March 13, 2018 • 50 mins
When it comes to the animal kingdom, SYSK has covered a wide range. This week, the guys dive into the frigid waters of the Arctic to delight in everything that is the huggable, lovable walrus. From their tendency to sticking together in tough times, to the strange noises they make to attract a mating partner, the walrus is now in the running as one of Josh and Chuck's favorites.
Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm MC Josh,
Josh Clark. There's ch ch Chuck Bryant, and then Jerry's
the DJ on the wheels and steel of Stuff you
(00:24):
Should Know the podcast. And that has nothing to do
with what we're talking about today. What, No, it doesn't.
I couldn't even faint surprise. I know it has nothing
to do with it. I was just being silly. You
like it? I love it. Silly Josh is one of
my top five favorite Josh is is it? I thought so.
(00:48):
I guess you're feeling pretty good today, Jerry, you are too, Yeah,
she says, yeah everybody. Um, well, the reason we're feeling
good is because there are a fewer just simple pleasures
in life then researching and talking about animals. Agreed. It's
one of my favorite s Y s K episode categories
as animal ones. Yeah, and it sort of don I
(01:11):
picked this one out and it sort of dawned on me.
It had been a minute, and um. Sometimes these are
some of our lighter lifts because we have some really
great house to works articles on animals and insects, so
it doesn't require like, you know, another twenty hours of
research on stuff. Uh, and we needed a lighter lift
this week. And I was like, hey, it's been a while.
(01:33):
I was perusing I saw walrus Is and they're so
darn cute and been lovable. I thought, all right, well
we got to get in there on this. Yeah. Plus
is a Jennifer Horton joint. And remember she used to
be like the in house animal writer. Oh was it? Yeah?
She she doesn't remember. Yeah, what would happen to her?
I don't know, but she left behind a legacy that
(01:56):
includes an article on walrus Is. Yeah. And I will
go and say up front, this is now in the
running for me with a little competition between the octopus
and the jellyfish. Okay, well then this is what we're
gonna do. You're gonna go, um, but that's all I
(02:16):
can think of when um, when a fact comes up
that you're like, this is one of the reasons why
they're in competition. Okay, okay, all right. Oh and before
we get started. Also before we get started, sorry, um,
I wanted to give a big shout out to our
pals at The Daily Zeitgeist, one of our sister podcasts.
They had me on yesterday. I know, I haven't listened
(02:38):
to it yet. How was it? It was pretty great?
Like they make it really easy on you. Um, They're like, here,
read all these articles that were potentially going to talk
about and study them for five hours, just like you
do stuff you should know, and then we're not going
to talk about any of those not a single article
that I researched. Dude, we talk about. But I've managed
(03:00):
to keep up anyway. That's how easy those guys make it.
So thank you to Jack and Miles and Anna for
for having me. And I guess when you're hearing this
by yesterday, I mean March five, So go back and
listen to the March fifth episode of Daily's Like Guys,
and then listen to all the episodes of Daily's Like Guys. Yeah,
I saw that they had a cutout, cardboard cutout of
you sitting in a chair, which is kind of funny. Yeah,
(03:20):
it is funny. But then I'm like, well, what are
you guys doing with a cardboard cut out of me?
Probably made it right, I guess, but I didn't. That's
they got a big budget. Then we don't have a
budget for cardboard cutouts. No, But I'm glad you gave
me the inside skinny because I'm gonna be on at
some point. And now I'm gonna say, hey, don't don't
do that crap you did with Josh. I'm not reading
(03:43):
a bunch of stuff unless we're doing it. Yeah, no, no,
just show up to show up relaxed and prepared to talk,
and you will be great. Uh So, the other thing
I had to say of the two things running in
for my favorite animal and another movie prediction from apparently
on the Great Movie Predictor or just Life predictor, uh, Pixar,
(04:09):
get on it, because if you don't do a lovable
story about a family of walrus is at some point,
then someone else is gonna beat you to the punch,
maybe us, and it's gonna be great because there's nothing cuter.
Just look up on your on your favorite image search
walrus calf and mother or just walrus calf and get
(04:31):
ready to be outcuted by most other animals. Like they're
so cute they can make you forget that you're watching
them live in captivity. That's how cute those things that
some of these are photographed in the wild. Yeah, the
videos that I've seen of calves are mostly the one
that was born at Sea World. It was like the
first walrus born in captivity. I think, if I'm not mistaken,
(04:53):
he is just as cute as the day is long.
But not small. I mean like it's it's like our size. Yeah,
they're not small. No, So like, apparently here's a fact
for you. I'm gonna give you. I'm gonna give you
the chance to do your heraldry. I'm not gonna make
any sounds alright, cool um, the walrus calf is born
(05:18):
born no less than ninety nine pounds and up to
a hundred and sixty five pounds born. How much to
undred and sixty five pounds? And for our friends outside
of the United States, that's forty five born. Yes, so
(05:39):
a mother a cow, walrus cow. She's hoping for a
nd right for the ease of birth because they only
get up to like a hundred pounds. So they're like
all calf and they're all water bursts. Though no, there're
ice perths. Kind about that. Yeah, all right, we'll get it.
(06:01):
We're getting ahead of ourselves. I'm getting excited. All right,
we should go back to the beginning. Who invented walters?
Is they were invented by the guy who invented sea monkeys, uh,
which just dropped today. Yeah, that was a good one.
It was alright, So should we go to uh by beginning,
we just mean we're going to talk about walters is Well,
(06:24):
how about this, we could talk about where they came
from because um walrace has lived and they're very very
isolated and as they exist today, there's two species and
I guess they're really subspecies, but they can't mate and
they're geographically isolated, so they're they're technically two different species.
Can they not mate because they're not near each other
or their parts don't fit? Jennifer Horton, I don't know.
(06:47):
She just says that they're um reproductively isolated, which means
they can't, you know, so they can kiss. I don't exactly.
I don't know if that means that that, yeah, like
their parts don't fit or but she says they're they're
geographically isolated too, So why would you also say that
(07:08):
if you know they were one and the same. So
that's just injury, I guess, I guess so. But there
are two groups subspecies or species of walrus is the
Pacific walrus and the Atlantic walrus, and they're both related.
They think they diverged as recently as like half a
million years ago. It's like five thousand years ago. There
(07:30):
used to be a lot of different walrus species. Now
there's just the two um. But at some point they
all descended from and the same ancestor of red pandas.
So walruses are related to red pandas, just a little
back on the family tree. And they're even more related
to red Pandas than they would be to say, like manatees,
(07:51):
would you'd be like, well, manatees and walrus is the
same thing. Nope, not even remotely related. I thought you're
gonna say Wilford Brimley, he's one, or Friedrich Nietzsche. Oh,
does he have the walrus mustache? Yeah? Are yosemboite Sam? Yeah?
And that. Then there was the professional golfer Craig Stadler.
I don't remember him he uh, he's probably on the
(08:13):
senior tour now, but he was. His nickname was the Walrus. Well,
he would need to look out for Jack Nicholas, whose
nickname was the Golden Bear. Yeah. They didn't get along, so,
really did they not? No? No, that would be the
polar bear. Yeah, any I guess so the today, Chuck.
There are walrus is in the north of the Pacific
(08:36):
and the north of the Atlantic around basically the Arctic. Yes,
and there's the Pacific walruses, and then the Atlantic walruses. Yeah,
the Pacific. The differentiation here that the males are generally bigger,
between nine and twelve feet and roughly sevent undred pounds
and about four thousand at the top top end women
(08:59):
women females. The ladies are about seven and a half
feet to ten feet four hundred to twelve fifty for
the Pacific. The Atlantic males are a little smaller. They
top out around the low end of the Pacific and
about two thousand pounds, and the ladies are shorter and
a little heavier and about eight feet so about the
(09:21):
same length but a little a little heavier. Yeah, So
they're they're big. Man with jam is I mean eight
DRAMs for Pacific males. That is, that's those are big boys, um,
And they're all they're all members of the order Pinapedia,
so they're related to seals and sea lions and their
(09:42):
Latin name. Their scientific name is otto benice rose maris,
which means are you ready for this tooth walking sea horse.
That's great. And the name walrus too, by the way,
is a Danish word. Yeah, and of that order uh
pinapede ah. They're the second largest only to the elephant
(10:03):
seal um. And they're the only one that have those tusks,
those hallmark tusks of the walrus um on the male
jutting down while females happened two but on the male
jutting down from that big um yosemite sam mustache, part
of what makes them so cute. Yeah, So those tusks,
And I was looking up with the difference between a
(10:23):
tusk and a tooth is I think once it really
kind of protrudes from the mouth, it becomes a tusk.
But their tusks are just overgrown canines nine te um
that grow up to I think about a meter three
ft long. That's crazy long, it is, and they can
do all sorts of stuff with that, right. So, because
walruses are so isolated, they're so far north, so far
(10:45):
away from most humans, um, they have been little studied scientifically.
Although of the two groups, we know the most about
the Pacific walrus, but the stuff we do know has
been largely guesses like, only very recently did we figure
out that they don't use their tusks to eat, because
(11:07):
they eat like um, seashells, like mollusks and clams and
other bivalves. Right, And they used to think that the
walrus is either use their tusks to like route out
clams and mollusks off of the sea floor, or they
use them to pry open shells. While both of those
are wrong. It turns out they don't use their tusks
(11:29):
for much except to menace one another when they're trying
to establish dominance. Yeah, that's that's one of the things
they can do. But um, I think he used a
good word, their menace. They don't try and kill one
another with their tusks. Uh. They like to jab at
one another and established dominance as like, Hey, I'm I've
got bigger tusks, some larger than you. But they're not.
(11:52):
First of all, they're protected. They have this really thick
skin around their neck and shoulders, so they're they're protected
in a sense, and they're not getting to kill one
another either, right, but they do, I mean, they do
draw blood when they jab each other, so they have
their their their little technique is they lean their heads
back like so so that their tusks are parallel with
(12:14):
the earth, and then they go ninja strike right, and
they'll draw a little blood and they'll even like leave scars.
But like you said, their necks are so protected with blubber.
It's like it mainly is just to to make a point,
and the point typically is move from what I can understand. Yeah,
(12:34):
they also will use their tusks sometimes to break through
ice to breathe. And then this one cute, cute move
they're swimming around, they're tired, they might stick their head
through and hook their tusks onto the ice and just
hang there for a bit, Yeah, which is pretty great. Yeah,
they have these sacks, fairy geal sacks that allow them
(12:55):
to kind of buoy upright, keep their head upright above water.
But would guess that that gets tiring after a while
and eventually just let the old teeth do it, you know. Yeah,
And like I said, the ladies have them too, But
the males are longer and stronger, a little bit straighter. Uh,
and they can grow. I mean a wal risk can
live up to thirty years and the tusks may grow
(13:16):
for about half of that life. Yeah, I saw thirty.
I also saw forty somewhere that they can live up
to forty. All right, that's one of the things. I'm
not gonna make the noise, but anytime animals live a
long time with one another, um that that kind of
gets me. Yeah, and I found this very fascinating about
Wallace is Man. They are um, very social creatures. Like
(13:41):
they hang out together, they like swim around together. Um.
The boys rest together for you know, months at a
time or weeks at a time, sometimes during certain times
of the year. But they live um apart from one another,
males and females. They only come together to mate and
then they say, Okay, this has been really great. I'll
(14:03):
see you next year. Yeah, I'll see a camp next year.
It's very interesting. As far as the rest of their body, Um,
they're mostly dark brown. Although I don't want to give
it away, but they can change color depending on what
they're doing, which is kind of interesting. Uh. And you know,
this is one of the situations where they it's a
kind of a big, clunky creature on land, but once
(14:24):
you get them in the water, then they're just so graceful,
which is a really lovely thing to see. Yeah, and
when they walk on land, so they turn their flippers out.
Their front flippers they have two pair, right, so they
turn the front flippers out to their side and just
kind of use that for side to side stability. And
they put their back flippers underneath their pelvis and they
use that to kind of propel themselves forward. It's it's
(14:46):
very cute. Yeah. And because they're ance, they're flippers um
are have like rough bottoms like a shoe sole almost. Uh.
And then in the water, it's kind of a reverse
boat thing. They don't steer from the rear. They use
those front flippers for steering and obviously power themselves with
those super strong alternating backflippers. It's like one of those
(15:10):
ships the hides used to scal Oh yeah, remember, yeah,
that's right. So it's basically the walrus of the riverboats. Yeah,
and these guys can swim. They says they average about
four and a half miles an hour. I think that's
just when they're kind of cruising, but they can swim
as fast as twenty tour if I guess they're fleeing something.
(15:30):
Even though they don't really have many predators, No, they don't.
They basically have two, don't they? Well, including humans, they
have three, don't they? Okay, what are they? Oh? Okay, Well,
if you want to talk predators, they have polar bears,
as you said earlier, killer whales, and then humans. But
(15:51):
that's one of the reasons why they've been so successful.
And we'll talk about that, how successful and whether or
not they're thriving or stabler whatever spoiler they are right
after this. Huh, All right, Chuck, we're back. That's right.
(16:16):
And if you've ever have you ever seen did you
notice in any of the videos that a walrus up
close with like in their face what do you mean?
So their eyes in particular, they have like pug eyes,
you know, Pug's eyes look like they're about to pop
at any minute. Yeah, they always looked a little surprised. Yeah.
I didn't know this because there was a camera on
them all of a sudden. It could have been I
(16:38):
was looking up walrus intelligence because you know, there's a
lot of videos about walrus is where they're they're saying, like,
you know, whistle or speak or whatever. Because as we'll see,
walruses can make a lot of cool noises, and the
walruses do the different things. So they're obviously trainable, which
means that there's some level of intelligence. But I couldn't
find anything about like, oh yeah, these guys are as
(17:00):
intelligent as an octopus or a pig or something. Couldn't
find anything like that, but they are trainable. Has anyone
who's seen the screen classic fifty first Dates can tell you?
I don't think I saw that. That's a good one. Actually, yeah, yeah,
Sandler and Drew Barryman. Right, where does the walrus fin in?
He is like a marine biologists specializes that. I think
(17:25):
in Walrus is or something like that, because he's got
penguin friends too. But anyway, there's a trained walrus that
factors into it. I have to check that out. It's
actually a pretty cute movie. Hey you got me at
at Adam Sandler and Walrus. Okay, uh so these guys
and ladies are, like you said, all over the Arctic. Um,
(17:45):
if we're talking Pacific, we're talking to bearing. See the Chukchi,
which shout out to my friend Max Goldman. I just
saw on Facebook this morning. He had a great picture
of himself staring out at the icy Chucky. See, well,
my only Alaskan friend. It sounds really cool. Yeah, it
was really gorgeous. And I said something about, hey, I
(18:07):
was just reading about this, and of course he's on
Alaska time, so you probably woken up yet. He's like,
I can see Russia from my house. He might. Uh.
And then the laptop see in the Pacific uh. And
then along the coast of Canada on the Atlantic side
in Greenland is where you're gonna find the other guys.
And we're talking two hundred and fifty total walrus is
(18:30):
about two hundred thousand, of which are Pacific. Yeah, yeah,
two total, which doesn't sound like a lot. But again,
we'll get to it later. But but they're doing okay, Yeah,
they really seem to be, don't they. Yeah, we don't
want people to worry too much about the walrus. So
so back to the walrus. Is pug eyes, right, they
(18:50):
um kind of protrude and you'd think, wow, that walters
can see all over the place. It's doing a three
sixty with its eye right now. Um, not necessary. Early.
They're actually not the best at seeing, but they don't
need to be because there are other organs are more
evolved to kind of make up for it. They they
hunt and can smell out predators using their nose. I
(19:15):
think it is probably their primary sense from what I understand. Yeah,
in their ears they can hear. They have these two
little uh kind of flap ears basically openings with a
little protective flap, and uh, they can hear things like
perhaps pray up to a mile away. Yes, I was
looking for that. Did you Did you see that anywhere else? No,
(19:37):
it was one of those ones that raised a red
flag because I looked all over it was like seeing
just that that. Yeah, they can hear for up two
mile away. The closest thing I saw that proved that
was demonstrations by um Arctic natives who would make like
a walrus call, and like a walrus like a mile
away would respond to it. They said hey wa us
(20:01):
and the war was looked around. Said you're talking to me, yes, sir.
How they talk Yeah, like Southern gentlemen. They have that
high cotton accent. I don't even know what that means.
That's a Southern thing, like, um, well, there's a bar
in Charleston called High Cotton, so I was thinking of. Yeah.
(20:21):
So their noses, though, is where that's their money maker. Um,
they have it's very sensitive. Um. Like you said, they
used to think that they use their tusks or I
don't know if you said it, but they used to
think they these are tusks to grind into the sea
floor dig things up. But that is not the case.
They are blowing out of their nose to clear away
(20:42):
stuff and stir up things to eat. And those whiskers
those uh what do you say called those vieber say
viber say, four hundred and seven hundred of those in
fifteen rows. Not only do they look cute and like
a big walrus mustache, but are super sensitive. Yeah, so
that's like their cactile sense. Then these little whiskers, the
(21:05):
sensitive whiskers, and they use those. So they shoot water
out of their nose into the bottom of the sea
and it stirs up some stuff. The clams are like
stop stop, and they start to float up, and the
walrus is since the clams with their their whiskers their
vibers say, or whatever you call them, and then things
(21:26):
get even weirder, right because remember they don't use their
tusks to open the clams. They don't use their tusks
to burrow. Their tusks actually appear to kind of get
in the way if anything as far as feeding is concerned,
what they do is they they are they have a
very high cavity in their mouth and they can pump
(21:46):
their tongue back and forth like a piston. So they
actually produce of a form of suction so strong it
sucks a clam right out of the shell. The clam
as as they can't say anything, that poor clam, they're
just hanging out down there. Before you know it, they
get snotted, snotted on and sucked out, and a lot
(22:09):
of them too. It's a very undignified ending for the clam. Yeah,
it says in here, and I didn't find back up
for this, but I believe it is that that suction
is so powerful. They've been known to suck holes in
plywood and I saw that. Yeah, I saw that elsewhere too,
that they they've had like five pound plugs in some
of their aquatic um like habitats. They've sucked out of
the flower that's crazy, also known as the floor the flower. Yeah, yeah,
(22:33):
so they do have things your hot cotton exit out
of the floor. So they do have like that, some
amazing suction going on, and they don't even chew. They
have these amazing like three ft teeth. They don't even
chew with any of them. They just eat a clam hole.
And I think, did you say three thousand to six
thousand of them? Indicating no, I said a whole lot,
(22:55):
that's a lot. Yeah. They said that they can eat
um between four and six percent of their body weight
each day. So let's just say an average three thousand
pound walrus eating about five that's a hundred and fifty
pounds a day of not just clams um. They're not
super picky anything down there, seaworms, snails, crabs, uh, they'll
(23:18):
eat all that stuff. But I get the feeling that
they really love those clams. Yeah, they like the claims
of the moment, as they should. But think about that.
If there's two hundred and fifty thousand walruses in the world,
all basically up in the Arctic, and each one is
eating something like three thousand to six thousand claims a day,
how have clams not taken over the world by now? Yeah,
(23:39):
it's crazy. It's um that. You know. The comedian Nate Bargatti, Yes,
he has that funny joke about a million sharks a
year killed and he was just like, I didn't know
there's ever been a million sharks in the history of
the world. Like, He's like that just sounds like a
lot of sharks, except Nate does it great because his
delivery is that of a professional comedian in that high
(24:02):
cotton next and not me. Well he's from Tennessee. There
you go. Uh, so they're eating cheese. I mean, I
can't even do the math. Two fifty thousand times four thousand.
Uh they're equals um a ton and we're still able
to dip our Christini and clam juice at an Italian dinner.
Do you like clams? I'm more of an oyster guy.
(24:25):
I like them both. I like to be turned on
by my food. You know. Well, I mean I definitely
love oysters, and we'll never not order them if it's
at a place with a good chance of having good ones.
But I'll dip into a clam shell. Well, you put
clams in your bloody Mary mix? Oh yeah, clamato, Sure
(24:48):
that's clam juice. Yeah, oh man, I could kick it
up a notch if I put a couple of clams
in there. Yeah, not in the shell, but just like
pick the meat out. Well, yeah, live have them like
living there for a little while. East of that vodka.
They do live up by Russia. I bet there's been
more than one beach bar called the Drunken Clam. There's
got me in there, like I think that's the that's
(25:12):
the bar and the family guy. Oh is it? I'm
pretty sure. Oh, we're gonna find out if it's not.
I don't know, man, I feel like we've gone a
little off the rails. Did we take a break or
can we pull it back without it? Uh? Well, quickly,
let's talk about the third potential breed um. There is
another subspecies that is not officially a subspecies Um that
(25:36):
lives in the Laptev Sa near Siberia, called the Laptev walrus,
and apparently their skull and body size is pretty similar
to the Atlantic and the Pacific um. And I'm not
sure why it wants its own distinction, but they haven't
been recognized as such. Yeah, I mean there must be
different enough in some way. Yeah, I saw. Some people
(25:59):
see them is a different species. Other people just do not.
I'm not sure what the deal is. Maybe they're isolated themselves.
I don't know. I don't know either. Now you want
to take a break, Okay, all right, So one of
(26:25):
the other things that I love insert whatever sound effect
is in your head, listener. Uh, is that they are
very and this is the same deal with the elephant.
In any creature that's very sensitive and caring to one another. Uh,
they will watch over their injured friends. Um. If one
of them dies, they will push them off the ice
(26:47):
if hunters are nearby so they can't get them. Um,
the ladies, well this is so sad, but the ladies
will carry their dead young away from hunters. And if
they sense that they're dudes nearby, these hunter men nearby, Um,
they can hack away at ice to break it away
(27:07):
and free uh, like a calf that might be stuck
or something. Yeah, they could really take care of each other.
It's been documented. Yeah, it's pretty cool. They're very sensitive creatures.
It turns out, so, Um, I don't think we could
talk about walrus is if we didn't talk about blubber, right, Yes,
so you said that, Um, it's pretty thick. I think
(27:30):
that's an understatement, Chuck. The the blubber layer on a
walrus is something like about almost four inches ten centimeters thick,
and during the winter, when they're at their blubberyest, it's
about a third of their body weight, So they might
have like a thousand pounds of fat in in their
body at any given point in time, which is is
(27:51):
pretty you gotta tip your hat to that. Well. Yeah,
and this you know, of course, this is an adaptation
to deal with the temperatures where they live. Keeps them warm.
Apparently they lose heat twenty seven times faster and water,
and they are in water, what is it, like two
thirds of their life or something like that. Yeah, so
they have this remarkable blubber to keep that body temperature
(28:14):
at about ninety eight degrees ninety seven point nine degrees
pretty consistently. Right, So you were saying, you were alluding
earlier to how they can change color. Here's how you're ready. Yes,
when they're in the water for a while or when
they're exposed to really really cold temperatures, their um their
their body pumps blood away from their skin and sends
(28:37):
it to their core to keep their internal organs warm
because the skin doesn't need to be as warm as say,
the internal organs is survival mechanism, right, And then once
they start to warm up, and when that happens, they
turn kind of white, like like a white worm, kind
of thing going on. Did you ever see that movie
The Layer of the White Worm. No, but that sounds familiar.
(28:59):
It was an early Hugh Grant movie where like there's
this group in uh in England that like worship this
white worm that comes out like every century or something
like that. It's like a weird English horror movie that
is also kind of funny in some ways. It's a
good one. But anyway, that's what a walrus looks like
when it's really really cool, like you Grant, Yeah, but white,
(29:23):
super white. He's about as white as it gets. These
guys get even whiter because they're very, very cold, that's right.
And then once they get back to like where the
sun is shining, or maybe back on the ice where
it's ironically slightly warmer um, their color can come back
there they're still brown that they can get a little
bit more of a pinky look to them. They can
(29:46):
with that blubber. They can handle water that's like down
to negative four degrees ferret height. It's just something like
negative twenty celsius. And they I mean, like you said,
they spend two thirds of their life and water this cold.
They live in the Arctic, so they're pretty well suited
for it. Well, negative four is the low end. It
can go all the way down to negative fifty nine.
That's nuttie. Uh. And they do have little hairs, uh
(30:10):
that they shed in the summer. But it's pretty much
everyone is in agreement that it doesn't really do much
to keep them warm. It's left over from when they
were bears. That's my theory. It probably is. Yeah. Uh,
so they have another cool adaptation. Um, they can go
a long time without oxygen. And this is all has
(30:30):
to do with how they circulate oxygen and their blood.
So uh, when they dive, they actually slow their heart
rate down and then that blood again goes to those
organs because they need oxygen and warmth. And uh. They
also have a special protein in their blood called myoglobin
that binds with the oxygen and then actually stores it
(30:52):
in the muscles. Right, so they have plenty of oxygen
whenever they're they're diving. How how deep do they dive?
I can't remember it said they feed I think from
between like thirty something and a hundred ft, but they
they prefer a little shallower because one of the worries
with global warming is the sea ice is retreating and
(31:14):
going away so they're having to go further and further
north to get to the sea ice, which means that
the waters are deeper. So they're having to learn how
to how to dive deeper to feed and um, you know,
there's just one of the effects of global warming is
sometimes the moms will get separated from their calves because
(31:34):
it's such a long journey and they don't know, like
are they going to be able to adapt and learn
to dive that deep to hunt for food? Right, And
and it's yeah, it's not just um where they where
they hunt for food from, like these are it's kind
of like their little base, right, So when when they're
on ice or an ice flow, they'll dive for food,
they'll come back up, they'll rest. That's where they sleep. Um,
(31:55):
that's where moms and their calves rest. Sometimes they nurse there.
It's where um cows give birth to calves. There's like
ice plays a very very important role in the walrus
is life, so much so that in the Pacific walrus,
the females basically just follow the edge of the ice
north in the summer and then come back down south
(32:16):
in the winter. Is the ice kind of like ebbs
and flows right towards the north pole um and and
as it doesn't retreat as far down. It's just it's
messing with the program a little bit, Like you said,
not just with food, but also with just typical regular behavior. Yeah,
I've been in a lot of these cases too. There's
got to be just some like confusion, you know. Yeah,
(32:40):
Like if you're for however many millions of years, you've
been used to the same thing, and if all of
a sudden you're like, wait a minute, like where are
we going now, They're like, I'm just a walrus. Your
your world frightens and confuses me. What happened to the accent? Uh? That? Well,
this is a different wal risk, This is ted the walrus.
(33:02):
Also that pharyngeal muscle that you were talking about, which
can they can puff up to kind of buy them.
They also will puff that up to close off water
from entering their lungs when they dive. Let's talk about
those pharyngeal sacks, because there they are pretty amazing. There's
a lot of stuff they can do with those. First
of all, walruses make some of the coolest sounds of
(33:25):
any animal I've ever heard. There's a clip on YouTube
just type in walrus sounds, and there's one that comes up,
and it's just a static picture of a big, old,
gigantic walrus. Um, what do they call them? Are they
called bowls? Well, they call them cows and calves, that probably,
but I didn't see bulls anywhere. A dude walrus, right,
(33:46):
just a big boy and um, it's about two and
a half minutes of just the best walrus sounds. And
it's actually in a really weird way, kind of soothing,
like you can have it on in the background. I
noticed I retained twelve percent more information while it was playing,
and I did when I wasn't listening to her, Right,
it just made that statistic upture. But you get the point.
(34:06):
And well, can we play some of it? Yeah? Can
we do that? Sure we can't. Jerry's nodding and she
rolled her eyes. Well, here's like seconds is some some
good walrus sounds? Halla, so ten twenty seconds? Who knows
(34:37):
what it be? Well, we can only use ten because
of the rights issues. Okay, get sued by the Walrus Association,
right exactly, I'm ted walrus and I've had enough of
this getting pushed around. So um, the way that the
walrus are one of the ways the walrus makes so
many different times. It's because these faaryngeal sacks that they
(34:58):
used to buoy themselves with, they use it also as
an amplifier, and they make all these sounds when they're
mating with women. That's right. So you remember how the
females in the Pacific go north in the summer and
then come back in the winter. On their way back,
they meet up with the guys who generally stay south
in the Bearing Sea the whole whole year. Um, And
(35:21):
that's just s Pacific the Atlantic ones. They put year around,
both males and females. But as the Pacific females are
coming back mating season as time perfectly with that, and
they will sit in groups of about twenty or twenty
three on a big chunk of ice and say, dudes,
let's see what you got. And then the little Gilligan's
(35:41):
Island Talent show starts and they literally line up out
there give each other a little space. They fight for
that prime spot. Yeah, they'll tusk. Yeah, that's when they
get a little aggressive. And the poor always feel bad
for the guys like in the back row or whatever
like it. He's got to really ramp up his vocalization.
I us and he's like my tusk broke. But he's
(36:03):
probably got a lady out there who likes that. But
they do they they kind of perform for them. They
do a little routine and the ladies are like, you, um,
sexually mature man, who I think, Uh, they reached. The
male reaches sexual maturity about eight to ten, females five
(36:24):
to six. But this is adorable. They still don't hug
and kiss until a few years after, just because they just,
I don't know, they want to do it the right way.
I think that um, that we don't have to take
our clothes off. Song is one of the Walrus's favorite
songs of all time. They're really big into promise rings,
but friendship bracelets first. Uh. So the female has a
(36:47):
gestation period about fifteen months, so this is a big deal. Um,
you know, they're they're pregnant for a long time, so
they want to hook up with the right dude, uh
to get them pregnant. Depending on it falls, depending on
when it falls in the cycle. They may even sit
that out if they're pregnant, you know, like they may
take a year off. Yeah, they're like, I'm good I'm covered,
(37:12):
but that is it's a thing like if if a
if a cow is pregnant come next mating season, like
you said, she's gonna kind of hang off to the
side and wait for her friends to be done so
they can keep going south. Um, but that actually is
going to have an impact on her calf because she's
gonna spend more time raising it and nursing it. Yeah,
(37:34):
which is really great. Like if if that happens in
the timing works out, they can they can be with
their young for up to a couple of years. Yeah,
so I think like a male calf, So remember males
and females they separate. They only come together during mating season.
And then if you're a male calf that's born, you're
(37:54):
hanging out with your mom for a year or two years,
depending on the timing of her pregnancy. And then you
go off with the mail hurt and say what up, boys,
I'm here, it's party, and they said get at the
back of the line. Yeah, I saw that. It's just
sounds so adorable that very young um walrus calves boys
(38:16):
will practice that tusking thing even before their tusks are
grown out. So they mess around with each other like
I'm gonna I'm gonna tusk you when my tests come in. Look,
i'd love to see that. It's like little goats before
they get their horns. Yeah, they can do the same
thing when they just have those little nubs. They just
walk around with headaches all the time. I have goats
to live across the street from me. I don't think
(38:37):
I've told you that Satanic goats are cute goats, no
cutest good Christian goats. Yeah, uh yeah, they're great. They
I'm not sure what the pat My neighbor across the
street had like seven or eight of them last year
and they went away for the winner. And now she
has a new batch. And she's jim No, no, no,
she's Jamaican. And I think what someone said in the
(38:57):
neighborhood is that she's keeps his oats around and then
raises them and then has them shipped to Jamaica as
like a charitable thing. What you're right where they're eating.
I don't know what they're eating. I'm pretty sure. I'm
not sure. But this is a new batch of goats.
And of course, you know, my kid loves it. Yeah,
(39:18):
I love goats too, Little baby goats, baby lambs. I saw, Um,
you mean, I watched this documentary called The Secret Life
of Dogs. Have you seen it? It's from two thousand thirteen.
I think BBC originally made it. If you get a
membership with Curiosity, a subscription on Curiosity on Amazon Prime.
(39:40):
It's on there. That's the only place I've found it.
I think, is it a sub thing I have to
join because I'm already on the Prime. Yes, it is.
It's an extra subscription, but it's like a seven day
trial or something like that. Really curious. You will pay
for it, right, so they they have the secret Just
check it out. Check You're going to love it. Um.
It's just a really well made documentary. But in part
(40:03):
of it, there's this this herding dog, some sort of
shepherd um that bottle feeds a baby lamb holding a
bottle in her mouth. This little lamb is nursing off
of the bottle. It's one of the most adorable things
you'll ever see in your entire life. Well, I think
we've agreed in the past that inter animal mingling and
(40:23):
coupling and friendship is the best thing in the world.
Maybe not coupling, but the rest of it. Well, I
don't mean like, I just mean in a friendly way.
Do you one of the other I love? There's just
one more thing about this. The the woman who owns
the dog, or who I should say is best friends
with this dog, said, I didn't teach her this. She
picked this up herself. Yeah, and I just dropped the mic.
(40:45):
As you can see, I probably watched twenty five minutes
the other day of um of baby pigs playing with puppies.
Oh that's adorable. It's it's pretty great man. Okay, So
so back to the wall, Yeah, back to reproduction. UM,
this is kind of really cool. Actually, for the first
(41:06):
up to five months of gestation, the eggs aren't even
in planting yet, so they just float around in the
uterus for up to five months and then eventually will
implant on the uterine wall. And they think this is
all done on purpose so that the calf is born
at the right time in the best environment possible. Yeah.
(41:27):
I just I thought that was a weird adaptation, like
why not just have a shorter gestation time? But I
guess they got figured out. I'm not gonna I'm not
gonna pry so the so again, it's fifteen months gest
station period, and the calves are born usually on ice,
which again melting ice is a problem for him um.
And then they stick around for a year or two,
(41:48):
go off to the male herd, and then you've got
the males and the females, and the females migrate in
the Pacific. The males generally stay around the same area,
which means that they moved to land when the ice recedes.
And there's actually this island in Alaska called Round Island
that's very famous for being a walrus summering area where
(42:12):
for a couple of a couple of weeks I think,
every summer, and for reasons no one knows, the walters
males all just come to this one island and they'll
be like twelve thousand of them just on top of
one another, hanging out, um, just basically being social, having
a having a boy's week. That's great. And it's so
(42:33):
like dense with walrus. Is it's wall the wall walrus.
You can't see the sand or not the sand? But
is there sand or is it just ice? It is
sand or no, it's I'm sorry, it's if I read
that it's rocky, I haven't actually seen it myself, but
you can't. You can't see anything beneath the waters. Is
it's just walters flesh and blubber. Yeah, there's this one,
(42:53):
uh if you ever drive it the coast of California.
I'm gonna butcher this because I don't remember what the
animal was. If it's a uh, a manatee, it's probably
not a manatee. I think it's Sea lions of its
seas to California. Yeah, but there's something near the the house,
the Hurst Castle. There's a beach that Emily and I
(43:15):
drove by that was wall the wall, I guess at
Sea Lions when we went, and it's got to be
a certain time of year, maybe time of day. I
have no idea, but we didn't even know. We just
sort of looked upon it and saw a bunch of
cars pulled over with mouths agape, and sure enough, the
whole thing and the sound was amazing. It was just
a bunch of But imagine one thing going and then
(43:38):
imagine a thousand things doing that, like the sweat hogs.
Mr Kat very nice on cue. Thank you all right, Chuck.
So what we said, um, there's three basically three predators
for the walrus, the polar bear, which, by the way,
I saw that a walrus can fend off a polar
(44:00):
air with its tusks one on one. The way that
polar bears hunt walruses is they cause a stampede and
walruss try to get away from the polar bear and
they will trample some a few unfortunate walruses, and the
polar bear comes up and says, hey, thanks for the
free meal. That's how they hunt walruses. The same thing
(44:20):
happens when humans get too close, say like in a
low flying plane or um just basically spook the walruses.
But they are hunted um but very very very narrowly
by a very small group of people. UM that in
Upiak and the u Pick natives of the Arctic area.
(44:41):
UM in the US, Canada and Russia are basically the
only human beings allowed to hunt a walrus. And the
reason why is because it's part of their um cultural
tradition to hunt walruses. And when they were forced to
stop for about thirty years from the sixties to the nineties,
their culture really started to suffer a decline as a result. Yeah,
(45:01):
and you know that they are protected as such. Now.
Over the years there have been. Um. I mean they've
been hunting walrus, as it says here since the ninth century.
These are oil the ivory of course for art their skin. Uh.
And for many years that you know, they were being
depleted because of the oil mainly that they would use
for you know, soap or lamps or it says here
(45:21):
even machine lubricant. But we have gotten on board with
protecting them along with like you said, Canada and Russia,
and uh, they're they're doing pretty good now. Yeah, apparently
the population is stable. They're they're um listed as vulnerable.
I didn't see why, um, because they are almost universally
protected by Arctic nations. Um, so there's not a ton
(45:44):
of poaching a little bit, but it's not like poaching
in Africa, right for their ivory typically right. So I
think for the reason why it might be climate change,
then that would be the only thing I can see
because they're pretty well protected, um reproductive, they're doing top
notch ah and that's it. I wonder if when a
(46:05):
polar bears eating a walrus, if they get in there
and they're like, hey, Phil, he's got like two thousand
clams in them too. Both ponents H and I've read
actually that their um, their meat is like hard, kind
of tough, but it's also very lean and supposedly very
(46:27):
tasty as well. Really. Yeah, And one of the things
that Upak and the U Picks are known for is
using of the walrus, is that they kill. Yeah. I
think a lot of times, almost all the time, with
indigenous people's they understand the value of a creature in
respect that animal, and part of that respect is I'm
(46:49):
just gonna take these tusks and kick it back in
the water. It's using everything from uh, it's the stomach
for a drum to the skin to cover your boat,
the raincoats. Apparently they used to use their um what
was it, the intestines for raincoats. Yeah, it's pretty pretty sharp.
(47:10):
And apparently these villages too were um they were early environmentalists.
The would set their own standards for hunting because they
knew the value of making sure they thrived. Yeah. I've
read this really interesting article, I think on a site
called like Cultural Survival or something, and it detailed how
the the I think, the U Picks and the US
(47:32):
government in Alaska, over like thirty years, came to an
agreement finally about hunting on Round Island. Um, but it
was pretty interesting. I was like, wow, that government really
has taken this seriously. This protection they they just wouldn't
give at all on any of it. And then finally
the U picks were like, we have to do this
(47:54):
culturally like this, this is not just us being Yahoo's
doing this for fun, like we have to do this.
We're losing like this cultural tradition. So they came to
an understanding that apparently is doing quite well. Nice just
like the Walrus is right. If you want to know
more about walruses, check out walrus is on how stuff
(48:14):
works dot com. There's a good article on there. And
since I say how stuff works, is time for listener mail?
All right, I'm gonna call this wonderful email from an
eleven year old kid. We always love these. Hey, Josh
and Chuck, I love listening to your podcast and it
brings me great joy every day. I'm eleven years old,
(48:34):
and I think your podcast is awesome for all ages
and is very informative. I'm learning so many new things.
My mom is even surprised. I just wanted to let
you guys know how happy you make me and how
much fun I have listening to you, man. Nice, isn't
that nice? I tell people all kinds of things they
never know, and they're like, wow, how did you know that?
(48:56):
And I say, I listen to how stuff works? Uh,
thanks for your time, and stay awesome. That is Lucas, Lucas.
You stay awesome. You stay awesome, and you start saying
stuff you should know instead of how stuff works. But
that's okay, it's close. It's close. The people might eventually
find us if he steers them the how stuff works.
(49:16):
That's right. We appreciate it, Lucas. And you're uh, if
you're listening to us at eleven, then you are on
the right track, my friend. And stay cool because remember
we lose him around high school. Yeah, don't get lost
around high school, Lucas, because we'll still be here making
episodes Where will you be Yea and secret. We are cool, yeah,
no matter what your high school friends tell you. Correct
(49:37):
In the meantime, we're glad you're listening to us, and
we appreciate the listener mail. If you want to send
us the listener mail, we appreciate. We would love to
hear it. You can tweak to us at s y
s K podcast or at josh oam Clark. You can
hang out with us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
(49:58):
stuff Works dot com, and, as always, joint us out
our home on the web, stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff Works dot com m
Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm MC Josh,
Josh Clark. There's ch ch Chuck Bryant, and then Jerry's
the DJ on the wheels and steel of Stuff you
(00:24):
Should Know the podcast. And that has nothing to do
with what we're talking about today. What, No, it doesn't.
I couldn't even faint surprise. I know it has nothing
to do with it. I was just being silly. You
like it? I love it. Silly Josh is one of
my top five favorite Josh is is it? I thought so.
(00:48):
I guess you're feeling pretty good today, Jerry, you are too, Yeah,
she says, yeah everybody. Um, well, the reason we're feeling
good is because there are a fewer just simple pleasures
in life then researching and talking about animals. Agreed. It's
one of my favorite s Y s K episode categories
as animal ones. Yeah, and it sort of don I
(01:11):
picked this one out and it sort of dawned on me.
It had been a minute, and um. Sometimes these are
some of our lighter lifts because we have some really
great house to works articles on animals and insects, so
it doesn't require like, you know, another twenty hours of
research on stuff. Uh, and we needed a lighter lift
this week. And I was like, hey, it's been a while.
(01:33):
I was perusing I saw walrus Is and they're so
darn cute and been lovable. I thought, all right, well
we got to get in there on this. Yeah. Plus
is a Jennifer Horton joint. And remember she used to
be like the in house animal writer. Oh was it? Yeah?
She she doesn't remember. Yeah, what would happen to her?
I don't know, but she left behind a legacy that
(01:56):
includes an article on walrus Is. Yeah. And I will
go and say up front, this is now in the
running for me with a little competition between the octopus
and the jellyfish. Okay, well then this is what we're
gonna do. You're gonna go, um, but that's all I
(02:16):
can think of when um, when a fact comes up
that you're like, this is one of the reasons why
they're in competition. Okay, okay, all right. Oh and before
we get started. Also before we get started, sorry, um,
I wanted to give a big shout out to our
pals at The Daily Zeitgeist, one of our sister podcasts.
They had me on yesterday. I know, I haven't listened
(02:38):
to it yet. How was it? It was pretty great?
Like they make it really easy on you. Um, They're like, here,
read all these articles that were potentially going to talk
about and study them for five hours, just like you
do stuff you should know, and then we're not going
to talk about any of those not a single article
that I researched. Dude, we talk about. But I've managed
(03:00):
to keep up anyway. That's how easy those guys make it.
So thank you to Jack and Miles and Anna for
for having me. And I guess when you're hearing this
by yesterday, I mean March five, So go back and
listen to the March fifth episode of Daily's Like Guys,
and then listen to all the episodes of Daily's Like Guys. Yeah,
I saw that they had a cutout, cardboard cutout of
you sitting in a chair, which is kind of funny. Yeah,
(03:20):
it is funny. But then I'm like, well, what are
you guys doing with a cardboard cut out of me?
Probably made it right, I guess, but I didn't. That's
they got a big budget. Then we don't have a
budget for cardboard cutouts. No, But I'm glad you gave
me the inside skinny because I'm gonna be on at
some point. And now I'm gonna say, hey, don't don't
do that crap you did with Josh. I'm not reading
(03:43):
a bunch of stuff unless we're doing it. Yeah, no, no,
just show up to show up relaxed and prepared to talk,
and you will be great. Uh So, the other thing
I had to say of the two things running in
for my favorite animal and another movie prediction from apparently
on the Great Movie Predictor or just Life predictor, uh, Pixar,
(04:09):
get on it, because if you don't do a lovable
story about a family of walrus is at some point,
then someone else is gonna beat you to the punch,
maybe us, and it's gonna be great because there's nothing cuter.
Just look up on your on your favorite image search
walrus calf and mother or just walrus calf and get
(04:31):
ready to be outcuted by most other animals. Like they're
so cute they can make you forget that you're watching
them live in captivity. That's how cute those things that
some of these are photographed in the wild. Yeah, the
videos that I've seen of calves are mostly the one
that was born at Sea World. It was like the
first walrus born in captivity. I think, if I'm not mistaken,
(04:53):
he is just as cute as the day is long.
But not small. I mean like it's it's like our size. Yeah,
they're not small. No, So like, apparently here's a fact
for you. I'm gonna give you. I'm gonna give you
the chance to do your heraldry. I'm not gonna make
any sounds alright, cool um, the walrus calf is born
(05:18):
born no less than ninety nine pounds and up to
a hundred and sixty five pounds born. How much to
undred and sixty five pounds? And for our friends outside
of the United States, that's forty five born. Yes, so
(05:39):
a mother a cow, walrus cow. She's hoping for a
nd right for the ease of birth because they only
get up to like a hundred pounds. So they're like
all calf and they're all water bursts. Though no, there're
ice perths. Kind about that. Yeah, all right, we'll get it.
(06:01):
We're getting ahead of ourselves. I'm getting excited. All right,
we should go back to the beginning. Who invented walters?
Is they were invented by the guy who invented sea monkeys, uh,
which just dropped today. Yeah, that was a good one.
It was alright, So should we go to uh by beginning,
we just mean we're going to talk about walters is Well,
(06:24):
how about this, we could talk about where they came
from because um walrace has lived and they're very very
isolated and as they exist today, there's two species and
I guess they're really subspecies, but they can't mate and
they're geographically isolated, so they're they're technically two different species.
Can they not mate because they're not near each other
or their parts don't fit? Jennifer Horton, I don't know.
(06:47):
She just says that they're um reproductively isolated, which means
they can't, you know, so they can kiss. I don't exactly.
I don't know if that means that that, yeah, like
their parts don't fit or but she says they're they're
geographically isolated too, So why would you also say that
(07:08):
if you know they were one and the same. So
that's just injury, I guess, I guess so. But there
are two groups subspecies or species of walrus is the
Pacific walrus and the Atlantic walrus, and they're both related.
They think they diverged as recently as like half a
million years ago. It's like five thousand years ago. There
(07:30):
used to be a lot of different walrus species. Now
there's just the two um. But at some point they
all descended from and the same ancestor of red pandas.
So walruses are related to red pandas, just a little
back on the family tree. And they're even more related
to red Pandas than they would be to say, like manatees,
(07:51):
would you'd be like, well, manatees and walrus is the
same thing. Nope, not even remotely related. I thought you're
gonna say Wilford Brimley, he's one, or Friedrich Nietzsche. Oh,
does he have the walrus mustache? Yeah? Are yosemboite Sam? Yeah?
And that. Then there was the professional golfer Craig Stadler.
I don't remember him he uh, he's probably on the
(08:13):
senior tour now, but he was. His nickname was the Walrus. Well,
he would need to look out for Jack Nicholas, whose
nickname was the Golden Bear. Yeah. They didn't get along, so,
really did they not? No? No, that would be the
polar bear. Yeah, any I guess so the today, Chuck.
There are walrus is in the north of the Pacific
(08:36):
and the north of the Atlantic around basically the Arctic. Yes,
and there's the Pacific walruses, and then the Atlantic walruses. Yeah,
the Pacific. The differentiation here that the males are generally bigger,
between nine and twelve feet and roughly sevent undred pounds
and about four thousand at the top top end women
(08:59):
women females. The ladies are about seven and a half
feet to ten feet four hundred to twelve fifty for
the Pacific. The Atlantic males are a little smaller. They
top out around the low end of the Pacific and
about two thousand pounds, and the ladies are shorter and
a little heavier and about eight feet so about the
(09:21):
same length but a little a little heavier. Yeah, So
they're they're big. Man with jam is I mean eight
DRAMs for Pacific males. That is, that's those are big boys, um,
And they're all they're all members of the order Pinapedia,
so they're related to seals and sea lions and their
(09:42):
Latin name. Their scientific name is otto benice rose maris,
which means are you ready for this tooth walking sea horse.
That's great. And the name walrus too, by the way,
is a Danish word. Yeah, and of that order uh
pinapede ah. They're the second largest only to the elephant
(10:03):
seal um. And they're the only one that have those tusks,
those hallmark tusks of the walrus um on the male
jutting down while females happened two but on the male
jutting down from that big um yosemite sam mustache, part
of what makes them so cute. Yeah, So those tusks,
And I was looking up with the difference between a
(10:23):
tusk and a tooth is I think once it really
kind of protrudes from the mouth, it becomes a tusk.
But their tusks are just overgrown canines nine te um
that grow up to I think about a meter three
ft long. That's crazy long, it is, and they can
do all sorts of stuff with that, right. So, because
walruses are so isolated, they're so far north, so far
(10:45):
away from most humans, um, they have been little studied scientifically.
Although of the two groups, we know the most about
the Pacific walrus, but the stuff we do know has
been largely guesses like, only very recently did we figure
out that they don't use their tusks to eat, because
(11:07):
they eat like um, seashells, like mollusks and clams and
other bivalves. Right, And they used to think that the
walrus is either use their tusks to like route out
clams and mollusks off of the sea floor, or they
use them to pry open shells. While both of those
are wrong. It turns out they don't use their tusks
(11:29):
for much except to menace one another when they're trying
to establish dominance. Yeah, that's that's one of the things
they can do. But um, I think he used a
good word, their menace. They don't try and kill one
another with their tusks. Uh. They like to jab at
one another and established dominance as like, Hey, I'm I've
got bigger tusks, some larger than you. But they're not.
(11:52):
First of all, they're protected. They have this really thick
skin around their neck and shoulders, so they're they're protected
in a sense, and they're not getting to kill one
another either, right, but they do, I mean, they do
draw blood when they jab each other, so they have
their their their little technique is they lean their heads
back like so so that their tusks are parallel with
(12:14):
the earth, and then they go ninja strike right, and
they'll draw a little blood and they'll even like leave scars.
But like you said, their necks are so protected with blubber.
It's like it mainly is just to to make a point,
and the point typically is move from what I can understand. Yeah,
(12:34):
they also will use their tusks sometimes to break through
ice to breathe. And then this one cute, cute move
they're swimming around, they're tired, they might stick their head
through and hook their tusks onto the ice and just
hang there for a bit, Yeah, which is pretty great. Yeah,
they have these sacks, fairy geal sacks that allow them
(12:55):
to kind of buoy upright, keep their head upright above water.
But would guess that that gets tiring after a while
and eventually just let the old teeth do it, you know. Yeah,
And like I said, the ladies have them too, But
the males are longer and stronger, a little bit straighter. Uh,
and they can grow. I mean a wal risk can
live up to thirty years and the tusks may grow
(13:16):
for about half of that life. Yeah, I saw thirty.
I also saw forty somewhere that they can live up
to forty. All right, that's one of the things. I'm
not gonna make the noise, but anytime animals live a
long time with one another, um that that kind of
gets me. Yeah, and I found this very fascinating about
Wallace is Man. They are um, very social creatures. Like
(13:41):
they hang out together, they like swim around together. Um.
The boys rest together for you know, months at a
time or weeks at a time, sometimes during certain times
of the year. But they live um apart from one another,
males and females. They only come together to mate and
then they say, Okay, this has been really great. I'll
(14:03):
see you next year. Yeah, I'll see a camp next year.
It's very interesting. As far as the rest of their body, Um,
they're mostly dark brown. Although I don't want to give
it away, but they can change color depending on what
they're doing, which is kind of interesting. Uh. And you know,
this is one of the situations where they it's a
kind of a big, clunky creature on land, but once
(14:24):
you get them in the water, then they're just so graceful,
which is a really lovely thing to see. Yeah, and
when they walk on land, so they turn their flippers out.
Their front flippers they have two pair, right, so they
turn the front flippers out to their side and just
kind of use that for side to side stability. And
they put their back flippers underneath their pelvis and they
use that to kind of propel themselves forward. It's it's
(14:46):
very cute. Yeah. And because they're ance, they're flippers um
are have like rough bottoms like a shoe sole almost. Uh.
And then in the water, it's kind of a reverse
boat thing. They don't steer from the rear. They use
those front flippers for steering and obviously power themselves with
those super strong alternating backflippers. It's like one of those
(15:10):
ships the hides used to scal Oh yeah, remember, yeah,
that's right. So it's basically the walrus of the riverboats. Yeah,
and these guys can swim. They says they average about
four and a half miles an hour. I think that's
just when they're kind of cruising, but they can swim
as fast as twenty tour if I guess they're fleeing something.
(15:30):
Even though they don't really have many predators, No, they don't.
They basically have two, don't they? Well, including humans, they
have three, don't they? Okay, what are they? Oh? Okay, Well,
if you want to talk predators, they have polar bears,
as you said earlier, killer whales, and then humans. But
(15:51):
that's one of the reasons why they've been so successful.
And we'll talk about that, how successful and whether or
not they're thriving or stabler whatever spoiler they are right
after this. Huh, All right, Chuck, we're back. That's right.
(16:16):
And if you've ever have you ever seen did you
notice in any of the videos that a walrus up
close with like in their face what do you mean?
So their eyes in particular, they have like pug eyes,
you know, Pug's eyes look like they're about to pop
at any minute. Yeah, they always looked a little surprised. Yeah.
I didn't know this because there was a camera on
them all of a sudden. It could have been I
(16:38):
was looking up walrus intelligence because you know, there's a
lot of videos about walrus is where they're they're saying, like,
you know, whistle or speak or whatever. Because as we'll see,
walruses can make a lot of cool noises, and the
walruses do the different things. So they're obviously trainable, which
means that there's some level of intelligence. But I couldn't
find anything about like, oh yeah, these guys are as
(17:00):
intelligent as an octopus or a pig or something. Couldn't
find anything like that, but they are trainable. Has anyone
who's seen the screen classic fifty first Dates can tell you?
I don't think I saw that. That's a good one. Actually, yeah, yeah,
Sandler and Drew Barryman. Right, where does the walrus fin in?
He is like a marine biologists specializes that. I think
(17:25):
in Walrus is or something like that, because he's got
penguin friends too. But anyway, there's a trained walrus that
factors into it. I have to check that out. It's
actually a pretty cute movie. Hey you got me at
at Adam Sandler and Walrus. Okay, uh so these guys
and ladies are, like you said, all over the Arctic. Um,
(17:45):
if we're talking Pacific, we're talking to bearing. See the Chukchi,
which shout out to my friend Max Goldman. I just
saw on Facebook this morning. He had a great picture
of himself staring out at the icy Chucky. See, well,
my only Alaskan friend. It sounds really cool. Yeah, it
was really gorgeous. And I said something about, hey, I
(18:07):
was just reading about this, and of course he's on
Alaska time, so you probably woken up yet. He's like,
I can see Russia from my house. He might. Uh.
And then the laptop see in the Pacific uh. And
then along the coast of Canada on the Atlantic side
in Greenland is where you're gonna find the other guys.
And we're talking two hundred and fifty total walrus is
(18:30):
about two hundred thousand, of which are Pacific. Yeah, yeah,
two total, which doesn't sound like a lot. But again,
we'll get to it later. But but they're doing okay, Yeah,
they really seem to be, don't they. Yeah, we don't
want people to worry too much about the walrus. So
so back to the walrus. Is pug eyes, right, they
(18:50):
um kind of protrude and you'd think, wow, that walters
can see all over the place. It's doing a three
sixty with its eye right now. Um, not necessary. Early.
They're actually not the best at seeing, but they don't
need to be because there are other organs are more
evolved to kind of make up for it. They they
hunt and can smell out predators using their nose. I
(19:15):
think it is probably their primary sense from what I understand. Yeah,
in their ears they can hear. They have these two
little uh kind of flap ears basically openings with a
little protective flap, and uh, they can hear things like
perhaps pray up to a mile away. Yes, I was
looking for that. Did you Did you see that anywhere else? No,
(19:37):
it was one of those ones that raised a red
flag because I looked all over it was like seeing
just that that. Yeah, they can hear for up two
mile away. The closest thing I saw that proved that
was demonstrations by um Arctic natives who would make like
a walrus call, and like a walrus like a mile
away would respond to it. They said hey wa us
(20:01):
and the war was looked around. Said you're talking to me, yes, sir.
How they talk Yeah, like Southern gentlemen. They have that
high cotton accent. I don't even know what that means.
That's a Southern thing, like, um, well, there's a bar
in Charleston called High Cotton, so I was thinking of. Yeah.
(20:21):
So their noses, though, is where that's their money maker. Um,
they have it's very sensitive. Um. Like you said, they
used to think that they use their tusks or I
don't know if you said it, but they used to
think they these are tusks to grind into the sea
floor dig things up. But that is not the case.
They are blowing out of their nose to clear away
(20:42):
stuff and stir up things to eat. And those whiskers
those uh what do you say called those vieber say
viber say, four hundred and seven hundred of those in
fifteen rows. Not only do they look cute and like
a big walrus mustache, but are super sensitive. Yeah, so
that's like their cactile sense. Then these little whiskers, the
(21:05):
sensitive whiskers, and they use those. So they shoot water
out of their nose into the bottom of the sea
and it stirs up some stuff. The clams are like
stop stop, and they start to float up, and the
walrus is since the clams with their their whiskers their
vibers say, or whatever you call them, and then things
(21:26):
get even weirder, right because remember they don't use their
tusks to open the clams. They don't use their tusks
to burrow. Their tusks actually appear to kind of get
in the way if anything as far as feeding is concerned,
what they do is they they are they have a
very high cavity in their mouth and they can pump
(21:46):
their tongue back and forth like a piston. So they
actually produce of a form of suction so strong it
sucks a clam right out of the shell. The clam
as as they can't say anything, that poor clam, they're
just hanging out down there. Before you know it, they
get snotted, snotted on and sucked out, and a lot
(22:09):
of them too. It's a very undignified ending for the clam. Yeah,
it says in here, and I didn't find back up
for this, but I believe it is that that suction
is so powerful. They've been known to suck holes in
plywood and I saw that. Yeah, I saw that elsewhere too,
that they they've had like five pound plugs in some
of their aquatic um like habitats. They've sucked out of
the flower that's crazy, also known as the floor the flower. Yeah, yeah,
(22:33):
so they do have things your hot cotton exit out
of the floor. So they do have like that, some
amazing suction going on, and they don't even chew. They
have these amazing like three ft teeth. They don't even
chew with any of them. They just eat a clam hole.
And I think, did you say three thousand to six
thousand of them? Indicating no, I said a whole lot,
(22:55):
that's a lot. Yeah. They said that they can eat
um between four and six percent of their body weight
each day. So let's just say an average three thousand
pound walrus eating about five that's a hundred and fifty
pounds a day of not just clams um. They're not
super picky anything down there, seaworms, snails, crabs, uh, they'll
(23:18):
eat all that stuff. But I get the feeling that
they really love those clams. Yeah, they like the claims
of the moment, as they should. But think about that.
If there's two hundred and fifty thousand walruses in the world,
all basically up in the Arctic, and each one is
eating something like three thousand to six thousand claims a day,
how have clams not taken over the world by now? Yeah,
(23:39):
it's crazy. It's um that. You know. The comedian Nate Bargatti, Yes,
he has that funny joke about a million sharks a
year killed and he was just like, I didn't know
there's ever been a million sharks in the history of
the world. Like, He's like that just sounds like a
lot of sharks, except Nate does it great because his
delivery is that of a professional comedian in that high
(24:02):
cotton next and not me. Well he's from Tennessee. There
you go. Uh, so they're eating cheese. I mean, I
can't even do the math. Two fifty thousand times four thousand.
Uh they're equals um a ton and we're still able
to dip our Christini and clam juice at an Italian dinner.
Do you like clams? I'm more of an oyster guy.
(24:25):
I like them both. I like to be turned on
by my food. You know. Well, I mean I definitely
love oysters, and we'll never not order them if it's
at a place with a good chance of having good ones.
But I'll dip into a clam shell. Well, you put
clams in your bloody Mary mix? Oh yeah, clamato, Sure
(24:48):
that's clam juice. Yeah, oh man, I could kick it
up a notch if I put a couple of clams
in there. Yeah, not in the shell, but just like
pick the meat out. Well, yeah, live have them like
living there for a little while. East of that vodka.
They do live up by Russia. I bet there's been
more than one beach bar called the Drunken Clam. There's
got me in there, like I think that's the that's
(25:12):
the bar and the family guy. Oh is it? I'm
pretty sure. Oh, we're gonna find out if it's not.
I don't know, man, I feel like we've gone a
little off the rails. Did we take a break or
can we pull it back without it? Uh? Well, quickly,
let's talk about the third potential breed um. There is
another subspecies that is not officially a subspecies Um that
(25:36):
lives in the Laptev Sa near Siberia, called the Laptev walrus,
and apparently their skull and body size is pretty similar
to the Atlantic and the Pacific um. And I'm not
sure why it wants its own distinction, but they haven't
been recognized as such. Yeah, I mean there must be
different enough in some way. Yeah, I saw. Some people
(25:59):
see them is a different species. Other people just do not.
I'm not sure what the deal is. Maybe they're isolated themselves.
I don't know. I don't know either. Now you want
to take a break, Okay, all right, So one of
(26:25):
the other things that I love insert whatever sound effect
is in your head, listener. Uh, is that they are
very and this is the same deal with the elephant.
In any creature that's very sensitive and caring to one another. Uh,
they will watch over their injured friends. Um. If one
of them dies, they will push them off the ice
(26:47):
if hunters are nearby so they can't get them. Um,
the ladies, well this is so sad, but the ladies
will carry their dead young away from hunters. And if
they sense that they're dudes nearby, these hunter men nearby, Um,
they can hack away at ice to break it away
(27:07):
and free uh, like a calf that might be stuck
or something. Yeah, they could really take care of each other.
It's been documented. Yeah, it's pretty cool. They're very sensitive creatures.
It turns out, so, Um, I don't think we could
talk about walrus is if we didn't talk about blubber, right, Yes,
so you said that, Um, it's pretty thick. I think
(27:30):
that's an understatement, Chuck. The the blubber layer on a
walrus is something like about almost four inches ten centimeters thick,
and during the winter, when they're at their blubberyest, it's
about a third of their body weight, So they might
have like a thousand pounds of fat in in their
body at any given point in time, which is is
(27:51):
pretty you gotta tip your hat to that. Well. Yeah,
and this you know, of course, this is an adaptation
to deal with the temperatures where they live. Keeps them warm.
Apparently they lose heat twenty seven times faster and water,
and they are in water, what is it, like two
thirds of their life or something like that. Yeah, so
they have this remarkable blubber to keep that body temperature
(28:14):
at about ninety eight degrees ninety seven point nine degrees
pretty consistently. Right, So you were saying, you were alluding
earlier to how they can change color. Here's how you're ready. Yes,
when they're in the water for a while or when
they're exposed to really really cold temperatures, their um their
their body pumps blood away from their skin and sends
(28:37):
it to their core to keep their internal organs warm
because the skin doesn't need to be as warm as say,
the internal organs is survival mechanism, right, And then once
they start to warm up, and when that happens, they
turn kind of white, like like a white worm, kind
of thing going on. Did you ever see that movie
The Layer of the White Worm. No, but that sounds familiar.
(28:59):
It was an early Hugh Grant movie where like there's
this group in uh in England that like worship this
white worm that comes out like every century or something
like that. It's like a weird English horror movie that
is also kind of funny in some ways. It's a
good one. But anyway, that's what a walrus looks like
when it's really really cool, like you Grant, Yeah, but white,
(29:23):
super white. He's about as white as it gets. These
guys get even whiter because they're very, very cold, that's right.
And then once they get back to like where the
sun is shining, or maybe back on the ice where
it's ironically slightly warmer um, their color can come back
there they're still brown that they can get a little
bit more of a pinky look to them. They can
(29:46):
with that blubber. They can handle water that's like down
to negative four degrees ferret height. It's just something like
negative twenty celsius. And they I mean, like you said,
they spend two thirds of their life and water this cold.
They live in the Arctic, so they're pretty well suited
for it. Well, negative four is the low end. It
can go all the way down to negative fifty nine.
That's nuttie. Uh. And they do have little hairs, uh
(30:10):
that they shed in the summer. But it's pretty much
everyone is in agreement that it doesn't really do much
to keep them warm. It's left over from when they
were bears. That's my theory. It probably is. Yeah. Uh,
so they have another cool adaptation. Um, they can go
a long time without oxygen. And this is all has
(30:30):
to do with how they circulate oxygen and their blood.
So uh, when they dive, they actually slow their heart
rate down and then that blood again goes to those
organs because they need oxygen and warmth. And uh. They
also have a special protein in their blood called myoglobin
that binds with the oxygen and then actually stores it
(30:52):
in the muscles. Right, so they have plenty of oxygen
whenever they're they're diving. How how deep do they dive?
I can't remember it said they feed I think from
between like thirty something and a hundred ft, but they
they prefer a little shallower because one of the worries
with global warming is the sea ice is retreating and
(31:14):
going away so they're having to go further and further
north to get to the sea ice, which means that
the waters are deeper. So they're having to learn how
to how to dive deeper to feed and um, you know,
there's just one of the effects of global warming is
sometimes the moms will get separated from their calves because
(31:34):
it's such a long journey and they don't know, like
are they going to be able to adapt and learn
to dive that deep to hunt for food? Right, And
and it's yeah, it's not just um where they where
they hunt for food from, like these are it's kind
of like their little base, right, So when when they're
on ice or an ice flow, they'll dive for food,
they'll come back up, they'll rest. That's where they sleep. Um,
(31:55):
that's where moms and their calves rest. Sometimes they nurse there.
It's where um cows give birth to calves. There's like
ice plays a very very important role in the walrus
is life, so much so that in the Pacific walrus,
the females basically just follow the edge of the ice
north in the summer and then come back down south
(32:16):
in the winter. Is the ice kind of like ebbs
and flows right towards the north pole um and and
as it doesn't retreat as far down. It's just it's
messing with the program a little bit, Like you said,
not just with food, but also with just typical regular behavior. Yeah,
I've been in a lot of these cases too. There's
got to be just some like confusion, you know. Yeah,
(32:40):
Like if you're for however many millions of years, you've
been used to the same thing, and if all of
a sudden you're like, wait a minute, like where are
we going now, They're like, I'm just a walrus. Your
your world frightens and confuses me. What happened to the accent? Uh? That? Well,
this is a different wal risk, This is ted the walrus.
(33:02):
Also that pharyngeal muscle that you were talking about, which
can they can puff up to kind of buy them.
They also will puff that up to close off water
from entering their lungs when they dive. Let's talk about
those pharyngeal sacks, because there they are pretty amazing. There's
a lot of stuff they can do with those. First
of all, walruses make some of the coolest sounds of
(33:25):
any animal I've ever heard. There's a clip on YouTube
just type in walrus sounds, and there's one that comes up,
and it's just a static picture of a big, old,
gigantic walrus. Um, what do they call them? Are they
called bowls? Well, they call them cows and calves, that probably,
but I didn't see bulls anywhere. A dude walrus, right,
(33:46):
just a big boy and um, it's about two and
a half minutes of just the best walrus sounds. And
it's actually in a really weird way, kind of soothing,
like you can have it on in the background. I
noticed I retained twelve percent more information while it was playing,
and I did when I wasn't listening to her, Right,
it just made that statistic upture. But you get the point.
(34:06):
And well, can we play some of it? Yeah? Can
we do that? Sure we can't. Jerry's nodding and she
rolled her eyes. Well, here's like seconds is some some
good walrus sounds? Halla, so ten twenty seconds? Who knows
(34:37):
what it be? Well, we can only use ten because
of the rights issues. Okay, get sued by the Walrus Association,
right exactly, I'm ted walrus and I've had enough of
this getting pushed around. So um, the way that the
walrus are one of the ways the walrus makes so
many different times. It's because these faaryngeal sacks that they
(34:58):
used to buoy themselves with, they use it also as
an amplifier, and they make all these sounds when they're
mating with women. That's right. So you remember how the
females in the Pacific go north in the summer and
then come back in the winter. On their way back,
they meet up with the guys who generally stay south
in the Bearing Sea the whole whole year. Um, And
(35:21):
that's just s Pacific the Atlantic ones. They put year around,
both males and females. But as the Pacific females are
coming back mating season as time perfectly with that, and
they will sit in groups of about twenty or twenty
three on a big chunk of ice and say, dudes,
let's see what you got. And then the little Gilligan's
(35:41):
Island Talent show starts and they literally line up out
there give each other a little space. They fight for
that prime spot. Yeah, they'll tusk. Yeah, that's when they
get a little aggressive. And the poor always feel bad
for the guys like in the back row or whatever
like it. He's got to really ramp up his vocalization.
I us and he's like my tusk broke. But he's
(36:03):
probably got a lady out there who likes that. But
they do they they kind of perform for them. They
do a little routine and the ladies are like, you, um,
sexually mature man, who I think, Uh, they reached. The
male reaches sexual maturity about eight to ten, females five
(36:24):
to six. But this is adorable. They still don't hug
and kiss until a few years after, just because they just,
I don't know, they want to do it the right way.
I think that um, that we don't have to take
our clothes off. Song is one of the Walrus's favorite
songs of all time. They're really big into promise rings,
but friendship bracelets first. Uh. So the female has a
(36:47):
gestation period about fifteen months, so this is a big deal. Um,
you know, they're they're pregnant for a long time, so
they want to hook up with the right dude, uh
to get them pregnant. Depending on it falls, depending on
when it falls in the cycle. They may even sit
that out if they're pregnant, you know, like they may
take a year off. Yeah, they're like, I'm good I'm covered,
(37:12):
but that is it's a thing like if if a
if a cow is pregnant come next mating season, like
you said, she's gonna kind of hang off to the
side and wait for her friends to be done so
they can keep going south. Um, but that actually is
going to have an impact on her calf because she's
gonna spend more time raising it and nursing it. Yeah,
(37:34):
which is really great. Like if if that happens in
the timing works out, they can they can be with
their young for up to a couple of years. Yeah,
so I think like a male calf, So remember males
and females they separate. They only come together during mating season.
And then if you're a male calf that's born, you're
(37:54):
hanging out with your mom for a year or two years,
depending on the timing of her pregnancy. And then you
go off with the mail hurt and say what up, boys,
I'm here, it's party, and they said get at the
back of the line. Yeah, I saw that. It's just
sounds so adorable that very young um walrus calves boys
(38:16):
will practice that tusking thing even before their tusks are
grown out. So they mess around with each other like
I'm gonna I'm gonna tusk you when my tests come in. Look,
i'd love to see that. It's like little goats before
they get their horns. Yeah, they can do the same
thing when they just have those little nubs. They just
walk around with headaches all the time. I have goats
to live across the street from me. I don't think
(38:37):
I've told you that Satanic goats are cute goats, no
cutest good Christian goats. Yeah, uh yeah, they're great. They
I'm not sure what the pat My neighbor across the
street had like seven or eight of them last year
and they went away for the winner. And now she
has a new batch. And she's jim No, no, no,
she's Jamaican. And I think what someone said in the
(38:57):
neighborhood is that she's keeps his oats around and then
raises them and then has them shipped to Jamaica as
like a charitable thing. What you're right where they're eating.
I don't know what they're eating. I'm pretty sure. I'm
not sure. But this is a new batch of goats.
And of course, you know, my kid loves it. Yeah,
(39:18):
I love goats too, Little baby goats, baby lambs. I saw, Um,
you mean, I watched this documentary called The Secret Life
of Dogs. Have you seen it? It's from two thousand thirteen.
I think BBC originally made it. If you get a
membership with Curiosity, a subscription on Curiosity on Amazon Prime.
(39:40):
It's on there. That's the only place I've found it.
I think, is it a sub thing I have to
join because I'm already on the Prime. Yes, it is.
It's an extra subscription, but it's like a seven day
trial or something like that. Really curious. You will pay
for it, right, so they they have the secret Just
check it out. Check You're going to love it. Um.
It's just a really well made documentary. But in part
(40:03):
of it, there's this this herding dog, some sort of
shepherd um that bottle feeds a baby lamb holding a
bottle in her mouth. This little lamb is nursing off
of the bottle. It's one of the most adorable things
you'll ever see in your entire life. Well, I think
we've agreed in the past that inter animal mingling and
(40:23):
coupling and friendship is the best thing in the world.
Maybe not coupling, but the rest of it. Well, I
don't mean like, I just mean in a friendly way.
Do you one of the other I love? There's just
one more thing about this. The the woman who owns
the dog, or who I should say is best friends
with this dog, said, I didn't teach her this. She
picked this up herself. Yeah, and I just dropped the mic.
(40:45):
As you can see, I probably watched twenty five minutes
the other day of um of baby pigs playing with puppies.
Oh that's adorable. It's it's pretty great man. Okay, So
so back to the wall, Yeah, back to reproduction. UM,
this is kind of really cool. Actually, for the first
(41:06):
up to five months of gestation, the eggs aren't even
in planting yet, so they just float around in the
uterus for up to five months and then eventually will
implant on the uterine wall. And they think this is
all done on purpose so that the calf is born
at the right time in the best environment possible. Yeah.
(41:27):
I just I thought that was a weird adaptation, like
why not just have a shorter gestation time? But I
guess they got figured out. I'm not gonna I'm not
gonna pry so the so again, it's fifteen months gest
station period, and the calves are born usually on ice,
which again melting ice is a problem for him um.
And then they stick around for a year or two,
(41:48):
go off to the male herd, and then you've got
the males and the females, and the females migrate in
the Pacific. The males generally stay around the same area,
which means that they moved to land when the ice recedes.
And there's actually this island in Alaska called Round Island
that's very famous for being a walrus summering area where
(42:12):
for a couple of a couple of weeks I think,
every summer, and for reasons no one knows, the walters
males all just come to this one island and they'll
be like twelve thousand of them just on top of
one another, hanging out, um, just basically being social, having
a having a boy's week. That's great. And it's so
(42:33):
like dense with walrus. Is it's wall the wall walrus.
You can't see the sand or not the sand? But
is there sand or is it just ice? It is
sand or no, it's I'm sorry, it's if I read
that it's rocky, I haven't actually seen it myself, but
you can't. You can't see anything beneath the waters. Is
it's just walters flesh and blubber. Yeah, there's this one,
(42:53):
uh if you ever drive it the coast of California.
I'm gonna butcher this because I don't remember what the
animal was. If it's a uh, a manatee, it's probably
not a manatee. I think it's Sea lions of its
seas to California. Yeah, but there's something near the the house,
the Hurst Castle. There's a beach that Emily and I
(43:15):
drove by that was wall the wall, I guess at
Sea Lions when we went, and it's got to be
a certain time of year, maybe time of day. I
have no idea, but we didn't even know. We just
sort of looked upon it and saw a bunch of
cars pulled over with mouths agape, and sure enough, the
whole thing and the sound was amazing. It was just
a bunch of But imagine one thing going and then
(43:38):
imagine a thousand things doing that, like the sweat hogs.
Mr Kat very nice on cue. Thank you all right, Chuck.
So what we said, um, there's three basically three predators
for the walrus, the polar bear, which, by the way,
I saw that a walrus can fend off a polar
(44:00):
air with its tusks one on one. The way that
polar bears hunt walruses is they cause a stampede and
walruss try to get away from the polar bear and
they will trample some a few unfortunate walruses, and the
polar bear comes up and says, hey, thanks for the
free meal. That's how they hunt walruses. The same thing
(44:20):
happens when humans get too close, say like in a
low flying plane or um just basically spook the walruses.
But they are hunted um but very very very narrowly
by a very small group of people. UM that in
Upiak and the u Pick natives of the Arctic area.
(44:41):
UM in the US, Canada and Russia are basically the
only human beings allowed to hunt a walrus. And the
reason why is because it's part of their um cultural
tradition to hunt walruses. And when they were forced to
stop for about thirty years from the sixties to the nineties,
their culture really started to suffer a decline as a result. Yeah,
(45:01):
and you know that they are protected as such. Now.
Over the years there have been. Um. I mean they've
been hunting walrus, as it says here since the ninth century.
These are oil the ivory of course for art their skin. Uh.
And for many years that you know, they were being
depleted because of the oil mainly that they would use
for you know, soap or lamps or it says here
(45:21):
even machine lubricant. But we have gotten on board with
protecting them along with like you said, Canada and Russia,
and uh, they're they're doing pretty good now. Yeah, apparently
the population is stable. They're they're um listed as vulnerable.
I didn't see why, um, because they are almost universally
protected by Arctic nations. Um, so there's not a ton
(45:44):
of poaching a little bit, but it's not like poaching
in Africa, right for their ivory typically right. So I
think for the reason why it might be climate change,
then that would be the only thing I can see
because they're pretty well protected, um reproductive, they're doing top
notch ah and that's it. I wonder if when a
(46:05):
polar bears eating a walrus, if they get in there
and they're like, hey, Phil, he's got like two thousand
clams in them too. Both ponents H and I've read
actually that their um, their meat is like hard, kind
of tough, but it's also very lean and supposedly very
(46:27):
tasty as well. Really. Yeah, And one of the things
that Upak and the U Picks are known for is
using of the walrus, is that they kill. Yeah. I
think a lot of times, almost all the time, with
indigenous people's they understand the value of a creature in
respect that animal, and part of that respect is I'm
(46:49):
just gonna take these tusks and kick it back in
the water. It's using everything from uh, it's the stomach
for a drum to the skin to cover your boat,
the raincoats. Apparently they used to use their um what
was it, the intestines for raincoats. Yeah, it's pretty pretty sharp.
(47:10):
And apparently these villages too were um they were early environmentalists.
The would set their own standards for hunting because they
knew the value of making sure they thrived. Yeah. I've
read this really interesting article, I think on a site
called like Cultural Survival or something, and it detailed how
the the I think, the U Picks and the US
(47:32):
government in Alaska, over like thirty years, came to an
agreement finally about hunting on Round Island. Um, but it
was pretty interesting. I was like, wow, that government really
has taken this seriously. This protection they they just wouldn't
give at all on any of it. And then finally
the U picks were like, we have to do this
(47:54):
culturally like this, this is not just us being Yahoo's
doing this for fun, like we have to do this.
We're losing like this cultural tradition. So they came to
an understanding that apparently is doing quite well. Nice just
like the Walrus is right. If you want to know
more about walruses, check out walrus is on how stuff
(48:14):
works dot com. There's a good article on there. And
since I say how stuff works, is time for listener mail?
All right, I'm gonna call this wonderful email from an
eleven year old kid. We always love these. Hey, Josh
and Chuck, I love listening to your podcast and it
brings me great joy every day. I'm eleven years old,
(48:34):
and I think your podcast is awesome for all ages
and is very informative. I'm learning so many new things.
My mom is even surprised. I just wanted to let
you guys know how happy you make me and how
much fun I have listening to you, man. Nice, isn't
that nice? I tell people all kinds of things they
never know, and they're like, wow, how did you know that?
(48:56):
And I say, I listen to how stuff works? Uh,
thanks for your time, and stay awesome. That is Lucas, Lucas.
You stay awesome. You stay awesome, and you start saying
stuff you should know instead of how stuff works. But
that's okay, it's close. It's close. The people might eventually
find us if he steers them the how stuff works.
(49:16):
That's right. We appreciate it, Lucas. And you're uh, if
you're listening to us at eleven, then you are on
the right track, my friend. And stay cool because remember
we lose him around high school. Yeah, don't get lost
around high school, Lucas, because we'll still be here making
episodes Where will you be Yea and secret. We are cool, yeah,
no matter what your high school friends tell you. Correct
(49:37):
In the meantime, we're glad you're listening to us, and
we appreciate the listener mail. If you want to send
us the listener mail, we appreciate. We would love to
hear it. You can tweak to us at s y
s K podcast or at josh oam Clark. You can
hang out with us on Facebook dot com, slash stuff
you Should Know or slash Charles W. Chuck Bryant. You
can send us an email to Stuff Podcast at how
(49:58):
stuff Works dot com, and, as always, joint us out
our home on the web, stuff you Should Know dot com.
For more on this and thousands of other topics, is
it how stuff Works dot com m
Stuff You Should Know News
Hosts And Creators
Chuck Bryant
Josh Clark
Show Links
AboutOrder Our BookStoreSYSK ArmyRSSPopular Podcasts
The Breakfast Club
The World's Most Dangerous Morning Show, The Breakfast Club, With DJ Envy And Charlamagne Tha God!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Decisions, Decisions
Welcome to "Decisions, Decisions," the podcast where boundaries are pushed, and conversations get candid! Join your favorite hosts, Mandii B and WeezyWTF, as they dive deep into the world of non-traditional relationships and explore the often-taboo topics surrounding dating, sex, and love. Every Monday, Mandii and Weezy invite you to unlearn the outdated narratives dictated by traditional patriarchal norms. With a blend of humor, vulnerability, and authenticity, they share their personal journeys navigating their 30s, tackling the complexities of modern relationships, and engaging in thought-provoking discussions that challenge societal expectations. From groundbreaking interviews with diverse guests to relatable stories that resonate with your experiences, "Decisions, Decisions" is your go-to source for open dialogue about what it truly means to love and connect in today's world. Get ready to reshape your understanding of relationships and embrace the freedom of authentic connections—tune in and join the conversation!