Bamboozled

it sounds like gullible? No, it doesn't, that's a trick. Yes, Today we're talking about getting bamboozled, pulling Shenanigan's, having the wool pulled over your eyes, getting can by caterpillars, and hoaxed by horses. So first we're going to talk about sexy scams. Pandas are notoriously bad at sex. Male pandas are terrible at knowing when a female is in the mood for sex, and even if they do happen to make it to third base, they have no idea what to do next. And the wild females have their pick

of the litter. They can select a mate from a group of males, but in captivity there's limited options, so mating is often awkward and unsuccessful. Animal care takes are taking a novel approach their bamboos, holding these pandas into getting good at sex. The Shingdo Panda Breeding and Research Center in Sichuan, China tricks male pandas into doing sexercize, getting up on their hind legs and working out their pelvic muscles by holding an apple just out of reach.

Apple hungry pandas don't realize that as they wobble on their hind legs trying to get a bite of that sweet fruit, they're really working out their hips to be better at making them moves on a DTF female. This is one of the very few, if only, examples of one species tricking another species into being better at mating. And it's probably because we humans are a bunch of weirdos. But when you explore the animal kingdom, you'll find a

great deal of sexual bamboozles. Amongst these perverted connartist creatures. Joining me today is actress, comedian Daily Zeygeister and host of the show Scam Goddess Lacey Mosley. Hey, welcome, Thank you for having me. Of course, uh ill of that these pandas all they wanted was an apple, and they got tricked into being really great at grinding. If only we could do this for real mint, I know, I know, just like dangle talco just out of right, and they're

like trying to get a taco like the football. You can watch football, but it has to be up this high and you have to stand here eat this popsicle wide not reason, Oh my goodness. But that's also so it's just making them better at thrusting. How do they get them to like engage with the females. Isn't that the problem that they don't even know they're like, it's

a good question. I feel like it's to make it so that when they do happen to under like the female is literally saying like come get this vagina please, and the males are like okay, then they kind of know what to do because otherwise they're just not in the habit of using their pelvis. I guess, so they would just like land on top of them, like is it happening, We're doing it right, you're fueling it? Is

this good for you? Oh? Pandas uh, So I want to take you on a trip to Deception Island, which is a real voice okay, yes, so it's named Deception Island because it looks like a normal island. But it's actually a caldera, which is a ring around an active volcano. So it's like it looks like solid land, but then if you get in, it's just this ring of islands and then ocean. So is it like when those volcanoes like robbed and then they make those ocean islands. It's

like one of those islands. Oh yeah, there's like nothing on those. Well this one actually has things on it, and it's got kind of funny and in silly history, um so, various countries have tried to declare it belongs to them. Um So, in UM two and argentinean exploratory party came to Deception Island and they just left signs and painted flags marking the territory as being Argentinia. I mean that's normally how used to work that way. I mean, that's what we did on the Moon, right, right, if

we went to the Moon. I mean that's true, when we pretended to go to the Moon, we just put a flag there and we're like, I guess it's American USA. Yeah, we put the flag here. I mean that's north. Like that's really like back in the day. I truly don't know how anyone owns land land owning is a scam and it still is a scam. It was like whoever got there first, or like whoever killed everyone? That's how you got it? Well, like I did you just hear the thing where Trump was talking about how he kind

of wanted to buy Greenland. No, he said so many crazy things that he does, but it was one of those things where I'm like, wait, how do you buy a country? And then I was like wait, how do people get countries in the first place other than just like war and like yep. It was like people got together, like we're going to decide that this is I mean, that's what happened to America. America had people on it that Native Americans and Columbus came and stuck a flag out. Look,

I discovered it, dude, No, I discovered it. We're here. What about No, No, don't see anything, don't hear anything. La la la la la, this is my land. Now. That's how Thanksgiving happened. About the story we get so a year later after the Argentinean ship like just put some flags in. They're like it's ours now, right, yeah, like a British ship being extremely petty in British returned and just like removed the signs and the flags and they're like, nope, it's British again. Um, so they owned

it in the first place. I don't know. I mean no, I don't think anyone really owned it. I think it's under some kind of like shared Antarctic territory treaty. Um. And then in the nineties sixties the volcano became active again and it destroyed British and Chilean scientific stations. So they kind of gived up, like they gave up on like trying to decide who owned it because it's like, oh, it's full of lava. No, no, you can have it Argentina and you can have a great Britain keep ant

taxes on it. That right, Argentina got a good deal out of that. Then. Well, the best part about Deception Island is it's home to chin strap penguins, which are cute little penguins who they themselves are little deceivers living on Deception Island? Is it? Okay? They were, Well they're penguins. Wait, so it's cold there, so it's an act of antarctic Yeah, it or near an antarctic. So the chin strap penguins

and penguins in general have what's called counter shading. So you may wonder, like why would you be uh so like like where those little tuxedos if you want to like blend in and be noticed, um, But by being darker on the top and lighter on the bottom, they actually appear flat in one dimensional from the top and from the bottoms. So like if they're swimming, uh, and the leopard seals or whatever it's hunting them, you know they will appear just flat. So if I want to

avoid like shark attacks, like I should swim in a tuxedo. Yes, that is h that is true. Everyone in Florida should be on the beach in a TUXI should wear you should wear it like a but like a texedo, um wetsuit. So like James Bond, Yeah, doesn't James. Isn't that what James Bond does? He like has a tuxedo under his wetsuit right like he like swims ashore and his wet suiting takes it off. It's just a TEXI am I

imagining that? Or was that in like or was that in like Austin Powers And I just feel like I don't know, I truly don't know, that's a good question. It's it's a funny concept though, Like I guess so if you seem flat, then animals are like, I don't want that because it's flat. Like because so normal three dimensional object, like when you have a sphere, it's like it's you see the highlight on the top because the sun is hitting it, and then like it's shaded towards

the bottom. So then that's how like you you can tell like, oh, this is a three dimensional object. This is a ball, and then like if you're an animal approaching from above or blow especially in water, it's like, okay, this is an object that is three dimensional and therefore I can put it in my mouth. Um. So like if it's flat and you can't do it, yeah, you're not. It's not like signaling because like if you just see like an advertisement for like a hamburger, you don't try. Well,

most people don't. I sometimes give it a lick just in case, just in case that they've like Willy Wonka asked, taste. Yeah, that's right. Wait, did they have scratching licks? I didn't know that. I don't think they we were licking. We were like with those markers where it was sniff, but they little bit like grapes. It's never tasted like grapes, but it felt like grapes too after a while. Yeah, i'fter sniffing it long enough, everything everything feels like grapes. Yeah.

So um. Here's another fun instance of this time. The chin strap penguins were the were the bamboozled Party. So in two thousand four, Roy and Silo, two male chin strap penguins at the Central Park Zoo. Um. They were famous for being a couple. Um, and they were both males, so they couldn't conceive naturally, so they adopted a rock thinking that it was an egg. Um, so they kept trying to hatch it like sat on the rock and they were totally fooled by this. So sweet and so sad.

I know, the penguin community won't let the gay penguin, why can't they adopt another person's egg. Well, the zoo keepers actually ended up replacing the rock with a fertile egg, and the couple hatched it enraged raised the chick ah, that's beautiful. I bet they raised it to be some kind of deviant penguin to see see why can't p will be really like this was in two thousand and four too, So it's like, I feel like the zookeepers were better at being nice to the penguin than like

penguins more rights than gay people. Ah, that is unfortunate. Um. And then one more little bamboos all that these chin strap penguins like to do. And we've actually talked about this a bit on the show about the Adelaide penguins who also do this. Um. So they create their nests out of pebbles because like I don't know, in Antarctic or on this on Deception Island, there's not much to work with volcanic you're gonna be sleeping on rocks. So they will steal pebbles from each other while they're not

looking to make their nests better. And we actually, I think we talked about this on the first or second episode, but this is a kind of new update where researchers have found that while both males and females will make nests and they'll both steal from each other, in these

chin strap popular Aians, the males are bigger assholes. Um, I mean, duh, But so males are more active in stealing stones, they're more aggressive when defending their nests, and they use larger stones because they're probably compensating, right, a large stone penguin anything compensating for a bad career. Uh. And then females are more likely to have their rocks stolen. So I know, so y'all are stealing from the weaker. Second to I have to bring feminism to penguin. I

mean they already got gay rights. I don't know. And if the whole island is made up of pebbles, like why I think you're stealing specifically from people to be petty because it's like you're just get pebbles that aren't well. I think the researchers also found that if you if you have more rocks around your nest, and the more rocks, I think the better because it keeps the eggs um warmer because it like elevates a little bit off of

the cold ground um. And so like there's just natural like stone loss over time because of weather or penguins or like people running around, well it's not people, but penguins running around and ars like playing tugo war with a flag saying no it's miling, No, it's milan um. So if you have more rocks to begin with I think you're just in a better place like as as you start to lose rocks um later on. So there's

a motivation to steal um. But you know, it's probably also a little bit of pettiness where it's like because like, why go out and get your own rock when you can just like steal rocks from your neighbor. That's true if your neighbor is like right next door, we don't have to go to the shore line. Yeah. And also like equal pay, you know, women who aren't making as much. That's true for every like like twelve rocks the male penguins make the females make like six and a half.

I don't actually know you were going I was believing it. Yeah, I'm not. I'm not a good feminist, especially not a good penguin feminist. Uh So, next, I want to talk about gelatas, which sounds delicious, but it's uh it sounds like gelato and I want gelata now, but it's not. So. These are species of Old world monkey. They're found in the Ethiopian highlands. They kind of look like baboons, but

they're just close relatives um there. But they have that but they have that nice but Um, they're also called bleeding heart monkeys because they have a red patch on their chest. Um. But there's also this is not the reason they're called that, but it seems to also make sense because they will sometimes cheat on each other and then get mad about it. Um. So they have an actually super complex social structure that is hard for me to wrap my head around. Um. They form multi level societies. Uh.

The smallest unit of their societies are reproductive units. It's just like a sex club where it's like, uh, um, it's like a dozen or so females and three or four males. Usually only one of the males is mating with the females um at once. So it's like a orgy yeah yeah, but it's like an orgy organization or georg um. And then the next step of gelata society is the bands, and they're made up of about thirty

reproductive units. So it's like a bunch of these sex clubs come together for like a convention sex emporia, and there are herds that are like temporary convoys made up of these reports sex cloud right more like so the basic structure sex road trip fucking. Right. Then it's like how big? How big? Is the level of fucking right right, right? So are you in like a small country town. We've

got three horses, that's all we're fucking. And then you know, it grows into like a Metropolitans say like, where's the where's the l a of Like, I mean, are we so different? Every like? Are you know? It's just more

people in a place having sex or less. You know, like the difference between a librarian and in and out is the number of people having said Yeah, so let's focus back on that little that smallest unit, which is the little sex club of like a dozen females and one to four males, and then one of the males is supposed to be the only one reproducing. Um, even

though that's supposed to be the case. I mean, you know, they like to cheat, so uh, sometimes they will cheat on him with another male, which I mean, come on, he's already got like twelve females. That's double standards, like you women, right, Um, So these cheating pairs have been studied in these observations, you know, like scientists just out there watching these Uh gelata is just fucking science is

science for science? Um? So often gelattes will vocalize while mating, like making like happy noises like oh yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah this yeah yeah goal. Um. So while they're cheating, they actually keep those sex moons to a minimum so they're more quiet. Um. So they just they just like they're just like, yes, yes, I find this quite this, this is quite enjoyable. Yes right there and also there and in addition there yeah good day wow. So they

know they're doing something yeah. Um. And if they're caught, the the mail that got cheated on will get really mad and throw a fet and like attack them and yeah, just like a real soap opera going on. Um, now when they get caught Like, I wonder is there someone telling them that that's so interesting? I don't. I don't feel like they just happened upon it, like they were going behind a tree, like like wait a minute, there's

just like a trail of like clothes and shoes. Um. So the society may kind of seem unfair to females at first, but sort of like how lions, it's like seen as like oh these are um, you know, patriarchy. It's actually in some ways more of a matriarchy, which is surprising. So females can basically elect their sex mayor by um. So, males will sometimes try to take over

like a little sex group. Um And if the females like their sex mayor who gets to mate with him, then they'll support him and they'll fight off the other male. But if he's doing a bad job at being mayor of sex, they'll be like, no, dude, you're out office, that's packed up, and then that comes along. But how do you know if the new guy is going to be good at sex? Or is it just like, well, we don't like our old guy. I guess gamble on

pretty much. Yeah, I know he could never find a clid and we just retired, right, And like some males will typically assert their dominance not by violence but by occurring favor with the females by grooming them. So if he's like really bad at it, then I imagine they're like, well, we're gonna try this new guy because you suck. Yeah, you were never really had charming. We were like yo jokes, but really, what I mean it was I was faking. I was faking it. I was taking those sex screams.

Um So, now we're gonna go onto some more dastardly sex capades. Um So, fireflies are pretty spectacular and romantic. Like I always like, you know, in romance, you're like you want to kiss in a field of fire flies, except you don't because then there's probably mosquitoes around and hitting the fun up and catching flireflies something kill them, Like what you're doing a jar full of fireflies that

are dead in the morning, childhood. Um, So they'll flash their luminous butts at each other to attract mates and like in a sort of sex morse code to be like you know b B B b B, which is like Netflix and Chill. Um, Now what is is it like Amazon Prime and Chill? Have we moved on from

Netflix and Chill? No, because Amazon Prime doesn't. The thing about Netflix is it has that like automatic like so because like you don't have to be like you're know, like in the middle of like you know, getting the cheeks clapped, and then it's like are you still watching so you can like binge watch the Good Place while having sex. Yes, yes, and it'll stay on for at

least four hours. Yeah, just like just love that ted Dance right now that probably think it goes back to the home screen and next thing you no, you're just looking at I don't know landscapes. Yeah, because like if you don't want to, you don't want to like have sex and then have it go to the Great British Bake Off, because I mean that show is great, but

it is the anti aphrodisiac. Yeah, right, exactly, you needed to keep playing whatever movie or whatever series that you're watching, especially if you have roommates, right right, wait, what would the roommates would suspect something off? Like if I think they probably start hearing sex noises if I live alone now, thank god, but I think they start hearing the sex noises.

All right, so you kind of needed as kind of a scrambling right right, right, But if it's like if there's that, it's sort of like when there's that dead air and then like the screen goes black and then you just see yourself like oh yeah, also, do you want to see your own reflection of you? It's gonna be because it's not gonna be like important, It's gonna be extremely unflattering. It's gonna be your your butt in

a way you've never seen it before. That is not becoming. Uh, it doesn't all look like that's how I imagine I look, you know, for years. I didn't know that people were having sex with the lights off. I was having sex with the lights on all like, oh god, I'm having sex with this new guy. I gotta I can my poses together. Okay, Well, speaking of sex with the lights on? Uh, these fireflies uh, so they do their little beef their

butts do the flashing lights. Uh. And then but there's a serial killer living amongst these innocent fireflies, who's all they want to do is have sex with each other. So photerus firefly females are called the fim fatales of the fireflies. The woman whom snap women. Have you seen the ads for that? Like like like why do women kill? Yes? I feel like because they want to get it girl kill those people? Yes, I actually no curb literally sla

it's literally slag. So they live in North America. Um. They mimic the flashing pattern of firefly females of other species, so they're like deeping with their their shiny butts. Like, hey, I would like to have sex. Come over here now, I would like to have sex as well, like a little NiFe and the male fireflies like what's the knife emoji? Because of how sharp art sex will be, you know

that's a funny story. Uh. So when the mail comes over ready to bone, then the photorists will just eat them, just be like, hey, thanks for showing up, munch, give me dick forest like the black woodows. And then she's like, okay, now you die right right right? Which is uh you know, like with spiders and mantis is at least they actually do have sex. But this the mail gets literally nothing except death love it. So this is a form of

aggressive mimicries. Mimicry comes in many different forms. We'll talk more about it later, but aggressive mimicry is when it's a predator or a parasite using the mimicry to attack their target. Um so uh, but the them fatil fireflight in her defense, has a really good reason to do this. Um. First of all, have you ever like had the like tender dates where it's just they're super annoying and they're always like sending you weird pickup lines or like weird erotica.

You know, I haven't had any of that. No one has ever sent me a penis picture unsolicited. I don't know, really, Maybe I have a face that says I don't want to see your penut. I actually have not gotten that many Dick pics, and I'm partially happy, mostly happy. A tiny bit of me is offended, right, I know, I'm actually I want to know before I go. I wanna know before we eat a Mealup, I have explicitly asked for Dick Dick pick picks. So Addictic is a tiny antelope.

It's very cute, and nobody sent me one, so I don't know, I don't know, Please send me tiny ante. So she also like, isn't this kind of cannibalism because she's a firefly like a different species, but they don't eat like I don't know. Well, um, well, so this one is carnivorous um and uh it also has a really good reason for eating them, other than because they're annoying. Uh. So she sucks the juices out of them, and these juices have chemicals that are essential for her self defense.

So when attacked by predators, fireflies release droplets of blood containing luci boufagins. I don't know, you've tried. You try to you try to pronounce it lucid lucibouf agins. That sounds better than what I said, but still wrong. So these lucibith figgins deter spiders and birds. They're like unpalatable and the killer female fireflies don't produce their own lucibithigans, so she eats hapless, sex hungry males of the actual species who do produce it, so that she can suck

out those sweet lucibithagans. Makes sense, means them, she needs them, She needs them, maybe have everything. Of course, they just aren't floored with the defense stuff, and we have to, like exactly, we have to literally suck it out of men so selfish. So fireflies aren't the only animals out

there who get preyed upon by a sexy seductor. Humans are often the victims of romance scammers, people who go online and pretend to be some hot guy from Italy who just needs five hundred dollars for that plane ticket to visit you. Researchers looked into the issue of romance scams and catfishing and found there are some shared personality traits among those who get scammed. It's not just being gullible.

No matter how smart you are, you're always susceptible but have been conned, especially if it taps into one of your vulnerabilities. People who are targeted by romance scammers tended to score higher on a romantic belief scale and believed in things such as love finds a Way or love

at first sight and there was one true soulmate out there. So, in other words, it's hard to blame the victims when there's a bunch of rom coms out there hawking these same ideas, teaching us that it's normal for some hot Italian stranger to declare their love to us and fly halfway across the world to meet us. One way to inoculate yourself against scammers, maybe to become the scammer, at

least to pretend to become a scammer. When we get back, we'll discuss how learning to impersonate can help both humans and animals survive. I'm sure you've heard endless chatter about fake news. Some news story or Twitter talks about fake news, and then that story gets called out for being fake news, and then there's such an endless back and forth between people yelling fake news. How are you supposed to be

able to sift through what's real and what's fake. There are fact checking websites out there, but they themselves may have their own biases, and there's no fact checkers checking the fact checkers. So instead of taking someone's else's word for it, there may be a way for you to become an expert propaganda and misinformation detector by becoming a misinformation and propagandist. A University of Cambridge study created a

game where you become the propagandist. It introduces you and teaches you how to master six techniques of spreading misinformation, polarization, invoking emotions, spreading conspiracy theories, tralling people online, deflecting blame, and impersonating fake accounts. Of course, this is not a complete list of all the various ways that propaganda is spread, but it's start. The goal of the game is to gather followers and credibilities metrics which are programmed into the game.

The researchers found that participants who played the game became better at identifying made up news headlines when tested. In fact, the greatest improvement in skepticism was found amongst those who were initially more gullible. This is very encouraging because it means we can learn to become more savvy consumers of media. Or maybe I just made up the soul study. Huh huh, No, I didn't or did I know? I didn't? You can

look it up. It's by John rousen Beak and Sander van der Linden, published in Paul Grave Communications five, article number six two nineteen. Or was it that last name sounded hell of fake? I know Sandra vander Linden. Sandra vander Linen. Yeah, it's like like one of those like Lisa and Bart pranks, Like like, I'm Sandra vander Linden. Can I speak to seymore butts a study published in

the Journal of Buttology. No, that's legit though, that as a scammer and I'm a professed SCAMMERA I tell me why I've running small scams and cons um The more you know about scams, the better you aren't identifying. Yeah, because there's like tell tell signs that once you start to get your finger on it, you're like, wait a minute, Like because if you if you have long enough to think, so what it is about gullibility to It is about how desperate you are to want something, like if you

want it really badly. And three it's also sometimes about time, like if someone catches you when you're like really sleepy, or you're in a rush, or you don't have time to really think about what they're saying to you, perfect opportunity to scam, right, Which is kind of crazy because that's when people read the news, like in the morning, right before work, like when you're sort of in a rush, or like if you're like checking Twitter, like when you're on break and you don't have a lot of time

right right, right exactly, so you're not always on your a game. So if there's like a news story that's like you know, like birds aren't real, Like you're like, yeah, sure, okay, no, yeah, actually on the news, girl I said, is not real. Drones they're watching they're watching this girl. That's what they said last night at eleven, Like sure, fine, I'll believe that. Also, romance scams are like a hundred forty three million dollar industry,

are you kidding? So much money is made off romance scams um, And a lot of it is because people were just so lonely, and I think that's so sad, it's really said. And they tend to skew older too, right, yes, and also like but older and also younger, like young women and men with a lot of disposable income, especially like they're very susceptible because they know when you're younger, Like I remember when I was nineteen, like people say

stuff to me. They made no sense. And it wasn't until I became like an adult that I was like, oh, or like my one of my ex boyfriends in college had a whole sugar daddy, and I know something was off, but he had a sugar daddy. It was like like, like okay, So we went to school and our campus was like ten minutes away from his internship, which was downtown. So he if they worked late, the sugar daddy would get them a hotel and they would stay downtown and

he lived him andutes a wife from home. I was like, you don't ever need to stay at home? This man? What is And I was young though, so I was like, I guess that's how they'd be working in the bank in the industry. I don't know. I don't work in the bank. Weirdly sweaty at the bank. Oh my god. They had robes that were like he would tell me, honest, I don't know why did not put two two together. It was like robes that were monogramed. I was like, bank robes. You know what the bank bankers were, you

know what the bank? You know what the bank when they have the robes, the terry cloth robes. Don't know what I'm talking about. You need those robes to handle the money, don't make it weird. I wonder if there's like a perfect age at which we are immune to scam. I feel like it's got to be like thirty five and that's it. Yeah. I feel like at thirty five you're probably lie a little bit more of a skeptic, but you're not like old enough that you're like worried about.

I guess what I'm trying to say is like when you get older, you all you also start to fall out of the way of technology. So the thirty five, I feel like you're in tune with all the technology that's currently happening. You probably know how to text and cinemogs and Skype, FaceTime and everything. But I feel like the older you get, because there's grandpa scams to grand parents scams and um and those on average grandparents are sending like nine thousand dollars to scammers that's so sad,

who are pretending to be their grandchildren. And with Facebook you can get on Facebook and learn everything you need to know about someone, click around to find their grandchildren. UM, and even people put have videos so you can learn how to mimic people's voices. It's so easily with deep fake. Now it's it's that's game over. Like once someone deep fakes a video of you going like, hey, Grandma, it's me. I need nine thousand dollars for bail, and that's what

they do. They call UM. Actually just did a show about one where the phone call started as like, don't be afraid. It's me. I'm your grandson's defense attorney. He got into a d U I accident, and he starts off with don't be afraid. I trust it so much, don't be afraid. So but the thing is going to be afraid. But he told me not to, so chill.

I'm good naturally. When I pick up the phone, I'm afraid, right, I'm just I'm on pins and needles when I answer the calling, waiting for someone to reassure me not to be afraid. But that's the thing, though, is like when you learn certain scams or get into like scamming, you start to hear things like that and you go, what

the like this is great. But if you're not involved in that stuff, like your study was saying, I think that you're less likely to pinpoint it sometimes, like if they catch you at the right time because they call late at night or really really early in the morning to write. Yeah, it's interesting because I feel like UM.

As a former UM psychology study research assistant, I was basically running scams as well, because you just you have to lie to people in order to test them because they can't know what you're testing otherwise that influences the results. So there were some really weird studies. One of them was I had to convince these guys that we had a special camera that monitored their sexual arousal by looking at their pupil dilation, and then we showed them a

sexy video. And like I had to be really in college, I was not cool. I just wasn't cool, and I had I wasn't able to really I didn't know how to lie. I was just you know, kind of kind of doofy and stuff. And you have like such an honest face though you have like these bright blue eyes. I feel like if you tell me things, I would believe them. Um. Yeah, it's it's my honest face a k A looking always startled or as if someone has farted in the room. Hey, it works. I have the

face of a liar people. People know what I'm talking. If I'm breathing, I'm lying. And I mean if I worked real hard to convince people when I am lying, I wouldn't say that. But then I have the face of a gullible person. So um so I had to somehow um And then the guys would sometimes question me like say like, wait, how can a camera tell like I'm aroused? And it's like you know, by detecting your pupils And they're like, well, am I aroused right now? Like I don't know. If I don'tbout the camera, I

can't tell that guy's a scamera. It was like sounds like bullshit. Um So, I don't think I got too. I didn't get good at scamming people or I didn't get good at like lying, but I did learn like to just not trust anyone because if I couldn't trust me, who can I trust? Right? And that's the thing too, is it like also your experience is right, that'll all lo catered to, Like how easily your scam if you're someone who's had more privileged life. You know, people in

your life have genuinely not been shady. If you have access to a lot of money, those people easiest to scam. Yeah, because you've been insulated in a bubble and everyone's treated you well up until, Like, you don't know how other people live. So someone does tell you, like they work in diamond dealing, and it's dangerous that people are following them. I'm like the arrested development, Like how much can bananas

cost twelve dollars? Just thirty dollars? I mean, I think because I do look kind of innocent, I think like a lot of people have tried to take advantage of me, so I've kind of learned a lot over the years. Um And, like I like I remember in high school, I was super global. People were always teasing me and like bullying me in a sort of funny way that like even now I can like that was pretty funny.

But like, um so the only person looking back fondly on the bullying, right, I think about well, I mean I was I was bullying. That was not so fun. But you know the fun bowling where it's like, oh, look at the ceiling, Katie and I would or like like, oh, did you know if you like shake a salt salt shaker on your tongue, you can like taste it. The i'm they're like looking like I'm, you know, jerking someone off. So another thing you can't trust is caterpillars. What a

seg Oh I'm great at segways. On this show, um so, Um, we're going to learn that just like humans can defend ourselves by learning to mimic our predators, so can animals. And we're going to start off with a very naughty little caterpillar. Um So. The hawk moth caterpillar of Central and South America mimics the look of vipers by inflating itself like a balloon a snake. Right, So they have these big fake eye spots and fake reptile scales, and they puff up their front parts and wave them around

to look like a snake head. They'll even like undulate and do monks strikes. So I've got a video of this alright, So here's the hawksmouth caterpillar. That's the cat. Oh my, it looks like a snake. This is crazy. It looks so it like twists itself around. Um, and then it like inflates itself, just like part of it so part of it still skinny, and then it kind of creates a bulb at one end that looks like

a snakehead. And it's extremely convincing like that. Even even biologists and researchers who know about this caterpillar and are actively looking for it, when they see it there start yeah, because it's we're so um programmed to be afraid of snakes that if you see this, you're going to jump. Now the fake has at all. This Is this the butt part of the caterpillar? I think it's the front part. Actually, oh wow, because I thought it was eaten. Now I think that is. I think that is the front part.

Oh okay, because I was like, that would be fly if you could just make it look like a snake but you could just eat Yeah. There are examples. So auto mimicry is a type of mimicry where you are mimicking your own body parts. So there are caterpillars and animals that have eyes on their butt um and there's um, there's this owl called the it's like the northern North American pygmy owl that has eyes on the back of

its head. Um here's a picture of that, so you can see from a distance that you would just think and it's looking at you right exactly, and alics can swivel their heads around. So um, this is like the next technology. They're like women need, like walking home at night, a whole face on the back of my head. I feel like if you had two faces, that would be enough of a deterrent, like like this pitch has two

faces crazier than um. Well actually so um. In uh In Indian Bangladesh, in tiger territory, people used to try to wear mank on the back of their heads to prevent tiger attacks because they would attack you from behind. Um. But this only they were only able to do it for a few months because reportedly the tigers like cut onto it and they learned to differentiate between the fake mask and like the real face. Right now, that's very smart. So I wonder who who was the first guy to

get attacked. He was like, no, no no, not, don't worry, I got my face mask. Do the first one. It's like it's just a really bad face mask. And then they turned around in their face also looks like that. I was like, I don't know what we're wrong. It was a perfect resemblance. Um so Uh. That is a form of the The caterpillar pretending to be a form is a form of Baitsian mimicry. So that's a harmless animal mimicking a dangerous animal animal in order to scare

off would be attackers. Uh so uh. In addition to the UM caterpillar, other examples are tasty butterflies mimicking UM. The epi semitic coloration of unpalatable butterflies and moths, like butterflies that will make like if a bird eats that butterfly, it'll vomit. Those tend to be like like green and red. Yeah, like these bright colors like monarchs are a good example. UM. Monarchs aren't delicious, no, um. They do look delicious though buttery.

There's there's a complex math to this actually, because if you have too many UM mimics who taste great mimicking the unpalatable mimics. Uh, then the it gets all skewed where predators don't learn, so they'll just like because the signal has too much noise. The predators lead all these tasty molds and only occasionally eat the moth or the butterfly.

That is actually toxic. So they're kind of messing up the game for the person who is toxic because they's like, I don't take my chances right exactly, Like if like most ice cream you ate tasted great, but like one once in a hundred like it tasted like ass like, then you'd still eat ice cream, right, Yeah, yeah, I probably would risk of that as Yeah. So so this really is kind of ruining it for the people who

had the armor, right exactly. So the populations actually you see like these populations rising in declining as they kind of balance out because there has to be this balance of mimic population to the actual true signal population. Um. So. Another example, and this is just kind of funny, is there be flies who are totally harmless that look like bees. But they're really funny because they're just these little they look like little poofballs with with eyes and they're they're

just harmless flies. But I would never look like these. I've never known if I've seen a bee fly before. I think the first time I saw one was um, I think I saw one in the Sequoias um and it was really funny because it like I thought it was a be but it was also a lot less agile than it looks like a great value brand, like one of those ice cream trucks serving like like pocket Monster like ice creams where it's like Pikachu but it's all melty to never were it's it's sponge Guy, the

ice cream poke Man. Get a Pokemon, I scream. I mean, I feel like this would work on humans too, Like you know, how um, Like when the whole tide pod thing was a mean and people were making like tide pod jello shots and tide pod colored uh like cupcakes and cookies like as a joke. But I feel like if someone handed me a jello shot that looked like a tide pod, I wouldn't want to eat it because it would disgust weight. I would feel like I was maybe going to eat a tide pot. Right. It's kind

of like how um, I think they're there. There's been some research to show that when you have a certain flavor associated with cleaning products in a country, like there's less gum that comes in that flavor, whereas like if in another country, like the gum or that kind of flavoring isn't like a minty flavor being used in cleaning products. It's not, it's less likely to be to be because you don't want to consume it, right exactly. Oh that

makes total sense. I would turn me off to I wonder what kind of gum they're eating in Mexico because flavor um and it's all delicious. Why do they make it look so good? They make it look too good. It's like a bright color like candy apple, grein and sin and blue, and the smells like candy does. And then I'm like, but I can't eat it? But or can I can? I? I mean we learned with tide pots. Have you have you seen those um like their coffee

mug shaped like toilets? Yeah? I don't understand it because any anytime, like there's some cute see things like oh, here's a cookie, but it's shaped like a pupa emoji, or like here's like it's eat poop. Yeah. Somebody had a baby shower cake once and they had a very realistic vagina yeah with like the baby you know, yeah, I mean maybe the vagina alone with the baby hand was coming down. It was like would you like to eat this pussy? Yeah, a lot of people would like

to eat a pussy. Um, But but it was like baby, baby, baby. I want to say coitus, but that's mad birth reaching the baby is yeah, And I was like they did as a joke, and I'm like, also, I don't want to eat I don't ever want to eat a baby shaped cake. Um. But also I saw I saw a baby cake where it was like the stomach was transparent. It was like this baby fetus in this transparent jello stomach. I don't under we've just because we can doesn't mean we should. Yeah, our society, man, I would eat a

cake shaped like a baby, though, I don't know. If I give you a little baby foot, I already want to eat baby cheek. I don't literally want to eat a baby. But it's like nibble, that's true, just like yeah, yeah,

just like suez um. So there's another kind of mimicry called Mularian mimicry, when it's two or more dangerous animals that develop a similar look um so that that signal, Like we talked about, it's important that predators actually learned that that signal so they don't eat you otherwise it's useless. So when you have too dangerous um or toxic animals teaming up looking alike than their signal is going to

be even stronger. So an example of this is the viceroy and monarch butterflies that are both mildly toxic um too toxic uh, and they look very similar. They basically look the same. It's really hard to differentiate them. And there's actually some human example. So evolutionary zoologist Thomas in Shatt claims that marketers engage in this Mularian mimicry where

products are colored similarly to signal brand identification better. So that would kind of be like baits and mimicry, so like a some coke off brand, like trying to look like a coke bottle or having the same like Dr Pepper and Mr Pitts exactly exactly um, or like the I can't believe it's not butter. Have you seen like all the variations of that where it's like butter, No,

I can't believe it. It's like, how don't know it's not It's like the same kind of swooping texts like like the blue on yellow or whatever it is, it's like butter. Nah, maybe no, this isn't butter or is it the taste of butter? Perhaps kind of butter but not really, but is it Maybe we don't know the cousin of butter or you be the judge, and I would go for that. I mean, that's I mean, that's what Walmart is a great value product is literally so

close to cheerios cheery boys. And then the kind of Mularian mimicry where it's like their signal boosting each other is like chip flavors often have similar colors, so like cool ranch is like blue, and like, um, like salt and vinegar is like green exactly um and like sort of like red and yellow is just like you know, basic basic chip. Yeah. Um So that's kind of interesting to me. It's like butterflies do it and chips do it. Um So, there's other forms, interesting forms of defensive mimicry.

Um So, there are these three snakes who live in North Central and South America who look almost identical, the milk snake, the false coral snakes, and the deadly coral snakes. Um So, the milk snakes are harmless, the false coral snakes are moderately toxic and venomous. Um and the deadly coral snakes are um So, there's a nemonic device to

try to tell the difference between these snakes. Um, it goes red on yellow kills a fellow, red on black venom black, or there's another one that's like red touches black, it's a friend of jack. Red touches yellow, it's a bad for a fellow. Or I didn't mean to do that, as like Italian, it's a bad for a Red touches yellow, you're a dead fellow. Red touches black, you're okay, jack. Um, I've never been able to learn these because I'm just like red on yellow good for a fellow, Red on black,

you're okay, Jack. You know it's completely confusing to close, but like you should, regardless of whether they confuse you, you should completely ignore these poems. They are useless. Researchers have found that there's no reliable color pattern that can help you determine the harmless snakes from the deadly coral snakes. So if you see like red touches yellow, just like, stay away from these snakes, right, don't be like, okay, red touches yellow or red touches black, rob it all

over your back. Um, So you might think that in this case, the milk snake and the false coral snakes are mimicking the deadly coral snake as a kind of Baitsia mimicry, but it's Some biologists actually argue that this is called Martensian mimicry um, where a deadly animal mimics a less deadly but still harmful animal, because if you're deadly, it's hard to teach a predator a lesson because if they eat you, then they die, but you also die,

so nobody learns anything. So if you mimic a slightly less deadly animal but that's still toxic, then the predators live, but they learned that that is a yucky snake, and then they won't eat you, which is kind of a convoluted thing, and it's not it's somewhat controversial. Snake. I can't tell my friends about the snake that I ate. If I'm did right exactly, you can't do that anyways. I've found people don't like it. I hate a snake last week, and then then they're like, okay, well, do

snakes tastes good? Alligator don't think they taste super good. I think it's hard to cook them without them getting really chalky. Yeah, and like dried out they're just useless little news like biting noodles UMDs. Uh. So um, there's also Gilbertian um emicry, so this is an interesting one. Uh. Here's an example. So, passion flowers um have developed growths that look like butterfly eggs to deter butterflies from laying

their eggs on them, exposing them to caterpillars. So, um, it's basically Gilbertian mimicry is you're the victim of parasites that then mimics the parasite in order to trick the parasite into not bothering you. Right, So this is like if um, oh, this is so dark, but it's like if someone shooting and you just lay down and pretend you've already been shot pretty much um. And so it's like these these passion flowers actually have developed growths that

look like butterfly eggs. So the butterfly who normally likes to lay their eggs on these flowers will look at that and be like, oh, there's already competition here, I can't do it. Or it also attracts predators of the butterflies, and then that's good because that then kills any butterflies that will come and lay their eggs. Um, because it kind of just keeps them around, like there's probably gonna

be some butterflies back soon and munch on. I feel like this would be like if you got a scammer calling you and then you tried to scam this camera, Like like if they're like, can you give me your social Security number? And you're like, oh, I don't know what a social security number is? Could you give me yours as an example? Yeah? Wait, repeat it, thank you? Or like what's your driver's license? It's all of a sudden you're giving up on the information. UM. And then

we talked a little bit about automimicry. UM. That's the that's where you're mimicking your own body parts where it's like the eyes on the back of your head. UM. Actually you know the that Gilbert Tian Memicry reminds me of. UM. I think his name is James Veach. Have you ever

seen his stuff? He's like he um, scammers email him, and then he like scams the scammers for comedy where he like, uh, like they'll they'll like try to get him to do a scam and then he tries to keep them engaged as long as possible, where he's like, oh, I'm in, But then he like starts like tormenting them by being like, you know, can you send me a photo of the briefcase scammers? I haven't seen that, but scammers have to be really good at photoshop or its

like a requirement. Um, and I can't imagine like him like putting them through like can you send me the bank statement? Like and they have to go to work making it all the comp or they're like they'll say like you've won this thing, and he's like, oh, I heard about that in the newspaper. So I also get a free toaster, right, And they're like, no, there's no free toasters, Like well what about this? And each shows like an advertisement for their scam, but it says like

and a free toaster. It's it's so good. There's one example of mimicry and evolutionary biology that isn't just unique, it's freaky, and like many freaky things in nature, it's all because of this weird fungus. Imagine a fungus that infects your body, hijacks your biology to make you look and smell like a delicious dessert. This is exactly what the disco micat Fungus monil in the Vaccini quorum bosy fungus do, or as I like to call them, because

that's impossible to pronounce, the blueberry fucker. The blueberry fucker fungus infects the leaves of the blueberry plant and causes them to secrete sweet nectar like substance. Pollinators like bees come to sip at this sugary hoax, and the fungus hitches right on the bee. Then, when the bee moves on to a blueberry flower, the fungus infects the flowers

reproductive system. Then the fungus hijacks the flowers ovaries, using them to produce mummified, inedible blueberries containing the fungus, which hibernate over the winter and goes on to infect the plant again in the spring. This is one of the only cases in nature where a parasitic organism forces another organism, in this case the blueberry plant, to engage in mimicry, and then uses a patsy in this case, the bee,

to infect the plant. Not only does it force the blueberry to smell delicious, it also alters its ultra violet coloration, making the leaves give off a flower signal to the bees. The blueberry fucker fungus runs one of the most complicated, dastardly scams in nature. When we return, we'll discuss how sometimes all we need to do to bamboozle someone is to just act casual and blend into the crowd. Sometimes the best way to trick someone is to act like

what you're doing is totally normal. The greatest strength of humans can also be our greatest weakness. We are highly socially intelligent, and we depend on social groups to survive, and other words, were a bunch of conformists. There's a famous study in psychology that puts us to the test it in an almost unnecessarily humiliating way. The elevator experiment was part of the Ash Conformity experiments that looked at how people coped with group pressures. Now imagine that you

normally enter an elevator. You get in, face the wall with the doors and all the buttons, and wait while desperately holding in that part. And the elevator experiment experimenters placed research assistance in the elevator who were instructed to face the back wall when they got in with their backs turned away from the doors like a couple of idiots, except when an unexpecting bystandard got in the elevator, they copied the two research assistants, also turning away to face

the back. So are we all just a bunch of stupid cheap well? The ash conformity experiments revealed that while people are heavily pressured by crowds and conforming, we're also extremely willing to listen to reason. His research show that it only took one person going like, hey, why the

hell are you guys standing backward? You assholes to prevent people from falling for the group think um, which, I feel like I would be easily tricked by this elevator experiment because I've been an elevator where they open on one side and then like I'm standing there, you know, like like a door like facing the doors, and then like ding, and then I hear like from the kind of like what there's like a big target on the bread that has those elevators where like they open on

the other side when you go out. I would definitely fall for this because like I'm also the type of person and like black people joke about this. Alive is like if we see other people running, we will start running to and we don't need to know why we're running or what we're running from or where we're running to. We'll figure out when we get there. We're like, there's dangerous, so we're going to just run with this group of people.

Sometimes it's a marathon. Uh. There have been prying shows where they just like have a horde of people who start running like towards some innocent person and then the person's like, oh shit, it's like it's happening, It's finally happening, and then they start running away too. I mean that's I feel like that's not being gullible. I think that's just self preservation because usually when a bunch of people are running, you should run, And I think it's also

self preservation. Sometimes I feel like when we're conforming, because it's like sometimes standing out can be dangerous exactly. But me too, me too, me as well, I know why we're doing this. I'm not even that like I would definitely do the same. I'd rather be sometimes. I mean it's like I know we're all like, oh, you know, you want you don't want to conform, you don't want to be a sheep. But sometimes I kind of would rather be a sheep than like be the idiot who's like, wait,

why is nobody else wat? Aay is nobody else walking? Because it's like an open man hole or right, literally, you don't want to be that one guy whose mask on the back of his head didn't work? Are my ex boyfriend who was wearing robes to the bank, you know, it's like, I guess that's whatever. It doesn't think. It's like what if you want to bank, like wearing a monoground robe and you're like, but my boyfriend said, this is what? This is? What? No, where's my hotel room?

Do all your business out of hotel rooms right now? So in the animal kingdom, there's something called wassmanny and mimicry, where the mimic resembles the animal that it's trying to live amongst um. So kind of like it makes me think of that meme with um, what's his name? Who's going like, hello, what's that actor's name? Oh it's Steve Yes, yes, yes, yes, hello, fellow kids, children, Yes, this is exactly that. So typically it's found in insects who are mimicking social insects like ants, bees.

So here's an example there are several species of jumping spiders who do this to avoid predation and get lost in the ant crowd. So spider predators like spider wasps, which like to prey on spiders, don't like to prey on ants because ants have zero chill. They will yeah, and they will destroy you. Turn. I stepped in an ampile not too long and they descended on my foot. It was like seconds before, like my whole was yeah, it was like damn, it was accidentally, bit is get

kid out here? They come outside and beat me up. I was like damn. It's like when you accidentally bump someone in the grocery store and then they just they don't accept your apology. You're like, oh, I'm sorry, and they're like what we're going asho, dare you. It's like there are people in traffic, like you cut somebody off by acts and you're like sorry that they honk at

you for three blocks. Drink It's it's like it's like it's like I want there to be a horn I can press where it's like, yes, I realize I've made a mistake and I'm very sorry about it. Please stop talking at me. I understand my mistake and I will endeavor to not do it again. And I wanted to be that law. Yes, that one you have to pause and let it finish, and then it repeats. I'm really sorry that I did this action. I have apologized. I know I didn't. We all do it. I don't know

why people get so angry. I don't know, but yeah, aunts turned up real quickly. They are um, they are, they are on board, uh for I feel like they're also just juiced up. I feel like they're like the roided up yes animal of the animal kingdom or of the insect kingdom, because they can like lift like ten

times are a body weight. They're they're like fifty flannel bros, like all like showing up to a party and they all like sign like one of them gets their drink knocked over and they're all like you want to go. They're all on pre workout there drinking pre workout and vodka. These are the antstring for logo. Love for logo, like all the ants is simultaneously unison like flannels off off um.

So these jumping spiders who mimic the ants will do a lot to try to really sell the allusions so that big um they can like the jumping spiders are actually quite small. They're pretty cute. I think they're adorable. I know, I know that's a controversial opinion about spiders being cute, But if there is a cute spider, it's the jumping spiders. UM. So I'll show you a couple of pictures of Um, here's the actual ants, and then here's the mimic. This is a spider, and then this

is another spider that looks just like the ants. You can tell that the mouth is different, the mandibles are a little different. So ants have those antenna which the spiders don't have. So the spiders will wave their front legs around as if they're antenna. Um. It makes me think of those like videos where like you put human arms around a dog and it's like, look, I'm a human doing science. I love that. That reminds me of UM.

One time, my girlfriends and I were trying to get into the v I P. Of this nightclub and it was like they had like really walled up and there were like some really famous people in there. And we walked by a table and there was like a bunch of cups and like supplies on it, and so we just picked that stuff up and held it over our heads like we worked there, Like excuse, that's so good to put these cups ye, jimmy, you know me, we

gotta put these cups back here. I think people are so we're so willing, we want to go with the flow. We want things to be normal. That if some if you are confident and you're just like I'm here to do a job, like people's default is like oh yeah, okay, yeah, you've got cups, you're official. I also learned in my Psychology of Marketing class that if you give people want to excuse, any excuse, they're more likely to let you

do what you want. So an example, if you want to cut in a line, they can just be like I do all the time at the airport, my flight sporting like do you mind it in front of you? Works every single time, or just any excuse. It doesn't even have to do with the situation. Could be at the air I've got diabetes and then you get the line. It's like, wait, what it works? Just like what I don't know if she got diabetes, so she said she said she got to get through t s a fast

because the diabetes gonna flare up. I don't get it. I have my dog has a bladder stone. Okay, so you need your start, sure, yeah, get your Starbucks faster. No, I was just gonna get a lot tame. But if you're dog like, you know how it is your dog? Yeah, okay sure. So some of these um jumping spiders that mimic ants will prey on the ants. Um. They'll like, I know, I know, they're like, I'm just a normal ants And it's like, well wait, why do you have

another ant in your mouth? Billy, come back, come back behind this dirt pile. I need you to see something. So some of the some of the other find that picture. So some of the other spiders, the bigger ones that can't get away with being ant sized. Instead they just look like two ants, like carrying another ant. Um. Here it is here, it is here, it is It's so cool. Okay. So this is an image of one spider who looks

like two ants. What like, here's the like it looks like one ant and then carrying another aunt because like, and it's got little eyes with anty right exactly. It's got little uh little spots in two places, so it looks like it has two sets of eyes. So it looks like a worker ant carrying like a dead or injured ant um and so it gets away with It's like it's like it's sort of the reverse of like two kids in a trench coat. It's like it's like one person looking like two adults that is insane. And

then it's eating ants. Yeah, it's like just a paramedic ant here carrying the injured out actually more ant on the It's like, is that are those two ants eating another ant just doing medicine which is working on and

we broke his lick scalpel. Alright, So now, um, I want to talk about zebra coloring because it's a really interesting, uh phenomenon where like you look at the zebra, it's like, that is a stupid animal because if it wants to not stand out, not be spotted by lions, like it's dumb because it's it's it almost looks like white and black right, Like it looks like it's like an alarm

sign going like here's a zebra eat it um. Uh. Like it even looks like a diner, you know how like diners like have this sort of like black and white pattern like tapers like like them and dine at the zebra diner um. So actually, uh, there's a few theories as to why these stripes are advantageous and they're really wild. So um zebras are actually have some defense

against predators and biting flies because of this coloring. So one way is they confuse predators with what's called motion dazzle, which is like the old razzle does the these zebras are like bootleggers from the twenties or something like kicking the hair feed up. Wait, what, like what do you mean by that? Is it like you look at them,

you think you're high for a second. That's also true, but it's like so bold patterns actually can make it difficult to assess speed and direction because of a couple of um illusions. So there are two illusions at play. There's the wagon wheel effects, so like if you've ever seen I mean, we don't see wagon wheels, but it's kind of an antiquated term, like you know how well we wheel? But like when you see like a fan, like a ceiling fan, and sometimes it looks like it's

going backwards in a weird way. Um, it's like the motion seems inverted when it's moving fast enough, because like the the light and dark going like light dart like dark. It's like it confuses your visual neurons and it's like because that is the same pattern as it would go in the other direction, so your brain keeps switching it back and forth. So this is similar to the barber pole illusion, which is also in effect with the zebras, where stripes on a barber pole, so it's just a

rotating thing inside that. It's like got like a blue and a red band, but it looks like when you look at the pole, looks like the stripes are moving down, like um, vertically along the stripe rather than just turning around. So that's because neurons in the visual cortex have what's called an aperture problem, which is that you only have a limited slice of visual information. You can't take in like everything about the geometry of like that barber pole.

So when there are two interpretations which like you have, it's like with the wagon wheel illusion, like you have the visual stimulation of like the stripes going around the pole is actually very similar to how it would look like if they were traveling down. Um, that's my brain is making it seem like it's traveling. It's like it's doing that right, and and in fact, your brain actually will opt for the slower moving interpretation. I'm not really sure why it does that. I think the neurons are

just lazy. They're like slow, don't worry about it. This is when our brain just starts to like make stuff up. It's like, yeah, we think it's moving down. We don't really know, but that's what we're gonna that's what we decided, right U. Yeah, Tom said it's moving down and around there's just loud chewing and like like McDonald's papers, like crinkly,

like what moving down down. So with the zebras with their stripes, they kind of they reap the advantage of both the barber pool and the wagon wheel allusions, so like uh, and they also when they're moving as a herd um, it just turns into this giant, flickering mass that to like a line, it's like it's it's hard for it to know like what way it's moving, what it's doing, And it's also hard to pick out an individual to like eat, because like you know, if you're

a line, you can't just eat all of the zebras you want to write once You probably just can't stop um, Sarah Getti spprinkle. But I mean that's another thing with scammers. You have to isolate a victim, right, Like if you try to scam a group of people, it's harder. No, yeah,

because then people can start figuring it out. And you also have to pick victims who are isolated, because if a victim has too many friends and then they go, you know, there I brunch and they're like, yeah, so Ferderico told me I gotta send him seven thousand dollars and then he's gonna get his visa and then he's gonna be able to come over here. But right now he only has a flip phone and he cannot contact me or show me any pictures of him. And you're like, wait,

you shouldn't do that, but but no, it's okay. His dog is bladders. Yeah, I know his dog is very much gonna die. I've never seen the dog either, No, but he once did have it bark on the phone, so I know it's real bark bark. Right. Oh, here's here's an image of the barber. Like it looks like it's like just moving moving up And even though I'm trying to tell my brain it's not my brain. Tom is like no, no, no, no, no, we told you

it's going right, going up. I mean, that's what's so interesting about illusions is that even once you know the illusion, you can't unsee it, and you you all actually flip back and forth, and sometimes you can force yourself to try to see. So Another use of these stripes is they are unattractive to horse flies, which typically like to bite animals like zebras. But horseflies can't, like they're so stupid that like, and they expect light to act in

a certain way. That putting like um, a dark color and a light color next to each other like that is like too confusing for them. And they they're like what you know what, never mind, we'll eat later. Come on, Tim, Like this horse is uh confusing just because it's got different colors, Like it smells like a horse and horse is broken. We don't want any of this nasty horse. Our horseflies like taking our blood out when they yeah, yeah,

they're second or juices are delicious juices, horse juice. That's the best situation though, because horse flies i't have to kill anybody. They're just come bite. That's true. Although um, like I'm not I think horse flies might sometimes carry disease, but I think that's the that's the thing that really gets you with like mosquitoes or the u C flies, Like they carry disease and then that's how they So it's not really their fault. It's the diseases that they

carry a kind of blame from biting people. Uh yeah, I mean that's a good that's kind of a chicken and the egg thing. Yeah. So like like they get the virus um or the virus directly infects them and then like they'll get it from another infected animal and then they pass it on. But they're like living good with zeka like zoidism. Yeah, yeah exactly. Um I think so.

Um So, it's like they're they're the carrier, they're um So, Lacy, I was thinking we could in the show with you talking a little bit about the scams that you know about or the scams that you do. I'm really not insulting you, So I don't talk about the current scams right right, it's like you know, going, but when it's retired and then I'll talk about scam exactly. So the scam Goddess that's coming out with new episodes, right, Yes, so October one, Scam Goddess on Earwolf. We'll be out

and we'll have an episode every single week. Yeah, what's happening. We're recording episodes now. It's super fun. This was a part of my inspiration for I love to see all the scammer animals and a scam scaminals. That's the kind of fat I want to have as a scaminal. Yeah. So what some of your advice to to scam which obviously we don't We don't endorse them scam people, but yeah, it depends on what kind of scams you're doing. If you're like scamming and hurting people that I don't approve

of that, if you're scamming big faceless corp. Absolutely don't scam old people, scam old companies right exactly, Like they're they're they're scams themselves, Like they've been running scams and work scams. So they need to be like like, scam your Internet provider into giving you new like trial packages and stuff like that. That's that's that's the good scam because they're you know, like they're the scammer exactly. They've they've all ripped us off so much that we deserve.

Oh this is a fun one um that I actually learned about. A listener mailed this one in. They said they retired the scams so I could share it, but I think other people should pick it up because I

think it could still work. So if you have a friend and you asked and like you asked them to like send you some text messages, so basically you change their name in your phone to like insert whatever food business promotion here, so like insert Taco Bell food promotion right, So you change their name to that in your phone. Then you have them text you a text saying like, oh, you have received a deal deal of the day and it's like ten corn traps for five dollars um offered

only for a limited time at participating locations. And then like you have to make sure that the date is about to expire or is already expired, but maybe just like a day or try. And then you go into like these fast food restaurants and you're like, hey, I got this deal promotion for tin five. I know it says it's about to expire, like can I use it? And a lot of times like these, like these fast

food chain restaurants don't really communicate they'll honor it. Um, And I was that was a wild because at first I thought you were going to like prank the friend, and it's like it's mean your friends. It's like prank talking.

That's fine. And I'm talking about those food scams. As you look up like popular concerts in the area or whatever concerts are happening that day, and then you call ahead to Chipotle and he tells them that you're on tour with whatever concept that's playing whatever venue, and that they love to have some like free burritos because this artist loves these burritos and most of the time and Sharon he loves and he's in love with the shape.

I accidentally scammed a restaurant once because um, I was doing a report for school on an Italian chain restaurants. It's like a an anthropology class. I was like comparing like American Italian chains like to to authentic Italian and like what kinds of things they're like mimicking and stuff. Uh, And so I like showed up with like a clipboard.

I was like writing things down because like I was trying to take notes and I didn't want to bring my whole laptop, so I was like there with a clip note like writing about the food, and they were so nice to me, and they like gave me extra bread. Came in with a clipboard. Yeah yeah, yeah, listen, a clipboard is in a scammers artillery. Okay, you gotta have a clip right right, It's like uh and I was like, wow, gosh, they sure were nice. They don't know what you're reporting.

A lot of times, like food credits, may be shocked how a much stuff you can get for free, right, so if you want, um, I mean you don't necessarily they might not give you free things, but they will be really nice to you. Yeah, um I got I think I got some free bread though they get me extra bread. There are definitely people who will like impersonate famous food critics that people may not necessarily know what their faces. And then those people come in and you

can get complimentary meals that way. Are saying that you're writing for like a big right. I think that's kind of mean because like if you like, if you know, like when waiters like but like also the cooks like you have some like like line cooks who are like, oh, I'm really trying hard in the like as well, you gotta get this right, like Gorton Ramsey, like just screaming

them out. It's like y'all solving this crap on a plata that would have never happened to me at the restaurant that I worked at ages ago, because we had photos of l a food critics were really so you knew what they're like, like putting like photos of counterfeit dollars up or putting real money n how to be onler If you did get a food back and you're like, oh, I know who you are, you have to I'll give you the goods right like like Gordon Ramsey isn't a

twelve year old boy, but like im person Nation. Scams like those are really big. The biggest thing that I tell people though, because on Scam Goddess, we spend a lot of time warning you about scams because we only want you to get involved in my scams. Now I'm running a scam. Please do give me your social Security number spinning a cup and mail it to me. Yeah, I need it, like you wan't like meet a swamman. Okay, I already took your other water bottles. I helpfully labeled

it with my credit card information. Yes, that was very helpful of you, right right, no, Um, but one of the biggest things is is like if someone calls you and they're offering you information, like you should always be watching out so like, so think about it, Like when you call your bank, like your bank basically acts like an angry ex girlfriend and interrogates you, like it's like, oh, you're wearing you have a Bank of America account. Okay, sure,

what's yourself Okay, what's your day to birth? Okay, what's your last night? What's your first name? Was your middle name? Who is your mama? Who's your mom? And what's your mama's favorite car? Like like they're gonna interrogate you. I heard your mother's dog has bladderstone. What's that dog's name? I don't know. You're not gonna be able to get anybody out of your account if you can't tell me. Um. So, if a scammer calls and they're like, hey, I'm calling

from your bank, and here's a reference number. A reference number is like the biggest O G scam things, Like they'll give you some made up numbers too, one zero O nine is your reference number, like and we know it's a scamp. Oh, here's one for all the dog walkers, and we're talking about the animals obviously and animal lovers. I'm sure listen to this podcast. Wags. So you've heard of WAGS, right, is that the walking dog walking service dog walking service with the app. So there's some scammers.

This is a recent one that um they'll get on the Wags app and they'll schedule a dog walking session with you and then they'll cancel it and then they'll call you because on the app it's like Uber how like when you can call people because you're about to have service with them, and like you know how Uber like scramble your number when you call the Uber driver and it does the same for them for privacy. So when they've scheduled a dog walk with you, they get

access to your contact information through the app. So by canceling the dog walking service that they previously booked with you, then they'll call and be like, Hey, we're calling from Wags and we just canceled your dog walking service. But don't worry, you're going to get a ten dollar cancelation fee. So then that person will go through the app and send ten dollars to the person that they just canceled the walk on then they'll be like, hey, we actually

need to reverify your banking information. Um, We're like right after they've sent them money, then they take their banking information and they robbed the dog walker and it's wait wait wait, so so it's a dog walk. Wait, so who's getting scammed? Is it the person with the dog or the person who was the person who walks the dog, which is so sad because the person probably doesn't even have a dog. The scammer is just getting on the app so that they can get in contact with the

dog walker. And then it's like and through the app they can pay the dog walker and make it seem like they work for the Apple. I see. It's one of those things where they dangle a little bit of money out for you and then they take all of your money. So it's like it's like, oh, I sorry, I had to cancel here, Um, let me give you ten dollars, but actually, could she give you a social

Security number? Right? It's like it's like if I called an Uber driver that I had the number four because I was using the app, and I was like, hey, Tom, that Uber drivers that we actually call him from Uber? It's me um, Mr Uber from San Francisco. Um, yeah, yeah, we just had to cancel that client. But we sent you the cancelation for you. We don't You're banking information is at a date or whatever, and then you give

me the information, then I steal it. Yeah yeah, I think for me, like the general thing is like when I get a call from someone like pretending to be the I R S or something, and they're like they're like, you owe taxes, and I'm just like make me because I've actually because I've gotten like actual letters from the I R S. Because like whenever you owe taxes or something, um, the I R S will send you physical mail and they'll be like, hey, you owe some stuff like check

like send us, which is so petty, Like I don't get the letter. They're like, hey, hoping this rail or go to jail. Well, I mean they actually don't really threaten you with jail typically, like there they there may be something in the letter which is like you know, like not paying these things we can't result in penalties or something, but they won't call you and be like hey, you need to pay this now or you'll go to jail. They just don't have the resources to send you to jail.

They're so underfunded, like they you know, they'll try to get you to pay it, but like it's um. But if someone's calling you, it's like I'm the I R. S. And if you don't pay this, you're in danger of going to jail. It's like no, they don't. They do not have the manpower to do. That's how they call.

They call like Hi, it's like maybe please listen, were trying to build a roses okay, and we just really meet right, and you know they're they're not Like it happens all the time too, especially like if you have kind of complicated taxes, um, you know, like you may make a miscalculation and they're just like, hey, this is what you owe or like hey there's something could you tell us what you want, like what you want me to both pay you and figure out what I owe.

And that's literally the government's biggest scam is the oh yeah, because like Tiarbo tax uh and other like H and R Blacks and these other like tax prep like companies lobbied against legislation that would have them, uh calculate what we all and just like be like, hey, here's your bill for taxes, which I would be fine with because then it's like then I don't have to do work and oh no, no, no, I need to be able

to run my scam. Honestly, my accountant is too low a biting and I'm gonna have to switch him out for more of a like a better call sault type because he'd be trying to follow all the law. And I was like, that's not why I hired you, Like, what is this? I literally like, I was shooting in Savannah, and Savannah took six percent of my earnators for shooting um and it was a series regular role, so they

took a lot of money from me. And so when I found out that this was going to happen, my lork my accountant called me and he was like, hey, Lacy, so when you get to Georgia like that, it's going to be a six percent tax for an outside contractor. And I said, okay, so how can we get around that? He said, we can't. It's the law. It's like, what, oh you can side? Are you on? I need to fire you talking about side or the law? Hired shady?

What I want you gotta get? You gotta get a sweatier accountant because like you know that, like in movies are always sweaty if they're like you know, yeah, you're right. Mine is like completely dry. He's got photos of his family. It looks like he sleeps. Well, that's not want. What's your favorite scammer like in history? Oh gosh, that's hard because I've fallen in love with a lot of scammers. One that I particularly love a lot. He's actually you heard if you heard the first episode a show that

you heard about him. But it's Jerome Jacobs. I love that story. I love him so much. There's another scammer that I'm trying to get the whole story on. But there was a woman and she worked for Walmart and she made over four hundred thousand dollars by just charging customers and extra nickel for a fake item and then taking that nickel out of the register. Oh my god.

And I just thought the patient that's like the office space kind of thing, right, Yeah, but yeah, that that takes a lot of She did it for many, many God, she said if people looked gullible, she'd take a quarter. I mean, who checks the receipt for like no bad

especially bag fees. Now, if I saw a cord I'd just be like, it's probably like a fee for printing out the receipt or something, right, And also I feel like there's no that's probably the hot new scam is charging for bags but not actually charging for the bag, because I don't think that stores are counting how many bags that they're giving away. Um, I know they're not at rouse because that's my biggest scam. And when I get like the grocery stores, I'll get all my stuff

and I'll say no bags. Then I'll pay, and then they'll close the card and then I'm like, I can't carry all this what was that again? And they don't never ring me back up for the bags and just give me the Bag's terrible. Let's self check out. They don't check Oh no, but I feel weird in the self check out, So I'll be like I got three

bags when really I got y. That's funny. Yeah, I'll give them a little bit, a little bit at because then I'll go to the regular counter and be like like, I can't carry this grocery car troll be some bad. I think it's because with that, you're like actually giving them a chance to do it. Charge. Yeah, where it's

like charge on his like the honor system. And I think it's like maybe it's feels guiltier to like because it's like it's so easy to get away with, right, I don't know what it challenge she loved the challenge might be it for me. I think I might just enjoy duping people. It makes me feel smart. Okay, that's so true. Why do I do that? You don't me? And that it was that? It was okay that I gave you my social Security number? Is I'm just verifying it? Yeah,

you're going to turn that into like big investments. Right? Oh of course were credit. That's seating social Security number. Well, thank you so much for joining me having me so tell people where they can find you in more about the podcast. Oh great. So you can find me Um Lacey Mosley at d I V A l A c I DVA Lacey on all platforms Instagram to Twitter, Ben Mode the like. Um. You can follow scam gott Us at scam got Us pod on Twitter and on Instagram.

And if you have any scams that you want to share with me that you're retiring or anytime you've been scammed, Uh, scam got his Pod at gmail dot com and don't don't scam the elderly only scam big face lost. Yes, yes, please do not scam the elderly. That is so hurtful. And also, guys, watch Florida Girls on Pop tv um. The whole season is out now, so you can stream the whole thing on or you can get on iTunes or Amazon and download it. It's really fun, guys, And

you can follow us on the internets. Uh Creature Feature Pod dot Com, Creature Feature Pod on Instagram, Creature Feet Pod. We couldn't get Creature Feature Pot on Twitter, Creature feet sounds like it's it's not it's f e a T. Don't type in creature f e T because you will get you will get something that's uh not endorsed by this podcast. And you can find me online at Katie Golden Um. And I'm also a bird on Twitter at pro bird Writes, where I am a real, actual, factual bird.

The greatest scam ever pulled was birds because they're not they are they are real. I don't know, I don't have to listening to this podcast is Bird Scams, Bird is scams, Birds is Scams. And thanks to the Space Classics for their awesome song exolumina