Welcome to Creature Future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and today on the show Big Mouths animals with absolutely animalistic appetites, from the stretchiest mouth the reptiles, to seat creatures that are mostly mouths. We're talking about the most
ghoulish gluttons on the globe. Discover this and more as we answer the age old question what the heck is wrong with Heron's joining me today is food writer, host of the podcast Smart Mouth, and expert on all things edible, Catherine Spires.
Welcome, Thank you so much for having me. I love doing this show.
I am excited to talk to you about this. I uh, I'm always impressed with animals that just go for it when they're eating, Like you would think, hey, don't you want a smaller nibble maybe, and they're like, no, I want the whole meal in my mouth immediately.
Yeah, because you don't know what's gonna happen exactly, so you got to get it in while you can.
Right exactly. You don't know if someone's gonna catch you trying to get this thing. Someone's gonna steal your food from right in front of you, so you've got to get the whole thing down your gullet within seconds, which is yeah, my sort of That's how my brain interprets when I'm eating pizza, like what I have to do, which burns the roof of my mouth, and then two seconds later I forget that pain and then continue.
I know, that's a hard one when something's so delicious or you just feel so panicky about it. You know, my dad was Irish Catholic and grew up in an Irish Catholic neighborhood and everyone had a million kids, and that is the way humans eat. Also when there's a lot of people at the table, a lot of people that you don't care about manner in front of, and they still kind of do it to this day. It's still kind of like a slightly panicky situation.
Yeah, just food around hyenas at a carcass exactly. Yes, yes, No, I mean I think anyone who's had sort of a buffet style thing and then you're competing with all your siblings and your cousins and your aunts and your uncles, you know, it can things can get messy.
Yeah, Yeah, especially if there's something highly prized like clams. They're from Seattle, and you know, my everyone's memories of like being allotted three clams. Are there any animals that think about food like that? Like, are there any mom animals that allocate food that thoughtfully? I mean, it's kind of mean to only let people have three clams, but I mean that's an interesting question.
There are I mean, certainly birds will feed their offspring, and if they have multiple offspring, they tried to feed where you know, many offspring, some bird species will favor one offspring over the other and feed them more. There are certainly animals who will starve themselves in order to feed their offspring. So there are so many different ways
in which animals will partition out food. In fact, some animals, like fish or frogs, will even eat some of their offspring just to make sure there's enough food to go around.
Oh interesting, Yeah, yeah, there are lots of ways of handling this indeed.
And so our first animal we're talking about, it's one of one of my personal favorite snakes. It's an egg eating snake. So all eggs eating snakes are quite impressive in terms of their ability to swallow whole eggs larger
than their heads. But a genus of cute little snakes called dazzy Peltis are the snakes with the highest prey size to their own size ratio in the snake world, meaning that relative to their body size, they can swallow the largest prey, but that prey is exclusively eggs, so they have.
Like a mono diet.
Okay, yeah, they eat only eggs, typically bird eggs, and they are really they cannot really eat anything else. They're highly highly specialized.
And how often do they starve or is this something that's easy for them to get.
To because they live in areas and are specialized to find bird nests. I think that they are fairly capable of feeding themselves, Like it's one of the things like when you're really niche, you have to be really good and specialized at getting that food. But they they happen to be really good at getting these eggs and specializing in it to the point where they actually have basically no teeth. They really can't eat anything other than eggs.
They're completely harmless to humans. They have no teeth, they have no venom. They're quite cute. I think some people might disagree, but they will they're really harmless, and they try to pretend like they're tough. So they'll hiss by rubbing their scales together, producing this striation that makes a hissing sound, and then they'll lunge with a fake bite, but they don't actually bite. They just have their mouth kind of like open and then bonk against you harmlessly
because they can't. They really have no bite to their bark, like there's nothing they can do. They're just trying to intimidate you and pretend like they're much tougher snake than they actually are.
Okay, that is pretty endearing. Do people keep these as pets?
They do? Indeed, yes, it's a fairly popular snake to keep as a pet. I think in addition to them being you know, not dangerous to handle, it's also if you feel bad about feeding snakes live food, this one is easy to feed because you feed it eggs typically not chicken eggs. They might be a little too big, especially for the smaller species, but you know, smaller eggs like quail eggs, although, as we'll talk about, these snakes in the wild can eat eggs much larger than quail eggs.
So oh gosh, okay, So I see what you're saying about it being cute. When you look at the picture of just the snake. I think a lot of it has to do with it's not huge and its eyes are disproportionately large. Yeah, it has that like Disney effect. But right below that you have a picture of it eating an egg, and I don't care for that image.
Yeah, it's a little it's a little gut churning. So this, the one that is pictured, is actually the Ganza's egg eater. It has a head that's about the diameter of an adult human's finger, Like, depending on how beefy your hand is either like your thumb or your pointer finger. H And despite being so slender, it can swallow whole bird eggs. And they are able to grotesquely distin their mouths and their bodies in order to swallow eggs many many times
the size of their own heads. It's like, yeah, it's like if I guess what would be like if we tried to swallow an entire watermelon. I think that would be sort of the the relative size here.
Wow wow, wow wow nature man. Yeah, I have a question that this is some story that my sister told me fifteen years ago. I think she in college lived in a house with a bunch of other hippies and one of them moved out but left his pet snake. And it wasn't a little guy like this, It was a big one. I don't know anything about snakes. But she would have to go to pet smart or whatever and get mice to feed to it. And she wanted
to like get into the whole snake world. She had this snake now, so she went to some her patological society meetings. Is that the correct? That's correct? Okay. So it was sort of just an enthusiast group and she was told the story that it was about, like when they were talking about the best way to care for your pet snake and interact with your pet snake. And this couple had gotten pet snake medium to bigs. I mean, I don't know how big they get in nature, but
like big for a pet. And they decided that they weren't going to keep it in a tank because that was cruel. That they were going to treat it basically like a puppy, including letting it sleep with them in their bed. And uh, the snake stopped eating but kept growing, so they took it to the vet, and the vet was like, do you keep this snake in a tank? And they were like, no, we let it sleep with us. We let it go where it wants. And it was like, okay.
So what snakes do is they when they're preparing to eat something really large, is they like stop eating so they have the appetite, but they grow to like accommodate the size of their prey and the snake is preparing to eat you. I that's the story.
I'm I don't believe that is true. Uh, snakes, I do not believe have that much foresight. I've heard stories kind of like this before, where it's like a snake is sort of trying to measure you, like a pet snake trying to measure you to see if you're it's big enough to eat you, or it'll stop eating to like kind of save room for you. Snakes really aren't plan like that. Burmese pythons certainly they can kill people because they are, you know, constrictors. They can constrict around you.
Both constrictors can constrict and hurt you. But I do not know of any cases of a pet snake eating an adult. I believe there might be cases of a pet snake killing an adult, Okay, And in terms of like feeding, they will usually feed very intermittently, so they can have a large meal and then basically not eat for many months. But I don't believe that is because it is saving room for a large meal. It's just
it doesn't really need to eat. Once it's had a large meal, it can metabolize that for quite a bit of time, and then it will after a while to eat something else once it needs to.
Okay, but yeah, it makes me feel a little better, a little better about snakes.
Yes, but you know, in terms of like snakes, so like what's interesting is even though these guys are pretty small and cute looking and other than when they're like distended around an egg, compared to like the Burmese python or other snakes, they have the stretchiest, most expandable.
Jaws relative to their body side.
So even though the Burmese pythec python has been known to eat like goats, this snake, pound for pound, can eat larger prey than any other snake that has been studied. And so they really basically just stretch their mouth over the egg like a sock going over a foot. And this is why being toothless helps them like they don't want that getting hot on the egg. They also have like these ridges on the inside of their mouth that
helps grip onto the egg. And the reason they can stretch their mouth out like a son is that their lower jaw comes in two sections and it's connected by very stretchy connective tissue that can expand like elastic, like a rubber band. And so there's not like our jaw is in one piece, and so if we tried to stretch our mouth out, there's a limit. Our jaw is also fused to our upper jaw, and that's another problem
with snakes. They have unfused jaws. And then in addition to that, that separated mandible allows their jaw to stretch out even more, and so it will take in this egg and like there's sort of with the movements of the jaws, the kind of ridge like pattern on the inside of the cheeks and muscle movements pulls the egg into the esophagus and they can actually close their mouth and then have this hole. It'll just be this like thin snake and then like an egg shape like inside
their throat. You might have the question of, well, how do they digest this egg, it's still got its shell on it. They actually have these bone like protrusions on the inside of their bodies that are actually part of their spine, and they use muscles to push the egg into these bony protrusions and that breaks the egg, and then they squeeze the egg until like all of the edible egg material, the yolk, the white, everything gets pushed
out and into the rest of their digestive tract. And then once they've basically squeezed everything out of this egg, they regurgitate the shell. And they're remarkably efficient, like they leave very little of the egg that is not she else. So they basically it's like they've eaten a pistachio now and they're just spitting out the shell and uh they it's just it's just kind of an incredible feat for
such a small animal, and it's all they can do. Essentially, they they exist to reproduce and process eggs.
That's it. Wait, So I've been thinking about this a lot because there's been a lot of talk of how there are mosquitos in Los Angeles now and apparently throughout history up till about five years ago, there were not so a lot of talk of like, can you get rid of an entire species if it doesn't seem like it's contributing that much to the ecosystem. Turns out mosquitoes actually feed a lot of other animals. But what are these snakes? What do we need these snakes for?
E mean, what does humanity need these snakes for?
What?
No, the antalcopulation, the plant planet. I mean, they are food for animals. So like mosquitoes, they provide food for any kind of snake eating animals. They you know, it's it's they may eat some bird eggs, and some birds might actually eat them. They're small enough to be eaten by, you know, many birds of prey. We're actually going to talk about a bird who likes to eat lots of different snakes, maybe not the egg eating snake in particular,
in terms of you know, the local ecology. It's interesting. But like when you have something that eats like an egg, there are a lot of species of birds where they may have a lot of eggs, and then if they all hatch, you may actually have too many nestlings, and some of the nestlings may get sick or even get pushed out of the nest. So there may be some
benefit even to birds. For an egg eating snake, now a lot of birds will also develop strategies to prevent snakes from eating their eggs, because if a snake goes and eats all their eggs, that's not good for the bird. And if you have a disproportionate say you have like it's all about balance. Really, it's like, you know, wolf populations and deer populations. For instance, if you have too
many wolves, that's bad for the deer. You have too few wolves that can actually be bad for the deer as well, surprisingly, because if you have too dense a population of deer, they can get spread illness more easily. And so wolves can actually help prey populations thrive just as much as the prey populations can help the wolves thrive.
So while I don't know like the exact specifics of this dynamic between egg eating snakes and birds, I wouldn't be surprised if it was a similar thing where it's like, you know, having the egg eating snakes in balance with the birds can actually help control the bird population such that there's not too much competition for food or.
Spread of disease.
So these relationships are very even when they're antagonistic, they can balance out in ways that actually creates a relatively stable ecosystem.
That's so interesting.
They're all so cute. So in my opinion, I was.
Gonna say, are there any animals that you're afraid of?
Hmm? I mean they're I mean I'm afraid of a lot of animals. I'm afraid of horses because they can kill me if they're having a bad day. I love horses. I think they're sweet, gentle animals. I'm amazed that they don't destroy us at every turn. But if I'm face to face with a large horse, I'm intimidated. Maybe intimidated is the right word. I'm scared, like I'm I think
like I am afraid of animal. Like if I see a snake on the ground, my initial response is fear because I don't know, you know, It's like I have an instinctive responsive fear. And then once I know whether it's like venomous or not, then my my feelings change essentially. But I'm not like looking at a photo of any animal, I don't feel discussed towards anything except for cockroaches and silverfish.
It's a type of insect, and I think it's because I associate those earwigs too to some degree, so because I think I associate those with them getting in my cereal boxes and being grossed around food, So I have a negative Like once I found half of a silverfish in a bowl of cheerios that I was eating, so I was done with them, yeah after that. So it's more of a disgust response I think to certain pests that actively get into my food. But it's also like I can see, like I have had mice as pets,
and I like mice. But if I see a mice scurry across the room, or like when I was camping, have a mouse run across my foot, I have a reaction of dismay because it's not a context in which I want to see the mouth.
Yeah that makes sense. Okay, So when.
We get back, we are going to talk about a fish that you probably don't want to see in most contexts, except for maybe a culinary one. So we will be right back. So, Catherine, are you familiar with monkfish in cuisine?
Oh? In cuisine, absolutely, yes. It's it's a delicacy. People love it, both the flesh and the monkfish liver is also something that some people really try and get their hands on.
That's interesting. Have you ever had it? No?
Uh? Have I? I don't think that I have. I tend not to, you know, try to do any stunt eating, which done in the context of Los Angeles is what it would be. So No, I've just had like monkfish, the flesh, the flesh.
What does just the ordinary flesh of the monk fish taste like in your opinion, like.
A, it's a really good whitefish, so you know, and it's whitefish, as Miles was, probably whatever seasonings.
Yeah, absorbs, absorbs the lime or whatever you put on it. Yeah, I've heard it's like got almost like a lobstery texture. Is that true or is that just is that just restaurants trying to talk it up a little bit.
Yeah, maybe that is not my recollection of it at all. Yeah, because Long to.
Me has a very specific, not fishy texture.
It's kind of you would think you wouldn't want you wouldn't want a lobster texture in a fish because it wouldn't that mean the fish was very rebby I. I. Yeah, this is not resonating with me. But okay, so this.
Is I think this is just trying Maybe it's advert marketing for the monkfish to make it.
Yeah, I mean, and they do do that, And I feel like it's different enough from sea bass that they can't call it sea bass, even though they call just about every other fish in the ocean sea bass when it's on a restaurant menu, but not monkfish. It's two different.
Yeah, And I've seen I also, like, in researching this, like I've seen certain publications claiming, Oh, this is sustainable, and then other publications saying, no, it's definitely not sustainable.
I think it's it's so.
Hard when you're researching because I eat fish, but I like to eat fish that if I can, eating fish that is more sustainable and also not full of mercury is a plus.
That's such a winning combination.
Yeah, And it's really hard to do research on it because I don't think, you know, it's always easy to get the correct information on this, Like I've seen sources saying like, well, their populations are stable enough such that it's sustainable, or sources saying like, well, but a lot of them are caught via trawling, which which is definitely not sustainable, because that's that's a method that kicks up a lot of the like coral and sand and stuff
and destroys the seafloor. So I honestly have I feel like the jury's out for me whether to eat this fish.
Yeah, and the seafood industry in particular is very secretive. They've got a lot of stuff going on that they don't want us to know about. And then that just raises more questions about like, well, what is sustainable for you? I think two people both operating in good faith can come up with a different definition of sustainable, because some people are gonna say, well, if the people catching this fish are literal slaves, that's probably not good. Yeah, I mean,
and I don't know if that's true for monkfish. But there's just it's like some people truly believe that farmed fish is better than wild and vice versa. And it's just to eat ethically, you have to put so much thought and effort into it. It's really hard.
Yeah, even if you're even if you're vegetarian or vegan. I think it's still like knowing which kinds of crops are are sustainable and like what the working conditions for farmers are. It's not that and I don't think it's
not worthwhile to try to research it. Yeah, I just think it's something where it like when we put it on the consumer to figure this stuff out, it is so there's so many hurdles, and I feel like we need a better system of regulation so that it's not like a consumer at the grocery store going like, oh, monkfish,
that's interesting. Well, I guess I'll do half an hour of research while standing next to the fish aisle to see if yeah, this is okay to eat, and then after thirty minutes, not knowing whether or not, it's like.
Eat, I know, and see I am that person who will stand there researching in the grocery store. But like, I don't have kids, like I have the time to do stuff like that. You're totally right. Putting on the consumer is way too much, and especially because you know, we don't have any consumer education in school, so we don't even know what we're looking for.
Yeah, no, no, absolutely, I mean knowing and also just like things about like safety, like knowing which types of fish tend to have more mercury in them, because it's like when you eat fish, you're like, well this is healthy, this is a healthy meat. You know, It's like uh, and it I mean people aren't wrong because it's like, you know, fish has a lot of like omega, you know, three proteins in it. It's a it's a protein that is not typically as you know, full of like say cholesterol,
as say like red meat. It's got a lot of good stuff in it. But then if you're getting a huge dose of mercury.
It's like, yeah, it kind of wipes everything else out, right.
But then there are certain types of fish that have less mercury and some that have more. And then it's just like you have to do this cost benefit of like, well, if I eat this fish for my health, how much mercury am I getting? If it's a low enough dose, it actually is worth it to eat that fish to
be healthy. And so it's just I think it's some and I mean I'm with you, Like I feel like I do, like an extensive amount of research on food and both in terms of health and like the ethics, and often I'm just become more confused.
After I do it, right.
But uh yeah, So it's I I guess it's a little bit of a tangent, but it's just like it's so hard to know. So I'm I've never personally eaten monkfish, but it seems it seems interesting because it's because it's definitely not the typical whitefish that I see around.
Yeah. No, it's it's its own thing. It is good man. I just keep starting at this picture, and unlike the snake picture, I was like, I'm just not going to look at this monkfish. I'm like, you're really something, yes, guy. So now we're no pun intended.
But now we're going to get into the meat of this issue, which is that the monkfish is an absolutely bananas monster from the deep that I think isn't It's like, we talk a lot about sharks, we talk a lot about deep sea anglers and stuff, and we have these these ideas of like these monstrous fish. This one, I feel like doesn't get as much attention for how monstrous it is, but it is just as disturbing as the deep sea angler without as much pr So these are
also known as frogfish and sea devils. Unsurprising if you're looking at them. Uh, they are actually in the same order as deep sea anglerfishuh. And they have a lot of similar qualities, but they are much flatter, wider, They tend not to live as deep when compared to certain species of deep sea anglerfish, but they still live on the seafloor.
Uh.
And they are absolute monsters. They have these huge, wide monster mouths. In fact, like most of their body is like their mouth and their head and their jaws. Like that's like none eighty percent of their body is like jaws and face essentially.
Yeah, this, you know. I scrolled down and I saw the picture below of the head on one that you have taken from above. Yeah, that is nightmarish. Well, I don't know why the above from above angle looks so much scarier.
I think it's because you can see the proportion that it is basically like mostly a mouth and then a small body attached to it.
Yeah, it's like the joker of fish or something. It is kind of a joker.
They also have this weird beard of this like fringe like beard of barbells growing on their chins. It's to help with camouflage. Oh, I forgot to put a photo of that in there. You deserve to see that, because it's actually a little funny. I'm seeing recipes. That's not what I want. There we go and I'll include this in the show notes.
Too.
I just added a picture of a living monk fish with its funny little beard.
Oh, that is a funny little beard. I haven't I don't think I've ever seen the beard before. Does it disintegrate or when it dies? Why have I mean this kind of makes it endearing looking Grandpa.
Monkeys don't have as prominent like this is a species that might not be fished as much. It's okay, this one has a more prominent one the other species. It's also the beard is like generally the same color as the rest of the skin, so like once it's out of the water, it's probably just kind of flattened against its so you can't really see it. Okay, Okay, I think all the species do have those little protrusions, just
like some species are more prominent. This one definitely is giving me sort of like a Quaker oats man beard, you know, like a chin strap neck beard.
Yes, yeah, which could go either way.
So they live on the seafloor at depths ranging from about two thousand to over three thousand feet, so that's around six hundred to one thousand meters in both Atlantic and Mediterranean waters. There's a few different species. Certain species such as the Lofius americanas also known as the all mouth American anglerfish, which I love that name, can grow up to around fifty pounds or nearly twenty three kilograms and live up to around thirty years old, so they can be chunky and hunky.
Yeah yeah, wow, that's impressive.
They can also use their pectoral fins to walk along the seafloor and depending on their and you're making a faith.
You don't like that. Don't tell me about fish walking. It's so weird, like fears about animals and stuff can be so non sensical. It's totally meaningless to my life that monkfish can walk across the ocean floor. But for some reason it's really freaking me out. There is this dog.
Related to like the sight hounds, like the Afghan hands. I forgot what it's called, but it's borzoi.
That's it.
That's it, and normally very cute. I have seen pictures of borzoi on their hind legs and it freaks me out. I don't know why. I love dogs. I love all dogs, Borzoi included. They're silly little noodle doggies with long noodle faces. But this dog, which is already quite long and tall, and it looks a little bit like an Afghan hound, but it has this really long snout and then when it walks on it's hind legs, I'm afraid of just being killed. I don't know why.
It's uh no, yes, absolutely, I'm looking. I googled borzoi on hind legs and it looks like a cryptid. Yes, absolutely, it.
Looks like some kind of weird human has dressed themselves as a dog and with only the worst intentions.
That is what it looks like.
So I get it when like animals are normally not scary, but in certain contexts they are for sure. So yes, Unfortunately, monkfish do walk on their fins on the ocean floor. They will hide themselves among the sand rocks or seaweed, depending on their environment, and they're basically at this point living mouths that will hide and wait for something to come close. And what they actually have, like their anglerfish relatives, is a lure, and so it's a filament on top
of their head. It's actually a modified fin that has a bulb on the end of it. So it's basically this long, skinny thing with a bulb on the end that they can move around kind of wiggle, and they move it around, and as soon as the fish comes up and gives it a little nibble, that activates the mouth and they use their wide, expandable jaws to grab
the fish and suck it inwards. And a charming little detail is that with the mini pointy needle like teeth, they're all facing inwards like towards its belly, they can actually sort of be flat, like flattened a little bit, and so that means that they can suck the fish in. But then if the fish tries to get out and go the other direction, it gets caught on the teeth.
So it's like a one way. It's you know, like when you're driving on those like spikes like out of like a parking lot or something, so you can drive one way but not the other way. Yeah, that's how these fish mouths work.
Is that where we got the idea?
Someone like pulled up one of these fish and it's like, I've got a great idea for parking that way. Maybe, you know, animals can be the mother of invention.
They can be So what animals eat?
Monkfish, humans, right, and I probably larger fish, I think humans are their main predators though, we're so strange.
Yeah, yeah we are. I guess I just keep wanting to know, making sure that these animals get got too.
They do, they do for sure. They are able, though, to swallow prey as large as their whole bodies, because apparently, even though their abdomen is relatively small compared to their heads, it's kind of like elastic and expandable like a snake. So they can just kind of like eat a whole fish that's pretty much as big as they are.
No problem, no problem. Yeah, I mean what about But I know that they are deep in the ocean, But has has a human ever gotten hurt by a monkfish?
I mean, they're not going to kill a human. They can't like eat a whole human. That's not going to happen. A person may have gotten bitten by one, and I'm sure that hurts.
I would imagine, But no, these.
Things aren't trying to eat people. That's not happened. Okay, okay, that nightmare you can you know, Yeah.
I've never monkfish. Don't scare me. Yeah, No, I think we're good. We're past the snakes. I am all good.
The thing is like once you've eaten an animal, can it really scare you again? Because it's like, you know, I'm actually the apex predator. I ate you.
Interesting. I guess we have to eat everything in find out.
That was Darwin's idea.
Yeah. Yeah, Actually, though, I think I'm ninety nine percent sure I have eaten snake before when I was in middle school, and they still scare me. I.
You know what, I have a similar story. I someone served what they claimed was snake during some kind of school project about snakes. I think it was chicken. I don't think it was snake. Yeah, I'm pretty sure they lied, calling you out, calling you out, Julie.
It was a fellow student doing a presentation.
Yeah, I just can't imagine where they would have sourced the snake meat. So I'm pretty sure it was chicken. I tried it. It was good, but it seemed like it was definitely chicken.
Yeah. I mean, if if her parents had bought her real snake to cook and serve to people, that would have been like one of the more expensive school projects. It's ever true, It's true.
I for a long time, I claimed though that I ate snake, and I upon reflect and I'm like, I'm I think that might have actually been chicken. But I would try snake. I just don't I love snakes, so I don't really want to have one killed for me. Very reasonable, And I don't really want to eat road killed either. I'm not that level of like scavenger quite yet.
No, I think I'd rather be a vegetarian. I yeah, yeah, I don't need I don't feel the need for meat in my diet, which is not to say I'm a vegetarian, but I would say, like, yeah, I'm a carb person, please give me all the carb.
I'm a bredetarian as well. Yeah. Well, we're going to take a quick break, but when we get back, we're going to talk about one of the world's least picky animals whose appetite is just completely buck wild. And you may be surprised or maybe not surprised what animals says, So we will return shortly. So, Catherine, do you like a heron?
Yeah? I do like them. I like birds. I think they can be pretty. I think they're cool looking at these pictures, though it looks like there's different kinds, many different kinds of herons. I'm certain are indeed familiar with all of them there are indeed.
I mean it's interesting because herons are a family of many, many different species of aquatic birds. So there's over seventy species of birds in the heron family, which includes birds from herons to egrets to bitterns. These are all birds that are considered to be in the heron family, and it also includes kind of some of the classic birds like gray herons, blue herons. These are the white herons. These are all in the same family of heron.
I see. Do you remember from when you lived in La what the birds at the Silver Lake Reservoir were? Were those egrets?
There are both egrets and herons there. I think there are a species of white egret.
Okay, in the spring when they have their babies in there, all sitting up in the trees just screaming their heads off. It is the craziest noise and I really enjoy it.
Okay, So great blue herons are found in Silver Lake, so those are the ones that are gonna be the big guys.
Mm hmmm mm hmm. Okay, I think it's the great blue herons that make a ton of noise. I'm just looking at the Silver Lake Wildlife Instagram page.
I see yes, so that that would be it.
Yeah, they are.
We're actually going to talk about the great blue heron because they are absolute monsters. I love them though. So larger species of herons, such as gray herons and great blue herons and goliath herons will eat so many different things from fish to other species.
We'll talk about it.
So the heron family ranges greatly. So the smallest member of the heron family is this bird called the least bittern. It is a cute little North American bird, just about a foot long and three ounces. Little guy bitterns are really interesting because when you look at them, you're like, this is not a heron. Where's the neck. There's no neck because they actually typically tuck their neck in and they're like holy, like it's when you like try to
turtle your head down. That's what they're doing. And so normally you look at them and like they have zero neck. There's no neck there. But they can stretch out their heads when they're hunting or flying and it's like they're they've got this expandable it's not really expandable neck, it's just there. It's just kind of tucked in, but it's
actually quite a long neck. It's like, have you ever had like those grabby things where it's like it's this not telescoping, but kind of like thing that folds in and then you kind of squeeze some clamps and then this grabby hand comes out. It's like that, but a bird. Yeah, so they're hiding a lot of neck under there. They are hiding a lot of neck under their feathers. So look, if you looked under the feathers, you'd see this neck kind of form a.
U shaped loop.
But yeah, they can stretch that neck out and grab fish. So, yes, they are little guys, but no less a heron. The largest heron is the goliath heron. It is found in Sub Saharan Africa and South Asia. The South Asian population is in decline, but they're found in lake regions. It's a very striking bird. It's hand and gray with black and white markings on its beak and neck. To me, it looks very dinosaur like. I love this one.
Yeah. Yeah.
Grows up to five feet tall including its neck, so that's over one and a half meters, and it can weigh around eleven pounds or five kilograms, So it's tall, but not a ton of meat.
No, what a skinny mini.
But look at that, like, look at the beak and its head. It looks, you know, like a it looks like a really long noodle e velociraptor. It absolutely does, but like a distinguished one, A distinguished one. I like this, This is a pretty bird. It's not like scary looking to me. Uh, it's it's like a swankier dinosaur.
Yes, exactly, you know, I so whatever. I obviously have no reason to be afraid of snakes, but I also don't understand it when people are afraid of birds.
I know these people who are afraid of birds.
It's a thing.
I think that part of it might be birds can be intimidating when they come in big flocks. So if there's like a big flock of birds, that can be kind of scary. Or if you live in a city with a lot of pigeons and they kind of fly towards your face, that can be startling. And I think that people have this concept about pigeons and birds as being maybe kind of dirty, and then they get intimidated, especially if there's a city dwelling bird that like flies
near them, and then they get scared. So I can understand it on a certain level, but I do not have that fear. I absolutely love birds.
I forgot about pigeons, and there was a story in my family for two generations that pigeons killed my great grandpa with their disease. What. Yeah, so it was like I was raised to fear and hate pigeons. I can't believe I forgot all about this, It's just it. When I was in my mid twenties or so, I realized that story made absolutely no sense. Yeah, I think because like what he died of wasn't completely clear, or at least it wasn't to my mom, but she was a
kid when he died. But yeah, the story was just like a pigeon pooped on him, or pigeons flew in his face and the feathers touched his face and it killed them or something like that.
Huh, it's interesting you bring that up. We may talk about that a little bit later. So herons, hold that thought about pigeons, okay, and then we are going to talk about how you should be more afraid of herons and pigeons. Actually, you shouldn't be afraid of either of them unless you are small enough to fit in a pigeon or fit in a hair and mouth. So herons can either directly catch prey in their beak or spirit, so typically it's fish on the menu, but they are opportunistic.
If they make the calculation that it can be eaten in swallowed hole, they will certainly try, especially species like the great blue heron that you find in Silver Lake and the gray heron. So the gray heron is found throughout Europe, Asia and Africa and wetlands. It's about a meter tall or a little over three feet, and it weighs around two kilograms around four pounds, so you know they're not huge, but for a bird, they're pretty big.
They will eat fish, amphibians, crustaceans, small birds, ducklings, ducks, small mammals, rabbits and more. They smash their prey against rocks, snap their necks, or drown them before swallowing them whole. And they are considered an apex predator in their environments.
So which is worse smashing something against a rock until its neck breaks or eating it while it's still alive.
I mean eating it while it's still alive, like if you get your neck snapped. I feel like that's a much easier way to go than you know.
Yeah, it's just maw yeah, yeah, no, that's true. It's the smashing it against the rocks imagery that like threw me for a loop. I guess.
Yeah, it's shockingly violent.
They must have gotten house pets at some point. This has to have happened. It's yeah, probably.
You know, it's I don't think I've seen anything documented, most likely because I simply don't want to google has a hair and eating a kitten. I'm not googling that ever.
Fair, fair, I don't think I will either.
No. So another hair, and one that's actually found in North and Central America is the great blue heron. That's your that's your local hair in Catherine. It's about four and a half feet high, which is over a meter, and weighs around five pounds that that's a little over
two kilograms. They are sort of a grayish blue. They will eat fish, crustaceans, frogs, toads, snakes, lizards, shrews, rats, moles, voles, ground squirrels, regular squirrels, muskrats, weasels, rabbits, smaller aquatic birds including ducks, chicks of various species, pied billed grebs, dippers, rails, turns, and young alligators.
What a diverse diet. This is so healthy.
Yes, this bird is the nutrition expert that we need. Just eat everything.
Yeah, yeah, no, and it actually goes It's really on point for where nutrition is right now because that's so much protein and none of us so much protein. But this bird is.
The heron diet. Eat everything you can fit in your mouth, just including young alligators.
Do they ever eat vegetables.
Not that I am aware of, unless you consider fish to be a vegetable, which they're not. No.
Do some people consider fish to be vegetables?
Maybe so, Yes, it's as pretty and elegant as these birds are. There absolute monsters. If you shrunk one of us down to the size of like at least a rabbit, it would eat you, no problem.
Interesting. Yeah, that's well, you know what, I'm okay with that. I'm not the size of the rabbit, so I guess I don't have to be afraid. And I really do. I mean to your point about them being monsters, they do. They make the craziest noises. The babies are so weird looking. I love them. I love It's just like just a lot of weirdness in one animal. We have to we have to play a hair and call then aaron. And that sounds like some screaming. Yeah.
I can't imagine that being annoying if there's like five of them altogether doing this, yeah, But.
As long as you're just walking by, I find it delightful.
Well, speaking of animal sounds, would you like to play a little game with me? Yes, this is the Mystery Animal Sound game, guests who's squawking? Every week I pick a mystery animal sound, and you the listener, and you, the guest, try to guess who is making that sound. So last week's mystery animal sound hint was this. This is a very common bird, but you might not recognize this sound unless you're close friends with one.
Did you hear that? M hmm?
Any guesses.
I know we were just talking about pigeons, but I feel like it's some sort of small bird like a pigeon or a dove, which I don't know if those are the exact same animals with different coloring or something that is interact.
We have been primed for pigeons, we did it, so this is indeed a pigeon. This is a pet pigeon, happily cooling as it's being pet. So domesticated pigeons are actually relatively common pets, and the pigeons you see in the city are typically feral pigeons that we domesticated from
rock doves, so rock doves look fairly similar. But yeah, a lot of these city pigeons are actually a feral population that over many generations have been around because we actually domesticated pigeons both as pets, as messengers, and as food. So yeah, most of the pigeons that you interact with today are probably feral domestic sticated pigeons, And by feral that doesn't mean they're vicious or anything. It just means that they are a population that was domesticated and now
they're out and about. It's hard to call them exactly wild because they're living in the city, but they have no masters. So we were talking about this idea that pigeons are actually disease ridden or dirty, and they're actually not nearly as dirty or disease ridden as they are
often feared to be. It is true that there are a few diseases you can get from pigeons, but usually you would only get them if you're cleaning a large amount of dried droppings, so not from the pigeon itself, not even if you're pooped on necessarily, But if you're like cleaning a large quantity of dried pigeon poop and like a poorly ventilated area, and even if you do get ill, it's usually only going to pose a threat
to you if you are immunocompromised. So according to the New York City Health Department, like cleaning small amounts of pigeon droppings is probably not going to hurt you, especially if it's in a well ventilated area. But if you're cleaning like a lot of them, like maybe from a vent or something. If you use water to clean it, like wet cloth a hose, that really helps because it doesn't kick up as much dust as if you're just
sort of using dry implements to clean it. You can also wear gloves and face mask and keep the area of well ventilated, and that is going to really help in terms of preventing you from catching anything from it. But just kind of being around pigeons in the city and having one fly near you or even poop on you, you're probably not going to catch anything. Like I wouldn't kiss a feral pigeon on the face or like try to subject myself to their poop because that's gross, But
they really aren't. You know, if you have a pigeon like fly by you or bonk into you, you're you're gonna be okay.
Yeah, I gotta figure that people maybe call them dirty because they're so associated with high density urban areas. Yes, a lot of people are afraid of anyway.
Also, yeah, when they are in sort of like urban areas and they there's a lot of problems with their feet often, so like they will get a lot of it. It's because like if it gets too cold, like they'll get frostbite and on their toes, and then they might loose some toes or get like sort of gnarled, sort of wardy growths on their feet which kind of make them look gnarly, or like they get like threads or
hairs or something like tied around their feet. It can cause them problems and stuff, and so they they might kind of look scruffy or dirty, but it's just because they're like picking up dirt from the streets that we've generated. So it's like right, right, not really their fault, but they are actually still kept as pets today, and like dogs or cats, they're actually bred for like different colors,
for different feather patterns. In fact, you may have seen pigeons in your city that like are interesting sort of splotchy colors or brown or like different color patterns. That's all from human selective breeding. And then those pigeons when they become feral or escape or breed with the local population of other feral pigeons, those genes get woven into the mix, and then you have these birds for generations
that will have these interesting color patterns. But yeah, there's definitely like if you like the idea of having a pigeon as a pet, but you like have this negative association with like street pigeons. A lot of the pet pigeons don't look very similar to street pigeons because they
are like different color patterns. And of course also because they're pets, they're kept very clean, so they do not look dirty at all, because you know, they get to live in luxury and not have to walk over the well trod streets of the city.
How do you feel about keeping birds as pets.
I feel like it's something that should be undertaken with an understanding of what you're getting into. So I think pigeons are actually much better pets than a lot of birds because they are very affectionate. I think it's better to get more than one pigeon, but they can bond with humans really well. They're much less expensive and easier to maintain than say a parrot, And while they do have a lot of social needs like they are not it's not nearly to the extent of say a parrot.
I think a parrot certain species of parrots, and because they can have like cognition that's like similar to like a toddler, And it is a huge responsibility to.
Take care of a parrot.
They live really long time, they have so many social needs, and sometimes they get psychological problems from being isolated from other parrots. So I would say, you know, when you're looking at pet birds, like pigeons are actually really good type of pet bird. I don't think it's cruel to keep a pigeon as a pet because they've been domesticated. I think it's similar to keeping like a dog or cat as a pet, as long as you've done your
research and you know what you're getting into. Because pigeons can live to be anywhere from fifteen to twenty years. So you are signing on too a long time with this pigeon, and.
They are so.
What you shouldn't do is get a pigeon, stick them in a cage and you know, just feed them once in a while. That's obviously not good. But if you interact with them a lot, especially if you have like more than one pigeon, they you can actually, I think, give a domesticated pigeon a nice life if you have enough space, if you have enough resources. It's you know, it's like a dog, like you know, you can have a dog with a very happy life or not so happy life. Like you wouldn't keep a dog just in
a crate all the time. But if your dog is out and about and you're taking care of it and giving it a lot of socialization, they can be quite happy.
Well, there's if anyone wants to have their heart melt. There's a big feature in People magazine about a pigeon and a chihuahua puppy who live in a foundation for special needs Animals Friends, and the pigeon sits on the chihuahua because it thinks it's it's mom. There's lots of.
Yeah, I've actually read that pigeons get along with cats and dogs pretty well, especially compared compared to other birds, and you can, you know, definitely your cat and your dog. I would say, if you have a pet with which has a really high prey drive, I would not have that combination. But if you have a dog that does not have a high prey drive or it's small, like at Chihuahua, you know, like they can actually get along fairly well.
Cute, very cute.
I like definitely look up photos of pet pigeons. They're adorable, and I think it also will give you a new appreciation for just your city pigeons because they are the same species. It's just like maybe they're a little cleaner looking, they're a little tidier, little different colors. It's like looking at sort of a street dog versus like a Pomeranian.
But it's you.
Know, they are at their core the same animal. It's interesting because here I live in northern Italy and we have a lot of pigeons here, and we have all sorts of like different interesting color morphs of these pigeons. Like there's white ones, there's brown, there's like all kinds of speckled patterns.
Uh.
But because we have a lot we don't have so much car traffic, and we have a ton of like sort of open public spaces where there's not like uh, there's a lot of like grass and trees and just uh, these birds aren't really harried so much. You'll just see all these pigeons just kind of like sitting around. I've never seen such calm, chilled out pigeons as I.
Have in the city.
And I I mean, I think they're really cute. Like when the quality of life goes up for the pigeon, I think like they're uh, their cuteness level also goes up because they're you know, they look healthy, they look content, and you'll just look over and there's like a little pigeon sitting on the ground and it does it's like it's not scared of you. It's just looking at you, like, Hey, what's up. All cute?
Very cute. Yes.
So you know, if you're if you like love the idea of having a bird, and you're you don't mind clean up bird poop and you have the space, but you don't really want to commit to like getting a parrot, a pigeon is actually I think a pretty good alternative. It's a you know, as long as as long as you know what you're getting into, because it's not like, uh, it's not no pet is like easy. Every pet has
its challenges. But you know, I don't think pet ownership is inherently wrong when we've domesticated animals that like depend on us and that we can we can make happy.
Yeah, yeah, I agree, And it's.
Certainly with the pigeons. I think when you compare like pigeons to like escape outdoors versus cats that escape outdoors, uh, usually will have a less bad impact on the environment. So they are definitely benefits.
Oh yeah pigeons.
Yeah, all right, So onto this week's mystery animal. Sound. The hint is this This raptor is all of out no shave November. Did you hear that kind of sounds like a squeaky toy that's lost a bit of its sweet Yeah, got any giesses?
I I don't know this kind of bird at all. It's I mean, okay, I think it's a verd.
I mean that that narrows it down, to be honest, things like the best game it can be any animal in the world. So narrowing it down to bird is a pretty big step.
Okay, yeah, that's all I got. Yeah, it's some sort.
Of bird, some sort of raptor bird. Well, we will find out on the next episode of Creature Feature. If you think you know, you can write to me at Creature featurepot at gmail dot com. Or if you have questions, or if you have a pet pigeon and you want to tell me how cute they are already pet right to me, Love the pet pictures, Catherine, Thank you so much for joining me today. Where can people find you?
Oh, let's see. So my podcast is called Smartmouth and there's a companying Substack Smartmouth about substack dot com that's for food history of the world. And if there's any Angelina's listening, which I'm sure there are. I also just started how to Eatla dot com, which is local restaurant reviews.
That sounds great.
La.
Like I've lived a few places over the years, in La is the best place I've ever lived in terms of food. It is like just no competition even I mean I haven't to be fair, I have not lived.
In New York.
I have visited New York, so it's hard. It's not maybe a fair comparison, but in terms of the places that I have lived, LA. It is the most diverse, most high quality food scene I've.
Ever experience that is objectively correct.
Well, I might check that out for next time I visit LA. But yes, definitely check that out if you are a gormond or just interested in the topic of food, because I think it's fascinating. And thank you guys so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you leave a rating or review, I greatly appreciate it. I read every review, and of course every rating really.
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