Dank Animal Memes

Today on the show we’re talking about D-D-D-DANK ANIMAL MEMES, KIDS with Alex Schmidt! Did you know humans aren’t the only ones spreading sweet memes? That’s right, we’re talking about viral birdsong that’s getting retweeted like crazy, otter tupperware parties, and dolphins engaging in the hottest new trend, “shelling.”

Footnotes: 

1. Otter tupperware parties
2. Dolphins shelling! 
3. Tandem recruitment in ants
4. Viral birdsong
5. Sperm whale dialects
6. Baby meerkat eating scorpion
7. Orangutan building nests

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:08):
Welcome to Creature feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
and evolutionary biology, and someone gave me a microphone, and well,
here I am in your years. Today on the show,
we're talking about dank animal memes. Kids. Did you know
humans aren't the only one spreading sweet memes? That's right,

(00:31):
We're talking about viral bird song that's getting retweeted like
crazy otto, tupperware parties, and dolphins engaging in the hottest
new trend shelling discover this more as we answer the
angel question how do fireflies synchronize their butts? Joining me
today is podcaster, comedian, Jeopardy champ and bison connoisseur Alex Schmidt, Like,

(00:58):
I just need to get all of that on one
business card as soon as I can. Now, I'm gonna
I'm gonna run to Vista Print or something. You get
it done. Why am I plugging Vista Print? I don't know.
It's the one that jumped to mind. Back to you, Katie's.
So today, much like business cards, we're going to talk
about memes, which is basically, so what a meme is? Here?

(01:24):
I am Okay, old Grandma Katie is going to explain
to you kids what memes are. Just pull up a seat.
Imagine me in a backwards baseball hat. I'm sitting backwards
in a chair and it's like, hey, hey, kids, how's
it going. Let's talk about memes today. But at its essence,
a meme is the spreading of information at a rapid

(01:48):
rate and using obviously we use these fun little image
formats or funny joke formats. You're basically spreading this unit
of information and then everyone takes it in all turns
it slightly. But hey, kids, did you know that animals
can meme to They can meme with the best of them.

(02:08):
I do. I have like the backwards in a chair
talking to the kids. Thing makes me think of the
actual science teacher who tried to tell us that meme
is like a scientific term that Richard Dawkins and other
people were using. And I was like, oh, buzz off,
I want advice animals and other memes of this era
that this happened. And yeah, because it's it's meant to
sound like gene. You know, meme gene basically the spreading

(02:34):
of information. That is, it's from the Greek mimima, which
means to imitate, and then it's patterned after gene, So
meme gene you know now you know. Now I've ruined
it for you all. It's been ruined by knowledge. Now
it's no longer cool, it's no longer funny. Ripped memes
from whatever two thousand and five to I'm actually now

(03:00):
I'm imagining the American chopper meme. But they're arguing about
whether this knowledge ruins memes or enriches them, because I
think it enriches them. I like knowing this stuff. Meta
memes the best memes of all, certainly not tires. So
meme kids, We're going to talk about animals and how
they spread information with each other, and we're going to

(03:21):
start with otter tupperware parties. So again, Grandma Katie is
going to explain to you what a tupperware party. So
tupperware parties were these things that happened, I think in
the fifties and sixties where women would get together and
sell tupperware, which was this cool new thing where you

(03:43):
stored food in these little plastic containers. And the premise
of the tupperware party is, hey, women are entrepreneurs. Now,
but only for things that are domestic related, and only
if we presented as these fun tupper where parties where
ladies get together and have some tea and cookies and

(04:05):
sell tupperware. So it's kind of this. It was this
interesting phenomena of Hey, women, you can be entrepreneurs too,
but only with tupperwars. Women love that stuff, right, don't worry.
You can also sell lipstick and tips on child rering probably,
and you know whatever women like. Yes, the couzy teacuzies

(04:29):
never quite understood. That is quite understood. Wouldn't a teacuzy
be like that foam beer cover but for a cup
of tea like that? Yeah, but there's also it's around
a teapot. Is it a cozy? I think it's like,
then what's a couzy? This is all extremely on topic. Anyways,
when I'm when I'm smashing teas with the boys on Saturdays,

(04:51):
I always throw a couzy on it, keep it warm.
When you're pounded back to with the bros, always get
a couzy on there. Yeah. So scientists are throwing Otter's
tupperware parties because it is for research. So I for

(05:12):
this show, I want to I've I've done a fun
little Okay, I'm getting really dumb and nerdy with this
whole episode, because, first of all, I've written titles for
each of the sections. Usually I don't share them, they're
just for my reference, but I titled this section There's
no Meme and Teamwork, and I thought I should share

(05:33):
that I did. I was quietly appreciating the pun. I
didn't know if I could tell the listener. I'm so
glad we could. And I'm also starting off with I've
written a fake news headline for you know how, they're
always these headlines that come out and there's a new trend,
like kids are out there eating tide pods at massive rates,

(05:56):
or they're rubbing bird's bees chapstick on their balls and
it's called bees in, and these very hysterical news headlines
that make it sound like these new trends are going
to be the downfall and turn all the kids into Satanists.
So I've written some of these to introduce what's happening
with these animals. So here is this one. Scientists are

(06:20):
giving otters tupperware parties, a new trend that is surpassing
TikTok's and k pops, where will the madness end? So
researchers are interested in otter tool use and how they learned.
So sea otters famously use rocks on their tommies to
crack open shellfish. So you know the little sea otters,

(06:41):
they have their food on their tommies. They use the
little rocks and smack open some shellfish to have a
nice meal. The problem is it's harder to research sea otters,
especially for these UK researchers, because they couldn't get a
captive population of them in zoos. So they looked at
smooth coated otters and Asian small clawed otters which were

(07:04):
chosen for the Tupperware party study. So the smooth coated
otter is found in the wetlands of Iraq, the Indian
subcontinent in Southeast Asia. They weigh up to about twenty
four pounds, which is eleven kill grams and they're about
the size of a medium dog. But a noodle dog,
I guess, a long dog. Yeah, the most aerodynamic but

(07:27):
for water dog possible, Like if a dog was a
plane but in a river, does that make sense? Probably not,
but no, no, it totally does. Plane river river river
plane dogs. If if dogs were airplanes that went through
the river and they were covered in hair and they
bit the heads off of fish like this photo. I
shared a photo with you, Alex. It's an otter biting

(07:49):
the head off of a fish. Do you like it?
He looks, He looks like me when a pistachio shell
is weird. Try like and like. Fingers cannot do this job.
It's time for teeth. But carefully that's what you used.
Do it now? Onto the small cloud otter. The small
cloud otter is found in South and Southeast Asia in

(08:09):
freshwater wetlands. It's a bit smaller than the smooth coated otter.
It weighs up to about eight pounds, which is three
point five kg. So it's the size of a little dog,
like a chihuahua, but long elongated chihuahua. Yeah. So again,
a smaller aircraft in a river and it's a dog.
This is like a like a Cessna in a in

(08:30):
a river. I don't know planes? Did I do? Did
I do? Get on? That? Is that? What is that
a plane? You know? As someone that a small plane,
as someone who has played Microsoft Flight Simulator, Yes, that's correct.
Not to throw around by Enorva's expertise, but so so.

(08:53):
These two species of otters can be found in uk
zoos where the study took place, and they have. One
of the other benefits of choosing these otters, the smooth
coated otter and the small clod otter is they both
have They're both very social in the wild, but they
have slightly different habits. So the smooth coated otters hunt

(09:15):
together cooperatively, whereas the small clod otters, though their friends
with each other and they hang out, they hunt independently.
So the researchers gave the otters tupperware filled with treats
and watched to see if the otters would figure out
how to open them on their own or with the
help of their friends. So they put a whole bunch

(09:36):
of great wonderful snacks inside of these tupperware containers. They
put fish heads, peanuts, meal worms, chick legs, and shrimp.
Which is actually exactly what my fridge looks like right now.
It is one of those things chick legs. What's like
like the legs of a baby chicken. I believe so, yes, yes,

(09:59):
that is like on the one hand, horrifying and on
the other hand, I could imagine learning that some restaurant
is doing that and everybody's going crazy, Like I feel
both ways about it. Yeah, the auto restaurant called Chic
Chic and its chick legs. So the smooth coated otters,
which are the larger otters who hunt together, as the

(10:23):
researchers predicted, were much better at copying each other and
working together to solve these tupperware puzzles, the mystery of
the tupperware, and especially the young otters, who were six
times faster at learning how to open up the tupperware
than their elders. So basically, it's as if these otters
are the tupperware is the smartphones, and the otter. The

(10:46):
older otters are saying things such as, oh, I can't
how do I get on the Twitters? And then young
otter is going, uh duh, you just click these buttons,
and the older otters are just baffled. But it's tupperware.
That's also I'm just realizing, because you're talking about otters

(11:09):
doing that cute thing where they have the food on
their belly and they eat it that way, that is
like precisely the smartphone pose they already are. They are
very prepared for that situation if we ever took them up.
We have not tried to give otters smartphones yet, and
I think it's because we're afraid of what we'll find,
which is that they will take to it like a
duck to water, or like an otter to water, and

(11:32):
basically outpace us some all the social media's. Can you
imagine otter TikTok and otter Twitter? It would be amazing.
We stand no chance. Yeah, I only want to see
animals on TikTok at this point anyway. Yeah, so, like
otter influencers would be the death of all human and
not literally but figuratively the death of all human influencers.

(11:54):
Although I don't know. Otters are eating baby chicken legs
all the time, so they are a little bit scary soul.
It could be that thing you know when you like
accidentally switch the way your camera's facing and it's like
mostly your chin doing a bunch of like folds somehow,
and it's very surprising, Like what if otters like look
cute from every angle except that one smartphone one from

(12:16):
their belly, and then we're like, oh, forget it, just
just a bunch of half eaten shellfish and they're stuff
like shrimp cotton their chin and yeah, it's discussing, but
I don't know, I still want to see it. So
the short the short clod otters, So those smaller otters

(12:37):
didn't seem to understand that there is no I otter
in team otter because they didn't seem to learn from
each other to work together to open these tupperware. So
they were working independently. They weren't learning from each other.
And what's interesting about that is that seems to mirror
their hunting behavior. So even though both of these species

(13:00):
of otters are social with each other, the fact that
one of them, the smooth coated otters, actually hunt together,
made all the difference in how they were able to
cooperate and share information on how to open this tupperware. Yeah,
and I never think of outer species having different approaches

(13:21):
to be in social that that's just fascinating. I just
figured they all kind of do the same thing because
because I see otters left, apparently, yeah, different strokes for
different utter folks. But the this, these findings are actually
really important for conservation to see if captive otters, when released,
would learn from their wild counterfarts counterfarts would learn from

(13:43):
their wild counterparts and survive, or conversely, if wild counterparts
might be influenced by captive otters released into the environment
and learn from them. So yeah, it's it's really important
to know how animals spread information, not just because it's
interesting in it teaches us about the world, but it
also helps us approach conservation correctly. Yeah, that's isn't that

(14:05):
Isn't that a whole thing with almost all kind of
animals where they'll just sort of be culturally different from
the culture is not the right word, but they'll they'll
behave very differently from their fellow animals. Is it not
the right word? You know? I think it's it's actually
there's a question of whether we could call it culture
or not, because if it's something that I mean, if
it's something that they learn and if it evolves over time,

(14:30):
I don't know why we can't necessarily call it culture.
I don't know why we can't call otters cultured. I
think it's snobbery. Well, I'll never let those odds into
this school or some snob thing. I don't know what
my character is, but you get it. No shirt, no shoes, otters,
no service So now moving on to another water dwelling

(14:58):
mammal dolphins. So, I think most people are well aware
of how intelligent dolphins are, but it is sometimes spooky
how smart they are and how they learn from each other,
like sleek, terrifying robots that swim in the ocean and
use their brains to echolocate. Anyways, so here's a here's

(15:22):
my headline about dolphins. Dolphins across the world are engaging
in a viral trend known as quote shelling. What do you,
as a dolphin parent need to know about this dangerous
new trend? I love I love trend headlines in general.
I love that. I love that you're doing this framing.

(15:43):
It's the best. They're they're always they're always just like
here's a term, are you scared or not? It's the best.
Like kids are doing waffling where they eat for waffles
at once. Yeah, yeah, they always they take like a
regular there now and then turn it into a verb
and you're like, oh, I guess, I guess that's frightening now,

(16:05):
Like like you just look at you look at something
in the room. What's here a coat? Teens are coding?
Like you know, like that's just how these things get written.
It's great. They're putting socks on their ears and they're
calling it socking it. But yeah, dolphins do engage in shelling,

(16:26):
and this is the actual term used by marine biologists
who describe this behavior. So in Shark Bay, Western Australia,
dolphins are teaching each other shelling. Danta done so they
will chase fish into an empty she shall I fail
at the tongue twisters obviously into an empty seashell. Carry this.

(16:52):
Biologists must have to limber up to do any speaking
about their work. Do mouth exercises exactly. They chase all right,
I'm gonna do this. She sells seashells by the seashore. Okay,
there we go. They chase fish into an empty seashell,
carrying the shell to the surface of the water, and
then they emptied the fish into their mouths like it's

(17:15):
a package of fish skittles. That rules. That's very good. Yeah,
Like we need more animals to do snacking behaviors just
in general. I want to feel normal. Yeah, it's akin
to us chasing pringles into a pringle package and then
dumping it into our mouths. If pringles were sentient animals,

(17:35):
I guess, but yeah, it's incredibly intelligent behavior and very
funny too. In some circles this behavior is known as
conching because they often use conscience. I think, how how
is ten times funnier than shelling. I don't know why.
I don't know. I think it's because. I think it's
because conscience is such a cumbersome word that you could use.

(17:59):
Shelling makes a lot of sense, it's simple, but to
specify consci and and say conscient, trying to turn that
into a verb is very funny. So Dr Sonya Wild,
behavioral ecologists at the Max Planck Institute of Animal Behavior
in Germany, and her colleagues studied the dolphin behavior and

(18:22):
found that instead of being good dolphins and learning from
their parents, they're a bunch of delinquent dolphins learning shelling
from their peers just to be trendy. So is this
doctor Wild? Yeah, Dr Sonya Wild, that's a person. Yeah,
that's a person and behavioral ecologists that's like a that's
like a Da Vinci code book. But about marine biologist's

(18:45):
character name, that's amazing. It is me, Dr Wild, Welcome
to my chamber of mysteries. I imagine her having a
comp oh, flooded compound filled with super intelligent dolphins with
a little dollers that allow them to speak to humans.
And it's Dr Wilde's dolphin Emporium that I'm meant to

(19:09):
it because also we we breeze past like these dolphins
are in Shark Bay of Western Australia, right like Dr
Sonja wild goes to Shark Bay is the thriller that
I would like to see as a film. She's definitely
got a secret layer. No offense. I think it's cool,
but yes, she definitely has a secret layer. Proved me wrong.
So Dr Wilde said, quote, you never know when it's

(19:31):
going to happen. She's referring to shelling. It's really remarkable
when all of a sudden there's a giant shell popping
up by the boat being shaken by a dolphin. One
of two things is about to happen. You're going to
make an animal behavioral discovery, or a bunch of fish
are going to break out into song and the dolphin
is playing with the shells, and everyone's going to start

(19:54):
singing and convincing you to come to a new conclusion
about your life and all of that. So, so the
important thing about this discovery is that it shows dolphins
don't just learn from their own family, but from unrelated peers.
And I think that is very important in terms of

(20:15):
understanding how information is passed amongst animals, especially one as
intelligent as dolphins, because it shows, like we were talking
about earlier Alex, this idea of culture. What is culture?
Is it passing information and habits amongst a group? And
if these are their peers and not just they're not

(20:37):
just their mothers or their own families, it means they're
kind of creating, you know, a society. How soon did
you get excited to say the word society? Was it? Like?
It was about halfway into that sentence and I started
my I started to tingle all over. It's great, I do. Yeah.

(21:05):
I think I always think of the overall concept of
calling it a school of fish when you talk about
a group of fish, and then that leads to like
finding Nemo, it's actually a school ha ha. I think
I'm the most ready to think of marine life learning
things from each other like teenagers like this. So it's
amazing that it's real. It's not just like from our
goofy terms and pick our movies. I used to watch
those old I think those were the Max Fleischer cartoons.

(21:29):
Is that is that the guy who did Betty Boop
and stuff, And he had these ones that were my
favorite were the ones where you'd go underwater and you'd
watch fish in their fish society. And there was one
with this naughty fish that didn't want to go to school,
so he went out and hung out with all the
bad fish and the mean octopuses, and it was there's

(21:50):
something so charming about He would have a gag where
uh fish would pick up a phone off the hook,
you know, one of those old timey phones where what
were they called the old yeah, the old timey rotary
phones and pick it up and and the fish would
leave and then the phone would just be floating in
the water, and just the the fun the idea of

(22:12):
having a society underwater always tickles me. It's always very funny.
Top comedy, top tier comedy. Right, All our gravity based
things are are foolish there. But that's what's so interesting
about dolphin tool use is they have to be really
really ingenious about how they use these tools because they

(22:34):
have to drive a fish into a shell, which is
probably a fit natural fish behavior. They take refuge in
any little crevice they find, but they make sure it's
something that is movable, a container they can carry, and
then when they carry it to the surface, they can
toss the fish out of air where the fish can't

(22:54):
really maneuver very easily. So it's all just every step
of this process of I scared the fish, it goes
into the shell, I pick up the shell, I take
it out of the water to the surface of the
water and toss it back like Alex does with his
buds on the weekend, drinking tea out of tea coozies,
crushing tease, thank you, crushing teas, slamming them back. Just

(23:18):
you gotta slam some fish back out of a nice shell,
is what I'm saying to be cool in the dolphin world.
So I really I realized fish or maybe the one
thing that would be grosser to slam than hot tea.
We'll remember. Remember. I think there was a thing back
in what was it, like the sixties or seventies where

(23:39):
teenagers were doing goldfishing or something where they would swallow
live goldfish and have these stupid frat guys would have
competitions to see how many live goldfish they could swallow,
which is just mean to goldfish. Guys, don't don't be
mean to goldfish. Yeah, yeah, let him live. So, in

(24:04):
case you were wondering, and I know you all were,
it's not just vertebrates who help each other learn how
to get food. So here's my headline about ants. Actually, Alex,
you want to read this headline from UH the from
the New New Ant Times. Yes, of course, UH officials
found that ants are practicing something called tandem recruitment, and

(24:29):
I can only hope to God that these ants don't
start recruiting our children more at eleven you have to watch.
So these are timno thorax albe penace ants or rock
ants are found in Europe and like to build their
colonies in the crevices of rocks. So they do tandem

(24:52):
recruitment or tandem running, where one ant who knows where
there's a tasty, hot new restaurant called old Discard banana
peal will move side by side with another aunt who
doesn't know where this hot new dining spot is, and
the savvy ant will slow down and pause at useful
landmarks to help its partner learn the path to food.

(25:14):
So the follower will make sure they're going the right
way by continually patting the leader on the abdomen, but
really it's the caboose part of the admin, so it
looks like it's just a bunch of encouraging butt paths,
which I think is really cute. Here's a video of
two sisters but padding their way to teamwork if you
want to see it, you know, Yeah, I'm gonna fright

(25:36):
this up. Okay, So I've observed the padding, and it
really looks a lot like tickling. I'm pretty do it
as a thing to think of ants doing to each
other while they're working, like yeah, and she's using her
antenna to pat the leader on the butt and yeah,

(25:57):
it's it's really interesting because the leader will also show
the follower these landmarks, so they'll pause in front of landmarks,
so you know, saying, hey, when you pass the old
lemon rind and the wadded up tissue, then you get
to the banana peel, take a left at the discarded

(26:19):
A O L C D case and then you're there.
That's another topical thing, isn't it old trial c ds? Hey? Kids,
I'm hip. It's it's it's old Katie here being hip
and teaching you about memes and a O L trial
C D discs, well, well, trash in particular, it's like
a layered history of culture, right, Like it's a geological

(26:41):
you know, like there's there's Eisenhower tupper ware down below it,
you know, and you'll find stuff. Yeah, exactly. It's going
to be fascinating for future generations to go through landfills
and wonder what we're street sharks, what POGs? Uh? Uh?

(27:06):
Have you ever been subjected to the strange corporate ritual
known as team building? Well, it may comfort you to
know that you're not alone. Many animals who work together
as teams need to learn how to communicate and synergize,
and they do so in the form of play. Wolf
families work together to ensure their survival, and play amongst

(27:27):
a wolfpack helps establish relationships between the wolves and also
helps the wolves blow off steam and reduces conflict. So
in the future, in post COVID times, when we're forced
to do team building exercises again, take a cue from
wolves and start wrestling over a chunk of raw caribou
to build those healthy interpersonal relationships. When we return, we're

(27:50):
going to talk about more animal memes, specifically the way
animals use their voices or their butts to communicate. And
then we'll be talking about some viru real tweets from
literal birds. Birds may lack social media, but they do

(28:11):
have social tweetia. Birds have an extremely complex method of
vocal communication, including mating calls, territorial calls, and alarms meant
to protect flocks from predators. But birds don't come pre
programmed with a static repertoire. They have to learn as
young birds by listening to adults and sometimes a new

(28:33):
innovation and birdsong takes bird kind by storm. So, Alex,
this is a headline from Bird's Song bi Weekly. Would
you like to read? I want to subscribe to Birdsong
bi weekly, but I surely um. In Canada, a new

(28:54):
song has taken white throated sparrows by storm. These sparrows
are bucking traditional songs in favor of this hot new tune.
Some older sparrows take umbradge at the change. What was
wrong with the old song? Says Manitoba bird resident Peepers
mc cheapers. I didn't I didn't read very fast with
my eyes and peeper's mike Cheapers really hit me in

(29:16):
a good bay that felt great, oh that all peepers
make cheaper. Is always telling young birds to get off
his front twig, stay away from the mic cheeper's place. Oh,
come on, other kid birds, and then oh man papers
mc cheapers, you can't you can't do do ring and
ditch on his nest. I mean, we don't even have doors.

(29:40):
So white throated sparrows in Canada have been observed changing
their signature song over a relatively short period of time.
In just twenty years, birds from two thousand miles around
have adopted the new song, which is an unusually rapid
change in bird's song behavior. So often bird's song laugh

(30:00):
a really long time, hundreds of years, maybe even thousands
of years. But in this case, these birds are changing
their song really rapidly. I know, twenty years seems like
a long time, but in terms of evolutionary history and
in terms of behavioral changes in huge groups of animals,
that is really fast. That's that's viral in terms of

(30:23):
when it comes from other nature, twenty years is viral.
So birds learned songs while young by listening to their elders.
So usually songs remain stagnant over many years because they're
picking up on the main song and they're repeating it.
But these birds shifted their song from a characteristic three

(30:43):
note ditty to a new two notes song, which really
speaks to how they just don't write bird songs like
they used to. You know, right in my in my day,
you needed to know three notes to play birds song.
Now it's all these punks do it to It's as
if that's even music. It's really fun to me. It's

(31:04):
just noise. It just sounds. I've been I've been getting
into country music last few years, and like there's an
old saying about country music is that it's three chords
and the truth. Like I like the idea that the
old birds are like it was three notes in the
truth man, that was it. And now well even even

(31:26):
animal behavioral experts are have an interesting perspective on it.
So Dr ken Otter, who surprisingly studies birds and not otters,
Come on, scientists, con do we do we know that
Ken Otter is. It's not like, oh, Dr Ken who
is an otter? You know, like, is this a person? Oh,
he is probably an otter. It's probably haven't your study on.

(31:50):
I am writing a grant proposal for a study on
bird song. Now, if only I can get this dang
tupperware open. Dang it. It's follow the tastiest fish heads
and chick legs. So Dr kin Otter, the lead author
of a study examining this shift in bird song, said, quote,

(32:11):
white throated sparrows have this classic song that's supposed to
sound like it goes quote oh my sweet Canada, Canada, Canada,
he explains, and then he says, and our birds they
sound like they're going, oh my sweet Cannon Canuck, Canuck, Canada,
which is really funny to me how it sounds like

(32:34):
he's criticizing them for being unpatriotic in Canada. It's like,
these goddamn young sparrows are unpatriotic little ingrates. I first
of all, Canada, I'm sorry, I said, you're an actual adder.
But second you're probably Canadian. And as Katie said, he's
adorable that you are so patriotic and your your friends

(32:56):
long research can Otter from Canada, h who's an honor. Sorry,
it all makes sense. So here is the historic song
of the white throated sparrows. Oh okay, yeah, that's oh

(33:17):
my Canada, Canada, Canada. Yeah. And then and here is
the new pop song that all these birds are singing. Yeah,
so you hear the difference. It's kind of subtle, but yeah,
they're they're definitely dropping a syllable there. Yeah, they're just
it's more concise. It's yeah, I like. I like the

(33:41):
bird music is like like how we humans innovate all culture,
which is, among other things, just making it shorter and tighter,
usually making it shorter, making it tweetable, clickable content. It's
just all it's all about making it concise, these short
attention spans. Sorry, it's not just humans, it's bird too. Yeah,

(34:01):
you you play me that first bird song. I'm leaving
that intermission, all right. I don't have time for this.
I need it tight. So. Dr Jeffrey Potos, who studies birdsong,
says that most alterations to songs don't actually catch on
amongst birds, but quote, for some reason, some birds just
went deviant, which again sounds awfully judgmental. Yeah, does the

(34:26):
does the report say how much stank he put on
that quote? Come up? Jeffrey, very judging. So the new
song doesn't seem to have any effect on their survival
or even their desirability to mates. So it's a real
mystery why the birds seem to prefer it. It's it
really does seem to be as if the birds feel

(34:50):
that this is shorter and easier to tweet out, they
want Twitter to go back to the old character limit.
Gosh darn it, remember when it was a hundred worthy
characters back my day. We had to be concise. Yeah,
I guess because birdsong, well, I guess I wonder if
it varies a cross species. But it's like just for

(35:12):
a mating right, Like, there's not there's not also some
communication thing of like all the seeds over here, or
it's going to rain or something like. Well, bird calls.
Bird calls can be about communication, absolutely, it can be
warning other birds of predators. It can be basically saying
this is my territory, stay out. There's all sorts of

(35:32):
things that can communicate using bird song and bird calls.
But yeah, it is also used for mating, so I
think this one this might be specifically a mating song,
but it is. Yeah, it's just really interesting because again
they're not really sure why this is preferable other than
it maybe being more concise. It's it's uh, yeah, yeah,

(35:57):
it's the it's the birdsong version of I'm an ad
and you get it like, rather than explaining the whole thing, like, well,
we're very polite, we like hockey. And it's the bird
version of sup instead of what's up or o MG
instead of oh my gosh, oh MG sounds up before
oh my gosh. Right, Oh yeah, I think so, oh

(36:22):
my gosh, oh my gosh. So another animal that has
an interesting way of spreading communication and keeping up the memes.
They don't even have to make any sound at all.
And these are synchronized fireflies. So, Alex, do you want
want to hit me with this headline that I found

(36:44):
from the Firefly Bugle? Yes, here we go. Do you
know where your children are? Do you know if they're
doing the flashy hot fad snappy sinks. I'm not going
to read Firefly Bugle anymore that that's just making me scaped.
I don't want an alarmist firefly publication. I thought this

(37:07):
was about the television show. That's why I bought it
in the first place. Yeah, the fire Firefly Bugle is
in a long, long lawsuit with the makers of the
TV show Firefly because like, we've been fireflies for hundreds
of millions of years. Oh yeah, it's like when wrestling
had to change the acronym and not the environmental group,

(37:28):
like yeah, yeah, yeah, sorry. But also if you put
I bet they decided that by actually putting a panda
in the ring with one of the wrestlers, and the
panda just wiped the floor with their butt. Because pandas
look pandas look really sweet and innocent, but they're still bears,
you know, they're still pretty powerful animals. Just heaving ceno

(37:53):
over the ropes just to do it. You can't see me,
and the pants like I can see snaps them in
half like a big piece of bamboo. So fireflies like
to communicate with their bioluminescent lower abdomens, or as I
like to say, they're bioluminescent butts. It's not really a butt.

(38:17):
Insect anatomy is different, so they don't really have a
butt in the way that a human does. But it
looks like the butt area. It's the lower abdomen. Okay,
I'm going to call it a butt. Maybe it's not scientific,
but hey, it's a firefly. But what are you gonna do? So, yeah,
if you're if you're pro abdomen, give us a call

(38:38):
it one to three cares or whatever the number is right,
forget it. So voterists front Talus a k Ace. The
snappy sink firefly are a species of firefly who like
to synchronize their blinking. And I like their names snappy sing.

(39:00):
It just sounds it sounds like an old person trying
to name a social media platform and getting it wrong.
Do you know what I mean? People getting on the
snapchats or the snappy sinks or the eye talks or
whatever to a tweet book. Yeah, it's one of those. Yeah,

(39:22):
then gosh darn snappy sinks. So they're found in North
America and they're synchronized. Light shows are often a celebrated spectacle,
so males of this species offer up a spectacular light
show of synchronized flashing to attract females. And research are
trying to figure out how they synchronize so exactly when,

(39:45):
So the fireflies really can only see when they're flashing, Like,
you know, to be able to synchronize with so many
fireflies simultaneously when you could only see just a few
fireflies in your line of sight, it's pretty incredible thinking
about how they are a able to synchronize it where
they go on and off at the same time, like
gosh darn string lights. Which actually, when I mentioned string lights,

(40:07):
the researchers used some string lights to try to imitate
the firefly blinking to be able to study the response
of other fireflis. So that is really funny. Just so
they were like research. They were like, we need an
artificial version of this group of fireflies. Get the box
labeled Christmas out of the attic and exactly exactly, dust

(40:30):
and off the Christmas lights. So is it Christmas yet, Daddy? Nope,
researching fireflies. So you know, it's hot out right, sun
like come on, so right now. Planned gatherings to see
the firefly light shows have been canceled due to COVID,

(40:52):
but this has given researchers an opportunity to study the
fireflies with lower levels of light pollution and commotion. And actually, Alex,
there's research going on in South Carolina right now studying
these fireflies. Yeah. Research, not shows I can go see,
huh because I would drive down it sounds good. Yeah,
I think those are closed unfortunately, but hey, in the

(41:14):
future there are shows you can go see. Yeah, I mean,
I'm it seems like like animal communication is when they
jump out to us the most, like with the bird
songs or with this these fireflies doing lights to tell
each other stuff like it sounds like we're most interested
in animals when they're chatting like this. So that's good.
Keep keep talking about animals want to go. Maybe fireflies

(41:37):
are using some kind of Morse code and we could
decode it and become friends with the fireflies. That's all
I'm saying. I have. I've been watching a lot of
the Office, and when you said they synchronized their blinking,
I thought of the office cold Open where Jim and
Pam taught each other Morse code to mess with DWIGHTE.
And they just blinked their eyes and Morse code of
each other at their desks. Yeah, much like the fireflies.

(41:58):
They were using it in their mating. Rich you old
Jim that we had to watch over the course of
I don't know, ten freaking seasons, goddamn it. So even
though researchers aren't exactly sure how they're synchronizing exactly, they
think that the fireflies have some kind of internal clock

(42:21):
or stop watch that they are synchronizing with other fireflies.
So basically, they start to sync with the fireflies near them,
who sink with other fireflies, and there setting these these
internal clocks to start like I blink now and then
this X amount of time, which maybe they're calibrating based
on the behavior of other fireflies. So it seems like

(42:42):
there's some really incredibly complex math going on inside these
little fireflies as they're sinking up, which is why it's
so fascinating to researchers. But it doesn't amuse me thinking
about all these dozens and dozens of fireflies all trying
to synchronize, and how frustrating that might be as a podcaster.
I know how that is, trying to synchronize our our

(43:05):
zoom meeting. But all these fireflies with little internal stopwatches
going like okay ready, no, no, no, no no, Jim,
Jim now go now now God built stop hey, okay,
everyone just stop. Don't stop? Everyone stopped? Right? Okay? Ready?
Oh my god? Kevin? No? Yeah? That well? Also, I

(43:28):
were you ever in marching band? This whole thing sounds
like marching practice to me. I played the French horn
in marching band, so but like, right, you didn't care, No,
I carried a French horn. That sounds hard, ye, yes
it was. It was horrible. Yeah, I played trumpet. We

(43:48):
were kind of designed for it. It was like Marshall,
you know, yeah, yeah, no, French horn is not really
designed for marching. And it was super annoying and I
just kept getting condensed spit all over my hand because
I have you with the french horn. You have to
shove your hand up the horn and shape your palm

(44:09):
to shape the sound as it comes out. But then
all of this condensation gets all over your hand as
you're marching, and it's really heavy and awkward. And I
was this really tiny kid, so basically a stiff wind
could have knocked me over in my French horn to
the ground. And it was yeah, it was trying to
do that and synchronize everything. It was the worst experience ever.

(44:33):
Now it was not that bad, but it was pretty bad.
Must have been hilarious for people watching, just this this
tiny like imp of a person trying to carry this
french horn and stumbling and tripping and face going red
as I try to get a note out. Yeah, pretty great.
I hope those words were being spoken in the crowd,

(44:54):
like look at that imp, Look at the imp down there.
It's look at that amp with that weird confused tangled
up horn. So in terms of communicating language, sometimes so
so some animals go through a process of learning where

(45:16):
their parents actually teach them, and we're going to get
into that a little bit more with our next section,
but right now I want to talk about the ways
that whales communicate and how they're young seem to just
kind of osmos this, which is similar to how human
children learn language. Obviously we do teach them, and we
try to teach them how to read and write and speak,

(45:39):
but really children do a lot of learning just by
taking it in and osmos thing this information, which I
think is really fascinating. So, sperm whales, which are the
bus sized mammals that roam the world's oceans, have complex
clicks that are used to communicate with each other. And

(46:01):
what's interesting is each family and regional group has their
own specific dialect of cliques. So it's a sequence of
clicks that is unique to their group, and it shows
that whale communication is in essence cultural. They learn from
their group, they learn from the group of whales that

(46:23):
they socialize with, and they each have their own twang
on it, which I think is fascinating. Yeah, very into it.
Yeah you got some whales. It's gonna howdy, it's me
almost sperm whale. Know when you laugh at my name,
it's scientific, it's scientific lack. So whale calves will naturally

(46:50):
pick up on this unique lingo from their mothers and
their elders, and when they grow up they'll have that
unique dialect as well. So again and little baby whales
had a neighbor having their their own twing on on
whale clicks. So this language can be used by sperm
whales to communicate information, such as when a calf is

(47:13):
in peril, or when it's time for the group to
hang out together socialize. Pound back some tea, pound go
watch watch some dolphins as they as they go shelling,
and and comment on it. King like now, on my day,
we never had dolphins doing this shelling or whatever. I

(47:35):
don't know why I imagine all all all sperm whales
as having a Southern accent, But now that I do,
it's completely stuck and I can't imagine it another way. Yeah,
well I don't. I don't you pick the excent for fun.
But I was hoping it was a thing where you
like like that Canadian bird researcher said, well, oh, well,
they're all saying Canada, like I hope it's a Southern
whale researcher who's like, you know, the whales have many

(47:55):
ways of saying y'all or or going to bow j
Angles specifically for chicken, or you know, yeah, yeah, exactly.
California researchers just all they can see is whales saying
dude all the time. It's it's got forty seven ways
of saying doe. Yeah. This whale group's dialect knows the

(48:20):
in and out secret menu and refers to highways as
the five instead of I five. And so you can
play some of these clicking sounds of sperm whales, which
is it kind of sounds a little bit like underwater
popcorn to me. But oh wow, it's a lot more

(48:47):
rapid than I expected. M hmm. Yeah, because when you
think of whale song, you think of the the sort
of like oh, but yeah, the sperm whales use clicking,
which is that rapid kind of like like nick and they Again,
it's hard for it's really funny to me to think

(49:09):
about how that has an accent or has a dialect,
and how like, how do you distinguish the dialects with
with these clicking sounds. But it is interesting. It really
does kind of decontextualize the idea of having a dialect
where it is it's just it's just a pattern of sounds.
And so if it's a pattern of clicks to these whales,

(49:32):
they're meeting other whales and they're they're picking up on Wow,
this is a completely different dialect from mine. Yeah, because
also it's I feel like it's like those little rapid
clicks and then also like a stepping on an old
stare kind of quick, you know, like a weird squeezing sound.
I didn't say it right at all, but I don't
speak whale, but but but it's very interesting. Yeah, I

(49:53):
guess I could see the creek, especially having some kind
of accent on it where you like, you hear it
from another whale and you're like, what are you French?
You know or something? You know whatever? The lake like
click click click. Human language is by far the most

(50:17):
complex form of communication on Earth. One of the theories
as to why humans are so uniquely good at communications,
surpassing our close cousins, the Neanderthals, is that we're capable
of nesting concepts and cultural constructions. Our language in the
way our brains work allow for a concept to be
housed inside a convenient container to be easily accessed and

(50:40):
used in a larger concept. For instance, the word orange
is a container for a whole bunch of different ideas
such as orange, the fruit, orange, the color orange, the flavor.
And there are all sorts of variations on each of
these things. But we can collapse all of these ideas
into a single word orange, and then we can nest
that word inside another word, like a barrel of oranges,

(51:03):
or orange juice or orange. You glad I didn't say banana.
I'm sorry you walked right into that one. When we return,
we're going to talk a bit about how some animal
memes spread mainly through parental supervision. That's pretty cool. Parents,
Have you taught your children any memes lately? You probably

(51:24):
have without knowing it. The original definition of meme is
just a behavior, idea, or style that is transferred from
one person to the other through imitation, and kids first
start to learn by imitating their parents. So, parents, I
hate to break it to you, but your kids are
learning all of your personal memes, whether it's the way
you like to brush your teeth, the way you talk,

(51:45):
or those stale Star Wars prequel memes you love so much.
So now I want to talk about how young animals
learn information. So, Alex, would you like to read this
headline from mere cap Monthly. Yes, of course, let me
just open my copy. Flip flip, flip, flip flip. Mere
Cats have been found to take hits of a substance

(52:07):
known as scorpion. Experts say that scorpion is the street
name for dead scorpions, and mere cats are teaching their
own children to get their sick kicks from this dangerous high.
So mere cats are a small mongoose found in southern Africa.
You know, they're tamons, A bunch of little tamons running

(52:28):
around in scorpions. I wish Toman was like the baby
mere cat in this picture that I'm looking at. Let's
just savagely destroying a scorpion. I have shown Alex a
picture of an adorable baby mere cat tearing a scorpion too,
shreds in a way that makes you feel sorry for

(52:49):
the scorpion. So mere cats are highly social animals who
live in communal colonies. They're actually you social, so you
social reality is the thing that is more commonly associated
with bees and ants and also naked mole rats, but basically,
youth sociality is a type of social structure marked by

(53:11):
cooperative care of young, overlapping generations within the colony, and
division of labor such as a division of reproductive and
non reproductive members. Often you'll have a queen or dominant
members that basically rule over the other subjects in this
use social group. So you social mammals are actually quite

(53:35):
interesting and they're very different from you social insects. So
youse social insects have this complex genetic reproductive organization that
actually makes it makes sense for why they're you social.
So insects like bees and ants are actually haploid diploid,

(53:57):
which is a term meaning that the females are deployed,
meaning that they have gam meets from their mother and
their father, and males are haploid, meaning that they only
have gammets from their mother. So when you think about
you know, you, you think about chromosomes getting you get
one As humans, we get one set from our mother,

(54:19):
we get one set from our father, and so with
these insects, they actually get if you're female, you get
two sets from your mother and one set from your father.
If your male, you only get your chromosomes from your mother. So,

(54:41):
sisters and these colonies and all worker ants worker bees
are all sisters. They're all female, are actually three four
related to each other, unlike human or mammalian siblings that
are only half related to each other. And they're actually
more related to their sisters than they are to their
own offspring. So what this means is that by having

(55:05):
these you social behaviors where they help the colonies survive,
copies of that gene that is responsible for making them
you social is more likely to be passed on when
they are all working together. Does that make sense? I
think so? Yeah? I always, I always. I've always just

(55:26):
kind of thought of insects as uh like like when
I say think of insects and mostly thinking of watching
animated films involved againsects like a Bug's life and aunts
with a Z and B movie movie, but all those movies,
it's always like, oh, a regular aunt or B who
wants to rise in society, and as virum always like nope,
like only some of you have all the genes and

(55:48):
some of you don't, and it's just like fundamental to
your weird insects species and it's not like mammal life
at all. First of all, I'm always frustrated with insect
based movies because they rarely depict it realistically where most
of actually all of the workers are females and the males. Basically,

(56:09):
the male's jobs are to live, be fed, and then
go and reproduce, which is a pretty cushy life when
you think about it. But yeah, flick in a bug's life.
But yeah, that they would not be males, they would
be females, and so essentially they get so they're more

(56:30):
related to their sisters, and so that is why it
makes more sense for them to be you social, and
give up that that freedom of having their own offspring,
which they can still technically do. They can have a
male offspring by having an unfertilized offspring, but then they're
really only half related or they really only share some

(56:56):
of their jeans with that offspring, and then they share
more genes with their sisters, and so it's it just
isn't very advantageous for the genes to be passed on
if all of these ants or bees are trying to
reproduce on their own rather than follow the use social structure.

(57:17):
So mammals are diploid, meaning you get it's half and
half with the mother and father, and so with mere cats,
they don't have this thing where they're more related to
their sisters than they are to their own offspring. So
how does being used social make any sense? So the
reproductive group are basically just bullies, so mere cats will

(57:40):
bully their way to the top in terms of reproduction.
And the reason that this system works for mere cats
is that the environment they live in is such this niche,
harsh environment that by having this really tighten knit social
group that all help each other, it makes them more

(58:01):
likely to survive. Even though some of them are just
bullying their way to the top and becoming the ones
that reproduce, and some of them lose out, but it actually,
in totality makes it more likely that these mere cats
are going to survive. So the the genes that code
for these these youth social behaviors actually do survive because

(58:25):
these groups of you social mere cats are more likely
to survive. Of course, there's there's a lot of debate
on how exactly this works, but that's that's one theory,
and that's sort of a general theory of it and also, uh,
the it's not entirely use social because the there are
definitely cheaters in the system. So the mere cats that
are not dominant will try to sneakily mate, and they

(58:50):
they will. There's all sorts of shenanigans that go on
with these mere cats, like the the subordinate females will
will have affairs and try to sneakly made or sneak
off and start their own colony or go mate with
another colony. They will sometimes murder each other's offspring. There's
just all sorts of of entrigue with these these mere cats,

(59:14):
which is why I think they mere cats had their
own soap opera. Basically, it was a documentary series called
mere Cat Manner, and it was basically a mere cat
soap opera. But they are extremely extremely drama driven animals,
so that's a little rundown on how mere cat society works.

(59:34):
But when we're not talking about you know, murder and
and and uh murder and deception, they are actually pretty
adorable in terms of how they work together. So they
cooperatively raise their offspring. They all have each other's back
in terms of protecting the colony from predators and the

(59:56):
adult mere cats will teach their young how to eat scorpions,
one of their favorite food, and they will bring babies
dead scorpions to learn how to d sting and eat them.
So it is it looks horrifying where you have this
adult take this big dead scorpion and drop it in
this little baby, cute baby merecat's lap and be like,

(01:00:18):
here's a present. It's a dead scorpion. But then they
learn how to eat them. So for really young mere
cat pups, the adults are really soft on them. They
bring them scorpions that have already been d stingred, so
they ripped the stinger off so that they're not getting
that those nasty stings from it. And once the pups

(01:00:39):
get a little bit older, the adults will be like, okay,
we're done coddling you. Here's just a whole as scorpion.
Figure it out. But that's to teach them how to
survive once they're adults. How how do you deal with
this scorpion and get rid of the bad parts and
only get the nice, juicy, delicious parts of the scorpion? Right?

(01:01:00):
You've You've had your scorpion lessons, Now get to it.
I'm not I'm not paying for any more scorpion lessons. Okay,
you're just moving the scorpion around on your plate. I
see what you're doing. Eat your whole scorpion, or you
get no dessert of more scorpion. There's also I'm glad,
I'm glad your headline at the top or like or

(01:01:22):
like news story at the top had like just the
word scorpion. I don't know. It's very fun in every context.
Every time scorpions as a as a drug name or
just a funny animal to be eating, or Ryan Goslings
jacket in that one driving movie. I don't know, they're
just they're just funny. It's also my zodiac sign. That's right,
I'm a scorpio. I always thought that was so lame.

(01:01:44):
When I was a little kid. I wanted something cool,
like Libra or one of the cute ones like Leo.
I want to be a line. But no, I'm a
gross scorpion. No, I think it's cool. I was about
to say, you got the scorpion one. Whoa. I just
thought it was a weird. I thought it was just
a weird gross insect, And now I know better. It's

(01:02:06):
actually an Arthur pod. But it's still weird and gross. Yeah,
it's just all like segments and pointy stuff like it's
it's characterisly aggressive, much like my personality. The zodiac called
it again, Well, don't get eaten by mere cats. I
guess that's true. That's true. They're always they're always looking

(01:02:28):
at me, ripping off my stinger with their eyes. I
see what you're up to, mer cats. So so now
I want to talk about another animal that teaches its
young in a really really intelligent way, in a really
fascinating way. How they pass on this information from generation
to generation. Well that was that rhymed? Sounds like I'm

(01:02:51):
got a good, good learning song going on. Having these
are ringing tans pass on information from generation to generation.
It's like the magic school bus for orangatans. I love it. So.
Orangutans are big orange apes found in Indonesia and Malaysia.

(01:03:15):
They are, in my opinion, extremely cute. They're those big, big,
goal hairy redheads. I I relate as a red to orangutans.
So they are highly intelligent. They use tools and like
we're talking about earlier Alex, different groups of orangutans seem

(01:03:36):
to have their own culture. When it comes to habits
and tool use these nuances and how they use tools,
how they it differs from group to group, and it
makes sense because they're highly social. They learn a lot
from each other and from their their mothers. So you
have different basically different orangutan culture, which is really interesting.

(01:03:59):
That's awesome. Yeah, and I love it. Used to be
a zoo tour guide. I don't know if everybody knows
that about me, but when I was, like, I do now.
I learned about that on your Bison podcast. Uh, And
I like when I was on the clock, I was
on a tram, so I would mostly see the outdoor
exhibits of large animals, and then whenever I had like
time off, I would go look at the primates indoors

(01:04:21):
because it's just like very fun to watch them socialize.
Mainly the guerrillas because they, to me, had faces that
would do human things a lot, but the orangutans as well.
It was it was a lot of like hanging out
in a way I found relatable. Yeah, whenever I go
to U zoo or wildlife area and I make eye

(01:04:42):
contact with a primate, I want to cry. It's like uh,
and they glance at me, and I feel as if
I have now connected to all of nature, which is
kind of silly, but yeah, I want a Whenever I
go to the San Diego Zoo and a gorilla just

(01:05:03):
glances at me, I feel like the most special girl
in the world. Yeah it's cool. Yeah, but yeah, so
it it is. It does give me chills. How intelligent
these animals are. So one of the orangutans more interesting
behaviors is their nest building. So to keep themselves safe

(01:05:25):
and sheltered, orangutans build nests in tree tops like they
think they're birds or something. So they build these nests
out of foliage, branches and vegetation. And you can't imagine
it's a bit tricky to build a nest big enough
and strong enough for an orangutan to sleep peacefully in

(01:05:46):
a tree top. You think about tree tops, you don't
think about a huge orangutan just snoozing up there. So
they actually have to have some construction know how, and
young orangutans must learn from their mothers how to become
nest engineers. So nest building for orangutans goes beyond just

(01:06:06):
piling a bunch of leaves together in a tree they
create a woven foundation by bending live tree branches and
in order to create a support for the nest. And
then they will weave a mattress out of smaller branches
and this creates a strong base for them to sleep in.

(01:06:27):
Once they've done all of that, they can get kind
of fancy with it. Sometimes they'll create a blanket out
of leafy branches or pillows made out of piles of vegetation.
They can get as fancy as they want with it.
You know, just a recliner. They press a little a
little button made out of twigs, and the bed goes

(01:06:49):
up and down, you know how it is. I mean,
I have seen house hunter type shows once in a while,
So I'm just imagining one orangutan telling another orangutan it's
vision and it's budget, you know, and then going from there,
My new sleep number branch nest allows me to sleep

(01:07:10):
on one side, whereas my my other orang a tan
likes to sleep with more firmness. Imagining orangutan mattress sales
people going around or sales orangutan's going around trying to
trying to sell, like you'll get a bunch of zse
on this baby, and they pat it and it falls

(01:07:30):
out of the tree. It's supposed to do that. Yeah,
they are just large, like it has to it have to.
You'd have to pick a really salad branch and then
do a lot of really impressive building to hold up
an orangutan in a handmade nest made out of just
what they can grab. That's amazing, exactly. Yeah, So it

(01:07:53):
there's a lot of thought that's put into it, and
they actually have to learn it from their mothers. They
watch them do what they start to participate when they're
very young, because you have to build up this skill otherwise,
if you create a shoddy nest, you're gonna fall out
of the tree and that's not good. So also they
do it all the time, so they typically construct new

(01:08:15):
nests almost every day, and so you have to not
only know how to do it in a way that
makes it secure and stable, but also relatively quickly because
you're doing this every day, and it's it's really it
takes I think it. It's kind of it's not maybe

(01:08:36):
apparent when you first think about it, how much intelligence
that takes. But when you really think about, well, could
I just build a nest that would support my body weight?
In a tree every day. It's hard. It would be
hard to do. I mean, obviously as humans we are
quite good at construction, but just figuring that out when
you're in the middle of a forest and you don't

(01:08:58):
have any bricks or galvanized nails or whatever. People using construction,
I know how to construct things, you know, two by
fours to create a sturdy nest out of just what
you find. It's very incredible. Yea, and yeah, I have
nothing else to like. It rains a lot where they live,

(01:09:19):
so like you're you're constantly That's probably part of why
they have to keep redoing it. Like there's rain all
the time, and you know it's it's it sounds like
just a horrible process. I don't want to be an
orangutan now I changed my mind. They will. They'll also
create sort of impromptu umbrellas out of leaves and leafy
branches and hold it up over their heads. And that's

(01:09:41):
another thing that the babies learn how to do. It's
really cute. We like like a like a running around
New York City guy with a newspaper when it's suddenly raining,
like a copy of the Orangutan Tribune. I've had to
come up with how many fake animal news publications this episode?

(01:10:05):
And now I'm subscribed to all of them and I
can't cancel. No, looks like you've subscribed to rat Facts.
Do you want to unsubscribe? And you press unsubscribe, you've
been subscribed to double rat facts. Speaking of rat facts,
here's some So fetal rats actually start learning before they're

(01:10:28):
even born, which is really really interesting. So there have
been studies on rats in utero that shows that they
can learn about food and smell before they've been born.
So fetal rats can detect odor particles from their mother's
food that they absorb through the placenta, and when the

(01:10:50):
rats are born, they actually show a positive response to
these foods. So they're learning from their mothers what food
she prefers and so to aid in their survival. They
also prefer those foods because it's it's teaching them basically, Hey,
pizza is great, go and eat it. I feel if

(01:11:14):
pizza rat would probably be really if Pizza Rat was pregnant,
she'd be super judged, like, oh, you're teaching your baby
that pizza is a healthy food. But you know, all
the all the judgments that are put on new rat mothers.
I think it's really unfair personally, I really like the

(01:11:35):
idea of a pickie high status rat, like I only
have water from medium gross puddles and stuff like really
really good. I only eat half rotten tomatoes for my baby,
like a rattitui rattitui rat just going around trying to

(01:12:00):
convinced rat mothers to eat fancy French food. Yeah. I
guess this does add to the lore of Ratatui, right,
because we don't know who Remy's mother is the rat
and Rattatui. We don't know what happened to his mother,
and so his mother must have eaten fancy food, which
made little Remy like fancy food, And so that whole

(01:12:21):
dynamic with his father and his brother makes it even deeper.
You see how biology makes it more fun to watch
picks our movie kids. That's like, that's legitimately a pretty
good pitch for Rattitui two. Like the start of the movie,
he finds out that for generations his his ancestors have
been with restaurants and chefs and stuff. I'm pretty into it.

(01:12:42):
Rattatui to Rata two, Oh of course, yep, that's the
correct title, Alice, Yeah, I'll accept my praise now, thank you.
I'll accept my job at PISAR now, thank you. Also,
researchers have also shown that fetal rats can be taught
next of reactions to foods as well. So there was this.

(01:13:03):
If you actually look into the study, it's pretty crazy
because researchers took these twenty day old fetal rats out
of the mother and they would describe it things like, oh,
we put these rats on somewhat these these basically orbs

(01:13:24):
of fetal rats covered in this amniotic sack, on these
moist paper towels to keep them point and safe. But yeah,
they took them out there, just these these orbs with
developing rats in pretty pretty I guess sort of matrix
matrix esque the rat matrix. But they injected them with

(01:13:49):
a food stimulus, which was apple juice. So they took
these very fine needles, injected the amniotic sack with apple
juice and then with and they it was lithium chloride,
which is an unpleasant salt that the fetus doesn't I
guess fetuses don't like lithium chloride. I don't know that
much of chemistry. But after so basically they were training

(01:14:12):
these rats that after apple juice comes this unpleasant stimulus.
And when the rats were born, they showed an aversion
to apple juice, which just seems kind of cruel, you know,
to offer these baby rats to juice box and you've
given them this trauma from when they were fetal fetal rats,

(01:14:32):
Like you want this juice box and the baby ros No,
excuse me, I remember, I remember from before I was born. Yeah,
it might I don't know, I don't even know if
it's a taste thing. It might be. This reminds me
of when I was like a matrix person, like being
dragged into a gooey machine world. Like I would not

(01:14:55):
want to have foods from that time, even if they're
great with the advanced technology of moist paper towels. Yeah yeah,
but yeah. So basically what I'm trying to say is
we could be delivering memes to fetuses in the womb
if we play our cards, right. Yeah, well we gotta
you know, American children are falling behind the rats, you know,

(01:15:17):
and so if we can teach them about impact font
and hard luck or old and what are some money
people who are pregnant right now, you need to work
harder at introducing memes to your unborn child. Yeah. Did
you know if you hold a meme up to a

(01:15:39):
pregnant belly, the fetus actually absorbs the dank meme. Oh man,
I've never felt older doing an episode, more ancient and
out of it because our memes are old, is that it? Ah? Yes, yes,

(01:16:01):
stale memes, I think so. But when this comes out
in a week, means will be over they we won't
have memes anymore. In a week, this will seem very dated. Well, Alex,
thank you so much for going on this learning journey
with me into the world of dank animal memes. Do

(01:16:22):
you have any memes of your own? To bug? I
just hold up like an advice wolf for whatever it was.
That's my book, um, Alex Alex Memes dot Geo Cities. No.
I it's been great being here. I'm between podcasts right now,

(01:16:44):
but starting something soon. If you go to tiny letter
dot com slash Alex smitty Next Show, or you can
find that on my social media at Alex Remitty on Twitter,
you'll get a little email newsletter one time when I
have something new to share. That'll be very exciting. And
also and and I have a podcast mini series out now.
At Bison Emoji podcast dot com about creating the Bison

(01:17:06):
emoji and it features great guests like Katie Golden, So
check that out. Who is she? Uh yeah, Definitely subscribe
to the Alex tri Weekly news letter. I think it's
a great read. I don't know if it's tri weekly
or not. I just like saying that, but because I
have to, I have one email newsletter that I've been
doing for a long time that's just free, fun internet

(01:17:27):
stuff that I like the ship. But then there's also
like a one off newsletter alex Modi Next Show that
will just give you, like an update when I have
a new podcast on. Subscribe to The Alex Enquired, the
Alex Tribune, the Alex the the the Alexidvaminer. There's so

(01:17:47):
many Alex based publications that one can subscribe to. Subscribe
to them all right by rat Ketis Publication by hire
Fly Publication, Orangutan Song It stream on SoundCloud. You get
it rap rap Feta is fair magazine to keep up
on all the rat Petis news. So if you want

(01:18:09):
to keep up with the Creature Feature news, you can
subscribe to Creature Feature Pod on Instagram, Creature Feet Pod
on Twitter, that's f e a T, not f et.
That's something very different. And to keep up with the
Katie Times, you can follow me on Twitter at Katie
Cole and where I just talk about it's basically Katie opinions,

(01:18:31):
so you know my opinions on stuff. It's not necessarily
really into the show. But if you're curious about on
all of my basically unasked for opinions on other stuff,
that's where you go. Also jokes, also fun jokes, and memes,
so many memes, and you also as always, perhaps the
original meme in the world is pro bird rights, the

(01:18:51):
first meme. Now I don't know that, but on pro
bird Rights on Twitter dot com the website, I explain
why birds are are basically the best animal and we
should allow them to rule us on Earth. You know,
just basic facts. Yeah, people listeners know that. The Audubon
people officially said that Katie coined burb as like a

(01:19:13):
meme about small birds. Right, like you're high ranking meme creator,
you would be on the amount rushmore of it or
a good good get it. They sent me a tin
foot tall burb statue made cast out of solid bronze.
It's in the center of my apartment, there's no space

(01:19:33):
for a fridge anymore. I had to dump the fridge
to make make room for my giant bourb bronze statue
commemorating my burb meme that I coined. And since it's indoors,
birds can't land on it, which is ironic. You know,
it sucks for them, That's right, it is ironic. They
look out from outside wistfully wishing they could poop on it.
But you know, that's that's how the meme crumbs. That's

(01:19:55):
how the meme crumbles. If you're enjoying this ridiculous show
where I give you animal facts and and dad jokes
and memes all all in one setting, just if you
leave a review, subscribe, download all of those things, write
a review. Especially, all of those things actually really help
with the algorithms. So I really appreciate you guys listening,

(01:20:18):
and if you want to want to press any of
those podcasts related buttons, that would be so so much appreciated.
And thanks to the space Colassics for their super awesome song.
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(01:20:40):
next Wednesday,