December 22, 2025 • 45 mins
For centuries most people in Europe thought of rhinos as another form of mythical creature, like unicorns or griffins. However, this all changed when an enterprising sea captain brought a young, orphaned rhino named Clara back to his home country after his travels abroad. It's often said that fame can have a powerful effect on the average human being, but how does it affect rhinos? Join the guys and special guest Katie Goldin, host of the podcast Creature Feature, as they unravel the mystery.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
And we're back with this week's classic episode. I've been
no riddle me this. What's the most famous rhinoceros?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You know why? Clara the world's most famous rhinoceros? Man,
you know the answer to that?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Okay, Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I love the name Clara because it is it evokes
images of like a dainty Ballerina esque figure. I only
say that because of Clara.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
From The Nutcracker and the idea of maybe that's what
they were going for, because the idea of a rhinoceros
being a huge lumbering beast also being able to kind
of tippytoe around and pirouette is a little funny.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yeah, this is This was a really interesting one for us.
Back in twenty nineteen, we learned the story of an
interprising I'll see enterprising see captain who got a hold
of an orphaned rhino and made friends and took the
rhino with him back home. And we're doing this, by
(00:55):
the way, with a special guest, our dear friend, Katie Golden,
the host of the podcast Creature Feature.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
So let's jump right in and begin to unravel this
history mystery.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the
(01:37):
show Ridiculous Historians. Quick question for you, what's the most
amazing animal that you have seen up close in real life?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Hi?
Speaker 1 (01:46):
My name is Ben, my name is Nol.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I would say Ostrich if by amazing you mean terrifying, right,
because you're bird thing bird thing Ostrich in particular cause
I've got those gangly, weird necks and those really musculous talons,
and the the whole shape of the bird is just
rommed today.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Do you know if, for a relatively or comparatively brief
span of Earth's history, flightless birds large flightless birds with
a dominant species totally I.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Mean, aren't like Jurassic Park dinosaurs meant to have had feathers. Yes,
that is true. That is true.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Spielberg did not back down. Another person does not back down,
is our super producer, Casey Pegram.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah. That Tom Petty song is about him. It is.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It is a lot of Tom Petty's catalog is actually
based on the life and times of Casey Pegram.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah. It didn't seem to work out age wise and
timeline wise, but trust us it does. Trust us.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, the whole thing's a concept album. I would say
the most amazing animal that I have seen up close
for entirely subjective reasons would be a tiger. The most
amazing animal I've seen up close in the wild was
a brown bear. Did I tell you that story?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
No?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Were, I was not a survived at the end. I
was in boy Scouts and we were on a camping trip.
I had walked away from the campsite, and let me
put this delicately, I was peeing in a creek, which
you know, I probably shouldn't have been doing. And then
mid stream is the best way to put it. I
(03:19):
looked across the creek and I saw a bear on
the other side of the creek just chilling and staring
at me while I was midstream, and I didn't know
what to do, so I just kept going and then
I backed away. I walked backwards back to the campsite,
and the bear just stared at me.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
What you're describing, Ben, is the natural adaptation that was
the inspiration for the care Bear stair with a care
bear stare.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, as long as it wasn't the inspiration for that
Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle. What was that?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Where was he in a live action care Bears movie?
Speaker 1 (03:57):
No, he was in a movie with a bear.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Oh where where he eats? There he eats raw meat
and animal carcass and I think they gave him the
oscar for it.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, Casey, do you remember which one that was? That?
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Was it?
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Casey on the Case, Casey on the Case. Today's episode
is about several things. It is about an amazing animal
that very few of us get a chance to see
in the wild nowadays, and it's about the way fame
can affect people. And this is a very special episode
(04:29):
today because we are not entering into this fora alone
Well we're entering into it alone, but we're going to
exit it with company. Yes that's correct. Yes we do
have a surprise guest at the end. But our first guest,
at least in concept here spirit, in spirit, there we Go,
is actually not a person. Our first guest is a rhinoceros.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Sure not to be confused with the very depressing Smashing
Pumpkins song of the same name and actually, in retrospect,
highly pretentious. I was so in love with that stuff,
and I look, some of it holds up, but that song,
he's like, he's like planned a show. Trees and balloons.
What does that even mean? Billy Corgan, you know ice
(05:16):
cream Snow.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, I lump them in with a lot of bands
from that time period. Who if you don't pay attention
to the lyrics. I've said this before. I've had those
moments with Stone Temple Pilots as well, where I think,
you know, if I didn't understand English, I would love
this song. But that stuff like the fashion victims gnashed
their charcoal teeth. Oh that that's that's zero melancholi.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
My beef with the song Rhinoceros, not one mention of
a rhinoceros and the entire so I guess it's maybe
just the feeling of a rhinoceros. It has sort of
a rhinoceros like melancholy to it, which you know that
interest into the story only it's interesting. We'll get to
we'll get to it.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
It does. It does matter though, because for quite a
long time a rhinoceros was considered to be somewhat of
a mythical creature.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Right. There is a very famous etching by Albrecht Durer
that depicted a rhinoceros based on description alone in a
really cool way.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah yeah, fifteen fifteen woodcut, and it shows a rhinoceros
in profile, and it looks like it's dressed for war. Yeah,
like it came to kick button, chew bubble gum and
it's all out of gum.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Looks like one of those ones from like one of
those ones from The Black Panther. That there's that tribe
and that comes into play pretty heavily in the big
battle structure of the film. They ride these rhinoceros like
creatures that aren't quite the rhinoceroses that we know. They're
a little bit of an augmented rhinoceros, which is this
this etching is very much the case. It has an
(06:49):
extra horn on its back, which makes it look even
more fierce. Yep. But overall, pretty damn good depiction of
a rhino based on just word of mouth, right, yeah, especially.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Considering how how woefully inaccurate many depictions of this type
were at the time. Now, at this time in the
fifteen hundreds, many many people in Europe would place a
creature like the rhinoceros up there with a creature like
the griffin, the hippogriffis or the unicorns. You know, it's
a cool idea, but someone was a bit in their
(07:21):
cups or as are different Ben Franklin may have put
it they had been to speak with the King.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
The King. Yeah, and Ben Well, last thing, this Albert
sure etching really reminds me of battle Cat from He
Man because it's a very large, muscular creature decked out
in some very bespoke like armor and kind of a
helmet that goes over the rhino head.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
I remember that.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, you were a battle Cat. Yeah, he was Cringer
and then he turned into battle Cat.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah yeah, yeah, because he had to transform with he Man.
That's in one of the most creative names for any superhero.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
You never heard of the band Man Man. Yes, I
wonder if that's sort of a of a jab at
he Man. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I never understood why it was she Ra and she
Woman if it was he Man.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
That's a good point. No one knows. What. I will
say that the new she Rack cartoon is supposed to
be incredible. It's being held up there along with like
shows like Stephen Universes being very inclusive and very well
written and interesting.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
And handling trauma quite well. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, I really
want to check it out. Oh and speaking of checking
things out, Durer ultimately arrives at at least part of
this description via the courtesy of the first century Roman
author Plinny the Elder, And I love his description of
the rhinoceros knoll. He calls it fast, impetuous, and cunning,
(08:39):
the mortal enemy.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Of the elephants.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yeah, where is this covering for some nightman day man
stuff going on?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Time? No? And I think even like, what was what was?
What was he basing these observations on. Did plant? Were
there were there rhinoceroses in Rome? That's a good question.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
I have a feeling it was probably more word of mouth,
and he probably did some research based on people that
were traveling too far oign lands and then maybe interviewed them.
But he didn't strike me as the type that was
going to go off to India or Africa or anything
that wasn't really in the cards.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Plenty also got plenty of things wrong, you know what
I mean. It's not as if he could hop on
the internet or even visit a particularly well stocked library.
So he most likely Plenty that is, was getting his
accounts from Greek and Roman forays into India, and he
(09:29):
was describing an Indian rhinoceros.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Which is the subject of our story today actually, and
one last thing. Plenty was a naval commander earlier in
his life before he became like, you know, a well
known no at.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
All as in maritime, not belly button, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
So I don't know that he experienced these things firsthand,
but I think he definitely had the opportunity possibly to have,
but more likely been that he heard it from someone else.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
And this is where we meet Clara. Let's fast forward
to the seventeen hundreds. Is a rhinoceros, and in seventeen
thirty eight, her mother is tragically killed in India Bambi style,
Bamby style dude, and she becomes a house pet of
one Jan Albert Sikderman, director of the Dutch East India Company,
(10:17):
and he kept her. He raised her in his estate
in Kolkata until she got too big. Now, apparently she's
very well behaved. People loved her. She loved people. But
a rhinoceros is a huge creature, and eventually, as she
grew into adulthood, she was just, despite her best intentions,
too big to walk around inside without wrecking the place.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
What do you call a baby rhinoceros? Ben? Is it?
Speaker 1 (10:41):
A pup Thomas Janine Clara Clara a calf like a hippo.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, I believe that's the case. This is so cool though,
because it's this is one of those stories where anytime
you have animals taken out of their natural habitat and
kind of trotted around and for human amusement, there's it's
easy to do an eye roll and be like, oh,
that is not what this animal was meant for. But again,
left to her own devices, Clara may will have perished
(11:11):
in the harsh wilderness of the Indian jungles, right, But this,
this kindly gentleman took her in and you know, would
trot her out for guests, apparently demonstrating her quote table manners.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
This is coming from an article from getty dot edu.
They curated a very cool exhibit at the Getty Museum
in New York about Clara. And we'll get to what
might have been contained in such an exhibit in just
a bit. But for one particular dinner, let's say, just
for editorial purposes. Jan Albert Sickdermann, Clara's caretaker had a guest,
(11:49):
a kindly Dutch sea captain. I'm gonna let you attempt
this pronunciation ben.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Daoomote Vandermere very good. And Clara at this time is
about three years old. So she spends the first to
and change years of her life living with Sickderman. But
then she is acquired by Vandermere and he takes her
on a seven month sea voyage around the African continent,
(12:15):
eventually arriving in Rotterdam in July seventeen forty one.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
And let's make no mistake, Clara was not full grown
at this point, but three years that's a big creature
right there. I want to say somewhere probably in the
range of two thousand pounds, because by no, that's not
true because by the age of eight she was five thousand.
So what do we conjecture that she was at the
age of three somewhere between that? Yeah, okay, somewhere between
zero pounds and five thousand pounds.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
That sounds acurate.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
I'm going to say a three year old rhino calf,
I'm going to estimate about one thousand pounds. So just
to get her loaded up onto the ship, not to
mention a six month journey where this creature would need
to be cared for and fed, no small task. This
is kindly sea captain did have a soft spot. He
was impressed and very taken in by this gentle giant
(13:05):
as she was described.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
And she was a little bit high maintenance because she
was not designed to live life on a boat. So
during her travels from India to Rotterdam, she acquired some
favorite human things, namely orange peels, beer, and tobacco smoke.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah. I think people would like blow her shotguns or something,
and also give her a little sip of their beer,
probably as a gag at first, but I think she
really did develop a taste for it and would have
a little nip throughout the rest of her existence.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
A lot of mammals do.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
And also Clara's skin required special moisturizers so she didn't
dry out, and that's why historians conjecture that the captain
may have used fish oil, may have massaged her flesh
with fish oil to keep her moisturized.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah. I saw a really adorable YouTube video. I think
it was. This is like sort of a fable almost
This has been recreated in picture books and like lore
or whatever because it is a really cute story. And
I saw kind of a pictorial animated recreation of this
and that they suggested that he thought, oh, she's trying out,
(14:12):
what do we have in abundance of we're in the
sea fish, Let's do fish oil. And as you can imagine,
it probably wasn't the most pleasant smell, but it did
keep her skin from drying out and cracking like the
under the sun. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Absolutely, this is first off, we have to commend the
captain and their crew because they would realistically have been
figuring this out on the fly. What does a rhinoceros seat?
How much food does it need? How much water does
it need? So this was trial and error. Unfortunately for Clara,
they persevered and it worked. When they arrive in Rotterdam,
(14:49):
she gets a temporary home in Laden and then in Amsterdam,
and she's exhibited around the Netherlands for several years before
she makes her next trip abroad to Germany, and that
was in seventeen forty four. At the time, she was
called the Dutch Rhino because that's where that's what people
(15:09):
associated her with. They wouldn't say it would be an
unnecessarily long explanation to say, well, you've heard of India.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Right, sure, I mean, let's think about the way we've
viewed circuses today. You know, we know circuses are problematic,
and then the way animals are treated in circuses has
historically been proven to be kind of gross. But think
about the fascination even to the top of the show,
Ben you had with your pal the grizzly Bear, and
my abject horror slash fascination with the ostrich things that
(15:37):
we have seen in various forms, whether printed or in
movies or whatever. But this is a thing that people
had no notion of even existing. As far as some
of the people that were seeing this, this rhino was
concerned it was a dragon of some kind, right, or
some kind of mythical creature. So it was like rhino hysteria,
the rhino craze, rhino craze, rhinomania, as the ermania.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
This is also the heaviest land animal on the planet.
There is an excellent book called Clara's Grand Tour, Travels
with a Rhinoceros in eighteenth century Europe by Glennis Ridley,
which describes in the most accurate detail possible Clara's journey.
You see, vandermir did a lot of great things for Clara.
(16:25):
I kept her alive much longer than the normal rhino
lifespan and captivity. But he didn't keep a journal, so
some of this stuff is conjecture on Ridley's part. And
one of the things that Ridley points out is that
there was an earlier attempted transport of a rhino in
seventeen seventy in France, and for a single check this out,
(16:49):
for a single journey transporting this male rhino to Versailles,
the French government paid for two days of work by carpenters,
thirty six days of work by locksmith's, fifty seven days
of work by blacksmiths, in seventy two days of work
by a team of wheelwrights, and the wagon still collapses.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Jeez, And wouldn't that have been like at the request
of a monarchy. So this is just like a dude,
like a sea captain who's having to like, you know,
pull this stuff together and figure it out. And not
to mention that in that same book you're talking about
by the time Clara was basically full grown around eight
years old, we're talking five thou pounds of creature that
(17:27):
eats about sixty pounds of hay, twenty pounds of bread,
and fourteen buckets of water a day, not counting the beer. No,
not counting the trip. That's just like for a treat,
you know. But rhino Mania was a real thing. I
mean it swept the cl nation Europe, you know. Clara
made trips to Switzerland, Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Strasburg, Augsburg, all
(17:53):
over Germany, Vertzport where I was born actually, and Onsbach, Italy,
London several times and inspired like all of these aristocratic
kind are members of these aristocratic courts, who are like
poets and painters.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Right right, She had private audiences with royalty, aristocracy and
people may This is very clever of vandermir He understands
the value of merchandising, you know, so he actively encourages
these different pieces of memorabilia and souvenirs commemorating Clara the Rhino.
There are bronze sculptures, they're porcelain curios. There are you know,
(18:31):
life sized portraits of her. One in seventeen forty nine
by Jean Baptiste Adri She stands in this like rustic landscape.
They're etchings of her. There's another painting in seventeen fifty
one that's currently at the National Gallery in London by
Pietro Longhi, and this entire thing impacts society as a whole.
(18:52):
It is rhinomania. She is a craze. Now most people
probably cannot afford the opportunity to see her in person.
Vandermir anticipates that it makes some different memorabilia for different
budget levels.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, like the equivalent of like a commemorative circus cup
or something like that, you know, exactly one of those
light up swords.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
And during her heyday, during the heyday of her tour
for a season, things that were fashionable in the world
of style and dress were referred to as ala rhinoceros.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah. I think there was even a hairdo that got
popular in France. If we can picture some of those
big billowy boufont hairstyles in France, one of them was,
I believe, called the rhinoceros.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Yeah, and they decorated horses with that as well, with
like little rhino ears and rhino little rhino tales.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah. It was like, I mean, it was an absolute sensation.
And I know you mentioned private audiences with certain monarchs,
but I haven't confirmed this, but I did see in
one source that Louis the fifteenth actually offered to buy
Clara from our kindly sea captain and or or at
(19:59):
least breast that he very much wanted this creature, to
which Vandermere said, I'll give her to you for some
exorbitant price, to which Louis turned his nose up because
he was expecting it to be gifted to him. But
now Vandermere was very very much this was like a companion,
even though he was, you know, cleaning up making bank. Obviously,
with this rhino, it really does seem like he loved her.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yeah, and she was inspiring songs and poems dedicated to Clara.
And I think you already mentioned that when she toured
Italy she met the same fanfare. That's where this wonderful
painting comes from, with some Venetians and masked staring at
the rhinoceros, very very eyes wide shut. That one's for you, Casey.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
And speaking of we check out Casey Pegrim's recurring guest
spot on our buddy Chuck's podcast movie Crush, which I
appear on occasionally as well, doing a series about Kubrick's
eyesweat shut and I believe you also by Linden and
the Shining as well, Right, yeah, those three and we
got it's passive Laura kind of soon. I love pass Laura.
It's fantastic, such a good one. So it's sort of
(21:04):
a let think of people. Don't think of it as
like top Kubrick. It's one of my favorites. Yeah, I
agree completely.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Why you may ask, well, you'll have to tune into
movie Crush to find out along the way. Both as
a animal and as an increasingly relevant cultural icon, it
seems that vandermir and Clara really do have this bond,
and she lives what we said, she lived longer than
(21:33):
any rhino in captivity beforehand had. She lived around twenty years.
She went to London three times. You know there are
I haven't been to London three times? What am I
doing with my life?
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Dude? I mean I went to I think I have
all the cool European destinations I've been to. I went
when I was too young to remember, when I traveled
with my mom when she was doing opera stuff. So
I really hope to remedy that. But yes, seriously, this
rhino lived large. And think about all the voyages and
the hoisting onto a ship and all of this.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
So yeah, the coach itself, she had to be pulled
by six horses in a specially reinforced coach. And again
with the whole trivia about the French government's attempts to
do this thing. This dude cracked the code, and I
guess he must have parlayed all of that Clara money
into ways of keeping her comfortable. You know, we don't
(22:22):
really read a lot about him living in the absolute
lap of luxury. I even heard that read that early on,
when she was still growing and he hadn't quite cracked
this racket yet, he would go hungry in order to
feed Clara the rhino again this again, this has sort
of taken the form of a bit of a fairy
tale the way it's written in some places. But that's
(22:43):
interesting detail to have survived, you know. And so spoiler alert,
Clara is no longer with us. If we assume that
she was approximately two years old when purchased by VanderMeer
and brought to Leyden in seventeen forty one, would have
been twenty and seventeen fifty eight, and that is when
(23:04):
on her third visit to London she passed away. Unfortunately,
there are no contemporary reports from visitors who saw Clara
of any visible signs of illness, and to this day
her death seems sudden, unexpected, and we don't have a
clear cause of death either.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
No, we don't. From what I've seen, it just sounds
like it was her time. I mean, it was sort
of an old age thing, given that she exceeded the
lifespan of a typical rhino. Yeah. I saw one one
version of the story that she lost her horn or
her horn fell off earlier before she passed away, and
that vandermir was concerned for her. But then he continued
(23:45):
to he felt that she enjoyed this life and that
she was like, this was the life for her, that
she got pleasure out of being paraded around and being
admired and you know, sort of anthropomorphizing I guess, which
we'll get to in a little bit. But apparently the
horn grew back and she had another couple of good
years in her of this life.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, let's see. There's one theory that I thought was
interesting that comes again from that book I mentioned earlier,
Clara's Grand Tour. There's one theory that says it's possible
that she just had a natural disease that would have
led to her death in the wild regardless. And there's
another theory that says the vast quantities of bread she
(24:23):
ate while on display in London may be a clue
to her death, since any fungal growth in the weak could,
if consumed in large enough quantities, have a severe effect
on the digestive system. But this is all speculation, and
the main point is that this gentle, gigantic, beautiful creature
single hornedly. I'm going to keep that bad Yeah, very well,
(24:48):
I'm going to keep it. She changed the way that
Europe understood the world beyond the edges of their maps.
While we're speculating, no this leads us to our segue.
It's often said that fame can change people. Right, a
(25:10):
sudden rise to fame and you can't remember who your
real friends are, you win the lottery or something like that. Right,
how does it affect you psychologically? Well, Claire of the
Rhinoceros had a sudden stratospheric rise to fame. Is it
possible that this rise to fame could have affected her
the same way it affects a human being? Admittedly, Noel,
(25:34):
this is a pretty great question, but I think we
could use a little bit of help exploring it.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
What are you say, I think we have to because
we set up a special guest at the beginning of
the show, and if we don't follow through with that,
people will think we're liars.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
There'll be chaos in the streets. My friend. Luckily that
wasn't just a bunch of smoke and mirrors of fellow
ridiculous historians. We are delighted to introduce you to today's guest,
peer podcaster of ours, a big friend of the show,
Katie Golden, the host of Creature feature.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
Key Guys, Happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
We are so happy to have you. And you might
remember Katie because an episode of her amazing show snuck
into our feed and then obviously you subscribe to her
show immediately, and now you're huge fans, so we're all
family here.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, so we were very curious to hear your take
on this, Katie. We set up earlier that question of
how sudden fame could impact a human being psychologically. We
were hoping to learn if there's whether there's any analog
to that in the world or in the mind rather
(26:42):
of the rhinoceros.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
I think that's a really interesting question because there is
so there's a lot of research into animals in captivity
and their psychology, especially these larger animals like elephants and
rhinos and tigers, you know, where they they require a
lot of territory and a lot their natural environment is
(27:05):
just so expensive that when you put them in captivity
and you put them in a different environment, it is
a drastic psychological shift for them. So I think, like
to explore the question of fame, like first you kind
of have to know a little bit about animals and captivity.
So like, even when animals are really well looked after
(27:27):
and cared for and the zoo keepers really love them,
say it like the San Diego Zoo, where it's just
a it's a fantastic zoo, but they still have these
issues of what are called stereotypees, which are like these
kind of like obsessive, compulsive behaviors that animals do when
they're in captivity, like polar bears or elephants, and they'll
(27:51):
do things like repeated tics movements, obsessive grooming, pacing, and
for rhinos, one of the things they do is they
have these awesome prehensile upper lips or their semi prehensile
and that's how they can like grasp twigs or stocks
of grass and chew those up. They'll kind of fidget
(28:12):
with that upper lip and do these repeated motions with
that as a sign of stress. And so there is
something in terms of captivity that can really stress out animals,
and especially the large ones. But there's evidence that increased
enrichment helps them out. It helps destress them. So things
(28:34):
like having to work through puzzles to get through their food,
like games and toys, and positive interactions with their trainers,
so allowing them to One thing that I think people
might not know about rhinos is you can actually train
their trainable. They're fairly intelligent. You can give them. There's
(28:58):
one rhino that has learned how to paint using its
upper lip. So the so the keeper applies a dab
of paint to its upper lip and then it just
kind of The paintings are I gotta say they aren't great,
a little abstract perhaps, I mean, I know it's it's
(29:19):
easy to be a critic, but they I mean there's
a certain genes sequa that's lacking in them.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
But saying like gorilla paintings are superior elephant, I.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
Think they might be. Even elephant paintings I think are
a little better. I'm really sorry to say, but I
mean the rhino paintings, they put in a real good
effort there. I'd put it on my fridge.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Well, I mean, a lip isn't quite the same as
like a trunk or like, you know, hands.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
I know, I'm waiting for the octopus paintings.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
I have a quick question for you, because this is
all super fascinating already, but one thing we maybe didn't
mention is that Clara lost her mother as a as
a baby, like Bambi style, and was always kind of
taken care of by humans from the age of like
two or three. Do you think that would make this
transition into captivity or whatever version of captivity you could
(30:11):
call being paraded around in this way. I mean, it
wasn't in one place. It was a lot of traveling,
which probably was even more traumatic now that I think
about it. But do you think having been exposed to
that kind of life from such an early age would
make a difference in developing those tics or any kind
of negative attributes.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
I mean, it is interesting because there is kind of
a precedent of a polar bear being separated from its
parents and then developing these tics and then like being
reunited with its parents and still having the tics, so
it's not necessarily clear that that parental separation would make
it worse or better. It could trigger some stress, for sure,
(30:50):
But then also being raised from such a young age
by humans would probably allow her to see them more
as peers, especially if they're interacting with her in a
real positive way, and if the training is very it
takes the approach of being encouraging rather than punitive, that
(31:13):
I think that would have a potentially positive effect on
her psychology. Obviously, none of this is ideal, like the
ideal thing is for her to be in her natural
environment and have a social life with other rhinos. Although
I have to say rhinos aren't the most social of animals,
they definitely do display a lot of friendly behaviors with
(31:36):
each other. They're not very aggressive with other rhinos. Only
male rhinos can be a little bit territorial and aggressive
with other males, and when they are it's pretty catastrophic,
but typically they're not in Females will sometimes be in
groups in the wild, so like with usually it's with
their infants or young or even young males can sometimes
(32:01):
be tolerated by females as they're sort of learning to
make it on their own, and sometimes they'll have like
playdates with other females where all their calves will get
together and kind of ramp around. So I think for
a female rhino like Clara, she would tolerate social interaction
(32:22):
and expect it, although it must be very bizarre for
her because no matter how kind her or well intentioned
her owners are, they are not going to know rhino
body language. They're not going to be able to flap
their ears back and forth and kind of like bob
their head in a way that's going to communicate to
her that they're playful or friendly. So she might I'd
(32:44):
imagine it'd be confusing, probably a little better since she
was raised since she was a calf, but still kind
of like, you know, imagine being stuck with these aliens
who seem to care for you, but they just are
so weird. They're just these blobs that have no expression,
no show, no emotion, and kind of just give you
(33:07):
food and sometimes soothe you in certain ways. And so
you could maybe sometimes infer some care, but it would
be hard for you to totally feel like you're actually socializing.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Oh that's a fantastic way.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
They can't even paint with their lips, you know what
I mean. Yeah, I had some follow up questions here.
Do female rhinos specifically experience any kind of like fertility
cycle that would change their behavior in adulthood?
Speaker 4 (33:41):
That is interesting because typically like the only sort of
adult interactions that female rhinos are going to have are
when they're an estress, so like they're when they're going
to mate with a male. So I would assume it's
hard for me to say definitively how that would translate
(34:02):
to interactions with humans, but there's certainly periods of time
where you know, they'll be more receptive to males, and
they're also when they're mothers, they are more receptive to
company from females with calves and juvenile males. So yeah,
(34:23):
I would think that perhaps her kind of she might
even have sort of a longing for certain rhinos social
events that she's missing out on without really understanding what
they are or why she feels that way, because I
don't you know, like she may have that urge to
(34:44):
do some kind of like socializing with her own young
but if she didn't, she didn't have any calves, right,
So it's it's kind of It's an interesting thing. I
wonder if she sensed something was missing but probably couldn't
underst and why she felt that way or what that
would be. So I don't think they're intelligent, but not
(35:05):
intelligent enough to know like, oh, I want to have
a baby or I want to mate with a male rhino,
but maybe just sort of a vague anxiety.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Could they feel loneliness perhaps? Or and also additionally, would
over time a rhinoceros be able to learn, for the
lack of a better word, learn to read human body
language or physical.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
Cues, I think to some extent. Well, first of all,
I mean it's hard to say how, especially an animal
like a rhino that is not as social as other animals.
So I would be a lot more confident to say,
like an elephant or a dog is going to feel lonely.
(35:51):
Rhinos are solitary enough that I don't know. I think
that maybe I think that, you know, because they do
have some positive social interactions, and although they're infrequent, they
do happen, and especially the females have a longer period
of time where they're with their young. I think it's
(36:13):
certainly possible she felt loneliness, but probably couldn't you know,
it would be a very different experience for an animal
like a rhino versus a human or even a more
social animal like a primate. And then in terms of
understanding human body language, yes, I do think because rhinos
are trainable, I think they could start to understand certain
(36:35):
cues and body language is meaning certain things. It's hard
to know how emotionally salient that would be though to
a rhino, So like there's a difference between understanding a
certain que means they're about to get food or praise
and actually making the connection to it being a meaningful
social interaction. So I think it's possible though for sure.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
I think that's a really interesting angle to the story too,
because the sea captain who kept her didn't we don't
have any journals of his, so a lot of this
is like second third hand, and it almost has taken
on the quality of like a fable or a fairy
tale or something, and it feels very disneyfied, like all
of the accounts are very much like he and he
cad for Clara the young rye know, and she was
(37:19):
like his very own child, and blah blah blah and
this very anthropomorphized kind of version of this wild animal,
and I think that holds true with what you're saying.
But I'm just wondering, do you feel like I feel
like what we're doing here talking to you is kind
of arriving at more of the reality of the thing
as opposed to the fable side. I don't really have
a question. I'm just kind of commenting. It's just interesting
(37:39):
because you know, I initially I was like, Oh, this
sea captain is such a nice kind man, and I'm
sure he was, and I'm sure there's some truth to it.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
But he made a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
He made a lot of money, and also I bet
Clara wasn't as down for it as he maybe made
her out to be.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
You know, yeah, I think up to Clara, she would
have probably, given the choice, opted to hang with rhinos.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Yeah, I mean it's not an ideal scenario. I think
no real like captive situation for a wild animal, especially
the size of a rhino, is going to be ideal.
If it's true that she was without her mother. You know,
now we do kind of have the understanding of how
to potentially rehabilitate young calves in captivity. But then kind
(38:25):
of socialize them so they understand how to succeed out
in the wild. But maybe back then they didn't understand
that as well, so there may not have been much
of an alternative.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
So you think left to her own devices, she probably
would have like perished, like left alone.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
Oh yeah's if she's a yacht like a calf, it's
unlikely without her mother she would survive. I guess it
depends on how young she was. But you know, rhinos
don't have that many natural predators as adults, but the
calves certainly can get taken down by tigers, and and
she was a I think she was an Indian, that's correct. Yeah, yeah,
(39:04):
so like tigers and humans would be her main threats,
and tiger could certainly take down a young calf.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Well, then maybe I'll give the kindly sea captain a
bit of a pass because the alternative probably not not
a good thing.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
Yeah, I don't want sea captains to get the idea
that you should be just like taking rhinos out of
the wild.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Though, Oh my gosh, our sea captain audience, Katie.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
They just they just turned on, They just turned really tough.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
That also, you've lost the coveted Sea captain democrats like our.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Main demo, the Merchants.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Well, also that that goes for any any animal that's similar, right.
We we see these these QT stories, for instance, about
a couple in South Africa that has a hippo, right
that lives in their house. But it's very important to
remember that as much as we want to anthropomorphize these things,
(39:58):
these creatures are fundamentally different animals and there's not a
really compelling reason to take one out of the wild
other than conserving the species, right, And I think that's
something that we hit on a lot with these stories.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Yeah, I know, I completely agree, and I think this
is a really awesome way to take this out of
that kind of fairy tale realm and do a little
bit of a reality check. So thanks again for giving
us that, Katie.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
I have one more question. This is purely for my
curiosity and probably for our listeners as well. Do you yourself
have any pets?
Speaker 4 (40:37):
I do? Yeah, so I have a dog named Cookie.
She's a pretty good girl.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
It's fantastic. I was going on the off chance that
you might say I actually do have a rhino. But
but let me explain, Well, please say hello to Cookie
for us thank you, as as Minko said, thank you
so much for coming on the show and shedding some
light on the enigma of rhino intelligence and the life
(41:07):
the inner life of animals and captivity. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
And this is the thing that you do on the
regular on your incredible podcast, Creature Feature. Can you tell
us a little bit about that and where folks can
find you and it.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
Yeah, So we talk about human behavior and also animal
behavior and sort of the crossroads of these two seemingly
different worlds. And I think as we have these discussions,
we find out that even though you can't necessarily completely
anthropomorphize animals, there's a lot of interesting crossover and behaviors
(41:42):
that you'll find in animals that are kind of eerily
similar to our own. And we look at it from
the perspective of evolutionary biology and research and clinical psychology.
And so you can find us. Our podcast is called
Creature Feature and it's on iTunes wherever you get your podcasts,
(42:04):
and also the iHeartRadio app, and also you could follow
us on Twitter at Creature Feet pods not feet like
you know and shoes, but feet as an feat.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
As in a great accomplishment, I do want to exactly.
I do want to thank you in particular for an
episode that came out in December, Extrasensory Posception. I appreciate
that episode, in particular exploring the uncanny ways that animals
are able to perceive the world. So this this stuff
(42:39):
is great. Of course, I and probably Noel as well,
really enjoy the Dark Tetrat episode. Not just because we're on.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
It, no, but it was just like, it was so
cool the way you had a song where we really
didn't do much leg work ahead of time. Oh, it
just kind of came in and we're able to have
a cool conversation with you about animal psychopaths. So yeah, I.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Mean, true crime is the thing now, and I.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Feel like animals.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
You gotta get a piece of that true crime pie,
no question. And don't you also run a Twitter account
where you like are the persona of a bird bird
rights activist?
Speaker 4 (43:13):
Okay, yes, so I'm allegedly the author of at pro
bird rights bird rights activists, and I am totally a
real human person and not haven't been paid by birds
to pretend to be.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Well, that's totally and I gotta I gotta tell you
real quick, and then knows this everybody who knows me
knows this. I am terrified of birds. I don't like
their weird, little creepy, beady eyes and their unpredictable movements,
and they absolutely give me the creeps and always have.
But I think your account is hilarious and actually you
kind of play into some of the things that I
find creepy and untrustworthy about birds.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Well, they're direct descendants of the t Rex. They're little, little,
tiny dinosaurs.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
That must be what does it?
Speaker 1 (43:58):
And jackdaws core It's in general are just brilliant. You
can befriend them and they'll teach their young. Oh that's
a different I would prefer not to dose. You can
have all the corvids, you can have them all. But yeah,
thanks again Katie for coming on the show. Thanks to
our super producer Casey Pegram, Thanks to Alex Williams who
composed our theme. Thanks to our research associate Gabe. Katie,
(44:20):
Thank you again. We hope that you have enjoyed this episode.
We hope that you tune in for our next episode,
which is going to examine the story of someone who
may indeed be the highest paid athlete in history. Who
is it? The answer will surprise you. There are several
ways to find out. We have a way that we
(44:42):
would like you to find out, which is to tune
into our show. In the meantime, you could say hello
to the best part of our show, your fellow listeners
on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Yeah. You can check me out on Instagram at Embryonic Insider.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
I am Ben Bollen in a burst of creativity. That's
the name I chose on Instagram and see pictures of
my pets and my various weird adventures. Did I tell
you I'm ended up in Korea again?
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yeah? No, you did. You wouldn't tell me. You said
you had a thing you weren't able to record. Yeah,
it's okay, okay, Well, thanks for thanks for the infat
but we'll see you next time. Folks. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(45:25):
you listen to your favorite shows.
And we're back with this week's classic episode. I've been
no riddle me this. What's the most famous rhinoceros?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
You know why? Clara the world's most famous rhinoceros? Man,
you know the answer to that?
Speaker 1 (00:14):
Okay, Well, I don't know.
Speaker 2 (00:15):
I love the name Clara because it is it evokes
images of like a dainty Ballerina esque figure. I only
say that because of Clara.
Speaker 3 (00:22):
From The Nutcracker and the idea of maybe that's what
they were going for, because the idea of a rhinoceros
being a huge lumbering beast also being able to kind
of tippytoe around and pirouette is a little funny.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yeah, this is This was a really interesting one for us.
Back in twenty nineteen, we learned the story of an
interprising I'll see enterprising see captain who got a hold
of an orphaned rhino and made friends and took the
rhino with him back home. And we're doing this, by
(00:55):
the way, with a special guest, our dear friend, Katie Golden,
the host of the podcast Creature Feature.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
So let's jump right in and begin to unravel this
history mystery.
Speaker 1 (01:09):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to the
(01:37):
show Ridiculous Historians. Quick question for you, what's the most
amazing animal that you have seen up close in real life?
Speaker 2 (01:46):
Hi?
Speaker 1 (01:46):
My name is Ben, my name is Nol.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
I would say Ostrich if by amazing you mean terrifying, right,
because you're bird thing bird thing Ostrich in particular cause
I've got those gangly, weird necks and those really musculous talons,
and the the whole shape of the bird is just
rommed today.
Speaker 1 (02:02):
Do you know if, for a relatively or comparatively brief
span of Earth's history, flightless birds large flightless birds with
a dominant species totally I.
Speaker 2 (02:12):
Mean, aren't like Jurassic Park dinosaurs meant to have had feathers. Yes,
that is true. That is true.
Speaker 1 (02:17):
Spielberg did not back down. Another person does not back down,
is our super producer, Casey Pegram.
Speaker 2 (02:24):
Yeah. That Tom Petty song is about him. It is.
Speaker 1 (02:27):
It is a lot of Tom Petty's catalog is actually
based on the life and times of Casey Pegram.
Speaker 2 (02:33):
Yeah. It didn't seem to work out age wise and
timeline wise, but trust us it does. Trust us.
Speaker 1 (02:38):
Yeah, the whole thing's a concept album. I would say
the most amazing animal that I have seen up close
for entirely subjective reasons would be a tiger. The most
amazing animal I've seen up close in the wild was
a brown bear. Did I tell you that story?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
No?
Speaker 1 (02:58):
Were, I was not a survived at the end. I
was in boy Scouts and we were on a camping trip.
I had walked away from the campsite, and let me
put this delicately, I was peeing in a creek, which
you know, I probably shouldn't have been doing. And then
mid stream is the best way to put it. I
(03:19):
looked across the creek and I saw a bear on
the other side of the creek just chilling and staring
at me while I was midstream, and I didn't know
what to do, so I just kept going and then
I backed away. I walked backwards back to the campsite,
and the bear just stared at me.
Speaker 2 (03:41):
What you're describing, Ben, is the natural adaptation that was
the inspiration for the care Bear stair with a care
bear stare.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, as long as it wasn't the inspiration for that
Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle. What was that?
Speaker 2 (03:55):
Where was he in a live action care Bears movie?
Speaker 1 (03:57):
No, he was in a movie with a bear.
Speaker 2 (03:59):
Oh where where he eats? There he eats raw meat
and animal carcass and I think they gave him the
oscar for it.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
Yeah, Casey, do you remember which one that was? That?
Speaker 2 (04:09):
Was it?
Speaker 1 (04:09):
Casey on the Case, Casey on the Case. Today's episode
is about several things. It is about an amazing animal
that very few of us get a chance to see
in the wild nowadays, and it's about the way fame
can affect people. And this is a very special episode
(04:29):
today because we are not entering into this fora alone
Well we're entering into it alone, but we're going to
exit it with company. Yes that's correct. Yes we do
have a surprise guest at the end. But our first guest,
at least in concept here spirit, in spirit, there we Go,
is actually not a person. Our first guest is a rhinoceros.
Speaker 2 (04:55):
Sure not to be confused with the very depressing Smashing
Pumpkins song of the same name and actually, in retrospect,
highly pretentious. I was so in love with that stuff,
and I look, some of it holds up, but that song,
he's like, he's like planned a show. Trees and balloons.
What does that even mean? Billy Corgan, you know ice
(05:16):
cream Snow.
Speaker 1 (05:17):
Yeah, I lump them in with a lot of bands
from that time period. Who if you don't pay attention
to the lyrics. I've said this before. I've had those
moments with Stone Temple Pilots as well, where I think,
you know, if I didn't understand English, I would love
this song. But that stuff like the fashion victims gnashed
their charcoal teeth. Oh that that's that's zero melancholi.
Speaker 2 (05:41):
My beef with the song Rhinoceros, not one mention of
a rhinoceros and the entire so I guess it's maybe
just the feeling of a rhinoceros. It has sort of
a rhinoceros like melancholy to it, which you know that
interest into the story only it's interesting. We'll get to
we'll get to it.
Speaker 1 (05:56):
It does. It does matter though, because for quite a
long time a rhinoceros was considered to be somewhat of
a mythical creature.
Speaker 2 (06:06):
Right. There is a very famous etching by Albrecht Durer
that depicted a rhinoceros based on description alone in a
really cool way.
Speaker 1 (06:16):
Yeah yeah, fifteen fifteen woodcut, and it shows a rhinoceros
in profile, and it looks like it's dressed for war. Yeah,
like it came to kick button, chew bubble gum and
it's all out of gum.
Speaker 2 (06:28):
Looks like one of those ones from like one of
those ones from The Black Panther. That there's that tribe
and that comes into play pretty heavily in the big
battle structure of the film. They ride these rhinoceros like
creatures that aren't quite the rhinoceroses that we know. They're
a little bit of an augmented rhinoceros, which is this
this etching is very much the case. It has an
(06:49):
extra horn on its back, which makes it look even
more fierce. Yep. But overall, pretty damn good depiction of
a rhino based on just word of mouth, right, yeah, especially.
Speaker 1 (06:58):
Considering how how woefully inaccurate many depictions of this type
were at the time. Now, at this time in the
fifteen hundreds, many many people in Europe would place a
creature like the rhinoceros up there with a creature like
the griffin, the hippogriffis or the unicorns. You know, it's
a cool idea, but someone was a bit in their
(07:21):
cups or as are different Ben Franklin may have put
it they had been to speak with the King.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
The King. Yeah, and Ben Well, last thing, this Albert
sure etching really reminds me of battle Cat from He
Man because it's a very large, muscular creature decked out
in some very bespoke like armor and kind of a
helmet that goes over the rhino head.
Speaker 1 (07:44):
I remember that.
Speaker 2 (07:44):
Yeah, you were a battle Cat. Yeah, he was Cringer
and then he turned into battle Cat.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
Yeah yeah, yeah, because he had to transform with he Man.
That's in one of the most creative names for any superhero.
Speaker 2 (07:56):
You never heard of the band Man Man. Yes, I
wonder if that's sort of a of a jab at
he Man. I don't know.
Speaker 1 (08:02):
I never understood why it was she Ra and she
Woman if it was he Man.
Speaker 2 (08:06):
That's a good point. No one knows. What. I will
say that the new she Rack cartoon is supposed to
be incredible. It's being held up there along with like
shows like Stephen Universes being very inclusive and very well
written and interesting.
Speaker 1 (08:17):
And handling trauma quite well. Yeah, exactly, Yeah, I really
want to check it out. Oh and speaking of checking
things out, Durer ultimately arrives at at least part of
this description via the courtesy of the first century Roman
author Plinny the Elder, And I love his description of
the rhinoceros knoll. He calls it fast, impetuous, and cunning,
(08:39):
the mortal enemy.
Speaker 2 (08:40):
Of the elephants.
Speaker 1 (08:41):
Yeah, where is this covering for some nightman day man
stuff going on?
Speaker 2 (08:44):
Time? No? And I think even like, what was what was?
What was he basing these observations on. Did plant? Were
there were there rhinoceroses in Rome? That's a good question.
Speaker 1 (08:53):
What do you think?
Speaker 2 (08:53):
I have a feeling it was probably more word of mouth,
and he probably did some research based on people that
were traveling too far oign lands and then maybe interviewed them.
But he didn't strike me as the type that was
going to go off to India or Africa or anything
that wasn't really in the cards.
Speaker 1 (09:08):
Plenty also got plenty of things wrong, you know what
I mean. It's not as if he could hop on
the internet or even visit a particularly well stocked library.
So he most likely Plenty that is, was getting his
accounts from Greek and Roman forays into India, and he
(09:29):
was describing an Indian rhinoceros.
Speaker 2 (09:30):
Which is the subject of our story today actually, and
one last thing. Plenty was a naval commander earlier in
his life before he became like, you know, a well
known no at.
Speaker 1 (09:40):
All as in maritime, not belly button, that's right, that's right.
Speaker 2 (09:43):
So I don't know that he experienced these things firsthand,
but I think he definitely had the opportunity possibly to have,
but more likely been that he heard it from someone else.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
And this is where we meet Clara. Let's fast forward
to the seventeen hundreds. Is a rhinoceros, and in seventeen
thirty eight, her mother is tragically killed in India Bambi style,
Bamby style dude, and she becomes a house pet of
one Jan Albert Sikderman, director of the Dutch East India Company,
(10:17):
and he kept her. He raised her in his estate
in Kolkata until she got too big. Now, apparently she's
very well behaved. People loved her. She loved people. But
a rhinoceros is a huge creature, and eventually, as she
grew into adulthood, she was just, despite her best intentions,
too big to walk around inside without wrecking the place.
Speaker 2 (10:39):
What do you call a baby rhinoceros? Ben? Is it?
Speaker 1 (10:41):
A pup Thomas Janine Clara Clara a calf like a hippo.
Speaker 2 (10:49):
Yeah, I believe that's the case. This is so cool though,
because it's this is one of those stories where anytime
you have animals taken out of their natural habitat and
kind of trotted around and for human amusement, there's it's
easy to do an eye roll and be like, oh,
that is not what this animal was meant for. But again,
left to her own devices, Clara may will have perished
(11:11):
in the harsh wilderness of the Indian jungles, right, But this,
this kindly gentleman took her in and you know, would
trot her out for guests, apparently demonstrating her quote table manners.
Speaker 1 (11:26):
Right.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
This is coming from an article from getty dot edu.
They curated a very cool exhibit at the Getty Museum
in New York about Clara. And we'll get to what
might have been contained in such an exhibit in just
a bit. But for one particular dinner, let's say, just
for editorial purposes. Jan Albert Sickdermann, Clara's caretaker had a guest,
(11:49):
a kindly Dutch sea captain. I'm gonna let you attempt
this pronunciation ben.
Speaker 1 (11:55):
Daoomote Vandermere very good. And Clara at this time is
about three years old. So she spends the first to
and change years of her life living with Sickderman. But
then she is acquired by Vandermere and he takes her
on a seven month sea voyage around the African continent,
(12:15):
eventually arriving in Rotterdam in July seventeen forty one.
Speaker 2 (12:19):
And let's make no mistake, Clara was not full grown
at this point, but three years that's a big creature
right there. I want to say somewhere probably in the
range of two thousand pounds, because by no, that's not
true because by the age of eight she was five thousand.
So what do we conjecture that she was at the
age of three somewhere between that? Yeah, okay, somewhere between
zero pounds and five thousand pounds.
Speaker 1 (12:41):
That sounds acurate.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
I'm going to say a three year old rhino calf,
I'm going to estimate about one thousand pounds. So just
to get her loaded up onto the ship, not to
mention a six month journey where this creature would need
to be cared for and fed, no small task. This
is kindly sea captain did have a soft spot. He
was impressed and very taken in by this gentle giant
(13:05):
as she was described.
Speaker 1 (13:06):
And she was a little bit high maintenance because she
was not designed to live life on a boat. So
during her travels from India to Rotterdam, she acquired some
favorite human things, namely orange peels, beer, and tobacco smoke.
Speaker 2 (13:22):
Yeah. I think people would like blow her shotguns or something,
and also give her a little sip of their beer,
probably as a gag at first, but I think she
really did develop a taste for it and would have
a little nip throughout the rest of her existence.
Speaker 1 (13:33):
A lot of mammals do.
Speaker 2 (13:34):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:35):
And also Clara's skin required special moisturizers so she didn't
dry out, and that's why historians conjecture that the captain
may have used fish oil, may have massaged her flesh
with fish oil to keep her moisturized.
Speaker 2 (13:51):
Yeah. I saw a really adorable YouTube video. I think
it was. This is like sort of a fable almost
This has been recreated in picture books and like lore
or whatever because it is a really cute story. And
I saw kind of a pictorial animated recreation of this
and that they suggested that he thought, oh, she's trying out,
(14:12):
what do we have in abundance of we're in the
sea fish, Let's do fish oil. And as you can imagine,
it probably wasn't the most pleasant smell, but it did
keep her skin from drying out and cracking like the
under the sun. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (14:26):
Absolutely, this is first off, we have to commend the
captain and their crew because they would realistically have been
figuring this out on the fly. What does a rhinoceros seat?
How much food does it need? How much water does
it need? So this was trial and error. Unfortunately for Clara,
they persevered and it worked. When they arrive in Rotterdam,
(14:49):
she gets a temporary home in Laden and then in Amsterdam,
and she's exhibited around the Netherlands for several years before
she makes her next trip abroad to Germany, and that
was in seventeen forty four. At the time, she was
called the Dutch Rhino because that's where that's what people
(15:09):
associated her with. They wouldn't say it would be an
unnecessarily long explanation to say, well, you've heard of India.
Speaker 2 (15:16):
Right, sure, I mean, let's think about the way we've
viewed circuses today. You know, we know circuses are problematic,
and then the way animals are treated in circuses has
historically been proven to be kind of gross. But think
about the fascination even to the top of the show,
Ben you had with your pal the grizzly Bear, and
my abject horror slash fascination with the ostrich things that
(15:37):
we have seen in various forms, whether printed or in
movies or whatever. But this is a thing that people
had no notion of even existing. As far as some
of the people that were seeing this, this rhino was
concerned it was a dragon of some kind, right, or
some kind of mythical creature. So it was like rhino hysteria,
the rhino craze, rhino craze, rhinomania, as the ermania.
Speaker 1 (16:04):
This is also the heaviest land animal on the planet.
There is an excellent book called Clara's Grand Tour, Travels
with a Rhinoceros in eighteenth century Europe by Glennis Ridley,
which describes in the most accurate detail possible Clara's journey.
You see, vandermir did a lot of great things for Clara.
(16:25):
I kept her alive much longer than the normal rhino
lifespan and captivity. But he didn't keep a journal, so
some of this stuff is conjecture on Ridley's part. And
one of the things that Ridley points out is that
there was an earlier attempted transport of a rhino in
seventeen seventy in France, and for a single check this out,
(16:49):
for a single journey transporting this male rhino to Versailles,
the French government paid for two days of work by carpenters,
thirty six days of work by locksmith's, fifty seven days
of work by blacksmiths, in seventy two days of work
by a team of wheelwrights, and the wagon still collapses.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Jeez, And wouldn't that have been like at the request
of a monarchy. So this is just like a dude,
like a sea captain who's having to like, you know,
pull this stuff together and figure it out. And not
to mention that in that same book you're talking about
by the time Clara was basically full grown around eight
years old, we're talking five thou pounds of creature that
(17:27):
eats about sixty pounds of hay, twenty pounds of bread,
and fourteen buckets of water a day, not counting the beer. No,
not counting the trip. That's just like for a treat,
you know. But rhino Mania was a real thing. I
mean it swept the cl nation Europe, you know. Clara
made trips to Switzerland, Berlin, Vienna, Munich, Strasburg, Augsburg, all
(17:53):
over Germany, Vertzport where I was born actually, and Onsbach, Italy,
London several times and inspired like all of these aristocratic
kind are members of these aristocratic courts, who are like
poets and painters.
Speaker 1 (18:06):
Right right, She had private audiences with royalty, aristocracy and
people may This is very clever of vandermir He understands
the value of merchandising, you know, so he actively encourages
these different pieces of memorabilia and souvenirs commemorating Clara the Rhino.
There are bronze sculptures, they're porcelain curios. There are you know,
(18:31):
life sized portraits of her. One in seventeen forty nine
by Jean Baptiste Adri She stands in this like rustic landscape.
They're etchings of her. There's another painting in seventeen fifty
one that's currently at the National Gallery in London by
Pietro Longhi, and this entire thing impacts society as a whole.
(18:52):
It is rhinomania. She is a craze. Now most people
probably cannot afford the opportunity to see her in person.
Vandermir anticipates that it makes some different memorabilia for different
budget levels.
Speaker 2 (19:04):
Yeah, like the equivalent of like a commemorative circus cup
or something like that, you know, exactly one of those
light up swords.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
And during her heyday, during the heyday of her tour
for a season, things that were fashionable in the world
of style and dress were referred to as ala rhinoceros.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
Yeah. I think there was even a hairdo that got
popular in France. If we can picture some of those
big billowy boufont hairstyles in France, one of them was,
I believe, called the rhinoceros.
Speaker 1 (19:33):
Yeah, and they decorated horses with that as well, with
like little rhino ears and rhino little rhino tales.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Yeah. It was like, I mean, it was an absolute sensation.
And I know you mentioned private audiences with certain monarchs,
but I haven't confirmed this, but I did see in
one source that Louis the fifteenth actually offered to buy
Clara from our kindly sea captain and or or at
(19:59):
least breast that he very much wanted this creature, to
which Vandermere said, I'll give her to you for some
exorbitant price, to which Louis turned his nose up because
he was expecting it to be gifted to him. But
now Vandermere was very very much this was like a companion,
even though he was, you know, cleaning up making bank. Obviously,
with this rhino, it really does seem like he loved her.
Speaker 1 (20:21):
Yeah, and she was inspiring songs and poems dedicated to Clara.
And I think you already mentioned that when she toured
Italy she met the same fanfare. That's where this wonderful
painting comes from, with some Venetians and masked staring at
the rhinoceros, very very eyes wide shut. That one's for you, Casey.
Speaker 2 (20:43):
And speaking of we check out Casey Pegrim's recurring guest
spot on our buddy Chuck's podcast movie Crush, which I
appear on occasionally as well, doing a series about Kubrick's
eyesweat shut and I believe you also by Linden and
the Shining as well, Right, yeah, those three and we
got it's passive Laura kind of soon. I love pass Laura.
It's fantastic, such a good one. So it's sort of
(21:04):
a let think of people. Don't think of it as
like top Kubrick. It's one of my favorites. Yeah, I
agree completely.
Speaker 1 (21:10):
Why you may ask, well, you'll have to tune into
movie Crush to find out along the way. Both as
a animal and as an increasingly relevant cultural icon, it
seems that vandermir and Clara really do have this bond,
and she lives what we said, she lived longer than
(21:33):
any rhino in captivity beforehand had. She lived around twenty years.
She went to London three times. You know there are
I haven't been to London three times? What am I
doing with my life?
Speaker 2 (21:44):
Dude? I mean I went to I think I have
all the cool European destinations I've been to. I went
when I was too young to remember, when I traveled
with my mom when she was doing opera stuff. So
I really hope to remedy that. But yes, seriously, this
rhino lived large. And think about all the voyages and
the hoisting onto a ship and all of this.
Speaker 1 (22:02):
So yeah, the coach itself, she had to be pulled
by six horses in a specially reinforced coach. And again
with the whole trivia about the French government's attempts to
do this thing. This dude cracked the code, and I
guess he must have parlayed all of that Clara money
into ways of keeping her comfortable. You know, we don't
(22:22):
really read a lot about him living in the absolute
lap of luxury. I even heard that read that early on,
when she was still growing and he hadn't quite cracked
this racket yet, he would go hungry in order to
feed Clara the rhino again this again, this has sort
of taken the form of a bit of a fairy
tale the way it's written in some places. But that's
(22:43):
interesting detail to have survived, you know. And so spoiler alert,
Clara is no longer with us. If we assume that
she was approximately two years old when purchased by VanderMeer
and brought to Leyden in seventeen forty one, would have
been twenty and seventeen fifty eight, and that is when
(23:04):
on her third visit to London she passed away. Unfortunately,
there are no contemporary reports from visitors who saw Clara
of any visible signs of illness, and to this day
her death seems sudden, unexpected, and we don't have a
clear cause of death either.
Speaker 2 (23:22):
No, we don't. From what I've seen, it just sounds
like it was her time. I mean, it was sort
of an old age thing, given that she exceeded the
lifespan of a typical rhino. Yeah. I saw one one
version of the story that she lost her horn or
her horn fell off earlier before she passed away, and
that vandermir was concerned for her. But then he continued
(23:45):
to he felt that she enjoyed this life and that
she was like, this was the life for her, that
she got pleasure out of being paraded around and being
admired and you know, sort of anthropomorphizing I guess, which
we'll get to in a little bit. But apparently the
horn grew back and she had another couple of good
years in her of this life.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
Yeah, let's see. There's one theory that I thought was
interesting that comes again from that book I mentioned earlier,
Clara's Grand Tour. There's one theory that says it's possible
that she just had a natural disease that would have
led to her death in the wild regardless. And there's
another theory that says the vast quantities of bread she
(24:23):
ate while on display in London may be a clue
to her death, since any fungal growth in the weak could,
if consumed in large enough quantities, have a severe effect
on the digestive system. But this is all speculation, and
the main point is that this gentle, gigantic, beautiful creature
single hornedly. I'm going to keep that bad Yeah, very well,
(24:48):
I'm going to keep it. She changed the way that
Europe understood the world beyond the edges of their maps.
While we're speculating, no this leads us to our segue.
It's often said that fame can change people. Right, a
(25:10):
sudden rise to fame and you can't remember who your
real friends are, you win the lottery or something like that. Right,
how does it affect you psychologically? Well, Claire of the
Rhinoceros had a sudden stratospheric rise to fame. Is it
possible that this rise to fame could have affected her
the same way it affects a human being? Admittedly, Noel,
(25:34):
this is a pretty great question, but I think we
could use a little bit of help exploring it.
Speaker 2 (25:39):
What are you say, I think we have to because
we set up a special guest at the beginning of
the show, and if we don't follow through with that,
people will think we're liars.
Speaker 1 (25:46):
There'll be chaos in the streets. My friend. Luckily that
wasn't just a bunch of smoke and mirrors of fellow
ridiculous historians. We are delighted to introduce you to today's guest,
peer podcaster of ours, a big friend of the show,
Katie Golden, the host of Creature feature.
Speaker 4 (26:06):
Key Guys, Happy to be here.
Speaker 2 (26:08):
We are so happy to have you. And you might
remember Katie because an episode of her amazing show snuck
into our feed and then obviously you subscribe to her
show immediately, and now you're huge fans, so we're all
family here.
Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yeah, so we were very curious to hear your take
on this, Katie. We set up earlier that question of
how sudden fame could impact a human being psychologically. We
were hoping to learn if there's whether there's any analog
to that in the world or in the mind rather
(26:42):
of the rhinoceros.
Speaker 2 (26:43):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (26:43):
I think that's a really interesting question because there is
so there's a lot of research into animals in captivity
and their psychology, especially these larger animals like elephants and
rhinos and tigers, you know, where they they require a
lot of territory and a lot their natural environment is
(27:05):
just so expensive that when you put them in captivity
and you put them in a different environment, it is
a drastic psychological shift for them. So I think, like
to explore the question of fame, like first you kind
of have to know a little bit about animals and captivity.
So like, even when animals are really well looked after
(27:27):
and cared for and the zoo keepers really love them,
say it like the San Diego Zoo, where it's just
a it's a fantastic zoo, but they still have these
issues of what are called stereotypees, which are like these
kind of like obsessive, compulsive behaviors that animals do when
they're in captivity, like polar bears or elephants, and they'll
(27:51):
do things like repeated tics movements, obsessive grooming, pacing, and
for rhinos, one of the things they do is they
have these awesome prehensile upper lips or their semi prehensile
and that's how they can like grasp twigs or stocks
of grass and chew those up. They'll kind of fidget
(28:12):
with that upper lip and do these repeated motions with
that as a sign of stress. And so there is
something in terms of captivity that can really stress out animals,
and especially the large ones. But there's evidence that increased
enrichment helps them out. It helps destress them. So things
(28:34):
like having to work through puzzles to get through their food,
like games and toys, and positive interactions with their trainers,
so allowing them to One thing that I think people
might not know about rhinos is you can actually train
their trainable. They're fairly intelligent. You can give them. There's
(28:58):
one rhino that has learned how to paint using its
upper lip. So the so the keeper applies a dab
of paint to its upper lip and then it just
kind of The paintings are I gotta say they aren't great,
a little abstract perhaps, I mean, I know it's it's
(29:19):
easy to be a critic, but they I mean there's
a certain genes sequa that's lacking in them.
Speaker 2 (29:27):
But saying like gorilla paintings are superior elephant, I.
Speaker 4 (29:31):
Think they might be. Even elephant paintings I think are
a little better. I'm really sorry to say, but I
mean the rhino paintings, they put in a real good
effort there. I'd put it on my fridge.
Speaker 2 (29:43):
Well, I mean, a lip isn't quite the same as
like a trunk or like, you know, hands.
Speaker 1 (29:48):
I know, I'm waiting for the octopus paintings.
Speaker 2 (29:50):
I have a quick question for you, because this is
all super fascinating already, but one thing we maybe didn't
mention is that Clara lost her mother as a as
a baby, like Bambi style, and was always kind of
taken care of by humans from the age of like
two or three. Do you think that would make this
transition into captivity or whatever version of captivity you could
(30:11):
call being paraded around in this way. I mean, it
wasn't in one place. It was a lot of traveling,
which probably was even more traumatic now that I think
about it. But do you think having been exposed to
that kind of life from such an early age would
make a difference in developing those tics or any kind
of negative attributes.
Speaker 4 (30:25):
I mean, it is interesting because there is kind of
a precedent of a polar bear being separated from its
parents and then developing these tics and then like being
reunited with its parents and still having the tics, so
it's not necessarily clear that that parental separation would make
it worse or better. It could trigger some stress, for sure,
(30:50):
But then also being raised from such a young age
by humans would probably allow her to see them more
as peers, especially if they're interacting with her in a
real positive way, and if the training is very it
takes the approach of being encouraging rather than punitive, that
(31:13):
I think that would have a potentially positive effect on
her psychology. Obviously, none of this is ideal, like the
ideal thing is for her to be in her natural
environment and have a social life with other rhinos. Although
I have to say rhinos aren't the most social of animals,
they definitely do display a lot of friendly behaviors with
(31:36):
each other. They're not very aggressive with other rhinos. Only
male rhinos can be a little bit territorial and aggressive
with other males, and when they are it's pretty catastrophic,
but typically they're not in Females will sometimes be in
groups in the wild, so like with usually it's with
their infants or young or even young males can sometimes
(32:01):
be tolerated by females as they're sort of learning to
make it on their own, and sometimes they'll have like
playdates with other females where all their calves will get
together and kind of ramp around. So I think for
a female rhino like Clara, she would tolerate social interaction
(32:22):
and expect it, although it must be very bizarre for
her because no matter how kind her or well intentioned
her owners are, they are not going to know rhino
body language. They're not going to be able to flap
their ears back and forth and kind of like bob
their head in a way that's going to communicate to
her that they're playful or friendly. So she might I'd
(32:44):
imagine it'd be confusing, probably a little better since she
was raised since she was a calf, but still kind
of like, you know, imagine being stuck with these aliens
who seem to care for you, but they just are
so weird. They're just these blobs that have no expression,
no show, no emotion, and kind of just give you
(33:07):
food and sometimes soothe you in certain ways. And so
you could maybe sometimes infer some care, but it would
be hard for you to totally feel like you're actually socializing.
Speaker 2 (33:18):
Oh that's a fantastic way.
Speaker 1 (33:19):
They can't even paint with their lips, you know what
I mean. Yeah, I had some follow up questions here.
Do female rhinos specifically experience any kind of like fertility
cycle that would change their behavior in adulthood?
Speaker 4 (33:41):
That is interesting because typically like the only sort of
adult interactions that female rhinos are going to have are
when they're an estress, so like they're when they're going
to mate with a male. So I would assume it's
hard for me to say definitively how that would translate
(34:02):
to interactions with humans, but there's certainly periods of time
where you know, they'll be more receptive to males, and
they're also when they're mothers, they are more receptive to
company from females with calves and juvenile males. So yeah,
(34:23):
I would think that perhaps her kind of she might
even have sort of a longing for certain rhinos social
events that she's missing out on without really understanding what
they are or why she feels that way, because I
don't you know, like she may have that urge to
(34:44):
do some kind of like socializing with her own young
but if she didn't, she didn't have any calves, right,
So it's it's kind of It's an interesting thing. I
wonder if she sensed something was missing but probably couldn't
underst and why she felt that way or what that
would be. So I don't think they're intelligent, but not
(35:05):
intelligent enough to know like, oh, I want to have
a baby or I want to mate with a male rhino,
but maybe just sort of a vague anxiety.
Speaker 1 (35:15):
Could they feel loneliness perhaps? Or and also additionally, would
over time a rhinoceros be able to learn, for the
lack of a better word, learn to read human body
language or physical.
Speaker 4 (35:29):
Cues, I think to some extent. Well, first of all,
I mean it's hard to say how, especially an animal
like a rhino that is not as social as other animals.
So I would be a lot more confident to say,
like an elephant or a dog is going to feel lonely.
(35:51):
Rhinos are solitary enough that I don't know. I think
that maybe I think that, you know, because they do
have some positive social interactions, and although they're infrequent, they
do happen, and especially the females have a longer period
of time where they're with their young. I think it's
(36:13):
certainly possible she felt loneliness, but probably couldn't you know,
it would be a very different experience for an animal
like a rhino versus a human or even a more
social animal like a primate. And then in terms of
understanding human body language, yes, I do think because rhinos
are trainable, I think they could start to understand certain
(36:35):
cues and body language is meaning certain things. It's hard
to know how emotionally salient that would be though to
a rhino, So like there's a difference between understanding a
certain que means they're about to get food or praise
and actually making the connection to it being a meaningful
social interaction. So I think it's possible though for sure.
Speaker 2 (36:57):
I think that's a really interesting angle to the story too,
because the sea captain who kept her didn't we don't
have any journals of his, so a lot of this
is like second third hand, and it almost has taken
on the quality of like a fable or a fairy
tale or something, and it feels very disneyfied, like all
of the accounts are very much like he and he
cad for Clara the young rye know, and she was
(37:19):
like his very own child, and blah blah blah and
this very anthropomorphized kind of version of this wild animal,
and I think that holds true with what you're saying.
But I'm just wondering, do you feel like I feel
like what we're doing here talking to you is kind
of arriving at more of the reality of the thing
as opposed to the fable side. I don't really have
a question. I'm just kind of commenting. It's just interesting
(37:39):
because you know, I initially I was like, Oh, this
sea captain is such a nice kind man, and I'm
sure he was, and I'm sure there's some truth to it.
Speaker 1 (37:46):
But he made a lot of money.
Speaker 2 (37:48):
He made a lot of money, and also I bet
Clara wasn't as down for it as he maybe made
her out to be.
Speaker 1 (37:54):
You know, yeah, I think up to Clara, she would
have probably, given the choice, opted to hang with rhinos.
Speaker 2 (37:59):
Yep.
Speaker 4 (38:01):
Yeah, I mean it's not an ideal scenario. I think
no real like captive situation for a wild animal, especially
the size of a rhino, is going to be ideal.
If it's true that she was without her mother. You know,
now we do kind of have the understanding of how
to potentially rehabilitate young calves in captivity. But then kind
(38:25):
of socialize them so they understand how to succeed out
in the wild. But maybe back then they didn't understand
that as well, so there may not have been much
of an alternative.
Speaker 2 (38:36):
So you think left to her own devices, she probably
would have like perished, like left alone.
Speaker 4 (38:40):
Oh yeah's if she's a yacht like a calf, it's
unlikely without her mother she would survive. I guess it
depends on how young she was. But you know, rhinos
don't have that many natural predators as adults, but the
calves certainly can get taken down by tigers, and and
she was a I think she was an Indian, that's correct. Yeah, yeah,
(39:04):
so like tigers and humans would be her main threats,
and tiger could certainly take down a young calf.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
Well, then maybe I'll give the kindly sea captain a
bit of a pass because the alternative probably not not
a good thing.
Speaker 4 (39:17):
Yeah, I don't want sea captains to get the idea
that you should be just like taking rhinos out of
the wild.
Speaker 1 (39:22):
Though, Oh my gosh, our sea captain audience, Katie.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
They just they just turned on, They just turned really tough.
Speaker 4 (39:30):
That also, you've lost the coveted Sea captain democrats like our.
Speaker 2 (39:33):
Main demo, the Merchants.
Speaker 1 (39:37):
Well, also that that goes for any any animal that's similar, right.
We we see these these QT stories, for instance, about
a couple in South Africa that has a hippo, right
that lives in their house. But it's very important to
remember that as much as we want to anthropomorphize these things,
(39:58):
these creatures are fundamentally different animals and there's not a
really compelling reason to take one out of the wild
other than conserving the species, right, And I think that's
something that we hit on a lot with these stories.
Speaker 2 (40:18):
Yeah, I know, I completely agree, and I think this
is a really awesome way to take this out of
that kind of fairy tale realm and do a little
bit of a reality check. So thanks again for giving
us that, Katie.
Speaker 1 (40:27):
I have one more question. This is purely for my
curiosity and probably for our listeners as well. Do you yourself
have any pets?
Speaker 4 (40:37):
I do? Yeah, so I have a dog named Cookie.
She's a pretty good girl.
Speaker 1 (40:44):
It's fantastic. I was going on the off chance that
you might say I actually do have a rhino. But
but let me explain, Well, please say hello to Cookie
for us thank you, as as Minko said, thank you
so much for coming on the show and shedding some
light on the enigma of rhino intelligence and the life
(41:07):
the inner life of animals and captivity. Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (41:11):
And this is the thing that you do on the
regular on your incredible podcast, Creature Feature. Can you tell
us a little bit about that and where folks can
find you and it.
Speaker 4 (41:18):
Yeah, So we talk about human behavior and also animal
behavior and sort of the crossroads of these two seemingly
different worlds. And I think as we have these discussions,
we find out that even though you can't necessarily completely
anthropomorphize animals, there's a lot of interesting crossover and behaviors
(41:42):
that you'll find in animals that are kind of eerily
similar to our own. And we look at it from
the perspective of evolutionary biology and research and clinical psychology.
And so you can find us. Our podcast is called
Creature Feature and it's on iTunes wherever you get your podcasts,
(42:04):
and also the iHeartRadio app, and also you could follow
us on Twitter at Creature Feet pods not feet like
you know and shoes, but feet as an feat.
Speaker 1 (42:18):
As in a great accomplishment, I do want to exactly.
I do want to thank you in particular for an
episode that came out in December, Extrasensory Posception. I appreciate
that episode, in particular exploring the uncanny ways that animals
are able to perceive the world. So this this stuff
(42:39):
is great. Of course, I and probably Noel as well,
really enjoy the Dark Tetrat episode. Not just because we're on.
Speaker 2 (42:47):
It, no, but it was just like, it was so
cool the way you had a song where we really
didn't do much leg work ahead of time. Oh, it
just kind of came in and we're able to have
a cool conversation with you about animal psychopaths. So yeah, I.
Speaker 4 (43:00):
Mean, true crime is the thing now, and I.
Speaker 1 (43:02):
Feel like animals.
Speaker 2 (43:05):
You gotta get a piece of that true crime pie,
no question. And don't you also run a Twitter account
where you like are the persona of a bird bird
rights activist?
Speaker 4 (43:13):
Okay, yes, so I'm allegedly the author of at pro
bird rights bird rights activists, and I am totally a
real human person and not haven't been paid by birds
to pretend to be.
Speaker 2 (43:27):
Well, that's totally and I gotta I gotta tell you
real quick, and then knows this everybody who knows me
knows this. I am terrified of birds. I don't like
their weird, little creepy, beady eyes and their unpredictable movements,
and they absolutely give me the creeps and always have.
But I think your account is hilarious and actually you
kind of play into some of the things that I
find creepy and untrustworthy about birds.
Speaker 1 (43:49):
Amazing.
Speaker 2 (43:50):
I appreciate that.
Speaker 4 (43:51):
Well, they're direct descendants of the t Rex. They're little, little,
tiny dinosaurs.
Speaker 2 (43:57):
That must be what does it?
Speaker 1 (43:58):
And jackdaws core It's in general are just brilliant. You
can befriend them and they'll teach their young. Oh that's
a different I would prefer not to dose. You can
have all the corvids, you can have them all. But yeah,
thanks again Katie for coming on the show. Thanks to
our super producer Casey Pegram, Thanks to Alex Williams who
composed our theme. Thanks to our research associate Gabe. Katie,
(44:20):
Thank you again. We hope that you have enjoyed this episode.
We hope that you tune in for our next episode,
which is going to examine the story of someone who
may indeed be the highest paid athlete in history. Who
is it? The answer will surprise you. There are several
ways to find out. We have a way that we
(44:42):
would like you to find out, which is to tune
into our show. In the meantime, you could say hello
to the best part of our show, your fellow listeners
on our Facebook page, Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 2 (44:51):
Yeah. You can check me out on Instagram at Embryonic Insider.
Speaker 1 (44:55):
I am Ben Bollen in a burst of creativity. That's
the name I chose on Instagram and see pictures of
my pets and my various weird adventures. Did I tell
you I'm ended up in Korea again?
Speaker 2 (45:05):
Yeah? No, you did. You wouldn't tell me. You said
you had a thing you weren't able to record. Yeah,
it's okay, okay, Well, thanks for thanks for the infat
but we'll see you next time. Folks. For more podcasts
from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever
(45:25):
you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
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