Cave Santa's Sleigh

promise stay here placed, don't go. Welcome to Creature Future production of I Heart Radio. I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we're talking about Caveman Santa and who would have got it as like Happy Creature, Creingle, Happy Creature, Cragle,

Happy Creature Crest whoa. So we are going to be sacking Santa's reindeer and replacing them with my favorite contenders from Christmas past, way past, millions of years in the past, from a real unicorn to a horse small enough to fit in Paris Hilton's purse. These ghosts of Christmas Past are ready to spread joy to all the world's children,

or cave children or apes. When we go far enough back does scover this and more as we answer the angel question, if you've got a shovel for a mouth, how do you kiss under the mistletol Joining me today is Front of the podcast host of Secretly incredibly Fascinating and jolly Human, Alex Schmidt. Welcome. I have so deeply jolly after that song. Yes, I felt like we were both clay made a an hon a sled going through

a wonderful land. That was great. Yeah, our hair kind of flopping around as it's not quite animated correctly, and like you can see like fingerprints on the clay that kind of like style, you know, real rough, real rough claymation going on here. Yeah, they made it in a hurry and they had to. Yeah, you can see a hand in one of the frames. There's like clear wires and threads sticking out. But that's what makes it special.

So today we are we are actually talking about animals that do look like they are for m crappy claymation from the fifties, like for real, and I am so excited. These are prehistoric, extinct animals who I think would be quite impressive guiding Santa's sligh. That's very exciting. Yeah, so let's start out, I think with a unicorn. Alex. Do you believe in unicorns? Oh? I don't believe in them. I just really like the concept that was like, that was some really clever. I wonder if people were ever

like cryptid believing in it type people about unicorns. I think it's a very fun, fantastical idea. I think so. I think people did just probably because they found fossils they couldn't explain and they were like, well, that's a unicorn. Or they found a narral tusk and they're like, that's a unicorn. That's yeah, that's true. I guess, especially when you're digging, if you just find a whole horse and one horn from any horned animal, it's an easy mistake

to make. Yeah, exactly. But what if I told you there really was a unicorn and it's very fantastical looking, I'd be thrilled. I'd want to ride first. First, I was in a claymated sled, very thrilling. Now I'm going to ride a unicorn. I've gotta I've gotta listen to that like Happy Unicorn power song from that one game like the platform or from the internet. Yeah, it's not a good description of it, but you know what I mean.

So first, in order to discover this unicorn, I want you to imagine a rhino, just a regular rhino, got it? Is it in there? Now make it bigger, like, way bigger, and now make it fluffy. Is it fluffy? Oh fantastic? Yes? Now reimagine the rhino's horn. Uh, and to the horn of a giant magical unicorn coming right out of the

middle of its forehead. That's true, the forehead horn. That's got to be such a different experience from the nose horn right right, like your whole head balance and everything that that seems like a maybe small change at first, but when I really think about it, boy, totally differently. Yeah, there aren't really many animals, are any that I can think of that really have that single forehead horn. Our current day rhinos do sometimes have a sort of nose

horn and then maybe a forehead horn. The two horned rhinos, and some of them just got through the nose horn bump, but one horn just right out in the middle of the forehead. Really struggling to think of any mammal that has that situation going on. Yeah, shoot, I wish they were still here. This is prehistoric, right, it's a it's departed in an age long ago. It has they have gone on a big spaceship and gone to that great

planet that of the Siberian unicorns in the sky. So, yes, this is the extinct Siberian unicorn a k a allasam Ethereums sibericum, that once thudded along the grasslands of your asia long ago. So Alex, you have it in your imagination, and now look at those pictures that I've provided for you as well. Yeah, I'm bullet it up. And this is an extra good time to me because there's like an illustration first and then a physical mock up somebody

made second. And I think the physical mock up the horn gets even bigger if I'm seeing this right, like they just I feel like every person who imagines this is exaggerating like a fish story with the horn. At some point the horn is just so big. It's this little little rhinoceros dangling off of it. Yeah, so the

horn itself. We don't I'm going to be real with you, we don't really know how big this thing was, the size of it is estimated based on the skull, because I don't think they have like, um that much in turn of full intact horns of like adults. So the like it's like there's this indentation on the school that seems to be where the horn would have grown out of, and then they estimate the size of the horn based

on other aspects of this thing. So I am a little skeptical of the one where it just seems like it is this massive horn that is almost I mean, it's bigger than its head in circumference almost. Not sure if that's true, but it would be cool cool if true. I think I think you're right. I think this drawing the first version it's and it's still quite a horn, and it also seems a little more proportional. Yeah, yeah, I'm way into it. And it's so far up on

the head there. You're right, it's just kind of got a snout in the nose area. It's a it's a chunky unicorn. It's a thick, thick unicorn. So the Siberian unicorn when extinct a little under forty thousand years ago, so technically humans may have crossed paths with these fellers at some point Uh, it was huge. It was larger than any living species of rhino and larger than it's contemporary uh, the wooly rhino. So it weighed around four

tons or two toyota tacomas. Um my favorite unit of measurement. Uh. It was mid teen feet or four point five meters long. It was also over eight feet or two point five meters tall. So is a big boy. Wow. Okay, yeah, yeah, I love with a prehistoric stuff. They do that little little scale diagram where it's just a silhouette of a little human next to whatever it is. I'm glad to know that human would be very dwarfed. Yeah, be a little just a little little bitty human. I mean, riding

one of these things, you'd look like a hobbit. Yeah. It's very like somebody on a giant eagle and learn of the rings that scale the eagle is much bigger. Yea, yeah, I mean it is. It is shockingly huge. I think that it is. And it's funny because it is like it's like a very metal unicorn. So like you know, you have a unicorn, and people may tease you like, oh you like unicorns. That's like, you know, that's weak.

That's something that manly. You know, I don't even know toxic masculinity, but like this, this is a unicorn who would thoroughly trounce you. That's I guess forgotten that a little bit. There is that gendering of how we assume people will like unicorns, Like we think all horse girls will also like unicorns, and then boys will be too busy with tanks and this animal sort of a tank.

So it's funny to me that unicorns is seen as this is like feminine kind of like um, non tough thing because it is a horse that has a spear on its forehead. Yeah. Yeah, Like put it together, folks, Right, a horse on a bad day can wreck you, right, Like, a horse can already wreck you. It can stomp you, it can toss you, it can kick you. It's already serious. And then you add a weapon to its head and we're like, oh, that's you know, that's that's weak, Like

that's that's silly, and that's for girls. And it's like, first of all, uh fine, like if girls have to claim unicorns, that's fine. Good luck with your non weaponized horses, fellas. That is funny. About a month ago, I rode a horse for the first time. Really was it scary and scared of horses. It I think it was a very well trained horse, but it also had a lot of different ideas from me about how we should be proceeding in the ride, where we should go, how fast we

should go. It's like every time I told it to do something different changes. It was like okay, fine. But also I had learned how to talk to this horse like two seconds before getting out it, so I did not feel in control at all. I was like, Okay, I just hope being perched on this works out. Yeah. Yeah, I mean I feel like I would be very easily bossed around by a horse. I love horses. I have never ridden a real horse. I've written a pony before

as a kid, but I thoroughly respect them. And they scare me a little bit, like they are so huge, and I'm like, you are just by your good nature not turning my face into a concave bowl like I you know, And and I think that they are quite impressive, and they the idea of like be like, well, now I'm gonna hop on you. It's like that seems rude. Maybe the horse is fine with it, but I don't what I'm doing, and I would just let that board, I would let the horse take charge. Really, it's just like, look,

don't ignore me, do what you want. I'm I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm even here. You want to carrot, don't don't kick me? Yeah, should have Bret Carrots. Yeah, I and you know, I made it back to shout out to Bud. Bud was the name of the horse. But things. Yeah, he's a nice guy. But it's it really is. It's like you're it's like you're on a motorcycle, but if you're also on top of a cliff, and then a fire animal can throw you off of the cliff at any time if it wants to. It's a motor a

tall motorcycle with feelings. Yeah. Well, anyway, I want to ride this animal. So anyways, this is like a mega rhino, also with a huge spear on its head, so good luck with that. The horn on its head is thought to have been massive of and likely required the Siberian unicorn to grow a large muscular hump on its back, sort of like a bison. Um. Yeah, and you love bison, so I thought you'd like this this guy too. Fantastic.

It is unknown like I said, how big the horn really was, but based on a large Indian found on its skull reconstructions, imagine this unicorn is being longer than its head and very very thick. Um. I would say some of the thickest models of it may be exaggerating a little bit, but it even with the more toned down the toned down illustrations of it still look ridiculous.

Like it is like a thick It's like a bison mixed with a rhino make a huge and then ama like not just like one of those sort of thin you know, you know corn horn is a big one. It's a chalker. Yeah, when you when you said the scientific name before, I think the phrase like there gum was part of it. And I'm pretty sure I learned from this great show. I first learned about megatheriums, and ever since then I've been like, Okay, theorium is probably

a big animal phrase. I should be like, oh mega too, Yeah, I don't want the theorium room means thee um? Does that mean? Oh? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know Latin. I probably shouldn't learn Latin at some point because of the animals, but I didn't um. But yeah, so this is yeah, this is a Lasmothereum sibericum um. So yeah, yeah.

Despite looking like they could easily shish kebab you and roast you over an open fire, they were big, old herbivores, likely grazers who munched down massive amounts of grass, and their dependence on the grasslands may have been what led to their downfall. There's not really evidence that we like

into them to extinction or anything like that. It seems to be more that because they were so huge and they needed so much grass that as grasslands shrank after the ice age, they simply were not able to get enough grass to sustain their populations. That makes sense. Yeah, this definitely seems like it needs to be chomping into and all of the time to buil it more horn, but also to keep going. Yeah right exactly, so that

that temperature change really kind of screwed them. Um So, in terms of why I think the Siberian unicorn would be a good candidate for Santa Cave Santa to bring back from uh uh from the I guess from the extinction, although I guess if it's Cave Santa case, Santa would have been contemporary with this guy, so uh, one is that there is huge horn to break ice or to fight off grunches. Uh. The Siberian unicorn is also vegetarian friendly, it only scrass. It is also fluffy, cold proof, and adorable.

And it's a literal unicorn, so I feel like it is already probably infused with magic. What do you think, Alex? I agree with all that, And I'm thinking of that like traditional picture of what is it eight reindeer pulling the sledges, and I feel like it's like a two columns of four reindeer. Is the general arrangement like two

two two two. These guys would need to work out being positioned directly behind each other with an enormous horn, And I could do it because like reindeer have those huge handlers, they're not sticking up each other's butts all the time, you know, so so these guys can probably figure it out. But the handlers are a little less forward facing than this horn, so I guess they need they need some personal space there to avoid a very

unfortunate situation if like the one in front breaks very suddenly. Yeah, yeah, I think maybe a bunch of paving, like yeah, wind of socks sort of structure stick a little like ball of styrofoam on the top of that point. There could be going to work cutting and they put a huge one of those foam microphone covers over their horns. It could be festive, little festive pom poms, a lot of lights. You can put so many Christmas lights on. Wow, that

you could paint it like a giant candy cane. Gosh. Yeah, So, Alex, I know what you're wondering. I know what you're thinking. What do you get when you cross a snow shovel with an elephant? Man? Finally, here I am on on a horseback in the woods, wondering that question, and the horse is like, I don't know, man, And I keep asking the horse what do with a snowshovel and an elephant? It's one of the great unanswered questions of our times. Well, I have an answer. It's the platty belladon the world's

due feist extinct elephant. He looks so dumb. Hooray oh I pulled up the picture. Wow, great, very good. This is one of my favorite extinct animals. It is one of the animals that got me interested in evolutionary biology when I was a kid, because I got like a what was it, I don't remember the brand of magazine, It might have been a Zoo Books, but it was like a free magazine we got in the mail that was about the Prehistoric Freaks Weekly. That was one of

my favorites. It was like it was like the evolution of the elephant and it showed, uh, just a bunch of weird, weird elephants, and I was fascinated by that, and it really, I mean I was already I already loved almost I think I was already probably addicted to animals at that point, but this was this was amazing and um so the Playbilla Don was one of the world's doofist extinct elephants, possibly the world's dufius looking animal. It looks like a Star Wars animal, but something that

is so silly looking. Even George Lucas would have had to edit it out of his films, and he is notorious for having doofy things and not knowing how to edit. I know, if people don't know really like bison me the bison emoji also variants of stuff like elephants, and I think just like large mammals or like big yeah, and like when those when those deluxe editions of the original Star Wars movies came out, I was pretty excited about the do backs. I think that whole school of animals,

I'm like, pretty good. But do backs are also, as you say, much more conventional. These guys would be just wacky. It would be like, why are the Stormtroopers on a comedy animal? Silly? Yeah, so they do have a bit of a charger being situation going on the yeah yeah. So the Platybelodon is a genus of extinct relatives of elephants that lived during the Miocene epoch ten to fifteen million years ago in Asia and Africa. So imagine an elephant,

but it's actually a bit smaller. Sometimes when we go prehistoric, the animals are bigger, like giant sloths, and this giant unicorn rhino is sometimes a smaller you know. Uh so this one's a little bit smaller. Now, turn its trunk into a giant shovel like it's almost kind of like duck bill thing with a couple of buck teeth sticking out of the lower jaw right on the tip of its mouth. In addition, it still has tests on the

side of its mouth like modern elephants. So there has been a lot of debate about exactly what this thing looks like. So there are some depictions of it that are a little more far fetched than others. All of the depictions of it are bananas bonkers, so don't worry like there's there's no a depiction of it that makes it look normal, like a reasonable animal. Some are just

a little more wild than others. The depiction that is my favorite, but possibly the least accurate, is the one where it has like stretched out daffy duck uh like bill with like buck teeth on the bottom. So it's hard to know exactly what they look like because we only have the like fossil records. We don't have the soft tissue records, so like, we don't know what like any of the sort of soft tissue would have looked like.

We can only guess based on the the skull, the lower jaw, what the upper fleshy part of their um essentially like it's this elongated proboscus would have looked like. So with a modern elephant, you have a elongated nose that acts as this big proboscis and has all these muscles very fine tune control, and its mouth is way back um, you know, like it's like it pulls. It

doesn't eat with the tip of its trunk. It can breathe with the tip of its trunk, but it you know, can pull up grasses or vegetation and bring it up to its mouth. And you've probably seen an elephant eat, you've probably seen it drink. It also doesn't drink like through its nose. It sucks that water in and then

dumps it into its mouth. So so it's thought that the Platybellodon had a similar situation going that it didn't like have a weird mouth at the tip of its proboscus, but unlike the unlike the elephant, it had a low, elongated lower jaw. Now this is pretty pretty definitive based on the fossil records. We have the fossil records of this really long like weird scooper shovel shovel like lower jaw that probably had these like two sort of like buck teeth or like weird uh, just like two tusks

together that's stuck out at the bottom. So definitely had a long lower jaw. Now the upper one, like it could have been more like a modern day elephant tusk, right, because the idea that it was more like an elephant tusk is that its mouth again, like, how is it going to get stuff in its mouth like like sort of scoop things up and then like toss its head all the way back and hope that it all falls in.

Probably not uh with that. If it hasn't easily manipulatable upper proboscis, then it could like you know, pick things up and then place it back into its mouth, which is like you know, sort of like the the the bits where it would be able to chew and eat stuff is not at the tip of that proboscus or even at the tip of that jaw. It would be in like deeper. I mean, like it's weird to think

about because our mouths are so like self contained. But for this, for this thing, it can't like chew with the front bits of its lower jaw or its long proboscus. It's got to get it back there somehow. So like the depictions of its mouth is more like a weird I don't even know, just like a weird kind of

like beak thing that like closes all the way. It's like, well, then this, that upper thing would have to somehow get stuff in that deeper into its mouth, and it's a little unclear how it would do that with such a long,

unwieldy duck like proboscis. But you know, it could have been flatter than a modern day elephants trunk, but still could manipulate things like still grab things and manipulate and push it back, so I get I. In my opinion, probably the most accurate model would be elephant with this ridiculously long lower jaw with the two buck teeth sticking out. So that's still good. That's still there. Oh yeah, we're

not losing that. The top part of it probably a flatter but still relatively recognizable elephant trunk on top of it's not quite like a weird duck bill, but still a a a flatter, a little bit thicker and flatter elephant trunk. That's my unprofessional opinion that that's making me think of obviously all the cartoon ducks you mentioned total fit, and then I'm thinking of the Disney character Goofy, Like if you put those two teeth of his on the bottom and set the top, that's kind of the mouth

we're looking at, which I don't. I don't want to see him eat at all out of the cartoon. It's it's very even the most reserved reconstructions of this are wild and very very strange. Looks like a fever dream

of an elephant. Um now, uh, they're so like. There used to be this theory about this elephant that kind of informed the illustrations of it, which is that it used its mouth as a shovel and kind of like would live in sort of swampy areas and then shovel up sort of swamp grasses and then like you know, kind of let it sort of drop in the backs of their mouths. But modern researchers think that it's more likely given the shape and characteristics of those low or

buck teeth that just jut out. God, it's just it's so weird. It's like a big spoon with like these two like a fork at the end. I don't even know, man, it's look this thing up. Please look it up, and don't look at just the first result. Look at many different reconstructions. So the thought is that, um uh, that they used this lower jaw not to like as a shovel,

but actually as like a tree trimmer. So uh, it's like basically the wear patterns on this seem to indicate that it was used to strip off bark and leaves off of trees. So basically it would use his lower jutting jaw to like tree trim the tree, and then its upper trunk to take that stuff it just trimmed and then push it back into its mouth. I yeah, like a bucket for catching. You're like an ounce yielder

is amazing. Yeah, yeah, so it's I mean, it's just like you can imagine this thing shred and stuff with its weird lower jaw and then picking it up with its upper trunk thing and then putting it in its mouth. Just I mean, there's no no matter how one reconstructs this, this elephant, it was preposterous. Yeah, some for some reason. I actually some comedy sketch where like a tree has a mind like a human, and it's like, look at

that dumb animal. Definitely eats marsh stuff, doesn't me, it's getting closer to me, don't need to worry about it. Getting even closer to me, doesn't matter. Stupid marsh mouth. Definitely that oh no, definitely a tree drivers about No. So this is why I think the Platybelodon would be a good candidate for Santa's sligh team. So even though it may not have used its mouth as a shovel, I think it still could so emergence the snowshovel mouth for efficient rooftop landings, as long as the roof is

structurally stable enough to handle the weight of a small elephant. Uh. But in addition, those buck teeth would be useful for tree trimming, so cutting down uh Christmas trees, trimming them all great? Uh? Proboscis could the elephant trunk part of it could be used to help tie Christmas presents? Uh sorry, creature Kringle presents. I want to be clear here. This is for Creature Kringle Times, a nondenominational holiday for all.

Uh so yeah, so creature creature of a creature Kringle Times presence um also Santa at least our creature Kringle Time Santa Cave. Santa is a kind magical man who knows not to ride on top of the platty Belodon because platty Belodon, like modern elephants, had, probably had a skeletal structure that means they can't bear the weight of

a human writer and that can hurt them. So Cave Santa would know this because he's you know, magical and would use magical slight powder to help the platty billad on fly and there would be no pressure on its back. And they're probably friends. So that's canon. Yeah, that's that's true. That's right. Yeah. I like that we're thinking so much about how this animal eats. Yes, it's making me think

about Santa. Like there's so much Santa Laura about how Santa eats and drinks as this night goes on, Like he has a couple of billion helpings of milk and cookies. So I want the Christmas stuff to be like, yeah, kids like Santa will come have milk and cookies. Meanwhile, his platty belladons are eating the trees outside our house. That's a fun break to me. That's a good good

stopper snacks. Yeah, make sure to plant a lot of friendly, deciduous edible trees for the Plotty Belladon, the Creature Kringle Times Plotty Belaton. You're like, oh, what a wonderful set of presents. Anyway, time to go outside and all the trees are just gone, Like you can just see for miles you know, right, I mean you gotta pay the piper, in this instance an extinct elephant relative. Yeah. Just a lot of rooftop damage too from the magical platybelod On

thumping down onto the roof. I feel like reindeer reindeer would cause a good amount of damage anyways, So that's yeah. I think a lot of especially kids are like, oh, all hoofed animals are on like pony logic where it's tiny in a way I want it to be, but those things are huge, like they would definitely break through a lot of roofs and jingles and stuff. Yeah. Well, speaking of tiny pony logic, when we return, we are going to stop with the big and start thinking small.

So tiny pony time, Tiny pony time, Tiny time, the tiny any time. It's like tiny tim but tiny pony, May I have some ponies. It's like, I'll give you ponies. I'm actually very nice surprised. So so far we've gone with huge animals who could probably take over, like the whole reindeer team, to be honest, like the platty belled On the Siberian Unicorn, both quite huge megafauna. But what about microfauna keeny tiny adorable animals. So let's look at

the world's first horse. Uh, number one, horse number one, Like once we started making these horses very different from from the horses today. So when we think about like the world's first x y Z, it's it's like kind of tricky, right, Like, well, what truly was the world's first horse? Well, it's more like this is the first sort of common ancestor of all horses. And that's essentially what we would say, like, you know the first horse, and the first horse was so teeny and tiny inch ball. Uh,

it's it's so wonderful. Um. The first horse was the Pripis Sandre, which was a genus of teeny tiny, itty bitty baby horses who lived in Wyoming over fifty million years ago. So it was the size of a chihuahua around eight pounds or four and a half ms. It was smaller than a modern horse's head. So this kind of horse, I feel like I could confidently boss around. It's true, isn't it? Is this the horse from the question about the duck sized horses or the horse sized

duck is right? But I wouldn't want to fight these guys because they're so cute. No. No, And also anytime people ask that question, I'm like, why are you battling animals? They're so nice? Like, I don't know, but I feel like if the duck sized horses want to fight you, you've done something to deserve it. Absolutely all a hundred of them can't be wrong. So the main difference between it and modern horses, other than obviously the fact it's the size of a lap dog, is its feet. So

while horses have one fused toe, the safripis had multiple toes. Uh. So it's like a teeny tiny horse with little tootsies. Cool. Okay, yeah, I'll bet that's I'll bet that's helpful for walking. Right, you have a little more control, grip, etcetera. You're not just on a stub. That has to be one thing. I mean, it's a it's a trade off, right like

you are sort of. Um, the hoof has some great properties in terms of like sort of suspension, weight distribution, things like that, uh, toughness of the feet and the fact that this thing like continually the horse hoof like sort of continually grows and makes it very tough and so a horse can uh in a wild horse can sort of trample over rough terrain and like shoes, you know,

natural shoes, growing shoes. The reason we actually have to shoe horses that are domesticated is because they are on harder surfaces, so like streets, cobblestone, things like that, and you kind of like paved thing is gonna be too hard on the hoofs and we'll wear them down too quickly. But wild horses are on softer terrain, but still having those like hooves uh does protect their feet and legs

from the stress of like galloping and running. And they don't really need the other toes uh for things like they don't use them for other things. So that is why generally speaking, like you would have something like a hoof form, but for this little tiny light animal, it doesn't necessarily need the hoof structure so much to like you know, offer that cushioning that protection as it's like running, and the toes might be useful for something like digging

things up. In fact, like some ungulates, not all ungulates have like horse hoofs. Some are like have multiple toes, and some have things like cup shaved hoofs, like caribou or reindeer have these like cup shaped hoofs uh, that can actually like dig up vegetation. So yeah, they're all sorts of interesting hoof structures. But yeah, the first the first horse ancestor genus, like they had multiple toes, they didn't had not yet had those all fused into that

one hoof. Wow, that's also interesting. I didn't know much of any of that, especially like cup shaped hooves. That's great. Yeah, that seems very handy, very very handy. R hoofy uh, I'm so human centric, Like those are probably bad and hands are the best, is my perspective. Interestingly, scientists are looking at how the prepose responded to climate change to predict how species might be impacted during our current anthropogenic climate change. So in the past there's been climate change, right,

like natural climate change. Currently, the climate change we're experiencing is increasing at a rate unprecedented, and it's anthropogenic caused human cause. Like, there's a bunch of research on this. So like when people were like, oh, well, you know there's been climate change in the past, like is different. Um, but even in the past climate change did have a

huge impact on the world. So, um, there was a period of rapid heating during the Paleocene Eocene thermal maximum, which was around fifty five million years ago, where global temperatures rose by almost twenty degrees fahrenheit or eight degrees

celsius and lasted around two hundred thousand years. And the paleontologists have found that this caused this A Rippus species to get small, going from around twelve pounds to eight pounds, so they started off and when even more teacup size, it's possible then that researchers speculate that maybe modern animals will adapt to global warming by getting smaller, if they

don't just go extinct. So yeah, like global warming today is happening at an alarming leak fast rate, So the worry is that it's happening too fast for animals to adapt. Um that is just going to like cause sort of extinctions rather than you know, a more gradual natural selection. But it's possible that animals will become smaller in response to global warming, and that's not necessarily good thing. Uh, but you know that's such a man I never thought

of that being a way things can go though. Even that's amazing, And I guess we have these ancient examples of some non human cause stuff that can be a guidance. That's amazing. Yeah, I mean again, it's very different because this is a different kind of global war warming that is happening in a much shorter time scale than historic periods of global warming. But yeah, it's it's still possible that we would see there be some selection for smaller animals. Um,

It's it's hard to know exactly. But anyways, let's talk about how we could get this if Frippis to uh uh told Santa sleigh h Also, can we can we celebrate the name zef Rippis? Come on, folks, well, actually it's got the acronym of your podcast in there. S I f r H I P p U s so s I f secretly in incredibly fascinating. This is the horse of your podcast. That's right. I'm sitting on one every time I tape. It's doing fine. It can it

can handle it. It kind of like made me think of like some old timey way of like writing, sir, and I'm reading it as like some media medieval like s Frippis like you know, some kind of honorific. So, uh, let's say that Frippis gets the same magical properties, same physics of the nine reindeer that Santa has. And remember, reindeer are real animals, also known as caribou. They are

quite hefty. Santa's reindeer are likely female because male reindeer shed their antlers in the winter, while females keep their antlers during the winter and shed them in spring. So all all those prancer d answer, they're they're all ladies, okay. I Also, I when when I was thinking about like how this sleigh is arranged, and I was thinking of eight reindeer, I think I fully forgot about Rudolph. Yeah,

that is definitely the most famous one. Uh. I'm the one who has been through the Alex is the one that was denying Rudolph those reindeer games. So direct your hate towards Alex. Yeah, it's four on four man, what do you want? What we gotta do? You can't have an odd number. Yeah, And also it's eight ladies. You're a guy, that's fine, but you know, we kind of have a thing. I mean, it's interesting because Rudolph is sometimes depicted as not having antlers, like having little nubs,

so he could actually be the only male. Wow, right, that's yeah, Santa Santa is so he just has a lot of personnel decisions going on that we don't understand. We're not privy to it. You know, how do I get in that meeting? So? Uh, females way around two pounds or female reindeers, so uh times nine rain year, that's like eight hundred pounds of pure reindeer. So obviously there's probably more biophysics that goes into this in terms

of like muscle capacity, pulling capacity, skeletal strength. I'm not going to do any of that. It's creature kringle nous. We don't have time. So how many seff rippists do we need to equal this amount of reindeer heft? Sef Rippis are only around eight to twelve pounds, so you'd need a hundred and fifty to two hundred and twenty

five sef rippis tiny ponies to equal nine reindeer. So you would get to hear the little toe toe steps of two hundred tiny horses pulling uh Cave Santa's sleigh or at least like these were not these were like around fifty million years ago. Humans were not around at this time, so Cave Santa would have to do some kringle Man magic to bring this guy back. That's incredible. And and I guess the naming situation is fun. You

get to pick a lot of names. Maybe it's too many to pick right, there's you know, Clarence one, Clarence too, Clarence three, Clarence four, the first name we pull. Yeah, they're all clarances. I can't, I can't. I guess it would eventually be like NASA where they just start numbering the asteroids, you know, like there's too many asteroids. Man, what are we gonna do? Tiny horse? Just one serial numbers, yeah, just serial numbers on their butts. Poor poor little horses.

Maybe they don't want to Maybe they don't want to fly, creature kringle time slamming. They just want to hang out, chill out and grasslands and skip around. I also, I'm just really saying how pretty that herd probably is. It probably looks like a flackup birds or something. Just that made little guys, just a little guys, just a little like just great, just so cute. I would love to have a lap horse like this, just had it keep in my lap, feel a little baby carrots, because that's

all could have because it's so small. I do I want to see one try to pick up a whole carrot and just thud. Little baby, little baby. It's so cute. I love tiny horses. I love tiny horses. Bring back like. I know that we have a bunch of like extinction projects and stuff, and maybe it's unethical, but I don't care. Bring back this horse. Yeah, do it. Come don't worried about it. Come on. My My proposal for like government funding is come on, tiny horse. Done just at the

the at I h or some huge government organization. You're just poking somebody at the desk, like standing behind poke, poke about. Well, before we go, we gotta play a little game, and that game is called ghost Who Squawking the Mystery Animal Sound game. Every week I choose mr Animal sound, and you the listener, and you the guests, try to guess squawking. The rules are it's any animal, that's it. That's the rules. You gotta gets last week mystery animal sound. The hint is this am I asking

a lot for you to guess this sound. So Alex, can you guess who is making that sound? That is? Spis it's a lot? Brought it back at such I feel like it's doing something really busy with its hands while it's doing that. That was the vibe I got. Um, So I'm yeah, I'm imagining like tiny you know, you know, like any especially of rodent that's good with its hands. That's my guess. Interesting, it's wrong, but it's interesting. So this is an axel attel. Congratulations to Jared im, Tiffany

In and Christina are who gets correctly. So this is kind of a tricky one because axel attels aren't really vocal. They don't even have vocal cords. So how it makeing this squeak? Well, it can do a little squeak when it comes to the surface to get a gasp of air. So axel attles are aquatic. They're actually the neotonous form of a salamander. They retain their juvenile characteristics throughout their

whole lifespan, never sort of more metamorphosized into adults. And uh so they have gills, those like fluffy sideburns that you see on an ax lottle. You know what an ax a lottle looks like, right, Alex, Yeah, because it's it's an amphibian, right or something. But yeah, it's got that like low head and the little frills. Yeah. Yeah, And so like it actually spends all of its life in aquatic environments. But it does have a very sort of simple set of lungs and it can like gulp

in air through its mouth. It's not very good at it, but it will do that if it like kind of needs a little extra air. Maybe that's not getting as much air as it needs or enough oxygen as it needs in the water, or it just kind of feels like doing it, so it'll come up and get a little gasp of air. And so the sound of that squeak is that of air bubbling out of its mouth, like when air comes out of a balloon or squeaky toy.

So it's not an intentional sound. It's just purely incidental to the ax a lottle getting a little breath of air. But it's like it is actually functioning like a little squeaky toy. This is so there's a future episode of secretly incredibly fascinating coming about rubber ducks. And so I've had like little squeaky bath toys really out of my mind. Now I want an excel attle toy. That would be great. Axcel Attles are the bath toys of the animal Kingdom.

Just don't squeeze them. Don't squeeze them. They won't like that. Latm squeeze themselves exactly onto this week's mystery animals sound the hint this is one cool chick, So Alec, can you guess who is making that sound? One cool check? Okay, I should have known you'd bring up fair down typical Katie with the birds. Uh, but yeah, it's so like that noise it almost sudded likes or sounds. I know that's not what it is, but it was like, you know, uh, so I don't know. Yeah, probably a baby version of

some kind of tropical bird. Maybe that's not specific enough, but you know, is that your final answer? Yeah? That is. Well, I'm not gonna tell you if you're right or wrong, because you'll find out on next episode of Creature feature the world's Biggest cliffhanger. So, Alex, thank you so much for joining me today. Where can the people find you?

Thank you for having me? It's always great. Uh, and yeah, I hope people enjoy my podcast Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, which also should have a recent episode about snoopy Yeah, featuring guest Katie Golden. That's out and that's me that's you. Yeah, but yeah, it's history and science and stories about why something seemingly ordinary is amazing. And I'm also glad Patron's picks Snoop because you know, folks love Snoopy. And also it turns out there was a lot more there, a

lot of snoopets out there. Yeah. I think this show is fantastic. I highly recommend it if you like this podcast. And yeah, I've been on a guest on it a few times now. And yeah I am on the Snoopy Snoopy Verse episode, so do check that out. Uh, and thank you guys so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you want to leave a rating or review, hey they Hey, I would love that. I read all

of them and they make me happy. And uh, if you have an answer to this week's mystery animal, sound game or question or picture of your pet, you can write to me at Creature Feature pot at gmail dot com. And thank you so much to the Space Costics for their super awesome song excel Alumina. Creature Feature is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or Hey, guess what where have you listen to?

Your favorite shows and and people, happy, creature cringinal times. Enjoy it. See you next Wednesday. Okay m.