Big Baby Mayhem

world that has ever existed. We are talking about fairly large babies and how they live their lives, how they baby round, and how essentially every animal baby is pretty much the same. Joining me today is proprietress of the website how to Eat La and host of the smart Mouth podcast, Catherine Spires. Welcome. Thank you so much for having me back on. I love being here. I am so excited to have you on. You told me about a elk story that you have involving baby Elk, which

is the whole reason I'm doing this. So can you share your baby elk observations? Yeah, yeah, okay. So my parents live in Utah, in like semi rural Utah, and there's a herd of elk that lives in their neighborhood. And so in the fall, there's just like I don't know, about two hundred elk just wandering about and you might wake up one morning and they're all in your yard or something like that. I was there in November and

December and their backyard. Imagine like the house with a hill immediately behind it in the backyard, a hill that goes down and then there's a flat land and then it goes up again. So if you can imagine like a natural coliseum, yeah type thing, I'm imagining the stands of like elk sitting. That's pretty much it's blogs. Yeah, like one elk going around with big pretzels hanging from antlers, Yeah,

selling them. Yeah, that's you're totally on points. Okay. So we were looking out in the backyard one day and the whole herd of elk was there, which isn't like crazy but obviously like very cool every time that you see it. I mean, not crazy in the sense of not being unexpected. And we've realized that they're sort of like circled up and two of the dudes are like

in the middle of the arena. They've got like they're the biggest dudes, and they've got the biggest horns, and they're sort of circling each other, and we realized that there's two more dudes like on either side of the arena, and I was like, are these they're like rather seconds

for the duel? Yeah? Yeah, And then like all the ladies and all the babies are just like hanging about, and then the two big dudes started getting closer and closer to each other, and we were like, oh my god, this is going to be some sort of epic battles. They're going to be bloodshed I nervous. I was like, I don't really want to see this. And then they locked horns and just stood there with their horns locked, going see ee at each other for like forty five minutes.

And that was the fight, and we couldn't tell who won except for that one of them. When he separated, he went to his second and headbutted him a bunch of times, like he must have lost because he's like embarrassed in taking it out on his homie right now. So that was great. But my favorite part was what happened next. Is like as the dudes had their horns locked or their antlers locked, the baby started getting like

more hyper. Yeah, like there was like more bouncing, yeah, and then when the fight was over, they were so hyped up. All the baby elks were just like running in circles and then they would do this thing where they would sort of like practice punch trees. That's like they were just kind of like and then they'd sort of like stand up on their hind legs like sort of near each other and sort of make the headbutting

motion like they were practicing. And then a couple and they were probably boys, kind of like ran towards dudes who had been fighting and sort of made like a vague headbutting emotion and then would run away. Really that's so cute. Oh my god, it was amazing and I can't stop thinking about it because I do think that animals have more of like I don't know, awareness and maybe emotional intelligence that we give them credit for. But I was like, this is exactly how little kids human

kids behave when something exciting goes on with adults. Yeah, no, absolutely, I mean they're playing, they're like what it's like watching sports and then acting out they see having fun and playing so everything, Like, I really don't think you're projecting in terms of emotions there I think that you really were seeing like what you think you were seeing that

they're playing. Yeah, they're copying what they're seeing. They're very excited and they're you know, they're trying to get involved, like doing the little the playful headbuts and yeah, we're gonna we're gonna talk about the importance of play with baby elk and also other animals. But they let's first talk about what are elk. Elk are large ungulates. They're the largest deer or they're they they're the second largest member of the deer family, the first largest being moose.

Elk live in North America as well as in Central and East Asia. They have very large antlers, and like all antlers, they're actually made out of living bone. So when antlers grow, they like when they're growing in and the spring, are covered in this like soft, slightly furry skin called velvet, which actually they will shed that off and it comes off in strips and sometimes they eat like the strips as they're shedding off, so it's kind of like a me jerky, like a self jerkey that

they're eating. Gross. Yeah, it's kind of like it's kind of like when you eat, like when you chew up a little piece of your cuticle and you're just like, well, I don't know where else to put it. But yeah, they are there nutrients in it. Yeah, it's meat essentially, they get some nutrients from it. And deer and are not above just slurping up random little bits of meat sometimes like in fact, sometimes like elk and deer, Like if there's a carcass, they might be like, oh what's

this and nibble a little bit off of it. Obviously they are herbivores, but once in a while they might eat a little bit of meat just you know, if they find it. That makes sense to me. I feel that moose have bloodlust. This is my firmly held belief they do, you know. I mean if you see, like, I've never seen a moose in person, but I've definitely seen the scale of a moose, and I have seen like a taxi dermied moose like from a natural history

museum in purpose in person, and they are really frightening. Yeah, they're scary. I I think I would not be able to handle seeing a moose in real life. Yeah. Yeah, people think that they can don't know what they're talking about. It's a very bad ideas. Yeah, we're gonna yeah, we're gonna be talking about bad ideas. So as you observed exactly, males will compete for mating opportunities by bellowing at each

other or showing off their antlers. Uh. They'll try to avoid a confrontation at first by assessing who would be the likely winner, but if neither backs down, they'll they'll engage in a fight by ramming their antlers together, which is a very risky activity. They could be seriously injured. They could even die. Both of them could get could die if they get too entangled. It's it's kind of like medieval jousting, right like it's a it's a it's

a serious activity that they're isking. So that's why they try at first to sort of see who they think is gonna win. So, but then if they can't make a determination, if neither backs down, then they engage in the fight because they don't really want to be killed or hurt, but they do have to compete in order to have access to females. Is the antler locking Is that the fight itself or is that like the pre fight? That is that is the fight itself? Like locking the antlers,

Usually they they'll like shake it around. Sometimes they'll kick with their front legs, so it's that is a that is a fight. Sometimes they'll spar which is usually it's just a little less dramatic, so they'll they will sort of like butt heads or sort of kind of lock their antlers together, but in a way that's a little more testing. So like when they're sparring, it's you know, usually younger males who aren't quite at the level of

like the big dominant ball. Uh, they'll they'll kind of like do these like sparring where it kind of looks like they're fighting, but there it's just a little bit more brief and it's a little it's less serious. They're not actually like what you saw with the loser, like butting heads with the other male that may have been sort of like a a sparring thing of like why what did I get wrong? Why am I? Why do

I suck at this? And then for sure yeah and uh, and also what the babies were doing, which is like sort of mimicking the motion sparring with each other, kicking at trees, like that's all a form of play that helps them learn how to fight with rival mails without actually risking their lives right, like because because the idea is like you want to become you want to get good at it, and you want to avoid being seriously injured.

And but but yeah, it's still the competition is so fierce that they have to get good at it and so like that that's that's where that playfulness comes from. Mm hmm. Yeah, you could tell that, like even though they were playing and not really making contact, there'd always

be one that would back down first. I also wondered, so after the excitement, all the women, the women, this is I feel like a lot of my friends will just call female animals women and it's very funny to me, and I don't I don't feel like correcting it, just because it's very funny to me a lot of women. And by women, I mean I mean I mean female elk. Yes, they they all just sort of sat down. It was. It was just so interesting. I felt like, yeah, okay,

the dudes are going at it. And then once they knew no one was seriously injured, they were like, enough with you. I'm like going back to my knitting type thing. But I want when they're little. Was was I only seeing the boy babies playfight or were the girl babies that it's probably mostly males, but I wouldn't be surprised if female young also engage in some of the play fighting. Like I think that it definitely once they get a

little older, like when their adolescent. So I don't think the females do it, but like the real real young babies are probably just gonna play around, jump around, so they may also get pretty excited. But the you know, probably the ones that were more aggressively sparring were most likely the males, right like okay, kind of like like when my dog was a puppy, she observed a dog humping another dog and she's like, well, that looks like fun. So then she tried it out, but she got it wrong.

So and so like going from the back, she did it like perpendicular to the dogs, so like kind of sideways, uh. And it was just sort of like resting her paws sideways on the dog's back and sort of like doing at like hit movement sort of like she was toerking, and it was very funny. Oh my god, that's amazing. Yeah. Oh you mentioned bellowing. The male's bellowing when they're fighting, but the noise I heard, like we all felt so embarrassed for the boy elks. It was just such. It's

a little it's a very funny noise. It's called bugling. Let me play it. Let me play the American elk bugling sound for you, because you'll see what Catherine is saying. It's not it's not quite the manly roar that one might think would be a dominant cry. But yeah, it's more high pitched. It's kind of like it's it's called bugling. I guess because it sounds like a bugle, I mean, a really terrible bugle. But but yeah, that's a call to tract, attract the females to stick out their territory,

sometimes as like a warning to another male. And yes, it's it's considered peak maskalinity in the elk elk world, sort of a a little bit of a Byork thing. I don't want to be mean to Byork. She's she does good songs, but there's a little bit of what she's doing. She does know what she's doing. Yeah, when it's no coincidence that when Byork sings they have to watch out for female elk, just going like, huh, what was that all? Across Iceland. York's great. Actually, yeah, in Iceland,

they probably wouldn't. They wouldn't have elk, they would have reindeer. And those are indeed a kind of deer. Yes, yes, reindeer. They're real. They're not full of Christmas magic, but they are. They're real deer. So yeah, and elk are actually kind of freaks. They love urine, So males have urethra is specifically designed to direct p at a ninety degree angle up at their own fur so that they it's kind of like a cologne that females will smell and be

attracted to. Males also create pea baths called wallows, where they pee in shallow ditches that they kind of dig out and then they roll around in the urine, so you know, whoa, that's nasty they look. It's uh, it's all done for the ladies because lady elk really do love the fresh smell of uh ppe ppe colonna ota toilette, but very literal, it's really the lady elk that are the freaks. Yeah, although the males also like to smell the ladies while they're peeing, so you know it's they're

all free. Oh my god. Yeah, yeah, they're Also they're also extremely dangerous, particularly during calving season and when they have calves around, so they do not passively accept intruders and they will stomp you to smithereens if they think you're a threat. Again, these are the second largest ungulates, only dwarfed by moose, so they're quite large, quite dangerous. According to the Yellowstone National Park Service, during the calving

season in the spring, elk are super dangerous. They will stomp you, they will attack you if you get too close to them and their babies. They have a warning on their website called warning Elk Calving has Begun. Cow Elk are much more aggressive towards people during the calving season and may charge or kick. Stay alert, look around corners before exiting buildings or walking around blind spots. Cow

Elk may bed their calves near buildings and cars. Keep at least twenty five yards from elk at all times. If an elk charge does, you find shelter in your v or behind a tall, s dirty barrier as quickly as possible. You are responsible for your own safety. So elk's. Elk are serious business. They really are, and I have some I have some concerns overall, I think it's been

really interesting with the rise of social media. I think a big part of why I think animals have more intelligence than we think has been from social media and seeing like chickens with feelings and stuff like that. And it's also been interesting. Remember Teddy the Porcupine, Yes, it was a big hit a couple of years ago. And noises, Yeah, we're like, oh my god, this is actual Disney animal noise happy noises. Yeah. Yeah, it was incredible. But then

but then I'm like, but they're not Disney animals. In a couple summers ago, when I was in Olympic National Park in Washington State, the deer were so aggressive, yeah, at the picnic area, and I didn't want to touch them because I was like, I don't know what bugs y'all are carrying. But I had to get it's so aggressive back to get them to not eat our food. And I don't know what to say. I think everybody should be allowed to be in nature, but at the

same time, why can't people respect animals? It really freaks me out. Yeah, it's it's really about respecting the both the animals safety and your own safety, and respecting the fact that yeah, it's not. It's not like it's gonna be like the scene in Snow White where if you crouch in a forest, a deer will gently put its head under your elbow, Like if if you like try to, you know, steal a baby elk, its mom is probably gonna find you, and she has a very particular set

of skills, which is stomping you to smithereens. I have seen a video of an elk stomping. It's and I think it was like directed in a cougar. It's wild, it's very powerful. It messed this cougar up. So yeah, so yeah, be careful around elk I did earlier. I just want to correct a slip of the time I said I said elk are the second biggest ungulate. I meant the second biggest deer. Obviously there are bigger ungulates like Jiroffes. Anyway, Oh okay, yeah, but anyways, back to

bad decisions. For some reason, people keep putting baby elk in their cars in national parks, thinking that if they find them alone, that they've been abandoned by their mothers. Don't do it. Don't do this with elk. Don't do this with other deer, like elk will leave their calves alone,

but this is a actually a survival strategies. So the females will hide their newborn calves when they go out to forage, and then they will return repeatedly to the calve to like nurse them, because this is actually the safest way to take care of the babies because that first week, the newborn calf does not have a strong smell, so predators are unlikely to find it when it's nestled

in the bushes. It'd be much more likely for this calf to get caught, like if it's following its mother and predators can see it out in the open, So the mother leaves it, you know, usually in a bushy or grassy area or behind some kind of structure so that the calf is hidden. And so essentially you're just kidnapping the baby if you try to, like, you know, quote unquote rescue it. So don't touch it, don't rescue it,

you're really not. This goes for fawns as well, Like just like deer, you might be more used to, like if you see a fawn just kind of like curled up in the bushes in the grass, don't touch it, don't carry it away somewhere. It was probably left thereby its mother, and the mother's going to return, and this is a normal behavior. Yeah. I mean, podcast audiences are

self selecting, so your audience probably knows this already. Yeah, but I just feel like want to say, in case someone who doesn't normally listen randomly listen to this second, like, don't touch the baby animals in wild areas, especially if it's government owned land, because if you, for instance, see a bear cub and think it's really cute and you interact with it, the government will kill that bear cub and its siblings and it's mom. So please leave them alone.

And they're not killing the bear family for fun, They're doing it for everybody's future safety that you personally just ruined. So now you're a bear murderer. Yeah, I think, Yeah,

I mean I do agree. I don't think my audience is probably gonna be going out trying to kidnap baby animals, I know, but this is this is good advice because like I do feel like we're it's more that we're deputizing you to go and stop animal kidnappers with knowledge, with knowledge, and you know, it's I think that oftentimes these things. These things can come from a good place where it's like, oh, I have to help this animal. So I get that, and I don't think I think

oftentimes it is done in good faith. Obviously there's the rfks of the world warts that's not done in good faith. But yeah, so yeah, don't kidnap a baby elk. You will get hunted down by a bunch of liam Neeson's that have hooves and anger. So that's not a great idea. I know you're not gonna do it, But tell your friends. Tell fine, you know, everyone has a friend where you're like that would be the friend that would think that

maybe they should kidnap a baby elk. Talk to that friend and tell them not to because like in the case, like you know, I read a news story about like someone had put an elk, baby elk in their car and then like essentially they the park rangers forced them to release the elk. But the elk, you know, ran off into w's somewhere. Who knows if it ever found its mom again, right, like hopefully yes, But it's just like,

what are you doing. It's like if you found you found like a kid at the mall and you're like all right, I'm gonna like take you to Canada or something, or if you're already in Canada, I'm gonna take you to uh, you know, America. Like it's just like, why would you do that? Just leave it, leave them alone, and you know probably their their moms nearby. So yeah, don't kidnap baby Elk. No, no kidnapping whatsoever. Blanket rule, blanket rule, it's bad, don't do it. Really, we're really

sticking it to my audience of educated animal lovers. You already know all of this, but you know, well, you know, it never hurts to remind people. Right, Sometimes you just forget and you're like, oh damn, and there's a baby Elk in your car and you're like, oh man, forgot, Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. It happens to the it really does. All right, Well, we're gonna take a quick break and when we get back, we're gonna talk about another big baby, all right, Catherine.

So now we're gonna talk about baby Elephants. Cute, very cute, super goofy. Everybody loves them, their little little scamps. Man, I feel so much for mom Elephants. Though it takes twenty two months, which is you know, nearly two years for baby elephants to gest date and then they give birth to like it's like a mini coop sized baby. Oh my god, yeah, it's it's wild. How long do elephants live? Big live quite a long time. I believe it's around forty to sixty years old. Let me double

check that. Well, two years gestation seems too long for that lifespan. I don't like that. Yeah, so like African elephants live sixty to seventy years, Asian elephants live around forty eight years. That's that's a long time though for a wild animal. To be fair, that's a very long time. They could probably live even longer if there was some I mean, elephants don't really do well in captivity, but if like there was elephant healthcare, which there kind of

is in certain natural reserves. Anyways, the point I'm making is that's a long lifespan for an animal that lives in such a sort of a tough and unforgiving environment. Uh huh uh huh. Do they have to eat more the entire time they're pregnant, yeah or anything like that? Okay, yeah, yeah,

they have to eat more while they're pregnant. They also eat more while they're lactating to be able to Yeah, I mean, okay, it's going to be pretty similar to human human pregnant for a much longer period of time, right right, you know, so similar to humans, baby elephants will suck their trunks like human babies stunk their thumbs, and they also try to learn how to use they can.

They get up and go walking very quickly, so like within the first few hours of life, they learn how to walk, but they do not know how to use their trunks yet, and so it takes them some time to learn how to operate their trunks. Because an elephant's trunk has around ninety thousand muscle fiber bundles and around fifty to sixty thousand motor neurons associated with controlling the trunks. So it's a very complicated organ, a very complicated limb.

So and they have a high concentration of muscles also in the tip at the in the lip of the trunk, like the you know, the little at the end of the snout where it can like pick up like a paintbrush and you know, do art, elephant art. So yeah, yeah, the babies will you like, that's why you can see videos of babies just sort of like helicoptering their trunk. It's because they're sort of they're playing, they're having fun, but they're also like learning how to use this very

sophisticated limb. It's sort of like babies, you know, waving their arms around, kicking their legs. You know, you're, you're they're both having fun, but they're also learning how to, uh, how to move their bodies, and they're it's usually quite thrilling for them to learn how.

in their mouth and then spit it out. Yeah, they don't know how to eat it, they don't know how to cheat it. They're kind of like mimicking the motions before they actually get it. Yeah, I mean there's a lot of similarities between the development of like say a baby elephant and a baby human, because they're both We're both very intelligent animals, both very social animals, also with limbs that have fine motor controls, so like our hands and fingers and in their trunks, So yeah, there is

similar situation. Also, baby elephants will play with each other and they learn really important social skills through playing, just like human babies. This is something very common with like a lot of different types of social species, from dogs

to lions to you know, dolphins. Like if you're a social species, like play is really important in terms of like playing with one another to learn social skills and also learn survival skills, like for predators like baby like if when you see like like kittens playing with each other where they're like chasing and pouncing and knocking each other over and biting each other's necks, but not that seriously, it's a way for them to practice their predation skills

without actually getting hurt. Same thing for dogs, like tugle war with your dog is your dog play acting snapping something's neck. For elephants, obviously they are herbivores, and yet they do have to defend themselves, and they aren't quite good at it, and so like babies will spar with each other, they'll run around do stuff that they also like.

The males have to learn how to defend themselves from other bulls or fight with other bulls if they want access to mating opportunities or to try to take over access to a herd, So like the elephant societies, basically it's like a matriarchy where the females form a core group that remains pretty consistent throughout the throughout the herds like lifetime or throughout the herd's history, whereas the males

are the ones that kind of like disperse. So like the male once they're old enough, they'll leave the maternal group and go off try to find a new herd to join and then and sometimes they'll have to like fight in order to like oust the other bowl male or to get a mating opportunity, So it's important for

the males to learn how to do that. But the females also have to learn how to be rough and tumble around to defend their young and defend themselves from predators and threats, and the males go to other herds like to prevent incest. Yes, I mean this is exactly You're exactly right. Like you look very sk to bring this up, but that's the very good point. Yeah, Like male dispersal. Dispersal is a great way to improve genetic diversity, or as you're praised, it prevent a game of throne situation.

It is, it's, it's it. Actually, this is a pretty similar course. The social dynamics are a bit different, but like with lions, lion prides, it's often thought of as being like a very kind of male dominated situation, And in a way it's true because males do have a lot of like strength when it comes to the females, but the females form sort of a core group that

remains much more consistent throughout the pride's lifetime. And they also if females get fed up with a male who's like taken over the pride, like sometimes all the females will gang up on him and and I think, like for elephants, like the matriarchy is a little more pronounced because you have like this lineage of older females and younger females and all taking care of each other, and they will enforce kicking out bull males that stick around

too long. So like if there's if there's a young bull male who's like uh ready to disperse, they'll be like, all right, you got to go now, and they'll like actually kind of chase them out, and then he has to go find you know, ahrd to kind of hang around the periphery of and so that he can find some mating opportunities. So are there in cell elephants, I mean, are there some that just get rejected? And probably probably

they go they go online trying to compare trunk sizes. Yeah, no, I mean, like you know, that's that is sort of that that's that's natural selection. Baby involuntary celibacy is his naturals lock. Okay, yeah that makes sense. Yeah, oh man. But yeah, so baby elephants play a lot. A baby elephant will invite another one to play by placing their trunk on the other one's head, like they'll play with me, and they'll wrestle with their trunks. They'll bonk their heads together.

If they've developed tusks, sometimes they'll knock those around together. The Sometimes a teenage elephant will like kneel down and let like a baby elephant like kind of wrestle with them. It's super cute because it's like this much larger elephant like kneeling down and letting the baby kind of like

go to town. And it's a great it's a great lesson for the baby because like it really teaches the baby like not to bite off more than they can chew, because sometimes they'll like try to pick a fight with like a larger elephant, and the big elephant just kind of like knock them over, and it's it's a good lesson.

And then of course, like the mother and a lot of the other females will be very protective of the babies, so like if things get too intense, the baby will probably run back to its mommy and then the mom will be like, all right, stop, the game is over. You can't mess with my child anymore. Yeah, So it really is very similar to kind of playground politics. Yeah. Also, baby elephants will sometimes chase other animals for fun, like just just like hey, I'm gonna chase you now. They're

not it's not because they're predators. Again, it's usually like kind of developing motor skills. It's fun for them, but it's also like developing skills for like chasing off predators or competing with rivals. So elephant researcher and behavioral at College Is Caitlin O'Connell documented the way that baby African

eleph playing around can change political dynamics and herds. So like she she documented this like schism that happened like in this herd, like these two females didn't get along, so one of the females like broke off started her own herd, and then they came back together because the female who had left the other the big herd, like her baby was so playful with the babies from the other herd that whenever they would like see each other,

the baby would just go there. She didn't want to leave, and so eventually this like other female in her herd were forced to join the primary herd because her baby was like way too excited to play with the babies and this other herd. So uh, sometimes what a spoiled baby elephant. I know, I know, it's it's great though, It's like, you know what we got to put make bygones be bygones because this baby ell if it wants to play, And how do you stop a baby elephant

from playing? You don't no, oh, Wow, this is reminding me. I heard something and it was like I think I heard it first on Twitter, so I don't know if

it was real. This was years ago, something about how an experiment was done where there were these two old lady elephants who did not care for each other, and they were in different groups, with the groups would sometimes you know, literally cross paths, and the researchers took recordings of one of the old Lady elephants and went played it at the other old Lady elephant who didn't hate her, and when she heard the recording of her arch nemesis, she would get really stressed out. Mm hmm. Do you

think that's real? Yeah, that sounds sounds real to me. What amazing like jerk researchers though, Like we know you hate Helen with a passion. Anyways, here's Helen's voice and then Miriam's like, what, Helen, I told you to not come around here anymore. Yeah, it's just it would if it helps, Like imagine Old Lady Elephants is like Maggie Smith and Dame Judy Dinch taking potshots at one another, and then you will understand better the psychology of elephants.

That's very pleasing to me. Yeah, I like that and I'm going to do that permanently. Yeah. Speaking of Helen Mrran or sorry not Helmet here, speaking of Judy Ditch and Maggie Smith. Elephants are very serious about protecting their young and they will exact revenge on anyone who hurts their calves, just as Judy Dinsch and Maggie Smith would do. In Malaysia, a car accidentally hit a baby elephant. Like

it was a total accident. It was like there was a rainstorm and fortunately it was like a tiny compact car, so it didn't hurt the baby. Really, it didn't cause a serious injury. Also, the occupants of the vehicle were uninjured.

But the baby's family was not having it because the baby like fell over and so like this family of elephants came over and like smashed the car, like totaled the car, like smashed all its windows in, like dentted in the doors, just absolutely wrecked this car because it's like,

how dare you hit my baby with your car? Which you know, like all the people, like the reason this is a fun story is like all the people survived, so they were and I think they were completely uninjured the car itself not so not so pretty a situation. Yeah yeah, I mean, you know, it was a total accident, but like you can't like say like, oh no, I didn't see your child there and I hit them, Like

the elephants are still gonna mess you up. I respect that, and sometimes I feel like, I mean, not if it's an accident, but maybe maybe humans could take a couple

lessons and like discending I have. I think I saw a video once like like there was like a thing where like there was a sort of near accident, like a kid was in a crosswalk and like a car came and like basically kind of like the car eventually stopped or something and the kid, the kid was okay, but the car did hit the kid because you know, the car was not paying attention well enough, and like the kid's parents like ran over and like you know

like hit the car like in anger. Right, Like it's just a very natural response, right yeah, this thing almost like hurt your kid, Like that response of like you know, like hit the car, like you know this stupid thing, you you hurt my You could have really seriously hurt my kid. It's just very very similar kind of thing. Right, like, just this just animal, this elephant family making the insurance premiums go up on this car smashing it in. I can't. I can't say that I wouldn't do the same if

I was an elephant. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I heard another story. That's another one that I'm like, is this true about in a village in India there was a woman who did not like elephants, so she would yell at them and they smashed up her funeral. I heard this too. I looked into trying to figure out if it was true or not. I really don't know. I think it's believable. I just don't know, though, because like, how would they know for sure it's her funeral? Did

they smell her? It's possible they did, I just I don't know. It could be that they were. It could also have been a coincidence where they were like agitated by the presence of people there. I could I really couldn't find out whether this was Like, first of all, I couldn't find out if it was genuine, and secondly, I couldn't find out if like it was some how confirmed that the elephant had come to like I don't know,

gate crash her funeral. Yeah, pay disrespect, right. Maybe maybe they didn't know for sure that it was the same woman, but they were like, we don't care. Yeah, this is doing today. Anyone dies in this village, we're gonna hope it's this lady that was mean to us. I really I don't know. I think if they I think if they could tell that this it was this lady, I wouldn't put it past them. I'll say that much. Wouldn't put it past an elephant if it was possible for

them to know that this was this lady's funeral. I just I really have a lot of respect for these herbivores that are not afraid to throw down. Oh man, so many herbivores are so not afraid to throw down. Like predators have a pretty tough life, honestly, lie Like you think of like, well, lions, like nothing's gonna mess

with the lions. Lots of stuff mess with lions. Like there's a lot of gnarly, gnarly, gnarly injuries you can see on even like male, big tough male lions, like where they'll just have like half a limb missing, a

chunk of their face taken out. That's probably because they got into a mix up with the wrong elephant or the wrong giraffe, you know, so like it's a or even like the wrong cape buffalo, right, like it's a There's a lot of herbivores that are not gonna take it lying down, and so yeah, it's they can be quite dangerous. And I mean that's one reason that lions tend to form, you know, groups, like it makes it a lot easier for them to take down large prey

without risking dying every time. Interesting. Interesting, I forgot I heard that about Cape buffalo. They're wildly dangerous. They're very dangerous. Yeah, So yeah, herbivores. Being an herbivore does not mean being weak or docile. I think we might get a mistaken impression because we have domesticated herbivores that we live around, Like cows. Cows are not normal ungillis. They're not. They're not because we've bred out their fear and their aggressions.

So cows are really docile. Sheep are really docile because we've bred them to be like like a if you go up to sort of the like the the ancestral sort of orcs that like you know, cows came from. They would be aggressive towards you if you tried to milk them, Like, it's not going to work out for you. Did you say ancestral orc ors? It's like a me nice spells spell ex the orcs, is it? It's a h let me, let me just double check, make sure

I'm getting this completely correct. Uh orcs. So it's a U R O C hsh Okay, this is new information, not orcs like World of War. That's what I was thinking, and I thought that can't be. But yeah, or rocks extinct. But yes, this is the sort of ancestral uh. The the species that we think cows came from, and they were probably pretty feisty.

you think is the biggest baby in the world? Catherine Well, I'm gonna make a fear based answer and say whales because I may have said this on the show before, whales terrify me. I think I would die. Maybe I remembered that subconsciously, which is why we're going to be talking about the biggest whale in the world. Because I'm you're so mean, I'd be I'd be a cruel podcast mistress. Uh. Yeah, we're talking about baby blue whales. Maybe I can help Maybe I can help us a wage or intensify your fears.

It's exposure therapy. Let's see, which have you seen, Like have you seen whales sleeping in the ocean where they're just like because like they'll sleep and like their bodies kind of like hang down sort of a vertically. Oh, and they just look it's weird. It kind of looks like here, let me shin, is it Okay? If I send you a photo, I don't I don't actually want to freak you out. Yeah. No, I can see photos

of them. Okay. I've actually been in a catamaran that a whale was swimming directly beneath and maybe I just like disassociated. I don't remember being that scared, but if I saw that now, I think maybe it's like I didn't even know that was possible, so I wasn't fully comprehending it in the moment. Yeah, I mean, I there are things that like fill me with a sort of fear slash awe where I don't get terrified. But it's it's it's hard to explain windmills do this to me.

I'm like, is scary, you know, like I find them a little bit like, you know, not Dutch windmills, I mean like the giant, uh modern windmills. I'm like, they're kind of scary in a way just because they're so massive. But yeah, it's just it's the same kind of fear of like being on a roller coaster, where it's like I kind of enjoy the fear a little bit. It's hard, it's hard exactly to explain. I'm just saying, although I don't enjoy roller coasters, so that's a bad metaphor specifically

for me. But I sent in the chat a photo of this. It's the it's sperm whales sleeping and they are actually kind of vertical like a whale forests. To me, that's it's super surreal to see them like that. What's going on with the perspective here, because the guy is much closer to the foreground. The whales are a lot bigger than Okay, I was gonna say, yeah, okay, that makes sense. Yeah, so those guys, I I I think I would die of fear if I were faced with

six or seven whales awake or asleep. Yeah, fair enough. So blue whales are gigantic. They're the biggest animal that we know of that has ever lived on the planet Earth. And the babies are the biggest babies. It takes up to it takes about a year for them to gestate. Babies are born over twenty feet long, which is six meters and up to six thousand pounds or two seven hundred kilograms. They're basically the size of a metal shipping container,

these babies. And I'm looking around my room. It wouldn't fit in my room. Probably not. No, I don't care for that, not, thank you. So the mother will lactate

about fifty gallons of milk a day. The baby grows at an incredible rate, so as adults they get to be around one hundred two hundred, like over one hundred feet long, which is around over thirty meters long, and one hundred and fifty tons, So the baby has to drink extremely rich, high fat milk every day and they gain around like two hundred pounds per day, which is don't you You can't air this because those raw milk freaks are gonna hear it and they're gonna I think

they should try to go and get it and the situation will sort itself out. But yeah, it's it is. It is an incredible feat. Uh. They grow very quickly. They have to, uh in order to get to be that size, and they are. It's it's very like we there's so much about blue whales that we don't know because they're they're just like can't get them. We can't get there. You can't study a blue whale in a lab. You can't put it in MRI. I can't, Like you

can't and like we're not there. We're not where they are, and they like go to very uh you know, deep depths. They do come up in surface obviously because they have to breathe their mammals, but yeah, they're just it's there for being the largest animal on earth. Like, we know surprisingly little about them. We do know that they're balen whales,

so they're filter feeders. They eat krill. They swallow enormous amounts of seawater that contains like if once they find a dense patch of krill, they swallow them in and they sort of push all that water out through their bileen, which are it's sort of like a broom bristles, and all the krill get tangled in there, and then they swallow them up and have a giant, giant snack of krill. And so, yeah, do we know what the biggest thing that they could swallow and not choke on is. I've

literally never thought about them. I've thought about this a lot. I don't know. I mean, you'd have to look at what they're throat sizes. I suppose. Wow, that doesn't help. So they there's some blue baby blue whale news apparently. Yeah, in New Zealand, baby Blue, a baby pigmy blue whale

got stuck in a pier under a wharf. So pigmy blue whales are you know, small blue whales, meaning they only grow to be about eighty feet long or twenty four meters, and this baby was nearly fifty feet long fifteen meters, so it got kind of like entangled among the supports for the pier. So what did the conservationists do? They just dismantled the pier so that the baby could could be free. So the entire the entire wharf was dismantled.

It was like a small wooden I'm not not talking about like Santa Monica pre with a ferrosprayle on it. But I just found it funny because, like, in reading about it, New Zealand's Department of Conservation called it a highly unusual situation. It's like, oh, really, you don't get

blue whales stuck in your peers all the time? I guess, uh, But also I am a little surprised it doesn't happen more often because like, have you ever seen like every time a child finds banisters, immediately the head gets stuck in it. Oh yeah, and this feels like a kid getting their heads stuck in a banister situation, but with like a blue whale. Oh absolutely, Oh funny. Wait, so

there are pigmy blue whales. Yes, that's a known thing. Yeah, they're just they're just they're smaller than the full sized blue whales, So instead of being being over one hundred feet long, they're about eighty feet long. Just teeny tiny, little guy, bitty cute little pigmy. It's just so funny to call this thing a pigmy blue whale. Yeah, so rescuers dismantled the small wharf, guided the whale out of

the bay with boats, and it was free to go. Uh. So, you know, whales or human children always getting stuck in anything that is like a stair banister. This is so funny and I will be very interested to know if, in the future if the offspring of that pigmy blue whale also gets stuck in a pier, Like it's a genetic trait of like, because yeah, I'm hearing about that curiosity. Yeah, there's that otter wasn't Yeah, it was an otter who last year I think, kept biting surfboards. And it was

the same one because he was tagged. Come to find out, it was the offspring of another otter who, however, many years before, kept biting kayaks. Hmm. I mean part of that could be genetics, but it could also be learned behavior, right, like if it's raised by an otter that likes to bite kayaks, sort of like when you have a kid and you're like, you know, uh, your kid goes into a pretty related career as you, right, Like, I guess for me, it'd be a kid who goes into radio.

I don't know, like where it's just slightly like a new spin. I don't know. There's gonna be something different. It's gonna be like hollow holographic VR radio. Yeah, it probably will. But not if you're a traditionalist and you just stick to a career in biting, right, biting, biting surfboards. I will support my hypothetical child in whatever career they choose, whether it's biting kayaks, biting surfboards, biting you know, sandboards,

biting I don't know, hookeyboards, yeah, hydrofoils. Biting yachts, Now, that would be a kid. I was proud of a kid who bites yachts. That's that. And that would be if your kid were in otter, you know, breaking into an orchad dominated industry. Yeah, always, Yeah, you'd be so proud. I think a bumper sticker for that, My ottered child bites yachts.

a wilde beast. Wow, wow, amazing surprising, right, yeah. So wilde beests are large antelopes found in Eastern and South Africa, with long, bison like heads and thick withers. There are two species of wildebeest. There's the blue wilde beast with stripes on their back and short horns. I think that's the one you see in lion king. So that's what you're thinking of when you think wildebest. It's the blue wildebeest. And then there's the black wildebeest, which has a tan,

shaggy mane, a mohawk like or sorry. And then there's the black wildebeest that has a mohawk like maine down its neck, a black head, and longer horns. So interestingly. Wildebeests like to take advice from other species, so they'll mingle with zebra herds and baboons and pay attention to warning calls of these other species for predators. So they are definitely there to let other species do the work of looking out and about for them. Oh my gosh, amazing. Yeah,

what a cool animal. Very cool and also extremely generous of you to say that bullfrog was anything. Well, a bowl is also I got where we're going from. A male wildebeast might be called a bowl that sounds like a thing. It would be called uh that sounds like such a cool animal. I love that, the gossipy, gossipy animal. Uh onto this week's mister animal sound. The hint is this. Don't stick your head in the sand for this one.

All right, you got any guesses, Katherine, No, it sounds like reving, but that's right, it's as rev is a it is a Hyundai BMX bike trick question. Yeah? Oh did I I just in case I forgot. Congratulations to Emily M for guessing correctly for the Well, all right, so we've got VMX bike as a guest. We will find out next time on Creature feature whether that is correct. Katherine, thank you so much for joining me today. Where can

people find you? Well, let's see, I'm on Instagram, as Katherine underscore spires difficultly enough, and then I am on TikTok. Katherine Spire, that's where I am. That's you're fighting a good fight. I don't man, TikTok confuses me because I'm about two hundred years old. It's not easy. I still find it difficult to actually use, but I find so much good information on that. For me, it's like that scene in two thousand and one A Space Odyssey where I think the guy is getting turned back into a

fetus after he goes inside the artifact. I kind of forgot what was going on in that movie. Slash didn't understand what was going on in that movie. Yep. But it's like that scene where that guy is turning back into a fetus, and like, I think, all the universe is flashing into his eyeballs and all those lights and stuff. That's what happens to me when I try to look at TikTok, I get turned back into a fetus. That's such an intense experience to be having. Yeah, and I

don't think you need to put yourself through that. If you don't, I'm a little over stimulated. Yeah yeah, Well, thank you guys so much for listening. If you rate a review the podcast, I love that. I appreciate it so much. Thanks to the Space Cossics for their super awesome song ex Alumina. If you think you know the answer to this week's mister Animal sound, you can write to me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com. You can also write to me with your animal questions,

any sort of evolutionary biology related questions, pictures of your pets. Uh. Creature features of production, Oh my god. Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or he guess what wherever you listened to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday. I went hard into the NPR Voice At the end