May 10, 2023 • 54 mins
Snouts, jaws, and eyeballs that look like they're about to break the graphics engine on the planet earth video game. Discover this and more as we answer the age old question: what's an echidna's deal?
Guest: Chris Crofton
Footnotes: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1RM6R3-Di9qnzxORJcPI6u83J75SnRdHBI3FWlBq4Feo/edit?usp=sharing
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Mini Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show Why the Long Face, animals
whose faces defy typical proportions, snouts, jaws, and eyeballs that
look like they're about to break the graphics engine on
(00:27):
the Planet Earth video game. Discover this and more as
we answer the age old question what's in Echidnas Deal?
Joining me today is friend of the show Coldbrew Got
Me Like Podcast, author of The Advice King Anthology, Chris
crofton Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hey, what's up, Katie. It's fun to be back on
the show. I can't wait to talk about snouts.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
I'm so excited. It's these are all these animals. What
they have in common is they got long faces in
some kind of direction for some kind of reason. And yeah,
I just love it when an animal is like, oh,
this is your typical face that that someone might have. No,
I'm going to go in a different direction with this
(01:13):
body part.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah. And then they've also accidentally, you know, provided you
know the joke, the why the Long Face jokes? Humanity
exactly incredible, What a gift on top of being weird
looking and and and also yeah, they just also gave
a great joke to everybody.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
This is how I feel about horses is they just
keep giving to us, right, Like they give us something
to ride. They're fun and sweet, they had they Yes,
they sometimes kick us, but let's be honest, we deserve it.
But they give us horse jokes.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, not enough in my opinion, right should be kicking
more people.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah no, strong agree, horses should be kicking more people.
So yeah, So today we are going to talk not
about horses but animal other animals who have long faces.
So first we're going to talk about the sling jaw rass.
Now that is a strange name for a thing. The
(02:14):
sling jaw rass is a fish. At first, it's a
relatively normal looking fish. Females are brown or bright yellow,
and males have white faces and yellow orange and green bodies,
so they just kind of look like tropical fish. They
grow to be around twenty inches or fifty four centimeters long,
(02:37):
and they are found in tropical coral reefs of the
Indo Pacific. So far, so good. They just kind of
look like a typical tropical fish, but they can transform
from a normal looking fish into a horrifying hell demon
in a matter of seconds. So, Chris, I want you
(02:57):
to take a look at this animated or giff of
this fish and tell me what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I'm looking at it right now. It's like a kind
of like a you know those step stools, like you
know that your grandmother has, like those ones where you
can pull out the ones that have stairs, Like it's
like a stool, but then has that little staircase that's inside.
It's kind of like that reminds me of like it's
like the fish looks like a normal fish, and then
you pull out this like reverse staircase. That's just it's
(03:27):
like you know what I mean. It's like it's it's
like maybe like a step down from a you know,
like a van that has like a step down from right. Yeah,
the elderly or something like the elderly need like an
automatic like the jaw drops down. Yeah, it's like a
It's like, yeah, it looks like a regular fish, and
then all of a sudden, this like extender it's a
slightly different color too, like drops down and then people
(03:49):
can walk up easily easier to the fish's mouth.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
I guess exactly. This is like an accessible fish. It's
gotta step down so you can walk.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Up to the Yeah, it drops down a step.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, yeah, it's but it's like it's sort of like
a tube, which is interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
It even won't work. Yeah, it won't work as a step.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
I mean you could kind of climb up it.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
But don't let don't let grandma trying get in the
van using a sling jaw rass.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
I mean, has it ever been tried? Do we know
it wouldn't work well?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And that's not sure. You have to get a big
sling jar. I don't know what size these fish are about.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah, this so they're only about twenty inches long, so
it'd have to be like a small grandma.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
A little Yeah it's very small, Yeah yeah, grandma. So
also it looks like one of those like it's like
it looks like a regular fish. Looks kind of like
a piranha to me. And then it like and then
it also has like you could also describe what falls
out of its when its jaw descends. It looks kind
of like one of those shoots that comes out of
an airplane, an emergency choote.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, yeah, it does look like that it's like it goes,
it goes from sort of fish to an ant eater
snout on a fish. But it's like it like, just
is it this extendable thing that pops out.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Of Oh, it does extend. I was thinking it drops.
It really just extends. But it has this sort of
has this sort of like ledge on it. I don't know,
it's it's a very It looks like a dust buster.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, like a dustbuster, I.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Mean, but at first it looks like a piranha.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, it looks like a dustbuster, and it kind of
acts like a dust buster. So when it is hunting,
because this is carnivorous, it eats a small, small other
fish or invertebrates, it can shoot its jaw forward like
an extendable tube, and then it vacuums up its prey. Uh.
And when the jaw is extended, it is around half
(05:41):
as long as its entire body, so it is ridiculously
long compared to its body length. And yeah, so it
will try to suck up this these little, poor little
animals from crevices in the coral reef. So typically these
are small crustaceans or fish and they're trying to hide
(06:01):
in the little nooks and crannies of the coral reef.
That's one of the reasons coral reefs are so popular
amongst fish and crustaceans. Is there a lot of areas
for them to hide. But then this fish just goes
into vacuum mode and sucks them right up. That seems unfair.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
It's terrible, It's absolutely terrible. It's not right at all,
this this thing, I mean, what kind of evolution is this?
Speaker 1 (06:24):
What?
Speaker 2 (06:24):
What one are you going to tell me? Here's this
is Katie. You can fill me in on this a
little bit. So you're gonna tell me that some fish
that just accidentally had a loose jaw like some you
know what I mean, like, and then all of a
sudden that fish started getting more food than the other fish,
so then everyone had a loose jaw like. I don't
just certain parts of evolution I just sound fishy to me.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
No part you think there's like a fish god trying
to make I don't know, yeah, I know, I mean,
it's it seems very strange, right. One thing to remember
is this is happening over a ridiculous timescale of millions
and millions of years.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
So there were lots of vacuum fish that had a
short vacuum that didn't work very well. Yeah, like a
million years Yeah, and they were just trying to vacuum
up the reef. But they all this, this sucks. I
was this is longer, and the fit crabs were all happy.
Million years later the crabs were like, oh Frank, these
things got oh man, these things are long and they
work now.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah, and you know it's using mechanisms right that are
part would be somewhat part of a fish without this adaptation,
so like the way that a jaw that can kind
of move forward when you look at a normal fish.
I don't know how much you watch fish. I used
to own an aquarium before I moved, and I would
watch my little fish. They'd eat their little their little foods,
(07:49):
and they do kind of have to like, uh, you know,
because you have to use a little bit of suction
if you're a fish to get food out of the water.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I never thought of that.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
I never thought of it because like, you can't if
you just bite down right, like it could push that
it could push the food away because it's in the world.
So you have to use a little bit of section.
And so when they're doing it, they kind of they
do protrude their lips a little bit and then like
kind of suck it up. And so that's a typical
behavior of most fish. And so this is just an
(08:17):
extreme exaggeration that this fish has. So you can imagine
it's fish ancestor that didn't have this adaptation. Maybe it
just protrudes its jaw a little more and that's a
little more effective, and then that gets passed on until
you get to this point where it has this highly adapted,
ridiculously long jaw. So you have these traits and animals
(08:39):
like the neck of a giraffe, right, you don't you
don't go from sort of a normal like antelope type
of animal to directly to a giraffe. But over time,
the ones with the longer necks tend to be able
to get that food better than the other ones. And
so they they especially because like there's so much competent
(09:00):
titian in a coral reef. A coral reef is sort
of like the New York City of the aquatic world.
It is just this incredibly dense, highly populated area. And
so if you can have a special adaptation that allows
you to like get sort of a niche like get
food where other fish can't get food. That's going to
(09:20):
help you be successful because there's just so much competition.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Yeah, I mean, uh, that makes sense. And then imagine
if a giraffe came down started messing around coral coral reef,
you could get stuff out of the very bottom of
this just like I mean, obviously the draft will be
attacked by these these whatever they.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Are, these fish. Well, if you gave a giraffe, if
you gave a giraffe like a really really long snorkel, right,
it has to be it had to be a super
long snorkel, then yeah they could they could wreak some
havoc out of corn.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah, yeah, I'd like to see that. I'm supprised they
don't have a TV you show where they do.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That TV show where they give land animals snorkels.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
And just like improper it's called like improper ecosystem, right, right.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Let's get a giraffe. Wet is the name of the.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
More Exciting, More Exciting Ecosystem, hosted by Joe Rogan's.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Joe Rogan would do that? That is that is that
totally would Yeah, just like he'd put a shark on
land and be like, hey, we gave this shark a
helmet full of water. Let's see how this shark does
on the plane.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
You're right, You're right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
And a lion underwater.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Joe Rogan would try and fight, he'd.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Try to fight. He well, he put a shark in
a wrestling ring, right, yes, and then try to fight it.
But it'd be unfair to this shark.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, it's no good. I think maybe it should be
like we got to get I'm sorry I mentioned Joe
Rogan because he was trying to fight the animals.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
I do always need an apology for anyone who ever
mentions Joe Rogan.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah. I don't like to mention it either. It ruined
my morning already. But but you know, like maybe just giraffe.
Introducing a giraffe is the name of the show or
something like that. Just a giraffe, the new giraffes in
ecosystems where they don't belong.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Right, just like see where you can put a giraffe.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It's just see what happens.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
It's obviously exploitative of the giraffe. But you know a
lot of reality TV is exploitation.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Gosh, oh my goodness, you think anybody have a problem
putting a giraffe in. It's a weird situation for TV rating,
No way, not.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
These days, not in today's, not days back in the day,
a day.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Like when people are diving horses off.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Of plan I feel like it's like, yeah, I feel
like it's the opposite. We were more likely to have
giraffe TV back in the day where you made it
like probably people would make like a giraffe fight a
chimp or something.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah. No, and the giraft can't even see the chimp.
It's just looking at sky. Yeah, the draft like clouds
and stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, yeah, you got it on the Johnny
Carson Show.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
This giraffe and the draft, Like the draft doesn't see
the Johnny Carson Show. It just sees like the.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Light trust right, it gets it keeps hitting the boom,
trying to meete with the boom, and the boom operator confused.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
You forget that drafts don't see stuff a ground level.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, but yeah, this sling jaw rass can shoot out
its john just a fraction of a second. You can't
normally see it almost doing it because it's so fast.
But there have been slowed down videos so you can
see it in all its wonderful weirdness, shooting its jaw
out and sucking up.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
I wonder who like saw that first. I mean, it's
gotta be you got to catch it in the act
because it looks like a normal fish. It looks like
a normal fish until like someone scuba diving had to
like kept a pretty cool s eye on that thing.
Thank God for people who take these take the time
to look at these animals.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Absolutely no, I mean it takes so much patience to
find to do like sort of observational research where you're
looking at these But yeah, I mean a lot of
the ocean animals. We know the most about our animals
that inhabit coral reefs because we can reach them, right,
We can relatively easy go there and watch them. You
can snorkel, you can scuba dive. It's easy. Like, there's
(13:21):
a lot of stuff about animals in the ocean we
don't know, and that's usually in like the deep ocean,
out in the open where like it's really like a
lot of whale behavior even though they're so huge. You'd
think we'd know everything about say like a blue whale,
but we don't because we're simply not over there. And
it's really hard to like get a person or even
(13:42):
a camera and watch them enough to know exactly what
they're doing at all times.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Because they'll kick your a.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Blue whale just like flexing and smack, they'll.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Kick your acts. You're not going to see our secrets nowt.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
I love that. I love that.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I twifounds, I will kick your as.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I remember that Joe Rogan thing where Joe Rogan tried
to wrestle a blue whale and he just.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
He was yeah, totally yeah, and he was trying.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
To like, yeah, yeah, trying to do this. You ever
heard of Joe Rogan half Nelson. Yeah, that's why Joe
Rogan is no longer alive. So another fun fact about
these fish is actually that and this is the case
for a lot of species of fish, so they are
not unique in this, but females can turn into males
(14:39):
if the conditions are right, and will change into the
male's colors. So I get yeah, I mean this this
happens with a number of fish where when they're when
the population conditions are favorable for them to turn into
a male to mate, they will turn into males. And
I mean this is yeah, yeah, and there are fish
(14:59):
that turned from males into females. It's it is a
lot a lot more fluid of a situation than we
might assume, get it, fluid of a situation water, And
that is like.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
That's pretty pretty uh telling as far as you know
what's going on politically. Just this idea that everything's I
mean either or it's not. It's not true.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
I mean I often so the thing is like, in
terms of human gender expression, right, like animal we don't
we shouldn't need like oh this, you know, animals have
these these behaviors because it's a human thing, right, it's
a cultural human thing. We don't need. It's sort of
like saying like, well, we should be able to have
marriage because birds sometimes are monogamous, right, Like, well now
(15:47):
we should be No, No, I know that's not what
you mean. But I'm saying like we don't need to
look to animals for justification. But you do see a
lot of people say like, well, it's just biology or
like try to biologiar like it's not natural exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
No. The argument they make is, yes, that the fucking
Matt Walsh's of the world, that there's like this strict
you know, you know, of course, in their view, you
know that it came from God, that God made these
very specific types of things, you know, and that's just
not true. God did a lot of very out there
and vague and interesting stuff. And then and it's the
(16:27):
idea that things are rigid is just this religious made
up thing.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, people will claim like, well, it's just a biological
fact that you see in every animal, and it's just like,
well that is categorically false. It's not true at all.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
That's incredible. Yeah, it's just it's just a yeah, it's
just an argument about like if they're going to argue
that God made things, then you know they're just not
being honest about.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Then we should then we should like dislocate our.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Jaws right exactly, and you know that, you know, there
might be somebody doing somewhere we just can't see because
they won't let us get close enough.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
All right, that's a good segway. Next. Yeah, so we
are going to take a quick break, but when we
get back, we are going to look at another animal
with a very long face. So we are going to
(17:26):
talk about the long beaked echidna. So the long beaked
echidna are a species of monotorum found in New Guinea.
So have you ever seen an echidna before, Chris, I
think so, but.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
I didn't necessarily, I don't think I knew. No, I mean,
I guess I have, but I didn't know they had long,
long noses.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, yeah, so some of them do. So there are
a few species of echidna, and the long beaked echidna
have these enormously long snouts. So it has a stout body,
body covered in thick hairs and spines. It looks a
little bit like a hedgehog with thicker, more stump like
legs and just this a really long tube like snout
(18:12):
and tiny head, which its head is so small it's
kind of laughable, like it just it looks more like
just this little peanut head and then this really long snout,
tiny beady eyes. So there are three species of long
beak to kidna, the Eastern, Western, and Sir David's long
(18:33):
beak to kidna, named after David Attenborough because that guy
is everywhere. He just he's got he's got his hands
on every animal.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Wow. Yeah, but yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Puts his name on it, just like he cooked. I
think he goes around and just points to animals and
he's like, that's mine. That's also mine, that one's mine.
But you know, in his in his in his British accent.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah yeah, he's a monster now.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Noted conservationist, beloved, beloved conservationist, naturalist, animal lover. Uh who
like he's basically like the Gandolf of evolutionary biology. Everyone
loves him. He's sweet. He's a monster.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Though, I mean yeah, it's like Jacques Cousto didn't like
name the reef like a reef, like he didn't name Jack.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
He didn't name it a Jacques. Yeah, yeah, okay, Jacques
Cousta's yeah, he didn't discover. To be fair, David Attenborough
didn't name this echidna after himself. It was the researchers
named this echidna after David Attenborough. So he's not good. Listen, David, Well,
(20:01):
we named kidna after you. How about it?
Speaker 2 (20:06):
They want to go to parties as house do?
Speaker 1 (20:08):
I mean? He does throw a wild party? Is David Attenborough?
You know it?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
So this is David Attenborough's a kidnap. That's one kind.
It doesn't have a long nose that they have.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
It has a long nose as well, So there are
three species of long beak to kidna, and Sir David's
long beak to kidna is one of them. The other
ones have the sort of less exciting names of Eastern
long beak to kidna and Western long beak to kidnap
because one is found in the eastern region and the
other is found in the western region of.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
I'll tell you one thing, I bet you man, when
old David saw this his first echidna, he must add
quite a shock because he came around. If that thing
came around a corner and you'd never seen one before,
you would definitely freak out. Oh good heavens, especially if
you're stoned.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah, I mean we all we all know that David
Attenborough's probably.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Oh yeah, that was He deserves it.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
He's worked hard.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
So what do you what if you're looking at that
many animals? I mean, come on, come on, So the
guy spent his whole life looking at animals. The guy's stone.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
I mean, we're not saying definitively for legal reasons, but
he own monster.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
He's a monster and he stone.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
We're getting sued by David Attinborough. No, So I when
you think of an echidna, I mean if you do
think of a kidness, which I hope you do, you
might be thinking of a smaller animal like a platypus.
Like I think people's perspectives of what a pat like
how big a platypus is, at least for me, I
always thought of a platypus as being kind of bigger.
(21:45):
But they're actually quite small. They're like they sort of
just like fit in maybe two hands. But yeah, no,
they're actually quite little. But a kidness, yeah, they're very
as long as they don't sting you with their venomous spike.
The male platypuses have a venomous spike that they can
(22:07):
jab you with.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Which Jesus yep, David's David spike.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
David spike, Sir David's spike, please put some honor on
his name.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, So the echidna, I've always thought of a kidness
as being pretty small, but echidnas, some species of kidneys,
can be quite big. So uh, they range in size,
but the western long beaked echidna is the largest and
grows to be around thirty five pounds or over sixteen kilograms.
(22:44):
So like it's a it's like a it's a huge yeah,
it's like a large pug almost. It's it's too much.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
That's too much kidnap for me.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
You can take about half that amount of a kidnap.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
I don't want that much a kid in the coming
at me, not with a snout like that. This thing
looks like a It looks like an elephant, but it's
like the elephant got like covered in prickers and like
got its nose hardened. I mean, it's a it's an
interesting animal. But I mean, like, all right, so I
want to know, Katie, Well, go ahead, you keep going.
(23:19):
I just want to know why it's noses.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah. So they live in forests and they eat insects,
and they use their extremely long snouts to root up
and slurp up earthworms like spaghetti through like a long
vacuum attachment. Yeah. Their beak also has electro receptors, which
are speculated to allow them to detect the faint electrical
signals that come from the muscle movements of earthworms, so
(23:45):
they can locate them and just hoover them up. Like
it's like a vacuum and a metal detector all in one,
except it's detecting earthworms.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, And it can insane.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, it's it's nuts. It's like it has a probe
that it can use to find earthworms and then slurp
them up. It's functional and stylish.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
That's you know like that. Yeah, I mean it's just
I kind of think of animals like I always think
of everything like the politics or so in my head,
and I always think about like people just like just
freaking out humans just being so broken in this way
where they they can't stop worrying and trying to dominate
each other, and meanwhile there's somebody just slurping up earthworms
(24:33):
and having the time of their lives.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
I mean this, I this is a lesson I think. Yes,
like when the world really gets to when you're getting
stressed out, when you feel like, oh we're all we're
all so much at each other's throats, just remember there's
this little weird, prickly guy in the forest slurping up
earthworms that it's really long tube snout.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah, having the time of his God.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Just enjoying it, enjoying life.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah. And we always say like, oh, they don't know,
you know, humans are always like, oh they don't they
don't have fun, they don't know that it's fun. But
you don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I don't know. I think they have fun. I mean, like,
I mean, obviously to us, maybe worms are a little
bit gross. But imagine if spaghetti, right, or lasagna, you
could just found that find spaghetti on the ground and
go around slurving up spaghetti on the ground.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
I haven't had I haven't had breakfast yet. Sound pretty good, like.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I mean, it's I if only I had no dignity,
I and I'm close, I'm close to having no dignity.
I would definitely enjoy just dropping a plate a nice
spaghetti on the ground and slurping it up. That would
be fun.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, humans are too uptight to do any of the
fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I know, I know. Just the fact that our culture
doesn't allow us to have floor spaghetti, it really gets me. Yeah.
So again, it's like.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Call David. They call it David spaghetti.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Third day it spaghetti. Excuse you?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
I like you trying to cover cover yourself because you're
afraid of the losses.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
He's very litigious. He will get you.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
He will love I love that man.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
I do too.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
He's no, I don't know, I don't have an opinion
about him, but I'm sure he's nice, he's very I mean,
if he's discovering animals, he's way. He's part of the good.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah, he's a conservationist. He's a good got a good voice,
a lot of good things. And maybe maybe he's like
I'm not saying if he does or doesn't slurp up
spaghetti on the ground, I won't I won't come on
either side of that.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Oh no, I'm not gonna think of that.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
I'm not gonna say he does or doesn't do it.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
I'm what if he does get crazy?
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Well, I don't know, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
What's next. You know, he's got his head in a
reef and he's trying to suck stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
If he does, he's allowed to do that because because
he's got Sir David's Sir David's a kid now, I think,
not a provingly his assistants.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Like, hang him upside down. Probably David wants to slurp
the reef.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Get the harnessed, Sir David wat, Oh my god, already
get in position. Maybe it's important for conservation for him
to understand what it's like to slurp a reef. I'm
gonna I wish he's a hero.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
He's a hero.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
What other what other night of the Queen's Order would
slurp a reef for conservation? David Attenborough would because he's.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Not your McCartney.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
No, no, he wouldn't. He wouldn't want to ruin his
hair by going underwater. I don't know much about.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
You're right about that, No, no, you're right, Okay, exactly right.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
So echidnas, like other monotremes such as platypuses, lay eggs,
so the females have a pouch where they incubate the eggs,
and the eggs hatch and the young are called, which
is adorable.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
These puggles will lick up milk that oozes from their
mother's underside without the help of nipples. So monotremes typically
don't have nipples. Instead, the milk just kind of seeps
out through pores, and they're young just kind of lap
it up. Uh, because they don't have any dignity, which
I think is very free.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
That's interesting, that's weird.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
It's it.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
No, I wonder why they concentrated so much on the
nose and forgot the nipples.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
They forgot, they just forgot.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
You know.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
It's a lot it's a lot to think about. Uh.
The males do have spurs on the back of their
legs like platypuses, but in achidnas they are not venomous.
They have lost their venoms. So echidnas, despite looking maybe
a little more menacing that a platypus, is I think
less scary because they're not gonna jab you with that
(28:54):
venomous spike. They also have kloacas, which I like to
call the hole that does it all, just like birds
and reptiles. So uh yeah, it is. A kloaca is
a hole which through which everything from urinating, defecating and
(29:15):
sex stuff happens, which I think is very efficient.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Wow, what's it called cloaca?
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Wow? Birds have it?
Speaker 2 (29:23):
I bet I bet you anything. There's a death metal
band called whatever that is.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Let's see, I want to find out.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
There must be cloaca. Yeah, like that's a good name
if you're starting, like a thrash metal or grind.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Core band, right, Cloaca core because.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
They like to explain it on stage what it is like.
They probably go like welcome work and in case you
didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
So there's a kloaca group in London.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yep, and there's a taken Cool.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Formed in two thousand and five in the UK. It's
atmospheric sludge metal. Yeah, that's my favorite kind of metal.
Atmospheric sludge.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
That's one of the best kinds.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
So uh. Fun fact about a kidnas A kid does
have four headed penises.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
So oh my god.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, it looks like a little high five. So they
don't urinate out of their penis. That is actually what
the kloaca is for. They use the penis exclusively for mating,
and they store the penis in the kloaca and like
have it kind of like flop out whenever they're ready
for mating. Store it. Yeah, you know, it goes in there.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Goodness. Wow.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Interesting like socks in your sock.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Drawer storing your penis.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Sure. Uh, some animals would think it's weird that we
don't do that.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Where do you keep your penis?
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Yeah, just leave it out hanging out there really all
the time. Wow. So they Yeah, it looks like a
weird little like I don't know, it looks like a
weird little hand timmy.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
And it's yeah, it's not the prettiest looking thing to
look at, but you know.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
It's horrifying looking I'm you're I feel like you're under
playing what a nightmare thing is. This looks like absolutely,
I mean, I can't even it looks extremely gross. I
mean it looks like Okay, well, I mean, you know,
I'm sure not to them. I mean, I'm sure it
looks awesome to them. I think, you know, obviously, but
(31:29):
it looks like a you know, I'm not going to
say what it looks like, but it's a very meaty
and raw looking thing.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, it looks a little bit like some kind of
weird role Deli meats.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
But that's what it looks like. You're right. It looks
like three four rolls of Deli meat.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Yeah, it does. So. They can only use two heads
of the penis at the same time when they were mating,
and it's thought that having multiple heads allow them to
mate more frequently without break time. Uh but yeah, that
is the wonderful echidnap with its a worm detecting snout.
It's sleaky, milky belly laid eggs as a foreheaded penis,
(32:10):
and it's crazy the size of like a hefty pug.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Do they does any Well, I'm just I guess you
couldn't keep that as a pet. I mean people probably
try and keep everything you probably wish you you're not
supposed to do it anyway.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
But yeah, I don't think it'd be great. I mean,
you've seen it's wiener.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Like, that's what I'm saying. You don't want to start
your day looking at that foreheaded, foreheaded deli Deli.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Meat thing exactly. They've got they've got a natural anti
poaching method, which is just like, have you seen my wiener?
It's really weird. You probably don't want to deal with it.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yeah, they are kind of cute, though.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
They are cute. They're very cute. I love them. I
wouldn't want one as a pet, but I do love them,
and I would like to hug it. Well, I mean
at a zoo. I've seen them, but no, I have
not personally had the honor of hugging and a kidnaped.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
I just realized that's that the head of an echidna
with that nose is what those plague masks.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
It does kind of look like I don't know if
they were meant to look like an echidna, but they
do definitely look like them a lot. Like Yeah, yeah,
absolutely the cutest, the cutest little plague doctors out there.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, they're very cute. I mean, like imagine they had
no they don't know that they have so much going
on either. They're just like, I'm minding my business. Stop
looking at my talking about where my milk comes from.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Yeah, yeah, just minding their own business. Snorful.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
It's not my fault. I don't have any nipples. I
don't know about that.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Yeah, exactly, I'm trying to.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Get some worms. I'm trying to eat some worms. Stop
photographing me.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Just trying to live their life, stay in their lane
and snorrefl up ground spaghetti, and we keep talking about
their lack of nipples.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
It's right.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
I hate this Instagram culture where we're like talking about
like who does or doesn't have nipples and just you know,
it's yes.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
And like they're yeah, and they're looking at us like,
you know, you think you're normal looking buddy.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yeah, it's a matter of perspective. It's a matter of yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Your penis only has one head. Loser.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
We're gonna take a quick break and when we get back,
we're gonna talk about the last animal of today's show
that has a long face in another direction. So far,
we've been talking about long faces that shoot forward? What
about long faces that go side to side or I
guess that would be a would that be a wide
face or a long face. I guess that'd be a
(34:48):
wide face, like a horizontal face.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
I'm trying to find whatever this is. Oh, here it is. Yeah, okay,
this is like oh wow, that's a okay, yeah, that's
like a yeah, that's like a long wide looks like
a barbell, looks like as a bud on its teeth,
like a huge or a double headed match, like a
double headed match.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Mouth, yeah, like a baton or something. Yeah. Yeah. This
is the Telopsis dalmani fly or Malaysian stock eyed fly.
It has a ridiculously wide set face with long eye
stalks that jut out perpendicular to the fly's head. Uh.
And they like to hang out around streams any rotting vegetation,
(35:36):
so they have a chill life. They live on the
roots of plants that dangle near streams, and they have
a whole, the whole social life where males will compete
to establish their territory on these root systems, and if
they are successful, they will be able to accumulate a
harem of females. The females will choose which mate they
(36:00):
wish to join on their little root area, and it
seems like a lot of the female's decision is based
on how long the male's eye stalks are.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Wow, these that's not fair though. What about the other
ones that have short eyestalks? What are they? What are
they supposed to do? Plants? Suck on plants all by themselves.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
I just go suck on planet all by yourself, all
by your lunesome sucks.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
I know, I know, I think those short I think
it's okay if your eyes aren't four feet from your head,
their eyes are like seriously like they're like, there's like, okay, Yeah.
It's like if you had two your eyes were like
two like two sticks coming out of the size of
your head, and your eyes are on the ends of
the sticks. So you're looking at not you're looking like
(36:48):
it way you're looking at You're not seeing what's right
in front of your face. You're seeing things that are
like four feet to either side of your face.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
It's like if you had, yeah, two selfie sticks attached
to your face permanently with eyeb on the end. That's
probably what's you know, Brave New Future everybody with selfie sticks.
Are people still using selfie sticks? I actually don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
We don't hear about them as much. I'll tell you
that there's too much in the news. There's too much
in the news cycle these days for selfie sticks to
get a spot.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Yeah, our twenty four hour news cycle really pushed selfie
sticks out of there. But yeah, these are like selfie
sticks on the sides of their heads, so they these
istalks are so long they can be longer than the
fly's body length itself, which is a little absurd, a
little bit interesting to invest that much of your body
(37:37):
into your eyestalks. So females do also have the exaggerated
eye stocks, so it's not a trait that has only
evolved in males to attract females. Females also have them
there usually not as as exaggerated maybe as males, but
researchers have found that males also select for female with
(38:00):
wide eye stocks as well. So apparently both male and
female stock eyed flies really like long eye stocks for
some reason. And there are actually many different species of
flies that have these long eye stocks. In fact, there
are eight families of flies that have these long eyes stocks,
so it is not an like one time accident that
(38:23):
happened with one family of flies, when like evolutionary oopsie,
this keeps happening for some reason.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, do they know? Why does anybody know why they have?
Why are those helpful for it to see? Or is
it more like predators don't want something that looks like
you know, that's carrying like a.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Wand I mean it's still it's still somewhat of a
debate why this is the case. But the main thing
seems to be sexual selection, where they are selecting mates
that have this trait. Now, maybe originally that's so interest
maybe you're i know, like maybe originally having those eye
(39:04):
stocks probably did help with their vision, right, like give
them a wider range of vision. But then they started
it seems like this might be a case of runaway
selection where they started to select for like, well, you
have long eyetocks and therefore that helps you see, so
you're better mate. But then like it kept getting more
and more exaggerated. There's some of the some of the
(39:28):
theories are things like it is costly to have such
long eye stocks, so you have to be really fit
to be able to have such long eye stalks. There
there are multiple theories, but the main thing seems that
seems to be driving this extreme length of the eye
stocks is is mate choice sexual selection, which is always
(39:49):
I think sexual selection produces some of the weirdest traits
because it just is like an aesthetic trait that keeps
getting more and more exaggerated because these an are not
necessarily selecting it based on practicality, but because they like
how it looks, because it for some reason it is
(40:10):
triggering their would be.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Like a bodybuilder. Yeah, if a person was a bodybuilder
and they got their muscles so big that they couldn't.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Even use them basically, yeah, I mean that, yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
But that would get them. Yeah, somebody would find that attractive. Definitely.
I mean there's definitely people who like really outlandish muscles,
but they don't really serve a purpose because then you
can't move.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Yeah, no exactly. I mean I think about how like
we have fake eyelashes, right, that's not really practical anymore.
Our eyelashes are meant to kind of help shield our
eyes from things like dirt and stuff. And then and
then you start putting a fake eyelash on there that's
really big, really exaggerated, and it is you know, it's
(40:50):
this attractive thing, but it's it's not it's something that
we have. You know, well, everyone has their own taste
about it.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
But I just thought about it. I just thought of
Attenborough's eyelash. I'm still.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Sir Sir David's eyelash, how many times?
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Uh, I'm trying to provoke him. Is he alive? Yes?
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, of course he's alive.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
I just provoked him.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
He's like five hundred years old, but he's alive.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
I'm looking at an animal right now.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
That's so much his brand.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
I've never been so alive. I'm looking at something that can.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
He's he's it's all that. It's all that slurp, but
on coral reefs. It's really good for your longevity. So
many antioxidants down there.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
He does it every morning.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah morning, it's very refreshing. So the stock eye, so
the stock eyed fruit fly found in China has ridiculously
long eye stalks as well. The males will compete for
females by lining up their eye stocks together to see
who's as bigger. So wow, yeah, it's just this like
competition for who's got the longest eye stalks. It's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Crazy, you're crazy, because you think you think of these
bugs looking at at a person, looking at a bug
looking at another bug, and like judging the eyestocks like
I mean, I guess, you know, we would be we
would be led to believe by scientists that they just
do it instinctively, so they're not in there, they're not
actually being like I like those eyestocks better, but I
(42:24):
mean they still have to have some I mean, that's
such a selection. Is such a strange thing, and an
animal that's supposed to be operating on instinct, like, but
there's a certain amount of attraction which we take all
the sexual you know, it's just instinct, it's just instinct.
But I wonder, you know, I always wonder whether they
could just be like you know, they could be on
the right track. Like maybe who knows if ey stocks
(42:46):
might be the hottest thing in the world. We just don't,
you know, we might need them.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
We don't even know, you know, we don't have But
I'm not saying we need to get eye stocks, but
maybe they're onto something.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
I mean, who knows. If I'm not on ey stocks
right now, walk down the avenue.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
You'd be you'd be the bill of the ball. You'd
be the talk of the town. I mean over It's true,
you wouldn't want to go to a china shop and
knocking over to people go to an antique store. Uh yeah,
But I mean it is interesting because yes, I mean
I think that in general, like a lot of the
(43:23):
things that we have that make us feel human, like
emotions and judgment and stuff. It originally, you know, originally
as we started out, like we did start out similar
to something like insects, where you know, we maybe a
lot of our quote unquote emotions are sort of more instinctive.
But then the line between like when do our instincts
(43:44):
and stuff and our our our impulses become emotions. It's
it's not clear to me when exactly that happens. Like,
I feel like mice probably feel emotions. Do are there
insects that feel emotions? Maybe it's just how do you know?
You can't get it. They they are very very simple,
so it's hard to imagine that they have very complex emotion.
(44:07):
But yeah, maybe there's maybe there's some joy that they have.
Look at a real long set of eye stalks.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Yeah, and their perception of time might be different so people, Yeah,
they live such a short time but they for them,
it might be eons, you know, they might have like
a very full life in like one day.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Yeah. We actually on the show we've talked about before
this uh flicker fusion rate where it's uh the oh
basically brain processing time. So some it's speculated that things
like flies have this, uh it's a very slowed down
flicker fusion, so that they are able to basically like
(44:46):
if you're if you're trying to swat a fly, they
see things potentially in this very very slow motion, very
high frame rate. Yeah yeah, so like yeah, yeah, and
one way to catch a fly is actually if you're
really slow, they may not be able to detect your
(45:07):
movement as well because you're going so slow that they
don't even really notice that you're moving. So you can
kind of like sneak up on a fly that way.
I bet you're wondering how do they, like, how do
they grow these things? How do they emerge out of
these like where do how do they grow these enormous
(45:27):
eye stalks? So when the icetock fruit fly first emerges
out of their shell from their pupil stage, their ice
stocks are actually short, but over the course of two
hours with a lot of rubbing and maneuvering. The ice
stocks get longer and fill with fluid, and at first
they are really wiggly, they look like a scrunched up
(45:49):
pipe cleaner. But eventually they straighten out, they darken, they
harden into the adult set of ice stocks. So I'm
sharing with you and all, including the show notes, the
most ridiculous set of photos I've ever seen from a
scientific journal of this newly hatched ice stock fruitfly, and
(46:11):
it's istocks growing into its adult proportions, and you can
see like it's just it's wild, like it looks like
at first it's just these wiggly squiggly things, and then
it gets longer and longer and then straighter, and then
finally it has these ridiculously long eyestalks.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
I'm looking at it right now, and I just reminded
me of the bottom left photo. Looks like Daniel Johnston's.
You know, Daniel Johnston, the musician. No, oh, he's a
he's he's considered an outsider artist. But he he painted,
(46:52):
and he painted like Antenna's with eyes on the end,
just like that.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
Oh, interesting, very.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Very that was his he I made I wonder if
he was aware of these animals, these bugs. I mean
he often drew these these creatures with with like long
hoselike things coming out of their head with eyes on
the end.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Daniel Johnston painting drugs.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
See yeah, bugs, he does like uh.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah that little frog thing, yeah right, yeah, no,
I see it.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Yeah, that's just reminded me very much of the bottom
left hand corner of that.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah no, I totally see that. That's really interesting and.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
I didn't notice it until you see the color. That's
just like his thing. Yeah, I wonder they're very beautiful.
I like the before the growing into the eyestalks is
a very fun looking experience, Like it's kind of fun
when they're droopy and stuff.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Yeah, yeah, it's all squiggly.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
They are, as opposed to when they get like stiff,
then they just look hot.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
Well, on that note, before we go, I'm gonna play
a little game called the Mystery Animal Sound Game Guess
Who's squawking? Every week I play a mystery animal sound
and you the listener, and you the guest, try to
guess who is making that sound. Uh. Last week's mister
animal sound was a tough one. The hint was this
(48:33):
this Madagascar native is named after the following alarm call.
All right, you hear that little like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
What is that?
Speaker 2 (48:50):
I don't know. I don't know what that is. Sounds
like a bird. Is that a bird?
Speaker 1 (48:53):
It is not a bird. It does sound a little
bit like a bird. I might have guessed bird if
I didn't know what this was. A no. This is
a type of lemur found in Madagascar called the she fuck.
Congratulations to Anti B, Marion D and Emily M for
guessing correctly. So there are nine species of she fuck.
(49:16):
They have white fur on their backs, brown fur on
their bellies, and black skin on their faces, hands and feet,
and yellow eyes. I think they're adorable. They have a
long tail and their feet are optimized for leaping from
tree branches, and they are so optimized for living in
trees and leaping and climbing that while they are on
(49:38):
the ground, they can't really walk, but instead they leap
to get around. So they kind of do this like
jumping sachet sort of movement just to get around.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
That sounds nice.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
It is fun. When I was little, I took ballet
and we learned how to sachet, and so I would
just do that through the house because it's actually a
pretty easy way to get around, is more fun than walking.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah, we limit our we limit ourselves.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Skipping is fun in an interview efficient, if we didn't
have so many hang ups about skipping, I think it'd
be a fun way to get around.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Yep. So eating spaghetti, eating spaghetti, eating spaghetti off the ground,
Sasha in around the.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Things I would do from out from under society's crushing
expectations exactly. So. They are such good climbers that they
are able to climb limestone spires to look for vegetation
that grows on these perilous natural flowers, and their cushioned
toepads allow them to navigate sharp thorns without injuries. So
(50:43):
they are tough little guys. They're adorable and they are tough.
And that sounds you just heard was a she fuck
calling out to its friends to help locate each other.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
So it's a cute sound.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
It's very cute. It's like a little chuck. Yeah, So
onto this, So onto this week's mystery animal sound. The
hint is this, don't be too bitter if you can't
(51:16):
guess this one.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Hm m hm hm.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
So Chris and he guesses as to who is squawking.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
No, I mean, I mean no, No, that's crazy sound.
That sounds like a that sounds like the sounds like
a car going by with a lot of bass.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Yeah, it sounds like to me, it sounds like someone's
blowing on top of a bottle, you know, doing that cool?
Speaker 2 (51:44):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's I have No, I mean bitter, bitter,
don't get bitter the toad? Is it a toad?
Speaker 1 (51:54):
It's a good guess, but you'll find out if you're
correct on next week's episode of Creature Feature. If you
out there, think you know who is making that sound?
Right to me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com. Chris,
thank you so much for joining me for talking about
animals with a long face. I hope you don't have
a long face after listening to this. Where can people
(52:15):
find you?
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Oh? Thank you so much, Katie. It's always fun and
I find out stuff I'd never ever would know. And
you can find me on at the Crofton Show on
Twitter and Instagram, and I created a TikTok account, but
I haven't put anything up on it right, And you
can go get my book, The Advice King Anthology, which
(52:38):
came out. I'm Vander Billet University Press last year, and
you can listen to my awesome podcast Coldbrew got Me Standard.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
He's a real deal. He's drinking coldbrew right now if
you like. If you think it's just like a marketing strategy, no,
Katie said she saw it.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
We're on zoom, you know, because yes, I just and
she was like, it is that iced tea? I kind
of almost like iced tea? Almost got angry screened.
Speaker 1 (53:14):
Are you kidding through it against the camera.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
I'm a I'm an old time doc worker. I took
black coffee.
Speaker 1 (53:28):
Ahead, check those things out. Be forewarned that cold brew
or bus It's never iced tea, always cold brew.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
I got. You know, it's like I just switched. You know.
I used to drink a lot of alcohol, and now
I don't drink any alcohol. So I screw and it's
so much better, I gotta say. But it does interrupt
your sleep, so you gotta be careful people. No matter
how long your ey stocks are. You might feel like
you've got some long eye stocks and you can handle it,
but but it'll interrupt your sleep.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
Yeah, you gotta brew the cold but built with the
cold brew. You great, Yeah, that's it. Well, thank you,
guys so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show
and you leave a rating and review, I that means
so much to me. I read every single one of
your reviews and it really helps me out. Uh and
(54:20):
thank you so much to these space Cossics 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 Podcasts, or hey, guess what, alright
you listen to your favorite shows. I don't care. Whatever
you want to do. See you next Wednesday.
Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
of Mini Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
and today on the show Why the Long Face, animals
whose faces defy typical proportions, snouts, jaws, and eyeballs that
look like they're about to break the graphics engine on
(00:27):
the Planet Earth video game. Discover this and more as
we answer the age old question what's in Echidnas Deal?
Joining me today is friend of the show Coldbrew Got
Me Like Podcast, author of The Advice King Anthology, Chris
crofton Welcome.
Speaker 2 (00:45):
Hey, what's up, Katie. It's fun to be back on
the show. I can't wait to talk about snouts.
Speaker 1 (00:50):
I'm so excited. It's these are all these animals. What
they have in common is they got long faces in
some kind of direction for some kind of reason. And yeah,
I just love it when an animal is like, oh,
this is your typical face that that someone might have. No,
I'm going to go in a different direction with this
(01:13):
body part.
Speaker 2 (01:15):
Yeah. And then they've also accidentally, you know, provided you
know the joke, the why the Long Face jokes? Humanity
exactly incredible, What a gift on top of being weird
looking and and and also yeah, they just also gave
a great joke to everybody.
Speaker 1 (01:31):
This is how I feel about horses is they just
keep giving to us, right, Like they give us something
to ride. They're fun and sweet, they had they Yes,
they sometimes kick us, but let's be honest, we deserve it.
But they give us horse jokes.
Speaker 2 (01:49):
Yeah, not enough in my opinion, right should be kicking
more people.
Speaker 1 (01:52):
Yeah no, strong agree, horses should be kicking more people.
So yeah, So today we are going to talk not
about horses but animal other animals who have long faces.
So first we're going to talk about the sling jaw rass.
Now that is a strange name for a thing. The
(02:14):
sling jaw rass is a fish. At first, it's a
relatively normal looking fish. Females are brown or bright yellow,
and males have white faces and yellow orange and green bodies,
so they just kind of look like tropical fish. They
grow to be around twenty inches or fifty four centimeters long,
(02:37):
and they are found in tropical coral reefs of the
Indo Pacific. So far, so good. They just kind of
look like a typical tropical fish, but they can transform
from a normal looking fish into a horrifying hell demon
in a matter of seconds. So, Chris, I want you
(02:57):
to take a look at this animated or giff of
this fish and tell me what you're saying.
Speaker 2 (03:05):
I'm looking at it right now. It's like a kind
of like a you know those step stools, like you
know that your grandmother has, like those ones where you
can pull out the ones that have stairs, Like it's
like a stool, but then has that little staircase that's inside.
It's kind of like that reminds me of like it's
like the fish looks like a normal fish, and then
you pull out this like reverse staircase. That's just it's
(03:27):
like you know what I mean. It's like it's it's
like maybe like a step down from a you know,
like a van that has like a step down from right. Yeah,
the elderly or something like the elderly need like an
automatic like the jaw drops down. Yeah, it's like a
It's like, yeah, it looks like a regular fish, and
then all of a sudden, this like extender it's a
slightly different color too, like drops down and then people
(03:49):
can walk up easily easier to the fish's mouth.
Speaker 1 (03:52):
I guess exactly. This is like an accessible fish. It's
gotta step down so you can walk.
Speaker 2 (03:57):
Up to the Yeah, it drops down a step.
Speaker 1 (04:00):
Yeah, yeah, it's but it's like it's sort of like
a tube, which is interesting.
Speaker 2 (04:05):
It even won't work. Yeah, it won't work as a step.
Speaker 1 (04:08):
I mean you could kind of climb up it.
Speaker 2 (04:11):
But don't let don't let grandma trying get in the
van using a sling jaw rass.
Speaker 1 (04:16):
I mean, has it ever been tried? Do we know
it wouldn't work well?
Speaker 2 (04:19):
And that's not sure. You have to get a big
sling jar. I don't know what size these fish are about.
Speaker 1 (04:24):
Yeah, this so they're only about twenty inches long, so
it'd have to be like a small grandma.
Speaker 2 (04:28):
A little Yeah it's very small, Yeah yeah, grandma. So
also it looks like one of those like it's like
it looks like a regular fish. Looks kind of like
a piranha to me. And then it like and then
it also has like you could also describe what falls
out of its when its jaw descends. It looks kind
of like one of those shoots that comes out of
an airplane, an emergency choote.
Speaker 1 (04:49):
Yeah, yeah, it does look like that it's like it goes,
it goes from sort of fish to an ant eater
snout on a fish. But it's like it like, just
is it this extendable thing that pops out.
Speaker 2 (05:02):
Of Oh, it does extend. I was thinking it drops.
It really just extends. But it has this sort of
has this sort of like ledge on it. I don't know,
it's it's a very It looks like a dust buster.
Speaker 1 (05:13):
Yeah, like a dustbuster, I.
Speaker 2 (05:15):
Mean, but at first it looks like a piranha.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, it looks like a dustbuster, and it kind of
acts like a dust buster. So when it is hunting,
because this is carnivorous, it eats a small, small other
fish or invertebrates, it can shoot its jaw forward like
an extendable tube, and then it vacuums up its prey. Uh.
And when the jaw is extended, it is around half
(05:41):
as long as its entire body, so it is ridiculously
long compared to its body length. And yeah, so it
will try to suck up this these little, poor little
animals from crevices in the coral reef. So typically these
are small crustaceans or fish and they're trying to hide
(06:01):
in the little nooks and crannies of the coral reef.
That's one of the reasons coral reefs are so popular
amongst fish and crustaceans. Is there a lot of areas
for them to hide. But then this fish just goes
into vacuum mode and sucks them right up. That seems unfair.
Speaker 2 (06:17):
It's terrible, It's absolutely terrible. It's not right at all,
this this thing, I mean, what kind of evolution is this?
Speaker 1 (06:24):
What?
Speaker 2 (06:24):
What one are you going to tell me? Here's this
is Katie. You can fill me in on this a
little bit. So you're gonna tell me that some fish
that just accidentally had a loose jaw like some you
know what I mean, like, and then all of a
sudden that fish started getting more food than the other fish,
so then everyone had a loose jaw like. I don't
just certain parts of evolution I just sound fishy to me.
Speaker 1 (06:47):
No part you think there's like a fish god trying
to make I don't know, yeah, I know, I mean,
it's it seems very strange, right. One thing to remember
is this is happening over a ridiculous timescale of millions
and millions of years.
Speaker 2 (07:06):
So there were lots of vacuum fish that had a
short vacuum that didn't work very well. Yeah, like a
million years Yeah, and they were just trying to vacuum
up the reef. But they all this, this sucks. I
was this is longer, and the fit crabs were all happy.
Million years later the crabs were like, oh Frank, these
things got oh man, these things are long and they
work now.
Speaker 1 (07:26):
Yeah, and you know it's using mechanisms right that are
part would be somewhat part of a fish without this adaptation,
so like the way that a jaw that can kind
of move forward when you look at a normal fish.
I don't know how much you watch fish. I used
to own an aquarium before I moved, and I would
watch my little fish. They'd eat their little their little foods,
(07:49):
and they do kind of have to like, uh, you know,
because you have to use a little bit of suction
if you're a fish to get food out of the water.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
I never thought of that.
Speaker 1 (07:57):
I never thought of it because like, you can't if
you just bite down right, like it could push that
it could push the food away because it's in the world.
So you have to use a little bit of section.
And so when they're doing it, they kind of they
do protrude their lips a little bit and then like
kind of suck it up. And so that's a typical
behavior of most fish. And so this is just an
(08:17):
extreme exaggeration that this fish has. So you can imagine
it's fish ancestor that didn't have this adaptation. Maybe it
just protrudes its jaw a little more and that's a
little more effective, and then that gets passed on until
you get to this point where it has this highly adapted,
ridiculously long jaw. So you have these traits and animals
(08:39):
like the neck of a giraffe, right, you don't you
don't go from sort of a normal like antelope type
of animal to directly to a giraffe. But over time,
the ones with the longer necks tend to be able
to get that food better than the other ones. And
so they they especially because like there's so much competent
(09:00):
titian in a coral reef. A coral reef is sort
of like the New York City of the aquatic world.
It is just this incredibly dense, highly populated area. And
so if you can have a special adaptation that allows
you to like get sort of a niche like get
food where other fish can't get food. That's going to
(09:20):
help you be successful because there's just so much competition.
Speaker 2 (09:25):
Yeah, I mean, uh, that makes sense. And then imagine
if a giraffe came down started messing around coral coral reef,
you could get stuff out of the very bottom of
this just like I mean, obviously the draft will be
attacked by these these whatever they.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
Are, these fish. Well, if you gave a giraffe, if
you gave a giraffe like a really really long snorkel, right,
it has to be it had to be a super
long snorkel, then yeah they could they could wreak some
havoc out of corn.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
Yeah, yeah, I'd like to see that. I'm supprised they
don't have a TV you show where they do.
Speaker 1 (10:00):
That TV show where they give land animals snorkels.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
And just like improper it's called like improper ecosystem, right, right.
Speaker 1 (10:12):
Let's get a giraffe. Wet is the name of the.
Speaker 2 (10:14):
More Exciting, More Exciting Ecosystem, hosted by Joe Rogan's.
Speaker 1 (10:19):
Joe Rogan would do that? That is that is that
totally would Yeah, just like he'd put a shark on
land and be like, hey, we gave this shark a
helmet full of water. Let's see how this shark does
on the plane.
Speaker 2 (10:33):
You're right, You're right, yeah.
Speaker 1 (10:34):
And a lion underwater.
Speaker 2 (10:38):
Joe Rogan would try and fight, he'd.
Speaker 1 (10:39):
Try to fight. He well, he put a shark in
a wrestling ring, right, yes, and then try to fight it.
But it'd be unfair to this shark.
Speaker 2 (10:48):
Yeah, it's no good. I think maybe it should be
like we got to get I'm sorry I mentioned Joe
Rogan because he was trying to fight the animals.
Speaker 1 (10:56):
I do always need an apology for anyone who ever
mentions Joe Rogan.
Speaker 2 (10:59):
Yeah. I don't like to mention it either. It ruined
my morning already. But but you know, like maybe just giraffe.
Introducing a giraffe is the name of the show or
something like that. Just a giraffe, the new giraffes in
ecosystems where they don't belong.
Speaker 1 (11:12):
Right, just like see where you can put a giraffe.
Speaker 2 (11:15):
It's just see what happens.
Speaker 1 (11:16):
It's obviously exploitative of the giraffe. But you know a
lot of reality TV is exploitation.
Speaker 2 (11:23):
Gosh, oh my goodness, you think anybody have a problem
putting a giraffe in. It's a weird situation for TV rating,
No way, not.
Speaker 1 (11:30):
These days, not in today's, not days back in the day,
a day.
Speaker 2 (11:38):
Like when people are diving horses off.
Speaker 1 (11:40):
Of plan I feel like it's like, yeah, I feel
like it's the opposite. We were more likely to have
giraffe TV back in the day where you made it
like probably people would make like a giraffe fight a
chimp or something.
Speaker 2 (11:51):
Yeah. No, and the giraft can't even see the chimp.
It's just looking at sky. Yeah, the draft like clouds
and stuff.
Speaker 1 (11:59):
Yeah, exactly, Yeah, yeah, you got it on the Johnny
Carson Show.
Speaker 2 (12:04):
This giraffe and the draft, Like the draft doesn't see
the Johnny Carson Show. It just sees like the.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
Light trust right, it gets it keeps hitting the boom,
trying to meete with the boom, and the boom operator confused.
Speaker 2 (12:16):
You forget that drafts don't see stuff a ground level.
Speaker 1 (12:20):
Yeah, but yeah, this sling jaw rass can shoot out
its john just a fraction of a second. You can't
normally see it almost doing it because it's so fast.
But there have been slowed down videos so you can
see it in all its wonderful weirdness, shooting its jaw
out and sucking up.
Speaker 2 (12:39):
I wonder who like saw that first. I mean, it's
gotta be you got to catch it in the act
because it looks like a normal fish. It looks like
a normal fish until like someone scuba diving had to
like kept a pretty cool s eye on that thing.
Thank God for people who take these take the time
to look at these animals.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Absolutely no, I mean it takes so much patience to
find to do like sort of observational research where you're
looking at these But yeah, I mean a lot of
the ocean animals. We know the most about our animals
that inhabit coral reefs because we can reach them, right,
We can relatively easy go there and watch them. You
can snorkel, you can scuba dive. It's easy. Like, there's
(13:21):
a lot of stuff about animals in the ocean we
don't know, and that's usually in like the deep ocean,
out in the open where like it's really like a
lot of whale behavior even though they're so huge. You'd
think we'd know everything about say like a blue whale,
but we don't because we're simply not over there. And
it's really hard to like get a person or even
(13:42):
a camera and watch them enough to know exactly what
they're doing at all times.
Speaker 2 (13:48):
Because they'll kick your a.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Blue whale just like flexing and smack, they'll.
Speaker 2 (13:57):
Kick your acts. You're not going to see our secrets nowt.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
I love that. I love that.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
I twifounds, I will kick your as.
Speaker 1 (14:09):
I remember that Joe Rogan thing where Joe Rogan tried
to wrestle a blue whale and he just.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
He was yeah, totally yeah, and he was trying.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
To like, yeah, yeah, trying to do this. You ever
heard of Joe Rogan half Nelson. Yeah, that's why Joe
Rogan is no longer alive. So another fun fact about
these fish is actually that and this is the case
for a lot of species of fish, so they are
not unique in this, but females can turn into males
(14:39):
if the conditions are right, and will change into the
male's colors. So I get yeah, I mean this this
happens with a number of fish where when they're when
the population conditions are favorable for them to turn into
a male to mate, they will turn into males. And
I mean this is yeah, yeah, and there are fish
(14:59):
that turned from males into females. It's it is a
lot a lot more fluid of a situation than we
might assume, get it, fluid of a situation water, And
that is like.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
That's pretty pretty uh telling as far as you know
what's going on politically. Just this idea that everything's I
mean either or it's not. It's not true.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
I mean I often so the thing is like, in
terms of human gender expression, right, like animal we don't
we shouldn't need like oh this, you know, animals have
these these behaviors because it's a human thing, right, it's
a cultural human thing. We don't need. It's sort of
like saying like, well, we should be able to have
marriage because birds sometimes are monogamous, right, Like, well now
(15:47):
we should be No, No, I know that's not what
you mean. But I'm saying like we don't need to
look to animals for justification. But you do see a
lot of people say like, well, it's just biology or
like try to biologiar like it's not natural exactly.
Speaker 2 (16:03):
No. The argument they make is, yes, that the fucking
Matt Walsh's of the world, that there's like this strict
you know, you know, of course, in their view, you
know that it came from God, that God made these
very specific types of things, you know, and that's just
not true. God did a lot of very out there
and vague and interesting stuff. And then and it's the
(16:27):
idea that things are rigid is just this religious made
up thing.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
Yeah, people will claim like, well, it's just a biological
fact that you see in every animal, and it's just like,
well that is categorically false. It's not true at all.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
That's incredible. Yeah, it's just it's just a yeah, it's
just an argument about like if they're going to argue
that God made things, then you know they're just not
being honest about.
Speaker 1 (16:51):
Then we should then we should like dislocate our.
Speaker 2 (16:54):
Jaws right exactly, and you know that, you know, there
might be somebody doing somewhere we just can't see because
they won't let us get close enough.
Speaker 1 (17:06):
All right, that's a good segway. Next. Yeah, so we
are going to take a quick break, but when we
get back, we are going to look at another animal
with a very long face. So we are going to
(17:26):
talk about the long beaked echidna. So the long beaked
echidna are a species of monotorum found in New Guinea.
So have you ever seen an echidna before, Chris, I
think so, but.
Speaker 2 (17:41):
I didn't necessarily, I don't think I knew. No, I mean,
I guess I have, but I didn't know they had long,
long noses.
Speaker 1 (17:49):
Yeah, yeah, so some of them do. So there are
a few species of echidna, and the long beaked echidna
have these enormously long snouts. So it has a stout body,
body covered in thick hairs and spines. It looks a
little bit like a hedgehog with thicker, more stump like
legs and just this a really long tube like snout
(18:12):
and tiny head, which its head is so small it's
kind of laughable, like it just it looks more like
just this little peanut head and then this really long snout,
tiny beady eyes. So there are three species of long
beak to kidna, the Eastern, Western, and Sir David's long
(18:33):
beak to kidna, named after David Attenborough because that guy
is everywhere. He just he's got he's got his hands
on every animal.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
Wow. Yeah, but yeah, that's interesting.
Speaker 1 (18:48):
Puts his name on it, just like he cooked. I
think he goes around and just points to animals and
he's like, that's mine. That's also mine, that one's mine.
But you know, in his in his in his British accent.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Yeah yeah, he's a monster now.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Noted conservationist, beloved, beloved conservationist, naturalist, animal lover. Uh who
like he's basically like the Gandolf of evolutionary biology. Everyone
loves him. He's sweet. He's a monster.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
Though, I mean yeah, it's like Jacques Cousto didn't like
name the reef like a reef, like he didn't name Jack.
Speaker 1 (19:37):
He didn't name it a Jacques. Yeah, yeah, okay, Jacques
Cousta's yeah, he didn't discover. To be fair, David Attenborough
didn't name this echidna after himself. It was the researchers
named this echidna after David Attenborough. So he's not good. Listen, David, Well,
(20:01):
we named kidna after you. How about it?
Speaker 2 (20:06):
They want to go to parties as house do?
Speaker 1 (20:08):
I mean? He does throw a wild party? Is David Attenborough?
You know it?
Speaker 2 (20:13):
So this is David Attenborough's a kidnap. That's one kind.
It doesn't have a long nose that they have.
Speaker 1 (20:18):
It has a long nose as well, So there are
three species of long beak to kidna, and Sir David's
long beak to kidna is one of them. The other
ones have the sort of less exciting names of Eastern
long beak to kidna and Western long beak to kidnap
because one is found in the eastern region and the
other is found in the western region of.
Speaker 2 (20:39):
I'll tell you one thing, I bet you man, when
old David saw this his first echidna, he must add
quite a shock because he came around. If that thing
came around a corner and you'd never seen one before,
you would definitely freak out. Oh good heavens, especially if
you're stoned.
Speaker 1 (20:57):
Yeah, I mean we all we all know that David
Attenborough's probably.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
Oh yeah, that was He deserves it.
Speaker 1 (21:05):
He's worked hard.
Speaker 2 (21:06):
So what do you what if you're looking at that
many animals? I mean, come on, come on, So the
guy spent his whole life looking at animals. The guy's stone.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
I mean, we're not saying definitively for legal reasons, but
he own monster.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
He's a monster and he stone.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
We're getting sued by David Attinborough. No, So I when
you think of an echidna, I mean if you do
think of a kidness, which I hope you do, you
might be thinking of a smaller animal like a platypus.
Like I think people's perspectives of what a pat like
how big a platypus is, at least for me, I
always thought of a platypus as being kind of bigger.
(21:45):
But they're actually quite small. They're like they sort of
just like fit in maybe two hands. But yeah, no,
they're actually quite little. But a kidness, yeah, they're very
as long as they don't sting you with their venomous spike.
The male platypuses have a venomous spike that they can
(22:07):
jab you with.
Speaker 2 (22:07):
Which Jesus yep, David's David spike.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
David spike, Sir David's spike, please put some honor on
his name.
Speaker 2 (22:19):
Sorry, sorry, sorry.
Speaker 1 (22:22):
Yeah, So the echidna, I've always thought of a kidness
as being pretty small, but echidnas, some species of kidneys,
can be quite big. So uh, they range in size,
but the western long beaked echidna is the largest and
grows to be around thirty five pounds or over sixteen kilograms.
(22:44):
So like it's a it's like a it's a huge yeah,
it's like a large pug almost. It's it's too much.
Speaker 2 (22:53):
That's too much kidnap for me.
Speaker 1 (22:57):
You can take about half that amount of a kidnap.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
I don't want that much a kid in the coming
at me, not with a snout like that. This thing
looks like a It looks like an elephant, but it's
like the elephant got like covered in prickers and like
got its nose hardened. I mean, it's a it's an
interesting animal. But I mean, like, all right, so I
want to know, Katie, Well, go ahead, you keep going.
(23:19):
I just want to know why it's noses.
Speaker 1 (23:21):
Yeah. So they live in forests and they eat insects,
and they use their extremely long snouts to root up
and slurp up earthworms like spaghetti through like a long
vacuum attachment. Yeah. Their beak also has electro receptors, which
are speculated to allow them to detect the faint electrical
signals that come from the muscle movements of earthworms, so
(23:45):
they can locate them and just hoover them up. Like
it's like a vacuum and a metal detector all in one,
except it's detecting earthworms.
Speaker 2 (23:54):
Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, And it can insane.
Speaker 1 (23:58):
Yeah, it's it's nuts. It's like it has a probe
that it can use to find earthworms and then slurp
them up. It's functional and stylish.
Speaker 2 (24:10):
That's you know like that. Yeah, I mean it's just
I kind of think of animals like I always think
of everything like the politics or so in my head,
and I always think about like people just like just
freaking out humans just being so broken in this way
where they they can't stop worrying and trying to dominate
each other, and meanwhile there's somebody just slurping up earthworms
(24:33):
and having the time of their lives.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
I mean this, I this is a lesson I think. Yes,
like when the world really gets to when you're getting
stressed out, when you feel like, oh we're all we're
all so much at each other's throats, just remember there's
this little weird, prickly guy in the forest slurping up
earthworms that it's really long tube snout.
Speaker 2 (24:55):
Yeah, having the time of his God.
Speaker 1 (24:57):
Just enjoying it, enjoying life.
Speaker 2 (24:59):
Yeah. And we always say like, oh, they don't know,
you know, humans are always like, oh they don't they
don't have fun, they don't know that it's fun. But
you don't know.
Speaker 1 (25:08):
I don't know. I think they have fun. I mean, like,
I mean, obviously to us, maybe worms are a little
bit gross. But imagine if spaghetti, right, or lasagna, you
could just found that find spaghetti on the ground and
go around slurving up spaghetti on the ground.
Speaker 2 (25:26):
I haven't had I haven't had breakfast yet. Sound pretty good, like.
Speaker 1 (25:30):
I mean, it's I if only I had no dignity,
I and I'm close, I'm close to having no dignity.
I would definitely enjoy just dropping a plate a nice
spaghetti on the ground and slurping it up. That would
be fun.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
Yeah, humans are too uptight to do any of the
fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (25:47):
I know, I know. Just the fact that our culture
doesn't allow us to have floor spaghetti, it really gets me. Yeah.
So again, it's like.
Speaker 2 (25:57):
Call David. They call it David spaghetti.
Speaker 1 (25:59):
Third day it spaghetti. Excuse you?
Speaker 2 (26:05):
I like you trying to cover cover yourself because you're
afraid of the losses.
Speaker 1 (26:08):
He's very litigious. He will get you.
Speaker 2 (26:11):
He will love I love that man.
Speaker 1 (26:15):
I do too.
Speaker 2 (26:15):
He's no, I don't know, I don't have an opinion
about him, but I'm sure he's nice, he's very I mean,
if he's discovering animals, he's way. He's part of the good.
Speaker 1 (26:24):
Yeah, he's a conservationist. He's a good got a good voice,
a lot of good things. And maybe maybe he's like
I'm not saying if he does or doesn't slurp up
spaghetti on the ground, I won't I won't come on
either side of that.
Speaker 2 (26:38):
Oh no, I'm not gonna think of that.
Speaker 1 (26:41):
I'm not gonna say he does or doesn't do it.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
I'm what if he does get crazy?
Speaker 1 (26:45):
Well, I don't know, That's what I'm saying.
Speaker 2 (26:47):
What's next. You know, he's got his head in a
reef and he's trying to suck stuff.
Speaker 1 (26:51):
If he does, he's allowed to do that because because
he's got Sir David's Sir David's a kid now, I think,
not a provingly his assistants.
Speaker 2 (27:02):
Like, hang him upside down. Probably David wants to slurp
the reef.
Speaker 1 (27:11):
Get the harnessed, Sir David wat, Oh my god, already
get in position. Maybe it's important for conservation for him
to understand what it's like to slurp a reef. I'm
gonna I wish he's a hero.
Speaker 2 (27:25):
He's a hero.
Speaker 1 (27:27):
What other what other night of the Queen's Order would
slurp a reef for conservation? David Attenborough would because he's.
Speaker 2 (27:35):
Not your McCartney.
Speaker 1 (27:36):
No, no, he wouldn't. He wouldn't want to ruin his
hair by going underwater. I don't know much about.
Speaker 2 (27:43):
You're right about that, No, no, you're right, Okay, exactly right.
Speaker 1 (27:48):
So echidnas, like other monotremes such as platypuses, lay eggs,
so the females have a pouch where they incubate the eggs,
and the eggs hatch and the young are called, which
is adorable.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (28:02):
These puggles will lick up milk that oozes from their
mother's underside without the help of nipples. So monotremes typically
don't have nipples. Instead, the milk just kind of seeps
out through pores, and they're young just kind of lap
it up. Uh, because they don't have any dignity, which
I think is very free.
Speaker 2 (28:25):
That's interesting, that's weird.
Speaker 1 (28:27):
It's it.
Speaker 2 (28:28):
No, I wonder why they concentrated so much on the
nose and forgot the nipples.
Speaker 1 (28:32):
They forgot, they just forgot.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
You know.
Speaker 1 (28:34):
It's a lot it's a lot to think about. Uh.
The males do have spurs on the back of their
legs like platypuses, but in achidnas they are not venomous.
They have lost their venoms. So echidnas, despite looking maybe
a little more menacing that a platypus, is I think
less scary because they're not gonna jab you with that
(28:54):
venomous spike. They also have kloacas, which I like to
call the hole that does it all, just like birds
and reptiles. So uh yeah, it is. A kloaca is
a hole which through which everything from urinating, defecating and
(29:15):
sex stuff happens, which I think is very efficient.
Speaker 2 (29:19):
Wow, what's it called cloaca?
Speaker 1 (29:22):
Wow? Birds have it?
Speaker 2 (29:23):
I bet I bet you anything. There's a death metal
band called whatever that is.
Speaker 1 (29:27):
Let's see, I want to find out.
Speaker 2 (29:30):
There must be cloaca. Yeah, like that's a good name
if you're starting, like a thrash metal or grind.
Speaker 1 (29:36):
Core band, right, Cloaca core because.
Speaker 2 (29:39):
They like to explain it on stage what it is like.
They probably go like welcome work and in case you
didn't know what it was.
Speaker 1 (29:46):
So there's a kloaca group in London.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
Yep, and there's a taken Cool.
Speaker 1 (29:53):
Formed in two thousand and five in the UK. It's
atmospheric sludge metal. Yeah, that's my favorite kind of metal.
Atmospheric sludge.
Speaker 2 (30:03):
That's one of the best kinds.
Speaker 1 (30:08):
So uh. Fun fact about a kidnas A kid does
have four headed penises.
Speaker 2 (30:13):
So oh my god.
Speaker 1 (30:15):
Yeah, it looks like a little high five. So they
don't urinate out of their penis. That is actually what
the kloaca is for. They use the penis exclusively for mating,
and they store the penis in the kloaca and like
have it kind of like flop out whenever they're ready
for mating. Store it. Yeah, you know, it goes in there.
Speaker 2 (30:36):
Goodness. Wow.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Interesting like socks in your sock.
Speaker 2 (30:39):
Drawer storing your penis.
Speaker 1 (30:42):
Sure. Uh, some animals would think it's weird that we
don't do that.
Speaker 2 (30:48):
Where do you keep your penis?
Speaker 1 (30:49):
Yeah, just leave it out hanging out there really all
the time. Wow. So they Yeah, it looks like a
weird little like I don't know, it looks like a
weird little hand timmy.
Speaker 2 (30:58):
Uh.
Speaker 1 (31:00):
And it's yeah, it's not the prettiest looking thing to
look at, but you know.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
It's horrifying looking I'm you're I feel like you're under
playing what a nightmare thing is. This looks like absolutely,
I mean, I can't even it looks extremely gross. I
mean it looks like Okay, well, I mean, you know,
I'm sure not to them. I mean, I'm sure it
looks awesome to them. I think, you know, obviously, but
(31:29):
it looks like a you know, I'm not going to
say what it looks like, but it's a very meaty
and raw looking thing.
Speaker 1 (31:36):
Yeah, it looks a little bit like some kind of
weird role Deli meats.
Speaker 2 (31:40):
But that's what it looks like. You're right. It looks
like three four rolls of Deli meat.
Speaker 1 (31:46):
Yeah, it does. So. They can only use two heads
of the penis at the same time when they were mating,
and it's thought that having multiple heads allow them to
mate more frequently without break time. Uh but yeah, that
is the wonderful echidnap with its a worm detecting snout.
It's sleaky, milky belly laid eggs as a foreheaded penis,
(32:10):
and it's crazy the size of like a hefty pug.
Speaker 2 (32:17):
Do they does any Well, I'm just I guess you
couldn't keep that as a pet. I mean people probably
try and keep everything you probably wish you you're not
supposed to do it anyway.
Speaker 1 (32:25):
But yeah, I don't think it'd be great. I mean,
you've seen it's wiener.
Speaker 2 (32:31):
Like, that's what I'm saying. You don't want to start
your day looking at that foreheaded, foreheaded deli Deli.
Speaker 1 (32:37):
Meat thing exactly. They've got they've got a natural anti
poaching method, which is just like, have you seen my wiener?
It's really weird. You probably don't want to deal with it.
Speaker 2 (32:49):
Yeah, they are kind of cute, though.
Speaker 1 (32:51):
They are cute. They're very cute. I love them. I
wouldn't want one as a pet, but I do love them,
and I would like to hug it. Well, I mean
at a zoo. I've seen them, but no, I have
not personally had the honor of hugging and a kidnaped.
Speaker 2 (33:08):
I just realized that's that the head of an echidna
with that nose is what those plague masks.
Speaker 1 (33:15):
It does kind of look like I don't know if
they were meant to look like an echidna, but they
do definitely look like them a lot. Like Yeah, yeah,
absolutely the cutest, the cutest little plague doctors out there.
Speaker 2 (33:31):
Yeah, they're very cute. I mean, like imagine they had
no they don't know that they have so much going
on either. They're just like, I'm minding my business. Stop
looking at my talking about where my milk comes from.
Speaker 1 (33:41):
Yeah, yeah, just minding their own business. Snorful.
Speaker 2 (33:44):
It's not my fault. I don't have any nipples. I
don't know about that.
Speaker 1 (33:48):
Yeah, exactly, I'm trying to.
Speaker 2 (33:50):
Get some worms. I'm trying to eat some worms. Stop
photographing me.
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Just trying to live their life, stay in their lane
and snorrefl up ground spaghetti, and we keep talking about
their lack of nipples.
Speaker 2 (34:03):
It's right.
Speaker 1 (34:04):
I hate this Instagram culture where we're like talking about
like who does or doesn't have nipples and just you know,
it's yes.
Speaker 2 (34:11):
And like they're yeah, and they're looking at us like,
you know, you think you're normal looking buddy.
Speaker 1 (34:17):
Yeah, it's a matter of perspective. It's a matter of yeah.
Speaker 2 (34:22):
Your penis only has one head. Loser.
Speaker 1 (34:26):
We're gonna take a quick break and when we get back,
we're gonna talk about the last animal of today's show
that has a long face in another direction. So far,
we've been talking about long faces that shoot forward? What
about long faces that go side to side or I
guess that would be a would that be a wide
face or a long face. I guess that'd be a
(34:48):
wide face, like a horizontal face.
Speaker 2 (34:52):
I'm trying to find whatever this is. Oh, here it is. Yeah, okay,
this is like oh wow, that's a okay, yeah, that's
like a yeah, that's like a long wide looks like
a barbell, looks like as a bud on its teeth,
like a huge or a double headed match, like a
double headed match.
Speaker 1 (35:12):
Mouth, yeah, like a baton or something. Yeah. Yeah. This
is the Telopsis dalmani fly or Malaysian stock eyed fly.
It has a ridiculously wide set face with long eye
stalks that jut out perpendicular to the fly's head. Uh.
And they like to hang out around streams any rotting vegetation,
(35:36):
so they have a chill life. They live on the
roots of plants that dangle near streams, and they have
a whole, the whole social life where males will compete
to establish their territory on these root systems, and if
they are successful, they will be able to accumulate a
harem of females. The females will choose which mate they
(36:00):
wish to join on their little root area, and it
seems like a lot of the female's decision is based
on how long the male's eye stalks are.
Speaker 2 (36:13):
Wow, these that's not fair though. What about the other
ones that have short eyestalks? What are they? What are
they supposed to do? Plants? Suck on plants all by themselves.
Speaker 1 (36:23):
I just go suck on planet all by yourself, all
by your lunesome sucks.
Speaker 2 (36:27):
I know, I know, I think those short I think
it's okay if your eyes aren't four feet from your head,
their eyes are like seriously like they're like, there's like, okay, Yeah.
It's like if you had two your eyes were like
two like two sticks coming out of the size of
your head, and your eyes are on the ends of
the sticks. So you're looking at not you're looking like
(36:48):
it way you're looking at You're not seeing what's right
in front of your face. You're seeing things that are
like four feet to either side of your face.
Speaker 1 (36:55):
It's like if you had, yeah, two selfie sticks attached
to your face permanently with eyeb on the end. That's
probably what's you know, Brave New Future everybody with selfie sticks.
Are people still using selfie sticks? I actually don't know.
Speaker 2 (37:08):
We don't hear about them as much. I'll tell you
that there's too much in the news. There's too much
in the news cycle these days for selfie sticks to
get a spot.
Speaker 1 (37:15):
Yeah, our twenty four hour news cycle really pushed selfie
sticks out of there. But yeah, these are like selfie
sticks on the sides of their heads, so they these
istalks are so long they can be longer than the
fly's body length itself, which is a little absurd, a
little bit interesting to invest that much of your body
(37:37):
into your eyestalks. So females do also have the exaggerated
eye stocks, so it's not a trait that has only
evolved in males to attract females. Females also have them
there usually not as as exaggerated maybe as males, but
researchers have found that males also select for female with
(38:00):
wide eye stocks as well. So apparently both male and
female stock eyed flies really like long eye stocks for
some reason. And there are actually many different species of
flies that have these long eye stocks. In fact, there
are eight families of flies that have these long eyes stocks,
so it is not an like one time accident that
(38:23):
happened with one family of flies, when like evolutionary oopsie,
this keeps happening for some reason.
Speaker 2 (38:30):
Yeah, do they know? Why does anybody know why they have?
Why are those helpful for it to see? Or is
it more like predators don't want something that looks like
you know, that's carrying like a.
Speaker 1 (38:43):
Wand I mean it's still it's still somewhat of a
debate why this is the case. But the main thing
seems to be sexual selection, where they are selecting mates
that have this trait. Now, maybe originally that's so interest
maybe you're i know, like maybe originally having those eye
(39:04):
stocks probably did help with their vision, right, like give
them a wider range of vision. But then they started
it seems like this might be a case of runaway
selection where they started to select for like, well, you
have long eyetocks and therefore that helps you see, so
you're better mate. But then like it kept getting more
and more exaggerated. There's some of the some of the
(39:28):
theories are things like it is costly to have such
long eye stocks, so you have to be really fit
to be able to have such long eye stalks. There
there are multiple theories, but the main thing seems that
seems to be driving this extreme length of the eye
stocks is is mate choice sexual selection, which is always
(39:49):
I think sexual selection produces some of the weirdest traits
because it just is like an aesthetic trait that keeps
getting more and more exaggerated because these an are not
necessarily selecting it based on practicality, but because they like
how it looks, because it for some reason it is
(40:10):
triggering their would be.
Speaker 2 (40:12):
Like a bodybuilder. Yeah, if a person was a bodybuilder
and they got their muscles so big that they couldn't.
Speaker 1 (40:17):
Even use them basically, yeah, I mean that, yeah.
Speaker 2 (40:19):
But that would get them. Yeah, somebody would find that attractive. Definitely.
I mean there's definitely people who like really outlandish muscles,
but they don't really serve a purpose because then you
can't move.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
Yeah, no exactly. I mean I think about how like
we have fake eyelashes, right, that's not really practical anymore.
Our eyelashes are meant to kind of help shield our
eyes from things like dirt and stuff. And then and
then you start putting a fake eyelash on there that's
really big, really exaggerated, and it is you know, it's
(40:50):
this attractive thing, but it's it's not it's something that
we have. You know, well, everyone has their own taste
about it.
Speaker 2 (40:56):
But I just thought about it. I just thought of
Attenborough's eyelash. I'm still.
Speaker 1 (41:02):
Sir Sir David's eyelash, how many times?
Speaker 2 (41:06):
Uh, I'm trying to provoke him. Is he alive? Yes?
Speaker 1 (41:12):
Yeah, of course he's alive.
Speaker 2 (41:13):
I just provoked him.
Speaker 1 (41:14):
He's like five hundred years old, but he's alive.
Speaker 2 (41:19):
I'm looking at an animal right now.
Speaker 1 (41:23):
That's so much his brand.
Speaker 2 (41:26):
I've never been so alive. I'm looking at something that can.
Speaker 1 (41:30):
He's he's it's all that. It's all that slurp, but
on coral reefs. It's really good for your longevity. So
many antioxidants down there.
Speaker 2 (41:38):
He does it every morning.
Speaker 1 (41:39):
Yeah morning, it's very refreshing. So the stock eye, so
the stock eyed fruit fly found in China has ridiculously
long eye stalks as well. The males will compete for
females by lining up their eye stocks together to see
who's as bigger. So wow, yeah, it's just this like
competition for who's got the longest eye stalks. It's really interesting.
Speaker 2 (42:02):
Crazy, you're crazy, because you think you think of these
bugs looking at at a person, looking at a bug
looking at another bug, and like judging the eyestocks like
I mean, I guess, you know, we would be we
would be led to believe by scientists that they just
do it instinctively, so they're not in there, they're not
actually being like I like those eyestocks better, but I
(42:24):
mean they still have to have some I mean, that's
such a selection. Is such a strange thing, and an
animal that's supposed to be operating on instinct, like, but
there's a certain amount of attraction which we take all
the sexual you know, it's just instinct, it's just instinct.
But I wonder, you know, I always wonder whether they
could just be like you know, they could be on
the right track. Like maybe who knows if ey stocks
(42:46):
might be the hottest thing in the world. We just don't,
you know, we might need them.
Speaker 1 (42:49):
We don't even know, you know, we don't have But
I'm not saying we need to get eye stocks, but
maybe they're onto something.
Speaker 2 (42:57):
I mean, who knows. If I'm not on ey stocks
right now, walk down the avenue.
Speaker 1 (43:03):
You'd be you'd be the bill of the ball. You'd
be the talk of the town. I mean over It's true,
you wouldn't want to go to a china shop and
knocking over to people go to an antique store. Uh yeah,
But I mean it is interesting because yes, I mean
I think that in general, like a lot of the
(43:23):
things that we have that make us feel human, like
emotions and judgment and stuff. It originally, you know, originally
as we started out, like we did start out similar
to something like insects, where you know, we maybe a
lot of our quote unquote emotions are sort of more instinctive.
But then the line between like when do our instincts
(43:44):
and stuff and our our our impulses become emotions. It's
it's not clear to me when exactly that happens. Like,
I feel like mice probably feel emotions. Do are there
insects that feel emotions? Maybe it's just how do you know?
You can't get it. They they are very very simple,
so it's hard to imagine that they have very complex emotion.
(44:07):
But yeah, maybe there's maybe there's some joy that they have.
Look at a real long set of eye stalks.
Speaker 2 (44:15):
Yeah, and their perception of time might be different so people, Yeah,
they live such a short time but they for them,
it might be eons, you know, they might have like
a very full life in like one day.
Speaker 1 (44:24):
Yeah. We actually on the show we've talked about before
this uh flicker fusion rate where it's uh the oh
basically brain processing time. So some it's speculated that things
like flies have this, uh it's a very slowed down
flicker fusion, so that they are able to basically like
(44:46):
if you're if you're trying to swat a fly, they
see things potentially in this very very slow motion, very
high frame rate. Yeah yeah, so like yeah, yeah, and
one way to catch a fly is actually if you're
really slow, they may not be able to detect your
(45:07):
movement as well because you're going so slow that they
don't even really notice that you're moving. So you can
kind of like sneak up on a fly that way.
I bet you're wondering how do they, like, how do
they grow these things? How do they emerge out of
these like where do how do they grow these enormous
(45:27):
eye stalks? So when the icetock fruit fly first emerges
out of their shell from their pupil stage, their ice
stocks are actually short, but over the course of two
hours with a lot of rubbing and maneuvering. The ice
stocks get longer and fill with fluid, and at first
they are really wiggly, they look like a scrunched up
(45:49):
pipe cleaner. But eventually they straighten out, they darken, they
harden into the adult set of ice stocks. So I'm
sharing with you and all, including the show notes, the
most ridiculous set of photos I've ever seen from a
scientific journal of this newly hatched ice stock fruitfly, and
(46:11):
it's istocks growing into its adult proportions, and you can
see like it's just it's wild, like it looks like
at first it's just these wiggly squiggly things, and then
it gets longer and longer and then straighter, and then
finally it has these ridiculously long eyestalks.
Speaker 2 (46:31):
I'm looking at it right now, and I just reminded
me of the bottom left photo. Looks like Daniel Johnston's.
You know, Daniel Johnston, the musician. No, oh, he's a
he's he's considered an outsider artist. But he he painted,
(46:52):
and he painted like Antenna's with eyes on the end,
just like that.
Speaker 1 (46:59):
Oh, interesting, very.
Speaker 2 (47:01):
Very that was his he I made I wonder if
he was aware of these animals, these bugs. I mean
he often drew these these creatures with with like long
hoselike things coming out of their head with eyes on
the end.
Speaker 1 (47:16):
Daniel Johnston painting drugs.
Speaker 2 (47:20):
See yeah, bugs, he does like uh.
Speaker 1 (47:28):
Yeah, yeah, oh yeah that little frog thing, yeah right, yeah, no,
I see it.
Speaker 2 (47:36):
Yeah, that's just reminded me very much of the bottom
left hand corner of that.
Speaker 1 (47:42):
Yeah no, I totally see that. That's really interesting and.
Speaker 2 (47:46):
I didn't notice it until you see the color. That's
just like his thing. Yeah, I wonder they're very beautiful.
I like the before the growing into the eyestalks is
a very fun looking experience, Like it's kind of fun
when they're droopy and stuff.
Speaker 1 (48:00):
Yeah, yeah, it's all squiggly.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
They are, as opposed to when they get like stiff,
then they just look hot.
Speaker 1 (48:11):
Well, on that note, before we go, I'm gonna play
a little game called the Mystery Animal Sound Game Guess
Who's squawking? Every week I play a mystery animal sound
and you the listener, and you the guest, try to
guess who is making that sound. Uh. Last week's mister
animal sound was a tough one. The hint was this
(48:33):
this Madagascar native is named after the following alarm call.
All right, you hear that little like, yeah, yeah, yeah,
What is that?
Speaker 2 (48:50):
I don't know. I don't know what that is. Sounds
like a bird. Is that a bird?
Speaker 1 (48:53):
It is not a bird. It does sound a little
bit like a bird. I might have guessed bird if
I didn't know what this was. A no. This is
a type of lemur found in Madagascar called the she fuck.
Congratulations to Anti B, Marion D and Emily M for
guessing correctly. So there are nine species of she fuck.
(49:16):
They have white fur on their backs, brown fur on
their bellies, and black skin on their faces, hands and feet,
and yellow eyes. I think they're adorable. They have a
long tail and their feet are optimized for leaping from
tree branches, and they are so optimized for living in
trees and leaping and climbing that while they are on
(49:38):
the ground, they can't really walk, but instead they leap
to get around. So they kind of do this like
jumping sachet sort of movement just to get around.
Speaker 2 (49:50):
That sounds nice.
Speaker 1 (49:51):
It is fun. When I was little, I took ballet
and we learned how to sachet, and so I would
just do that through the house because it's actually a
pretty easy way to get around, is more fun than walking.
Speaker 2 (50:05):
Yeah, we limit our we limit ourselves.
Speaker 1 (50:08):
Skipping is fun in an interview efficient, if we didn't
have so many hang ups about skipping, I think it'd
be a fun way to get around.
Speaker 2 (50:14):
Yep. So eating spaghetti, eating spaghetti, eating spaghetti off the ground,
Sasha in around the.
Speaker 1 (50:21):
Things I would do from out from under society's crushing
expectations exactly. So. They are such good climbers that they
are able to climb limestone spires to look for vegetation
that grows on these perilous natural flowers, and their cushioned
toepads allow them to navigate sharp thorns without injuries. So
(50:43):
they are tough little guys. They're adorable and they are tough.
And that sounds you just heard was a she fuck
calling out to its friends to help locate each other.
Speaker 2 (50:54):
So it's a cute sound.
Speaker 1 (50:55):
It's very cute. It's like a little chuck. Yeah, So
onto this, So onto this week's mystery animal sound. The
hint is this, don't be too bitter if you can't
(51:16):
guess this one.
Speaker 2 (51:19):
Hm m hm hm.
Speaker 1 (51:25):
So Chris and he guesses as to who is squawking.
Speaker 2 (51:30):
No, I mean, I mean no, No, that's crazy sound.
That sounds like a that sounds like the sounds like
a car going by with a lot of bass.
Speaker 1 (51:38):
Yeah, it sounds like to me, it sounds like someone's
blowing on top of a bottle, you know, doing that cool?
Speaker 2 (51:44):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's I have No, I mean bitter, bitter,
don't get bitter the toad? Is it a toad?
Speaker 1 (51:54):
It's a good guess, but you'll find out if you're
correct on next week's episode of Creature Feature. If you
out there, think you know who is making that sound?
Right to me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com. Chris,
thank you so much for joining me for talking about
animals with a long face. I hope you don't have
a long face after listening to this. Where can people
(52:15):
find you?
Speaker 2 (52:17):
Oh? Thank you so much, Katie. It's always fun and
I find out stuff I'd never ever would know. And
you can find me on at the Crofton Show on
Twitter and Instagram, and I created a TikTok account, but
I haven't put anything up on it right, And you
can go get my book, The Advice King Anthology, which
(52:38):
came out. I'm Vander Billet University Press last year, and
you can listen to my awesome podcast Coldbrew got Me Standard.
Speaker 1 (52:49):
He's a real deal. He's drinking coldbrew right now if
you like. If you think it's just like a marketing strategy, no,
Katie said she saw it.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
We're on zoom, you know, because yes, I just and
she was like, it is that iced tea? I kind
of almost like iced tea? Almost got angry screened.
Speaker 1 (53:14):
Are you kidding through it against the camera.
Speaker 2 (53:18):
I'm a I'm an old time doc worker. I took
black coffee.
Speaker 1 (53:28):
Ahead, check those things out. Be forewarned that cold brew
or bus It's never iced tea, always cold brew.
Speaker 2 (53:38):
I got. You know, it's like I just switched. You know.
I used to drink a lot of alcohol, and now
I don't drink any alcohol. So I screw and it's
so much better, I gotta say. But it does interrupt
your sleep, so you gotta be careful people. No matter
how long your ey stocks are. You might feel like
you've got some long eye stocks and you can handle it,
but but it'll interrupt your sleep.
Speaker 1 (53:59):
Yeah, you gotta brew the cold but built with the
cold brew. You great, Yeah, that's it. Well, thank you,
guys so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show
and you leave a rating and review, I that means
so much to me. I read every single one of
your reviews and it really helps me out. Uh and
(54:20):
thank you so much to these space Cossics 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 Podcasts, or hey, guess what, alright
you listen to your favorite shows. I don't care. Whatever
you want to do. See you next Wednesday.
Creature Feature News
Host
Katie Goldin
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