Pardon My Turkey!

Welcome to domestication station as we talk about the weird and wild world of artificial selection! Giant chickens, turkeys, swole cows, oh my. Discover these animals and more as we answer the age old question: if Arnold Schwarzenegger was a chicken, what would he look like? With special guest David Bell.

FOOTNOTES:

1. Dong tao chicken
2. ko shamo chicken
3. English pouter
4. Silkie chickens
5. Frizzle chicken
6. Serama "Arnold Schwarzenegger" chicken
7. Ayam cemani "goth chicken"
8. What really killed the dodo?
9. Mangalitza pig
10. Belgian blue cow
11. Damascus goat

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:06):
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 I like to dive into the
brains of humans and animals and see that, hey, we're
not so different after all. I mean, you guys legs too. Right.

(00:27):
Today on the show Part in My Turkey, Welcome to
Domestication Station, as we talk about the weird and wild
world of artificial selection, giant chickens, turkeys, swoll cows, oh my,
discover these animals and more. As we asked the angel question,
if Arnold Schwartzenegger was a chicken, what would he look like?
So the ancestors of the chicken can be traced back

(00:49):
to one bird, the jungle fowl. The red jungle fowl
and maybe some hybridization of the gray. Jungle fowl is
the single ancestor of all domesticated chickens. Their native to
Southeast Asia, India and Sri Lanka. They were first domesticated
in India over five thousand years ago. The jungle fowl,
at least the males, look somewhat similar to the image

(01:11):
of the rooster you may be picturing, though they're a
bit smaller. The females are also leaner than their domesticated counterparts.
They only fly short distances, and the males do an
interesting behavior called tidbitding, where they entice females with a
bit of food that they pick up and drop repeatedly.
It sounds like a bad dinner day, Am alright, am alright.
The jungle fowl is likely the single common ancestor of

(01:33):
all modern chickens. For a time, there was a theory
that there was a species called Gallus gigantius, a hypothetical
extinct chicken that some believed existed based on bone fragments.
It's a huge bird that loomed over the jungle fowl,
and some believe that this interbreeding created the medium sized
domesticated chicken. However, this is likely not the case. Those

(01:54):
bone fragments were probably another chicken known as the Malayan fowl,
a very large breed of domes sticated chicken. These boys
are a tall drink of water, standing over thirty six
inches high, with legs for days. The point of this
story is that artificial selection, the act of domestication, can
be so transformative. It's easy to mistake a certain domesticated

(02:15):
animal for an entirely different species. Today we'll be looking
at the completely insane amount of morphological diversity among domesticated
animals and the horrific, beautiful, messed up things humans have
done playing god with animals. Joining me today is my
good friend, podcaster host, a gamefully unemployed and best bad
movie ever, owner of a demon cat, and all around

(02:35):
cool guy, David Bell. Hi, so good to have you here.
Thanks for having me on. I'm very excited beyond Yeah.
I love your cat. By the way, she's a great cat.
She is objectively better than me, well well as a presence,
she's I'm a better human. She commands more in terms

(02:56):
of just fear, respect that comes from year perhaps. Yeah,
she's real feral yeah. Um. So I first want to
say that I got a lot of the info for
this episode from there's this beautiful book called Unnatural Selection.
It's by Katrina Van Grow. She's a science author and

(03:16):
an incredible illustrator and overall just way more talented than
I will ever hope to be. I don't know if
that's true. She can draw a chicken, though, she can
draw a chicken like I've never seen anyone draw a
chicken before. Yeah, that skill has limited applications though, joll
me like one of your fit French chickens cat Katrina. Now,

(03:37):
it's a beautiful book. I think it's a book that
anyone can read through, even if you don't have a
deeper knowledge of evolutionary biology. It's just very well written
and beautifully illustrated. I highly recommend it. Yeah, how can
you not like chickens? How can you not? It has
so many It's not just chickens, it's also sheep and
pigs and dogs and cows, and also all the domesticated

(03:58):
animals that humans have concocted, which are often uniformly horrifying.
It's I think it's like the ultimate revenge. As we
were living in caves and like terrified for our lives,
and we're like, we're not just gonna kill these animals.
We're gonna We're gonna just slowly change what they are fundamentally.
We will bend their bones to our will. We will

(04:21):
create a dystopian universe for these animals. We will take
that wolf and crush its skull into the shape of
a chihuahua, make it unrecognizable. Yeah. So, so we are
indeed sort were monsters were godlike monsters. So first I
want to start out with something simple or seemingly simple.

(04:42):
The broiler chickens. So the broiler chicken is probably if
you eat chicken, it's probably what you had for lunch.
It's bread specifically for meat production. Now I should start
out with the caveat Dave, you are a vegetarian. This
is true, and I've brought you here today to tort you.
It's okay. I'm not, as we were saying before this.
I I've been a vegetarian since fifth grade, since I

(05:03):
was I don't know eight, I don't know what what
age you are in fifth grade? Uh, and I never
I just did it because I thought it was gross.
I'm not against like, I'm not very preachy about it.
I don't get bothered by I would probably eat a
very um exotic animal for the hell of it. Like
if you if you gave me a baby, Yoda, I
would eat babies, you know, because a little snack. It

(05:28):
looks delicious, It looks delicious like jellybelly. Yeah. See, I
just don't like me. I mean, I mean, there's definitely
animal rights aspect in that, but you know, I think
it's great. Uh, so this is going to be an
interesting podcast. I think it'll be interesting to get your
perspective of someone who isn't addicted to the flesh of
living animals. The broiler chicken is a modern breed that

(05:52):
was actually concocted in the nineteen fifties, and they have
been domesticated to accumulate weight quickly, so that at around
four to seven weeks of age, they're already ready for slaughter.
They have white feathers, which means the reason they are
white is so that after being plucked, their corpse looks

(06:12):
more delicious because with brown feathers you can actually see
little pin feathers, and I guess people are disgusted knowing
that the meat they're eating was once a bird, so
with the white feathers, you can't really see it. So
it's like, oh good, just a clean chicken carcass that
I'm sure just dropped out of the sky. We should
all aspire to have more delicious looking corpses, that is
I yeah, you know, I mean it's it's one of

(06:35):
my big goals is to die gorgeous and delicious looking.
Due to the way the chickens were selectively bred to
accumulate mass as quickly as possible. Their muscular skeletal structure
precludes natural mating. We have we've screwed these guys up,
these poor little fellows. So they're they're large breasts make

(06:57):
it difficult for mounting to occur. Now want to say breasts,
I don't mean human like breasts. It's it's the chest
area where you have the muscles, and it's the breast
that you eat. You know, not needed Dave, but other people,
those of us who have this the sanguine desire for flesh.
So to make more chickens, here's the thing. What do

(07:18):
you do when you have chickens that are functionally celibate
because they're weird round chicken bodies are too awkward to mate. Well,
the farming industry uses artificial insemination on a select few
breeding stock of these chickens. So those are the only
chickens that will be allowed to live past four to
seven weeks because they're slaughtered before they even reach sexual maturity.

(07:41):
And the way they collect well, okay, this is sorry,
this gets a little blue, but it's science, so I
have to do it. So they give males a back
massage until you know they popple chicken chicken bowner back massage. Yes,
so they that's what does it for chicken, that's what
does it for male chickens. And so they pitch a

(08:03):
little chicken tint and then they well, YadA, YadA, YadA,
they collect the semen. That's a job. That's a job
of someone that's that is a career. Yeah, I would
say I almost feel like the second part, while dirtier,
is better than the first part of arousing, essentially arousing
the chicken. It's less emotionally fraught. Yes, because if I'm

(08:28):
giving a chicken essential back massage, I've made a connection
with this chicken. What if the chicken looks me in
the eye? What's a connection? Oh no, what if you
feel connected on a spiritual level to this chicken. I
mean you've shared a moment and you'll never be able
to unshare that moment, right, whether or not you're willing
to admit it. You have shared a moment. Yes, and

(08:51):
the chicken may become meat at some point. So what
do you do then? You can't? You can't eat a
chicken after you've shared a back rub with the can
I don't know, you just drink away the nightmares or something.
So this dark, dark seed has been planted into the
female's reproductive tract and more of these cute little abominations

(09:12):
are born. So this paradox of non mating animals being
propagated through selection is only really seen in nature in
the context of youth social insects like bees and ants,
and also naked mole rats, which is the only youth
social mammal. So you social means there's a queen and
you have a colony of workers who all work to

(09:33):
aid the queen, and they don't individually reproduce. Are you
telling me there's a queen mole rat? Yes, naked moret
that's amazing and I think we've talked about it on
the show before. But they are grotesquely large, just like
a queen bee. Where queen bee is huge and pumps
out a bunch of baby, the queen naked mole rat
is huge and pumps out a bunch of babies. And
it's the only like mammal is the mole rat that

(09:56):
does that. Yeah, the only mammal that has a colony
structure like a bee is the naked morat. Should we
be worried about that? They live beneath us in vast colonies.
So no, I don't see what the problem is. So
in these chunky broiler chickens, the genes that regulate muscle
growth are just switched off, which allows them to continue

(10:19):
developing muscle way past what is normal or good for
the chicken, so their skeleton remains the same, meaning they
suffer a lack of mobility due to their skeletons being
unable to properly function under their massive musculature. Muscular true.
Uh so even when they're raised outdoors, this is pretty heartbreaking.
The chickens aren't able to show high levels of activities

(10:42):
due to physical weakness because they're just they're too swoll,
They're too muscled, and they don't like walking too swallow.
That's what it is. Too much muscles, muscles. It's a
common problem that I have is too many muscles. I'm like,
I will get up off the couch and actually do something,

(11:04):
but too many muscles. This gun show is heavy. This guy,
I know you've got two tickets to the gun show,
but you'll have to come to me. So keep in
mind as we look at other chicken species that even
the standard generic meat chicken is insanely constructed, it doesn't

(11:24):
make any sense, and it is only made for human consumption,
which is you know, I'm not a I'm not a vegetarian.
I try to do my best to eat ethically in
terms of like not eating too much meat. But regardless
of your stance on vegetarianism, I think we can all
agree that what we've done to chickens is it's an abomination.

(11:44):
It is an abomination. Ye that's uh. This is where
personally I became more because as I got older, I
got a little more like because when you're vegetarian, other
vegetarians are like, oh, let's let's talk about it, which
is the most boring thing in the world. But the
animal rights aspect, I've met vegans who will eat hunted meat,

(12:04):
and that makes so much more sense where it's it's
not the eat like I do think whenever I hear
people being like, I'm trying to not eat means like,
why that's your clearly I think designed to eat meat.
We seem to be. Don't fight that, but it's the
way we eat meat. Is if we if everyone cut
back on meat or looked for more humane farm raising

(12:29):
practices when purchasing meat, I think that would be great.
You know what, go to home depot, get a hammer,
and walk out into the woods and just get some meat. Yeah,
just whatever you find, don't care what kind of mean
it is. So now let's talk about the Dong Tow,

(12:50):
which is a Vietnamese chicken breed that was created as
a result of a mutation that made thick, old feet,
big old chunky feet. Now, this is prep starts the
image portion of the podcast for day that well, because
feet are delicious. This is again it feels like it's revenge.

(13:15):
So what's interesting about these chickens is actually, compared to
the much more normal looking broiler chicken, they have a
higher quality of life because they don't actually seem to
be too impeded by their thickle hobbit feet. So they
just stomp around and these big old leg warmers made
out of flesh. We made the more powerful. No, don't

(13:36):
do that. We have made their feet giant and thick
like hulk cans. So yeah, they look like they're wearing
leg warmers made out of flesh. As always, I'm going
to include lots of links in the show notes so
you can look upon this Bauschian nightmare they live up
to about a year before being slaughtered, so again actually
more fortunate than the standard broiler chicken. The they are

(14:01):
their feet are so big as a result of a
mutation that causes their feet to grow uncontrollably. And they're
also known as the dragon chicken, probably because they're gonna
kill us once they catch on to what we've done.
You know, they'll they'll look in the mirror and be like,
what am I? They've been probably like stomping on mice

(14:23):
this whole time, got a thirst for blood and yeah,
next they're splattered with blood. What am I? Am I
a monster? So these guys are actually worth around two
thousand dollars per chicken. They're so prized for those thick,
juicy feet, and the feet are that's what we're after
is those feet to eat, eat the feet. They are

(14:46):
considered a culinary delicacy. Oh yeah, I have more pictures
I forgot here you go, Oh my god, they look glorious.
They're just like boots, like remember eug boots, like egg
boots made out of pink flesh. Yeah, yeah, which is yeah,
I'm sure a thing you could make exist. Go out

(15:10):
and collect meat and make sure are these feet? Any
good have you got? No, I haven't eaten these feet.
They must be somewhere. Welcome to my new podcast called
Did I Eat these Feet? No? I haven't. Yeah, it's
I don't know. I'm I Maybe I would try it

(15:30):
just for the sake of it, but I don't think
I could afford two. The worst thing that could happen
is you try and you love it, right exactly, because
then I would have to that would become my whole
life is raising and eating the feet from these chickens.
But then I would feel bad about eating their feet.
So I'd probably do some kind of horror show thing
where I amputate their feet and then just give them

(15:53):
robot legs. No, but then robot legs, Oh yeah, why
don't we just do robot legs for these chickens? Work out?
I mean, it's cruel and horrific, But at the same time,
robot leg chickens, I think I think they'd be fine
with it if they could. We gave them the ability
to like jump really high, right, yeah, Mecca, Mecca chickens. Yeah,
and then we just released them in the nature and

(16:15):
like every now and then, you're gonna you're gonna encounter
a robot chicken. But it's fine, right, and it'll be like, listen,
I know one day you my children will come back
to kill me for the crimes I've done against you.
But this is this is the way you must learn
the rage so that you may grow strong. Speaking of which,
let's talk about the shamow and Ko Shamo chicken, which
is a chicken with disturbingly upright posture. Now, I gotta

(16:38):
show you a video of this little guy. Oh, I
don't know if I don't know how I feel about this. Yeah,
just just let it sink in that you're seeing a
chicken with perfectly upright posture walking around. Yeah, for people listening,
it just looks like a what a person in a
chicken costume would look like. Yes, it's uncomfortable is the

(17:03):
word I would use to describe these chickens. And kind
of cute. Here's a picture of a big one. So
they look curious. They look like they're it's like your
cat seeing a hearing a noise and like getting on
its hime legs. Any uh, any Charlie Chaplin fans out there,
there was remember gold Rush. There was a scene in
gold Rush for there was a man in a giant

(17:25):
chicken costume walking around, and it was because in the
requires a little background on the film gold Rush, but
they were starving in a cabin in the woods and
the snow, and so they started hallucinating each other's food,
and so you just saw them as this big chicken
walking around. It looks like that, but obviously not human sized. Yeah.

(17:45):
I mean any Looney Tunes cartoon as well, if they're
like on an island or start hallucinating like your big sausage. Yeah.
So the coach Shamo is a former fighting cock breed
from Japan. Over time, breeders selected for upright posture as
an ornamental breed, meaning these are generally not used for consumption.
It's just imagine a chicken. Now, imagine that chicken just

(18:09):
sort of ironed out, straightened out, a chicken with a
lot of confidence. So you said ornamental, they're not. Are
they still for fighting? Are they just pets? I think
some Shamo chickens are still used for fighting, unfortunately, But
I think some of the like the co Shamo and
these these really upright ones, I think they're just used

(18:31):
as pets and four shows and things like that. Get
one of those you know, they're really some of these.
I do now want pet chickens from these, but I
also find it a little horrifying that we've done this.
It's it's a grotesque thing. Right. The way I think
of it is like if presented with one yes, yes,
I would be like one wound up on my doorstep

(18:54):
in a little little baby bundle like with a little
note saying please take care of me. I would adopt
it and make it my son. Exactly. It's the same
as my stance with eating exotic things. If someone was
like a cooked a baby baby, yoda yoda for you,
I'd be like, well, I don't condone what you want
to get ways the baby. Yeah, but it's here right exactly.
It's that I would so have. It's only to just

(19:15):
terrify my guests walking around. So it's similar to the
English powder, which is not a chicken but a type
of pigeon. And this is another bird that has been
bred to have a very weird upright posture, very long legs,
and also it has an inflatable neck pouch. So this
is the inflatable crop is something that most pigeons have.

(19:40):
In fact, I think all pigeons male pigeons have that,
and it's uh used in mating display and to kind
of show off your your confidence level as a pigeon.
But over time, breeders have selected for the biggest inflatable crops,
which is the neck pouch, and the most upright posture
resulting and this little guy, I'm going to show you

(20:01):
a video. Oh I love them. Look at those balloon faces.
Oh my god, they looked so proud. They're very proud.
So they imagine imagine a beard, but it's a balloon
of feathers and then very long legs and fluffy feathery feet. Yes,
I would put a little tuxedo on one, and I

(20:24):
would tell people that it was a person who was
cursed to become a chicken. What would its name would
be like, Lord Byron Vaughn. Yeah, I think that's solid,
Lord Byron Monocle, Duke of Western Shore. So they've been

(20:47):
selected to have the most excitable temperaments. So they're always
popping that that big old neck pouch. Oh my goodness.
So wait, they're angry too. They're excited, not angry, Well,
they could be angry. I don't know what pigeon excitement
Isn't necessarily like they're either constantly aroused or constantly angry,
or maybe a mixture. Probably a mixture. Probably a mixture.

(21:10):
Where's my sensual BackRub? So now onto. Maybe the cutest
of the chickens are the silky chickens. These are the
lapdogs of the chicken world. They have been bred to
have a sweet temperament and to be soft and fluffy.
They look made up. They look like a Jim Henson puppet.
Oh my goodness, they look exactly like a Jim Henson.

(21:31):
They're really fluffy. They're they have these really fluffy, downy feathers.
I'm going to show you a video because it really
has to sink in that they're real animals. Once you
see them moving around, oh my god, being a chicken
from other positions, it looks like you would be looking
at like a dog. Yes, it looks they look fluffy
like a little dog. Here's a bunch of them with

(21:54):
with cool little little poof balls on their heads. Man,
they look like um. They used to sell these puppets
where it was like, there's I had one of those puppets.
I wish. Yeah, it's like a big fluffy puppet in labyrinth.
Those weird goblins that dance. Well, it looks. The reason
it looks so similar to Jim Henson puppets is that

(22:17):
they I think Jim Henson puppets use feathers for some
of their fluffy are ones. The amount of animals that
were slaughtered to those uppets, I don't think they were
Jim Henson. Oh no, So it was likely bread from
the Chinese silk chicken. In the Some of the eighteen
hundreds Dutch breeders claimed that the silky was a chicken

(22:41):
crossbread with a rabbit because people in the eighteen hundreds
were dumb as rocks. It's true they are kept as
ornamental pet birds or do eggs sitting for other breeds,
as they are very quote brooding birds, which doesn't mean
they're off in the corner going like nobody unders stoned

(23:01):
onto me. It means that they like to sit on eggs,
and they're very good egg sitters. So the way their
feathers work is that the feathers have no barber cells,
which are microscopic hooks on feathers that allow them to
retain their feather shape. Have you ever like screwed up
a feather? You know what? I mean, where you take
a feather that's perfectly coming, you go the wrong way, Yeah,

(23:22):
and then it's screwed up forever. That's because you've broken
apart those barber cells which are actually hooking onto it
and giving it that structure. Hands, yes, exactly, exactly, So
these do not have barber cells. So all their feathers
are essentially down and soft and fluffy, and they look
like the most wonderful thing to touch. And there's other

(23:45):
chickens that actually have structural abnormalities with their feathers, such
as curly feathers, like the frizzled chicken. You gotta see this.
This is this chicken, isn't this is me as a
chicken if I became a chicken. It's got really curly hair.
It's got wonderful locks of curly right, And that actually
results from a lopsided structure of the feather, where like

(24:07):
one side of the feather is structured out of sync
with the other side so that it curls up. It's
really funny, so onto. Perhaps my favorite of the chickens
uh is the Arnold Schwarzenegger chicken, also known as the
Malaysian cerama. It is a tiny angry looking chicken with

(24:29):
a huge puffed out chest and upright posture like the shamow,
a huge chest like the broiler chicken. And it's one
of the smallest breeds in the world. And I can't
even do it justice verbally. Here's a picture of it.
It looks like a looting to his cartoon. It looks
like a little chicken that's trying to act tough. Yes,
that has like a big temper because what it's it's

(24:50):
also bred so that its wings are straight down, so
it looks like it's at attention, like a soldier, a
tiny soldier chicken. In fact, in Malaysia they're also called
a brave warrior or archangel chickens due to their brave
stance they are. The chicks of this chicken are about
the size of a human thumb. They're teeny tiny, and

(25:13):
the adults are about I would say, about the size
of a larger grapefruit, maybe a grapefruit. Okay, sorry, I mean,
I don't know what kind of football you're playing with.
I don't know, I don't know how, I don't I
don't sports. You don't sports. Yeah, they they're also uh,

(25:34):
they don't weigh that much. They're about I think they're
under like five grams or something. Why would we do this?
Why would because adorable because it's like a this is
you keep talking about wanting to eat a baby Yoda?
Here it is? Are these getting eaten? No? No, I
don't think so. I mean you could. I mean it
would be like maybe like a thimbleful of me a

(25:57):
tiny although we do eat quail and the really only
happ anything, right, Yeah, well that is true. Yeah, we
will find if there's a way to eat something, we
will find it. So the next one is I like
to call it the goth chicken. It is the I
Am Semoni chicken, which is jet black all the way through.

(26:18):
So it is possibly the most deeply pigmented animal on
the planet because even its bones and internal organs are
jet black. So it originates from Indonesia. It's that goth.
It is deep. This is not this is like typo negative. God, Yeah,
this isn't. This isn't. Oh I dyed one strand of

(26:38):
my hair red and I'm goth. Now this is this
is like I only wear nine inch nails shirts and
my shoes lace up to my butt hole. Mindless self
indulgence concerts. Yes, yes, this is. This is I have
permanently tattooed dark makeup and shaved off my eyebrows. Goth

(26:59):
the are the most These are the most goth that
you can achieve. If your bones are black, that's the
most goth. They are from Indonesia. They have a mutation
known as dermo fibro melanosis, which is so normally chickens
and other animals have genes in skin, feather, hair, or
fur follicular cells that control color. So the genes and

(27:23):
these cells basically send out a request for melano blasts,
which are cells that develop into melanocytes, which is these
are all just fancy words to say that these are
cells that control pigment. And so if you have the
gene in the cell, it's like, hey, pigment, come over here,
give me some red color on these locks. Like that.
That's that's how it works. But usually your bones don't

(27:46):
have that gene. Your bones aren't like, hey, red hair gene,
come over here and make my bones red. In the
I am so many chickens. Cells in the bones and
other organs and feathers erroneously have the genes that ask
for melana sites to come over, meaning they have black bones,
which is a called like a mismigration of the milan in.

(28:10):
It's the coolest thing I think an animal can do,
to have black bones. I think that's the coolest thing.
It apparently makes the meat taste different. I don't know
why we're eating the black bones chickens for the bones well,
but the problem is these are clearly demon chickens, and
we were basically, if you eat one of these chickens,

(28:32):
I think that you will willingly signed onto Satan's army.
Is one of his Oh yeah, Satan was like, I'm
putting these demon birds in and see who eats them.
Right now, I think about it's kind of a bummer
to have awesome bones because there's only one way to
get to those bones, and it's not a pleasant way. Yeah,

(28:53):
there's only one way to get to them bones. That's
a that's a good that's a good catchphrase. I like
that only one way to get to them bones. So
it's a total restructuring of the genome to create these
goth chickens, possibly being traced back to a single bird. Now,
this is an interesting thing in evolution because this is

(29:15):
known as a macro mutation. Where it's like one huge mutation.
So usually traits are developed over long periods of time,
thousands and thousands, hundreds of thousands of years, just to
get a slightly different trade or just to get a
new trade, whereas there are macro mutations where just boom,
suddenly your bones are black. Uh, And so the idea

(29:37):
of macro mutations as being a driving force of evolution
is mostly debunked. It was called mutationism, which argued big
steps rather than small gradual changes, had to be responsible
for evolutionary progress. But this theory was mostly debunked by
Darwin's national selection and Mandelian genetics that showed mostly when

(29:58):
you have a huge like a big mutation, it's typically
bad for the animal, and better to have these smaller
mutations that don't hurt yet that kind of work towards
maybe a more advantageous trait. Yeah, if your bones went
black overnight, very worrying. The hopeful monster is the name

(30:21):
for the model of an animal who has a macro
mutation that would become successful, And it was a model
in n that is definitely never caught on and was
widely ridiculed. But the hopeful monster model actually works well
with artificial selection because humans are weirdos and we love

(30:41):
to see crazy, insane animals that have black bones and
huge chunky feet. We are the most like perverse of
the species on this planet. We didn't, Yeah, we do
love an underdog, and by underdog, like a dog with
an underbyte that we've breke right exactly. I've seen viral

(31:03):
images that suggest the eggs of the i Am Smani
Goth chicken are black, but in my research it appears
the eggs are like pink. The black eggs are likely
a hoax. Images online of these jet black eggs maybe
Oakudani black eggs regular chicken eggs that turn black after
being boiled in Owaka Dani Valley, Hakone, Japan's hot springs,

(31:25):
where the sulfur in the water causes a chemical reaction,
turning the egg shells black and birds. Egg pigment comes
from the reproductive tract. The squishy yolk and white of
the egg is covered in calcium carbonate from special shell
glands as they make their way down the bird uterus,
then they're covered in a layer of protective protein. At
this point, patterns and pigments may be added from special

(31:47):
glands that spray paint the eggs. It's like a factory
conveyor belt made out of chicken uterus. This process takes
only about twenty four hours. Those specialized pigment blasting glands
can be so in utably precise that they're time to
fire at certain times to produce specific coloration and patterning,
often camouflage for each egg. When we return, get out

(32:10):
your hands in construction paper. It's turkey time. Gobble, gobble, everybody,
it's turkey time. You know what a turkey is. It's
roughly the shape of your hand plus some construction paper

(32:32):
beaks and feet. The turkey, unlike the chicken, is indigenous
to the America's Native Americans have been domesticating turkeys for
over one thousand, five hundred years. The ancestors of the
modern day turkey meligress, Gallopevo, the wild turkey, have been
linked to bone fragments, along with archaeological finds of fences

(32:53):
and cages and corn in Central Mexico dated back to
eight hundred BC, indicating that all ready the turkey was
being held captive. Nowadays, the turkey that's on your table
is a far gobble from the colorful blue red, pink,
and purple wild turkeys. So let's talk a bit about
this noble creature who are once nominated by Benjamin Franklin

(33:15):
to be the national bird, as Franklin considered them to
be a bird of courage. God, I wish we had
gone that route. Can you imagine how uch cooler America
would have been. He's not wrong. They are a bird
of courage, they really are. They are better. Yeah, they're
a better analogy for America where they run in places
and tack people and freak everybody. It really I mean,

(33:36):
but I think if we had gone with the turkey,
we would have been a more humble nation because we
would have been looking into a mirror, right, yes, a
turkey shaped mirror. Oh yeah, And like there'd be a
little turkeys on like the top of flag pools and
like maybe like everything, we'd have busts of turkeys, Like
presidential candidates would pose next to a turkey. God, it

(33:57):
would have been so much better. He was, so we
probably wouldn't be eating them. I don't think once a
year we'd be eating eagles instead. And eagles are they're
like in certain places, they're past like like if you
go to Alaska, you can just yeah, you can eat
the eagle. I think I cannot fact check that right now,
but I'm not sure if we can. If you can

(34:19):
just eat eagles, if it's true, I don't know if
it's If it's true, Alaska, that should be their state
motto because that's eagles. You can eat eagles here. I
don't think it's I don't think it's legal to eat eagles.
Probably illegal, eagle illegal legal. So domesticated turkeys have white

(34:40):
feathers unlike the natural hand turkey variety, and it's the
same reason as chicken, so their corpses look more pretty
and so you can't see their pin feathers if they
missed a few when they defeathered them. So they're called
the turkey because Europeans stupidly misidentified the American turkey as
a guinea fowl from Turkey the country. But the Latin

(35:02):
name for turkeys is gallopavo or chicken peacock, like that
better chicken peacock. Yeah, this is a better name, isn't
It makes it makes it feel a little weirder to
eat them, like you don't eat peacock. Well, we don't,
although I think you can in Elizabethan's You see. We
talked about this on another podcast where I had Smart
Else host on Katherine Spears. We talked about how they

(35:25):
used to uh eat peacocks and swans and then they
would stuff the swan and peacock skin back with the meat,
so you would be eating the meat out of a
stuffed peacock. Yeah. I lived near peacock's growing up, and
they are allowed angry animals and there's ever a bird

(35:45):
that deserved to get eaten. We had a peacock take
my family hostage when I was a little kid, just
landed in our yard, stayed there. We fed it bread
and it would scream at us. It was great. I
missed that peacock. So the wild Turkey's bit and Bob's
are all male sexual displays. So that big old fantail
all the neck business going on. So the fleshy head

(36:08):
bump bumps are called car uncles. The fleshy protuberance that
comes off the beak is called the snood. That throat
dangles called the wattle, and the chest feathers are called
the beard. So the snood, which is that dangle thing
that comes off the beak is like a beak weener,
because when the male is displaying to females, the snood

(36:30):
becomes erect, so the beard is like the pups. Yeah sure, yeah,
I mean if we're doing the beak weener, the yeah,
I mean it is, it's it's like straightens out it
because yeah that. So to entice the female, the turkey
will puff out its chest feathers and tail feathers, its

(36:52):
struts and does a ritualistic sexy sneezing with an erect
snood in bright red e gorged her uncles. Then the
turkey will also do body vibrations hot hot. So I
want to answer a question, which is our turkeys stupid?

(37:12):
Are they? I don't know. Probably I think that they
are considered stupid, And the popular conception of turkey stupidity
comes from the awkward way they walk, probably the the
erect nudes that they do, and the stupid things that
they do, like staring into the rain with their mouths
open until they allegedly drown. So I looked into this

(37:35):
and specifically that behavior of staring into the rain is
not actually stupidity or a death wish, and there's not
really evidence that they drown in any significant numbers. It's
caused by an inherited condition called titanic torticol or spasms,
which is a result of our domestication of them. So
it's a neurological tick where the turkeys throw their heads

(37:58):
onto their backs and point their beaks upward into the sky.
I like to think that they're just asking God, why
why have you done this? Right? And if they're drowning,
they're just like end it. Yeah, it's not. They're not mesmerized.
It's not some dude at burning Man. They're not like
whoa when the rain comes towards you, like little dots

(38:19):
man in space, it's like styles are falling on my face.
So turkey advocates argue that turkeys are highly social and
not as stupid as they seem, and they indeed have
a lot of like social gobbles. They but they're they're
actually kind of aggressive towards each other sometimes. So they're

(38:39):
not it's all not all sunshine and roses with with
the turkeys, but they are they are highly social and
they Yeah, I think that they're probably not as smart
as say crows or you know, these other smarter bird species,
but they're probably not complete imbeciles. Did you see on

(39:02):
the on the social media's there was a video of
a turkey following a mail truck and it was apparently
doing it for like a month, and it would follow
it along and then whenever he'd stop and give him ale,
it would like bother the mail. That's wonderful. So they're
smart enough to be jerks. The Turkey Revolution come. Yeah.
I saw a video of a bunch of turkeys just

(39:23):
circling a cat like and I think the cat may
have been dead cat, and they were just they formed
this circle around the cat. And the explanation I saw
of it was that the turkeys were curious. But no,
that's the devil. It's the devil. That's that's some sinister stuff.
Or that's like Turkey time. This cat for the Turkey Revolution.

(39:54):
So related to the turkey. I always think of the
dodo because they are another cidered stupid bird which is
not actually related to the turkey. But I kind of
want to give the dodo a bit of a reprieve
from their perception as the dumbest animal. The turkey is
more closely related to chickens than to the dodo. Uh.

(40:16):
The dodos had brains that were about the size of
a pigeon's um, which we know doesn't necessarily mean anything
about intelligent, Like crow brains are pretty small and they're
actually very smart, so brain size doesn't necessarily indicate anything,
but it is an indication that they may not have
been There's no evidence to suggest they were much dumber

(40:38):
than a pigeon, so they were considered to be stupid
due to how easy it was to round them up
onto the ships of Dutch sailors on their native island.
After the human invasion, the Dodo quickly went extinct in
the late sixteen hundreds, and a lot of people attribute
this to humans hunting them and the Dodos just being
too stupid to not prevent their own mass demise. But

(41:02):
I don't think this is necessarily true. So the reason
they were easy to capture wasn't because they were stupid,
but due to the fact that as island birds, they
were never exposed to humans or even comparably large predators
that they need a defense strategy against. Right, they're just friendly,
right end, neighbor, Would you like to come over and

(41:24):
play some yachts? Do you play yachts? And we're like, yes,
get into this box here, and we'll have a great
time coming to our ships. Please. Yeah. So consider the quaco,
which is that adorable little mammal that's isolated two small
islands off the coast of Australia. We've talked about it
on the show. If you don't know what is, google

(41:46):
that right now. They are adorable. Here let me show you.
There's definitely certain species that if we decided to suddenly
eat them, it would be very easy. It'd be very
it would be incredibly easy to just because we just
haven't and they didn't, they're gonna be like, I didn't
know they do that. So here's the quaca. Oh I've
seen these. Yeah, they're adorable little mammals. They have no

(42:11):
fear of humans because they live in on island and
they they're only predators are snakes, so they have they
just don't associate humans with a threat, so they'll take
selfies with you. Now, we are actually kind of a
threat to them when we leave our litter or try
to touch them or feed them and in general in general. Yeah,
but if we just it's so frustrating because people you

(42:34):
can take selfies with them as long as you don't
touch them and you don't feed them. This could be
a perfectly fine relationship, but I feel like we're going
to mess it up by like shoving Snickers bars in
them because they look so cute. We have to touch things.
We do have to touch a little belly. There's no
way I can't. They can't bite, though they they'll they'll

(42:55):
only allow so much interaction before they bite to So
I feel like the dodos may have been similar to
the quaca. So like, if they had been alive today,
maybe we would would have taken a bunch of selfies
with them. And they're stupid, happy little faces. Yeah, if
we knew better, right, But if you're like showing up
on island, you're like, I'm really hungry and these birds
are walking up like high. Yeah. Actually, so far from

(43:23):
being the plump and juicy victim of dinner time, Dodos
probably didn't die out because of overhunting. In fact, their
meat was not necessarily all that great anyways. The really
juicy looking dodo image comes from captive, over fed dodos,
whereas wild dodos probably died out due to the animal
hitchhikers that invaded along with the sailors, so namely rats, rats,

(43:48):
and other invasive species, likely eight dodo eggs, and out
competed them for food until they were driven to extinction,
which is happens very easily on these islands. It happens
to birds on islands when cats are introduced, because the
birds just they don't have a natural predator as efficient
as a cat, and then the cat comes in and
just cleans that island up. Cats were an apocalypse for

(44:11):
certain because we yeah, they were just what get on
our boats and we'd be like, I guess we have
cats now, which is how anybody ever gets a cat,
and then we just bring them somewhere and be like
all right, get out and then just wreak havoc. Yep.
Just I mean maybe that's why the turkeys celebrated the
cat's death. Yea, the great destroyer has been killed, it

(44:31):
has been felled. Now the greater turkey demon can take
its place. It does make sense. And I think about
it that like if if you see a bunch of
anything circling a dead thing in a celebratory way, I'd
be like, oh, that's the murderer, right right. Yeah, generally speaking, yeah,
it's it's I think the turkeys were probably right, yeah, yeah,

(44:52):
most likely hashtag those turkeys were right. Turkeys were right?
So why do we eat turkey? Okay, smart says, I
know a bunch of you just said because they taste good.
But hold on, there are all sorts of animals we
eat who could be candidates for Thanksgiving dinner. Fickleness and
human culture can shape the fates of domesticated animals, particularly

(45:16):
the turkey. Originally, eating turkey on holidays was likely practical.
The turkey was a large bird, enough to feed a
whole family, and slaughtering a turkey was more economical than
a whole cow or a chicken, who was valued for
its eggs and more succulent meat. Ham and brined cork
was a staple, but wasn't considered special enough for a feast.

(45:36):
In eight President Lincoln declared Thanksgiving a national holiday, and
turkeys already had the honor of being the centerpiece of
the feast in American culture. Lucky then, in the twentieth century,
turkeys had become associated with the working class, so the
wealthy turned to game and beef to feel fancy. And
thanks to Charles Dickens, a Christmas Carol and Scrooge is

(45:57):
generous gift of a Christmas turkey. The turkey became a
popular Christmas staple. It's a Christmas miracle, but not for
the turkey. The turkeys died. When we return, we'll talk
about man's best fried friends. So did we originally domesticate

(46:20):
dogs to snack on them? A new study proposes that
wolves were originally domesticated, at least in part for their meat.
The study suggests that there was a single domestication event
and that all domesticated dogs are descendants of these wolf
ancestors from about fourteen thousand years ago. At these archaeological sites,

(46:41):
ancient dog bones with marks that suggested they were butchered
for their meat were found. But fortunately for our canine friends,
eventually we discovered that they were worth more to us
seated next to the table than on it. I wonder
sometimes when I look at my dog, I I go
to I'm going to eat you, I'm going to eat

(47:04):
Is that like an instinct, some kind of deep instinct?
I think, so, yeah, I think we know dogs are delicious.
Now it makes sense. The moment we discover new animal,
I think the first thing we do is a taste test,
and then it's yeah, are they worth more as meat
or are they worth more as a pet. I think
about this with um, like if the apocalypse happens. If

(47:25):
you have a dog, there's that loyalty where you're like
like if there's no food around, and you're like, I'm
not gonna eat my dog. But eventually you'd be like, man,
that dog looks pretty good. Um and the Honor Party
famously in their journal road after they ate their dogs
like it was a good dog. Yeah, it was doing
a little joke there as they stared down cannibalism and death. Yeah.

(47:49):
That's why I think cats tend to be like I
think as pets they have more of the power because
I think if I was faced with a situation where
I was darving and I had my cat, I'd be like,
it's hardly a meal, Like what's the point? I might
as well just keep it around. My My dog is
fun sized, though she would be a little snack, A

(48:10):
little snack yeah, but not yeah again like with a
little dog, It's like, I don't know if this is
worth it. It's interesting because I do think the smaller
smaller the dog, the more the power dynamic shifts as well,
like the dog knows like you're not going to eat me,
not even worth it, Yeah exactly. That's why they're so pushy,
like what are you gonna do about it? What are
you gonna do about it? Yeah? Yeah. So it is

(48:32):
interesting because when you compare dogs to pigs, you do
find that pigs are similarly intelligent to dogs, at least
domesticated pigs. Pigs are on the way they're being promoted
to pet soon, I believe. I don't know. I think
I don't think we're gonna drop our pig eating habits.
I mean, I'm I try not to eat it just

(48:53):
because it creeps me out thinking about because like I
just associated it with eating a dog. Aren't they also,
like I know, like they're pretty close to humans, like
in terms of like their mass and like the there.
Like it's not that they're like genetically close to us
or anything. But when I think a pig flesh, I think, like, yeah,

(49:13):
that's probably what a human I have heard that. I've
heard that human meat would taste like pig, but I
can't confirm that, having not ever eating a human. Clearly
I wouldn't know. I mean, I mean, come on, right,
you know, not even out of curiosity, not even a
reasonable amount of just curiosity of tasting it once come

(49:36):
on anyways, So domesticated pigs are quite smart and are
comparably intelligent to dogs. In fact, a recent study showed
that pigs are capable of understanding how mirrors work, which
I'm not even sure dogs have been able to do so.
So they may not know whether the image in the

(49:57):
mirror is of themselves, but they can triangulate their location
based on mirrors and use the mirrors to find food.
So a lot of pig intelligence is food motivated, which honestly,
same same my i Q jumps up like a hundred
points when food is involved. So pigs also know how
to deceive other pigs. So if one pig is trying

(50:19):
to follow another pig to find where the food is,
the pig being followed will try to throw off the
other pig from its trail, like yeah, exactly. So it's
incredible because first you have the first layer of the
pigs knowing to try to stake out the other pigs
to try to find their food stash, and then the
layer of like hopping in the taxi trying to lose

(50:40):
the other pig, you know, driving into the wrong neighborhood.
So the pig doesn't know where you live, wearing a
pig disguise, a little pig mustache like warm rattle perg. Yeah,
they're they're just not fluffy, that's the that's the problem.
If they became fluffy, we probably uh we would probably

(51:00):
stop eating them. Well, boy, do I have news for you.
There is a pig called the mangoza, which is a
pig with a wooly coat like a sheep and of
course not hairy like boars, which are no, no, not
coarse hair, soft fluffy wool like a sheep. Oh wow,
why did that happen? That's amazing. We made it happen.

(51:24):
We shaped them. Did we just put the chia pet
seeds on it? Well, according to like old Europeans, we
would have cross bread it with a sheep, because god,
they were so dumb, like, oh, it's got wool. Most
have been crossbread with a sheep. Anyways, I mean, honestly,
I don't want you about animals. If I was just

(51:45):
like left in a vacuum and saw that thing, I'd
be like, I don't know, I guess it had sex
with a sheep. Well, you know I can actually Okay,
so a pig and a sheep I could conceive as
like an a sixteen hundreds European of believing that. But
but the earlier example of the chicken and the rabbit,
I would have a Rabbits can't do eggs, so I'm

(52:06):
not sure. It's also like, there's no way you'd get
those two to mate. They would just try to kill
each other. Yeah. Yeah, So these are a Hungarian breed
of domesticated pig. They've gone out of fashion since they
provide really lean meat, and they have been replaced by
more modern domesticated pigs on the meat production side of things,

(52:28):
but they are still reared as a specialty pig, fun
furry friend of ours to pretend we don't eat some populations.
Good news. They have gone feral in the Serbian wetlands
and they are breeding with wild boars, meaning that we
could have some wild, wooly wild boars in the future. No,

(52:52):
look like they look like wigs, wigs. They look at
pigs with pigs with wigs, with wigs with those fancy
like Victorian Oh yeah, like the Judge wigs or the
Victorian wigs, or the French those French powdered wigs. Yes,
I do. I do say they're like pigs in a
monty pythons let the meat cake. So speaking of wild boars,

(53:17):
Farrell Hawk, I know this is a Dave's pet issue.
I've done a lot of research. Have you heard of
the Ferrell hogs that found and destroyed a cash of cocaine?
Worth happened? That just happened. And we're learning about our cocaine,
which is as humanity, that's our secret weapon. Yes, cocaine

(53:40):
was always are that the sort of like when the
penny drops, at least we have cocaine top card. Yeah. Yeah,
if the aliens come and we really got we really
got a focus and like fight them, We're like, all right,
everybody do cocaine. The aliens do some kind of tabulation
of like their their fight want is at only T

(54:00):
and then we do cocaine. It's like, oh no, it
is off the charts, aboard, aboard, so many new screenplays. Yes,
these Ferreal hogs found cocaine that was hidden in the
Italian woods, and a wire chap on drug dealers caught
them complaining about Ferrell hogs destroying their product. Wonderful. I

(54:22):
just love that they're listening to this Hawaire tap like, man,
those those Ferreal hogs twenty two thousand, just down the drain,
will down the hog, really down the hog. I wonder,
it's an interesting The hogs are just like I just
want to clean everything. Everything got gotta clean. Get a
clean man. This forest is dirty. Wow, No one knows

(54:44):
how many pineheals around want account, want account. So yeah,
now Ferrell hogs have a taste for cocaine. They have beautiful,
luscious wooly coats. They're basically becoming Hollywood. They are. They
really are just gonna give them some fancy glasses, fancy
glasses and and like designer shoes, and then suddenly they're like,

(55:04):
you know, yeah, they're there. They've made it. Yeah. Now
I want to talk about actual sheep called the ancon
sheep or also known as the otter sheep, which is
it's a sheep with dwarf is m basically so otters.
By the way, we really need to start domesticating them.
There's a little off topic, but I think, like otters

(55:25):
and seals, I think they're ready. I think they want to.
Are they ready? Are they ready to be? Have us
shape their bones with our godlike powers unnatural selections. You
watch those videos of like seals like getting attacked by
killer killer whales and jumping out onto the boat like
hey please, like I think that. I think if we
took one home, they'd be like, all right, this is cool,

(55:47):
this is easier cool. And they crap everywhere and bite you. Ye,
I mean sure, that's when my cat does. Sounds like
my dog too. So that's the little little guy. They
got little stubb legs and they are now they're not
an actual new species of sheep. They're just it's a

(56:08):
sheep that basically was descended all from one mutant sheep,
and they have dwarf is um, so they have shorter legs.
That connective tissue isn't. There's a mutation in their jeans
that just gives them that shorter skeletal structure. When you
say one, it was like one little horny sheep, one
little horny sheep at necessarily especially horny. It was just

(56:30):
one sheep. And then a farmer saw this little stubby
like sheep was like, not sheep can't clamb fences. Well,
we're going to breathe that sheep. That is the that's
the weirdest revelation I've had about this stuff. Is I
looked into my cat breed, which is an American Bombay,
And that's just one lady in the thirties who was like,

(56:50):
I wanted to make little panthers. And it's like, okay,
like I have had seven husbands, but have I haven't
had a tiny panther. It's like ground zero these these, Yeah,
it is. It is weird how one human has the
power to craft a new misshape and animal and then

(57:12):
we're all like, oh, let me get one of those. Yes,
so yeah, no, it literally the farmer that first encountered
the sheep was like, well, I don't have to build
tall fences because this sheep cannot jump over fences. No,
that was literally the actual story, and they actually these
sheep were important to Darwin because it helped him argue
the case for inheriting independent characteristics from parents. So it's

(57:36):
not always a blend of traits. So you have one
really tall parent and one really short parent and then
you're like medium sized. But you can have just one
trait that's inherited that wins out over the other, like
dominant recessive genes. Uh so yeah, it's a it's a
it's got stubby legs, but a big heart. So now

(57:58):
this is exciting. I want to talk to you about
swoll cows. Swoll Cows is not their real name. That's
the name I gave them. And they are it is
a species, or not a species, but a breed of
cow called the Belgian Blue, which is a mutant cow
with huge muscles. These aren't because I am aware that
there are Nazi cows. Have you seen those? What? There

(58:21):
are cows that the Nazis, specifically bread that are still
around today and they're very they're very aggressive, like they
do not like people. They are Nazi cows. I don't
think these are the same. I'm hoping not. H I don't.
I will say I highly doubt that these cows hold

(58:44):
any Nazi beliefs. Yeah, I don't think the Nazi Nazis
cows are just well I don't know. They're very aggressive,
but they have a lot of anger. No, so these
are these are more just like jim rat cows. So
look at this, Oh, look at these bro cows. They're
broke cows. They're completely yoked, totally swollen. They have not

(59:09):
skipped leg day, any of the leg days. Just trying
to tip me, bro come at me, bro trying to
tip meat, like if you milk them, just like like
monster energy drink. I mean you're looking at a male
so if you try milking. So the their breed of

(59:30):
beef cattle that has been selected for mutations that give
the massive muscles. It's called double muscl ng similar to
what I talked about with the broiler chicken. The calves
are so the babies the calves are so large. Farmers
have to perform cesarean sections on the mother cows to
get these monster babies out of the mother. Having a

(59:52):
small baby, Oh god, just the baby comes out with
huge muscles is like, yes, hello, mother, I desire a
mel feed me mouth and protein powder. Mother. It's a
little disturbing. It's a real problem. I know. They're also
doing this to pigs. Yeah. I don't know why we

(01:00:13):
would ever give animals that were like farming and eating
the ability to you know, we're sets of our own destruction.
I gotta say we kind of deserve it. Yeah, we're
gonna be like we design these swull guns like cows
that also like we give them blade like blades sticking
out of their horns, the ability to breathe, fire something. Yeah,

(01:00:36):
these cows are just it's muscles upon muscles upon muscles,
and they look like body You know how body builders
much respect to their passion in their hobby, but they do.
It is sometimes a little unnerving how many muscles can
get on a human body. It's like this. But cows, why,

(01:00:57):
oh my god, look at the butt. It looks uncomfortably swell.
It looks uncomfortably large. And the what's interesting about these is,
like I think, to show off how musclely they are,
they shave some of the cow, but not all of
the cow because they need some sort of like a
poodle where they need some of the fur to stay warm.
But they just shave the butt and specifics. Right. If

(01:01:18):
you've ever seen the famous flop League of Extraordinary Gentlemen,
the Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, when he takes the
potion turned into mister Hyde, there's a henchman that takes
like a bunch of the potion and he becomes comfortably swollen. Yes, yes,
and that's what I'm I'm looking at. Yeah, it is.
It is definitely. I mean, yeah, there's a lot of
a lot of steroid use that I know can give

(01:01:40):
give that look. But also I think something that happens
now is like implants that you know, give you fake
like in large or like like injecting um something like
silkne into the muscle, which is not I wouldn't necessarily recommend,
but yeah it is. It looks it looks like they're
about to explode into meat with cows. Why are we

(01:02:05):
doing that? Because our muscles delicious? What we muscles? Muscles?
I mean it's muscles and fat essentially. Okay, So I
like the idea of asking a farmer where they're doing
and they're like, because I think it's funny. We were
bored when we were like, we do we make the
cow really like muscular the cows It's like, well, the

(01:02:27):
cows were bored, so we got them lifting set, we
got them a bow flex. They got really into it. Yeah,
just a cow hunched over like, uh, they can weigh
so the steer can The male cows can weigh just
under three thousand pounds. Normal steer away about two thousand,

(01:02:48):
four hundred pounds, So that's significant. So the last animal
I want to talk about is the well. It's called
the Damascus goat. It's also known as the Aleppo goat,
and it is well. So it's it's it's weirdo goats

(01:03:11):
who have been selected for bizarre facial features. So it's
from Syria, Cyprus and Lebanon. And let me get you
a good picture. Here's one of these bad boys. Where
what are we doing there? What's uh, what's the point
of that? I look like a Star Wars creature? They
do look like a Star Wars, So I don't. I think.

(01:03:35):
I think that the facial feature, it's specifically bred for
these facial features, kind of for the sake of it.
I think they do. They do have a really impressive
milk production ability, but I think it was so I
think part of it may be just a side effect

(01:03:57):
of breeding them for specific traits like milk production that
just caused this crazy face to come about. But I
do think that now they're kind of maybe leaning into it. Right.
It probably started with someone like, look, if you want
the best milk production, that's your goat, and they're just like, yeah,
but what's wrong with it? And it's like nothing. In fact,
we're going to make it more that way. I think

(01:04:19):
that's what happened. So it's it started out being like, huh,
that's interesting, let's let's lean into this look you gotta,
which I mean I think is correct in terms of fashion,
like you do have to fully embrace a bold look
like a like a bold culture or a statement piece.
You really have to go fully on it. On the
genetic level for a goat, It's an interesting they could

(01:04:45):
choice we make as humans are people listening. They could
legitimately sell those to Disney to have in a Star War.
Yeah that these are star Wars. Yeah, like you'd see
it in a Star Wars and you'd be like, oh,
that's a cool creature effect. Interestingly, the kids, so they
the young goats, do not look so demonic and horrible.
Let me let me describe it, because I think we've

(01:05:08):
gone this whole time without actually describing what it looks
like they have. Well what would you say? So they
have a huge forehead that it's faces the shape of
a square and under bite it looks I seem bigger,
but maybe not. The eyes are almost displaced, I guess

(01:05:28):
because of the massive square forehead head, Yeah, like a
fish head. Or if you how would you describe, like,
what's just imagine an abomination like close your eyes, take
a goat but smush its face into the shape of
a loaf of bread. Yes, that's it. Yeah, that's what

(01:05:52):
it looks like. And actually the kids, so the immature
goats are quite cute. They have really long ears and
adorable little faces, which is good because if they had
these bread shaped faces, they probably couldn't nurse, they couldn't
drink milk from their mother's It's only until after they
hit puberty that they turn into bread face. Yeah, so

(01:06:15):
that's we did that. Why did we do it just,
oh right, just for the milk or whatever? Well, no,
I think it was. It started out because we were
trying to get milk or meat, and then it just
turned into like, wow, look what we can do. Let's
do it even more, let's make it even more. So
I think we've I think we're just we're learning how

(01:06:38):
to be little angry demigods and we've got to understand
this power better. No one's stopping us. No one is
stopping us. Though. Hopefully those swoll cows and pigs are
gonna realize their power at some point and they're going
to be like, it's our turn, it's our time. Yeah,
I'm going to change your face. I'm going to change

(01:07:01):
your faces through through selective breeding, not with my fists. Yeah,
that that's our future. We're asking for it, we really are. Congratulations, humans,
we have created a cow that can stop us, which
is actually maybe a good thing. I was about to
say considering other man made futures we have on the horizon,

(01:07:25):
like Planet of the Cows wouldn't be the worst, right right, Yeah,
I mean because while we still have on Earth at
least exactly, they probably take over and they'll be like, Okay,
we don't need any of this stuff. That's the thing.
Why do we need this? Like that's the thing about
Planet of the Apes, right, Like, sure they blew up
the Statue of liberty, sure they hunt humans for sport,

(01:07:45):
but the planet is luscious. It's still full of life.
So hey, yeah, I do want to amend this though.
Cows would be a problem because the burs the methane, right,
that is true, the assive protein powder shake fars. That's
gotta be heinous. Yeah, that's not good. You don't want
to be near that when that goes off. Well, thank

(01:08:11):
you so much for joining me, Dave. Do you wanna
you got any animal stories? Get anythink of plug? I
can plug some stuff real quick. I have a podcast
network called Gamefully Unemployed. You can go to our Patreon
at patreon dot com slash gamefully Unemployed. We have some
exclusive podcasts on there. You can check us out on
SoundCloud all sorts of stuff. I also um and I

(01:08:35):
believe Katie you also do this. I write for a
YouTube show called some More News. It's lovely. It's a
lovely little frolic through the world of politics, the polite
world of the polite world. If you want to feel
real good about politics, feel good, that deep down good
feeling of we're all okay, everything's going to be. This
is heavy, heavy irony. Yeah, yeah, I think that's it.

(01:09:00):
You can find us on the internet Creature feature Pod
dot com, Creature Feature Pod on Instagram, where it's mostly
pictures of my dumb dog. Creature feet Pod on Twitter
that's f e A T f e E T is
something very different. You can find me online at Kate
Golden and of course at pro bird Rites, where I
advanced the rights of birds and the eventual Turkey domination

(01:09:23):
of the world. You'll be You'll be there, King, you're
a queen like they'll you'll be. I'd say you'll be
top pet I'll be there, token human top pet most
favored of pet humans. That's what I'm certain like. If
I get tummy rubs and some kibble, I'll be happy. Yeah.

(01:09:43):
I want to do a quick shout out to Castaway Podcast,
which is a new podcast that points out all the
podcasts that you should be podcast and we're listening to.
It's a it's a podcast about podcast. It's actually really great.
That's great. Now, that's great. The host is Laura Whitmore
and she had a guest on The Lovely Sarah Pasco.
She is a famous brit and she said really nice

(01:10:07):
things about our podcast. Here a Creature feature, and I
really appreciate it. And it was really nice to hear
in her lovely British accent because it makes it sound
so much fancier. The podcast actually is thanks to the
Space Classics for their super spectacular song ex Alumina. Creature
features a production of I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works.

(01:10:29):
For more podcasts from I Heeart Radio, visit the I
heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.