April 2, 2025 • 48 mins
All the pee-news that's fit to print! We're talking whale pee, soft-shelled turtles peeing (out of a place you wouldn't expect) and the animal whose pee smells like movie popcorn? I'm joined by Alex Schmidt of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating!
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Creature future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your hosts
of Many Parasites Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show Urine for a great show, guys,
because we're talking about all the wee wee that's fit
to piss. So we are talking about animal pe studies,
(00:30):
about animal urine, the amazing facts about We've got three
we wei stars here, animals whose urine is either fascinating,
super important to the environment, or just weird, just very
strange pe if we are gonna go from one of
(00:50):
the largest actually, no not one of the largest, the
largest mammal in the world to a strange, fuzzy little
grimlin that you've probably I've never heard of. Joining me
today is my personal friend and co host of Secretly
incredibly Fascinating with none other than wah, which is perfect
(01:12):
grammatic French. Everyone, I'm so happy to have Alex Schmidt
joining me today.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Alex, hi d thank you for having me. This is
so great, and especially I feel like most schools and
biology class or whatever they they're probably teachers who cannot
tell you about animal p right. There's probably districts or
parents groups or something where they shut it off, cut
it down.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
My arch nemesis, the PTA, always trying to stop.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
The Pta, the PTA ironically.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Oh the irony. Yeah, so animal p is actually very interesting.
And on this show we do like to discuss the
sorts of topics that might seem a little bit too risque,
too in a pro to be taught in biology class.
And this is one of them.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I all be we all bee.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Everyone does it. It's not weird. And if you don't
do it, you should go to a doctor a urologist
because you need to do it. It's very important. You
should be proud of yourself every time you pee because
that's that's okay, that's biology, baby, and you did it.
So Alex, we just got you know what we got
(02:31):
like to in this life. There's so little we control,
and one of the things we can control is going
to the bathroom. And I think that's a sacred human right, Alex.
We also do like a little side project on so
our our show Secretly Incredibly Fascinating is on the network
Maximum Fun and we actually just we just did a drive.
We just did a drive for new members. So if
(02:53):
any of you are listening to that, you also subscribed
over there. Thank you for that, and that we have
been funded for a show that we do called uh
the Inspectors Inspectors, but I like to call it us
PISS because it's US Postal Inspection Service, which spells US piss. Uh.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yes, yes, it's not our fault.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, but now we're talking about they piss because it's
animals whose pe is really interesting? And I did this
whole topic not because I'm a freak, but because I
read some news about a new study on whale p
none other than the majestic Blean whale. Uh So whale p.
(03:43):
There is a lot of it, so that's one thing. Yeah,
and it turns yeah, makes sense, right, there's there's a
ton of whale pea.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah, I can't. I'm very excited to hear how this
is measured, like how they measure the p from the whale.
You know, maybe they're estimating, maybe there's a big cath
in her.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I believe it's estimates. I do not think that there's like, oh,
I don't think they cat up the whales. No, there's
not really a great way to study whales. I think
it is based on the knowledge of like the size
of say whale bladders and their capacity and the calculated
(04:31):
rate metage of urination. So that's that's how they because yeah,
whales are Actually it's funny because they're the world's largest mammals,
so you'd think we'd know everything about them. They're actually
very difficult to study because they're deep in the water
and it's hard to get there, and they're so big.
It's not like we can take a whale carcass to
your nearest lab and study the entire thing. Like, yes,
(04:57):
like parts of whales are studied, of course, but it
is it's very difficult to study them, but we do,
and and this is one of them, a new study
called Migrating Baling Whales Transport high latitude nutrients to tropical
and subtropical ecosystems by University of Vermont conservation biologists Joe Roman.
At all. Basically, this is a paper Roman. Joe Roman
(05:24):
sounds a little bit like Joe Rogan. I know, Joe
Rogan wishes he was at the intellectual level of studying.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Whale p you know, so uh really.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so uh this is a study on
whale pp.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
For the most part, they just I guess we're too
embarrassed to put that in the title. So we're talking
mostly about large baling whales. Other whales, toothed whales like
orc as, they certainly contribute, but it is really the
big boys, the blue whales, the humpback whales. Uh, these
are huge players in the nitrogen cycle in the ocean
(06:01):
because peepy urea has a lot of nitrogen in it.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Okay, Yeah, and I don't and I don't know a
lot about the nitrogen cycle, but I think also especially
most dryings I've seen of it, it's on land, like
the sky and the earth are doing it, you know,
So it's cool to think about it in the sea.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, and it's it's something that we may not know
as much about because it's in the ocean and it's
maybe harder to measure. But yeah, absolutely, nitrogen plays a
huge role in the same way that it plays a
role in our soil right for growing plants. Nitrogen in
the ocean supports a lot of life like algae, phytoplankton.
(06:39):
It is important in terms of depositing nutrients to create
a fertilizer for the foundation of the food chain, super important. So,
and the way the specific way that baling whales contribute
to this is not just by eating and peeing, it's
by eating and peeing in a very specific migratory pattern.
(07:05):
So uh, they end up moving nitrogen from icy cold
polar regions, very very cold regions. And it's interesting because
in these polar regions, actually the ocean is a lot
more nutrient dense. You have things like you have things
like a lot of krill. You have a lot of
things for the whales to eat. Balen whales or filter feeders.
(07:28):
They're the ones that have those things that look like
broom bristles in their mouths. So they're not they're not
really going after like say tuna or fish. They're going
after krill. Santa ah man. You know if Santa's look
really tiny or his little his little elves, maybe they'd
(07:49):
get caught in there.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
But yeah, they go after like every piece of art
of Santa. They have to include a scale drive where
like there's that stensil of a human to show you
he's also.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Very comes down the chimney. No one's ever said how
big Santa is. Maybe he's planktonic. Explain it and why
we can't see him. They eat krill, which are these
small shrimp like animals and UH, and they eat massive
amounts of them, so they actually find more of them
(08:19):
in these colder regions. And so what happens is they
feed in these polar cold regions and then to mate
and to breed, they actually move to warmer tropical regions.
And these warmer regions it has plenty of life, but
it's less nutrient dense than the polar regions. And so
(08:40):
they actually live off of a lot of their blubber
when they're in these uh, these more tropical regions. And
as they're burning that blubber, they're using the energy stores
and all that nutrition they gathered when they're in the
polar regions and they're burning it off and they're producing
a byproduct PE and so and that PEE is the
(09:03):
byproduct u urea, which is loaded with nitrogen, and that
urea helps to fertilize these tropical areas. So they're moving nutrients,
UH and fertilizer from these polar regions into the tropical regions.
And in what the long haul truckers, they are like
(09:23):
long haul truckers, especially for P for P which I'm
sure long haul truckers also appreciate the idea of just
peeing where you are. Uh, I know they've got jugs,
you know, depositing it on the side of the road.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Fertilized plant get empty. Yeah, it's it seems like I'm sure.
I'm sure. That's like day one of being a trucker.
You fall into some kind of routine.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you gotta have your you have
your piss jug.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
They don't just use the diner with the sign that
says eat at and ame of diner.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I mean, it's uh, it's gotta be tough, man, it's
gotta be I I have I have pea anxieties, so man,
I would.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
I'd like to be a whale though, because no one
would know except for the giant, except for the enormous
warm spot. A single whale can actually pee out two
hundred and fifty gallons of pee a day. That is
daily amounts. It's a lot of Wow, it's a lot.
(10:31):
It's quite a bit. And so through their urine, their
placentas and carcasses, whales release around three thousand, seven hundred
and eighty tons of nitrogen into lower nutrient areas. So
that's that's an incredible transfer of nutrients to these areas
(10:53):
that need them. So it helps support these warmer areas,
help support like you know, coral reefs, all the animals there, plankton, phytoplankton.
It's a fantastic, a fantastic sort of boost to these ecosystems.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, and then I have and I'm still hung up
on just the idea too, that the colder parts of
the ocean are denser in life. Like if you'd forced
me to guess, I would have said the opposite. I
would have imagined, like the ocean of the Equator is
like a tropical rainforest. The ocean. You know, yeah, I
guess it's.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yeah, it is very interesting because it's like you have
these kind of like one thing that is true is
that when you get very very deep in the ocean,
then some nutrients, like the nutrient gradient is kind of
more spread out. But then you have like these these
hot spots of nutrients near thermal vents. But in colder waters,
(11:49):
you actually do have a high density of things like krill.
You have like a lot of tuna, you have a
lot of these these sort of large groups of schooling fish,
like a bunch of biomass. Part of that is the
light cycle in these areas. So like even though it's colder, right,
(12:11):
and you'd think like, oh, well then that would mean
there's fewer animals there, you still have like a lot
of energy that is contained within these waters.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Cool. Wow.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
I always like to find out that we have so
many mental pictures of habitats where we think nothing lives there,
you know, like a sahara or just a black of
ice with one polar bear standing on it. But no,
it's full of life. It's great.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah, I mean it is, it is. It is true
that like polar bears do sometimes have a tough run
of it because they're actually like on the land, so
polar regions, like when you're on the land itself, because
that is not very conducive to the growth of vegetation
on the terrain. Yes, actually it's pretty tough. That's why
(12:54):
things like penguins they go in the water to fish
because there's not a lot of stuff like in the
Arctic on or sorry, in the Antarctic for them to
feed on on the land or in the Arctic. Certainly
there's parts of the Arctic where a lot of animals
like seals and polar bears will need to like go
in the water, and then polar bears of course will
go after the animals that are fishing in the water.
(13:16):
It is really cool. This is a little more kind
of like complicated science. But the way that the cold
waters work is it encourages some sea mixing that can
actually bring up nutrients that are sequestered in these like waters.
So you have the system that like you'd think of
(13:39):
course like that warm you know, it'd be easier for
life to exist in warm waters. But it's a very
kind of specific chemical thermodynamic process that churns up nutrients
in the water, allowing you know, the smallest forms of
life to thrive, and then you have this thriving food chain.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Wow. Amazing. Yeah, yeah, just never you just never think
about this stuff with the sea. It's all down there.
And plus I have a phobia of sea creature. So
I'm trying you do you do?
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Whales are fine? Okay, Well, I figured I figured this
is I'm not intentionally trying to torment you on this episode,
So there's no jellyfish.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah. Part of and part of my lore with my
silly phobia is that if I can imagine it as
a land animal, it's okay. Yeah, and whales. It's just
some kind of like packetrm or elephants or something. It's fine.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
They used to be terrestrial animals. They used to be
sort of these little deer like animals, and then they're
just like, I'm tired of living on land. Man, too
many taxes, so then they lost all of their limbs
and wouldn't know.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
It is this complex the text cheets.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yes, there's these.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Cons that they were like still too many taxes about.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Off real offshore for tax holdings. Yeah, have you.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Seen the tax bill in even the Cayman Islands? Forget it,
I've going down there about in the Cayman Oceans.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah. The reason that whales migrate, right because like, well
why not just stay in these polar regions because there's
a lot of food there for them to eat, like krill,
is that it's actually easier for them to keep their
calves save and alive in these warmer waters. The calves
can't swim as well, it keeps them safe from larger predators,
(15:35):
and it also forced like it has they all kind
of go into these regions to be in sort of
a meet and greet area for mating. Because whale, really
large whales some smaller whales like dolphins, which is a
type of toothed whale actually, or orcas tend to be
in groups right, like a pot of way of dolphins,
(15:58):
but they're really big ones like blue why they're usually
actually relatively solitary and they communicate over really long distances.
That's why the whales song where it's like ooh, it's
a method of communication over a very long distance. But
the mothers and the calves hang out quite a bit.
But otherwise you.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Don't have like very good whales song. By the way,
I can't just thing you.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
But so when they go to these tropical waters, it
forces them into a more dense area and it makes
it easier for them to find a mate. We honestly
don't know that much about the largest whales and their
mating practices, like blue whales, because it's hard to see them, man,
they're in the water. You'd think that we would be
able to because they're so big, but it's just like
(16:46):
we don't. We can't just like hang out down there
in a submarine waiting around for whales to get it on.
So it's actually very rare that we observe it. And
actually the one time we did observe it. I think
in blue whales it was actually a two males, which
was hilarious that like, we've weighed around really long time
and then it just spits in the face of homophobes
(17:07):
who don't understand that a lot of animals are gay.
So I love it.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Maybe maybe it'll turn out that blue whales are just
these wild pan sexuals, you know, you.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Know, I wouldn't be wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah, like that that homosexual encounter was between many encounters
among the kinds of whales.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
It really fits their vibe to be honest, that all
that all whales are pant sexuals proved me wrong. So yes,
so they they they move into these warmer waters for mating,
which also means they actually leave behind, uh placenta, and
that placenta also contains a bunch of nutrients, and that
also contributes to the this nitrogen cycle. It contributes to
(17:49):
the fertilization of these waters. They also each placenta waste, like, yeah,
weighs hundreds of pounds.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Concept has never crossed my mind in my whole life.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
There they're mammals, placential male Yeah, of course they got one.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, it's like three pounds. It is nutrient bomb or whatever.
It's quite literally.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Is it's probably around that, you know, like it's hundreds
of depends depends on the species of whale, but yeah,
it's hundreds of pounds. So yeah, and this study, uh,
the study has shown that like whales are the main
distributor of nitrogen to tropical waters that the uh, which
(18:30):
is like extremely important for the whole the whole system.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
And then.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yes, the studies lead author told the University of Vermont newspaper, quote,
we call it the great whale conveyor belt, or it
can also be thought of as a funnel because whales
feed over large areas, but they need to be in
a relatively confined space to find a mate, breed and
give birth. And the University of Vermont newspaper titled the
(18:58):
article on this, uh the whale p funnel, the Great
Whale PA funnel. So that's that's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Give that student their degree right now. They did it.
They have nothing more to learn at the University of Vermont.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Also also Ed Goodall, head of the Intergovernmental Engagement at
Whale and Dolphin Conservation, told the National Geographic National Geographics
Melissa Hobson quote, the ocean is spluttering along like an
old car with rusty parts that aren't functioning properly. So
you know, so basically we need we need.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
This whale peepe What what they saidis fying just the
verb spluttering straight off of pee talk. I imagined like
a difficult stream that's set on.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Me drunk problem, A drunk whal.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
The urologist and a psychologist. Why I reacted.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
A drunk whale trying to aim for the ocean and
somehow missing and somehow missing its hits Greenland instead.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Right, Conservative American political officials scattering as this happens.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yet, god ah man, I would love it if the
whales came to Greenland's defense just formed a great peak wall.
So this process of whales distributing nitrogen with their pee
used to be even more impressive. You know, we went
through this whole I think we've talked about this on secretly.
(20:30):
Incredibly fascinating for something I forgot which topic. But yeah,
there used to be obviously a huge whaling industry, like
around three million whales were killed in the twentieth century alone,
drove their populations down enormously. Yes, and so given what
we know about the nitrogen cycle. It's likely that this
huge reduction in whale populations and ergo whale pe means
(20:55):
that the density of life in the ocean is like
a fraction of what it used to be in terms
of like the because there needs to be this fertilization
process for say tropical waters to be rich in life.
So wow, right, it's a funny thing, right, Like whale
p turns out super super important, just incredibly important. So
(21:17):
when you see like a study and it's like, oh,
why are we studying whale p? This is why absolutely
important to like all life in the ocean and therefore
on Earth.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Yeah. Yeah, and all those news stories too, whenever they're
like can you believe this topic is being studied, Like, yes, yes,
there's probably a reason. Yeah, why would professional scientists just
be goofing off but also working really hard you know
what I mean? Yeah, like they either study something important
or go home and cook or go on vacation a yeah,
like they don't waste time and work super hard both.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yeah, life life on Earth is like a giant Jenga tower,
and like you might look at one piece and it's like,
whale P, how is this important? And you pull it
out and the whole thing just like comes crashing down.
It was all, yeah, it was all being held up
by whale p guys.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
I also I also want to know how many people
made some kind of little micro blog post, you know,
ex Blue sky its atter ibat, like can you believe
they're talking about whale p while that person was using
their phone on the toilet? I want another savage because
up too well.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Or goshtern hypigrites. Yeah, yeah, so there we have it.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Folks who would even think about this flesh?
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah you know, yeah, yeah, well, you know, whale p
it's extraordinary, doing a lot more for the world than
some politicians, am I right?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
And I really didn't know how the ocean works. There's
so much transit of calories and resources and energy whatever
it is.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I really like how you I really like how you
describe them as pe long haul truckers that that's so apt.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah. Yeah, They're body is the what's it called the
back of the truck where the stuff is.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
The the trailer the tractor. I'm also imagining them wearing
the like mesh baseball hats with some like funny whale
related pun like whale whale whale lookuta is and like
they have like their fin has sort of the like
a sexy lady whale, like it's a mudfla.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Oh, instead of BUCkies, it's buck peas. There you go,
that would be the gear. Do you know BUCkies stops.
I guess that's certainly not in Italy, but it's only
a southern US thing.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Okay, well, i'll, i'll. I'm sure people from that region
are laughing at your show so.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Hard at buck peas, they can't stand it. They applause
the show to yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, they bust their guts right up at that joke. Alex.
Don't let anyone convince you otherwise. I'm gonna take a
quick break, and when we get back is more urine science.
Hooray whoop. All right, Alex, So I'm just gonna I'm
just gonna spit this right out. Chinese soft shelled turtles
(24:18):
urinate through their mouths.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Perfect.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah, no for the questions, So Chinese soft shelled turtles,
what are they? They are these sort of olive green,
flat aquatic turtles with a relatively soft shell, long neck,
and long pointed snoots. They are silly looking animals.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
I google the picture and the face is very muppet.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
It's very muppet. It looks like an alien muppet. And
they do excrete urine out of their mouths. Now, they
do have a kloaeca. The kloeca be the whole that
does it all. In birds and reptiles and amphibians, the
(25:06):
kloaca is it's like it's like our rectum and our
urinary opening and all other openings down there combined into
one magical hole.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
But yeah, if we had more of a grindset, we
would have a cloaca. We would just knock it all out.
It's like a four hour work week.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
But for all sufficient man, Yeah, yeah, you know, it's
like it's like we're doing all of these separate workflows
and we could have it all go through a kloaca
come on work flow. Yeah. But yeah, So these these
turtles often, like you know, an animal with the kloaca,
everything comes out of the kloaca, urine, feces, reproductive materials.
(25:49):
But for these Chinese soft shelled turtles, they urinate mainly
out of their mouths. Now, they can urinate out of
the kloaca, but a lot of the important urrea extreme
actually happens through the mouth. So they The way they
do it is they take water into their mouth, kind
of hold it there like you're swishing it, and then
(26:12):
they spit it out back out into like the water.
So usually they're like on land, they stick their head
in a puddle. They take in the water, kind of
let it soak there for a while, and then spit
it back out. And when they're spitting it back out,
it is with it comes a bunch of urea that
they just excreted through their mouths.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Weird.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah, the way they study it's.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Super reverse of swallowing up pill Yes, like like first
I need water or last I need water and then
I don't know if there's a good metaphor.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
It's it's something is what it is alex Uh. The
way these these scientists study these turtles is they like
restrain them on land and then like had like pottle,
like like a puddle of water or a bucket of water,
and like the the turn is like, well it got
a pee and like stuck its head in the water,
held water in its mouth, and then when it spitted out,
(27:05):
the researchers were able to measure that there was an
increase amount of urrea in the bucket, so you know, wow, yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
I guess yeah, And that's probably not too bad for
the turtle because you got a pe.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
So they did lit the turtle peace, so that's that's
always good, you know. Yeah, I'm sure the turtle is
just a little mildly inconvenienced.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
So, like the lining of the soft shelled turtle's mouth
transports urrea from the blood stream and it's able to
kind of osmos out into the water. So it holds
the water in its mouth. It has a bunch of
urea that's in its mouth and it's able to be
excreted into the water osmos into this water. They have
(27:49):
all these sort of fingerlike projections in their mouths called
pilla that facilitates this transfer. And the reason that they
have such a like why not just pee? Why not
just pee out the kloaca? Right, it seems simpler. So yeah,
the reason they do it grinds it, Yeah, chloaca grindset.
(28:10):
The reason they do it in such a roundabout way
is the brackishness of the water in their natural habitat.
So a brackish water is salty water. It's not as
salty as sea water, but it's relatively salty, so in
swamp they live in swamps and marshes, the water's a
bit salty, so it's brackish because of this higher salt
(28:33):
concentration than say fresh water. If they had to drink
enough water to move urrea out into their urine, because
like we drink a lot of water, and that helps
facilitate us transporting waste products out our pea. So the
water is running through our system basically helping us osmos
all of these these waste products like urea, carrying it
(28:55):
down through the body, through our kidneys into our bladder
and we peel it out and that's the miracle of
pea time. So with these turtles drinking all that brackish
water means taking in a lot of salt. Now they
have all this excess salt and they would have to
deal with it somehow. So instead of having to deal
with all that excess salt in order to facilitate urination,
(29:18):
they've just like moved the urea excretion process from one end,
the far end, to the front end where they they
just swish the water in their mouth, let that let
all the urea come out in that water in their mouth,
and then spit it out. So those unique urea transporter
(29:38):
proteins exist in the lining of the mouth, whereas it
does not exist in the kidneys, which is really interesting.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
That's amazing. What a good reason to do it?
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, great, Yeah, they just they kind of like they
solve this plumbing issue by like that, what if we
switch the polarities of the pea.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, this, this is going to destroy the grind set
Alpha success bro podcasts about how great kloacas are. I know,
this is the kind of information they don't want out there.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
You know, I'm coming for Cloaca bros. And they know it.
They're scared of it.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Really, guys.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, you might be wondering, well, why don't they just
figure out a way to get rid of the excess salt.
And in fact, this is the case for other turtles.
Sea turtles use a different technique to deal with sea salt,
the extremely salty waters, so they drink salt water all
the time. They excrete the water through lachrymal glands, so
(30:39):
they're crying. They cry out the excess salt. So you
may see a sea turtle it looks like it's crying.
You might think it's because of all the plastic straws
in the ocean. No, it's because it has to excrete
extra salt out in its tears, and this allows it
to It's basically solving the same problem that the soft
shelled turtle has in a different way, because evolution is
(31:02):
not necessarily going to always arrive at the same exact
solution to a similar problem, and sometimes that's because of
different types of evolutionary pressures. Sea turtles obviously live in
a different environment, they have a different method of feeding,
they have more salt in their water, so these glands
probably ended up being the best solution for them. But
sometimes you can just have two perfectly good solutions for
(31:24):
the same process for the same problem. Because yeah, evolution, Yes,
if it works, it works, that's the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, especially it seems like evolution is that its most
creative and lazily just do it. When it comes to holes,
you know, well that hole will do that, done, trying
done thinking. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
We basically when you examine basically any organism, we are
all tubes of varying complexities.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah, as long as the two functions, stuff goes in
one and comes out the other, go out your sulf
and animal.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
See that for this reason, I'm going to stop discriminating
against sea sponges. All this time, I've been like, we're
super different, but no.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
We just tubes, sea squorts and sea sponges. Just kind
of like cut out all of the other nonsense.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
I'm gonna start letting sea sponges be customers in my
business and hire my jobs and stuff. Yeah, it's time
we're the same.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I've learned of Rungebob is thrilled. All right, So we're
going to take a quick break and when we are
when we come back, we're going to discuss the most
delicious smelling urine in the world.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Code creature feature gets you, all right, So, uh, there
is a critter out there, Alex who's urine smells like
hot buttery movie theater popcorn.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
It's me, no, who is it? Gross?
Speaker 1 (33:05):
So and so we're actually staying in Asia. We're now
in Southeast Asia. There is an animal. It peas relatively normally.
It peas out of its urethra. It's a mammal, but
it's urine smells like buttered popcorn. This is the binter wrong,
otherwise known as the bear cat. It's found in Southeast
(33:28):
Asian tall forest so it is a vivarid. This is
the family to which civets, genets, and fosses belong. So, Alex,
I want you to take a look at that that
cute bear cat for a minute and just appreciate its
scrungly appearance.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, I was gonna say what you said the name.
I was like, I'm pretty sure there is one of
the cute ones, and it is one of the cute ones.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
It's one of the cute ones.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
It's I forgot how cute.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Yeah, they're they're dark gray with orange eyes. They have
this sort of like diamond shaped raccoon like face, long whiskers,
rounded ears. They have this really thick, bushy, prehensile tail,
and they're somewhat like stout and hefty, so they're not
like long and noodlely. They're like they're solid bear like,
(34:23):
but not as big as a typical bear. They weigh
around forty to fifty pounds, which is about eighteen to
twenty two kilograms, with a body length of around thirty
inches or eighty centimeters, and a tail of up to
thirty five inches or seventy centimeters, so they have quite
like their tail is about as long as their bodies.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah. I love when you use the word scrungly because
they are it's like a scrungly dark red panda. Yeah,
it's a really cute animal. It's really great and they's
very cute.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
They look like to me what I would think a
realistic lorax would look like.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah, yeah, right, black and yes, yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Like a little scrungly guardian of the forest. They're active
during both the day and the night. They just take
a lot of naps, which man I relate. I feel
like this isn't.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
So they're like newborn baby or me. Cool. Yeah, cool.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
I feel like this is probably what I naturally would
do if if I didn't have to exist in society,
like active at day at night, but just a lot
of naps happening. They're omnivores, so they eat fruits, but
they also prey on insects, small mammals and birds when
they can get them. So you know, they're they're they're
(35:44):
that's just those are just those are just a flying nuggets.
So uh, onto their pea. It smells like popcorn and
there's no way around it. It's just this isn't this
is a famous uh sort of comparison. There is in
fact a study on this particular phenomenon published in the
(36:05):
Science of Nature by Duke University ecologist Lydia Green at All,
which is called Reproductive Indocrine Patterns and Volatile Urinary Compounds
of Arcticus binter Wrong Discovering why bear cats smell like popcorn?
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Cool? Yeah, yeah, I mean we both love popcorn. We
talked about that on Yeah, and it's very tempting. I
don't know, like, if I smell popcorn, I have to
go home and have popcorn or have it at the theater.
I walked past. There's a theater kind of down our street.
It's it's trouble for.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Me that smell the theater popcorn smell. I know. It's like,
I know, like that butter is not like actual butter.
It's some kind of strange corn amalgam. But man, do
I want to.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, whichever your lab scientist made it is.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yeah, it's like powerful. It's like some kind of like
sunflower seed oil thing concoction made in a lab, and
I can't get enough of it.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Yeah, I've evolved to mostly subsist on it. I don't
really get a lot of other stuff.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
So the researchers found that bear cat peek contains two
aceetyl one pyroline to a p which they believe quote
is likely to be responsible for the bentong's characteristic popcorn aroma.
So okay, Essentially, what happens is the bentrong peeps, but
(37:26):
they're scrungly, right, they're really fluffy, Their tails are super fluffy.
What happens is some of that peepee gets soaked into
their fur. If you have a fluffy dog, you know,
this is a problem sometimes where or a real fluffy cat,
you know, sometimes that ppe goes where it's not supposed
to go, which is either in the litter box or
on the ground. But for the bentterong, this is a feature,
(37:49):
not a bug, and so some of it sticks to
their tail fur and it gives them that popcorn aroma.
And the theory about why why do they they smell
so good and delicious through their disgusting peepee is that
it is a sexual signal of reproductive readiness, because like,
(38:11):
the males have a higher concentration. So the idea is
it's like some sort of like reproductive signal for the females.
It's like, hey, look, you know, but they're not sure
we're not exactly sure why they have this odor, but
given whenever there's like a difference between the sexes, that's
a hint that it could be something to do with reproduction,
(38:33):
with like competition or trying to attract a mate. That's
it's not necessarily the case. There can be sexual dimorphism
that is not necessarily related to sexual reproduction. But so
often is that the case that it's a good guess.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
It's almost more fun if it's not for anything sexual.
It's just for love of the game. When it comes
to pcorn, you know, just.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Like so they can get into movie theaters and have
sort of fanks just blow past that counter, yea aroma camouflage.
They wear little popcorn suits and they sneak in so
they can watch our movies.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Right. That one nineteen year old in the Simpsons with
the primitively ready voice is like, he's probably staff just
lets him in.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Yeah, So researchers are really on the case about why
do these cute little animals smell like delicious popcorn? It's
their pea, And no, I don't think it tastes like
it smells, so don't try it.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah, And I guess a lot of it there's no
way to know this. A lot of animals probably like
corn is what I'm imagining. So it's probably exciting to
the bent rupt right, Like it's probably romantic to them
in a way, it's not to us. I've always just
a exciting.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
I've always said that corn is romantic.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
It's the most sensual of the Midwestern grains, for sure.
So I bean's all business corn. Yeah, we're getting down.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Exactly all right. So before yeah, print that out, have
your name forever tied to that sounds good to me. Ah,
before we go, I would like to play a little
game called Guess Who's squawking? The mystery animal sound game
(40:39):
game every week by you're squawking' it's it's Alex Schmidt's.
Last week's mister Annilsund was this. I don't mean to
bring religion.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Into this, and let me play it for you, all.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Right, Alex?
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Beautiful, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Really didn't expect that sound?
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, I ignore that.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
You said you don't want to bring religion into.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
It, said, I don't want to bring religion into it?
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Is it? Is it? Easter bunny stuff, Easter bunny stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
It's a good GISs, very good guess I know.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
It's the passover wound bat.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
It's the Australian easter bilby. No, I'm kidding. Sorry, it
sounded really exist. I know it does exist. The Australian
easter bimby does exist. Sorry, not bimby bilby. Uh. It
is a sort of rabbit like looking marsupial animal. The
(41:52):
rabbits are invasive, so in Australia they have a campaign
to turn the bilby. I don't know. I don't know
what a bimbi is. That that's just a made up word.
But they want to turn the bill be into sort
of Australia's version of the easter bunny, because the bill
b is actually endemic to Australia, whereas the rabbit is invasive.
(42:14):
But this is none of that. So this this sound.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
Boobies also look like that marsupial and dune that they
call polytrdes too, So that's fun.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yes, I understand that very well. Yes I've seen no
so this sound. The one that sounds like an Internet
dial up is the capuchin bird, named after capuchin monks
because it has a bald head. It is a tropical
bird found in South America. You might think it's this
(42:46):
beautiful bird with glorious colors. It's it's not so it
has a bald head like a vulture. It's got this brown, fluffy, down,
feathery coat. They look very strange, very ugly, but their
call is apparently quite attractive to their their counterparts, female counterparts.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
It's so weird. They're like very feathered and a really
lovely orange color, a lot of it. But then their
head specifically looks like that plague mask guy. Yes, so
like it's really pretty until the head.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Yeah, it's like, oh oh okay, yeah, that's so stark.
Yeah yep. Well yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
The good monastic pull. There's a lot of monks. That's
a fun one.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
All right, So onto this week's mister Animals sound. The
hint is this, this little rock dweller is just saying hi,
all right, you got any guesses?
Speaker 2 (43:58):
That was even better than the that's what Rocketoiler's saying. Hi.
One of like, besides Bison, one of my favorite animals
is elephants, and I feel like I period that fact
that they really had a one time.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
And some.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Alex you are so smart. That is absolutely correct. In
order to make it fair to the listeners, one of
the game no, because I have technology. This is pre recorded,
so I will bleep out just the part where you
say the name of the animal. But Alex gave you
a free hint there, which is that it is the
latest two Elephants. So there you go. Uh, fantastic job, Alex.
(44:41):
I am super compressed. Thank you, amazing.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
And they had my childhood zoo the actual answer, So
that's the other fantastic.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
But don't worry. Everyone will know, everyone will know you're right,
and you will be sent this. You'll be sent this
week's UH prize, which is a box full of rocks.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Oh but I wanted the special pee.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
And a vial of bin wrong key to pour on
your popcorn. Oh God, that I mean, I mean myself
grossed out. I grossed myself out, Alex.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
I have I have received popcorn through the mail, so
I would if you sent me that, I would think
it's one of those like carrots tubs or the nuts
on Clark in Chicago or whatever.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
Yeah, please don't, please don't send Alex pee covered bear
cat pee covered popcorn. That would be very bad. Yeah yeah,
although yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
I'm sure it's against the rules. I don't know the rules,
but I'm as it's.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Against the rules that I just made right now, which
is don't send Alex bearcat pee on popcorn. Alex, thank
you so much for joining me today. Where can people
find you? What kind of projects? What kinds of projects
do you do with I don't really, I'm not, I'm not.
I'm sorry. I invited you on and I'm not really
familiar with your body of work. So if he could
(46:06):
do it to all the people? What what? What? What?
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Just the funniest, increasingly bisified face. That's great. Yeah, I'm
so glad your co hosts SIF with me because it
makes the show great.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Really incredibly fascinating.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Yeah, secretly incredibly fascinating. So I hope people check it out.
And I assume a lot of listeners here know it already.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
If they don't, it's a secret.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
This show is amazing.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Yeah, I'm winking, and this is the sound my wink mace.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Dis place in the uh yeah, what's it called? The
balls bird? Capuchin bird? There we go.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Now, Alex does a fantastic job on that show. He
does all the research, teaches me things every week. I
never like I always have something to talk about at
awkward parties. Which has saved my life. My social life
is saved because of Alex. Like I can be at
a party I don't know what to talk about, and
because he teaches me all these incredible facts about things
(47:07):
I can be like, h do you know that w
D forty has a secret recipe that's in San Diego,
which is where I was born? And everyone loves me
now I'm I'm the bell.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Of the ball and I get that from mostly listening
to this show sometimes casting. So it's cool that we
both get to do that, preaches, So please do.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Check that out secretly incredibly fascinating. I am on there
every week with Alex and guys, thank you so much
for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you leave
a rati or review, it really helps me and encourages me.
It keeps me going in the way that whalu'reine keeps
tropical regions of the ocean going. And thanks to the
Space Cossics for their super awesome song. Ex Alumina. Creature
(47:55):
features the production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the
one you just heard, visit the iHeart Radio ap Apple
of Gold, cast a right here or rah I'm leaving
that take in, dammit. Listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or hey, guess what, wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
See you next Wednesday.
Welcome to Creature future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your hosts
of Many Parasites Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show Urine for a great show, guys,
because we're talking about all the wee wee that's fit
to piss. So we are talking about animal pe studies,
(00:30):
about animal urine, the amazing facts about We've got three
we wei stars here, animals whose urine is either fascinating,
super important to the environment, or just weird, just very
strange pe if we are gonna go from one of
(00:50):
the largest actually, no not one of the largest, the
largest mammal in the world to a strange, fuzzy little
grimlin that you've probably I've never heard of. Joining me
today is my personal friend and co host of Secretly
incredibly Fascinating with none other than wah, which is perfect
(01:12):
grammatic French. Everyone, I'm so happy to have Alex Schmidt
joining me today.
Speaker 2 (01:18):
Alex, hi d thank you for having me. This is
so great, and especially I feel like most schools and
biology class or whatever they they're probably teachers who cannot
tell you about animal p right. There's probably districts or
parents groups or something where they shut it off, cut
it down.
Speaker 1 (01:38):
My arch nemesis, the PTA, always trying to stop.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
The Pta, the PTA ironically.
Speaker 1 (01:47):
Oh the irony. Yeah, so animal p is actually very interesting.
And on this show we do like to discuss the
sorts of topics that might seem a little bit too risque,
too in a pro to be taught in biology class.
And this is one of them.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
I all be we all bee.
Speaker 1 (02:07):
Everyone does it. It's not weird. And if you don't
do it, you should go to a doctor a urologist
because you need to do it. It's very important. You
should be proud of yourself every time you pee because
that's that's okay, that's biology, baby, and you did it.
So Alex, we just got you know what we got
(02:31):
like to in this life. There's so little we control,
and one of the things we can control is going
to the bathroom. And I think that's a sacred human right, Alex.
We also do like a little side project on so
our our show Secretly Incredibly Fascinating is on the network
Maximum Fun and we actually just we just did a drive.
We just did a drive for new members. So if
(02:53):
any of you are listening to that, you also subscribed
over there. Thank you for that, and that we have
been funded for a show that we do called uh
the Inspectors Inspectors, but I like to call it us
PISS because it's US Postal Inspection Service, which spells US piss. Uh.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
Yes, yes, it's not our fault.
Speaker 1 (03:18):
Yeah, but now we're talking about they piss because it's
animals whose pe is really interesting? And I did this
whole topic not because I'm a freak, but because I
read some news about a new study on whale p
none other than the majestic Blean whale. Uh So whale p.
(03:43):
There is a lot of it, so that's one thing. Yeah,
and it turns yeah, makes sense, right, there's there's a
ton of whale pea.
Speaker 2 (03:54):
Yeah, I can't. I'm very excited to hear how this
is measured, like how they measure the p from the whale.
You know, maybe they're estimating, maybe there's a big cath
in her.
Speaker 1 (04:07):
I believe it's estimates. I do not think that there's like, oh,
I don't think they cat up the whales. No, there's
not really a great way to study whales. I think
it is based on the knowledge of like the size
of say whale bladders and their capacity and the calculated
(04:31):
rate metage of urination. So that's that's how they because yeah,
whales are Actually it's funny because they're the world's largest mammals,
so you'd think we'd know everything about them. They're actually
very difficult to study because they're deep in the water
and it's hard to get there, and they're so big.
It's not like we can take a whale carcass to
your nearest lab and study the entire thing. Like, yes,
(04:57):
like parts of whales are studied, of course, but it
is it's very difficult to study them, but we do,
and and this is one of them, a new study
called Migrating Baling Whales Transport high latitude nutrients to tropical
and subtropical ecosystems by University of Vermont conservation biologists Joe Roman.
At all. Basically, this is a paper Roman. Joe Roman
(05:24):
sounds a little bit like Joe Rogan. I know, Joe
Rogan wishes he was at the intellectual level of studying.
Speaker 2 (05:31):
Whale p you know, so uh really.
Speaker 1 (05:34):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, so uh this is a study on
whale pp.
Speaker 2 (05:38):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
For the most part, they just I guess we're too
embarrassed to put that in the title. So we're talking
mostly about large baling whales. Other whales, toothed whales like
orc as, they certainly contribute, but it is really the
big boys, the blue whales, the humpback whales. Uh, these
are huge players in the nitrogen cycle in the ocean
(06:01):
because peepy urea has a lot of nitrogen in it.
Speaker 2 (06:07):
Okay, Yeah, and I don't and I don't know a
lot about the nitrogen cycle, but I think also especially
most dryings I've seen of it, it's on land, like
the sky and the earth are doing it, you know,
So it's cool to think about it in the sea.
Speaker 1 (06:18):
Yeah, and it's it's something that we may not know
as much about because it's in the ocean and it's
maybe harder to measure. But yeah, absolutely, nitrogen plays a
huge role in the same way that it plays a
role in our soil right for growing plants. Nitrogen in
the ocean supports a lot of life like algae, phytoplankton.
(06:39):
It is important in terms of depositing nutrients to create
a fertilizer for the foundation of the food chain, super important. So,
and the way the specific way that baling whales contribute
to this is not just by eating and peeing, it's
by eating and peeing in a very specific migratory pattern.
(07:05):
So uh, they end up moving nitrogen from icy cold
polar regions, very very cold regions. And it's interesting because
in these polar regions, actually the ocean is a lot
more nutrient dense. You have things like you have things
like a lot of krill. You have a lot of
things for the whales to eat. Balen whales or filter feeders.
(07:28):
They're the ones that have those things that look like
broom bristles in their mouths. So they're not they're not
really going after like say tuna or fish. They're going
after krill. Santa ah man. You know if Santa's look
really tiny or his little his little elves, maybe they'd
(07:49):
get caught in there.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
But yeah, they go after like every piece of art
of Santa. They have to include a scale drive where
like there's that stensil of a human to show you
he's also.
Speaker 1 (07:59):
Very comes down the chimney. No one's ever said how
big Santa is. Maybe he's planktonic. Explain it and why
we can't see him. They eat krill, which are these
small shrimp like animals and UH, and they eat massive
amounts of them, so they actually find more of them
(08:19):
in these colder regions. And so what happens is they
feed in these polar cold regions and then to mate
and to breed, they actually move to warmer tropical regions.
And these warmer regions it has plenty of life, but
it's less nutrient dense than the polar regions. And so
(08:40):
they actually live off of a lot of their blubber
when they're in these uh, these more tropical regions. And
as they're burning that blubber, they're using the energy stores
and all that nutrition they gathered when they're in the
polar regions and they're burning it off and they're producing
a byproduct PE and so and that PEE is the
(09:03):
byproduct u urea, which is loaded with nitrogen, and that
urea helps to fertilize these tropical areas. So they're moving nutrients,
UH and fertilizer from these polar regions into the tropical regions.
And in what the long haul truckers, they are like
(09:23):
long haul truckers, especially for P for P which I'm
sure long haul truckers also appreciate the idea of just
peeing where you are. Uh, I know they've got jugs,
you know, depositing it on the side of the road.
Speaker 2 (09:38):
Fertilized plant get empty. Yeah, it's it seems like I'm sure.
I'm sure. That's like day one of being a trucker.
You fall into some kind of routine.
Speaker 1 (09:46):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, you gotta have your you have
your piss jug.
Speaker 2 (09:50):
They don't just use the diner with the sign that
says eat at and ame of diner.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I mean, it's uh, it's gotta be tough, man, it's
gotta be I I have I have pea anxieties, so man,
I would.
Speaker 2 (10:04):
Hello.
Speaker 1 (10:07):
I'd like to be a whale though, because no one
would know except for the giant, except for the enormous
warm spot. A single whale can actually pee out two
hundred and fifty gallons of pee a day. That is
daily amounts. It's a lot of Wow, it's a lot.
(10:31):
It's quite a bit. And so through their urine, their
placentas and carcasses, whales release around three thousand, seven hundred
and eighty tons of nitrogen into lower nutrient areas. So
that's that's an incredible transfer of nutrients to these areas
(10:53):
that need them. So it helps support these warmer areas,
help support like you know, coral reefs, all the animals there, plankton, phytoplankton.
It's a fantastic, a fantastic sort of boost to these ecosystems.
Speaker 2 (11:10):
Yeah, and then I have and I'm still hung up
on just the idea too, that the colder parts of
the ocean are denser in life. Like if you'd forced
me to guess, I would have said the opposite. I
would have imagined, like the ocean of the Equator is
like a tropical rainforest. The ocean. You know, yeah, I
guess it's.
Speaker 1 (11:27):
Yeah, it is very interesting because it's like you have
these kind of like one thing that is true is
that when you get very very deep in the ocean,
then some nutrients, like the nutrient gradient is kind of
more spread out. But then you have like these these
hot spots of nutrients near thermal vents. But in colder waters,
(11:49):
you actually do have a high density of things like krill.
You have like a lot of tuna, you have a
lot of these these sort of large groups of schooling fish,
like a bunch of biomass. Part of that is the
light cycle in these areas. So like even though it's colder, right,
(12:11):
and you'd think like, oh, well then that would mean
there's fewer animals there, you still have like a lot
of energy that is contained within these waters.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
Cool. Wow.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (12:21):
I always like to find out that we have so
many mental pictures of habitats where we think nothing lives there,
you know, like a sahara or just a black of
ice with one polar bear standing on it. But no,
it's full of life. It's great.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Yeah, I mean it is, it is. It is true
that like polar bears do sometimes have a tough run
of it because they're actually like on the land, so
polar regions, like when you're on the land itself, because
that is not very conducive to the growth of vegetation
on the terrain. Yes, actually it's pretty tough. That's why
(12:54):
things like penguins they go in the water to fish
because there's not a lot of stuff like in the
Arctic on or sorry, in the Antarctic for them to
feed on on the land or in the Arctic. Certainly
there's parts of the Arctic where a lot of animals
like seals and polar bears will need to like go
in the water, and then polar bears of course will
go after the animals that are fishing in the water.
(13:16):
It is really cool. This is a little more kind
of like complicated science. But the way that the cold
waters work is it encourages some sea mixing that can
actually bring up nutrients that are sequestered in these like waters.
So you have the system that like you'd think of
(13:39):
course like that warm you know, it'd be easier for
life to exist in warm waters. But it's a very
kind of specific chemical thermodynamic process that churns up nutrients
in the water, allowing you know, the smallest forms of
life to thrive, and then you have this thriving food chain.
Speaker 2 (14:01):
Wow. Amazing. Yeah, yeah, just never you just never think
about this stuff with the sea. It's all down there.
And plus I have a phobia of sea creature. So
I'm trying you do you do?
Speaker 1 (14:12):
Whales are fine? Okay, Well, I figured I figured this
is I'm not intentionally trying to torment you on this episode,
So there's no jellyfish.
Speaker 2 (14:22):
Yeah. Part of and part of my lore with my
silly phobia is that if I can imagine it as
a land animal, it's okay. Yeah, and whales. It's just
some kind of like packetrm or elephants or something. It's fine.
Speaker 1 (14:34):
They used to be terrestrial animals. They used to be
sort of these little deer like animals, and then they're
just like, I'm tired of living on land. Man, too
many taxes, so then they lost all of their limbs
and wouldn't know.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
It is this complex the text cheets.
Speaker 1 (14:50):
Yes, there's these.
Speaker 2 (14:52):
Cons that they were like still too many taxes about.
Speaker 1 (14:58):
Off real offshore for tax holdings. Yeah, have you.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
Seen the tax bill in even the Cayman Islands? Forget it,
I've going down there about in the Cayman Oceans.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Yeah. The reason that whales migrate, right because like, well
why not just stay in these polar regions because there's
a lot of food there for them to eat, like krill,
is that it's actually easier for them to keep their
calves save and alive in these warmer waters. The calves
can't swim as well, it keeps them safe from larger predators,
(15:35):
and it also forced like it has they all kind
of go into these regions to be in sort of
a meet and greet area for mating. Because whale, really
large whales some smaller whales like dolphins, which is a
type of toothed whale actually, or orcas tend to be
in groups right, like a pot of way of dolphins,
(15:58):
but they're really big ones like blue why they're usually
actually relatively solitary and they communicate over really long distances.
That's why the whales song where it's like ooh, it's
a method of communication over a very long distance. But
the mothers and the calves hang out quite a bit.
But otherwise you.
Speaker 2 (16:17):
Don't have like very good whales song. By the way,
I can't just thing you.
Speaker 1 (16:24):
But so when they go to these tropical waters, it
forces them into a more dense area and it makes
it easier for them to find a mate. We honestly
don't know that much about the largest whales and their
mating practices, like blue whales, because it's hard to see them, man,
they're in the water. You'd think that we would be
able to because they're so big, but it's just like
(16:46):
we don't. We can't just like hang out down there
in a submarine waiting around for whales to get it on.
So it's actually very rare that we observe it. And
actually the one time we did observe it. I think
in blue whales it was actually a two males, which
was hilarious that like, we've weighed around really long time
and then it just spits in the face of homophobes
(17:07):
who don't understand that a lot of animals are gay.
So I love it.
Speaker 2 (17:11):
Maybe maybe it'll turn out that blue whales are just
these wild pan sexuals, you know, you.
Speaker 1 (17:17):
Know, I wouldn't be wouldn't be surprised.
Speaker 2 (17:20):
Yeah, like that that homosexual encounter was between many encounters
among the kinds of whales.
Speaker 1 (17:25):
It really fits their vibe to be honest, that all
that all whales are pant sexuals proved me wrong. So yes,
so they they they move into these warmer waters for mating,
which also means they actually leave behind, uh placenta, and
that placenta also contains a bunch of nutrients, and that
also contributes to the this nitrogen cycle. It contributes to
(17:49):
the fertilization of these waters. They also each placenta waste, like, yeah,
weighs hundreds of pounds.
Speaker 2 (17:55):
Concept has never crossed my mind in my whole life.
Speaker 1 (17:57):
There they're mammals, placential male Yeah, of course they got one.
Speaker 2 (18:03):
Yeah, it's like three pounds. It is nutrient bomb or whatever.
It's quite literally.
Speaker 1 (18:08):
Is it's probably around that, you know, like it's hundreds
of depends depends on the species of whale, but yeah,
it's hundreds of pounds. So yeah, and this study, uh,
the study has shown that like whales are the main
distributor of nitrogen to tropical waters that the uh, which
(18:30):
is like extremely important for the whole the whole system.
Speaker 2 (18:33):
And then.
Speaker 1 (18:37):
Yes, the studies lead author told the University of Vermont newspaper, quote,
we call it the great whale conveyor belt, or it
can also be thought of as a funnel because whales
feed over large areas, but they need to be in
a relatively confined space to find a mate, breed and
give birth. And the University of Vermont newspaper titled the
(18:58):
article on this, uh the whale p funnel, the Great
Whale PA funnel. So that's that's fantastic.
Speaker 2 (19:07):
Give that student their degree right now. They did it.
They have nothing more to learn at the University of Vermont.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
Also also Ed Goodall, head of the Intergovernmental Engagement at
Whale and Dolphin Conservation, told the National Geographic National Geographics
Melissa Hobson quote, the ocean is spluttering along like an
old car with rusty parts that aren't functioning properly. So
you know, so basically we need we need.
Speaker 2 (19:33):
This whale peepe What what they saidis fying just the
verb spluttering straight off of pee talk. I imagined like
a difficult stream that's set on.
Speaker 1 (19:42):
Me drunk problem, A drunk whal.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
The urologist and a psychologist. Why I reacted.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
A drunk whale trying to aim for the ocean and
somehow missing and somehow missing its hits Greenland instead.
Speaker 2 (20:00):
Right, Conservative American political officials scattering as this happens.
Speaker 1 (20:08):
Yet, god ah man, I would love it if the
whales came to Greenland's defense just formed a great peak wall.
So this process of whales distributing nitrogen with their pee
used to be even more impressive. You know, we went
through this whole I think we've talked about this on secretly.
(20:30):
Incredibly fascinating for something I forgot which topic. But yeah,
there used to be obviously a huge whaling industry, like
around three million whales were killed in the twentieth century alone,
drove their populations down enormously. Yes, and so given what
we know about the nitrogen cycle. It's likely that this
huge reduction in whale populations and ergo whale pe means
(20:55):
that the density of life in the ocean is like
a fraction of what it used to be in terms
of like the because there needs to be this fertilization
process for say tropical waters to be rich in life.
So wow, right, it's a funny thing, right, Like whale
p turns out super super important, just incredibly important. So
(21:17):
when you see like a study and it's like, oh,
why are we studying whale p? This is why absolutely
important to like all life in the ocean and therefore
on Earth.
Speaker 2 (21:29):
Yeah. Yeah, and all those news stories too, whenever they're
like can you believe this topic is being studied, Like, yes, yes,
there's probably a reason. Yeah, why would professional scientists just
be goofing off but also working really hard you know
what I mean? Yeah, like they either study something important
or go home and cook or go on vacation a yeah,
like they don't waste time and work super hard both.
Speaker 1 (21:52):
Yeah, life life on Earth is like a giant Jenga tower,
and like you might look at one piece and it's like,
whale P, how is this important? And you pull it
out and the whole thing just like comes crashing down.
It was all, yeah, it was all being held up
by whale p guys.
Speaker 2 (22:08):
I also I also want to know how many people
made some kind of little micro blog post, you know,
ex Blue sky its atter ibat, like can you believe
they're talking about whale p while that person was using
their phone on the toilet? I want another savage because
up too well.
Speaker 1 (22:23):
Or goshtern hypigrites. Yeah, yeah, so there we have it.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Folks who would even think about this flesh?
Speaker 1 (22:31):
Yeah you know, yeah, yeah, well, you know, whale p
it's extraordinary, doing a lot more for the world than
some politicians, am I right?
Speaker 2 (22:43):
And I really didn't know how the ocean works. There's
so much transit of calories and resources and energy whatever
it is.
Speaker 1 (22:50):
I really like how you I really like how you
describe them as pe long haul truckers that that's so apt.
Speaker 2 (22:58):
Yeah. Yeah, They're body is the what's it called the
back of the truck where the stuff is.
Speaker 1 (23:05):
The the trailer the tractor. I'm also imagining them wearing
the like mesh baseball hats with some like funny whale
related pun like whale whale whale lookuta is and like
they have like their fin has sort of the like
a sexy lady whale, like it's a mudfla.
Speaker 3 (23:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (23:33):
Oh, instead of BUCkies, it's buck peas. There you go,
that would be the gear. Do you know BUCkies stops.
I guess that's certainly not in Italy, but it's only
a southern US thing.
Speaker 1 (23:43):
Okay, well, i'll, i'll. I'm sure people from that region
are laughing at your show so.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Hard at buck peas, they can't stand it. They applause
the show to yeah.
Speaker 1 (23:56):
Yeah, they bust their guts right up at that joke. Alex.
Don't let anyone convince you otherwise. I'm gonna take a
quick break, and when we get back is more urine science.
Hooray whoop. All right, Alex, So I'm just gonna I'm
just gonna spit this right out. Chinese soft shelled turtles
(24:18):
urinate through their mouths.
Speaker 2 (24:21):
Perfect.
Speaker 1 (24:21):
Yeah, no for the questions, So Chinese soft shelled turtles,
what are they? They are these sort of olive green,
flat aquatic turtles with a relatively soft shell, long neck,
and long pointed snoots. They are silly looking animals.
Speaker 2 (24:43):
I google the picture and the face is very muppet.
Speaker 1 (24:45):
It's very muppet. It looks like an alien muppet. And
they do excrete urine out of their mouths. Now, they
do have a kloaeca. The kloeca be the whole that
does it all. In birds and reptiles and amphibians, the
(25:06):
kloaca is it's like it's like our rectum and our
urinary opening and all other openings down there combined into
one magical hole.
Speaker 2 (25:17):
But yeah, if we had more of a grindset, we
would have a cloaca. We would just knock it all out.
It's like a four hour work week.
Speaker 1 (25:24):
But for all sufficient man, Yeah, yeah, you know, it's
like it's like we're doing all of these separate workflows
and we could have it all go through a kloaca
come on work flow. Yeah. But yeah, So these these
turtles often, like you know, an animal with the kloaca,
everything comes out of the kloaca, urine, feces, reproductive materials.
(25:49):
But for these Chinese soft shelled turtles, they urinate mainly
out of their mouths. Now, they can urinate out of
the kloaca, but a lot of the important urrea extreme
actually happens through the mouth. So they The way they
do it is they take water into their mouth, kind
of hold it there like you're swishing it, and then
(26:12):
they spit it out back out into like the water.
So usually they're like on land, they stick their head
in a puddle. They take in the water, kind of
let it soak there for a while, and then spit
it back out. And when they're spitting it back out,
it is with it comes a bunch of urea that
they just excreted through their mouths.
Speaker 2 (26:32):
Weird.
Speaker 1 (26:33):
Yeah, the way they study it's.
Speaker 2 (26:36):
Super reverse of swallowing up pill Yes, like like first
I need water or last I need water and then
I don't know if there's a good metaphor.
Speaker 1 (26:45):
It's it's something is what it is alex Uh. The
way these these scientists study these turtles is they like
restrain them on land and then like had like pottle,
like like a puddle of water or a bucket of water,
and like the the turn is like, well it got
a pee and like stuck its head in the water,
held water in its mouth, and then when it spitted out,
(27:05):
the researchers were able to measure that there was an
increase amount of urrea in the bucket, so you know, wow, yeah.
Speaker 2 (27:15):
I guess yeah, And that's probably not too bad for
the turtle because you got a pe.
Speaker 1 (27:18):
So they did lit the turtle peace, so that's that's
always good, you know. Yeah, I'm sure the turtle is
just a little mildly inconvenienced.
Speaker 2 (27:28):
Yea.
Speaker 1 (27:29):
So, like the lining of the soft shelled turtle's mouth
transports urrea from the blood stream and it's able to
kind of osmos out into the water. So it holds
the water in its mouth. It has a bunch of
urea that's in its mouth and it's able to be
excreted into the water osmos into this water. They have
(27:49):
all these sort of fingerlike projections in their mouths called
pilla that facilitates this transfer. And the reason that they
have such a like why not just pee? Why not
just pee out the kloaca? Right, it seems simpler. So yeah,
the reason they do it grinds it, Yeah, chloaca grindset.
(28:10):
The reason they do it in such a roundabout way
is the brackishness of the water in their natural habitat.
So a brackish water is salty water. It's not as
salty as sea water, but it's relatively salty, so in
swamp they live in swamps and marshes, the water's a
bit salty, so it's brackish because of this higher salt
(28:33):
concentration than say fresh water. If they had to drink
enough water to move urrea out into their urine, because
like we drink a lot of water, and that helps
facilitate us transporting waste products out our pea. So the
water is running through our system basically helping us osmos
all of these these waste products like urea, carrying it
(28:55):
down through the body, through our kidneys into our bladder
and we peel it out and that's the miracle of
pea time. So with these turtles drinking all that brackish
water means taking in a lot of salt. Now they
have all this excess salt and they would have to
deal with it somehow. So instead of having to deal
with all that excess salt in order to facilitate urination,
(29:18):
they've just like moved the urea excretion process from one end,
the far end, to the front end where they they
just swish the water in their mouth, let that let
all the urea come out in that water in their mouth,
and then spit it out. So those unique urea transporter
(29:38):
proteins exist in the lining of the mouth, whereas it
does not exist in the kidneys, which is really interesting.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
That's amazing. What a good reason to do it?
Speaker 1 (29:48):
Yeah, great, Yeah, they just they kind of like they
solve this plumbing issue by like that, what if we
switch the polarities of the pea.
Speaker 2 (29:59):
Yeah, this, this is going to destroy the grind set
Alpha success bro podcasts about how great kloacas are. I know,
this is the kind of information they don't want out there.
Speaker 1 (30:09):
You know, I'm coming for Cloaca bros. And they know it.
They're scared of it.
Speaker 2 (30:14):
Really, guys.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, you might be wondering, well, why don't they just
figure out a way to get rid of the excess salt.
And in fact, this is the case for other turtles.
Sea turtles use a different technique to deal with sea salt,
the extremely salty waters, so they drink salt water all
the time. They excrete the water through lachrymal glands, so
(30:39):
they're crying. They cry out the excess salt. So you
may see a sea turtle it looks like it's crying.
You might think it's because of all the plastic straws
in the ocean. No, it's because it has to excrete
extra salt out in its tears, and this allows it
to It's basically solving the same problem that the soft
shelled turtle has in a different way, because evolution is
(31:02):
not necessarily going to always arrive at the same exact
solution to a similar problem, and sometimes that's because of
different types of evolutionary pressures. Sea turtles obviously live in
a different environment, they have a different method of feeding,
they have more salt in their water, so these glands
probably ended up being the best solution for them. But
sometimes you can just have two perfectly good solutions for
(31:24):
the same process for the same problem. Because yeah, evolution, Yes,
if it works, it works, that's the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (31:33):
Yeah, especially it seems like evolution is that its most
creative and lazily just do it. When it comes to holes,
you know, well that hole will do that, done, trying
done thinking. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
We basically when you examine basically any organism, we are
all tubes of varying complexities.
Speaker 2 (31:54):
Sure.
Speaker 1 (31:55):
Yeah, as long as the two functions, stuff goes in
one and comes out the other, go out your sulf
and animal.
Speaker 2 (32:02):
See that for this reason, I'm going to stop discriminating
against sea sponges. All this time, I've been like, we're
super different, but no.
Speaker 1 (32:10):
We just tubes, sea squorts and sea sponges. Just kind
of like cut out all of the other nonsense.
Speaker 2 (32:16):
I'm gonna start letting sea sponges be customers in my
business and hire my jobs and stuff. Yeah, it's time
we're the same.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
I've learned of Rungebob is thrilled. All right, So we're
going to take a quick break and when we are
when we come back, we're going to discuss the most
delicious smelling urine in the world.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Code creature feature gets you, all right, So, uh, there
is a critter out there, Alex who's urine smells like
hot buttery movie theater popcorn.
Speaker 2 (33:01):
It's me, no, who is it? Gross?
Speaker 1 (33:05):
So and so we're actually staying in Asia. We're now
in Southeast Asia. There is an animal. It peas relatively normally.
It peas out of its urethra. It's a mammal, but
it's urine smells like buttered popcorn. This is the binter wrong,
otherwise known as the bear cat. It's found in Southeast
(33:28):
Asian tall forest so it is a vivarid. This is
the family to which civets, genets, and fosses belong. So, Alex,
I want you to take a look at that that
cute bear cat for a minute and just appreciate its
scrungly appearance.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Yeah, I was gonna say what you said the name.
I was like, I'm pretty sure there is one of
the cute ones, and it is one of the cute ones.
Speaker 1 (33:56):
It's one of the cute ones.
Speaker 2 (33:57):
It's I forgot how cute.
Speaker 1 (33:59):
Yeah, they're they're dark gray with orange eyes. They have
this sort of like diamond shaped raccoon like face, long whiskers,
rounded ears. They have this really thick, bushy, prehensile tail,
and they're somewhat like stout and hefty, so they're not
like long and noodlely. They're like they're solid bear like,
(34:23):
but not as big as a typical bear. They weigh
around forty to fifty pounds, which is about eighteen to
twenty two kilograms, with a body length of around thirty
inches or eighty centimeters, and a tail of up to
thirty five inches or seventy centimeters, so they have quite
like their tail is about as long as their bodies.
Speaker 2 (34:43):
Yeah. I love when you use the word scrungly because
they are it's like a scrungly dark red panda. Yeah,
it's a really cute animal. It's really great and they's
very cute.
Speaker 1 (34:52):
They look like to me what I would think a
realistic lorax would look like.
Speaker 2 (34:57):
Yeah, yeah, right, black and yes, yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:01):
Like a little scrungly guardian of the forest. They're active
during both the day and the night. They just take
a lot of naps, which man I relate. I feel
like this isn't.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
So they're like newborn baby or me. Cool. Yeah, cool.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
I feel like this is probably what I naturally would
do if if I didn't have to exist in society,
like active at day at night, but just a lot
of naps happening. They're omnivores, so they eat fruits, but
they also prey on insects, small mammals and birds when
they can get them. So you know, they're they're they're
(35:44):
that's just those are just those are just a flying nuggets.
So uh, onto their pea. It smells like popcorn and
there's no way around it. It's just this isn't this
is a famous uh sort of comparison. There is in
fact a study on this particular phenomenon published in the
(36:05):
Science of Nature by Duke University ecologist Lydia Green at All,
which is called Reproductive Indocrine Patterns and Volatile Urinary Compounds
of Arcticus binter Wrong Discovering why bear cats smell like popcorn?
Speaker 2 (36:21):
Cool? Yeah, yeah, I mean we both love popcorn. We
talked about that on Yeah, and it's very tempting. I
don't know, like, if I smell popcorn, I have to
go home and have popcorn or have it at the theater.
I walked past. There's a theater kind of down our street.
It's it's trouble for.
Speaker 1 (36:38):
Me that smell the theater popcorn smell. I know. It's like,
I know, like that butter is not like actual butter.
It's some kind of strange corn amalgam. But man, do
I want to.
Speaker 2 (36:49):
Yeah, whichever your lab scientist made it is.
Speaker 1 (36:51):
Yeah, it's like powerful. It's like some kind of like
sunflower seed oil thing concoction made in a lab, and
I can't get enough of it.
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Yeah, I've evolved to mostly subsist on it. I don't
really get a lot of other stuff.
Speaker 1 (37:05):
So the researchers found that bear cat peek contains two
aceetyl one pyroline to a p which they believe quote
is likely to be responsible for the bentong's characteristic popcorn aroma.
So okay, Essentially, what happens is the bentrong peeps, but
(37:26):
they're scrungly, right, they're really fluffy, Their tails are super fluffy.
What happens is some of that peepee gets soaked into
their fur. If you have a fluffy dog, you know,
this is a problem sometimes where or a real fluffy cat,
you know, sometimes that ppe goes where it's not supposed
to go, which is either in the litter box or
on the ground. But for the bentterong, this is a feature,
(37:49):
not a bug, and so some of it sticks to
their tail fur and it gives them that popcorn aroma.
And the theory about why why do they they smell
so good and delicious through their disgusting peepee is that
it is a sexual signal of reproductive readiness, because like,
(38:11):
the males have a higher concentration. So the idea is
it's like some sort of like reproductive signal for the females.
It's like, hey, look, you know, but they're not sure
we're not exactly sure why they have this odor, but
given whenever there's like a difference between the sexes, that's
a hint that it could be something to do with reproduction,
(38:33):
with like competition or trying to attract a mate. That's
it's not necessarily the case. There can be sexual dimorphism
that is not necessarily related to sexual reproduction. But so
often is that the case that it's a good guess.
Speaker 2 (38:52):
It's almost more fun if it's not for anything sexual.
It's just for love of the game. When it comes
to pcorn, you know, just.
Speaker 1 (38:58):
Like so they can get into movie theaters and have
sort of fanks just blow past that counter, yea aroma camouflage.
They wear little popcorn suits and they sneak in so
they can watch our movies.
Speaker 2 (39:16):
Right. That one nineteen year old in the Simpsons with
the primitively ready voice is like, he's probably staff just
lets him in.
Speaker 1 (39:24):
Yeah, So researchers are really on the case about why
do these cute little animals smell like delicious popcorn? It's
their pea, And no, I don't think it tastes like
it smells, so don't try it.
Speaker 2 (39:45):
Yeah, And I guess a lot of it there's no
way to know this. A lot of animals probably like
corn is what I'm imagining. So it's probably exciting to
the bent rupt right, Like it's probably romantic to them
in a way, it's not to us. I've always just
a exciting.
Speaker 1 (40:00):
I've always said that corn is romantic.
Speaker 2 (40:07):
It's the most sensual of the Midwestern grains, for sure.
So I bean's all business corn. Yeah, we're getting down.
Speaker 1 (40:16):
Exactly all right. So before yeah, print that out, have
your name forever tied to that sounds good to me. Ah,
before we go, I would like to play a little
game called Guess Who's squawking? The mystery animal sound game
(40:39):
game every week by you're squawking' it's it's Alex Schmidt's.
Last week's mister Annilsund was this. I don't mean to
bring religion.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Into this, and let me play it for you, all.
Speaker 2 (41:03):
Right, Alex?
Speaker 1 (41:04):
Beautiful, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (41:08):
Really didn't expect that sound?
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, I ignore that.
Speaker 2 (41:14):
You said you don't want to bring religion into.
Speaker 1 (41:15):
It, said, I don't want to bring religion into it?
Speaker 2 (41:19):
Is it? Is it? Easter bunny stuff, Easter bunny stuff.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
It's a good GISs, very good guess I know.
Speaker 2 (41:27):
It's the passover wound bat.
Speaker 1 (41:32):
It's the Australian easter bilby. No, I'm kidding. Sorry, it
sounded really exist. I know it does exist. The Australian
easter bimby does exist. Sorry, not bimby bilby. Uh. It
is a sort of rabbit like looking marsupial animal. The
(41:52):
rabbits are invasive, so in Australia they have a campaign
to turn the bilby. I don't know. I don't know
what a bimbi is. That that's just a made up word.
But they want to turn the bill be into sort
of Australia's version of the easter bunny, because the bill
b is actually endemic to Australia, whereas the rabbit is invasive.
(42:14):
But this is none of that. So this this sound.
Speaker 2 (42:17):
Boobies also look like that marsupial and dune that they
call polytrdes too, So that's fun.
Speaker 1 (42:25):
Yes, I understand that very well. Yes I've seen no
so this sound. The one that sounds like an Internet
dial up is the capuchin bird, named after capuchin monks
because it has a bald head. It is a tropical
bird found in South America. You might think it's this
(42:46):
beautiful bird with glorious colors. It's it's not so it
has a bald head like a vulture. It's got this brown, fluffy, down,
feathery coat. They look very strange, very ugly, but their
call is apparently quite attractive to their their counterparts, female counterparts.
Speaker 2 (43:11):
It's so weird. They're like very feathered and a really
lovely orange color, a lot of it. But then their
head specifically looks like that plague mask guy. Yes, so
like it's really pretty until the head.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Yeah, it's like, oh oh okay, yeah, that's so stark.
Yeah yep. Well yeah, that's.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
The good monastic pull. There's a lot of monks. That's
a fun one.
Speaker 1 (43:40):
All right, So onto this week's mister Animals sound. The
hint is this, this little rock dweller is just saying hi,
all right, you got any guesses?
Speaker 2 (43:58):
That was even better than the that's what Rocketoiler's saying. Hi.
One of like, besides Bison, one of my favorite animals
is elephants, and I feel like I period that fact
that they really had a one time.
Speaker 3 (44:14):
And some.
Speaker 1 (44:16):
Alex you are so smart. That is absolutely correct. In
order to make it fair to the listeners, one of
the game no, because I have technology. This is pre recorded,
so I will bleep out just the part where you
say the name of the animal. But Alex gave you
a free hint there, which is that it is the
latest two Elephants. So there you go. Uh, fantastic job, Alex.
(44:41):
I am super compressed. Thank you, amazing.
Speaker 2 (44:43):
And they had my childhood zoo the actual answer, So
that's the other fantastic.
Speaker 1 (44:50):
But don't worry. Everyone will know, everyone will know you're right,
and you will be sent this. You'll be sent this
week's UH prize, which is a box full of rocks.
Speaker 2 (45:03):
Oh but I wanted the special pee.
Speaker 1 (45:07):
And a vial of bin wrong key to pour on
your popcorn. Oh God, that I mean, I mean myself
grossed out. I grossed myself out, Alex.
Speaker 2 (45:20):
I have I have received popcorn through the mail, so
I would if you sent me that, I would think
it's one of those like carrots tubs or the nuts
on Clark in Chicago or whatever.
Speaker 1 (45:29):
Yeah, please don't, please don't send Alex pee covered bear
cat pee covered popcorn. That would be very bad. Yeah yeah,
although yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:42):
I'm sure it's against the rules. I don't know the rules,
but I'm as it's.
Speaker 1 (45:46):
Against the rules that I just made right now, which
is don't send Alex bearcat pee on popcorn. Alex, thank
you so much for joining me today. Where can people
find you? What kind of projects? What kinds of projects
do you do with I don't really, I'm not, I'm not.
I'm sorry. I invited you on and I'm not really
familiar with your body of work. So if he could
(46:06):
do it to all the people? What what? What? What?
What do you do?
Speaker 2 (46:12):
Just the funniest, increasingly bisified face. That's great. Yeah, I'm
so glad your co hosts SIF with me because it
makes the show great.
Speaker 1 (46:22):
Really incredibly fascinating.
Speaker 2 (46:24):
Yeah, secretly incredibly fascinating. So I hope people check it out.
And I assume a lot of listeners here know it already.
Speaker 1 (46:31):
If they don't, it's a secret.
Speaker 2 (46:32):
This show is amazing.
Speaker 1 (46:33):
Yeah, I'm winking, and this is the sound my wink mace.
Speaker 2 (46:40):
Dis place in the uh yeah, what's it called? The
balls bird? Capuchin bird? There we go.
Speaker 1 (46:47):
Now, Alex does a fantastic job on that show. He
does all the research, teaches me things every week. I
never like I always have something to talk about at
awkward parties. Which has saved my life. My social life
is saved because of Alex. Like I can be at
a party I don't know what to talk about, and
because he teaches me all these incredible facts about things
(47:07):
I can be like, h do you know that w
D forty has a secret recipe that's in San Diego,
which is where I was born? And everyone loves me
now I'm I'm the bell.
Speaker 2 (47:19):
Of the ball and I get that from mostly listening
to this show sometimes casting. So it's cool that we
both get to do that, preaches, So please do.
Speaker 1 (47:32):
Check that out secretly incredibly fascinating. I am on there
every week with Alex and guys, thank you so much
for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you leave
a rati or review, it really helps me and encourages me.
It keeps me going in the way that whalu'reine keeps
tropical regions of the ocean going. And thanks to the
Space Cossics for their super awesome song. Ex Alumina. Creature
(47:55):
features the production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the
one you just heard, visit the iHeart Radio ap Apple
of Gold, cast a right here or rah I'm leaving
that take in, dammit. Listen to the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts,
or hey, guess what, wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
See you next Wednesday.
Creature Feature News
Host
Katie Goldin
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