Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we're talking about the belly of the beast.
And how you can escape being eaten.
Well, maybe not you personally, but we have three, actually four brave creatures who are able to Houdini their way out of an animal using some very creative exits discover the semore as we answer the angel question, who does it best getting out of a toad or frog?
Joining me today is author of the new book.
I'm starting to worry about this black box of doom, which should be out right now.
Jason Pargin, Welcome.
So I spent the last few days watching videos of the adorable baby hippo mooding modang yeah at the zoo and Thailand. Is it possible this amount of discussion of the adorable baby hippo? Would this justify you putting mooding in the thumbnail for this episode, which would vastly, vastly increase listenership, I think, and if you could even mention we talked about the adorable pygmy hippo mooding and some other things.
Yeah, mostly things crawling out of other things. But but yeah, mood really it's all about Moodang. I do love moodan. I don't know how to game the system such.
That I can squeeze.
Attention from mood Dang's adorable round body onto myself. But I actually recently had a bit of a plumbing snafu, and I do feel like I probably looked almost exactly like one of those photos of mooding, because every time there's a photo of her, she's like kind of like wet, like hosed down wet, and looks surprised and angry about it.
And that happened to me.
I accidentally sprayed a bunch of dirty sink water on myself by removing a U trap when I should definitely not have done that, and I looked just like muding.
Anybody out there, if you need a visual while you're listening to this, just go look up. It's moo space DNG and just enjoy the various videos of mooding basically as two modes, either at sleep or biting something sleep. And it's tiny, it's not hurting you. It's just running around, tiny little miniature hippo you can hold in your hands, just biting everything in sight. So just watch that and
then that will be our last mention of mooding. But that's okay because still in your mind you can think, if this asks the mooding episode, we're dedicating it to mouding.
Yeah, we are.
This is this is an honor of muding because Mudan likes to eat things, and this is it's almost like a cautionary tale because you definitely don't want to eat things that then like come back out of you, which is never a good time. So that is what we're talking about today. You know, we can also just sandwich this between adorable tales of muding, because honestly, this is kind of gross, a little bit of a gross episode,
so like, well, we'll do a palate cleanser. We'll talk about mooding more after this.
But yeah, So there is a new new eel.
It's actually an old eel, but new news news about eels that they can come out of a fish when they are eaten by a fish.
So there was a YouTube video.
And a New York Times article by Annie Roth, and this is about eels escaping fish stomachs. Now Jason I have sent you the the film footage of an eel making its way out of a fish, and I encourage you to watch it.
So I guess we should. You did kind of warn people to some of you out there, this might be the most upsetting episode you've ever listened to, because I guess I knew that lots of predators in the wild swallow their food whole. I mean, my favorite video anywhere is my favorite genre of video as side of moodang videos, is of pelicans trying to eat things are not supposed to be eating, and like a zookeeper will have to come and pull it out of its mouth. And pelicans,
of course do not chew their food. They swallow it. And I guess I never thought of what happens, Okay, specific I never thought of how long it takes, maybe for a fish or an eel or some other food
to finally die when it's inside of a creature. But in this case, I guess they just got extremely fortunate that they were able to get an X ray of this process, right, Like, that's how they found out this was going on, is they were able to see it from the inside and watch this thing worm its way out of the body of the fish that had eaten it.
Yeah, this is like, this is a study.
So they were able to X ray and observe what happens when these eels are ingested by fish because of these observations that sometimes these eels can escape. So let's talk first about the eels. These are young Japanese eels. They're juveniles. They are eels are delicious treats for both people and animals, so a lot of things like to eat them. And also when they are small, they are
very edible. They're like tiny little noodles. They do eventually grow to be about fourteen inches, which is around thirty five centimeters, or if they're female, they can grow up to twenty four inches or sixty centimeters. But they go through a life cycle where when they are young they're quite small, you know, like maybe like thinner than a pencil, maybe about as long as you're pinky. So they are often eaten by fish, but once they're in the fish,
they do not give up. So researchers like you mentioned, they use these X rays to see what was happening inside of these fish, and apparently these eels like swim around in circles inside like this kind of frantic swimming, but it's not just panicking. It is kind of like that they are looking for an exit.
And then what.
They usually do is they go up the esophagus and out one of the gill slits backwards.
And one of the reasons they often go out backwards is the.
Fish will actually eat the eel head first and kind of slurp it up, so then the eel to orient itself to come back out, it'll kind of go backwards.
And here I guess we should address the elephant and the room. We are both well aware that there is a common sexual fetish around fantasies of being eaten a whole called vorophelia or just var in the community. If you find any of this discussion arousing, we are not judging you, But you don't need to tell us that, right like, you can keep that to yourself because you know some people will be disgusted by these stories we're
going to tell. Some people will feel different things. You don't need to go on the internet and let us know what you're feeling. It's fine, just keep that private.
I don't want to harsh shermellow, but I do want to emphasize that the eels in this situation are definitely not having a good time. They're not getting horny by being kind of like burned by stomach acid and they're not They're not happy about it.
So they are and it's kind.
Of horrifying to see, like when you think about it, right and again, like you know, like you do you in your own head, there's nothing wrong with that, but in.
Real life, like this feels like it would be.
So horrifying because you are It's not like they're in the stuff. Like the idea of being eaten, right, it's like, okay, well you just get killed as you get eaten, you get chewed up in the little pieces. But no, in this case, it's like you are being like you're being burned to death by acid, which is just not for me personally. Up it's very upsetting, and I do feel
very bad for these these eels. And it's interesting because when you first look at this video, kind of feel sympathy for the fish because it looks like it's some kind of parasite like wiggling out of it. But no, this was a thing that it tried to eat and now is like wiggling backwards out of the gill slet you know that, like saying that, note ginger rogers did everything like fred Astaed did, but backwards in and heels. Well,
this eel does it backwards and in a fish. So I think that's mighty impressive.
But I think the question that's immediately going to come up in the listener's minds, and the question I just asked myself now, it's like, well, how because this is a common form of eating, like swallowing without chewing. Not every animal chews their food before swallowing, of course, but it's like, well, why then doesn't this happen all the time?
Why don't Why aren't pelicans constantly getting damaged from the inside by a thrashing fish, Because even if they are drowned or burned or whatever, it doesn't happen instantly, it doesn't happen within it. In some cases, like a it can be hours later. So it's like, why would it seems like that would be such an evolutionary disadvantage to swallow your food alive, not just whole, but alive, because it is a fairly common way to eat.
Yeah, so there's different strategies that animals come up with for eating. So one thing is when you do swallow things whole, you're able to very quickly ingest something without taking the time to chewing takes time. Some other fish can come up and steal your food from you. If you swallow something really quickly and you swallow it whole, you are maximizing.
The speed at which you eat.
Something, and you're also minimizing the chance that that will get away when it's outside of your stomach, right, and it is in the case for these fish, Like it only takes about three and a half minutes for the eels to die inside of the fish, so the stomach acid actually works pretty quickly, and so a lot of these eels are actually not going to make it out, so it's a race against the clock to get out.
And so yeah, I think that you do actually have a lot of interesting techniques that some animals, particularly aquatic animals, use to prevent this from like the escape from happening. One is like sea turtles actually have these backward facing they're called denticles.
They look like spikes.
They're this sort of hard, fleshy material that is like spikes that are pointed backwards in its throat, kind of like a sarlac pit or a dune warm. But the purpose of that is as it's swallowing fish, the fish can go down down there esophagus, but they can't come
back up because those spikes will prevent them. Penguins also have that, and so yeah, I mean it is it's a trade off, right because then if you're you think, well, why don't why doesn't every animal have these spikes, It's like, well, you know, it is it's something that is, uh, you're putting resources into having these this part of your anatomy andol Like the important thing to remember about evolution is it's not creating the most efficient perfect organisms. If you
survive and you have offspring, like that's good enough. So like if you're a fish and you're just eating like anything you can that moves and it's going in your stomach and most of that like stays in there and you digest it, then you're fine. But of course there's pressure on animals then to develop strategies to escape the stomach. It's just very it's very difficult, right, So a lot and it's very risky because you will often just end
up dead anyways. So a lot of these strategies that animals have is to prevent being eaten, whereas like, once you're eaten, there are there are some like and we're talking about them today, but it's not it's like a last ditch strategy. So some animals just don't really spend the I guess evolutionary coins, that's not really how it works, but like that, they're more geared towards avoiding getting in there in that stomach in the first place.
We don't spend enough time thinking about how the fact that for most things that are alive, one of the primary features of their life is that they're going to be food for something at some point. It's because as humans, of course, you know, as humans, the entire planet, in its entire ecosystem, exists only to be a buffet for us to eat. So we are separated from that process of that knowledge of having to the point where we think it's weird, where it's like, oh, my gosh, this
surfer was attacked by a shark. How rude of the shark to when we are trying to enjoy our ocean that exists for us to have fun in, and this, this murderous psychopath of a shark just attacked this man for no reason. Like now you stepped into its kitchen. It has no idea it would have preferred to have eaten a seal, but it kind of thought you wear a seal for a moment. And yeah, it's like a couple of bites in is like you yucky.
I don't like it. Yeah, I mean I think that.
Have you seen the movie Nope? Oh yes, yeah that I really like that one really scared me because I think, I mean it maybe it wasn't like scary in the sense of like the you know, modern sort of jump
scared type movie. It didn't really have that, but it was really like creepy and kind of lingered because that whole the whole scene of this you know, spoilers, but there's like an alien, weird creature that almost looks like a bouncy castle but scary somehow eight a bunch of people and they're all like just stuck in there, crammed in there, panicking, and that is uh, not not sexy at all of me. That actually is very terrifying to me.
The idea of like you're you know, you're you're a whole person, you have a whole life, and then just being reduced to like nope, you're just like something's food and you're there's just no heed to you going through something horrible, right, Uh.
That that's quite upsetting.
And this is this is when you realize that the one thing when you talk about evolution and all the factors that go into it, being merciful toward the food is not one of the factors that exist in evolution, like being kind or putting something out of its misery. The concept of your praise misery is not a factor in anywhere in the animal in the animal kingdom. So yeah, you'll find examples of creatures. Something will eat one end of a beast while the other end is still alive,
and they don't care. It just means that the meat is fresh.
They don't have a concept of it. I think it's really nice that humans have a concept of it. I don't think it's wrong of us to think, like, hey, maybe we shouldn't make animals suffer before we eat them. We should make their lives pretty decent up until you know, we do eat them.
I think that's nice. I like that.
But yeah, animals definitely don't necessarily have that consideration. Like dolphins are often vilified and I'm kind of tired of it because you know, it's I think it's like a backlash against the Lisa Frank version of dolphins. But they're just they're just like any kind of predator, you know. But they will smack the dickens out of octopuses, and it's not just to be a jerk. They are doing that because if they swallow the octopus alive, it can
choke them to death. So when they smack the dickens out of an octopus, it's like us chopping our steak up into small pieces so we don't choke. Because if the octopus is still alive, it can like use its tentacles in its section to like stick onto the dolphin's throat and that can kill the dolphin.
Yeah, And if you want to see these stories as inspirational, you know, because yeah, somebody got swallowed and they got back out. There's like a metaphor or something.
Sometimes you get eaten by a fish and then you go out of its gill slit, just like in life out if you get eaten by a fish, that's metaphorical for capitalism. You can crawl out of the gill slit, which is metaphorical for.
I don't know, community.
Anyways, we'll workshop that and when we get back, we're going to talk about another animal that can survive.
Getting eaten but chooses a.
Different exit root. So, Jason, here's another animal. It is called the Hydrobia peringea oulvay snail which is a big mouth.
So so we'll just call it h oulvay for.
Now, or I don't know, poopy butt snails, whatever you prefer. These are aquatic snails that can survive being eaten by aquatic birds, and they may even benefit by being eaten by getting dispersed to new wetland territories. So yeah, so let's talk a little bit about this. Aquatic birds often have very rapid digestive systems. We kind of talked about this earlier. Different animals have different eating and digestive strategies.
So human beings, we chew our food and there's this kind of predigestion that goes on in our mouth and
as we chew food and then we swallow it. There are ungulates that have like different sort of different parts of their gut that does some kind of like predigestion before it goes into another part of their gut where it gets digested more like ruminants, and so they're very like There are even some animals where they have stuff that are like fermenting inside their goullet that they then sort of like predigest before it passes.
On to the main stomach.
Ducks are sort of like the speed Eater's Hot Dog contest animals, Like they will eat fast, and they digest fast, and they poop fast. If you want to know what I'm talking about, look at a video of ducks eating peas. Also, just to improve your life, Like I like, if you're ever feeling stressed or upset or angry or any kind of negative emotion, if you look at a video of duck eating peas, it just grounds you.
It's lovely.
Yeah, especially if they've got a bunch of ducks. It's a very frantic and it seems like a kind of a joyful process. They're not neat eaters at all. They're not. But no, it's hilarious. And I'm sure the people on TikTok making these videos they're keeping the ducks's pets, which you probably should not do. But no, that's another good visual if you've run out of pygmy hippo videos.
I mean ducks's pets.
Is it's fine like in terms of the ducks well being, because ducks are often domesticated. But for your sake, you probably don't want to duck as a pet.
They will.
They'll absolutely poop everything and poop everywhere because again, their digestion is really really fast, and so they will eat, digest it quickly and then poop stuff out. So researchers at the Netherlands Institute of Ecology fed ducks live snails of a variety of species and found out that one particular species, these h Oulvay snails, can survive the ordeal intact the entire getting eaten, passing through the digestive system,
and getting pooped out. So these snails, these h Olvay, are small yellowish conical snails which live in marine and brackish environments, including salt marshes. They're pretty small, they grow to be about five millimeters long, and so they can be easily eaten as a snack, but they can also be accidentally ingested by herbivorous aquatic birds. So a lot of aquatic birds aren't really interested in the snails, but
they'll eat them up anyways because they're eating algae. They're eaten bits of aquatic plants, and if the snails are on there, it's going to get in a bird. It's like if you've ever owned an aquirement, an aquarium and fish, and you buy plants from the pet store.
Suddenly you also have snails. It just happens.
So Yeah, in experimental settings, these snails were able to cope with duct digestive juices for five hours, which is incredible.
And I've got to say we kind of joked about this being a metaphor, but it kind of works because here is a system that is not designed to help you, or it's not designed for you to survive. It is designed to extract the life out of you to benefit somebody else. But you can make it through and get pooped out the other end and actually wind up in a better place. Yeah, if you can hold onto what makes what makes you, you, you can hold onto your humanity or your snail your snail hood. Yeah, you can
survive the process. But you just have to understand the process does not love you. It thinks of you as it's food. It is trying to feed off of you. But you can you play your cards right, You can hit your ride you may get pooped out in an island that's better than the one you were.
On, exactly.
That's beautiful when life is a duck, be a little snail and get pooped out somewhere better. So this is perhaps not the most comfortable method of transportation. Many of these snails did indeed succumb to death by duck, but enough of them survived that it seems that these ducks
are unwittingly aiding the snails and dispersing two different areas. So, like, the whole point of this research was not like, Wow, look how cool it is that the snail gets pooped out alive, although I'm sure that helped them get a research grant. A lot of it is about like the ecology of like how do these snails get from one marsh to another one? Like you know, how are they dispersed? And it's especially interesting or I guess relevant and helpful
when it comes to say like invasive snails. Now, these snails are not necessarily invasive in these areas, but you know, it's it is it's just very It's wild to me that you could have a duck swown around eaten duck stuff, like like aquatic plants and then fly off and poop and now the snail has an entirely new wetland area to colonize.
Yeah, and well, we don't think about the fact that this is why seeds exist and why they're designed the way they are. They're designed to be eaten and to survive the digestive tract into and to get pooped out elsewhere. It's like, well, you're stilling the same thing. It's like, yeah, that seed is designed to not get digested. And then that's how plants, you know, disburse themselves through. Obviously not a strategy they thought of because they're just plants. They
don't know what they're doing. But that's still natural selection. It works works very well.
Yeah, pisely. Yeah, it's it is. It is very interesting because I think in this city they were also looking at things like seeds and stuff, but the snail part was that's the fun stuff, because like just imagining this fantastic voyage of this little snail mining its own business suddenly gets gobbled up by a duck and goes like,
I mean, it just must. I don't really think snails have that much in terms of a consciousness, but can you imagine being gobbled up by an unspeakable, horrific monster and then suddenly like seeing some sunshine and you're now in like this new garden of Eden, and you're alive, and enough of your buddies are alive that you can you know, start a new a whole new seal society.
That there's a whole new snail society is just you know, like I wonder if that'll ever happen to like humans, Like we're just gonna get eaten by a big space alien, have no idea, idea what kind of like interdimensional travel is going on, and then suddenly get pooped out somewhere else.
Well and without the eating and pooping part. This is something that for example, dogs experience all the time. Whenever I see somebody taking their dog on a plane, I always think, well, the dog doesn't know what's flying, It doesn't know what a plane is. It just knows that it got taken inside this little room and then when it left that room, it's now.
Or whatever.
I think about this all the time with my dog because we go on the elevator and I'm.
Just like, how do you how do you conceive of this elevator?
Because we go in this room, it makes a noise, and then the door opens again and now we're in different room. It must just seem like magic to you. I don't know honestly she thinks that much about it, but if she does, this just must seem like, well, this is you know, you're a wizard.
I guess this is just wizardry.
Yeah, because I've when we've had to take our golden retriever to a hotel that's dog friendly, I've never seen her express like fright or like what what what happened? The world went away? It's always just like, all right, let's go.
This is think dogs are just okay knowing that they don't know stuff, right, Like they just accept it. They're like, well, you know, I don't know what's going on, but that's okay as long as as long as they're comfortable and as long as they're getting treats. But yeah, I just I do wonder about that because it's it seems like
we took our dog on vacation recently. She hates planes, so we avoid that, but we did go on a train and she just winds up in this entirely different city, like we're by a beach, right, and she's just like.
All right, I guess we're here now. I don't even like how does it's It blows.
My mind how she conceives of that, or if she's just like there is no room in her head to even question what's happened.
Gosh, the idea that life is possible in that state of mind where you're not anticipating what's about to happen. In many cases, years like going with it because like, what what did you expect to see when the plane door opened? And the answer is nothing. They were they weren't expecting about that.
Yeah, completely, Yeah, it's like the.
Loud noise is stopped now, the smells are more more typical, So I'm happier. I think that's it. Speaking of dogs, Uh, the best part of this study on the snails going through the ducks is how the researchers got the mallard ducks too in just the snails, since these ducks are not typically all that interested in these snails. So the researchers the same thing that you do to feed your dog or your cat a pill. They just rolled the snails up in some bread and fed the ducks that way.
It's just like, I love.
It when research is silly, like we're serious researchers. Come on, mister duck, you gotta take your snail pill. I'm gonna roll it up in a little bit of bread dough for you.
Just incredible.
There's a wonderful series of TikTok videos where a woman is pretending to be Charles Darwin's girlfriend, and the bit is that every time they observe like an animal being eaten by something else, she like runs it and tries to save it. It's like or she's like, well, I saw that this this this little wounded this little wounded duck was born without wings and without a beak, and
it can't feed itself. So I've adopted it and I'm feeding it, and point out that she's just ruining the evolution that he's trying to observe it every stage because she couldn't bear I always think about that way and think about like animal scientists like this part. You know, the study is probably great and fun and you would have to develop such an affinity for wildlife, but also ninety percent of it has to be just the saddest thing you've ever you've ever seen.
It depends.
I think like some of it is like literally just like, hey, we're gonna feed these ducks some bread and some of it's like, well, I've made an emotional attachment to these mice and I have to kill them at the end of this study. So like, yeah, it can be rough, but this is this is a fun one. I enjoy feeding the ducks the snail bread, especially given that a lot of these snails make it out alive. It's like the best of both worlds. You're feeding ducks and you're
not killing all of the snails at least. So we're gonna take a quick break and when we get back out, we are gonna find out who makes it.
Out of a toad the best.
We are going to talk about a marvelous adventure through a toad. And we have a couple of animals. We have a beetle and we have a tiny snake. Now, Jason, which do you think is going to make it out of the toad and or frog better?
You would think the smaller the creature, the better your chances. Right, I'm picturing a snake as I don't.
Know, to be fair, this is a tiny This is a tiny snake. It's thinner than a pencil and it's about four to six inches long. So just to just to give you, I'm not trying to push you, okay, in any direction of who to pick. I'm just giving you all the information. And then the beetle is likewise very small.
That's a small snake for me to eat. I think that is a very big snake for a toad to eat in my opinion.
Okay, so you're leaning towards like the beetle being better at this, Well, you're you are right, this was not this is not a trick question. But it does turn out that both of them seem to be able to make it out of a frog and or toad. So let's first talk about the less good, less skillful Hoodini, but still quite skillful bra Many blind snakes, so Brominy blind snakes look like long, dark gray worms. They really do not look like they are snakes. They don't they're
worm shaped. They don't have like a distinct head you know have snakes. It's like they sure their body is a tube, but their head is like angular or rounded, like you can see where their head is, whereas a worm is just kind of one like shape. These these blind snakes also do not have a well defined head. They do have a head, but you can't even see their eyes because they actually have scales that grow over
their eyes, and they are indeed blind. And they spend pretty much their whole lives underground like a worm, so they are very easily mistaken for a worm, and they spend their time burrowing in dirt in many different environments in Asia and Africa. I already mentioned. It's like, you know, it's quite small. It's about it's like a finger, but a very skinny finger. Like I'd say it's a thinner than like a pencil. It's kind of like a you know,
one of those what are they called pipe cleaners? But you know, a snake?
I okay, this thing's clearly a worm. What makes it a snake? What earns you the scientific designation snake? If have a skeleton or something, what's the difference?
It's a vertebrate unlike a worm. It is related to snakes. And yeah, it's just it's like it branches off of the same evolutionary tree as snakes, so like it shares a common ancestor with other snakes, and it is it's still got a mouth and a jaw and a skeleton, whereas a worm is like a completely different part of the evolutionary tree is an invertebrate. It does not have
like a spine or anything like that. It is it is a warm so but they are both very noodle like and easy pickens for predators like toads and frogs, who are similar in terms of their indiscretion when it comes to eating. They are like, these animals are so I love them, but their brains are just so like geared towards eating whatever they see. You can put an iPhone and put like fake flies on the iPhone and they will just endlessly like try to eat the flies on the iPhone.
They don't learn.
They will try to fit anything in their mouth, so it's not surprising that they will just eat one of these tiny snakes if they can fit it in their mouths. But apparently, at least in according to an observation, these blind snakes can survive going through a toad's entire digestive system.
So there has been a single documented observation of the Brahminy blind snake emerging out of a toad butt intact and alive, although it was a little bit dented where the toad's sphincter muscles closed in on it, so it wasn't completely like unchanged by the journey.
Don't look up this photo, m there's no need. If you want to look up a visual instead, look up a video called Pelican tries to eat capybara.
Hmmm, that's cute.
The famous, yes, the best video on the internet because they similarly, pelicans don't pay it. They'll just walk around just biting things to see if it's food. Like, they don't discriminate. So there's a zoo or something closure where the pelicans and the capy bears, and you know, any place where those capy bears is very chill atmosphere. They're
all just standing around kind of not doing anything. There's like a water running and the pel you're just kind of wandering out, wandering around very slowly and just trying to bite it. The capy bear is trying to eat it, and it tries and capit. Berera doesn't even look at it because it's clear this happens all the time, and then it eventually gives up like, oh, all right, that's food, and then a few minutes later just tries again.
It's like because it's like the world's chillest animal, the capy bera, and the world's like most food oriented, least chill animal, the pelican, And it is this pelican desperately trying to eat this thing, and the cab beerra just doesn't care, is like cool man, like you do you as this because it knows it's like an immovable lump and it cannot be eaten by this bird. But yeah, I mean so the photo that Jason doesn't like is a photo of a toad with what looks like a
worm coming out of its butt. But I have to emphasize again this is a snake, not a worm. And like there is a helpful diagram with a little arrow that points towards part of the snake that got a little dented by the toad's cloacal muscles. Yeah, so you know it's not very comfortable now. Unfortunately, this snake did end up dying seven hours after going on mister Toad's wild ride, so I guess it only survived in the
more technical sense. But this observation shows that it is at least possible for these snakes to come out of it alive ish, and it is then possible that if say the snake is smaller or a little luckier that maybe these snakes can make it all the way through a toad and be fine. We just don't know how often this happens.
And that does seem to be the two categories of example here, whereas this it's like, could be a one in a thousand freak accident where I think the other one and I could be wrong. But the beetle, I think is a case where it more evolved to survive this process. And I think the snails too, like they that's the case where they have they are built to survive it.
They're actively seeking an escape, whereas I think this snake was just kind of maybe trying to get out, but also probably very confused. But yes, so this the beetle that we're talking about is the Asian water beetle regem Barca at Tinuata. This is a small five millimeter big black and opalescent dome shape beetle. They're actually quite pretty because they have this like sort of obalescence to their shells.
Researchers found that after being eaten by a frog, the beetles can emerge from the frogs but completely intact and just scamper off like nothing happened, so the beetle does not wait around in the frog for divine intervention like Pinocchio and his dad. It is like actively all right, like let's go. It swims its way out of the frog. But unlike our first animal, the Japanese eel, which made its way out of the esophagus and guill slet this
beetle is like, let's go out the back door. So they swim through the rest of the digestive system and out of the frog's kloaca, which is the one hole
that the frog has on its butt. So researchers have looked into this and over ninety percent of the beetles tested managed to escape the frog through the backflap, and it is is thought that this is something that is actively happening because it is doing this quickly enough that it is not the frog's natural digestion right like it's escaping after you know, it's escaping in a number of minutes, which is faster than the frog would naturally digest food.
So it is likely that these beetles are swimming through like actively climbing through the frog's digestive system to go out of the butt and not not wait around to be digested, so they have kind.
Of it seems like an instinct built in for this situation. Because again, I know, we can't comprehend how this works in animals, Like what's it like to be motivated to do something but without thought? You know, this is just what we do in the situation, like cockroach runs away from light, that doesn't have a thought.
It's like a rumba, right, Like it's got a programming Like well, when I bonk into a wall, I turn around until I don't bonk into it anymore. And that's it's like that, but way more sophisticated than a rumba.
Yeah, So I find that really interesting because I like, we keep kind of giving human like tendencies to these animals and when we describe it, because you talked earlier about how there are turtles and other creatures that have spikes that have evolved in their system specifically to keep things from coming back out right, And of course you're imagining getting swallowed whole and then heroically trying to climb out and then realizing that this system expected you to
do that and has built defenses to keep you from doing it. But of course they don't have any they don't have any thought. This is just a you know, this is a battle between predator and prey and trying to one of them, trying to not starve to death. But yeah, it's still the most horrifying thing I can think of.
But you know, these beetles make it work, which I think is really admirable, and I like how it's just it's really all about efficiency and it's not about pride. It's okay for them that they're coming out of the butt as long as they make it, and you know, they do so good for them.
And we have in the course of this episode referenced multiple stories from pop culture and mythology, because this is a common story in our culture of a person getting swallowed by some sort of a big creature or a big fish. Usually the person is a sinner who who has gone wavered and they've gotten swallowed by a big creature and then while they're in the belly of the creature, they realize something about their lives and need to turn their lives around, and then they escape. And of course
talking about Boba Fett escaping from the sarlac. But it's interesting that.
Is that a thing I don't follow star Wars, so I know that like in the original movies, he definitely seems like he died.
Did they like say he escaped.
Yes, there is an entire on Disney Plus there's an entire series around Boba Fat in his life after he escaped from the Sarlac and turned his life around after being But it is important to note that in the story of Jonah and Boba Fat and Pinocchio and all of the I'm sure every culture probably has these, they never escape from the.
Butt, right that would be too signified.
Well, okay, we need to discuss this for the rest of the episode because it seems like it seems like it's very important in the story of the hero who realizes, Okay, I have gotten myself here. To get out, I need to be something new when I am reborn. They have to make the thing vomit them back up onto the beach or whatever. Or is Boba Fet I think used maybe like a plasma grenade or something and caused the Starlac to cough him up. I don't know the exact story.
I didn't watch it, but it's extremely important that they leave out the front door and not the back and I would be fascinated to know if somebody out there, please, if there's any listeners who know, if there is mythology around a heroic person who was swallowed by a giant whale or something and their resolution was they got pooped out and survived and then turned their life around.
Right, write to me at Creature Feature Product gmail dot com specifically about that and no other eating and pooping related things.
Again, we are talking about mythology, not something you wrote on the internet.
Can't please don't say like, well, one time I saw this art of bugs bunny eating Elmer Fudd.
And then being pregnant.
I don't want that, but you know if you want that, I'm not judging you, just not for me. Well, before we go, we do got a play a little game I called Mystery and Sound Game. Every week I play Mystery Animal Sound and you the listener and you the guests, get to guests who is squawking?
Who is making that sound? It can be any animal.
The hint for this week's or for last week animals sound is is someone's faucet leaking.
Or is someone horny? That is what we're looking for.
That that put that kind of like that sound almost sounds like someone hitting a wood block or water droplet.
Yeah, that definitely to my ears sounds like a noise that only a beak can make, so I would I'm gonna say that is a puffin. The last bird I saw a picture of.
That's a valiant. Guess it's incorrect, but I love I love puffins, So I feel like you get bonus points just for mentioning puffins. But congratulations to Emily M who guessed correctly that this is the like in bush frog aka the water droplet frog. It is found in the western Ghats in India. It's called alike in bush frog because it is camouflaged.
To look like lichen and so it is. Uh, I enjoy it.
I like looking at these guys because they are very sort of I don't know, it's just like the fact that they have that like any skin texture is very cool to me. And then yeah, that is the call that they make that it sounds like this kind of water droplet sound, which is very interesting to me. And I couldn't really find like why exactly it is other than sort of the typical thing of like they want their call to be able to be heard over long distances.
But yeah, it's very cool, little frog. So onto this week's mystery animal sound.
The hint is this, Uh, just just listen to this episode, Jason, you got any guesses?
Oh, I know exactly what it is?
What is it?
So I can't. I can't say it. It's going to ruin the again.
It's all right, I'll beat.
It out, all right. No, I would know the sound of some from a mile away.
That's exactly right.
Well, if you guys think you know what that is, you can write to me at Creature Featurepod at gmail dot com. Jason, thank you so much for joining us, and tell people where they can buy your new book. I'm starting to worry about this black Box of doom personally.
It's available everywhere in all formats including audio. No, I do not read the audiobook. People always ask me that they hired a professional. But it's also our hardcover ebook. Wherever you buy books except for like, it's not like Target or Walmart's I'm not famous. It's it's at bookstores, but otherwise Amazon, all the normal places.
It's at a book store where they sell books.
Well, that's that's excellent.
Congrats on your new book, and thank you guys so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show, if you leave a rating and review, that actually.
Helps me, Like literally, it's good for me.
It helps the show in the algorithm, and I feel it, and like every time I get like a new rating, it's kind of like a power up. My hair grows a little longer, my fingernails get a little stronger. Eventually I will turn into some kind of like beast creature that has like these talents and hair.
Everywhere.
But that's a good thing, I think, so keep on rating the show. Thank you guys so much for listen. Thanks to the space cssics for their super awesome song ex So Lumina. Reach Your Features a production of ByHeart Radio. For a more podcasts like the one you just heard it, listen to iHeartRadio, app Apple podcasts, or hey, I guess what wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
I don't judge you.
I can't tell you what to do. I'm not your mother, but I will give you this advice.
Uh, don't swallow eels alive.
You may not enjoy what happens, and if you do, it's not in my business.
See you next Wednesday.