Creature Feature: Go Home Nature, You're Drunk

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Ridiculous History is a production of I Heart Radio. Ye,

(00:27):
welcome to the show Ridiculous Historians. Thank you so much
for tuning in. Uh, my name is Ben and this
is uh, this is a pretty weird sitch, wouldn't you
say a little bit. I mean, we're in a bit
of a weird sitch right now. We're in a hotel
room in Orlando, Florida with our dear friend Matt Frederick
sitting on the floor recording us like an absolute boss,

(00:48):
a super producer that freshick by default, and that I
can I consist the vibe we have held the we
have held back the amazing power of your hairy carry impressions. Uh,
the southern gentleman you do as well. Uh. This is
like one long tease because Matt, you're you're not actually

(01:09):
on this this episode yet, but the fans demand that
you make an appearance at some point. They have demanded
it many a time, and we have demanded it. Uh,
it's it's gonna happen. That's that's that's that's a promise. Yeah,
so great. That counts as verbal consent. So now, uh,
let's see. This is an episode that we did with

(01:30):
our good friend Katie Golden of Creature Feature fame, right,
and we wanted to uh, we wanted to share this
with you. Make it easy to find this. Uh No,
I think it's fair to say that. Uh. You and
I as always on Creature Feature, we talked with a brilliant,
awesome friend who taught us terrible, terrible things, absolutely terrible

(01:53):
nightmare fuel type material. We had a slide show of
just bizarre animal adaptations that we were paging through as
we had this conversation. We went on this journey with
Katie Golden. Um, word to the wise, this is a
little different in in more ways than one for our show.
In the we swear on this one. Oh that's right. Yes,

(02:15):
we do use some choice language. In our defense, I
argue it is apt and we need to be explicit. Look,
I don't know about you, but I learned a lot
of stuff about elephants. One main thing about elephants that
would rather not know. Yeah, as opposed to stuff they
don't want you to know. Um, it's stuff that we

(02:35):
never wanted to know. What on earth are we talking about?
You are about to find out? Roll the tape. Hey, everybody,
Welcome to Creature Feature, the show where we explore all
the weird things in nature that your seventh grade biology

(02:58):
teacher was too much of a who to teach you.
I'm Katie Golden, I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and
i'm your host of many parasites. Today we're talking about
anatomy that just seems well made up, like if you
gave Salvador Dalis some bad weed and told them to
invent some animals. We're answering some of the weirdest questions
about evolution and anatomy, like how do woodpeckers keep from

(03:20):
scrambling their brains? White animals have not one, not two,
but three vaginas? Why would a doctor want to sew
your leg on backwards? Discover this and more as we
answer the age old question what are some of the
most bodacious boobs in the animal kingdom? So medical science
has advanced to the point where we now have a

(03:42):
pretty good idea of human anatomy the heartbones connected to
the leg bone and whatever. But we haven't always been
so intimately familiar with our inner workings. In fact, we
used to have some pretty fantastical ideas about how the
human body worked before doctors decided to dig up dead
bodies and really settled the matter once and for all.
For instance, in the late seventeen hundreds, phrenology was the

(04:04):
quote science of measuring someone's psychology by feeling their head bumps,
the theory being that the different parts of the brain
controlled different emotions, so when they worked out more, they
got more swollen something. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, on the
other hand, had theorized that the heart was where your
consciousness resided, and the brain and other organs were simply

(04:25):
cooling mechanisms to keep the heart cool for some reason.
And in the eighteenth century, the Preformationism theory held that
each sperm contained a tiny, fully developed human that simply
grew larger in the woman's womb like one of those
you know, like grow your own dinosaur capsules. This all
sounds crazy and stupid, and well, yeah it is, but

(04:46):
we're about to discuss even crazier and stupid or sounding
anatomy that is actually scientifically accurate. Joining me today are
the hosts of the podcast Ridiculous History, Nold Brown and
Ben Bolan. Welcome you guys, Thanks for having us. I'm
excited to see some weird animals as the slideshoe in
front of me, promises, Well we say that now. Yeah,
I haven't looked ahead, I have not cheated. I'm ready

(05:08):
to be like you know, I'm ready to give a
completely realistic reaction and challenge. Yeah, this may challenge some
of our preformationist or preformist us. Uh did I did
I get that right? I think it's performationism. Performation is
m Yeah. Yeah, so let's be open minded. We think
the performationism. Uh, science is pretty solid. Uh, I mean

(05:33):
willing to be wrong. I mean it is just like
you know, I mean I don't know how else of
fetus is supposed to develop what like, although the thing
with the performationism that's interesting is that the ideas that
it's already this fully formed human that just didn't exists
inside you. Then like is there does that fully formed
human also have like a fully formed human? Like is

(05:55):
it fetuses all the way down? Yes, it's basically like
cabbage patch here rules you know, like I don't know
what that means exactly, but you know, I have no
idea what what cabbage patch kids? You mean? Just like
cabbage Patch kids just kind of are like they just
are birthed into existence, like fully form from the cabbage
cabbage right right, So maybe that's the the cabbage sub

(06:16):
discipline performation is. Yeah, now that I think about, I
went to there's a place in Georgia called baby Land General.
It's like where the cabbage patch babies are born. And
there's a really creepy tree that they shove the cabbage
patch babies out of and that's how their birthed into
the world is through this magical tree and their heads
pop up, their heads. I've been there too. It's a
really creepy place. Is this This is like a real

(06:37):
what are you what the yah? What are you guys
talking about? It's called baby Land General Hospital, and it's
like the home of like where it's like in the
town I think it's called Cleveland, Georgia, where cabbage patch
babies were invented by you know, Jonathan cabbage Patch. It's
the only thing in the town too. It's this mansion
that used to be their house and it really does
look like a creepy kind of like a psych ward

(06:58):
or something like that. It's a very strange place and
kids have birthday parties there. So it's like actually affiliated
with the cabbage patch company. Absolutely, yes, HQ. I'm gonna
send you a weird YouTube link after this episode. They
have a really really serious collection Andy Warhol. Andy Warhol
paintings of cabbage patch kids are all over the wall
pictures of celebrities. But that's neither here nor there, really isn't.

(07:22):
That is pretty messed up. But we're about to get
even more messed up, you guys. Um, So have you
given much thought to woodpeckers? Actually? Yes, I grew up
with some woodpeckers in our yard, and I was always
disappointed because they seemed radically different in comparison to the

(07:44):
other woodpeckers I saw in the media, like woody woodpeck
These were just these very like, I don't want to
say agro but very myopically focused birds who just kept
hitting their heads against trees, and it blew my mind.
I did understand. My parents explained to me that they
were doing that to eat bugs. Is that correct? Yeah? So,

(08:07):
uh they do actually, as their name implies, peck wood Uh.
And they'll bang their heads against the tree with their
their well, they're they're banging their banks against the tree
bark to create these holes so that they can reach inside.
And it's but for the insects, you know, to eat

(08:27):
up some ants or larva or whatever is living in
the tree bark. They also will do it to help
themselves nest, So sometimes they pull away tree bark to
access holes in the tree, uh to nest there, to
to increase the size of a hole and excavate there
a little nesting area. They also do something called drumming,
where it's just wrapping against the tree for seemingly the

(08:51):
only purpose is uh sexual behavior like mating mating call.
But as people may know, if if there's any metal
fans out there, like head banging is extremely unpleasant. Even
when you're just banging your head against air, it it's disorienting,
it hurts. So you can imagine that if you're banging

(09:12):
your head against solid wood, that would be pretty unpleasant
and probably give you a lot of head injuries. So
it's really incredible when you think about how rapid these
little jackhammers are going and how that seems like that
would instantly destroy their tiny little bird brains and smack
their skulls and just explode their heads. But uh, there
you have developed a few very interesting evolutionary traits that

(09:37):
allow them to uh keep on head banging without actually
getting brain damage. So first of all, kind of the
obvious one is that they have thickened skulls uh, and
they have powerful neck muscles for for that control. Another
more subtle one is that the beak is actually kind
of designed for shock absorption. So they've got this or

(10:00):
bite and the top of the beak is more fleshy
than the lower beak, which is bonier. So then that
directs the force of the impact towards the lower beak um,
and then that directs it away from the brain case area.
But you guys are here for the real gross, weird stuff,
so one more trick up their sleeves or well, I

(10:24):
guess up, there's skull. UM. I want to talk to
you about woodpecker tongues. They're very interesting and weird. So
woodpeckers often have pretty long tongues. Uh. They're covered in
sticky barbs so that they can stick it into those
tree holes uh to slurp up ants and larva um.
Someone peckers species have shorter tongues with more bristles, So

(10:47):
there there's variety amongst the woodpecker species, but for many
of them, uh, it has to be long. So that
they can get get in there and get those ants
out of the wood. So, but we don't see woodpeckers
just with this tongue flopping out. And they're not like
hummingbirds where they have a really long beak. So where

(11:08):
where do they keep it? Well, it's in its skull.
It winds up kind of like a measuring tape. It
literally will wrap around the back of their head and
up over their skull and then towards their nasal cavity.
And the way that it does this is actually even

(11:28):
weirder than just the fact that it winds its tongue
around around its school, because I think that that fact
is maybe out there. Um. But how it does so.
First of all, the tongue is bifurcated in the back,
which means split into um. So think like a reverse
snake tongue, where instead of coming out and then splitting

(11:49):
at the end, it's like it's split at the sort
of uh up in the mouth and then it comes
together into one point um and uh. So the reason
it has this length is actually that its tongue is
not just tongue flesh. It's partially made out of bone.

(12:10):
So there's this bone called the hyroid bone. And so
if you guys could just put your fingers near your
throat where your tricky is, you know, gently, don't strangle yourself.
Don't don't do that. Um yeah yeah, So up along
the front of your throat where your tricky is and

(12:31):
where your jaw meets your your trichya basically and you
should feel a couple of bony kind of protrusions. Do
you feel that that's the that's the hyroid bone. So, uh,
it's the sub metrical kind of butterfly shaped bone. Um.
It supports an anchors the tongue and it helps in swallowing. Uh.

(12:53):
And woodpeckers, these bones wrap all the way around the
skull and up towards their nasal cavities, and it's all
covered in tongue tissue. So they basically have bony tongues
uh that wind around their skull. And I actually sent
you guys that that picture of it in the slide show. Um, yeah,

(13:13):
I was I was gonna ask, are there's the same
bird like the two images, Like you're seeing how the
tongue is deployed. Got it? Okay? Yeah, exactly. And I
question too here because in this illustration which is fascinating,
not yet disturbing all the go with fascinating. I see
that the tongue has this barbed tip on there is

(13:34):
that bone as well. No, that's just that's just tongue bristles.
So the tip of the tongue is just tongue kind
of like ours, but like it the bone it attaches
to the tongue way back there where you have that
that dual structure. But I think those barbs are it's

(13:54):
sort of like you know how cat tongues are spiky,
So when a tongue has retracted, the bone winds all
the way around the skull. And not only does this
have a nice nifty storage place for the tongue to go,
it also offers extra structural support and shock absorption for
when the woodpeckers smashing its face against a tree. Um.

(14:19):
So it's sort of like you it's like having a
weird tongue helmet inside your your head. I have kind
of a dumb question. Maybe it's not dumb question. Presumably woodpeckers,
outside of their superpower ability to you know, smash their
heads against trees and not get brain damage, have all
the same stuff that other birds have, Like why is

(14:40):
it advantageous to them to eat in such a bizarre
and uncomfortable way. I mean, it's finding a niche really,
because you have a lot of competition for insects that
are easily available. If you're able to get into the
tree bark where other birds can't access it, you've just
opened up this whole mind of food that you don't

(15:02):
really have as much competition for. So that's that's finding
their niche and their specialized hunting strategy. Uh, that is
really advantageous. So like if you can't, you know, there
are a lot of birds who will try to get
insects that are kind of embarked that are more easily accessible.
So once you start developing adaptations where you can get

(15:22):
deeper and deeper into the bark and get more and
more insects, you're going to do a lot better than
those that you're competing with. I also have a question,
and I hope it's not super dumbling, but here goes.
I'm gonna shoot my shot first. The woodpecker. Now I
can see that tongue and a highoid apparatus. It reminds
me in some ways of an ant eater, in some

(15:43):
kind of like parallel evolution thing. But my question is,
given that this, given that this bird has adapted to
prevent I guess, concussions and brain damage from its very
specific life choices. Uh, how effective is it? Are there
woodpeckers that get concussions or brain damage? Is that anything

(16:04):
that can happen? Yeah, Actually there was a recent study
that showed that woodpeckers do still get some structural damage
that's consistent with CT injury like football players get. Um,
so it's so it's not effective, but certainly you can
imagine that without these protective structures, they just instantly scramble

(16:28):
their eggs or brains, their brain eggs, the old brain egg.
So there's one other. There's actually a couple other weird
adaptations that they have to help protect them from the
blunt force trauma of repeatedly smacking themselves against the tree. Uh.
Their brains are extra dry, so they don't have as

(16:49):
many fluids surrounding the brains, so they don't just like uh,
and I guess this, I think this is the scientific terminology,
so their brains don't slash around a lot. Uh. And
then they also have nictating membrane, which is that weird
transparent eyelid that you'll see on your cat, and that
covers their eye as they're pecking. So it's like a

(17:12):
set of goggles. So because otherwise their eyeballs would probably
pop out. Wow, because of the constant impact. Yeah, the
force of that, you know, Like it's sort of like
if you're riding a bike and you the bike is
suddenly stop, you'll fly off a bike that but with eyeballs.
I had a similar experience like that with one of
those birds scooters recently, So I totally understand this scenario, right, Right,

(17:37):
Is it a coincidence that it's called a bird scooter? No,
that was my point. No, it's not. It's absolutely not
a question. It makes me uniquely qualified to have this conversation, right,
you're basically an ornithologist now. No, Actually, I don't know
if I think I probably told you this last time
we were on. But I am definitely afraid of birds
and woodpeckers in particular, just just the more freaky the adaptation,

(17:58):
the worse. Like I have nightmare where I wake up
and there's like woodpeckers under my covers and I wake
up like in a cold sweat, and and yeah, it's
it's a thing that I struggle with. Um so I'm
pretty triggered right now actually, but trying to hold I'm
trying to hold it together. Well you know. I mean
I did present you with a nice diagram showing its
tongue wrapping around its skull, uh, and how long it

(18:19):
is and how pointy it is, and I'm sure that
will help. Yep, Yeah, feeling good. Well, if you're uncomfortable
with birds, why don't we pivot to something a little
less less weird. Uh kangaroo vaginas? Oh finally, yeah great,
I'm here for it. So kangaroos, wombats, kualas, Tasmanian devils. Uh.

(18:39):
These marsupials have three vaginas. Uh. So first of all,
I want you to get your minds out of the gutter. Uh.
They don't have three volva's. It's not like the alien
and total recall where she's got uh you know, the
three breasts. Um, it's not the Australia version of that,
right right, So it's not just like three volva's just

(19:01):
kind of like randomly placed on the kangaroo somewhere. Um.
So the vagina this is it's gonna be a little
bit of sex. Said here, the vagina is an inside
organ um. It's the canal that you do use sex
inside that sperm travels up and babies come out of.
That's where a menstruation and discharge come out. And that's

(19:22):
also where Gwyneth Paltrow puts her jade eggs in. That's
what the vagina is. That's what we're talking about. Um.
So you know, we we like to use our imaginations
on this show. I wanted you to imagine a naked
female kangaroo, so and so, a kangaroo not like wearing
a suit or something like boxing, no boxing gloves, totally naked.

(19:45):
So it's gonna it's gonna have a normal looking kangaroo
volva as far as kangaroo volva's go. But once you
look inside the kangaroo, the vagina splits off into three canals.
Uh that meat back up sort of like a weird
steering wheel or like a no smoking logo or like

(20:06):
that that London like subway logo, the underground logo. So
if you actually you guys, proceed in the slide show,
you can see, oh yeah, the interesting complex sort of
it looks a little bit like a French horn Honestly,
I know what this means, but I just want to
point out that there's a one diagram. It says middle vagina,

(20:28):
Joey travels down, and that just I just like saying
that out loud. Just Joey travels down. I mean, Joey
likes to take the middle of vagina. He really, that's
classic the path of least resistance. You know that middle
vagina exactly. I mean, Joey could be more adventurous, but
that that refers to, you know, the juvenile kangaroo, right, yes, yes,

(20:48):
so Joey is a baby kangaroo. I have a question
looking looking at this, which it also looks like it
might be a made up musical instrument in a sci
fi film, like a Doctor SEUs book, or like the
Fifth Element or Doctor SEUs or something in Huville, But
apparently it's very real. Um. I have always heard that kangaroos,

(21:11):
female kangaroos are an animal that can either suspend its
pregnancy or some somehow control when and how it gives birth,
or when it gives birth at least. Is that correct?
Or is that something that my college friends made up
when we were hanging out too late at night. Yeah?
So it can kind of time it. UM. So what

(21:32):
the beauty of the kangaroo reproductive system is that it
can have three Joey's at once, basically and at different
stages of developments. So you've got one Joey that is
think of it as like a toddler, where it's like
outside of the pouch, walking around, you know, maybe still

(21:53):
like reaching in the pouch for milk and stuff, but
it's a it's a sort of what what you would
associate Joey to look like. Um. And then you have
the second one, which is the Joey that is inside
of the pouch. So that's usually uh, the really young
Joey that's either at a very early stage of its
development when it looks like those weird little pink jellybeans,

(22:15):
or it's a little older, but it's so it's developing
inside of the pouch. And then you have a third
Joey that is still developing inside of the uterus or
traveling down. You know, once the middle Joey leaves the
pouch and that one uh starts to travel down and
leave uh and then makes that heroic crawl from the

(22:38):
vagina to the pouch, which is kind of incredible. So
I don't think they can consciously control it, like you know, oh, well,
you know, I've got this. This Joey is a real
pain in the in the the real pain in the
middle of vagina. So I'm gonna stall off that other,
that other Joey. But yeah, there is a this timing

(22:58):
allows them to perpetually pregnant. It's like an assembly line
of Joey's. So what's interesting is some biologists think that
so as you can see from the diagram, the middle
vagina is a little narrower than the other ones um
and some biologists think this is why Joey's are born
so premature, because it's just too narrow for a bigger baby.

(23:23):
So that's why they have to make that crazy crawl
from the vagina to the pouch. If you if you
don't know what I'm talking about, Joey's are born very tiny,
like they look like little little gross pink beans, and
then they have to they crawl all and there. They
look like an embryo. They don't look like they're fully developed,

(23:45):
and they're not. And then they crawl from after they
give birth, they crawl from the vagina and they go
all the way up into the pouch, so that having
that narrow middle vagina is like, maybe that's why this
is this happens. Oh. They also it's important to note
that they have two uteruses to uterie. I see that. Yeah, um,

(24:07):
and that's actually not too uncommon. Um, they're bifurcated uter
i in deer's, cats, dogs, elephants, whales, and a lot
of other cool animal ladies. Uh. In fact, humans only
having one uterus were more of the weird ones. I
guess I've always thought that, Yeah, it's just one more

(24:29):
thing to shame women about. You only have one uterus?
What's wrong with you? Boy? Oh no, I'm not associated
with that at all. I did notice so, um when
when I've seen pictures of Joey's and how how they're
so they're so newly formed and undeveloped. It's pretty amazing

(24:49):
that they can instinctually climb up the parents body towards
that that pouch. But the pouch always weirded me out,
Like is the I never thought I'd say this on
the air. Is this treble vagina adaptation? Is it something
that occurred around the same time that the pouch was developing?

(25:11):
Or like, what, why and how that's my question. Why
and how? I just I'm baffled, just why, just why.
It's a really good question. It's a little bit of
a mystery, at least to me, UM, because I was
trying to find why exactly they have three vaginas. And
so there's a few theories. One is that um, male

(25:34):
marsuvials actually have a two pronged penises, so maybe they
can do double time fertilizing the vagina um. But actually
kangaroos do not have the two pronged uh penises, which
I guess is really unlucky for the lady kangaroos. UM.
But so that's that's one theory. But it could also

(25:55):
be helpful for creating like that endless perpetual Joey production machine. Um.
You got one in the pouch, one in the oven,
one fending for himself. Um. And you know, uh, I
I would really like to hear if there are any
marsupial biologists out there if they have any theories about

(26:18):
why they have three vaginas. But there's one other thing,
and it's I think, so first we have to kind
of talk about, um, you know, uh, what a spandrel
of evolution is. Have you guys heard of that term,
I note, so, uh spandrel is the term that comes
from architecture. Actually, so the spandrel is this triangular wedge

(26:40):
between and archway and like uh ceiling. So uh it
actually serves no inherent purpose other than being a structural byproducts.
So you have the arch and then the ceiling, and
then where that kind of like meets you you have
that little wedge where it's like the the where the

(27:00):
semicircle meets that kind of triangle um and uh so
uh it was coined as a term to mean an
anatomical feature of evolution that's just kind of a result
of how the animal got built. It has no inherent purpose.
It's just you know, it's kind of like, I don't know,
I guess like you could also describe it as like

(27:20):
the taint like of of evolution because it's like it
doesn't serve any purpose. It's just there because you gotta
you gotta have a place between the the front in
the back. Um so. Uh So there's a possibility that
having the three canals is like a spandrel of having
to uterie um and that the fact that they have

(27:46):
it's that for some reason they want a separate birthing canal.
And then just the fact that we're typically speaking in
many structures are symmetrical, just in terms of how they
developed in the fetus. But you know, I don't know,
it's it's really it's kind of a mystery. And we'll
actually see kind of in another animal maybe a proto

(28:06):
kind of a proto pouch, which is really interesting. Uh.
Later on that will discuss, But first I want to
take you guys on the imagination train to imagination station.
So this one's actually really easy. Just imagine an elephant
in your head, close your eyes. Got it there and

(28:28):
such kind eyes and all of its elephant e goodness,
does it have big tusks? Now you're doing You're doing
it wrong. It's female elephant. I didn't expect that, did you. Um,
Now imagine that with it is a smaller elephant. Little baby?
Is it? Cute? Oho able? Little baby? Now that baby elephant,

(28:53):
he's gonna be hungry and it's got to drink milk
from its mother. How does it do this? We're like
like trying to imagine where do you think it's getting
the milk from? Maybe through the trunk maybe how maybe
they're like secret elephant utters? Have you ever have you
ever tried to imagine this like an elephants utters? No,

(29:18):
this is this is a first for me, Katie. It's
never come up. It's never come up in my line
of thinking, right right, Well, you know because like you don't.
It's not just like cow arders attached to the elephant.
So it's well, I gotta tell you guys this. Did
you know that elephants have big old honkers honkers as
it noses. No, No, they got big old, very big

(29:42):
old set of very human looking boobs. So if you
advance in your slide show, oh my goodness. So I'm
not doing a pearl clutch situation right now. What I'm
doing is like they literally look like those fake boobs
you buy it like the joke store, like because the
scale is all off kind of the elephants so very

(30:03):
close together, and they're very close together, and they look
like yeah that there. Wow. I don't I don't want
to use the word traumatized. But when I first when
I first looked at this, I was pretty uncomfortable and
I was thinking, Okay, how many things in this slide
show or photo shopped? I'd better be a good sport
about this. But if I were in the wild, I've

(30:25):
only seen elephants in you know, zoos or nature preserves.
So if I were in the wild and I saw
a busty elephant running at me, I would freak out
and trampled. I'd be tramped, I'd be I would die
trampled by the feet or by the boobs. I don't know,
that's them. I love the I love the caption you

(30:45):
have on this slide to it just says very non
you know, it's just like a very matter of factly
some hot elephant hits. Katie. Yeah, it's it's you. Guys.
Are welcome for the slideshow. By the way, I'm gonna
see if I can post the slide show online actually
for the listener. Um. But is this like something they
always have and that I've just never noticed noticed? Yeah,

(31:06):
well they have it so when they're when they're nursing,
they definitely swell up. But but yeah, I mean they
they've this is not new. It's not like a twenty
nineteen weird new millennial thing like they've always had Elephants
have always had breasts. Um. And also, I would encourage
my listeners to google elephants boobs um and do it

(31:28):
with the safe search off for sure um and and
just just roll those die. Uh. So what's really interesting
about the elephant mammary glands is that they are some
of the most human looking boobs on an animal that
I've actually ever seen, and that includes primates, because if

(31:49):
you think of primate boobs, they actually, you know, they're
they're pretty small, they're kind of flat as kansas um.
But the elephants actually have more extensive breast tissue. So
the reason their breast tissue is so voluptuous is so
the baby elephant can reach better. Because elephants are big,

(32:11):
baby elephants are less big, and that's tricky. And it's
also interesting because those boobs are in the front, like
on their chest, like you would see in a human,
which you may wonder like why aren't they in the back,
like uh, you know, a cow or something. So there's
a very simple reason. The back just has no room
for boobs, and this has to do with how they

(32:32):
give birth. So in order to give birth and not
drop a little baby Dumbo on his sweet little head
and kill them immediately. Uh, the vagina is actually under
the elephant, like between her legs, so the calf doesn't
have as far to go. So in other unguleets you
may know, like like in cow's the vaginal opening is

(32:53):
it kind of like closer to the butt, like near
the tail um, and so the calf kind of drops
a little bit. If that happened with an elephant, that
would be really bad for the baby. Uh I see, yeah, yeah,
yeah right, So because they give birth down there and
that's where the vaginal opening is, there's just no room
for the breasts. Uh So that's why they're between on

(33:16):
their chest. Okay, sorry, I'm catching up the speeding. Just
I'm a little baffled. And this is changing changing some things,
for changing how you look at elephants, literally elephants like
Mark trunk shop here. Yeah, I guess so, I guess so.
I mean because elephants are already such amazing and intelligent

(33:37):
creatures and cognitively, the more we learn about them, the
more we learn that their thought processes are are very,
very sophisticated, and they feel increasingly, I don't want to
say human like, but increasingly like a pure species in
some ways. So now finding out I do I do
want to interrupt you to say I do like that

(33:58):
you're thinking about the elephant's mind, not just her chest.
That's really woke of you. Thank you. I try to
be elephant woke. This is so much information though, like
how how human are they? I don't well, I don't know,
so to put your mind at ease, this isn't it's
a it's another case of parallel evolution um. But it

(34:19):
is really interesting because most animals don't actually have large
breasts or like it's like an utter situation where their
utters swell during pregnancy nursing, and certainly they don't have
the kind of like large breasts that elephants have. And
that's uh. Those are as I mentioned before designed to
make it easier for the baby elephant to reach. But

(34:41):
humans human breasts are actually really kind of an evolutionary mystery, um.
Scientists are baffled by boobs uh and it's uh. There
are a few theories, like some are nutrition, like maybe
it's kind of like camel humps, where you store extra
fat for neur my humps, my humps, my lovely um.

(35:05):
One of the more popular theories that I actually think
is probably more convincing is that it's sexual selection, um,
that they somehow It's just kind of this thing in
nature where sometimes certain characteristics are attractive because they may
signal sexual maturity or uh some kind of sexual fitness,

(35:27):
and then that trait becomes more and more exaggerated because
that that signal uh is very powerful. So an example
of that is, um, there are certain birds that if
you give them a big egg, like a big fake egg,
they care about it even more than the smaller eggs
because that signal is just like really powerful. So that's

(35:49):
kind of like potentially with breast, like the you know,
having more voluptuous breasts is like this overpowering signal that
just uh mesmerizes like our early human ancestor males or something. Yeah,
that's okay, I see the I see the point you're
making here. I want to point out something too, like

(36:10):
I maybe I haven't been to the zoo or on
safari enough to see elephants, you know, in their natural habitat.
Typically thinking them, think of them is rearing up on
their back legs too too much, because the image that
you have for us in the slide show is an
elephant and kind of an awkward squatting position that's allowing
us to see these uh, these elephant boobs. Um, but
it typically wouldn't be something you would notice, I would think,

(36:33):
right right, yeah, I mean it's uh if when they're standing.
I think that's also why this is an image that
is capturing so many people's attention. Um. Usually when you
see an elephant there, uh, it's it's a little harder
to see they're rocking tips, um because that they're angled,
not in such a way to show them off. And

(36:54):
so yeah, it's sometimes do that. I'm actually trying. I'm
kind of trying to figure out why she is kneeling
in this picture. Um. It could be to go the bathroom.
It could be, um that she tripped. That's how I
want to think of it, as like it's a Marilyn
Monroe situation where she just kind of stumbled and she's like, oh, sorry,
is my my is my beautiful chest showing exactly the

(37:18):
baby looks like it's about to get on her back
or something too. It's it's a weird situation there, baby
kind of coming up behind the check on him. He's
just like really embarrassing, like moms toar mom. Um. So
I teased earlier that I wanted to talk about animal
pouch kind of like a potential um sort of proto

(37:42):
pouch situation. Uh. And it's actually a very interesting animal. Um.
So it's called the Colugo Flying Lemur and it's actually
not a lemur and it doesn't fly, so what the heck?
Why you know? Yeah, is that like it's just a
street name or something. Just that's that's the it's it's
a type of drug. Actually, it's called Colugo Flying Lemur.

(38:05):
It's really gonna make you, really gonna make you fly, dude.
Um So they this this creature definitely looks like he's
tripping balls. He's got these giant like dilated pupils. Yeah,
I thought, yeah, I thought I could see tripping always
thinking more like a studio gibli anime animal in some
kind of magical woodland environment. Yeah. Sure, it looks like

(38:29):
the lead thirteen year old me off on an adventure.
So to describe this for the audience, like, it's it
kind of looks like a DreamWorks version of a flying squirrel,
like remember what was his name script the little squirrel
from ice Age? Oh yeah, something like that. Yeah, like that,
but with like big old skin flaps. Um. So, they

(38:51):
live in Southeast Asia. They're not lemurs, but they are
close relatives of primates. Um they uh, like I said,
they're kind of like they look a little bit like
flying squirrels, but way more fucky. Uh. They have a
big flap of skin they can use to glide huge
distances up to five feet without even losing that much altitude. Um,

(39:15):
they kind of look like they should be close relatives
of bats, but they're not. That's just another case of
parallel evolution. UM. And they're really bad at climbing and
are super clumsy, so it's it's very fortunate that they
have built in parachute. They kind of climbed by like
awkwardly hopping up a tree. Um. They eat shoots and leaves. Uh.

(39:42):
And uh they actually use their skin flaps sometimes to
carry their babies. Now they're not, uh, they're not. This
is not necessarily like, oh, this is how uh pouches evolved,
But I think it's an interesting thing where you have this,
you have some anatomical feature, and then you can kind
of see how potentially, like a another structure could be

(40:07):
start to be used for caring for offspring, Like how
the pouch like was evolved to be a protective area
for the offspring. You have these arm flaps which are
not to be used as a pouch, but then they
do get used as that, and that's really interesting to me.
It's fascinating. It's it's almost like a an evolutionary crossroads

(40:29):
or adaptive crossroads, like what what will win the day?
Will it be more useful to uh glide and have
a built in parachute because you're crappy at climbing, or
it would be more useful to have a pouch to
protect you're young. I don't know exactly, And I think
that's that's also what makes UH studying evolution so tricky,
because you can look at a characteristic and say, Okay,

(40:52):
clearly this evolved to like allow them to flyer something,
but it could have started out as something else, like
a structure. Maybe maybe it did start out as like
a structure that helped with their child rearing, but then
it as it got bigger, like it actually helped them
with gliding, and then it turned into that. So that
evolution is a twisty turny uh kind of kangaroo vagina situation, UH,

(41:18):
where it's just like you have all these twists and
turns and weirdness. So one other fun fact about them
is that in order to poop, they have to lift
their skin flap over their body, and it's really weird looking.
If you guys, check out slide number seven. I discussed it.
I am trauma. This is you know. I thought I

(41:38):
thought I had gotten over the tough part with the
elephant breast, but this is traumatizing. I didn't know what
I was looking at for a second. I thought it
was a weird dragon fruit. Uh is it turning? Is
it turning its pouch inside out? We're seeing the inside
of the pouch, like right, so it's well, it's not

(42:00):
really a pouch. It's just this like well, yeah, no,
I got in the flaps. Yeah, it's like it took
its cape up right, and all in the entire cape
turned out to be made of asshole. It's like an
animal kingdom goat. See kind of it really is? It
looks prolapsed. Oh my god. Well so, uh, it's the
membrane that makes up it's flap. Like on the top,

(42:21):
it looks kind of cool because it's covered in fur,
but from the bottom it's nude. It's not covered in fur,
so it's all vainy and weird and pink and translucent. Uh.
And it's when it folds itself up, it kind of
looks like it's turning itself inside out. Uh yeah, it's
uh stuff of nightmares kind of a like a you

(42:42):
know that that painter Hieronymous Bosh, like all his paintings
of humans being tortured in hell, it looks like, yep,
can you imagine there? But for the grace of randomized
evolution go us. You know, humans aren't perfect. But I'm
so glad I don't have to go through that just

(43:03):
to use the restroom. I mean, I don't know, because
like maybe if we had evolved big skin flaps, we'd
consider that sexy, Like like maybe colugos have a whole
category of corn that's just like skin flap. Yeah. Oh
my gosh. It was the worst up script videos ever.
Uh yeah, I'm just I'm really glad that I don't

(43:24):
have to pull my asshole over my back to use
the restroom. It sounds a little sounds a little overrated,
to be honest to me. What is he using to
do it? I don't understand what I'm looking at. So
you see, you see that that kind of line that's
going down, that's that's yeah, that's like his tail bones.

(43:44):
Uh and I got it. Okay, I see. For a
second I thought he was like using his mouth to
like pull it up over like that's even more disturbing.
And he just kind of like exactly turns inside out
and disappears and doesn't. The thing is that you don't
need this to be anymore to serving. It's fine just
the way, Thank you very much. Okay, great, some new

(44:05):
nightmare fuel. Now this is really helpful. Well we can
take a quick break up, but then I'm gonna throw
more stuff at you. All right, I'm ready. Yeah, I'll
steal myself. So can you look like a regular human
on the outside but an alien on the inside. There
was a recent news story about a ninety nine year

(44:26):
old woman who donated her body to science medical students
at Organ Health and Science University in Portland. We're using
her cadaver in a gross anatomy class. When I say
gross anatomy, it doesn't mean disgusting anatomy. It just means
anatomy that can be seen with the naked eye. In
this case, the anatomy was particularly well. Odd year old

(44:47):
woman had lived a long and healthy life without ever
knowing that her organs were backwards. Her liver and other
abnominal organs grew on the left side of her body.
Typically they grow on the right. It's a rare condition
called sit us and versus with levi acardia. She's thought
to be the oldest person to survive with this condition,
and I mean, at ninety nine years old, she's probably

(45:08):
one of the oldest people to live period. This is
a one in twenty thousand condition with a typically bad outlook,
where only one in fifty million lived to adulthood. So
this year old woman was truly one and a billion fold.
Onto your livers. We'll be right back with more wild anatomy.

(45:39):
Sometimes animals are so strange scientists don't believe they're real.
This was the case when the platypus was discovered in
sevent The biologist George Shaw couldn't believe that the platypus
specimen he was looking at was real. After all, platypus
has what looks like a duck's bill and a beaver's
tail with no nipples, and it lays eggs. Surely, people

(46:01):
thought it must be a hoax. But as you know,
the platypus is very real as are the freaky fantastical
animals were about to discuss these animals may not have
heard of Alright, guys, So I want you to imagine
that you're walking in the beautiful forests of Southeast Asia. Awesome.

(46:21):
You're there among trees and plants and various wildlife, and
suddenly you smell the delicious scent of popcorn. You look around.
There's no theaters to be found here, it's a forest.
Suddenly you see what looks like a cross between a lorex,
a bear cat, and a monkey. It's the bent a Wrong.
Is it? Is this the source of this popcorn smell? Yes,

(46:45):
it is, which we will discuss. Uh do you guys?
See I sent you that image of the bent Wrong
just chilling on a tree. It's a mood for sure. Yeah.
And uh and the second image I show you you
can see how shaggy it is and how thick its
tail is. It is a chunky, chunky tail. So um,

(47:08):
it looks like a Doctor Seuss creature to me, like
like an old gnar or like a Jim Hinson. Oh
you know, like in the dark crystal the what what
are those the sears? Oh? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it
kind of looks like that. So it's um uh, like
I said, it's found in Southeast Asia. It looks it's

(47:30):
like black and gray, shaggy, big tufted ears. Yeah, like
a big honey badger. But its face is like floppity.
It looks like a It also seems like it does
give a fuck. It's got kind of kind eyes. It
looks like it would give you wisdom and kind of
like take you under its wing and nurture you as

(47:51):
a traveler, like in the jungle. I think that's that's
what I'm picturing. Maybe in the first picture. In the
second picture though, the eyes, and maybe it's the gradation
of the facial hair. But in the second picture it
looks like a villain. It's like the first picture is
sort of the Simba or Mufasa and the second pictures
the scar version. Oh man, they should have they should

(48:14):
have made the Lion King remake with bin t wrongs.
That would have been so much better. I know that
they didn't answer my tweets, but there's always next reboot,
right is it? Is it a prehensile tail? I mean, like, okay,
got it? It is indeed, so prehensile means it can
grasp and hold things, and it can do that. In fact,
when they're young, they can actually hang by their tails.

(48:35):
But when they get older, they're just too fat, too heavy,
as you said, so that adaptation becomes less helpful as
they get older, or like does it does it still
serve a purpose for them, still serves a purpose, still
allows them to balance as they climb on trees. And
you know, for for young bin t wrong, that's maybe

(48:55):
less adept at climbing. That being able to actually support
their whole way on a tree is very much more useful,
probably than an adult. So it's actually not a cat
or a bear. It is. Try to guess like some
of its closest relatives. Okay, not cats, not bears, not badgers.

(49:15):
Uh your cat? Uh yeah? Maybe like uh oh, what's
what's the one? Um? Whatever? Red panda is Well, actually
your closest with the cat's guests. So they're member of
the Vivarid family, which includes palm civets and genets, which

(49:38):
civits and genets look like cats, but they aren't. Civets
are the ones that make the great but disturbing coffee, Yes,
the poop coffee. I think you're right about that, Yes,
so they eat these coffee beans and then they poop
it out, and then you collect the pooped out beans
and drink that up as your your nice hot poopy
bean juice in the morning. It's really expensive. Yeah, I

(50:01):
love my expensive poopy hot bean juice. So they're related
to cats, but they're also related to hyenas and weasels,
so that whole sort of group of I know, hyenas
seemed like a kind of weird, like you would think
they would be more related to dogs. But there that's

(50:21):
actually also parallel evolution, which we talked about a lot today.
But yeah, so that's what that thing is. This bent
a wrong. It's omnivorous and uh, it's about four ft
long from head to tail. Uh. The tail is about
as long as the body, so it's like a two
ft long tail two foot long body. Uh. They weigh

(50:41):
about fifty pounds, so you know, like a slight kind
of a big dog. They're like a big dog, ah,
with a bunch of shaggy fur and eyes that have
seen into the heart and soul of the universe. Um.
Females are actually larger than males, which is pretty rare
amongst mammals. Usually male mammals are larger than females as

(51:04):
you know, and um insects, the female is often larger. So,
like I mentioned earlier, they're famous for smelling like popcorn
or corn chips, a real yummy smell, and that that nice, pleasant,
popcorny smell is coming from their scrotal or volval glands.
Oh it's their steak. Yeah, it's their musk. So they

(51:28):
have they have some scent glands located near their genitals
that they used to mark and uh that it smells
like fresh buttery popcorn. Wait a minute, So I think
I heard and didn't believe one time that vanilla extract,
something from vanilla extract comes from like beaver scent glands.

(51:49):
Is that true? I don't know. I don't think. So what, well,
it seems to make sense based on what you're saying. Well,
I mean, like vanilla extract. I thought vanilla extract came
for the vanilla bean plan for sure, But I but
I heard, I heard there was like a synthetic version
of it that came from like beaver scent pouches. But

(52:09):
you know, people say all kinds of stuff, but at
the same time, like what they can't bottle this Uh,
this gland juice and make buttered popcorn. And I don't
know that's a good question. I'm actually I actually looked
up beaver butt uh and vanilla and I found a
National Geographic article that says beaver butts emitt good use
for vanilla flavoring. Yeah, substitute vanilla flavor uh and then

(52:33):
sometimes raspberry or strawberry. It's called castareum um and the
U s f d A list castoreum as generally regarded
as safe. I wish that they would, like do like,
generally regarded as safe but disgusting. Yeah. Also, I just
sound when last fact about that. I also found castorium

(52:55):
was used in Sweden to flavor schnops and they have
one called Literally it translates in English to beaver shout.
It's it's beaver butt juice booze. This. This is weird too,
because now I'm thinking, like, when I go to movie theaters,
am I smelling actual popcorn? Or am I smelling bent

(53:19):
a wrong booty? Probably not bent wrongs unless you're in
a forest in Southeast Asia. Okay, I mean it is interesting.
I think these are pretty These are threatened or endangered animals.
Um otherwise it'd be great to harvest their butt juices
to make artificial popcorn. Can people keep these as pets

(53:40):
or do they? I don't know. They shouldn't and you
wouldn't want to. But do people keep exotic animals as
past that they definitely shouldn't. I mean that does happen. Um.
They are at the San Diego Zoo. Uh. And I
looked up the They say that they get fed a
iet that includes primate biscuits, which is so cute, sounding

(54:03):
like we made you a little special biscuit. Bent Wrongs
aren't primates, but I guess that they are have a
similar diet because they're omnivorous. Are they intelligent, I don't know.
I think they're, you know, about as intelligent as like
a like a weasel or a cat, which is to say,

(54:24):
possibly like just containing the wisdom of the universe. But
sometimes they sit there and like their own butt hole
for hours, so it's hard to know. It's because of
the popcorn smells. Man, if my butthole smell like popcorn. Uh.
And then one other cool fact is that they can
turn their ankles and eighty degrees, so in theory they

(54:46):
could open doors like no too far, too far. So
if you if you're like at home and you suddenly
hear a door creak open and the scent of popcorn
wasps in the air, and you hear the footsteps and
a black, shaggy figure. It's probably me, actually, and I've
come over and brought some some popcorn and I'm covered

(55:10):
in dog hair. Classic, right, I'm loving the horror movie
set up here. So now let's go back to imagination Land,
imagination station, home of the brain. Uh So, now imagine
you're in the grasslands of South America. You smell something
distinct and it's not popcorn, but yes, it's the unmistakable

(55:35):
odor of that dank ass or my dude, some four twenties,
some of that old devil lettuce. You look around, ready
to choke it up with someone, but instead you see
a deer. No wait, that's no, dear. It comes closer
and closer, with long, long, spindly legs, a red body
of black mane, the tail of a fox, and the

(55:56):
head of a wolf. So this is the main wolves,
which is not a wolf, and they're not a fox
but a distinct species of kenid. So if you guys,
I've sent you a picture of this this guy, and
it's really incredible looking because its legs do not look
like they go with the animal. It's got a real

(56:17):
set of gams. Now, yeah, it's it's also it's all
kinds of wrong, You're right, Like the proportions seem off,
like the head size versus the legs, and it's got
this dainty little posture with the front legs crossed over
each other and has come hither look and these kind
of look I'm working through some feelings right now. Um yeah,

(56:38):
a k A wolf Maine. Because it smells like it
smells like weed apparently right, it does smell like weed
in fact, but how much cooler can this wolf? It
looks like it looks like, again, like a character you
would see in Spirited Away or something from No. It
totally looks like the spirit of the forest, like the
human face and spirit or oh yeah, Princess Monon Okay,

(57:01):
yeah exactly. And it smells like we this cat is
this is too cool for school? So yeah, they have urine,
uh that they used to mark their territory. And it
smells so strongly of marijuana that at the Rotterdam Zoo
where they kept main wolves, cops were looking around, uh,
scouring the zoo for pot smokers because they're like, we

(57:25):
keep we keep smelling pot. But it was just wolf
pe weird. Okay, I think it's less cool now that
I know it's the urine that smells like marijuana. But
still I visited in the zoo. Wait a minute, are
you saying it's not okay to smoke weed at the
Rotterdam Zoo? I guess not. That's my that's my take away,

(57:45):
you know what. I actually, when I was researching this,
that was the most surprising thing to me. Not that
their pa smells like marijuana, because like, I'm so used
to whatever weird animal things they get up to. But
the fact that, like in Rotterdam, they're so in vested
in stopping people from smoking pot at the zoo blows
my mind. It's like a known issue with the Rotterdam.

(58:08):
Everyone goes there to get high. Well, I mean, you
can smoke weed openly in Rotterdam, right, I guess what
I was. I don't know. I guess not at the
zoo though maybe not. It's for children. You got to
stick to your your hashbars and you have like the
proprietor I'm thinking of pulp fiction. Now it's four twenty
pm right now, just definitely in here in Atlanta, Georgia.
It's only one here. Um. That is funny though for

(58:34):
twenty dude. Uh So, like I said, main wolves aren't
actually wolves. Uh. They are this this species of canad
that um uh evolved these like weird deer like legs. Uh.
And they kind of look like a fox. A deer
and a wolf had an orgy and just like popped out.

(58:56):
There's a weird animal. Um. So they're about three ft
tall and they weigh about fifty pounds, so again kind
of like uh purports like their proportions are all different,
but they're about the size of a bent a wrong
um And Uh. They're omnivores and they're solitary hunters, so
they're not really like wolves in their social structure. Uh.

(59:18):
They're this is cute. They're actually monogamous. So they lived
together with their life partner and they'll um stick together.
And so I think they think their partner do hunt
together to some extent, but I don't think they actually
work together in the same way that like a wolf
pack structure does. But they do stick with one partner

(59:39):
typically speaking, which is really cute. And they also have
a roarer bark, which is really unique. Wow, that's it

(01:00:01):
does kind of sound like like death metal screaming. Imagine
hearing that that, like like you smell weed and you're
smoking weed and you hear that. Yeah. Oh I couldn't
deal with that. So you're one of your stoner metal
brethren are coming to join you, you know, because they're
they're out there vocalizing and that's so. Now I want

(01:00:23):
to move on to one of the most unfortunate looking
monkeys I've ever seen. So this is the black and white,
young and snub nosed monkey. They're Old world monkeys who
live in China, and they lack nasal bones and they
have vibrant, huge pink lips. Uh And honestly, they kind

(01:00:45):
of look like those pictures of like when someone gets
plastic surgery and it goes terribly wrong. Uh. So I
showed you guys that picture. As you can see, they
have no nose and just these huge, buluptuous lips. Mean,
it looks like a photoshop fail. I'm not gonna lie.
I mean it really does. The lips look very uncanny Valley.

(01:01:06):
The tone of them doesn't match anything else on their body.
It looks like absolutely all mixed up. I was so,
I was so taken with the nose. I've seen these
monkeys before, and I remember I was in a conversation
with someone about what they do when it rains, like
they can't look up because the water would get into

(01:01:27):
their nasal passages. But I never noticed the lips. I
was so taken by the nose. And now these yeah,
I'd agree, I'd agree with you, man. These these lips
look photo shops from real like Kylie General lips. Yeah. Why, well,
I feel like I'm asking that question continually here. Well
to know why, first, let's talk a little bit about

(01:01:49):
their habitat. They're one of the um highest altitude of
all the primates. They live around fifteen thousand feet above
sea level UM. The reason cold at these high altitudes
mean that if they had a nose, it would probably
just get frost bite all the time. So they just
don't have one. That's how they solve that problem, is

(01:02:11):
like nose keeps falling off, Well, just don't just don't
be born with enough um. And yeah, when it's it rains,
they'll also sneeze a lot because it gets in their nose.
And they have to sneeze it out um, and there's
not that much food and nourishment up here, so they
actually have evolved to be able to eat lichen off

(01:02:32):
of trees, which normally you can't really digestive, but they've
developed special digestive techniques for being able to get nutrition
from the lichen um. And as for those juicy lips, uh,
that actually could be sexual selection, which is really interesting
because just like in humans, how big red, plump lips

(01:02:54):
are considered attractive. This may be considered attractive among these
numb those monkeys, but it's more important for the males
to have these big, red, juicy lips. Um. It's also
it tends to happen where the older males have redder
and thicker lips, so that could be a dominant signal.
It could be a sexual maturity signal. And it's uh,

(01:03:18):
it's just it's so great. It's like they look like
they have had way too many fillers in their lips. No,
it sounds like a terrible idea. It's a bad idea.
Don't do it. But it looks like that like someone
like put a vacuum hose against their mouth and then
pull it away and have these like big lips. But
they're definitely these are just things they're born with that

(01:03:40):
increase I guess in their extreme nature as the animal ages. Yeah,
oh man, how are they doing, like in terms of
like as a species, are they prevalent or are they
They're very they're very threatened, uh, you know, and endangered
their um. They have a very small population size so

(01:04:00):
in the just like severals of thousands um so uh.
And they also have such a unique habitat that uh.
And they're so isolated. Uh, there's actually a little bit
of genetic bottleneck. Uh. So researchers have like looked at
their genome and found lack of diversity because they are

(01:04:22):
such a small population and so insular, which is always
a little bit of a concern with a unique species
like this, because, um, when you lack a certain amount
of genetic diversity, if a change to their environment happens
or some kind of new disease pops up, they are
much less likely to be able to cope with that. Yeah.
Maybe you're you know, maybe you were onto something with

(01:04:42):
the Kylie gener kind of earlier, because if you could
get her on board with this, uh and get her
to post some stuff on Instagram. Oh yeah, if we
if we could make these monkeys Instagram models like Instagram
stars like that that, and then people would get on
board with protecting their them monkey influencers. Oh my god,

(01:05:06):
I can't believe nobody else has the time come. You know,
if you went in for an amputation and the surgeon
sowed your leg on backwards, you might think you've got
a medical malpractice case. But in some cases this is
an intentional procedure. Rotation plasty is a procedure in which

(01:05:27):
the leg is amputated, usually to exercise bone cancer. Then
the lower part of the leg, if healthy, is reattached
to the thigh backwards. The purpose of this is to
create an knee using the foot. The ankle has the
same hinge motion as the knee, just backwards, so rotating
it gives the same locomotion as the knee. This allows

(01:05:50):
people who have had an amputation to have a better
range of motion and to adapt prosthetics with more ease,
being able to operate a below the knee process thesis
more easily. It may look a bit strange, but it's
an innovative procedure that can give people a better quality
of light. It just goes to show you so called
weird anatomy can be incredibly useful. When we get back,

(01:06:13):
we'll look at some of the more intimidating examples of
animal anatomy. Dinosaurs. They're big, leathery, with bony claws and

(01:06:34):
pointy heads. Our conception of what dinosaurs look like maybe
a misconception due to what's called shrink rapping. Shrink Rapping
is when paleo artists artists who try to reconstruct what
an animal looks like based on its fossil record, don't
include as much muscle, tissue and fat as an animal
may have in reality had, which makes them look bony

(01:06:54):
and skeletal, sunken, sort of like the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.
In the book Yesterday's Unique and Speculative Views of Dinosaurs
and other Prehistoric Animals, artists made a series of pictures
of what did it look like if you did the
classic shrink rapping artistic rendering of living species based on
their skeletons. Suddenly, swans are horrible monsters with needle like

(01:07:16):
pointy arms. Baboons and squirrels look like grotesque demons. In fact,
as we now know, dinosaurs may have been feathery and
brightly colored, maybe even a little chubby. Sometimes a t
rex may have looked more like a giant threatening chicken.
As we'll find out, our concept of what animals can
look like may need to be expanded, and we'll start

(01:07:37):
out with a very large, extinct monster who flew the skies.
Sorry you guys fans of the Jurassic Park thing franchise. Yeah,
one of the first one was really good, and then
the most recent one was pretty okay, But the ones

(01:07:57):
in between, I wasn't a huge fan. Maybe you just
maybe you just got older and lost the magic of
the Jurassic magic. Jurassic Park one totally holds up on
repeat viewings, Like even though like it was like the
effects looked really great. I can actually I can verify
that because when I was a kid, I was too
scared to watch Jurassic Park. Um, and then I watched

(01:08:18):
it as an adult, and it really does hold up.
It's really good. Uh, it's got quotables. Even even just
the way the story is structured, you'd still very watchable.
Despite the fact that, as as you pointed out, Katie,
science is showing us that dinosaurs, what we call dinosaurs

(01:08:38):
may have had a ton of feathers, right, instead of
just scaly skin. Yeah, they may have been a little
fluffy chicken like creatures. Um, like imagine a t rex,
but just like a big old chicken with big old
fluffy feathers. They could have been colorful. They could have
had like, um, like gol or pouches and head bonds

(01:09:00):
and stuff. Yeah, exactly. I think artists are now reimagining
dinosaurs more to be more fancy and I love that.
And one group of dinosaurs that I think we have
a certain conception about them but it is a misconception
is the pterosaurs. So parosaurs are think like the pterodactyl,

(01:09:21):
that's one species of pterosaur, and they're not actually dinosaurs.
They're winged reptiles that are extinct that are of the
Mesozoic era. So they are just defined as this group
of extinct reptile that would have these you know, they
have those leathery wings that they can use to fly

(01:09:43):
like a pterodactyl. But I want to talk about one
of the most incredible species of pterosaurs, which is the
cats acts north Ropy. Does that sound right? Yeah? Is
um it's a reference to Maya culture. Yes, that feathery serpent.
God right, the plume serpent and this this thing is

(01:10:09):
I have to ask just looking at maybe a recreation
or a model of this. Uh, my first question is
could it actually fly? Because that head is ginormous. Yes,
I mean I think it could have flown. The scientists
actually there were like physicists trying to figure out whether
this thing could fly. And it's a little bit of

(01:10:31):
a controversial debate, but most researchers, I think agree that
it could indeed fly. Um, which is insane looking at
it because so far our listeners it was it looks
sort of pterodactyl like, but it was as tall as
a giraffe with a thirty five ft wingspan. It's about

(01:10:52):
the size of a S S No. One two airplane. Um.
It has a long, sharp pointed beak and a really muscular,
stiff neck. Uh. And so when they're on the ground, uh,
they can fold their wings kind of like I mean
like when you see in uh fantasy movies how dragons
walk on the ground, where when they don't have fore legs,

(01:11:15):
like uh in Game of Thrones, how the dragons would
walk on they're folded up wings. That's exactly how these
guys would walk on the ground. Paleontologists think, Uh, so
they actually have a um sort of physical structure similar
to large ungulates like giraffes, So they may have been

(01:11:35):
able to walk UM with a similar ease as a giraffe. UM.
Probably not quite as good because of those big old
flappity wings UM and uh. Some researchers actually think that
they could have made transcontinental flights because they're just so
dang big, and they may be caught the right thermal

(01:11:55):
or something in for a while. So looking at this thing, though,
like I mean, I leave flying out of it. I
don't feel like they'd be able to stand up right.
The head is so huge. I feel like they would
just like topple over. But I guess the only the
only explanation there is was the beak like really light
or something like does it just looks so top heavy
and unwieldy. I mean, I think it's just their their vertebrae.

(01:12:17):
If you look at um a skeletal uh, the fossil
and the skeleton of it, their vertebrae were huge, just
these really thick, thick structures UM. And then couple that
with some really swollen neck muscles, and then I think
a beak, which is you know, a lot of their
head is, you know, the the beak structure, even though

(01:12:38):
that's quite large, it is hollow for the most part.
And then you know, the head is obviously pretty heavy,
but then that the little bump on top of the
fleshy bump on top of their beak is probably pretty
light too, So I can see how they do it
because like if their neck vertebrae are just real chunky, yeah,

(01:12:59):
they definitely have feathers. They may have had feathers, so
there's evidence other pterosaurs had primitive feathers to keep them warm.
So there's a real good chance that they were just big, feathery,
huge monsters, which is pretty incredible. So in DARPA, you know,

(01:13:19):
the defense contracting company that they like to do robots
and weird technology stuff, they used one of these guys,
the cats akodalists north Ropy as a model for an
unmanned ornithopter uh so that's a flying vehicle that uses

(01:13:39):
flapping wing motions. And it was this unmanned flying uh
like tarosaur. Vehicle was eighteen feet and had a weight
of forty pounds. And I can't find out what Like,
I think they just have it in a museum because
I it doesn't sound like it worked too good. No,

(01:14:01):
but that would be funny because like now we have drones,
which are less funny, but the like if drones just
like we're big things that were like flapping their wings
trying to go unnoticed, like don't mind me, normal giant
pterodactyl sore. Yeah, that's you know, there's a reason that

(01:14:22):
we don't catch a lot of ornithopters at the airport
now it right, Yeah, it's not when you can have
a plane like structure where you the energy is not
in the flapping motion but rather uh fuel situation, that
is a lot better. But they didn't learn their lesson
because in two thousand and nine they created a hummingbird

(01:14:43):
sized ornithopter um, which it actually worked a lot better.
It looks like and it's really creepy, and I guess
now we kind of have to worry that maybe a
hummingbird is a government robot. Have you guys heard of that? Like,
birds aren't real campaign I support that entirely. I'm just
putting that out there. Um. I hate to say this,

(01:15:06):
but this is another feather in their cap. So to speak,
because they did create robot hummingbirds. Um. I'm always getting
harassed about that because I owned the pro bird rights
Twitter account. Um, so people are always like saying, well,
did you know birds aren't real? Um, which is offensive
to me and my people. Actually, yeah, we get a

(01:15:29):
lot of that on our other show stuff. They don't
want you to know, but it's mainly from flat earthers,
So we feel your pain on that. Yes, yeah, really
like just people writing in and saying like that the
Earth is flat and yeah, basically you guys are that.
You guys are idiots, and uh, you know, get off
your high horse. I'll send you I'll send you some

(01:15:49):
some choice words. Typically, I've been a victim of some
rebuttal videos to regarding the flat Earth, and I found
them massively in youring. So you know, if you're fighting
a good fight, whether bird rights or the shape of
the planet, you just gotta you gotta take the long game. Look,

(01:16:10):
I'm actually a kangaroo vagina earther. I think that's the shape,
you know. I have been reading the blog of your organization,
the Kangaroo Vagina Earthers uh dot blog spot dot yeah, yeah, yeah,
and I gotta say I. I, uh, I don't entirely agree,

(01:16:30):
but I think you raised some valid and fascinating points.
Would you agree nor? Oh? Absolutely? I just want to
I just want to start a conversation. I'm just looking
for a new movement to get behind, you know, and this,
this seems like the one for me. Well, you, guys,
I want to take you back to imagination station. M

(01:16:50):
imagineer trapesing through the zag Gross mountains of western Iran
and suddenly you see a spider crawling on a rock.
Oh no, it's a spider. But maybe you listen to
this podcast, so you know that most spiders are friends. Uh,
And you reached down to pet the spider, which I'm
not actually recommending that you do that. Don't pet spiders,

(01:17:13):
you know some of them are venomous, but also just
like they don't want to be pet by you. But
you do it for some reason, and suddenly the rock
transforms into a viper and eats your face. So yeah,
that's brutal. Twist. I want to talk about something called
the spider tailed horned viper, which is how it sounds like. Um,

(01:17:39):
it is found in Iran. Uh, in the in western Iran,
like in the mountains. Uh. It has a unique adaptation
to lure in birds to prey upon, So it has
uh what's called a caudle lure, which is science words
for a bamboozl tale. The tail ends in a bulb,

(01:18:02):
and along the tail are these elongated spindle e scales
that kind of look like insect legs. So the total
effect is that it looks like this weird spider. And
then what the snake does is it kind of twirls
and slowly moves its tail around, and the effect looks
extremely convincingly like a crawling spider. When I first saw this,

(01:18:24):
I didn't know what I was looking at, so I
just thought it was like a spider crawling around. And
then suddenly this viper appears out of nowhere, because yeah,
the the viper itself has camouflage, so it blends right
in with the rocks, except that its tail, which sticks
out and looks like a spider. So the birds all

(01:18:45):
they see is this juicy looking spider moving around, and
then they go and attack the tail. And there was
one video I particularly liked because uh it showed a
bird attack the tail that it thought was the spider,
and then the viper kind of like um lunges at it,
and the bird flies away temporarily, and then it comes

(01:19:06):
back and attacks the spider or the fake spider tail again,
and then the snake like eats. It's just does not
learn its lesson. Oh man, But I want to say,
like this, this viper needs to get a job with
like the Jim Henson Company, because there's some serious finesse
to this, like puppeteering with this fake spider. I mean
it's not just I mean it's there's some real subtlety

(01:19:28):
to the way the thing moves to make it look
like a crawling creature. And you're right, like, I was
totally taken vipers. I'm like, what am I looking at?
I thought it was a rock with a spider crawling
on And then yeah, the plot twist is when you
realize the viper's there the whole time, right right exactly.
The Viper's just like eat is me? I am? I
am kermit? The spider do not worry. So it's it's

(01:19:51):
interesting because this looks like, uh, this is an amazing adaptation.
It reminds me very much of the adaptation that rattlesnakes have.
It's like the same. What did you call the caudal area, yeah,
which just means tail area. Yeah. Okay, so they went
into a different direction, and I gotta say, these are

(01:20:14):
I don't know. I've always loved the rattlesnake adaptation because
it's like they have their own Morocca, you know. But
this is like a leveled up version though, right, it's crazy. Yeah,
they sacrifice puppeteer. They've sacrificed percussion for puppeteering, you know
what I mean. If you could get like a rattlesnake
and one of these vipers together, you got a show. Yeah, right,

(01:20:34):
You've got a whole presentation. You might get bit at
the end. Yes. So, speaking of reptiles, I want to
talk about the Mexican mole lizard. It's a worm, it's
a snake. Nope, it's some old lizard. It's found in
Baja California, and it looks like a pink, squiggly little

(01:20:56):
spaghetti guy. It really does look like a warm ut
on first sight. But it is actually a type of
reptile in the Amphysbania group, which is warm lizards. So
a lot of worm lizards just don't have legs at all.
They're legless lizards. They're not snakes actually are distinct species

(01:21:18):
of lizards. But this one, the Mexican mole lizard, does
have legs, but they're really tiny and stubby and they
only have four legs um, which is really it's very funny.
So if you guys look at that little picture of it,
you see it looks and they're so brightly colored pink.

(01:21:40):
They look like, you know, they don't even look like
real worms. They look like those gummy worms just and
then but they have those little two little legs out
in front that they can use to kind of burrow
into soft sand. Are they dragging themselves completely with those
their muscles constrict and relax like a snake's for movement. No, yeah,

(01:22:05):
so it's it's partially the muscles, uh, moving them along
along the abdomen um and the little legs may help
a little bit with movement, but it's also helping them
with burrowing and crawling down holes. But yeah, it's not
just like them like putting one leg out like drag
and the other one is drags. So they're about eight

(01:22:28):
inches long and it actually has an autonomous tail, which
is think about like lizards and how you can yank
their tail off. Don't do that actually be nice the lizards,
but if they are caught by a predator, they can
remove their tail. Uh, and the tail kind of wiggles around.
So these guys have that, except unlike lizards, their tails

(01:22:50):
don't regenerate, so they got like one or two shots,
I guess. And uh. In fact, it's quite useful when
they're bur going down and like their tail detaches because
then it also plugs up the burrow and keeps the
predator from getting to them. But like I said, they
they can't blow their load too soon or else they're

(01:23:12):
out of a tail. Yeah, geez, I've got to say. Also,
these things look kind of like a slinky that someone
had coated with a pink I don't know, like a
pink curtain wrapping around them and then kind of just
messed it up. Get it slammy. The little close up

(01:23:34):
is really strange. Like on the first slide, you guy
here where you've got like a long shot where it
really does look like a worm minus the tiny, tiny
little arms, and then it almost like made me laugh
out loud when you zoom in and you see it's
tiny little lizard face and these bizarre little turtle hands. Yeah,
that's kind of what they look like, is a little
miniature turtle hands. Yeah. What how does this thing live?

(01:23:55):
How does this thing survive? Why does this thing exist?
I mean exist to atually? I can't really answer that
for you. But actually, if you like, go down, there's
a little video of it moving around, uh, and it's
you can see that the little legs does help it
as it's burrowing down into the sand, and you can
actually see its body undulating to that the that abdominal

(01:24:18):
movement of the muscles helping propel it forward. But it's
kind of funny because it is just walking along with
the legs to uh. So it uses the legs to
dig and burrow, um, and then uh the uh. It's
it's sort of a similar to how you know one

(01:24:38):
imagined snake evolved where it's like, well I don't really
need the back legs, but in this case, the front
legs are pretty still pretty useful and cute. It is cute.
It kind of looks like a little baby do you
remember Dune or like tremmors, like a little baby sand
worm but a door in beetlejuice. Yeah, um, but pink

(01:25:04):
uh it is actually like the dune sandworms or or tremors,
because it pulls its prey underground to eat them. So,
like if you were a little insect size, these would
be pretty horrifying. Oh yeah, yeah, I can imagine so,
but now what you said. They're eight nine inches long, right,

(01:25:25):
there's primarily primarily underground, so I don't have to worry
about accidentally running into one on the street unless you're
unless you're like in Baja California and you're like rooting
around in the sand. Are they venomous at all? And
I'm sorry if I missed it, And if you said that,
like would they would they give you a bite? Or
they might, they might buy you, But I don't think

(01:25:45):
they could hurt you, and I don't think they're venomous.
Looking at their face, it looks like they could. If not,
I don't know if it would be so much as
of a bite as like a really aggressive gumming. Yeah, yeah,
they would nom at you angrily, sort of like a
like an unfriendly hickey. Yes, yes, it's a great bad name.

(01:26:07):
I think the unfriendly Hickies and the purple nerd bullets
um So, finally, our last animal, I wanna give the blobfish.
Shine some light on this blobfish and kind of clear
its name a little bit, because I think it's been

(01:26:27):
slandered by the media for far too long. Um So,
you guys might all be familiar with the blobfish, do
you guys? Have you guys seen these picture of of
the blobfish before? I've seen the first one definitely, because
it comes up whenever you're searching a rabbit hole for
like weird creatures of the abistle planes in the ocean.

(01:26:51):
Uh and it looks like it looks like a guy
who's having a bad day, right, It's that it's that
viral picture of like this pink, big nose deflated blobs.
It kind of looks like a ziggy cartoon head exactly.
Um and uh so that you know, we're probably when

(01:27:12):
you think about it, you think of this little blobfish
like looking like that in the ocean, just swoorn around
looking sad and blobby. But this this is medialized in
slander and liberal and all those bad things. Um. So.
Blobfish are deep water fish that live off of the
coast of guess guess guess what coast? Uh, the a

(01:27:38):
Pacific coast Nope, Australia. Oh, that makes so much more sense.
So the pressure at four thousand feet underwater is over
a hundred times that of the surface. So for animals
living down there, they've been specialized such that they can
survive in these crushing depths. But just as you'd be

(01:27:59):
crushed diving that deep, blobfish and other fish, when brought
up to the surface will kind of explode. So the blobfish,
when alive in its natural habitat, looks kind of like
an ugly but relatively normal fish. So I showed you
guys the picture of the blob fish when he's alive
and healthy. Uh, and you can see he's actually his

(01:28:22):
skin has a different texture. He's not just uniformly pink
and gooey. He's got some spines on his skin, he's
got some color differentiation, and he's got ice sockets and
a distinctive fins. And I mean the mouth is pretty
still pretty moby, to be fair, Uh, but it does

(01:28:46):
it looks recognizably like a fish, just a bit of
an ugly fish, right yeah, with a big floppity mouth.
But once it reaches the surface, uh, it kind of
turns into that weird pudding and that's why it has
that distinctive ziggy look. That's that's the desecrated corpse of

(01:29:07):
a blobfish. And so I think it's one of those
things where that kind of demonstrates how easily we can misunderstand, uh,
natural discoveries. Um because while that's not a doctored image,
the one of the blobfish, there's nothing fake about it.
It's just that's not how they would look in their
natural environment. Um. So our conception of these these ziggy

(01:29:30):
heads just kind of floating on the ocean floor is
not quite correct. You know what I think would be great, Katie,
is to have a have these two pictures in a
p s A. Because they're great before and after, you
know what I mean, like meth not even once? Or
what's what not even once? Yeah, I was gonna say,

(01:29:53):
what's a hot button issue with the ocean? Plastic straws,
not even plastic stra us, ocean acidification, Uh, you know,
worms on hooks, not even once. Apparently tie pods are back, y'all.
I've got a ten year old daughter and she informed
me that tide pods are back because they now have
non toxic tide pods, So the kids are really going

(01:30:14):
to town like actually, ah children. Yeah, I know this.
This has been a blast as always, Katie and and
been looking back through our exploration today and wondering if
I had to pick one adaptation for myself, what would
I pick? And right now all I've got is that

(01:30:35):
I feel very fortunate to be human. We're not perfect,
but but there's a lot of there's a lot of
weird stuff. We don't have to do this at least
we don't have to pull a skin flap up over
our bodies to be able to poop. That's what I'm
thinking of. Yep. Well, thank you guys so much for

(01:30:55):
joining me. Uh why don't you tell people where the
heck they can find you? Yeah, we are Ridiculous History.
We have new episodes coming out every Tuesday and Thursday.
You can find us on our website Ridiculous History Show
dot com. Yeah I think so. I don't really go
to the website, but the best way to reach us
as you can email us at Ridiculous at I heart
radio dot com, or you can check me out on Instagram.

(01:31:17):
I am at how now Noel Brown. You can find
me getting kicked into and out of various countries and
communities at at Ben Bolan on Instagram or at ben
Bowland h s W on Twitter. And you can find
our show Ridiculous History wherever you find your favorite podcast.
It's True All of Its True. You can find us
on the web at Creature feature pod dot com. You

(01:31:42):
can find us on Instagram Creature feature Pod and on
Twitter Creature feet Pod f e a T. Be sure
to put that in or else you will get some
weird images. I I've been Katie Golden. You can find
me on Twitter at Katie Golden or also pro bird Rights,
where I am really fighting against the media lies and
slander about how birds aren't real. In fact they are

(01:32:05):
and sometimes their tongues go inside. There's goals And thanks
to the Space Classics for their awesome song Exo Lumina.
For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit the I
Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows.

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