because we've created domesticated horses, we've facilitated this new species
of horse to spread across the globe. And in that sense,
I would say it's like a symbiotic relationship that is
mutualistic because we help the horses reproduce, we take care

(48:56):
of them, we've increased their numbers and old like the
horses that we have bred have become you know, this
like dominant species of horse and so in that sense,
we've kind of it's a mixture of co evolving and
one where I think that it is I wouldn't. I

(49:17):
don't think I would describe it as a parasitic relationship
because we do ultimately facilitate the horse species their survival.
That's not a This is like not like a moral
sort of a a judgment or something in terms of
saying like, so it's good that we've done this to

(49:37):
horses or something like that. The ethical conversation about it
is completely separate. This is sort of just from the
evolutionary biology perspective of we by using horses, we made
more horses, right, But also if you're like shifting the
perspective to our relationship to the og wild horse, you

(49:58):
could view us as a paras because existence exactly. So
it kind of depends on how you view that and
how you view sort of the connectivity of species. Like
if you breathe them out of existence, but the new
horse that you've created then is way more successful than
the original horse? Is that a you know, it's sort

(50:21):
of like saying like, well, human beings bred out of
existence are ancestors. Is that really does that count as us?
Like killing off our ancestors because we're slightly different from
them and we outbred them. I would say probably no.

Speaker 2 (50:40):
Like I guess that classic philosophical question, the Horse of Theseus.

Speaker 1 (50:45):
The horse of Theseus, where you keep ripping apart a
horse and replacing its horse parts with the like one
legs of zebra and then one legs like a donkey,
and then by the time you're done with it, you
actually get Donkey from Shrek, and you're like, is this
still the same horse that I started out with?

Speaker 2 (51:03):
And then Eddie Murphy says yes, yes, he sounds like
Eddie Murphy, so.

Speaker 1 (51:07):
He's like, yeah, we're constantly dying and living. In the
context of the new Shrek movie.

Speaker 2 (51:14):
Oh god, I would love to see Shrek five be
an existentialist horror film, but I don't think dream Works
is quite brave enough.

Speaker 1 (51:24):
They're cowards. They won't give us a Shrek where we
see Shrek sort of eating his son like Saturn, and
I'm sad about it.

Speaker 2 (51:34):
Man, that would be awesome.

Speaker 1 (51:35):
Yeah, can you imagine. Anyways, we're going to take a
quick break and come up with a better Shrek, and
then when we come back, we're going to talk about
a couple of examples of animals that you might think
these seem like they would count as four aunts as
examples of Boric's but it's a little more complicated than that.
All right, So for the last two animals we're going

(51:58):
to talk about, were two types of animals to talk about.
These are I think if we think about like animals
that use other animals, it's transportations. These would come to
mind immediately. But the question is do they count as
four ants or not in terms of is their relationship
really primarily about transportation. So barnacles are a really interesting

(52:23):
example because I've seen a mix of references to them
as either it being for esis or not, and it
kind of I mean, part of the problem is these
categories again are not super rigid, but I've seen a
lot of sources saying like, no, they don't count because
barnacles are permanently attached to their host, and also they

(52:46):
use their host for Basically, it's not just about travel,
it's about a substrate like a home. So once it
becomes like this is my home, now, it's not really
about travel. It's like this is my this is my apartment. Uh,
this whales, this whales butt is my apartment, so they don't.

(53:09):
It's but you know, I've also seen it described as well, Yeah,
but they are the reason that they settle on a
whales butt and not just like other substrate is for
being able to travel at or being able to travel
around and get access to like different spots where there's
maybe more filter feeding opportunities.

Speaker 2 (53:28):
Right for the for the the barnicle, it's it's like
truly about the journey, not the destination. Yeah, they're not
trying to go anywhere, They're just trying to go.

Speaker 1 (53:39):
You know what. It's such a healthy life philosophy, Like
if we were all just less thinking about where we
want to be and who we want to be, we
could all be a little more like the humble barnacle.

Speaker 2 (53:50):
The humble barnacle, The humble Barnacle.

Speaker 1 (53:52):
I got it. Just this is a little bit of
a tangent, but it's just too weird not to share.
So there's a lot of different types of arracles. There's
they're actually crustaceans. They're related to crabs. There's a bunch
of different species. They're not all sort of the little
just like bumpy wart like things that we see it,

(54:13):
like like whale acne. There's also long ones. There's god. Okay,
I'm gonna say this word real good. It's Zeno baileinis
globic ticis I I I did not mount, I did
not nail the landing. There Zeno baileinis globbic pictus, Yes,

(54:40):
globic globbic pitus. Okay, there we go.

Speaker 2 (54:45):
Anyways, there's a lot of letters in there.

Speaker 1 (54:48):
I'm gonna call them unholy canolis because they like, that's
what they look like. They look like weird little squash blossoms.
They're kind of long and tubular, and they attached to whales.
And then there's also species of barnacles called goose neck
barnacles that have like a long stalk and they're like
tipped in calcium plates. They look like super weird aliens.

(55:12):
And the weirdest thing about them is actually our misconception
of them back in medieval times, which is that because
they have this like long neck like a goose, and
because they're kind of like black and white, they're the
same coloration as a actual goose, a bird called the
barnacle goose, which is black and white, had this long neck.

(55:34):
But medieval people, like in Europe, didn't have a concept
about geese migrating. So they would see these barnacle geese
like the bird and not see any evidence of a
nest or eggs, but they would see goose neck barnacles.

(55:54):
So the crustacean this like long, weird, inanimate looking thing.
And because they had long neck, because they had the
black and white coloration, medieval people thought that the geese
spontaneously generated from the barnacles. And because they like just

(56:15):
couldn't find any eggs, and they couldn't fathom that maybe
the geese flew there rather than were born there.

Speaker 2 (56:22):
That's so funny.

Speaker 1 (56:23):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (56:23):
And then I presumably we named the geese after the barnacles,
and we didn't choose the word barnacle after the geese.
That would be that would be a much crazier etymology.
I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (56:35):
I think barnacle, I'll do it. I believe so because
barnacle uh an homology. I believe it has uh huh, okay,
maybe it does have something to do with the goose.

Speaker 2 (56:50):
Oh my god, that's nuts.

Speaker 1 (56:52):
Wait, hang on, Barnick really be oh huh you know
what actually burnac which is like Anglo Latin burnecki. There's
no way that's right, early thirteenth centuries species of northern
European wild goose meaning no way. The meaning the type

(57:17):
of shelf is found on clusters on submerged wood, is
attested by fifteen eighties. It is of unknown origin, despite
intense speculation. The earliest form looks like bare neck. So
barnacle might have actually first been the goose.

Speaker 2 (57:39):
That's amazing, and like the goose.

Speaker 1 (57:42):
Yeah, so the goose nests in the Arctic and then
returns to Europe in the winter. So Europeans, those silly
goats like never see any of the eggs that the
geese slays. They're like, where are these geese coming from?

Speaker 2 (57:57):
Egg hatching from the barnacle.

Speaker 1 (58:00):
They're hatching from the barnacles. So it was like they
thought that they would develop from the barnacle's shell and
like also, yeah, I guess so this etymology has even
more information. Like they they thought that like the that
the stalks of the crustaceans having this like texture that
resembled goose feathers, which is wild. So uh, they thought

(58:24):
that like the barnacles would grow on trees and then
fall into the ocean and then like that would cause
them to turn into geese. They were so bored back then,
like they did. They're just like they're just eating potatoes
for the you know, billianth night in a row and

(58:46):
they see they see a goose. They're like, where the
hell did that goose come from?

Speaker 2 (58:53):
That goose looks a lot like that weird rock I
saw in the ocean.

Speaker 1 (58:57):
Right, exactly like it had that thing was black and
white and long, And this thing is black and white
and long. Goose comes from the barnacle, obviously.

Speaker 2 (59:08):
That which well, the again yet again another famous expression
which came first the goose or the barnacle?

Speaker 1 (59:15):
Exactly. Yes, now we know where that famous expression about
the goose or the barnacle comes from. Wonderful.

Speaker 2 (59:21):
My only point of reference for barnacles for a long
time was that there I used to be willing to pirates.
And and keel hauling is a method of torture that
where pirates would attach you to a rope and then
run you under the boat so that you would get
like ripped up by the barnacles on the bottom of
the boat. That they would like drop you in front
of the boat and then you would like the boat

(59:43):
would keep going and you get like joinked under it
and then they'd pull you back up. Oh damn, that's yeah,
it's really horrible. It's like getting.

Speaker 1 (59:51):
Cheese gratered by barnacles. Oh yeah, that doesn't sound very good.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
Do barnacles? Do barnacles think boats are just like terrible whales?
Is that what's happening there?

Speaker 1 (01:00:01):
I mean they will also they would also like sort
of go on say like pieces of wood that would
fall into the water, so it wouldn't just be boats.
But yeah, I mean it's just like there's a boat.
It's like I'm on this boat. Now, It's like whoa,
we're moving right. Yeah. So yeah, just like really awful

(01:00:21):
stinky whales. Probably is. I mean, barnicles don't have a
lot going on in terms of neural right, they exactly.
So the last one I want to talk about is
something that maybe people think of when we think about
an animal riding a horse, and those are oxpeckers. So
oxpeckers are one of the most famous examples of like

(01:00:42):
animals riding on another animals because they sit on the
backs of a ton of ungulates. Hooved animals found in
Africa and savannahs, so zebras, rhinos kudoos, which is sort
of an antelope like animal, will the beast, buffalo and pollod, giraffes,
et cetera. All sorts of these megafauna found in African

(01:01:04):
savannahs have often been observed with oxpeckers on them as
a passenger. And oxpeckers like these other examples are really
interesting because they blur the line between mutualism and parasitism. Now,
the one thing about them is that seems pretty definitive
is they are not really considered fronts, so they don't

(01:01:27):
actually ride on the backs of these animals as transportation.
They do it for the snacks, mostly like there's a
lot of snacks to be had on the backs of
say a zebra, in the form of ticks, in the
form of botflies, which don't look that up. I beg,
you do not google that. It's gross.

Speaker 2 (01:01:49):
Uh I never.

Speaker 1 (01:01:54):
Just so you know, botflies lay their larva under the
skin and then they you know, develop under the skin
and in form sort of this bolus and then hatch
and it's gross. But the oxpecker will eat these things,
will eat the they'll eat the ticks, and it's just
it's like a it's like a feast. It's sort of like,
if I don't know, the first time I've ever seen

(01:02:14):
this is in Italy, but I'm sure this exists elsewhere.
Which is like a dining trolley where it's like a
tram and you're on it and they serve you dinner
on it, but you're not really riding the tram to
get anywhere. You're just riding it to eat dinner, which
honestly to me sounds awful. I'm like eating dinner and

(01:02:36):
I'm moving on a tram and it's like rumbling. The
silverware is kind of jingling, and then I can't imagine
the bathroom is very good. Uh So I'm starting to
feel nauseated because, like, I'm in a small tram eating
dinner doesn't sound great, but some.

Speaker 2 (01:02:54):
People like to do it.

Speaker 1 (01:02:55):
But that's essentially what the oxpeckers are doing. It's like
it's like a dining experience. They don't actually really need
to get from point A to point B.

Speaker 2 (01:03:04):
That makes sense, And actually, before before this podcast, that's
sort of what I thought all of the animal like,
I assumed that most of the animals riding on other
animals were it was more about food than transport. I
think of like those little birds that sit on alligators.
Are those oxpeckers? Are those something different?

Speaker 1 (01:03:19):
Those? You know? It could be I think if so,
like the little birds that like sit on I don't know,
I don't. I don't think they would be Uh, they
might be oxpeckers, but I think in general oxpeckers stick
to more like terrestrial animals. But it could be. There's
also like there there are little birds. I'm trying to

(01:03:40):
think of the species that do hang out around alligators.
Let me just look that up really quickly, because there's
like an idea of them sort of picking in the
alligator's teeth. And that has never like that was maybe
observed once and hasn't really been established as a routine behavior.

Speaker 2 (01:03:59):
But it certainly it really embedded itself in my mind
because that is what I was thinking of the bird
and the alligators. I feel like there's a whole I
can't I will not remember the name of it. But
there's a children's book where an alligator uses like a
bird as a toothbrush, like they that that imagery is really.

Speaker 1 (01:04:15):
Yes, I think I remember. I think I remember that
as well. So, but it's like and that act so Okay,
so that comes from the a plover bird. So these
are little aquatic birds that will sit on a crocodile

(01:04:35):
or yeah, sit on a crocodile, and sometimes they can
be seen like maybe near their mouth. But it's I
don't think that there's any really good evidence that plovers
actually do dental care for crocodiles consistently. But I see

(01:04:55):
that repeated as like an established fact, but that's not
it's not. I don't think that's actually an established fact.
Another example of a bird, but this is not like
a little bird like egrets will sometimes sit I believe,
on alligators, not on crocodiles. So like, the plovers are big, right,
Egrets are big, though they're not the little tiny birds.
So the plovers are the little ones that I think

(01:05:17):
have been mythologized into like crocodile dentists, and egrets are
sort of the big white birds with the long necks,
and those are the ones that are will like hang
out on alligators and kind of sit on them as
like and actually know what, I think that might count
as sort of a forurnt because they're just like hanging

(01:05:42):
out on them like they're a boat or a not
necessarily for transportation though, but maybe for like a place
of rest. Yeah, yeah, for the like also like you know,
like a perch for them.

Speaker 2 (01:05:54):
Well it's sort of like a vanity car, right, Like
a lot of sports cars aren't super practical, but they
look cool, soue Like.

Speaker 1 (01:06:01):
If it's like this, egret is picking up egret chicks,
which has a different connotation now that I think about it.
Egret females by cruiser babes. The babes exactly, that's what
birds call them babes. Yeah, so the the oxpeckers actually,

(01:06:21):
because they're feeding on parasites on top of the animals,
you think, like, okay, so this is an example of
a mutualistic relationship. They're both benefiting, but they also can't
help but kind of be jerks sometimes, so like they
will I say, like the buffalo or the zebra that
they're sitting on has like a little wound or something.

(01:06:44):
Maybe even like maybe they pick a parasite out, but
then they have like a wound left behind. They'll drink
blood from that wound and sometimes they've even been observed
like opening up the wound more because it's like ooh,
you know, delicious, delicious zebra juice. The drink it right,
so they're not so innocent. And the whether or not

(01:07:05):
they're beneficial like is again, it's one of those things
that is really hard to tell because it's not very
clear whether or not they're actually hurting them more than
they're helping. There have been studies to try to look
at whether they're actually reducing the amount of ticks on them,
and it seems like sometimes they're just eating the ticks

(01:07:27):
that have already had blood meals, So it's hard to
tell whether that's like beneficial. Uh so, yeah, it's it's again,
it's an this I feel like this episode more than
any other episode, has really been about like how we
don't like you mentioned, I don't really know anything, just
like you know, sometimes that happens. Yeah, and it's weird.

(01:07:51):
But there is one actually really cool observation that has
been backed up by research where it is definitely a
mutualistic relationship, and that's between oxpeckers and rhinos, because oxpeckers
will more or less do the same thing with rhinos
that they do with other species, picking off parasites maybe
even sort of like eating their earwax a little bit

(01:08:16):
and their dandruff, you know, because hey, why not? That
actually sounds pretty like they're getting a little bird spa there.
But the thing that really helps the rhino is that
the oxpeckers have better vision than the rhinos, and they
are more sensitive to seeing potential predators from far away,

(01:08:37):
and they can see humans, and when they see humans,
they will issue this alarm call. And for the rhino,
that's really useful because the rhino has good hearing, it
has pretty good sense of smell, but it doesn't have
great visions. So the bird is actually going to spot,
like say, a human approaching faster than the rhino will,
and that's really important for the rhino to avoid being

(01:08:58):
poached by a human being. Humans are going to be
the most dangerous predator for the rhinos, so the presence
of there have been studies that saw that the presence
of oxpeckers on rhinos helped the rhinos spot and avoid
humans faster than rhinos that didn't have the oxpeckers on them.
So in this in this specific case of the rhino

(01:09:21):
and the oxpecker, I would say this counts as a
mutualistic relationship where they both gain a benefit.

Speaker 2 (01:09:29):
That's awesome. That's so cool that we know that, and
also kind of depressing that we can we can make
that observation, like these birds help rhinos not get murdered
by us. But what we're still like we know that,
but we're still doing the murdering. Yeah, I'm sure it's
not the same humans.

Speaker 1 (01:09:46):
It's not the same people. For sure. It's not like
the poacher's submitting a paper to nature.

Speaker 2 (01:09:51):
But like, wow, when I try to kill this rhino,
the birds warn it and it goes really interesting.

Speaker 1 (01:09:58):
I mean that's like, that's kind of how like we
used to conduct a lot of our sort of uh
you know, natural research where it's like, ah, you know,
like I a bunch of turtles, and in the process
of eating a bunch of turtles, I noticed that.

Speaker 2 (01:10:13):
I noticed that the turtles do not like being They
don't like it, even.

Speaker 1 (01:10:16):
Though they come in a bowl. Like why would they
come in a bowl if they don't want me to
eat them? Oh?

Speaker 2 (01:10:23):
That makes that so sad.

Speaker 1 (01:10:25):
Oh no, I I hate to I hate to tell
people about how Charles Darwin snacked on so many of
the animals he discovered. He's like he's the grandfather of
evolutionary science or one of them, you know, and like
he just went to town, like he tried like Galapagos tortoise.

(01:10:48):
I'm pretty sure he ate a bunch of animals that
he found on the Galapagos because he's like, I mean,
these are new animals. I'm gonna I'm gonna nibble on
him a little bit on taste them, you know, just
a little taste, you know.

Speaker 2 (01:11:02):
I hear, I hear Punnett was eating the peas too,
So yes, goes all the way down right right?

Speaker 3 (01:11:10):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:11:12):
Mindel that monster. Anyways, before we go, we gotta play
a little game called Guess Who's squawk and the Mystery
Animal Sound Game.

Speaker 3 (01:11:25):
Uh.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
This is where you the guest and you the listener,
try to guess who is making this sound. Uh. And
so the hint for last week was this little rock
dweller is just saying hi. Another another hint is.

Speaker 3 (01:11:43):
This is related to the elephant. There we go, that
lovely little that lovely little sound.

Speaker 1 (01:11:53):
Let's hear it again. All right, Ell you got any guesses.

Speaker 2 (01:12:02):
Well, I'm thinking it's a bird.

Speaker 1 (01:12:05):
I did say it's related to the elephants.

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
So do you want to like adjust maybe not say
it's a bird, it's related to the elephant. You're right,
you're right, you're right, you're right, you're right. It seems
unlikely it's related to the elephant. I didn't know elephants
had relatives that were living. I know about I know
about the mammoth, but those guys aren't around, right, it's

(01:12:29):
very strange related to the elephant. Can I hear it
one more time?

Speaker 1 (01:12:36):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (01:12:39):
All right?

Speaker 2 (01:12:40):
Wow, related to the elephant. I have no idea. I
want to say, like something like rhinoceros related, but we
that's mostly just because we were talking about rhinos.

Speaker 1 (01:12:54):
We're just talking about rhinos, so I kind of prime
the pump for rhinos. Uh. This is actually some thing
called a rock hierax. They are found.

Speaker 2 (01:13:05):
I would not have gotten that. I'm gonna be honest
with you, Katie.

Speaker 1 (01:13:08):
It's just this is a pokemon that I'm randomly throwing
out there. No, they're found in the Middle East and
in Africa, and they're actually related to elephants. Despite the
fact that they're only around eleven pounds, which is about
five kilograms of pure adorable fluff, they're super cute. They
look like a little prairie dog that has this pair

(01:13:29):
of tiny tusks. And they eat vegetables, vegetation and grubs,
and they are super chill animals. They're actually more Timon
and Pumba than like the species like meerkat and warthog
that Timon and Pumba are based on, because rock higher
exes have a very Kumbaya egalitarian society where they like

(01:13:53):
form groups of friends where it's like the friend of
my friend is my friend, and they trust each other,
and they don't establish a hierarchy. There's not like a
dominant one. Uh. They all seem to like have this
kind of like commune and the reason that helps them
is that they have such a spread out territory. And
then they also face predators that if one starts to

(01:14:14):
send off an alarm call, that will also spread to
its buddies, who like from kind of a distance will
be like, oh, you know, like Jenny just told me
that like there's a leopard around, so I'm gonna send
out an alarm call of my own, and so that's

(01:14:35):
a Then it forms this like cool community of little keys.

Speaker 2 (01:14:40):
It's amazing. And you're saying, though they're related to elephants,
that's why they have the little teeth.

Speaker 1 (01:14:46):
Their teeth are very similar. Yeah, they're tiny and they're adorable,
but yes they are. They are related to elephants. They're
one of the few living relatives of elephants.

Speaker 2 (01:14:56):
That's so beautiful. Yeah they're so small. Oh about their
large their large cousins.

Speaker 1 (01:15:02):
I feel like someone should tell them and they should
all be friends. I think so too, Like can you
imagine like these little guys riding on top of an
elephant just being like technically.

Speaker 2 (01:15:14):
I'm imagining it right now and it's making me emotional.

Speaker 3 (01:15:20):
Wow.

Speaker 1 (01:15:21):
Yeah, they're super cute. I also just love to hear
about like people are always like, oh, well, you know,
it's it's only natural to have like, you know, messed
up societies where we have hierarchies where we're all mean
to each other, and then the rock hier axes are
out there being like we're all buddies and we're all friends.

Speaker 2 (01:15:39):
This is really important. Wow, thank you very well showing
me this animal.

Speaker 1 (01:15:46):
So onto this week's mystery animal sound. The hint is this, uh,
don't try to cut into this guy for breakfast. I
feel like this one's kind of tough, so I'm also
going to give a country. It is from New Zealand,

(01:16:09):
New Zealand News Islands Island.

Speaker 2 (01:16:14):
Is it taicho? Y t T I wouldn't cut into
him for breakfast.

Speaker 1 (01:16:22):
Doesn't sound like he wants. He doesn't seem to want
to know.

Speaker 2 (01:16:28):
Hmm, don't cut into this guy for breakfast. What do
people eat for breakfast? Like eggs and also fish? Sometimes
you're cheerios cheerios which we eat with a fork and
night which we eat with a fork in a night. Wow,

(01:16:49):
that was such a horrifying sound. New Zealand. New Zealand
is adjacent to Australia, which is where all of the
scariest animals live. Yeah, I didn't know that New Zealand
also housed such horrors. I think.

Speaker 1 (01:17:06):
I mean, it has a few horrors, but it definitely
does feel like New Zealand is sort of like a
more fun version of Australia or a friendlier version of
Australia when it comes to animals. But there are there
are a few stinkers. This one's actually not is I'll
give another hint. This one is surprisingly not as scary
as you would think.

Speaker 2 (01:17:27):
Not scary. Don't cut into him for breakfast, which means
he sort of seems like something you might eat for breakfast.

Speaker 1 (01:17:33):
Yes, maybe, but you don't want You probably don't, but I.

Speaker 2 (01:17:37):
Wouldn't want to.

Speaker 1 (01:17:37):
No, you probably wouldn't want to.

Speaker 2 (01:17:39):
Oh, man, I have no idea again, well should I?

Speaker 3 (01:17:45):
Uh uh?

Speaker 1 (01:17:48):
Like?

Speaker 2 (01:17:48):
Is it a mammal? I'm gonna guess mammal of some kind?

Speaker 1 (01:17:51):
Well, we will find out if you are correct or
close next week on Creature Future Major Cliffhanger. Ella, thank
you so much for joining me today. Where can people
find you? And all the cool stuff that you do?

Speaker 2 (01:18:07):
Thank you for having me. It's been so much fun.
I'm on all the social media's. I'm Ella dot Yeerman
on Instagram and Ella Yerman on Blue Sky and X
the Everything app.

Speaker 1 (01:18:20):
My writing is Eggs, the everything app Eggs.

Speaker 2 (01:18:24):
The Everything App. My writing is all around the Internet.
I just I wrote this profile of Vivian Wilson for
teen Volks.

Speaker 1 (01:18:32):
Yes, yes, super good.

Speaker 2 (01:18:33):
I read it.

Speaker 1 (01:18:35):
It's amazing you, I mean probably everyone's heard of it
because it was.

Speaker 2 (01:18:39):
Yeah, it's been it's been all over lately.

Speaker 1 (01:18:43):
Fantastic profile.

Speaker 2 (01:18:44):
Thank you. And then yeah, I write for some more
news on YouTube and then I also host and self
produce another political comedy news show called Going Down with
Ella Yeerman. Also on YouTube and Instagram and x the
everything app.

Speaker 1 (01:19:00):
But I can't imagine that just sounds so pessimistic, which
seems so out of step with like where we're at,
you know, like.

Speaker 2 (01:19:08):
Going, well, yeah, you know everything everything in politics is
so good and cheery right now.

Speaker 1 (01:19:14):
So cheerful, and I just I just don't understand why.
It's like there's nowhere up, there's nowhere but up from here.

Speaker 2 (01:19:20):
There's nowhere but up from here.

Speaker 1 (01:19:23):
But I'm joking, it's a it's a you should definitely
check these things out, like she's an incredible writer and
a great article, great somewhere news, great YouTube, YouTube projects.

Speaker 2 (01:19:40):
Thank you, thank you. Yeah, it's a lot of fun.
I think that's it. That's where you can find me.

Speaker 1 (01:19:45):
And yeah, if you guys want to write to me
because you think you know who the mystery animal sound is.
If you have a question a picture of your guinea
pig and a cowboy hat, you could write to me
at Creature feature pot it gmail dot com. And if
you're enjoying the show and you leave a rating or review,

(01:20:06):
I super appreciate that. That's really tangibly helps and I
love seeing feedback. And thanks to the priest Classics for
their super awesome song XO. Lumina. Creature features a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard,
visit the iHeartRadio app Apple Podcast Hard Guess what, Baby,
listen to your favorite show. I would judge you whatever

(01:20:27):
you want to do.

Speaker 3 (01:20:28):
Baby.

Speaker 1 (01:20:29):
It's like, let's all be rock higher axes and just
be friends and not judge each other for podcasting platforms.
And I'll see you next Wednesday.