Barking Animal News!

audio form because this is a podcast anyways. So I'm going to go through all of the incredible animal news stories that you may have missed these past few weeks. We're talking robotic wolves, bear Blade Runner, newly discovered flying Teddy Bears, discovered this more as we asked the angel question, and what the platypus rave like? Is it awesome? It is spoilers, it is awesome. Joining me today is host of the podcast, secretly incredibly fascinating and friend of the pod.

I'd like to say, I hope I'm not, you know, just consuming too much a friend of the pod, Friend of the pod, Alex Schmidt. Katie. It is like I feel like every time I'm on this podcast. Very exciting. It's also going into a podcast. People are always like, I'm excited to be here, but like that intro, I'm very excited to know about all these things. This is great. I can't wait. Bear Blade Runner doesn't just very exciting. I don't remember what the theme song to Blade Runner was.

Was it like Blade Runner, it's in the future. Yes, Later on he had a standard like thirty second upbeat television theme song that's part of lading Yeah, played by staying. It was weird. It was in sting we're in the future, robot people are here Blade Runner. Let me tell you a little story about a man named Blade and then you just go yeah. But yeah, we're going to talk about bear Blade Runner because apparently while we've been distracted with elections, the world has been creating a bear Blade

Runner for bears, a bare new future. So in Japan, in Tachikawa, they have built huge, terrifying woolf robots with glowing red eyes that are being used to scare bears. Okay, so this so it's it's bear Blade Runner because the bears are being hunted down like the robots were hunted down in Blade Runner. It's not being the hunting. I didn't think that through, honestly, Alex, I didn't think it through that far. I just saw a robot. I saw a robot. I saw I had to do with bears

as like bears and a wolf robot. This is bear blade Runner. So yeah, I think if I remember right, no one cares. But if I remember right, the blade Runners are the hunters, which in the movie, then that's the question of is he a robot or not? But if I remember, the blade Runner is the hunter hunting the robots, So a Bear blade Runner would be somebody

hunting bears. That makes sense, yeah, right. But these wolf robots I do not think would pass the Turing tests or whatever is the test they use in the movie where they're like, what would you do do a turtle? Like they asked the robots, hey, are you a robot? And they're like no, and then they're like, hey would you if you found a turtle on its back in the desert? What would you do? And they're like, I'm

a robot. I don't know what I would do. But these are not very I wouldn't say convincing wolf robots, but terrifying. They look like Halloween decorations. In fact, I feel like they may have been made out of parts of Halloween decorations. But they have glowing red eyes, they move around and kind of gyrate around. They have weird robot legs that just kind of like sort of stops looking like a wolf at one point and looks like

a metal stick figure. Anyways, But yeah, it's got it's got like a fake rubber wolf head, and then it makes terrifying noises as well. Let me play some of these for you. So yeah, it's you know, kind of I'm not I think part of that what was wolf noises, and then it sounded a bit like birds. I'm not

really sure it really escalated. It initially sounded like standard horror movie sound effects from maybe, and then it was like it's like if you know how there there's a human will turn into a were wolf wolf and then they like, yeah, yeah, now I know how that is for sure. Yeah, yeah, it's so they make the noises, they flash, the head turns around and this is too scare bears, which I can I can imagine it would scare bears. You have a possessed devil robot wolf making

horrible sounds. Poor bears. They have been encroaching on human populated areas recently, and I say encroaching with a bit of irony because of course humans are the ones that have been encroaching on the bears territory and the reason that they have had more interactions with humans. There have actually been more bear attacks in this region, which is

very serious. But this has been due to the fact that there's a short stage of acorns that the black bears in the region in Japan used to supplement their diet, and because of deforestation and human developments kind of getting closer and closer to the bear's habitat and taking up more of it, it makes these bears desperate for food and come into the human populated area, and so in order to reduce the number of bear attacks, the city has deployed these wolf robots to scare them away, and

I I get it. I think it's important you don't want bear attacks at all, obviously for humans and also for the bears, because when you have a bear attack, often you have to actually put down the bear itself. So keeping them away from human populated areas, even if it is with freaking terminator wolf over here, I think makes sense. On the other hand, I think it is just a band aid on the bigger issue, which is that they need more or food in acorns and territory.

Otherwise they're going to keep you know, uh like at a certain point, I feel like they'll become desensitized to the wolf robot and just start coming into human areas anyways if they if their food problem is not solved. So yeah, yeah, you're very nice to send a picture as well, And between the picture and the sound, I feel like this is trying to solve the problem both ways. Where you scare bears out of the region and you

scare humans out of the region. There's no bear attack if there's no people to get attacked, right, fixed, right, exactly knocked it out. This belongs to the robot wolves, now are we sure? Are we sure? Like? Whoever selling these robot wolves? I imagine like coming in in the wolf robot wolf truck, like they have sort of a human costume on. They're like, we come bearing robot wolves for your small village to scare the beards. Oh that's another thing we need to be concerned about, is anyone's

selling human costumes. There is never a good scenario where a being is like I would like one human costume. It's only to deceive us. It's only we need to stop manufacturing them in our huge human costume factories. Yeah, I mean, I think you're being a little paranoid, Alex. It's not like a flock of super intelligent birds would use a human costume to do a podcast. Anyways. Facial recognition of bears, Katie, did it? Did a feather just fall out of your eye? That was weird? No? That

was that was normal perspiration anyways. Uh. Step two in bear Blade Runner is facial recognition of bears For bears. Bears are just having technology thrown at them, and I I don't know how they're going to deal with it.

So uh. Silcon Valley software developers are making bear facial recognition along with bear researchers in Canada, and the project is called Bear I D which I feel like you could be a little more inventive with your evil seeming bare facial recognition software like bear faced is right there, fair Faced. Purportedly, this technology is being used for bear conservation studies to be able to track individual bears. So to figure out how to make this software, it's kind

of an interesting path via software developers took. They took cues from a program called dog Hipsterizer, which can find dogs faces, eyes and snouts and photos and puts the little mustache she's in glasses on them. Yeah, we all know that app from its recent Nobel Prize win. I mean, it's a pretty pretty common scientific achievement and has absolutely

it's an absolute disrupter in the dog face app tech industry. Yeah, and so they're like, oh, how do we you know, we've got facial recognition for humans, but now we need it for bears so the government can track the bears and the I R s can hunt them down or whatever. Yeah. I love that. They're like, huh, well, this app, these app developers already did it with their technology to put glasses on hipster glasses on dogs to make your chihuahua look like a hipster. So we'll just use what they

did and but put it on bears for science research. Um. So you know my opinion on this news is if this is used for conservation, which they are claiming it is, this is great because then you can use it to I D individual bears and track them. You don't have to collect them tranquilize them and and tag them or anything, or you know, try to spot them by visual differences. That can be hard to do as a researcher. And so that would mean a lot for conservation, especially if

it can adopt this technology to other animals. But if we're going to be in a bear surveillance state where the government is tracking down rogue bears, I don't know. I can't support it. Yeah, yeah, watch out for watch out for bear brother another name they could have used for this software. That's there's so many out there, work harder at this element, scientists. Please be better, far better, bear best bear. All these pictures are amazing, But if this is a mock up of how it works, I

feel like they didn't try that hard. Like it's just it's a picture of a bear and then there's a red square around the bear's whole head, and then there's just a triangle where the three points are its eyes and its nose point. Like that doesn't it doesn't seem like it's trying bad hard to identify that. I mean, I mean, I get I get what it's doing. It's like saying, like here's the bare face we've we've spotted the bear face, and then this is how far its

eyes are from its snout. I guess kind of like detecting very small differences in individuals. But it does look very simplistic, doesn't it, Like, well, here's the bare head, which is vaguely square shaped, and then it's nose triangle. I'm a smart computer, this is bear. Bears are just

triangles on squares. When you think about it, what if the software really just tells you whether something is a bear or not, Like it can't distinguish between bear right, Like you right, you pointed out like a like a blue jay, it's like, not bear. You pointed out a coyote, not bear, and then you pointed out a bear, and it's like, that's a bear, and then you know, you

know that's a bear. You would also know it's a bear, like the bear is already charging at you and then gets your whole face and it's out in the programs going like yep, definitely bear. And also I feel like in every Silicon Valley story it's that. And then the next line is the company was valued at ten trillion dollars. They always expect this to change the world. There's there's

big bucks and bear surveillance. Yeah, I do hope also because they got the technology from dog Hipsterizer that we will be able to put hats and little glasses and little mustaches on bears. I'm just saying the technology is already there, a whimsical bear surveillance state, right, perfect, right, how do you do? It's me? Mr Bear two plus two is five? Ha ha. It's nice within the totalitarian element, right right right, freedom is freedom is bear bear? Big? Wait,

what bear? I don't know. That's another name. That's it. That's the name of this thing. Yeah, exactly, a bare New World. Yep, No, it's it's good. We're gonna be I guess turning bears into soldiers. I don't know, I'm I'm I'm guessing we're gonna Okay, we're gonna scare them with the with the wolf robots be able to track them down, and then I guess the next step is to convince them that in order to fight the robot

wolf scourge, they must join the U. S. Military. Well, we were warned, you know, like as soon as the election is over, they're going to implement these bear policies and we have to be vigilant and well, now we're here. You know. The bear army. Yeah, you know, so just keep your keep your eyes open for uh, a bear army that is waging war on robot wolves. Another bare news, a bear in King's Beach, California rated a convenience store

for snacks. The bear ate a bunch of candy bars before being chased out and slapped on the butt by the owner. But before you judge this bear, you should know that the bear was recovering from a leg injury and just wanted to have a few snickers. For God's sake. The bear was captured by wildlife officials and relocated, which barely seems fair. When we return, we're going to discuss some more suspicious species in the news. Human politicians often seemed to fail us, so why not a different kind

of political animal. Apparently, the idea of voting for an animal as an elected official has been quite popular. In two Yo Yo, the billygoat was elected to be city counselor of Fortaleza, Sierra Brazil. In Curtis, the mule was unanimously elected for a Republican precinct seat, and Milt in Washington, Bosco, the dog was elected mayor of Soon all California. In one in a cat named Stubbs was elected honorary mayor

of Talquitna, Alaska. And in ten Lincoln the Goat won his election for mayor of fair Haven, Vermont, defeating Sammy the Samoya Dog by two votes. I hope Sammy demanded a recount. But sometimes voting for animals goes beyond symbolism and has real policy and environmental implications. So, Alex, Uh, you know, I feel like people have probably been paying attention to the election and stuff, but I think people have missed perhaps the most important election results of all time. Oh,

and that is in Colorado, wolves got voted in. They got voted in, Alex. The wolves got voted in a Colorado like voted in existing in the state or of the legislature. They got voted in to Colorado. They won the election, and now they get to be in Colorado. This is literally actually what it was. So there was a proposition in Colorado to reintroduce gray wolves to the southern Rockies. So gray wolves, which are basically you know, gray wolves are the standard wolf. They are basically all

the wolves in the world. Uh, And they have been hunted to extinction in the area. There have been no wolves in the Southern Rockies since the nineteen forties, and the people of Colorado voted and they voted to bring back the gray wolf and to reintroduce them to the area, which conservationists have said that the Southern Rocky Mountain area has capacity for hundreds of wolves to thrive. Before the fire marshal kicks him out. If you go over that

fire marshal says, out of here. Alright, alright, alright, shut it all down. The wolf rave. They got the robot wolf playing skirl x just pumping out, pumping out stick peek. Yeah, it's interesting because it was narrowly passed. It did not pass by a landslide. There, the wolves have not gotten a mandate unfortunately, wolf supermajority. Yeah, there we go. The opponents worry that the wolves will reduce the elk population. Ranchers are worried that the wolves will attack their cattle.

In terms of them reducing the elk population, I don't think that's really that much of a concern in my personal non elk expert opinion, because well, in general, like wolves and predator animals can actually be really good for prey animal populations, like when they When you have a good balance of prey to predator, the predators actually keep the prey from dangers like overpopulation, mass starvation, uh, and disease. So I feel like if anything, introducing the wolves might

actually be good for the elk population. I guess it all depends on the balance, like the number of wolves to elk and how things have changed since they went extinct from the area, because obviously when when you have an animal, one of the tricky things with reintroducing them is if the environment and balance of things have changed since they disappeared from the area and then you suddenly

reintroduce them, there can be some issues. But I think that you know, we've done We've done a lot of successful reintroduction of species that I'm I think conservationists are well aware of all those issues and will probably be

pretty careful about that. And they're not They're not just like dumping hundreds of wolves all at once, like they're saying, this is going to take years to like we build up to Yeah, and they and they haven't been there since then you said, that's amazing, Yeah, yeah, want to come back and for what it is, you know, great, and like uh yeah, and A bit of evidence for the wolves actually being good for potentially good for the elk population is that in another area in Yellowstone, the

wolf population maybe saving the deer population from a deadly brain disease called chronic wasting disease. Oh, I've heard of this. By picking off the deer that have the disease and preventing it from spreading, the wolves are actually saving the deer population from this disease. So like the disease can spread from deer to deer, I don't think it can spread to wolves yet, but it is a concern, like whenever you have a zoonotic disease that it could jump

from deer to other species, including humans. So the wolves are heroes, their hero doctor wolves. Wh am. I you probably know more about it than me. But am I overdoing it if I say the chronic chronic wasting disease is sort of like zombie ism and pop culture. That's what I've heard of. Compared to Yeah, I think because it does attack the brain, it is a little bit concerning.

I don't I don't know that these deer are eating other deer brains necessarily um or or like stomping around on their hind hooves like with their front legs kind of sticking out and go like right at a tattered shirt from their old profession, and everything right right, right right, a bunch of like like football players and patterns, and like, oh a priest. How ironic that they're now a flesh eater.

That is really commentary someone in a hazmat suit. Now, how did that deer in the hazmat suit get the zombie ism? Because you think now I have the main character, I'm frowning at this new development. Yeah, yeah, sure, but yeah it is so like this is a really good example of how predators can actually be good in general for a prey population. Obviously it sucks for whatever dear they end up eating. But like, if you have deer that have the chronic wasting disease and the wolves kill

them and eat them, it prevents it from spreading. Uh, And you know, if anything, like, it's probably marginally sucks less to get eaten by a wolf than to die of chronic wasting disease. I don't, I don't. Actually no, I'm going to say maybe I would potentially prefer to get eaten by a wolf then go out by chronic wasting disease. Yeah, if you're if you're a deer right in the Creature Feature podcast at one to three Main Street. Anytime you want, say and let us know what you're Yeah,

call into the show at one. Death by Wolves uh so uh yeah. It shows the importance of predator prey balance in nature, sure, and also the importance to humans. Like if this chronic wasting disease God forbid mutates and is able to jump from dear to human, that is really bad. That could be another Like, you know, I don't want to scare people. This is all very low probability.

It's just like whenever whenever you have a disease or a virus and you give it time to mutate and evolve, like you're rolling the die over and over again for it to be able to jump from one animal to another. Um And so you just like but like by reducing the chance that that happens, you reduce the chance of it, you know, spreading to humans and potentially being a disease that that humans have to deal with. Um. So yeah, thank you wolves, hero doctors. Yeah, and just Andrew, I

wish I knew more about wolf conservation in general. It seems really cool I used to work at Brookfield Zoo as a tour guide and we had Mexican gray wolves on exhibit and because that was I guess because the Mexican population of gray wolves is distinct and was way way down, so they were trying to conserve them bring them back. But it's so easy for people to be like predator fire, you know, and then and then we got to save them too. Yeah, yeah, exactly, Yeah, Yeah,

I think it is. It's really important to remember that once an animal is taken out of the game, Like I kind of use this metaphor a lot, where you know, the environment is sort of like a game of Jenga, and you take out an animal and you don't know, you don't know, like once you take out one animally, you don't know which one is gonna like mess up the tower of Jenga. And the more animals you take out,

the more unstable it becomes. So yeah, I'm I think I mean, obviously I don't know some of the ins and outs of reintroducing these wolves, but I think it sounds like a good idea. Yeah, and you can you can sue me if it turns out not to be a good idea. Send your subpoena or whatever to one death by wolf. But if you want to talk about introducing a species that is not a good idea, let's talk about the giant murder hornets that everyone is all a buzz about. I'm so pleased to be back for

more murder hornet news. I believe yea, yeah, yeah, murder hornet news. That's very exciting, was it. Well, Welcome back, Alex to the The Katie Alex Podcast. Within the podcast murder Hornet. Uh, just dial MH for murder hornets. There it is let of touchstones, touch tone stuff in this episode. I can't talk, but it's fun. It's good. We're fine. We're fine. Our brains are good and healthy and normal

after the last few weeks. So here's the difference between reintroducing like a species that used to be indigenous to an area and introducing a species that is and invasive species. So wolves are indigenous animals being reintroduced. They are suited for that environment and their prey. The elk probably still have a lot of the defense mechanisms that they had while the wolves were there in order to prevent them from just being all killed by the wolves. So you

have you reintroduced the wolves. It's basically inserting them back in the balance. As long as things haven't changed too much since the wolves have been gone, shouldn't be too harsh of a transition. Meanwhile, when you have an invasive species like the giant murder hornets, So giant murder hornets, um are not just kid a kid, They're not so

I don't think they They're not like bad animals. So like the areas in which they are originally found, like in countries in Asia, the animals there have developed antipredator defense mechanisms against the giant murder hornets, so they the giant murder hornets are kept in check by a series of checks and balances. Damn it, I don't want to

talk about politics anymore in this podcast. So they are, but they have been accidentally introduced into North America, which is really bad because our bees, both are native bees, and our honey bees, which are not native but they are like our domesticated population of bees, are both in danger from this invasive species of murder hornets because they just don't have any defensive and the murder hornets are huge and they can decapitate a bunch of bees at

an alarming rate master decapitators. So that's where we are with the murder hornets. But here's uh murder hornet update. Maybe I do a sound effect here, or if maybe I'll probably be too lazy to do that. Should we do our own like, let's do our own thing like we wi we wi we Murder hornet update, Buds trying to do like you did it in the morning with Katie and the Spas. I'm the Spas now it's my

nickname on the show. So in Blaine Whatcom County, Washington, state entomologists have found the first murder hornet nest filled with queen murder hornets. So when did you find them? Just queens? No, not just queens, but had a bunch of queens in it. I'm sorry, it's not all it's like oops, all queens murder hornet nest. No, No, there were workers in the nest as well. So the way that they do it is when they find a murder hornet, they don't just like kill it with fire like the

people want them to. They actually trap it, put a radio tracker on it, and then revived them with a little bit of grape jelly. Wait, which is my favorite part of it. Okay, yes, so they knocked them out like with ether or something like a cartoon well yeah,

or just like chill them. I'm not exactly sure how they knocked them out, but yeah, they trapped them, put a radio tracker on them, revived them with a little bit of grape jelly, which is kind of and then like follow them back to the nest so that they can actually destroy the nest, because killing a worker murder hornet doesn't really get you anything if there's still a nest out there with queens, because the worker murder hornets are most likely likely not going to be reproducing, whereas

the queens are the ones that are reproducing. And so standard anti mafia stuff like don't worry about exactly the foot soldiers, right exactly. So uh, yeah, so you gotta have them lead them back to their hideout and yeah, throwing in a little bit of grape jelly to you know, kind of grease the wheels them. Quiet. Hush jelly, never hurt nobody, you know, a little bit of hush jelly.

So then they followed this this murder hornet back to the nest, and indeed they found the nest and it had I think several queens in it and they destroyed it. So that's good because, yeah, you don't want we do not want the murder hornets to get a foothold in uh in North America because our native bee populations just

wouldn't know how to handle it. You know, we could get we could try to train them like Rocky, give them a little tiny boxing gloves, but you know, I don't know that's there's a lot of bees, so that would be very time consuming. Yeah, if I if I remember right, the Japanese honey bees would do some kind of thing where they surround and explode the murder hornets, which seems hard to teach. You can't you can't just like learn that in a school for bees. Yeah, school

for bees. So that would be a fun show. But no, no, no, yeah, you're completely correct. Uh. These Japanese honey bees will surround the invading murder hornets and then vibrate their bodies, heating them up such that the invading hornets will basically boil to death as Yeah. Yeah, as they heat up, heat up the murder hornet with their little angry vibrating bodies. Um.

I think they also like drop the oxygen level. Uh in the in the big bee ball, so like they're suffocating and boiling the hornet to death and they can pretty effectively defend their high against hornets this way, and so yeah, but our bees don't know how to do that, so they're yeah, right, we can't just do a training montage wherever we like, it's going to be yeah, like vibrate, come on, you can do what boy vibrates so well, actually they're all all of these bees would be would

be girls because they are well females, because all the worker bees are female. So it'd be come on, come on, gals, you can do this. You just gotta vibrate harder. There's no crying in defensive vibration is the female sports movie. I guess, just like dump a gallon of gatorade on them and all the bees die. Anyways, and then our last bit of specious species, suspicious species. Uh, this is actually great news, which is that two new species of

greater glider have been discovered in Australia. So we have talked, yes, we have talked about greater gliders before. They are Australian marsupials. They are the largest gliding mammal in the world. They are about seventeen inches long, that's about forty three centimeters and they look like big teddy bears with long fluffy tails and like a face that looks like a cross between a kitty cat and a mouse. They look made up.

They look like they look like a stuffed animal that like is made up from the imagination of Lisa Frank. They are just so fluffy, so incredible, like in the neo pet family of creature. Yes, yes, they look like a neo pet. Damn it, I forgot to feed my neo pets for the last twenty years. Oh no, what if it's alive and just politely upset, like it's just looking at it's watch in an armchair like they're flapping its little foot. Makes you feel bad, you know. Yeah,

it turns around, turns on the lamp like. So, I guess you've been busy and gone for the because you've been busy for the past twenty years. Yeah, so this is a real life neo pet. Uh. They have flaps at the sides of their bodies, skin flaps that allow them to glide, much like a flying squirrel, but they are much bigger than a flying squirrel and here is the cool news. Recently, it's been discovered that there are actually two other is shees of greater glider, when we

originally thought there was only one species. So they look a little bit different, and they are have been found to be genetically different as well. And yeah, they're all put this picture in the show notes, but you can see all three of these species. You have one that looks sort of gray with cute, big old like cat mouse ears and it's super fluffy. And you have another one that's sort of like a darker, sort of ashy color and with a little white belly as well, and

in big old, big old mouse looking ears. And then a third one that's sort of a even darker color, kind of black. It looks scruffier and it's got, you know, again, that cute little white belly there. I've got to say, they're all adorable. That's that's my that. You know. If I was cataloging these, I'd be like, that one's cute. Uh, this one's cute. Uh. Specimen thirty five a also cute, very cute. As as different as they are, they're all rated thirteen out of ten. You know, they're all great.

It's a referenced Twitter. Yeah, it's just good, really good. Yeah, it's got to be hard to basically identify these when you're just going, oh, look, I don't little baby, look, I don't let a baby jumi baby, it's a flying baby. Like the expert scientist has the tradeing scientists and they're like, now, when you approach these, you need to be very oh but like as soon as they see big tale have to be quiet. As we approached the subagect, all call that blaa and then it just screams and glides away.

It's a big problem. It's probably why we only are finding out there are three species as of now, because like scientists have just been blown their cover too much. They can't even identify them. Do you remember There's another thing I learned as a zoo tour guide. We had all copies and no copies are from like Central Africa,

like and deep rainforest. There. Those are those like zebra, giraffe hybrid looking things, right, yeah, exactly, And between their fantastical looks and how deep they were in the rainforest, a lot of Europeans thought they were mythical because they just couldn't track down a report of them. I feel like this is like that, like it was just so cute. The boss back at Science headquarters was like, no, you're making this up. Forget it right, which has happened before,

Like with the platypus. Uh, they thought that was a hoax. They thought someone just glued spare parts altogether to make the platypus. But actually, speaking of platypus, we have some exciting platypus news right after the break. Oh how will people tolerate the break that's so excited? I don't know, They'll just like pe the p Speaking of US Australia, they've just invited devils into their island. Tasmanian devils have been reintroduced to Australia's mainland, which they haven't stepped foot

in for three thousand years. Tasmanian devils have in recent history lived exclusively on Australia's Tasmania Island. By introducing them to the mainland, conservationists so for two things, that the devils bring some balance to Mainland Australia's ecosystem and that their population numbers increase. Mainland Australia has suffered many blows to their native ecosystem from cane toads to pet kitty kats.

Rare animals like bandicoots have been threatened Tasmanian devils. Pugnacious scavengers may help ward off invasive species and act as ornary custodians of the ecosystem, and the increase in natural habitat for the Tasmanian devil may help their population grow.

As they've suffered from a contagious facial cancer outbreak in Tasmania, conservationists are hoping that the new colony of cancer free devils in mainland Australia will have a better fighting chance, and they do love to fight, though they're no farat to humans. When we return, we're going to switch to the entertainment beat and talk about some breaking party animal news. So how have animals been partying while we've been distracted?

If you miss partying during quarantine, why don't we take a peek to see some of the most festive, sexy, and remarkable animal news stories of the past few weeks. So now we are back with a Platypus update and the spares. We're still doing it in in an air Platypus in the morning mono e monotream. That's a joke because their monotreams um, which is a type of mammal

who lays eggs and it does not have nipples to lactate. Instead, they actually use milk out of their bellies, and that's what a mon They're called monotream because they have a cloaca and mono tree means one hole mo no ivano tream in the morning. So, yes, platypus snooze is that Platypuses are biofluorescent and glow blue under UV light. Wow, that's awesome. Yes, I actually think I had a listener

asked me. I'm so sorry, I don't remember what your Twitter handle is, but a listener did ask me if this this was true, and I am happy to report that yes, yes, it is true. It was probably a young platypus figuring out its own body, and I'm glad we can guide them on this journey, you know, like I'm changing. Oh yeah, normal. I also have huge braces even though I don't have teeth, and I'm trying to figure out why. It's very it's very weird to have

a retainer in my bail button, you know. So biofluorescence happens when a living organism is able to absorb and re emit light. So typically this is only visible to humans under u V black light, but other animals can actually see biofluorescence. Coral scorpions, fungi and other living creatures all biofluoresce, so this is there is a lot of

biofluorescence in a variety of organisms. But this we did not know about until recently, and it really was just researchers going like, you know what, I wonder if platypuses glow under UV light and trying it out because like, you know, it's not it's not like it's not like we test every animal to see if they biofluoresce. But yeah, like flying squirrels have a little bit of biofluorescence. So some researchers were like, you know, I wonder if mom

platypusts do that. Let's let's try platypust is. Why not. They're weird. I'm imagining the boss of Australian Science right there, working from home. They're juggling children and cooking and everything, and then they're getting all these reports of gliders and luminescent platypuses and everything like they got they gotta be pulling their hair out all this stuff, right, gosh, darn

TikTok teams trying to prank me. Yeah, so researchers aren't sure why this happens, but sure enough, under UV light or black light, their fur glows a beautiful bright blue. And again we're not sure why this happens. This is a very recent discovery. Maybe it's a form of I'm a flash question mark in this like scan or whatever. It almost looks like a blue footed booby in a weird little the little paddles, the little front webbed feet. Look.

They also seem to be fluorescing, which is interesting. But yeah, it does look a little bit like a blue footed booby, which I must say is a bird. It's a bird, and it's got blue feet. It's called a blue foot a booby. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, I don't know if I guess it's not everybody. We just, yeah, we just like to name birds nanny things like kits and boobies. Scientists, I guess, I guess, like, uh, ornithologists are just kind

of kind of horny on Maine. But you know, there you go, speaking of ornithologists being horny on Maine, let's talk about a bird that was discovered that is half male, half female in a spectacular way. In Pennsylvania, a row was breasted gross speak again with the breasts, you guys, just to take it down a notch burners, all right. So a rosebreasted gross speak was discovered that is half male, half female, literally split down the middle. One side of

it is male and the other side is female. So gross speaks are small birds with sturdy beaks for cracking open seeds. They look very finch like. They come in many colors, and they are often sexually dimorphic, meaning that the females and males differ in physical appearance and color and size. In this case, the rosebreasted growth speak that was discovered is a very rare bilateral gynandromorph meaning that one side of its body is female and the other's male,

split laterally from head to tail. So I think in this case the right side is male and the left side is female. And this picture is amazing because like, I don't know a ton about birds. You know more, and you are birds. But but as I understand it, like it's very common for bird male and female of a species to look different, but it's almost always symmetrical within the bird, you know, and then this picture of a bird. It has a red wing and it has like a golden yellow wing and that must be because

of the split. That's that's fascinating. Yes, yes, exactly. So the red wing is the male side. Males have red coloration and that wing is actually a little bit longer than the yellow wing which is the female side, which is a little shorter, which is also like females have slightly shorter wings, which I hope this poor bird isn't like flying around in circles because of that. But so this is extremely rare. This is like winning the bird lottery, like literally one in a million chance to find one

of these incredible birds. So, although this is not the only bird that's ever been discovered, there have been other birds. This has also been recorded in butterflies, crustaceans, spiders and other insects, snakes, uh and particularly I think zebra finches for whatever reason, have it happened to them a lot.

It's been found in chickens as well, cardinals um. So. This is caused by an unusual event during a bird's embryonic development, when the cells are splitting during a fertilized eggs development, where one of the dividing cells does not split the sex chromosomes as it normally would. Yeah, so it literally develops where one side of the bird is physically female and then the other side is physically male.

And this can be both external characteristics like the coloration and size as we see in this bird, can also be internal anatomy. So sex organs like you may have over is only on one side. Uh So it is absolutely, absolutely fascinating. One thing is that, like, I feel like there are a lot of prudes that like to reference nature when it comes to like human gender expression, and they're like, oh, well that's unnatural. It's like, dude, you

don't know anything about nature. Nature is incredibly fun and free. Yeah, it's just like, oh, you're you can't you know, identify as another another gender. That's unnatural. It's like, no, nature, Nature wrote the book on this stuff. You guys, Like, yeah, it's it always frustrates for me when people are like, well, you know, biology says you can't be you know, different as a human. It's like, no, it actually does. It's actually your biology is incredibly creative and fun and so

you know, you don't. It's it's frustrating also, can I just say this bird absolutely beautiful, Like, it's just I mean, there's something about like, I guess, I guess because we're so used to symmetry in animals. Seeing an animal where it's like one side is red, in the other side it's yelled, it's just incredible looking. Yeah, I now, I just want to see all the animals like this. Like you said, a cardinal was found like this, I don't

know if it was the past and they didn't. Yeah. Yeah, one side is red reddish coloration, to the other side is sort of a lighter, lighter coloration like a female. Yeah, it's it's really really interesting. Also important to note that this is different from hermaphroditism, where so in that case, it's not like bilateral asymmetry. So like you can have a mixture of male and female second sexual characteristics and an organs, and that is actually a lot more common

than this. This is just very uncommon because it's the the particular arrangement of having like literally like one half one side of the animal is male the other half is female is just very very rare, very interesting. So, yeah, they're there, but there are a lot of different types of situations where an animal will have both male and female parts, and sometimes it's not even like unusual, like there's species of animals that are always from aphroditic, all

always have both male and female parts. This just happens to be a species where this is not typical. And it's also especially interesting because it's again that that whole like you know, one one half half and half split right down the middle. Yeah. Also, also good job humans noticing this tracking it down. I feel like I don't see I'm not a birder, but I never see birds that clearly in the wild are walking around the neighborhood. So a good job well done. I mean there's probably, yes,

yes it is. That is an incredible find. Also, it's probably there are probably more of these bilateral gynandromorphs than we know because some birds are not quite as obvious with the sexual dimorphism, so spotting a like the males and females look more similar, So being able to find ones that that have this like you just wouldn't know

looking at them. It would be very subtle. So yeah, it's really interesting and I just want to in the show with a little bit of bat news, and I feel like this We've actually talked about this bat before on the show I think actually almost exactly a year ago, and of talking about it's there, we go, yes, thank you. But now I think it's relevant to bring this up again. First of all, they they're in the news, and also it's very applicable to us humans. So these are wrinkle

faced bats. They are found in Central America. They have a very very wrinkle wrinkly face. It just I don't know, like, how would you describe this face? Like a walnut look a little bit like a one. Yeah, it's like if a walnut was made of knuckles. Yeah, and then the good description. I like that. Then the overall shape but like that that Sumerian dog monster from Ghostbusters, like the two of them form like the activated thing. Yeah. I think it's cute and it's cute. Yes, I should clarify that.

I mean that that is cute. It's like you put if you put like Stitch in the washing machine, but then you didn't like fold them, so then he got all wrinkly. I saw that movie for the first time last month. I finally caught up with it. It's very fun, that's very good. I love Lelane. Stitch is amazing best movies. So they have mouth pouches to store food in. They

eat fruit. They have one of the strongest bites per their size compared to other bats, because this allows them to eat tough fruit, get through the tough skin of fruit. And most most importantly, they have a little chin flap that they can use as a mask that they literally pull up over their face as a mask, as we should all be doing right now, hero bats. So god,

I just imagined a Republican wriggle face bat. That's like, sure, I have a chin based flap that's a mask, but I'm not gonna wear it like just the laziest worst bat anyway. Well and well, bad news for that bat, because the lady bats love a mask. Female bats find these masks sexy, which look Speaking as a female human, I say all masks are sexy, and wearing them like instantly improves you're standing. In my mind, I'm like, that

person cares about other people. That's respectable. Caring is sexy, So it is it is literally signaling your virtue, Like you're a virtuous person who bothers to care about people. That's good, right, right exactly, So these masks are sexy for for female birds, and the males will use them to attract mates. Uh. Bernald Rodriguez Herrera, who is a bat biologist at the University of Costa Rica, calls the

male masked seducers, which I love. I would like to adopt that for humans, Like, like, you wear a mask, you're a masked seducer. Uh. They will literally flex their little face masks like they're flexing their muscles. They will lift it over their face and like pull it with their little arms, like and you like what you see?

And that drives the lady bats wild with desire. Uh. And one of the theories is that the mask may help them modulate their mating calls, because they seem to always chirp while the mask is up, so maybe it gives the mating calls some interesting kind of resonance. Another theory is that because the skin flap is white, it might help the females locate the males visually. And so you're sort of almost flat sishing a beacon at the females like, hey, look at me, I'm an eligible bachelor

who cares about public health and safety. Also, the little masks are furry, so they kind of look like Santa beards, which I think is cute. Oh man, and we're in the ear of Kurt Russell being sexy Santa. So that's that's understood. Now, people get it. Oh wait, I just had an idea, why don't people put fake beards over their masks so you can look like Santa? Yeah? What, why haven't we done this? I do? I remember. I

think it was around August. I was just walking and I had a realization that the mask would feel warm in the winter. Like I got excited for now. I was like, oh, yeah, it's gonna be good. So yeah, that's getting like I'm always getting running noses and stuff, and like I've been noticing like, hey, you know what, my hot breath is heating up my nose. It feels good. So again, I think we can learn a lot from

these bats that they have. They love masks. The ladies love them, and yeah, I mean for humans obviously, everyone everyone of good caliber loves a mask, and I just think that it is great to wear them. Yeah, me too, Like, keep keeping up, folks, it's spiking. Yeah, I'm sure that. I feel like all of our listeners are probably on board with the whole mask wearing thing, but I want

I want to give you hope. I want to give you some cheer that like, the bats are on board with us, and they'll think you're cute if you wear a mask, bats are going to think you're cute, and then that is I'm sure you're right at every listener to this show is like on top of masks, like I prior to the election, I realized as I was taping a secretly incredibly fascinating I was like, I would tell you guys to vote, but you're great, Like if you can vote, I'm sure you did a good job.

Like this space, we don't need to do it, you're you're at it. I just think it will help with the monotony of wearing a mask every day, and no that bats will think you're cute for wearing the mask, and you know you might get noticed by bats and pie, so that's good. Yeah. Bat society is really interesting to me. I love it, like like the romance novels with a heavily masked bat on the cover, like, wow, look at it.

You'd never see that really? Yes, yes, yes, So if you want, if you want to attract a bat, wear a mask. Well, specifically the wrinkle faced bats. But yeah, yeah, who wouldn't Who wouldn't want to attract a wrinkle face bat? They are Oh boy, you know again a handsome knuckle walnut that you want to walnut. I want to get to know this handsome walnut. Well, Alex, I think that's gonna do it for today. I think we've covered all of the news stories that people may have missed during

you know, the recent weeks. I guess other stuff was going on that was important, but yeah, now we're caught up on the animal news. I'm I there's so much going on and I I'm sure, like you said, it all happened when I was distracted with other other things, and it's so excited about it. I get the bear and wolf stuff alone, remember that, folks, Holy cow later runner bears. Yeah. Uh well, So, Alex, thank you so much for joining me today. I'm so happy to be

able to talk to you about animal news. So where where can the people and the bats and the robot wolves find you? Because they will. I'm on I'm on Morning drive Time with Katie Golden on Katie and the Spas every week w KA. That is the end of bit. I've hosted a show called Secretly Incredibly Fascinating. It's a podcast I'm really proud of. It's about the history and science and lower that make ordinary things secretly incredibly fascinating.

And it's had wonderful guests like Katie Golden, who's on the second every episode and did a lot to help like get it going at all, so I really appreciate that a whole lot. We talked about Luke How's yeah, and the episodes about cattle, so you know, animals for you, Yeah, yeah, yeah. You can find us on the internet at Creature Feature Pod on Instagram, at Creature Feet Pod on Twitter. That's not et that's something very different. You can find me at Katie Golden online that's k A T I E

G O L D I N. I usually post Katie thoughts. Look, a lot of my tweets are going to be political, because you know, politics is important. But you know here on the podcast, it's animals time as always. I'm also at Pro Bird Rights, where I am definitely just a normal human talking about birds. It's fine, it's pretend birds, not real birds. I'm certainly not a bunch of real birds in a human suit. That would be weird and

I'm not that, I am. I'm also really impressed how much seed you can eat without the mic picking it up, you know, like usually during a tape things doctor stop. I'm also really impressed how much bird seed you can eat during a taping without the mic picking it up usually snacking. It really gets in there. But you do a good job that. It keeps me regular. It's good fiber. I don't know why there's a big handwritten note that says human seed over the label of whatever that really is.

That's interesting. It's good to label products as they accurately are. Anyway. Anyways, if you have any questions for the podcast, you can email me. I mean, obviously you can message me on any of those social media platforms, but if you prefer the old email, you can do Creature Feature pod at gmail dot com and also send me pictures of your pets. I love that, I like that, or birds um at,

you know, as normal humans like sea birds. Thanks so much to the Space Classics for their super awesome song Excelumina. Creature Feature is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts the one you just heard, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or Hey guess what gab you listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday, m