October 23, 2025 • 63 mins
It's the weekend! Time to get outdoors, enjoy nature... and, honestly, watch out for crazy animals. Join the guys in this Classic episode as they make an appearance on Creature Feature, the podcast that takes a critter’s eye view to explore how animal behavior parallels the behavior of humans. In this episode, Katie Goldin and the guys explore the dark tetrad in the animal world, ultimately answering the age old question: Who's the most prolific serial meow-derer?
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Fellow Ridiculous Historians, not too too long ago or I
don't know, it's twenty eighteen, so lo these many years ago?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Noel, You and I asked our pal Katie Golden to
tell us about something called the Dark Tetrad in the
animal world. Do you remember this one?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I do?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And if I'm not mistaken, this is an episode of
that podcast where we were a guest that we also
posted in our feed. So something a little different for
you today.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yeah. Yeah, we asked our We asked our good friend Katie,
who's the most prolific serial meowderer Max. I don't know
if you want to put a rim shot on that one,
but I thought it was good.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Ma'am was jump right in.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to a
Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
See what you did? Yeah, this is what they call
the old Ridiculous History bait and switch.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's true, yes, and your no always man. We've got
our super producer, Casey Pegro, and we want to introduce
you to a show that we did that we had
so much fun doing.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
It's also not our show.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
It's not our show, but here's the thing, folks. It's
a little thing called the holiday season, and we really
needed a little something to pat out our feed to
give you guys something juicy to listen to over the holidays.
But make it we didn't have to actually record a
whole episode of our show, Ridiculous History. So we were
asked to be guests on an episode of a wonderful
(01:43):
show called Creature Feature, which is hosted by the wonderfully
smart and funny Katie Golden.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yes, and we had such a great time on this show.
We don't want to spoil too much of it for you,
but we had such a great I'm on this show
that at the end of it, we harascible scoundrels that
we are, said, hey, Katie is equal if we publish
this episode on our feed as well, so that more
(02:12):
of our listeners can find out about Creature Feature and
all the neat, strange stuff you dive into. So what
is Creature Feature? Well, it's this. It's this brand new
podcast from How Stuff Works that takes a quote critters
I view to explore how animal behavior parallels human behavior.
And we entered into a dark, yet paradoxically illuminating exploration
(02:37):
of something called the Dark tetrad.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
That's right, Ben, which includes psychopathy, narcissistic personality, macha.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
That's the original dark triad, but there's a fourth that
is added occasionally, which is good old everyday sadism.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
That's right, And that was actually my favorite entry in
the episode where we talk about a particularly nasty pair
of cidic wasp that does horrible, horrible things to tarantulus.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
So check out our appearance on Creature Feature. Thanks again,
Katie if you're hearing this for having us over on
your show, and if you enjoy this exploration of human behavior,
please check out the rest of the fine episodes of
Creature Feature that are available today wherever you find your
favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Listen up for a guest spot from Katie herself on
this show.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yes, that's true.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Can we roll the tape without further ado?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Hey, everybody, welcome to Creature Feature, the show where we
explore the brains of animals and people. I I got
brains on my shirt. Today we'll be talking about evil killers, kidnappers, murderers,
and hidden lurkers walking or crawling amongst us. Then we'll
answer the age old question, who's the most prolific serial meter,
(04:01):
does evil exist? There's not really an entry for evil
in the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by psychologists.
General attempts to categorize evil has resulted in the creation
of the dark tetrad, a term used for four personality
traits associated with bad behavior. Narcissism, sadism, psychopathy, and machiavelianism.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
These are traits that.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Are often attributes of people with maladaptive, dangerous personalities. So
what does it mean to be in the dark tetrad?
We all know generally the concept of narcissism, sadism, psychopathy,
and machiavilianism, but what does that actually look like in
humans and even animals. Let's take a look at narcissism.
(04:48):
For example, the DSM's definition for clinical levels of narcissism
is someone who has quote a grandiose sense of self
importance and shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes. I mean,
you've almost certainly encountered at least a subclinical narcissist, and
no doubt you could name a few celebrities and politicians
(05:08):
who fit the bill. But could you find narcissism and animals?
Many animals seem like narcissists. But even if you point
the finger at a totally self obsessed animal, say a housecat,
you could also argue they lack the sense of self
to be narcissists. Certainly, all Mittens seems to care about
is herself, but she may not fully comprehend that she
(05:29):
is a herself, So can she really be a narcissist?
This is the problem with trying to assign human traits
to animals. We can't get inside the animal's head and
know what it's thinking. An act that seems sadistic or
manipulative may be simply an instinct that allows the animal
to pass on its genes. It's impossible to know what
(05:50):
they're really feeling. But hey, this podcast is all about
the impossible. So we're gonna look at the animals that
best symbolize each of the remaining.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Characteristics of the Dark tetras.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Sadism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism. We'll compare these masters of evil
with their human counterparts, exploring what it means to be
a member of the Dark tetrad and whether we can
use modern scientific imaging to actually quantify.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
What it means to be a psychopath.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Joining me today on our journey into the Dark is
Ben Bollen and Noel Brown, hosts of the podcast Ridiculous History.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Welcome you guys.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Thanks for having us. Katie, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Thanks so much. I'm already kind of terrified, but I'm excited.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
It's a weird feeling. I, for one, am and thrilled,
darkly thrilled.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
One of you. You were mentioning you have a cat.
Would you describe your cat as a narcissist?
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Oh? Sure, I mean he I don't know, it's weird.
He sort of like flits between narcissism and outright psychopathy.
Like I was saying, he kind of leaves me little
treats on the front porch where it'll be like almost
like splayed out like some kind of satanic rich what
it'll be like the head of a squirrel and the
body of a rat, and then you know, kind of
surrounded by like viscera and like the shape of pentagram.
(07:06):
Sometimes it's really pretty scary. But then he snuggles up,
you know, like a good little guy. So I don't
know what to make of him. I do not know
what to make of him. I'm hoping I can learn
from this podcast today and kind of get inside his
head a little bit more and understand what makes him tick.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Yeah, And I mean even dogs, to me are pretty
narcissistic because they, like my own dog, you associate them
with being selfless and loving towards humans. But she's a
black hole of neediness and desiring affection. So no matter
how much I pet her, like I feel like if
I was dying on the floor, her number one priority
(07:42):
would be to get another belly rub before I pass out.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, and then, as we all know too, if we
died alone in our apartments with just our cats or
our dogs, they would probably instantly start eating us.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
But that's any animal would eventually begin eating you if
it were I know.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So is the love real, Ben, that's my question of
love is real?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
But now we're talking about the nature of the body
versus the mind or the soul, which I don't think
is quite where we're going with.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Today's Well you did say what is evil? Is evil real?
So I'm intrigued. Please, let's let's dive right in.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
There's a lot of curiosity around whether animals can be sadistic.
A catter or a dolphin who plays with their half
dead praise seems sadistic, but there's actually practicality behind their cruelty.
So take this example, Dolphins beat up octopi before eating them,
even after they're dead. This may seem overkill, as if
the dolphins simply can't stop their murderous frenzy because they're
(08:38):
having too much fun, but there's actually a really good
reason to.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
Play rugby with a dead octopus.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Octopi don't have centralized nervous systems, so after they're dead,
their tentacles can still move around. If an overeager dolphin
gobbles up an octopus who's dead but still wriggling, those
tentacles can crawl up its esophagus and choke the dolphin.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Today.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yes, this is something that's actually been documented before. So
the dolphins beat the octopi to a pult before chowing down,
preventing the octopi from getting its surfinge from beyond its
watery grave. So asking whether animals are sadistic is a
tricky question. I'd wager I guess that yes, more intelligent
animals like dolphins or primates may have fun wreaking doom
(09:22):
and destruction, even if there's a good evolutionary reason for it,
but instead I want to look at how evolution itself
can create a sadistic monster, void of any emotion at all.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
To do that, we'll have to take a look.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
At tarantulas, And in this case, the tarantulas are the
innocent victims of a much more terrifying creature. So you, guys,
imagine being captured by a criminal sadist, being paralyzed by him,
stuck inside like a kill shed, totally at his mercy,
(09:55):
completely paralyzed.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Katie, I think about that all the time.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
It's like, you know those bad dreams where you're like
trying to run away from a bad guy and you
can't move your stupid body.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
It's like this really common recurring dream for me. I'm
like trying to run but it just feels like you're
stuck in mud, and then you can't move at all
and you try to scream but you can't scream.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Well, it's like that part of Nightmare on Elm Street
where the where she's running up the stairs and she
starts sinking the stairs, turning into marshmallows and she just
like sinks into.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
The Oh I hate that, or like or like the
bed sinks under you.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
The fear of moving slowly in dreams, of trying to
run but being unable to is I think slightly more
common than the other spooky one, which is the fear
of your teeth falling out in your dreams.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, that's a common one to the
body horror, either teeth, skin, or hair just falling out.
I get those ones too. I hate it, like big
chunks of skin falling off. It's the worst.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
I have one question when we talk about this, this
attack of paralysis, right, do the animal victims of this
sort of attack do they experience fear as we would
understand it?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
You know, I'm not sure. I mean, so we're talking
about tarantula's being the victims. So they're terrorized by this
thing called tarantula hawk. It's a sort of wasp, and
I imagine if the tarantula is capable of feeling anything
at all, this is going to be the scariest thing
(11:36):
that ever happens to it. I feel like tarantulas are
probably just a little more advanced than like a rumba
in terms of their ability to like sense things. But
I feel like there's got to be some kind of
very primitive wiring that is able to at least, you know,
gets like some dim awareness of being afraid of something
(12:01):
so that they can survive. Probably no other real cognition
beyond that, but other than like uh oh uh oh.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, probably just like an impending death kind of moment,
you know, where it's like ah, fuck, it's over.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Like oh oh no oh no.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
But the tarantula hawk is it Is it actually a hawk?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
No, no, it's a it's a type of wasp. And
if you look into evolutionary biology, you'll find that ninety
nine percent of asshole behavior is by wasps. Uh. So,
what these tarantula hawks do is they wait outside of
tarantula's burrow and they pluck at the tarantula's webbing to
(12:44):
lure the spider out, because the transulas create this this
little sort of dormat of webbing so that when an
insect crawls across it, they know to pop out and
capture the prey. But instead of a juicy little worm,
it's the transola hawk waiting for them, and it stings
the tarantula with a paralyzing venom, and so the transula
(13:08):
is frozen but still completely alive, and the wasp drags
the transula back to its burrow, where it places the
transola snugly inside and then lays a single egg on
top of it. And I feel like, if you're the tarantula,
with whatever tarantula consciousness that you have, if you can't
(13:31):
move and you see someone lay an egg on top
of you, this is the point where you're going like, well,
this is not.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Going to be cool.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Wow, indeed, it's not cool for the transula. So the
hawk the wasp buries the transula alive and tamps down
the earth. So it's stuck in there, still alive, buried alive,
with this little baby hatching on top of it. So
the wasp larva will feed on the live flesh of
(14:02):
the tarantula for up to a month.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
That's like the buffalo bill of the animal kingdom right there.
And this is this is terrifying. Why is it? Why
is this so adapted to do this bizarre thing like that?
It seems like such a stretch, Like I mean, how
did this creature come up with this idea? I mean
that's a silly way of asking it.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Well, think about it this way, like when you you
know animals, especially like wasps, they don't have refrigerators, so
they can't keep food fresh for their young as it
hatches and develops. So by burying their larva, they're keeping
it safe from predators. But you know, if you bury
it with some dead prey, it can feed off of
(14:44):
it for a while, but eventually that's gonna go bad
and it can't eat it anymore. But by feeding on
something that's alive, it will stay fresh. So actually, some
species of the tarantula hawks will feed on non vital
organs first, so that the transula remains alive longer and
(15:06):
that gives it more opportunities to feed.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Makes sense, makes it? I have a quick question here, Katie.
So you know how serial killers are often known for
their specific mo o, either in the way that they
commit murder or in the types of victims they choose.
Are different species of tarantula hawk do they operate in
a similar way? Do they only prey on specific types
(15:32):
of tarantulas or is it any hairy or achnet out
there as fair game?
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Yeah? No, they are often very specific in terms of
the way that they kill and which species of tarantula
that they go after, because it's such a specified strategy.
Because you need a tarantula that is a burrowing type
of tarantula, and so that's not going to be every spider.
(15:59):
It's there very specific strategy isn't going to work. So
it's picked these cute little I mean to me, they're cute,
the translas that like hide in their little holes and
then as soon as a little prey comes by, they're like, ooh, gotcha.
But this time they're the ones who are got so. Also,
it actually gets more specific because female tarantulas are the
(16:22):
ones that are the killers. Males just hang around flowers
and try to get laid. So the mother actually will
select the gender of the larva based on how big
their victim is. If they have a big tarantula that
they've buried alive, then the mother will fertilize the egg,
which creates a female, because the females are the big,
(16:44):
tough serial killers and the males are these little, smaller
flower drinking dudes. And so if the transula is small,
you know, it's like the male doesn't require as much
nutrition to develop, so the wasp believe the a unfertilized
and then that creates a male baby. And adults are
(17:05):
actually non carnivorous, so it's just the babies that eat
the meat. The adults just like to drink flower.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Nectar and then abduct and murdered tarantulism.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
Well yeah, that too.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
It's sort of like have you guys seen Oh, what
is it?
Speaker 4 (17:21):
What's that movie? It's not called is it Split? The
one with James McAvoy.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yes, yes, he has multiple personalities.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Yeah yeah, and the one like he has like the
mother personality where he's like, I've made you a sandwich
and like he's stroking her hair and stuff. It makes
me think of that, these like wasp that like, oh
I like to drink flower nectar anyways, enjoy being paralyzed
while my baby eats you.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yikes? So how long does it take to kill the tarantula?
Like how long does this this horrible torture porn go on?
Speaker 3 (17:55):
It can be up to a month, which is crazy
to me because like that's such a long time to
be slowly eaten. It's like being in a sarlac pit.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
It's just do they even do them the kindness of
reinjecting them with the paralyzing venom or does that eventually
just wear off once they're buried and they don't even
care anymore we're dismembered.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, I think it'll eventually wear off, but I think
they'll most likely die before it does. And also the
they're packed in so tight inside the dirt they can't
move anyways. It's every nightmare combined into one, like being paralyzed,
being eaten alive, being buried alive.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And having a baby eating you. Yeah, maybe part is
extra creepy. That's to me, that's the kicker. I don't
know why. Something about the baby eating you from the
top down is just really really awful.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Because even human murderers don't do that. That's one of
the big difference.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
That's a very special kind of evil who.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
There aren't typically baby murderers, although there are children who
can be murderers, but I don't think infants have yet
done a murder.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
It's a different show.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
So good news you guys. Tarantula hawks are found all
over the world, including Australia, which duh, because Australia is
just home to every monster. They're also in Africa, Southeast Asia, India,
and also America. They're even in San Diego, California, which
is my hometown.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
So yay, that's astonishing.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, will you be able to find any video of
this process going down. I would love slash.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Yeah, I could totally send you guys something like that.
It's I have seen it. It's pretty gnarmally because you
see this wasp attach itself to the tarantula and then
there's a scuffle and then the transla slowly starts to
go very still, and that's when the dread sets in.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, it was. It was as you were walking us
through this process. I was watching a video of a
child who is one watching this intense deathmatch and kidnapping, abduction,
burial of a tarantula, and even the kid seems to
think this is this is a little brutal. You can
(20:12):
see the tarantula attempt to escape as the paralytic agent
is kicking in. But I was surprised by the size
because at least in what we're seeing here, the tarantula
hawk looks significantly smaller than the creature it's attacking.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yeah, and that's why it's having the ability to paralyze
the tarantula is so important because it's using its smarts.
Not really because wasps are done, but in evolutionary terms,
like this intelligent strategy over the brawn of the tarantula.
That sting is extremely powerful. So there's this entomologist, doctor
(20:54):
Justin Schmidt from the Southwestern Biological Institute, and he created
a sting pain index and uh. He says, the Transla
hawk sting is quote unsurpassed and intensity by any other
stinging insect and that a sting feels like a lightning
bolt struck the spot. The pain is beyond imagination. And
(21:17):
you want to know why he knows this.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Did he sting himself?
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Yep?
Speaker 5 (21:23):
Oh wow, this crazy bastard like just created this sting
pain index by finding a bunch of insects that sting
and then having them sting himself and then rating it like,
oh yeah, that's yep, that's a ten.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
How is that guy? Is he still alive? I don't
want to I don't want to sound insensitive.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Okay, yeah, I don't think he's killed himself with insects stings,
just subjected himself to quote unimaginable pain.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Now from if if A, what I remember is correct,
a wasp or notorious for you're just attacking human beings
who happen to be around their general vicinity. Are tarantula
hawks that way too? Or do they have to be
you know, provoked or prodded.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
They have to be provoked. So the silver lining is
they're actually pretty non aggressive towards anything except for obviously
tarantula's But I mean, if you get one caught like
in your sweater, it'll probably sting you out of a
fear response. But yeah, they don't go around trying to
attack people, which think christ because.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
That would be terrible.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah, but if you're a tarantula, you know, not such
good luck.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Wow, And they're so widespread. Yeah, so I guess then
one of the big questions I keep going back to
is is this evil because it sounds like this is
while it's horrific for the tarantula, the victim, the incubator,
it seems like it's the only way for these these
(23:01):
creatures to reproduce. Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Like there's no alternative, right, and so this is like
this is the key question is now, I don't think
a wasp is capable of being evil in the sense
that we kind of define it because they're so simple.
They're basically like robots. So it's like you wouldn't necessarily
describe a virus as being evil because it's so simple
(23:26):
and even though wasps are a great deal more complex
than a virus. I don't think they can have like
the intent or the awareness to be evil. But when
you look at it, like you kind of take a
step back and look at it from like an evolutionary perspective,
where it's sort of more of this emergent intelligence from
(23:49):
millions of years of evolution, I mean, maybe you can
define that as evil. You know, I'm not talking about
like intelligent design or like some god control evolutions, talking
about like, you know, you have this sort of like
guiding force of evolution that is its own sort of
(24:09):
like I mean, it is. It is a form of
intelligence where it's like you have to really zoom out
to see it, where it's just millions and millions of
years of these small changes resulting in something that's so
so messed up. And maybe that's like a natural form
of evil.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
I don't know. I guess that's a very philosophical question.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Well, I think it is. But it's also interesting because
so much of psychopathy is almost like reptilian type behavior,
or like non feeling, non empathetic type behavior, which is
the kind of things that an insect like this would do, right,
like there's no feeling about it. It's just, you know,
I must feed, I must feed my baby, and this
(24:51):
is how I'm going to go about doing it. It's
very callous, for lack of a better term, you know,
but you're right, there's no cognition involved. It's just the
thing that makes sense and that it's adapted perfectly to do.
But I think we ascribe those kind of things to
psychopaths as well.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Right, because I think with a human, we're like, you
should be capable of empathy. But then it's a really
uncomfortable question because it's a little more clear when you're
looking at a wasp that okay, of course it doesn't
understand what it's doing. But you could also make that
argument for humans who can't feel empathy, like they may
(25:25):
truly not understand the gravity of what they're doing. And
then is that sort of like the wasp where you
can't really blame them, or is there something else going
on with people where it's like, well, you should be
smart enough to figure out, like does there even need
to be like an intentionality behind evil, because like if
it's defined as something where it's like you're incapable of
(25:48):
feeling mercy or empathy. Then maybe just like evil doesn't
need to be like intentionally evil, it's just a force
that doesn't have empathy and then causes harm.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
So then we would be defining evil as not the
addition of something nefarious or insidious, but the absence of
an alternative, long term evolutionary strategy, because that's what empathy
ultimately functions as, right.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Right, right, Yeah, that's really interesting. It's like we have
because there are some animals who have evolved a survival
strategy that could be seen as like good. So like
bees are so social and help each other, so you
know a lot of these use social animals. So like
bees and ants and even naked molerets, they all seem
(26:39):
to team up and pitch in and help each other
and care about each other as much as like a
bee can. But it does seem like a kinder sort
of animal in general than a wasp, even though if
you take a bee and a wasp individually, they don't
really I don't think they can feel kindness. But you
(26:59):
look at the whole the group of them, like a
b colony, does seem to have empathy, for it's like
each other in a weird way.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
So what would a tarantula hawk be in terms of
the Dark Triad or Dark tetrad, would they would they
qualify as a sadist.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, Like these very sadistic because
like to keep something alive for up to a month
and then slowly feed on it.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
It's just so.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
It seems so unnecessarily cruel, even though as we've talked
about it, there is a reason for it.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Yeah, I think that checks out.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
As we've just discussed in the Animal Kingdom. Some of
the most terrifying examples of sadism are due to reproductive
needs in humans. Some of the most dangerous people are
those who somehow link sexuality to sadism.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
This is called a pair off.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
It's a form of sexuality that is atypical or pathological.
Now a huge disclaimer here, I'm not talking about the
BDSM community. People who engage in BDSM are very different
from those with sexual sadism disorder. The key thing being
consent in healthy communication. For BDSM practitioners, consent is extremely important.
(28:23):
They may find sadistic acts or masochistic acts to be
sexually arousing, but not unless their partner is equally interested.
That's why safe words setting clear boundaries and a lot
of discussion is often present in these communities, and it's
also why psychologists don't consider BDSM to be a disorder.
They aren't causing harm to themselves or others while I
(28:45):
mean psychologically speaking, but sexual sadism disorder is different. People
with this disorder are aroused by the suffering of others,
and the disorder is either harmful to the individual who
might find it disturbing or upsetting, or to others in
the case of sex offenders who seek out non consent
and victims. What I find interesting is the difference between
(29:09):
people with sexual sadom disorder who choose not to act
on it and those who do, meaning that there are
some who either have empathy or at least a fear
of consequences while still feeling.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
These sadistic urges.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
I had a clinical psychology professor who put it this way.
The explosive combination is having both a sadistic paraphilia and
a clinical lack of empathy. Those are the ingredients to
make most types of serial killers. So after a quick break,
that will bring us to our next member of the dark.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
Tetrad this psychopath.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
So how do you spot a psychopath by the cold
look of cruel indifference in their glassy eyes, the pile
of bodies in their basements. Well, what about with technology?
Psychologists have attempted to quantify psychopathy using brain imaging, which
leads us to one of the most interesting stories in
brain research. James Fallon is a neuroscientist who was interested
(30:13):
in looking at the anatomical characteristics found in the brains
of serial killers. He found a pattern of abnormalities in
the pet scans of these killers, showing structural aberrations in
the orbital cortex, the prefrontal cortex, the ventral anterior cingulate,
and the amygdala. As he was shuffling through piles of
(30:34):
brain scans on his desk, he was looking through a
file on his family's brain scans taken for another study
on Alzheimer's. One of the scans had the clear structural
abnormalities consistent with psychopathy. Curious as to who and his
family was the psychopath, he looked up the name and
was surprised to find it was his own brain scan. Obviously,
(30:56):
he wasn't a violent killer, so first he wondered if
all his recent search about the psychopathic brain was just wrong,
But When he took genetic tests, he found that he
also had alleles associated with people high at risk for
exhibiting violent behavior. He did some introspection and decided, instead
of it being a fluke, he may very well have
(31:16):
a psychopathic brain. But due to his loving upbringing with
parents and siblings who were devoted to him, he suspects
he was able to avoid the more frightening violent traits
of the psychopath.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
But when nature is left to.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Her own devices, what kinds of deadly killers does she concoct?
The deadliest serial killers are often harmless looking. They blend
right in, allowing them to continue their killing while raising
no alarms. As we'll find out, this is true both
in human society.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
And the animal kingdom.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
So speaking of psychopaths, let's talk about cats. So, guys,
which wild cat would you guess is the most prolific
serial killers of them all?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Wildcat specifically, Let's see, it's probably smaller than one would imagine,
because naturally people would think something large, like a tiger
or maybe a lion. But I'm gonna go with something smaller,
maybe a bobcat or a wild cat.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
That's a really intelligent guess. Yeah, because like you have
these huge predator cats, so like lions seem really formidable.
I mean, they have a thousand psi of force for
their jaw strength, so just for comparison, we only have
about two hundred psi, so they're so powerful. And you know,
(32:39):
there's also like the more sleek ones like cheetahs who
can run up to seventy five miles an hour and
jaguars who are super like buff and can carry cadavers
up a tree. But you're right that even those guys
are really terrifying. They're not the most prolific serial killers,
and we do have to get smaller. In fact, our
(33:02):
most prolific serial killer kitty is one of the smallest
species of cats in the world, and that includes domestic cats,
so they're smaller than your household kitty. It's this really
adorable cat. It's called the blackfooted cat. They're about three
times smaller than your pet house cat, and they weigh
(33:22):
in about two to four pounds, so females are around
two pounds, males can get up to around four pounds,
and they have a sixty percent kill success rate, which
if you've ever seen a nature documentary and you see
how many times a lion us will have a goof
up and not be able to catch its prey. Sixty
(33:44):
percent is incredible. So they actually look a lot like
a house cat, but just like kind of shrunken down.
They have big eyes, and they're tan with dark brown
spots and striations. And they're called black black footed because
their little feets are black. And they're also called ant
(34:05):
hill tigers because when they're cornered, they'll like, they'll mess
you up, they'll cut you.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
They're very aggressive.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
You know, I'm looking at I'm looking at a picture
of one right now, and I gotta say these cats
are adorable. They look even better than my two cats.
My two cats are just you know, cat models. Basically,
they have that.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Like baby schema because they have the big eyes and
the big four heads and they're they're really tiny and
just super super cute. You would not think these are
a big threat.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
So what kind of stuff do they hunt?
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Well, their prey can be pretty small, so rodents, birds,
pretty much anything that moves, and they can fit in
their mouths though, so they'll do insects, lizards, birds, and
small rodents are their favorite. They're mostly nocturnal. They'll walk twenty.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
Miles a night.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
So that's the furthest that any small wild cat will walk.
And I did a little math and if you scale
that up to human size, that's like walking one thousand
miles a night, which wow, you know, it's like it's
like the Proclaimer's song, like I will walk five hundred months.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
So does that mean these little sweet babies hunt for
sport just like for kicks? Like why why such a
high kill rate versus lions who to me seem like
they hunt more practically and functionally to you know feed.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
No, they I mean they just have a rapid metabolism
and they for the food that they can't eat on
the spot, they storm their burrows. So it's not for fun,
it's definitely for nutrition. And these smaller animals will actually
have a pretty large nutritional demand because they can't bulk
(35:51):
up a lot of calories and then just like sleep
it off. They have to be constantly eating.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
And to be clear, we're talking about the most prolific
successful serial killers, not just the most attempts. Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (36:07):
I mean they actually rack up a pretty high kill count,
So I would say they are of the big cats
they kill the most per day, so they can take
down around fifteen prey items a night, which is a lot,
and that includes like birds. So if there's a really
cool video I can show you guys, and I'll put
(36:28):
that up on our Twitter where it just like jumps
up and catches a bird midair and it's got it
like jammed in its mouth and it looks very pleased
with itself. But yeah, that's like about a kill an hour.
So that's I mean, these are small prey items, but
you know you scale that down to the size of
(36:49):
the cow, which is like two pounds of like pure
murderous rage, and that's like, you know, it's like taking
if a lion could take down a small gazelle like
every hour. So they also do it's so cute. They
do the little butt wiggle, you know that thing like
when your cat is getting ready to pounce and it
(37:11):
like there's a little swigty swootye with its butt.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Yeah, it's like Simba and the Lion King.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, they do that.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
They do the little little butt wiggle, and so that's
actually not just to look cute. It helps align their
feet under them so they can pounce with maximum precision
and power like a spring and sometimes they do take
down bigger prey though, so they rarely but sometimes kill
(37:42):
cape hairs, which way more than them. They're these relatively
larger rabbits, So it's just kind of funny because they're
just like so amped up on being murderous they don't
even think that, oh, maybe this rabbit I can't even
carry it because it weighs like twice of me.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
So is this where the is this where the psychopathy
aspect comes in?
Speaker 3 (38:07):
Yeah, because it's like I feel like their desire to
kill these bigger prey items is it's like, clearly, you're
not going to eat that, it's too big. I mean
maybe you know, they do save it for later, but
it's just kind of funny. I don't even know if
they could fit a cape hair in their din. So
(38:29):
it's just killing stuff because they are driven to kill.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
I mean, we've all been there.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
But that's what my house cat does. That is what
my indoor outdoor sweet snugly house cat does. Yea, Betty,
he's not hungry.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
Betty doesn't have it.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Well, Betty doesn't have a sixty percent kill rate.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Though, No, absolutely not. But it's like he is clearly
toying with these creatures and you know, just like leaving
them in the most twisted arrays I've ever seen in
my life. Like it's it's like the well, it haunts
my dreams. It's it's bizarre that I guess why I
was asking earlier, like does this creature hunt kind of
for sport? So I guess some of that does enter
(39:05):
into it. If it's not, it's not even thinking about
the fact that it can't actually carry it, you know,
the kill away. It just needs to feed the urge, right.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
Right, And well, I mean it's really interesting because with
house cats, obviously they don't need to kill anything at
all because they're getting fed their little kibbles and bits.
But I think they have a desire to hunt. So
they're driven to hunt by this, and it is a
survival instinct to hunt, because you can imagine if a
(39:35):
cat didn't have that and just waited around for kibble,
if it lived in the wild, it would be done
an evolutionary dead end. But yeah, I mean, it's we
can't talk to a cat and say like, hey, do
you really enjoy doing this? But my guess would be
that they do get satisfaction from it, and even though
(39:58):
it is an evolutionary strategy, and even playing with their
prey has practical reasons like making sure it's dead and
also honing their skills. I mean, they seem to love
doing it, and that is kind of psychopathic, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Yeah, that's a good point, especially when we consider not
just cats, but a lot of similar mammals. Their juvenile
phase is spent playing, and playing is really just a
less fatal version of the hunting that they will instinctively
practice later in life. And I can absolutely see from
(40:36):
a neurological perspective, I can absolutely see an animal as
evolved as a cat or my cat's enjoying that kind
of thing. It's scratching an itch. Your body and your
brain will tell you it's a pleasurable and correct thing to.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Do, right right. I mean, like we do have video
games where we like to kill stuff. So it makes
me wonder if we might have something like that deep
inside us, where we kind of, you know, maybe have
that killing instinct that's just been over many, many hundreds
of thousands of the years of cultural and societal evolution,
(41:10):
has been sort of put inside a little box and
locked away, except in the cases of.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Serial killers, right, Well, in the defense of my cats,
Doctor Vankman and mister Jackpott have to shout him out here. Yeah,
and that's the real names. In defense of my cats.
They have at the very least never paralyzed. Someone buried
them alive and put a kitten inside of their bodies
(41:36):
to a month.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
But would cute, Like would a kitten bursting out of
a tarantula be cute or horrible?
Speaker 4 (41:45):
I can't know.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
I'm on the fence. I'm honestly on the fence.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
Because if that was if that was backwards, like a
transla bursting out of a kitten, that would obviously be horrible.
But when you do it in verse, it's kind of cute.
I mean, I still feel bad for the tarantula, but
you know, hey, it's.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
A kid for sure, so it's pretty crazy. You mentioned
Fallon the neuroscientist. Yeah, he's actually in this show that
I'm working on called Happy Face. It's like a true
crime show about the Happy Face killer, and it's about
this guy's daughter. And in the show, she goes and
gets analyzed by this guy to try to figure out
(42:25):
whether she herself has inherited her father's psychopathic tendencies and
It's really interesting because it's like there's a lot of
discussion around it, whether it's like is it all nature,
is it all nurture? Is it a combination of the two.
Can you really figure out just from someone's brain skin
whether or not this is true. It seems like a
very kind of like surfacey way of figuring that stuff
(42:46):
out because it's a combination of a lot of factors.
But he actually talks a lot about psychopathy in the
animal kingdom too, and how it's actually can be a
positive trait. Yeah, Like you know animals that our psychopaths
will kind of they'll go places that other animals won't,
and they will actually breed more successfully and things like that.
It's I'm not explaining it super well, but it's.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
No that makes sense, Yeah, because like psychopaths, one of
their characteristics is risk taking and not having a fear
of the consequences. So in some cases that could obviously
be very bad, but for some animals that will bring
you a reward if you are bolder and take a
risk and try something novel, that lack of fear will
(43:31):
actually give you a leg up over your competition.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
That is exactly what he was talking about. You know that.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Yeah, so long as they survive to reproduce. Yes, right,
So that's that's that's the Vegas Odds part.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
Yeah, that's that's really interesting. I've actually listened to some
of that podcast. It's so I think that is it's
such a personal perspective on the nature versus nurture because
she's I mean, from my perspective, she's obviously a very
empathetic person to be so worried about that part of
(44:07):
her nature, but I can totally imagine how that would
be that you're wondering, like, well, any behavior you feel
where it's like maybe you know you have sean Freud
of sometime, or you feel angry, you wonder like, well,
is that me? Or is that like these genes inside
me puppeting me.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Yeah, And you might not have made it far enough
in the series. I don't want to spoil anything, but
it does come into play, like the way she's dealt
with relationships and kind of her emotional kind of closed offness,
and that's a big part of it, and wondering if
she can actually feel things the way quote unquote normal
people can. So it's something that really like haunts her
and bothers her, and at the end of the series
(44:46):
she kind of figures out, you know, at least as
far as this guy's concerned, what she is.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Yeah, the story.
Speaker 4 (44:55):
Of the most prolific serial killer.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
In human history is one that's more true tragic than gruesome.
Harold Friedrich Shipman was a bespectacled, bearded man, very ordinary
and meek looking. He was a doctor, married and had
four children. Not someone whom you would peg as a
cold blooded killer, but he killed two hundred and eighteen people,
committing crimes undetected.
Speaker 4 (45:18):
For twenty three years.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
Shipman was a GP who had his own practice near Manchester, England.
He targeted the most vulnerable people as his victims, his
own geriatric patients. Most of his victims were the elderly
women in his care to whom he gave lethal doses
of morphine.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
He had a typical pattern.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
He would give his victims a lethal dose of diamorphine,
signed their death certificates, and then alter their medical records
to falsely indicate that their health had been in decline.
Shipman was an outlier even among serial killers, as there
was no clear motive for the crime, except in one
case he altered his victim's will to make himself the
(45:59):
benefit of three hundred and eighty six thousand pounds, something
the victim's daughter found to be awfully suspicious. So why
did he kill It's hard to know for certain. As
a teenager, he witnessed his mother received morphine for terminal
cancer until she died of the disease. Some of the
psychiatrists who've looked at his case speculate that he had
(46:20):
a deep seated need to control other people, something influenced
but certainly not caused in total by his mother's death.
Another possibility psychiatrists have proposed is that he felt a
sense of relief from stress or pressure by killing his patients,
as he considered them a nuisance. This is the heart
of what a psychopath is. Coldly, flippantly cruel. We need
(46:44):
a minute to clean our brains with images of cute cats.
Wait is that a blackfooted cat? And is that a
baby bird in its mouth?
Speaker 4 (46:51):
Oh no, We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (47:02):
Machiavelianism through the scope of psychology is defined as a
duplicitous manipulation with a disregard for morality, putting personal gain
before any feelings of empathy. Think Little Finger from Game
of Thrones, someone behind the scenes manipulating and pulling strings,
causing destruction for others for their own game. But fortunately,
(47:24):
Machiavelians can only manipulate, not mind.
Speaker 4 (47:27):
Control their victims.
Speaker 3 (47:29):
However, the natural world is not so merciful. We're going
to discuss a Machiavilian animal that is literally pulling the
strings using real life mind control. So mind control and
hypnosis is often explored in popular culture. From the Manchurian
Candidate to Jessica Jones were fascinated by the idea of
(47:50):
thought control. So, you know the Purple Man and Jessica Jones,
it's such a creepy villain.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Yeah, yep, yep, yep, Doctor Who, David Tennant, Yeah, he's.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
So lovable in Doctor Who. But then his man he's.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
Just I think, so he's got he's got a good range.
I trust him. You don't trust him as Doctor Who?
Was it after watching Jessica Jones that you stop trusting.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Him Doctor Who? No, No, I just don't. I don't
trust his mouth.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Is it because he has a bunch of hearts? He's
got like ten hearts or something.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
That's just shallow?
Speaker 2 (48:21):
That's fair.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
But yeah, the Purple man for background for Jessica Jones
emidst pheromones that force people to obey his suggestions, right right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
It's like he issues at command and then the person
has to do it because of some kind of metichlorians
or whatever. I haven't watched the whole show, so I'm
not sure, but yeah, that's it's so creepy to me
because like like one of the worst possible sci fi
horror scenarios where serial killer mind controls you into digging
(48:56):
your own grave or just following him into his like
kill basement. But I have bad news for spiders again.
This is a very spider unfriendly podcast. Orb Weaver spiders
are spin these really neat, precise webs. They're actually very
beautiful the webs the spiders are. I mean, I think
(49:19):
they're cool, but people have hang ups about spiders for
some reason. So now wasps again come into the picture
and just are so mean and are such assholes. So
female parasitic wasps lay an egg onto the orb weaver's abdomen,
(49:40):
and if you've been listening, you know, and once a
wasp lays an egg on you, you're in for a
bad time. So the orb weaver is still alive, and
the spider becomes mind controlled by the wasp larva, and
instead of spinning its beautiful lace like web, it dismantles
its web and creates a cocoon for the parasitic larva
(50:04):
to live in. And then, because wasps, again, there are
such huge assholes, the larva will suck on the spider's
juices until the spider dies, and then the larva just
checks its carcass away like a soda can, and it
makes itself nice and cozy in the cocoon that the
(50:25):
spider had woven for it, against its will. It's so
crazy to me that you can have such a precise
method of mind control that the larva not only gets
to eat its victim but makes it spen a little
cradle for it as it develops and so it can
(50:46):
stay safe.
Speaker 4 (50:47):
It's just so creepy.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
So it's slave labor at that point, too.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
Right, a slave that you eat later.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (50:55):
Yeah. So are these wasps as common as the tarantula hawk.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
They aren't as widely distributed, So the ones that we're
going to be talking about are found in Japan. So
researchers in Japan wanted to look into this behavior. Because
it's so crazy how precise that mind control is. And
they found that the cocoon that the zombie spider weaves
(51:27):
for its parasite is very similar to the molting stage
web that the spider, a healthy spider, will weave for itself.
It's a protective cocoon designed to keep the spider safe
while it molts its exoskeleton, and it's actually made out
of this special ultraviolet spider silk so that birds and
(51:50):
flying insects will avoid crashing into it. So like normally
when a spider builds its web, it wants insects to
run into it so that you can eat them. But
if you're all naked and exposed and don't want something
to kill you, you wrap yourself up in like this
neon light of like warning naked spider in here. So
(52:11):
researchers found that there was higher levels of this substance
that's called twenty oh ectisone, and it's the same hormone
that controls molting. So in these zombified spiders, they are
being mind controlled into thinking that they're going through their
(52:32):
molting stage. It's unknown how the wasp is actually manipulating
this hormone, but it's not just mind controlling it into
thinking it's molting. It's actually a step above that because
it's somehow commanding it to go into this like super
molting mode where it's building an extra strong cocoon, more
(52:56):
reinforced with greater tensile strength than the spider's normal molting cocoons.
So it's like it's beyond just like thinking it's molting.
It's creating a mega safety bunker for the parasite that's
planning on murdering it.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
So wait, wait, So the downside is that you are
being a mind controlled and then you're going to die.
But the upside is that you get super strength or
I guess the equivalent of spider superpowers.
Speaker 3 (53:29):
Well, your your webbing does. So you're creating spider silk
that has is extra reinforced because the molting spider silk,
like in a healthy orb weaver, that's creating a cocoon
for itself to molt inside that that webbing will be
reinforced and stronger.
Speaker 4 (53:49):
To protect it.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
But for the parasite, it's like it's bringing out the
good stuff. It's bringing out the big guns, the big
webbing guns, and creating really really strong webbing to protect
the parasite. So, I mean, I would think it's not
necessarily clear in the research yet, but I would think
that somehow it's just being flooded with these hormones and
(54:15):
make like this extra strong signal for it to produce
the molting webbing in a way that's like it's over
signaling so that the parasite benefits from the super strong cocoon.
So this is what's called an ectoparasitoid. It's a parasite
who will live externally on its host and eventually kill it.
(54:37):
But some parasitic wasps will lay their eggs directly inside
the spider, and then the larvae eat their way out
of the spider like an alien chest burster.
Speaker 4 (54:48):
It's really disgusting.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
And just for a safety check here, there are no
wasp that do this to people, right, no use, there
none big enough to do it yet.
Speaker 3 (54:58):
Okay, not yet, not that we know can help.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
But think of whatever. Whenever I think about this paras
parasitic stuff doing things to animals to make them act
against their own self interest, I always think of that
parasitic fungus like erupts out of ants heads. Yeah before right, yeah,
before it does that, doesn't it also do some kind
of crazy mind control that makes them do something that
(55:23):
like benefits the fungus itself.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, crawls up a stock like
a plant stock, and then it's final. The ant's final
act is to cling onto the stock with its mandibles,
so it its brain is being so manipulated by the
fungus that it's like clinging onto the stock with its mandibles.
(55:47):
And then that's really good for the fungus as it
grows out of its head and then produces spores because
it's got a solid anchor down onto the onto the
plant or the branch.
Speaker 5 (55:58):
You know.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
One that while we're speaking of parasites, one that worries
me as a cat owner is Toxoplasma gandhi.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Yeah, yeah, we all probably have that, Like that's why
we're nice to cats.
Speaker 3 (56:09):
I don't know, so, yeah, you probably if you clean
up the cats litter box and you don't obsessively wash
your hands every single time, you might have it. And
I mean there's actually a pretty good chance, like if
you've owned cats over a long period of time. It's
generally not a problem for humans unless you're pregnant, in
(56:30):
which it can cause birth defects or miscarriage. And the
other thing it's been linked to is potentially triggering schizophrenia.
Speaker 4 (56:39):
That's a very very.
Speaker 3 (56:40):
Rare almost just like it's not going to happen to you,
but it it is a documented effect, So they can
a cat can literally cause schizophrenia in a person via
the tea GANDHII. So I think we need to talk
more about how spiders are terribly mistreated in nature. So
(57:04):
there's another mind controlling machiavellian manipulator called the spiderfly, and
it's a fly that injects itself into the spider's abdomen,
lodging itself near the lung. And here's the crazy thing.
Speaker 4 (57:22):
It can remain there for.
Speaker 3 (57:24):
Years while it completes its development. So once it's finally
ready to molt and emerge from the spider, it controls
the spider into spinning a protective cocoon, just like we were.
Speaker 4 (57:37):
Talking about with the orb weavers.
Speaker 3 (57:39):
Then it eats the spider from the inside out, which
is just the worst, but at least these ones are
kind of cute and fuzzy, so unlike the wasps, the
spiderfly they're sort of like these little bumbling cuties entomologists
fr describes them as having a floating sort of flight,
(58:04):
rather undulating and uncertain. It has the habit of buzzing
around and circles when it falls over on its back
on a smooth surface, often doing this for some time
before it can regain its feet. Most of the time
it is making a high, thin humming sound. So it's
just like it's this dopey, kind of like dorky little fly.
(58:25):
But then it's really horrifying and living inside a spider
for years before killing it.
Speaker 1 (58:31):
And this isn't like a marsupial situation, you know how
like a Joey can enter and exit the pouch of
the parent.
Speaker 2 (58:39):
It's more like a chest burster.
Speaker 1 (58:41):
Yeah, yes, I can't fly back in and out.
Speaker 3 (58:44):
It's a chest burster situation, but with like a cute
little like Elmo esque muppet character, Like if an alien's
just like the chest burster birthstud, it's like it's it's
he low.
Speaker 1 (59:00):
I'm kind of sold.
Speaker 2 (59:01):
It reminds me of this terrifying toy my girlfriend got
my daughter for a birthday other day. It's like a
tiny puppy that lives inside a croissant and you turn
the croissant inside out and then the tiny puppy emerges.
But it's really unclear, like the scale of it, Like
is it meant to be a tiny puppy or a
giant croissant? They really don't make that clear. But yeah,
(59:21):
that's not very sciency at all. But that's what I'm
picturing this whole time. I'm sorry. I don't know why.
Speaker 4 (59:25):
Toys have gotten weird.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
They really have, they really have.
Speaker 3 (59:32):
You might be comforting yourself with the knowledge that you're
not a spider and you're in no danger of a
fly hiding out in your lungs, But I want to
tell you the story of the human version of a spiderfly,
a secret hideaway killer that will have you checking your
cross spaces tonight. The Dinver spider Man doesn't really deserve
his name. His real name was Theodore Edward Coney's. He
(59:56):
was a drifter who in nineteen forty one decided he'd
settled down, but there was a little problem. The home
he chose was already occupied. Coney's found a trap door
in a closet that led to a tiny attic cubbyhole.
He went undiscovered for five weeks, leaving his Heidi hold
to occasionally steal food out of the fridge. One day,
(01:00:18):
the homeowner, seventy three year old Philip Peters, discovered Coney's
as he was foraging for food. Philip whacked Coney's with
his cane, and Coney's responded by brutally murdering Philip, bludgeoning
him to death with an iron stove stoker. Police investigated
the murder, but they found no signs of a break in,
(01:00:38):
and though they found the door to the attic, they
didn't explore it they thought it was too small for
any human person to fit through. After the murder, the
victim's wife and the housekeeper reported hearing strange noises in
the night, and they believed the house was haunted, so
they moved out and Coney's presence remained unknown. He stayed
(01:00:59):
in the vacant house until nineteen forty two, when police
came to make a routine check and they heard noises
coming from the second floor. They followed the noise and
saw a pair of legs vanishing into the trapdoor. They
grabbed them before he could disappear. He was tried and
convicted for Phillip's murder and spent his life in imprisonment,
(01:01:22):
although really was that a punishment? His sell probably felt
like a sprawling estate compared to the tiny nook he
hit away in. So do you have any crawl spaces
in your home? No reason, just curious, all right, So
thank you guys for coming on. This is really fun.
Do you guys have anything to plug?
Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Yeah, thank you so much for having no skatie yet.
You can catch Snola and myself on our show Ridiculous
History and come out twice a week. You can find
us on Instagram, Facebook.
Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
All the podcast places, mainly, Yeah, what's the show? We
kind of just go into some of the weirder, little
off the beaten path kind of history nuggets. It's a
very kind of snackable show. Episodes are like thirty to
forty minutes, very bingeable. It's a lot of fun to do.
And we also do other show called stuff they Don't
Want you to Know, where we take an open minded
(01:02:17):
approach to conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
I would say we take a critical thinking approach to.
Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Conspiracy is much better and more accurate.
Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
So you can find us on those shows. You can
find us all over the regular internet places and wherever
you find your favorite shows. You can also when you
find us on the social media stuff, just hit us
up directly. We're pretty approachable, unlike some of the animals
that we met in today's episode.
Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
We don't bite you guys, aren't or yeah, or inject
you with paralyzing venom.
Speaker 4 (01:02:51):
Well that's polite of you, guys.
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
You know, we try to be affable. It's sort of
like our that's our adaptation is like the super affability.
Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
Yeah, this is always like been stop injecting people with
paralytic agents.
Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
That was before my time.
Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
So you can find me at Katie Golden or at
pro Bird Rights where it's revealed I'm actually a bird.
And you can check out the podcast every Wednesday on
iTunes or the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts,
and just hit us up on Facebook, Twitter, and our
website is Creature featurepod dot com. And thanks to the
(01:03:31):
space Cosax for letting us use their wonderful song Exolumina.
Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Fellow Ridiculous Historians, not too too long ago or I
don't know, it's twenty eighteen, so lo these many years ago?
Speaker 2 (00:08):
Uh?
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Noel, You and I asked our pal Katie Golden to
tell us about something called the Dark Tetrad in the
animal world. Do you remember this one?
Speaker 3 (00:21):
I do?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
And if I'm not mistaken, this is an episode of
that podcast where we were a guest that we also
posted in our feed. So something a little different for
you today.
Speaker 1 (00:33):
Yeah. Yeah, we asked our We asked our good friend Katie,
who's the most prolific serial meowderer Max. I don't know
if you want to put a rim shot on that one,
but I thought it was good.
Speaker 2 (00:50):
Ma'am was jump right in.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
Ridiculous History is a production of iHeartRadio. Welcome to a
Ridiculous Historians.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
See what you did? Yeah, this is what they call
the old Ridiculous History bait and switch.
Speaker 1 (01:06):
It's true, yes, and your no always man. We've got
our super producer, Casey Pegro, and we want to introduce
you to a show that we did that we had
so much fun doing.
Speaker 2 (01:20):
It was a lot of fun.
Speaker 1 (01:21):
It's also not our show.
Speaker 2 (01:22):
It's not our show, but here's the thing, folks. It's
a little thing called the holiday season, and we really
needed a little something to pat out our feed to
give you guys something juicy to listen to over the holidays.
But make it we didn't have to actually record a
whole episode of our show, Ridiculous History. So we were
asked to be guests on an episode of a wonderful
(01:43):
show called Creature Feature, which is hosted by the wonderfully
smart and funny Katie Golden.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Yes, and we had such a great time on this show.
We don't want to spoil too much of it for you,
but we had such a great I'm on this show
that at the end of it, we harascible scoundrels that
we are, said, hey, Katie is equal if we publish
this episode on our feed as well, so that more
(02:12):
of our listeners can find out about Creature Feature and
all the neat, strange stuff you dive into. So what
is Creature Feature? Well, it's this. It's this brand new
podcast from How Stuff Works that takes a quote critters
I view to explore how animal behavior parallels human behavior.
And we entered into a dark, yet paradoxically illuminating exploration
(02:37):
of something called the Dark tetrad.
Speaker 2 (02:39):
That's right, Ben, which includes psychopathy, narcissistic personality, macha.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
That's the original dark triad, but there's a fourth that
is added occasionally, which is good old everyday sadism.
Speaker 2 (02:54):
That's right, And that was actually my favorite entry in
the episode where we talk about a particularly nasty pair
of cidic wasp that does horrible, horrible things to tarantulus.
Speaker 1 (03:04):
So check out our appearance on Creature Feature. Thanks again,
Katie if you're hearing this for having us over on
your show, and if you enjoy this exploration of human behavior,
please check out the rest of the fine episodes of
Creature Feature that are available today wherever you find your
favorite shows.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
Listen up for a guest spot from Katie herself on
this show.
Speaker 1 (03:27):
Yes, that's true.
Speaker 2 (03:28):
Can we roll the tape without further ado?
Speaker 3 (03:38):
Hey, everybody, welcome to Creature Feature, the show where we
explore the brains of animals and people. I I got
brains on my shirt. Today we'll be talking about evil killers, kidnappers, murderers,
and hidden lurkers walking or crawling amongst us. Then we'll
answer the age old question, who's the most prolific serial meter,
(04:01):
does evil exist? There's not really an entry for evil
in the DSM, the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual used by psychologists.
General attempts to categorize evil has resulted in the creation
of the dark tetrad, a term used for four personality
traits associated with bad behavior. Narcissism, sadism, psychopathy, and machiavelianism.
Speaker 4 (04:25):
These are traits that.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
Are often attributes of people with maladaptive, dangerous personalities. So
what does it mean to be in the dark tetrad?
We all know generally the concept of narcissism, sadism, psychopathy,
and machiavilianism, but what does that actually look like in
humans and even animals. Let's take a look at narcissism.
(04:48):
For example, the DSM's definition for clinical levels of narcissism
is someone who has quote a grandiose sense of self
importance and shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes. I mean,
you've almost certainly encountered at least a subclinical narcissist, and
no doubt you could name a few celebrities and politicians
(05:08):
who fit the bill. But could you find narcissism and animals?
Many animals seem like narcissists. But even if you point
the finger at a totally self obsessed animal, say a housecat,
you could also argue they lack the sense of self
to be narcissists. Certainly, all Mittens seems to care about
is herself, but she may not fully comprehend that she
(05:29):
is a herself, So can she really be a narcissist?
This is the problem with trying to assign human traits
to animals. We can't get inside the animal's head and
know what it's thinking. An act that seems sadistic or
manipulative may be simply an instinct that allows the animal
to pass on its genes. It's impossible to know what
(05:50):
they're really feeling. But hey, this podcast is all about
the impossible. So we're gonna look at the animals that
best symbolize each of the remaining.
Speaker 4 (05:58):
Characteristics of the Dark tetras.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
Sadism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism. We'll compare these masters of evil
with their human counterparts, exploring what it means to be
a member of the Dark tetrad and whether we can
use modern scientific imaging to actually quantify.
Speaker 4 (06:15):
What it means to be a psychopath.
Speaker 3 (06:18):
Joining me today on our journey into the Dark is
Ben Bollen and Noel Brown, hosts of the podcast Ridiculous History.
Speaker 4 (06:25):
Welcome you guys.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
Thanks for having us. Katie, Yeah, for sure.
Speaker 2 (06:29):
Thanks so much. I'm already kind of terrified, but I'm excited.
Speaker 1 (06:34):
It's a weird feeling. I, for one, am and thrilled,
darkly thrilled.
Speaker 3 (06:39):
One of you. You were mentioning you have a cat.
Would you describe your cat as a narcissist?
Speaker 2 (06:44):
Oh? Sure, I mean he I don't know, it's weird.
He sort of like flits between narcissism and outright psychopathy.
Like I was saying, he kind of leaves me little
treats on the front porch where it'll be like almost
like splayed out like some kind of satanic rich what
it'll be like the head of a squirrel and the
body of a rat, and then you know, kind of
surrounded by like viscera and like the shape of pentagram.
(07:06):
Sometimes it's really pretty scary. But then he snuggles up,
you know, like a good little guy. So I don't
know what to make of him. I do not know
what to make of him. I'm hoping I can learn
from this podcast today and kind of get inside his
head a little bit more and understand what makes him tick.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
Yeah, And I mean even dogs, to me are pretty
narcissistic because they, like my own dog, you associate them
with being selfless and loving towards humans. But she's a
black hole of neediness and desiring affection. So no matter
how much I pet her, like I feel like if
I was dying on the floor, her number one priority
(07:42):
would be to get another belly rub before I pass out.
Speaker 2 (07:47):
Yeah, and then, as we all know too, if we
died alone in our apartments with just our cats or
our dogs, they would probably instantly start eating us.
Speaker 1 (07:54):
But that's any animal would eventually begin eating you if
it were I know.
Speaker 2 (07:58):
So is the love real, Ben, that's my question of
love is real?
Speaker 1 (08:01):
But now we're talking about the nature of the body
versus the mind or the soul, which I don't think
is quite where we're going with.
Speaker 2 (08:07):
Today's Well you did say what is evil? Is evil real?
So I'm intrigued. Please, let's let's dive right in.
Speaker 3 (08:14):
There's a lot of curiosity around whether animals can be sadistic.
A catter or a dolphin who plays with their half
dead praise seems sadistic, but there's actually practicality behind their cruelty.
So take this example, Dolphins beat up octopi before eating them,
even after they're dead. This may seem overkill, as if
the dolphins simply can't stop their murderous frenzy because they're
(08:38):
having too much fun, but there's actually a really good
reason to.
Speaker 4 (08:42):
Play rugby with a dead octopus.
Speaker 3 (08:44):
Octopi don't have centralized nervous systems, so after they're dead,
their tentacles can still move around. If an overeager dolphin
gobbles up an octopus who's dead but still wriggling, those
tentacles can crawl up its esophagus and choke the dolphin.
Speaker 4 (08:59):
Today.
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Yes, this is something that's actually been documented before. So
the dolphins beat the octopi to a pult before chowing down,
preventing the octopi from getting its surfinge from beyond its
watery grave. So asking whether animals are sadistic is a
tricky question. I'd wager I guess that yes, more intelligent
animals like dolphins or primates may have fun wreaking doom
(09:22):
and destruction, even if there's a good evolutionary reason for it,
but instead I want to look at how evolution itself
can create a sadistic monster, void of any emotion at all.
Speaker 4 (09:33):
To do that, we'll have to take a look.
Speaker 3 (09:35):
At tarantulas, And in this case, the tarantulas are the
innocent victims of a much more terrifying creature. So you, guys,
imagine being captured by a criminal sadist, being paralyzed by him,
stuck inside like a kill shed, totally at his mercy,
(09:55):
completely paralyzed.
Speaker 1 (09:57):
Katie, I think about that all the time.
Speaker 3 (10:00):
It's like, you know those bad dreams where you're like
trying to run away from a bad guy and you
can't move your stupid body.
Speaker 2 (10:10):
Oh yeah, for sure.
Speaker 3 (10:12):
It's like this really common recurring dream for me. I'm
like trying to run but it just feels like you're
stuck in mud, and then you can't move at all
and you try to scream but you can't scream.
Speaker 2 (10:22):
Well, it's like that part of Nightmare on Elm Street
where the where she's running up the stairs and she
starts sinking the stairs, turning into marshmallows and she just
like sinks into.
Speaker 3 (10:28):
The Oh I hate that, or like or like the
bed sinks under you.
Speaker 1 (10:35):
The fear of moving slowly in dreams, of trying to
run but being unable to is I think slightly more
common than the other spooky one, which is the fear
of your teeth falling out in your dreams.
Speaker 3 (10:48):
Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, that's a common one to the
body horror, either teeth, skin, or hair just falling out.
I get those ones too. I hate it, like big
chunks of skin falling off. It's the worst.
Speaker 1 (11:01):
I have one question when we talk about this, this
attack of paralysis, right, do the animal victims of this
sort of attack do they experience fear as we would
understand it?
Speaker 3 (11:15):
You know, I'm not sure. I mean, so we're talking
about tarantula's being the victims. So they're terrorized by this
thing called tarantula hawk. It's a sort of wasp, and
I imagine if the tarantula is capable of feeling anything
at all, this is going to be the scariest thing
(11:36):
that ever happens to it. I feel like tarantulas are
probably just a little more advanced than like a rumba
in terms of their ability to like sense things. But
I feel like there's got to be some kind of
very primitive wiring that is able to at least, you know,
gets like some dim awareness of being afraid of something
(12:01):
so that they can survive. Probably no other real cognition
beyond that, but other than like uh oh uh oh.
Speaker 2 (12:10):
Yeah, probably just like an impending death kind of moment,
you know, where it's like ah, fuck, it's over.
Speaker 4 (12:15):
Like oh oh no oh no.
Speaker 1 (12:17):
But the tarantula hawk is it Is it actually a hawk?
Speaker 3 (12:21):
No, no, it's a it's a type of wasp. And
if you look into evolutionary biology, you'll find that ninety
nine percent of asshole behavior is by wasps. Uh. So,
what these tarantula hawks do is they wait outside of
tarantula's burrow and they pluck at the tarantula's webbing to
(12:44):
lure the spider out, because the transulas create this this
little sort of dormat of webbing so that when an
insect crawls across it, they know to pop out and
capture the prey. But instead of a juicy little worm,
it's the transola hawk waiting for them, and it stings
the tarantula with a paralyzing venom, and so the transula
(13:08):
is frozen but still completely alive, and the wasp drags
the transula back to its burrow, where it places the
transola snugly inside and then lays a single egg on
top of it. And I feel like, if you're the tarantula,
with whatever tarantula consciousness that you have, if you can't
(13:31):
move and you see someone lay an egg on top
of you, this is the point where you're going like, well,
this is not.
Speaker 4 (13:37):
Going to be cool.
Speaker 3 (13:38):
Wow, indeed, it's not cool for the transula. So the
hawk the wasp buries the transula alive and tamps down
the earth. So it's stuck in there, still alive, buried alive,
with this little baby hatching on top of it. So
the wasp larva will feed on the live flesh of
(14:02):
the tarantula for up to a month.
Speaker 2 (14:06):
That's like the buffalo bill of the animal kingdom right there.
And this is this is terrifying. Why is it? Why
is this so adapted to do this bizarre thing like that?
It seems like such a stretch, Like I mean, how
did this creature come up with this idea? I mean
that's a silly way of asking it.
Speaker 3 (14:23):
Well, think about it this way, like when you you
know animals, especially like wasps, they don't have refrigerators, so
they can't keep food fresh for their young as it
hatches and develops. So by burying their larva, they're keeping
it safe from predators. But you know, if you bury
it with some dead prey, it can feed off of
(14:44):
it for a while, but eventually that's gonna go bad
and it can't eat it anymore. But by feeding on
something that's alive, it will stay fresh. So actually, some
species of the tarantula hawks will feed on non vital
organs first, so that the transula remains alive longer and
(15:06):
that gives it more opportunities to feed.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
Makes sense, makes it? I have a quick question here, Katie.
So you know how serial killers are often known for
their specific mo o, either in the way that they
commit murder or in the types of victims they choose.
Are different species of tarantula hawk do they operate in
a similar way? Do they only prey on specific types
(15:32):
of tarantulas or is it any hairy or achnet out
there as fair game?
Speaker 3 (15:37):
Yeah? No, they are often very specific in terms of
the way that they kill and which species of tarantula
that they go after, because it's such a specified strategy.
Because you need a tarantula that is a burrowing type
of tarantula, and so that's not going to be every spider.
(15:59):
It's there very specific strategy isn't going to work. So
it's picked these cute little I mean to me, they're cute,
the translas that like hide in their little holes and
then as soon as a little prey comes by, they're like, ooh, gotcha.
But this time they're the ones who are got so. Also,
it actually gets more specific because female tarantulas are the
(16:22):
ones that are the killers. Males just hang around flowers
and try to get laid. So the mother actually will
select the gender of the larva based on how big
their victim is. If they have a big tarantula that
they've buried alive, then the mother will fertilize the egg,
which creates a female, because the females are the big,
(16:44):
tough serial killers and the males are these little, smaller
flower drinking dudes. And so if the transula is small,
you know, it's like the male doesn't require as much
nutrition to develop, so the wasp believe the a unfertilized
and then that creates a male baby. And adults are
(17:05):
actually non carnivorous, so it's just the babies that eat
the meat. The adults just like to drink flower.
Speaker 1 (17:11):
Nectar and then abduct and murdered tarantulism.
Speaker 4 (17:14):
Well yeah, that too.
Speaker 3 (17:17):
It's sort of like have you guys seen Oh, what
is it?
Speaker 4 (17:21):
What's that movie? It's not called is it Split? The
one with James McAvoy.
Speaker 1 (17:26):
Yes, yes, he has multiple personalities.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
Yeah yeah, and the one like he has like the
mother personality where he's like, I've made you a sandwich
and like he's stroking her hair and stuff. It makes
me think of that, these like wasp that like, oh
I like to drink flower nectar anyways, enjoy being paralyzed
while my baby eats you.
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Yikes? So how long does it take to kill the tarantula?
Like how long does this this horrible torture porn go on?
Speaker 3 (17:55):
It can be up to a month, which is crazy
to me because like that's such a long time to
be slowly eaten. It's like being in a sarlac pit.
Speaker 2 (18:04):
It's just do they even do them the kindness of
reinjecting them with the paralyzing venom or does that eventually
just wear off once they're buried and they don't even
care anymore we're dismembered.
Speaker 3 (18:14):
Yeah, I think it'll eventually wear off, but I think
they'll most likely die before it does. And also the
they're packed in so tight inside the dirt they can't
move anyways. It's every nightmare combined into one, like being paralyzed,
being eaten alive, being buried alive.
Speaker 2 (18:32):
And having a baby eating you. Yeah, maybe part is
extra creepy. That's to me, that's the kicker. I don't
know why. Something about the baby eating you from the
top down is just really really awful.
Speaker 1 (18:42):
Because even human murderers don't do that. That's one of
the big difference.
Speaker 2 (18:46):
That's a very special kind of evil who.
Speaker 3 (18:49):
There aren't typically baby murderers, although there are children who
can be murderers, but I don't think infants have yet
done a murder.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
It's a different show.
Speaker 3 (19:02):
So good news you guys. Tarantula hawks are found all
over the world, including Australia, which duh, because Australia is
just home to every monster. They're also in Africa, Southeast Asia, India,
and also America. They're even in San Diego, California, which
is my hometown.
Speaker 1 (19:23):
So yay, that's astonishing.
Speaker 2 (19:26):
Yeah, will you be able to find any video of
this process going down. I would love slash.
Speaker 3 (19:31):
Yeah, I could totally send you guys something like that.
It's I have seen it. It's pretty gnarmally because you
see this wasp attach itself to the tarantula and then
there's a scuffle and then the transla slowly starts to
go very still, and that's when the dread sets in.
Speaker 1 (19:50):
Yeah, it was. It was as you were walking us
through this process. I was watching a video of a
child who is one watching this intense deathmatch and kidnapping, abduction,
burial of a tarantula, and even the kid seems to
think this is this is a little brutal. You can
(20:12):
see the tarantula attempt to escape as the paralytic agent
is kicking in. But I was surprised by the size
because at least in what we're seeing here, the tarantula
hawk looks significantly smaller than the creature it's attacking.
Speaker 4 (20:28):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (20:29):
Yeah, and that's why it's having the ability to paralyze
the tarantula is so important because it's using its smarts.
Not really because wasps are done, but in evolutionary terms,
like this intelligent strategy over the brawn of the tarantula.
That sting is extremely powerful. So there's this entomologist, doctor
(20:54):
Justin Schmidt from the Southwestern Biological Institute, and he created
a sting pain index and uh. He says, the Transla
hawk sting is quote unsurpassed and intensity by any other
stinging insect and that a sting feels like a lightning
bolt struck the spot. The pain is beyond imagination. And
(21:17):
you want to know why he knows this.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Did he sting himself?
Speaker 3 (21:21):
Yep?
Speaker 5 (21:23):
Oh wow, this crazy bastard like just created this sting
pain index by finding a bunch of insects that sting
and then having them sting himself and then rating it like,
oh yeah, that's yep, that's a ten.
Speaker 1 (21:40):
How is that guy? Is he still alive? I don't
want to I don't want to sound insensitive.
Speaker 3 (21:44):
Okay, yeah, I don't think he's killed himself with insects stings,
just subjected himself to quote unimaginable pain.
Speaker 1 (21:53):
Now from if if A, what I remember is correct,
a wasp or notorious for you're just attacking human beings
who happen to be around their general vicinity. Are tarantula
hawks that way too? Or do they have to be
you know, provoked or prodded.
Speaker 3 (22:10):
They have to be provoked. So the silver lining is
they're actually pretty non aggressive towards anything except for obviously
tarantula's But I mean, if you get one caught like
in your sweater, it'll probably sting you out of a
fear response. But yeah, they don't go around trying to
attack people, which think christ because.
Speaker 4 (22:32):
That would be terrible.
Speaker 3 (22:33):
Yeah, but if you're a tarantula, you know, not such
good luck.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
Wow, And they're so widespread. Yeah, so I guess then
one of the big questions I keep going back to
is is this evil because it sounds like this is
while it's horrific for the tarantula, the victim, the incubator,
it seems like it's the only way for these these
(23:01):
creatures to reproduce. Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (23:03):
Like there's no alternative, right, and so this is like
this is the key question is now, I don't think
a wasp is capable of being evil in the sense
that we kind of define it because they're so simple.
They're basically like robots. So it's like you wouldn't necessarily
describe a virus as being evil because it's so simple
(23:26):
and even though wasps are a great deal more complex
than a virus. I don't think they can have like
the intent or the awareness to be evil. But when
you look at it, like you kind of take a
step back and look at it from like an evolutionary perspective,
where it's sort of more of this emergent intelligence from
(23:49):
millions of years of evolution, I mean, maybe you can
define that as evil. You know, I'm not talking about
like intelligent design or like some god control evolutions, talking
about like, you know, you have this sort of like
guiding force of evolution that is its own sort of
(24:09):
like I mean, it is. It is a form of
intelligence where it's like you have to really zoom out
to see it, where it's just millions and millions of
years of these small changes resulting in something that's so
so messed up. And maybe that's like a natural form
of evil.
Speaker 4 (24:26):
I don't know. I guess that's a very philosophical question.
Speaker 2 (24:30):
Well, I think it is. But it's also interesting because
so much of psychopathy is almost like reptilian type behavior,
or like non feeling, non empathetic type behavior, which is
the kind of things that an insect like this would do, right,
like there's no feeling about it. It's just, you know,
I must feed, I must feed my baby, and this
(24:51):
is how I'm going to go about doing it. It's
very callous, for lack of a better term, you know,
but you're right, there's no cognition involved. It's just the
thing that makes sense and that it's adapted perfectly to do.
But I think we ascribe those kind of things to
psychopaths as well.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
Right, because I think with a human, we're like, you
should be capable of empathy. But then it's a really
uncomfortable question because it's a little more clear when you're
looking at a wasp that okay, of course it doesn't
understand what it's doing. But you could also make that
argument for humans who can't feel empathy, like they may
(25:25):
truly not understand the gravity of what they're doing. And
then is that sort of like the wasp where you
can't really blame them, or is there something else going
on with people where it's like, well, you should be
smart enough to figure out, like does there even need
to be like an intentionality behind evil, because like if
it's defined as something where it's like you're incapable of
(25:48):
feeling mercy or empathy. Then maybe just like evil doesn't
need to be like intentionally evil, it's just a force
that doesn't have empathy and then causes harm.
Speaker 1 (26:02):
So then we would be defining evil as not the
addition of something nefarious or insidious, but the absence of
an alternative, long term evolutionary strategy, because that's what empathy
ultimately functions as, right.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Right, right, Yeah, that's really interesting. It's like we have
because there are some animals who have evolved a survival
strategy that could be seen as like good. So like
bees are so social and help each other, so you
know a lot of these use social animals. So like
bees and ants and even naked molerets, they all seem
(26:39):
to team up and pitch in and help each other
and care about each other as much as like a
bee can. But it does seem like a kinder sort
of animal in general than a wasp, even though if
you take a bee and a wasp individually, they don't
really I don't think they can feel kindness. But you
(26:59):
look at the whole the group of them, like a
b colony, does seem to have empathy, for it's like
each other in a weird way.
Speaker 1 (27:10):
So what would a tarantula hawk be in terms of
the Dark Triad or Dark tetrad, would they would they
qualify as a sadist.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, Like these very sadistic because
like to keep something alive for up to a month
and then slowly feed on it.
Speaker 4 (27:30):
It's just so.
Speaker 3 (27:32):
It seems so unnecessarily cruel, even though as we've talked
about it, there is a reason for it.
Speaker 1 (27:39):
Yeah, I think that checks out.
Speaker 3 (27:44):
As we've just discussed in the Animal Kingdom. Some of
the most terrifying examples of sadism are due to reproductive
needs in humans. Some of the most dangerous people are
those who somehow link sexuality to sadism.
Speaker 4 (27:58):
This is called a pair off.
Speaker 3 (28:00):
It's a form of sexuality that is atypical or pathological.
Now a huge disclaimer here, I'm not talking about the
BDSM community. People who engage in BDSM are very different
from those with sexual sadism disorder. The key thing being
consent in healthy communication. For BDSM practitioners, consent is extremely important.
(28:23):
They may find sadistic acts or masochistic acts to be
sexually arousing, but not unless their partner is equally interested.
That's why safe words setting clear boundaries and a lot
of discussion is often present in these communities, and it's
also why psychologists don't consider BDSM to be a disorder.
They aren't causing harm to themselves or others while I
(28:45):
mean psychologically speaking, but sexual sadism disorder is different. People
with this disorder are aroused by the suffering of others,
and the disorder is either harmful to the individual who
might find it disturbing or upsetting, or to others in
the case of sex offenders who seek out non consent
and victims. What I find interesting is the difference between
(29:09):
people with sexual sadom disorder who choose not to act
on it and those who do, meaning that there are
some who either have empathy or at least a fear
of consequences while still feeling.
Speaker 4 (29:20):
These sadistic urges.
Speaker 3 (29:22):
I had a clinical psychology professor who put it this way.
The explosive combination is having both a sadistic paraphilia and
a clinical lack of empathy. Those are the ingredients to
make most types of serial killers. So after a quick break,
that will bring us to our next member of the dark.
Speaker 4 (29:40):
Tetrad this psychopath.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
So how do you spot a psychopath by the cold
look of cruel indifference in their glassy eyes, the pile
of bodies in their basements. Well, what about with technology?
Psychologists have attempted to quantify psychopathy using brain imaging, which
leads us to one of the most interesting stories in
brain research. James Fallon is a neuroscientist who was interested
(30:13):
in looking at the anatomical characteristics found in the brains
of serial killers. He found a pattern of abnormalities in
the pet scans of these killers, showing structural aberrations in
the orbital cortex, the prefrontal cortex, the ventral anterior cingulate,
and the amygdala. As he was shuffling through piles of
(30:34):
brain scans on his desk, he was looking through a
file on his family's brain scans taken for another study
on Alzheimer's. One of the scans had the clear structural
abnormalities consistent with psychopathy. Curious as to who and his
family was the psychopath, he looked up the name and
was surprised to find it was his own brain scan. Obviously,
(30:56):
he wasn't a violent killer, so first he wondered if
all his recent search about the psychopathic brain was just wrong,
But When he took genetic tests, he found that he
also had alleles associated with people high at risk for
exhibiting violent behavior. He did some introspection and decided, instead
of it being a fluke, he may very well have
(31:16):
a psychopathic brain. But due to his loving upbringing with
parents and siblings who were devoted to him, he suspects
he was able to avoid the more frightening violent traits
of the psychopath.
Speaker 4 (31:28):
But when nature is left to.
Speaker 3 (31:30):
Her own devices, what kinds of deadly killers does she concoct?
The deadliest serial killers are often harmless looking. They blend
right in, allowing them to continue their killing while raising
no alarms. As we'll find out, this is true both
in human society.
Speaker 4 (31:45):
And the animal kingdom.
Speaker 3 (31:48):
So speaking of psychopaths, let's talk about cats. So, guys,
which wild cat would you guess is the most prolific
serial killers of them all?
Speaker 1 (32:00):
Wildcat specifically, Let's see, it's probably smaller than one would imagine,
because naturally people would think something large, like a tiger
or maybe a lion. But I'm gonna go with something smaller,
maybe a bobcat or a wild cat.
Speaker 3 (32:18):
That's a really intelligent guess. Yeah, because like you have
these huge predator cats, so like lions seem really formidable.
I mean, they have a thousand psi of force for
their jaw strength, so just for comparison, we only have
about two hundred psi, so they're so powerful. And you know,
(32:39):
there's also like the more sleek ones like cheetahs who
can run up to seventy five miles an hour and
jaguars who are super like buff and can carry cadavers
up a tree. But you're right that even those guys
are really terrifying. They're not the most prolific serial killers,
and we do have to get smaller. In fact, our
(33:02):
most prolific serial killer kitty is one of the smallest
species of cats in the world, and that includes domestic cats,
so they're smaller than your household kitty. It's this really
adorable cat. It's called the blackfooted cat. They're about three
times smaller than your pet house cat, and they weigh
(33:22):
in about two to four pounds, so females are around
two pounds, males can get up to around four pounds,
and they have a sixty percent kill success rate, which
if you've ever seen a nature documentary and you see
how many times a lion us will have a goof
up and not be able to catch its prey. Sixty
(33:44):
percent is incredible. So they actually look a lot like
a house cat, but just like kind of shrunken down.
They have big eyes, and they're tan with dark brown
spots and striations. And they're called black black footed because
their little feets are black. And they're also called ant
(34:05):
hill tigers because when they're cornered, they'll like, they'll mess
you up, they'll cut you.
Speaker 4 (34:10):
They're very aggressive.
Speaker 1 (34:13):
You know, I'm looking at I'm looking at a picture
of one right now, and I gotta say these cats
are adorable. They look even better than my two cats.
My two cats are just you know, cat models. Basically,
they have that.
Speaker 3 (34:25):
Like baby schema because they have the big eyes and
the big four heads and they're they're really tiny and
just super super cute. You would not think these are
a big threat.
Speaker 1 (34:35):
So what kind of stuff do they hunt?
Speaker 3 (34:37):
Well, their prey can be pretty small, so rodents, birds,
pretty much anything that moves, and they can fit in
their mouths though, so they'll do insects, lizards, birds, and
small rodents are their favorite. They're mostly nocturnal. They'll walk twenty.
Speaker 4 (34:55):
Miles a night.
Speaker 3 (34:56):
So that's the furthest that any small wild cat will walk.
And I did a little math and if you scale
that up to human size, that's like walking one thousand
miles a night, which wow, you know, it's like it's
like the Proclaimer's song, like I will walk five hundred months.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
So does that mean these little sweet babies hunt for
sport just like for kicks? Like why why such a
high kill rate versus lions who to me seem like
they hunt more practically and functionally to you know feed.
Speaker 3 (35:29):
No, they I mean they just have a rapid metabolism
and they for the food that they can't eat on
the spot, they storm their burrows. So it's not for fun,
it's definitely for nutrition. And these smaller animals will actually
have a pretty large nutritional demand because they can't bulk
(35:51):
up a lot of calories and then just like sleep
it off. They have to be constantly eating.
Speaker 1 (35:57):
And to be clear, we're talking about the most prolific
successful serial killers, not just the most attempts. Is that correct?
Speaker 3 (36:07):
I mean they actually rack up a pretty high kill count,
So I would say they are of the big cats
they kill the most per day, so they can take
down around fifteen prey items a night, which is a lot,
and that includes like birds. So if there's a really
cool video I can show you guys, and I'll put
(36:28):
that up on our Twitter where it just like jumps
up and catches a bird midair and it's got it
like jammed in its mouth and it looks very pleased
with itself. But yeah, that's like about a kill an hour.
So that's I mean, these are small prey items, but
you know you scale that down to the size of
(36:49):
the cow, which is like two pounds of like pure
murderous rage, and that's like, you know, it's like taking
if a lion could take down a small gazelle like
every hour. So they also do it's so cute. They
do the little butt wiggle, you know that thing like
when your cat is getting ready to pounce and it
(37:11):
like there's a little swigty swootye with its butt.
Speaker 2 (37:15):
Yeah, it's like Simba and the Lion King.
Speaker 4 (37:17):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah, they do that.
Speaker 3 (37:21):
They do the little little butt wiggle, and so that's
actually not just to look cute. It helps align their
feet under them so they can pounce with maximum precision
and power like a spring and sometimes they do take
down bigger prey though, so they rarely but sometimes kill
(37:42):
cape hairs, which way more than them. They're these relatively
larger rabbits, So it's just kind of funny because they're
just like so amped up on being murderous they don't
even think that, oh, maybe this rabbit I can't even
carry it because it weighs like twice of me.
Speaker 2 (38:03):
So is this where the is this where the psychopathy
aspect comes in?
Speaker 3 (38:07):
Yeah, because it's like I feel like their desire to
kill these bigger prey items is it's like, clearly, you're
not going to eat that, it's too big. I mean
maybe you know, they do save it for later, but
it's just kind of funny. I don't even know if
they could fit a cape hair in their din. So
(38:29):
it's just killing stuff because they are driven to kill.
Speaker 1 (38:33):
I mean, we've all been there.
Speaker 2 (38:34):
But that's what my house cat does. That is what
my indoor outdoor sweet snugly house cat does. Yea, Betty,
he's not hungry.
Speaker 4 (38:41):
Betty doesn't have it.
Speaker 3 (38:42):
Well, Betty doesn't have a sixty percent kill rate.
Speaker 2 (38:45):
Though, No, absolutely not. But it's like he is clearly
toying with these creatures and you know, just like leaving
them in the most twisted arrays I've ever seen in
my life. Like it's it's like the well, it haunts
my dreams. It's it's bizarre that I guess why I
was asking earlier, like does this creature hunt kind of
for sport? So I guess some of that does enter
(39:05):
into it. If it's not, it's not even thinking about
the fact that it can't actually carry it, you know,
the kill away. It just needs to feed the urge, right.
Speaker 3 (39:14):
Right, And well, I mean it's really interesting because with
house cats, obviously they don't need to kill anything at
all because they're getting fed their little kibbles and bits.
But I think they have a desire to hunt. So
they're driven to hunt by this, and it is a
survival instinct to hunt, because you can imagine if a
(39:35):
cat didn't have that and just waited around for kibble,
if it lived in the wild, it would be done
an evolutionary dead end. But yeah, I mean, it's we
can't talk to a cat and say like, hey, do
you really enjoy doing this? But my guess would be
that they do get satisfaction from it, and even though
(39:58):
it is an evolutionary strategy, and even playing with their
prey has practical reasons like making sure it's dead and
also honing their skills. I mean, they seem to love
doing it, and that is kind of psychopathic, isn't it.
Speaker 1 (40:15):
Yeah, that's a good point, especially when we consider not
just cats, but a lot of similar mammals. Their juvenile
phase is spent playing, and playing is really just a
less fatal version of the hunting that they will instinctively
practice later in life. And I can absolutely see from
(40:36):
a neurological perspective, I can absolutely see an animal as
evolved as a cat or my cat's enjoying that kind
of thing. It's scratching an itch. Your body and your
brain will tell you it's a pleasurable and correct thing to.
Speaker 3 (40:50):
Do, right right. I mean, like we do have video
games where we like to kill stuff. So it makes
me wonder if we might have something like that deep
inside us, where we kind of, you know, maybe have
that killing instinct that's just been over many, many hundreds
of thousands of the years of cultural and societal evolution,
(41:10):
has been sort of put inside a little box and
locked away, except in the cases of.
Speaker 1 (41:16):
Serial killers, right, Well, in the defense of my cats,
Doctor Vankman and mister Jackpott have to shout him out here. Yeah,
and that's the real names. In defense of my cats.
They have at the very least never paralyzed. Someone buried
them alive and put a kitten inside of their bodies
(41:36):
to a month.
Speaker 3 (41:38):
But would cute, Like would a kitten bursting out of
a tarantula be cute or horrible?
Speaker 4 (41:45):
I can't know.
Speaker 1 (41:46):
I'm on the fence. I'm honestly on the fence.
Speaker 3 (41:49):
Because if that was if that was backwards, like a
transla bursting out of a kitten, that would obviously be horrible.
But when you do it in verse, it's kind of cute.
I mean, I still feel bad for the tarantula, but
you know, hey, it's.
Speaker 2 (42:04):
A kid for sure, so it's pretty crazy. You mentioned
Fallon the neuroscientist. Yeah, he's actually in this show that
I'm working on called Happy Face. It's like a true
crime show about the Happy Face killer, and it's about
this guy's daughter. And in the show, she goes and
gets analyzed by this guy to try to figure out
(42:25):
whether she herself has inherited her father's psychopathic tendencies and
It's really interesting because it's like there's a lot of
discussion around it, whether it's like is it all nature,
is it all nurture? Is it a combination of the two.
Can you really figure out just from someone's brain skin
whether or not this is true. It seems like a
very kind of like surfacey way of figuring that stuff
(42:46):
out because it's a combination of a lot of factors.
But he actually talks a lot about psychopathy in the
animal kingdom too, and how it's actually can be a
positive trait. Yeah, Like you know animals that our psychopaths
will kind of they'll go places that other animals won't,
and they will actually breed more successfully and things like that.
It's I'm not explaining it super well, but it's.
Speaker 3 (43:08):
No that makes sense, Yeah, because like psychopaths, one of
their characteristics is risk taking and not having a fear
of the consequences. So in some cases that could obviously
be very bad, but for some animals that will bring
you a reward if you are bolder and take a
risk and try something novel, that lack of fear will
(43:31):
actually give you a leg up over your competition.
Speaker 2 (43:35):
That is exactly what he was talking about. You know that.
Speaker 1 (43:38):
Yeah, so long as they survive to reproduce. Yes, right,
So that's that's that's the Vegas Odds part.
Speaker 3 (43:46):
Yeah, that's that's really interesting. I've actually listened to some
of that podcast. It's so I think that is it's
such a personal perspective on the nature versus nurture because
she's I mean, from my perspective, she's obviously a very
empathetic person to be so worried about that part of
(44:07):
her nature, but I can totally imagine how that would
be that you're wondering, like, well, any behavior you feel
where it's like maybe you know you have sean Freud
of sometime, or you feel angry, you wonder like, well,
is that me? Or is that like these genes inside
me puppeting me.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Yeah, And you might not have made it far enough
in the series. I don't want to spoil anything, but
it does come into play, like the way she's dealt
with relationships and kind of her emotional kind of closed offness,
and that's a big part of it, and wondering if
she can actually feel things the way quote unquote normal
people can. So it's something that really like haunts her
and bothers her, and at the end of the series
(44:46):
she kind of figures out, you know, at least as
far as this guy's concerned, what she is.
Speaker 3 (44:51):
Yeah, the story.
Speaker 4 (44:55):
Of the most prolific serial killer.
Speaker 3 (44:57):
In human history is one that's more true tragic than gruesome.
Harold Friedrich Shipman was a bespectacled, bearded man, very ordinary
and meek looking. He was a doctor, married and had
four children. Not someone whom you would peg as a
cold blooded killer, but he killed two hundred and eighteen people,
committing crimes undetected.
Speaker 4 (45:18):
For twenty three years.
Speaker 3 (45:20):
Shipman was a GP who had his own practice near Manchester, England.
He targeted the most vulnerable people as his victims, his
own geriatric patients. Most of his victims were the elderly
women in his care to whom he gave lethal doses
of morphine.
Speaker 4 (45:37):
He had a typical pattern.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
He would give his victims a lethal dose of diamorphine,
signed their death certificates, and then alter their medical records
to falsely indicate that their health had been in decline.
Shipman was an outlier even among serial killers, as there
was no clear motive for the crime, except in one
case he altered his victim's will to make himself the
(45:59):
benefit of three hundred and eighty six thousand pounds, something
the victim's daughter found to be awfully suspicious. So why
did he kill It's hard to know for certain. As
a teenager, he witnessed his mother received morphine for terminal
cancer until she died of the disease. Some of the
psychiatrists who've looked at his case speculate that he had
(46:20):
a deep seated need to control other people, something influenced
but certainly not caused in total by his mother's death.
Another possibility psychiatrists have proposed is that he felt a
sense of relief from stress or pressure by killing his patients,
as he considered them a nuisance. This is the heart
of what a psychopath is. Coldly, flippantly cruel. We need
(46:44):
a minute to clean our brains with images of cute cats.
Wait is that a blackfooted cat? And is that a
baby bird in its mouth?
Speaker 4 (46:51):
Oh no, We'll be right back.
Speaker 3 (47:02):
Machiavelianism through the scope of psychology is defined as a
duplicitous manipulation with a disregard for morality, putting personal gain
before any feelings of empathy. Think Little Finger from Game
of Thrones, someone behind the scenes manipulating and pulling strings,
causing destruction for others for their own game. But fortunately,
(47:24):
Machiavelians can only manipulate, not mind.
Speaker 4 (47:27):
Control their victims.
Speaker 3 (47:29):
However, the natural world is not so merciful. We're going
to discuss a Machiavilian animal that is literally pulling the
strings using real life mind control. So mind control and
hypnosis is often explored in popular culture. From the Manchurian
Candidate to Jessica Jones were fascinated by the idea of
(47:50):
thought control. So, you know the Purple Man and Jessica Jones,
it's such a creepy villain.
Speaker 1 (47:55):
Yeah, yep, yep, yep, Doctor Who, David Tennant, Yeah, he's.
Speaker 3 (48:00):
So lovable in Doctor Who. But then his man he's.
Speaker 2 (48:03):
Just I think, so he's got he's got a good range.
I trust him. You don't trust him as Doctor Who?
Was it after watching Jessica Jones that you stop trusting.
Speaker 1 (48:12):
Him Doctor Who? No, No, I just don't. I don't
trust his mouth.
Speaker 2 (48:16):
Is it because he has a bunch of hearts? He's
got like ten hearts or something.
Speaker 1 (48:19):
That's just shallow?
Speaker 2 (48:21):
That's fair.
Speaker 1 (48:22):
But yeah, the Purple man for background for Jessica Jones
emidst pheromones that force people to obey his suggestions, right right, Yeah.
Speaker 3 (48:34):
It's like he issues at command and then the person
has to do it because of some kind of metichlorians
or whatever. I haven't watched the whole show, so I'm
not sure, but yeah, that's it's so creepy to me
because like like one of the worst possible sci fi
horror scenarios where serial killer mind controls you into digging
(48:56):
your own grave or just following him into his like
kill basement. But I have bad news for spiders again.
This is a very spider unfriendly podcast. Orb Weaver spiders
are spin these really neat, precise webs. They're actually very
beautiful the webs the spiders are. I mean, I think
(49:19):
they're cool, but people have hang ups about spiders for
some reason. So now wasps again come into the picture
and just are so mean and are such assholes. So
female parasitic wasps lay an egg onto the orb weaver's abdomen,
(49:40):
and if you've been listening, you know, and once a
wasp lays an egg on you, you're in for a
bad time. So the orb weaver is still alive, and
the spider becomes mind controlled by the wasp larva, and
instead of spinning its beautiful lace like web, it dismantles
its web and creates a cocoon for the parasitic larva
(50:04):
to live in. And then, because wasps, again, there are
such huge assholes, the larva will suck on the spider's
juices until the spider dies, and then the larva just
checks its carcass away like a soda can, and it
makes itself nice and cozy in the cocoon that the
(50:25):
spider had woven for it, against its will. It's so
crazy to me that you can have such a precise
method of mind control that the larva not only gets
to eat its victim but makes it spen a little
cradle for it as it develops and so it can
(50:46):
stay safe.
Speaker 4 (50:47):
It's just so creepy.
Speaker 1 (50:49):
So it's slave labor at that point, too.
Speaker 4 (50:51):
Right, a slave that you eat later.
Speaker 3 (50:54):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (50:55):
Yeah. So are these wasps as common as the tarantula hawk.
Speaker 3 (51:03):
They aren't as widely distributed, So the ones that we're
going to be talking about are found in Japan. So
researchers in Japan wanted to look into this behavior. Because
it's so crazy how precise that mind control is. And
they found that the cocoon that the zombie spider weaves
(51:27):
for its parasite is very similar to the molting stage
web that the spider, a healthy spider, will weave for itself.
It's a protective cocoon designed to keep the spider safe
while it molts its exoskeleton, and it's actually made out
of this special ultraviolet spider silk so that birds and
(51:50):
flying insects will avoid crashing into it. So like normally
when a spider builds its web, it wants insects to
run into it so that you can eat them. But
if you're all naked and exposed and don't want something
to kill you, you wrap yourself up in like this
neon light of like warning naked spider in here. So
(52:11):
researchers found that there was higher levels of this substance
that's called twenty oh ectisone, and it's the same hormone
that controls molting. So in these zombified spiders, they are
being mind controlled into thinking that they're going through their
(52:32):
molting stage. It's unknown how the wasp is actually manipulating
this hormone, but it's not just mind controlling it into
thinking it's molting. It's actually a step above that because
it's somehow commanding it to go into this like super
molting mode where it's building an extra strong cocoon, more
(52:56):
reinforced with greater tensile strength than the spider's normal molting cocoons.
So it's like it's beyond just like thinking it's molting.
It's creating a mega safety bunker for the parasite that's
planning on murdering it.
Speaker 1 (53:12):
So wait, wait, So the downside is that you are
being a mind controlled and then you're going to die.
But the upside is that you get super strength or
I guess the equivalent of spider superpowers.
Speaker 3 (53:29):
Well, your your webbing does. So you're creating spider silk
that has is extra reinforced because the molting spider silk,
like in a healthy orb weaver, that's creating a cocoon
for itself to molt inside that that webbing will be
reinforced and stronger.
Speaker 4 (53:49):
To protect it.
Speaker 3 (53:50):
But for the parasite, it's like it's bringing out the
good stuff. It's bringing out the big guns, the big
webbing guns, and creating really really strong webbing to protect
the parasite. So, I mean, I would think it's not
necessarily clear in the research yet, but I would think
that somehow it's just being flooded with these hormones and
(54:15):
make like this extra strong signal for it to produce
the molting webbing in a way that's like it's over
signaling so that the parasite benefits from the super strong cocoon.
So this is what's called an ectoparasitoid. It's a parasite
who will live externally on its host and eventually kill it.
(54:37):
But some parasitic wasps will lay their eggs directly inside
the spider, and then the larvae eat their way out
of the spider like an alien chest burster.
Speaker 4 (54:48):
It's really disgusting.
Speaker 1 (54:50):
And just for a safety check here, there are no
wasp that do this to people, right, no use, there
none big enough to do it yet.
Speaker 3 (54:58):
Okay, not yet, not that we know can help.
Speaker 2 (55:02):
But think of whatever. Whenever I think about this paras
parasitic stuff doing things to animals to make them act
against their own self interest, I always think of that
parasitic fungus like erupts out of ants heads. Yeah before right, yeah,
before it does that, doesn't it also do some kind
of crazy mind control that makes them do something that
(55:23):
like benefits the fungus itself.
Speaker 3 (55:25):
But yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, crawls up a stock like
a plant stock, and then it's final. The ant's final
act is to cling onto the stock with its mandibles,
so it its brain is being so manipulated by the
fungus that it's like clinging onto the stock with its mandibles.
(55:47):
And then that's really good for the fungus as it
grows out of its head and then produces spores because
it's got a solid anchor down onto the onto the
plant or the branch.
Speaker 5 (55:58):
You know.
Speaker 1 (55:58):
One that while we're speaking of parasites, one that worries
me as a cat owner is Toxoplasma gandhi.
Speaker 2 (56:06):
Yeah, yeah, we all probably have that, Like that's why
we're nice to cats.
Speaker 3 (56:09):
I don't know, so, yeah, you probably if you clean
up the cats litter box and you don't obsessively wash
your hands every single time, you might have it. And
I mean there's actually a pretty good chance, like if
you've owned cats over a long period of time. It's
generally not a problem for humans unless you're pregnant, in
(56:30):
which it can cause birth defects or miscarriage. And the
other thing it's been linked to is potentially triggering schizophrenia.
Speaker 4 (56:39):
That's a very very.
Speaker 3 (56:40):
Rare almost just like it's not going to happen to you,
but it it is a documented effect, So they can
a cat can literally cause schizophrenia in a person via
the tea GANDHII. So I think we need to talk
more about how spiders are terribly mistreated in nature. So
(57:04):
there's another mind controlling machiavellian manipulator called the spiderfly, and
it's a fly that injects itself into the spider's abdomen,
lodging itself near the lung. And here's the crazy thing.
Speaker 4 (57:22):
It can remain there for.
Speaker 3 (57:24):
Years while it completes its development. So once it's finally
ready to molt and emerge from the spider, it controls
the spider into spinning a protective cocoon, just like we were.
Speaker 4 (57:37):
Talking about with the orb weavers.
Speaker 3 (57:39):
Then it eats the spider from the inside out, which
is just the worst, but at least these ones are
kind of cute and fuzzy, so unlike the wasps, the
spiderfly they're sort of like these little bumbling cuties entomologists
fr describes them as having a floating sort of flight,
(58:04):
rather undulating and uncertain. It has the habit of buzzing
around and circles when it falls over on its back
on a smooth surface, often doing this for some time
before it can regain its feet. Most of the time
it is making a high, thin humming sound. So it's
just like it's this dopey, kind of like dorky little fly.
(58:25):
But then it's really horrifying and living inside a spider
for years before killing it.
Speaker 1 (58:31):
And this isn't like a marsupial situation, you know how
like a Joey can enter and exit the pouch of
the parent.
Speaker 2 (58:39):
It's more like a chest burster.
Speaker 1 (58:41):
Yeah, yes, I can't fly back in and out.
Speaker 3 (58:44):
It's a chest burster situation, but with like a cute
little like Elmo esque muppet character, Like if an alien's
just like the chest burster birthstud, it's like it's it's
he low.
Speaker 1 (59:00):
I'm kind of sold.
Speaker 2 (59:01):
It reminds me of this terrifying toy my girlfriend got
my daughter for a birthday other day. It's like a
tiny puppy that lives inside a croissant and you turn
the croissant inside out and then the tiny puppy emerges.
But it's really unclear, like the scale of it, Like
is it meant to be a tiny puppy or a
giant croissant? They really don't make that clear. But yeah,
(59:21):
that's not very sciency at all. But that's what I'm
picturing this whole time. I'm sorry. I don't know why.
Speaker 4 (59:25):
Toys have gotten weird.
Speaker 2 (59:28):
They really have, they really have.
Speaker 3 (59:32):
You might be comforting yourself with the knowledge that you're
not a spider and you're in no danger of a
fly hiding out in your lungs, But I want to
tell you the story of the human version of a spiderfly,
a secret hideaway killer that will have you checking your
cross spaces tonight. The Dinver spider Man doesn't really deserve
his name. His real name was Theodore Edward Coney's. He
(59:56):
was a drifter who in nineteen forty one decided he'd
settled down, but there was a little problem. The home
he chose was already occupied. Coney's found a trap door
in a closet that led to a tiny attic cubbyhole.
He went undiscovered for five weeks, leaving his Heidi hold
to occasionally steal food out of the fridge. One day,
(01:00:18):
the homeowner, seventy three year old Philip Peters, discovered Coney's
as he was foraging for food. Philip whacked Coney's with
his cane, and Coney's responded by brutally murdering Philip, bludgeoning
him to death with an iron stove stoker. Police investigated
the murder, but they found no signs of a break in,
(01:00:38):
and though they found the door to the attic, they
didn't explore it they thought it was too small for
any human person to fit through. After the murder, the
victim's wife and the housekeeper reported hearing strange noises in
the night, and they believed the house was haunted, so
they moved out and Coney's presence remained unknown. He stayed
(01:00:59):
in the vacant house until nineteen forty two, when police
came to make a routine check and they heard noises
coming from the second floor. They followed the noise and
saw a pair of legs vanishing into the trapdoor. They
grabbed them before he could disappear. He was tried and
convicted for Phillip's murder and spent his life in imprisonment,
(01:01:22):
although really was that a punishment? His sell probably felt
like a sprawling estate compared to the tiny nook he
hit away in. So do you have any crawl spaces
in your home? No reason, just curious, all right, So
thank you guys for coming on. This is really fun.
Do you guys have anything to plug?
Speaker 1 (01:01:43):
Yeah, thank you so much for having no skatie yet.
You can catch Snola and myself on our show Ridiculous
History and come out twice a week. You can find
us on Instagram, Facebook.
Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
All the podcast places, mainly, Yeah, what's the show? We
kind of just go into some of the weirder, little
off the beaten path kind of history nuggets. It's a
very kind of snackable show. Episodes are like thirty to
forty minutes, very bingeable. It's a lot of fun to do.
And we also do other show called stuff they Don't
Want you to Know, where we take an open minded
(01:02:17):
approach to conspiracy theories.
Speaker 1 (01:02:20):
I would say we take a critical thinking approach to.
Speaker 2 (01:02:22):
Conspiracy is much better and more accurate.
Speaker 1 (01:02:25):
So you can find us on those shows. You can
find us all over the regular internet places and wherever
you find your favorite shows. You can also when you
find us on the social media stuff, just hit us
up directly. We're pretty approachable, unlike some of the animals
that we met in today's episode.
Speaker 2 (01:02:44):
We don't bite you guys, aren't or yeah, or inject
you with paralyzing venom.
Speaker 4 (01:02:51):
Well that's polite of you, guys.
Speaker 2 (01:02:53):
You know, we try to be affable. It's sort of
like our that's our adaptation is like the super affability.
Speaker 1 (01:02:59):
Yeah, this is always like been stop injecting people with
paralytic agents.
Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
That was before my time.
Speaker 3 (01:03:07):
So you can find me at Katie Golden or at
pro Bird Rights where it's revealed I'm actually a bird.
And you can check out the podcast every Wednesday on
iTunes or the iHeartRadio app or wherever you get your podcasts,
and just hit us up on Facebook, Twitter, and our
website is Creature featurepod dot com. And thanks to the
(01:03:31):
space Cosax for letting us use their wonderful song Exolumina.
Speaker 2 (01:03:40):
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Ridiculous History News
Hosts And Creators
Ben Bowlin
Noel Brown
Popular Podcasts
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist
It’s 1996 in rural North Carolina, and an oddball crew makes history when they pull off America’s third largest cash heist. But it’s all downhill from there. Join host Johnny Knoxville as he unspools a wild and woolly tale about a group of regular ‘ol folks who risked it all for a chance at a better life. CrimeLess: Hillbilly Heist answers the question: what would you do with 17.3 million dollars? The answer includes diamond rings, mansions, velvet Elvis paintings, plus a run for the border, murder-for-hire-plots, and FBI busts.