Welcome to Creature Future production of iHeartRadio Creature Feature.
It's Creature cring Old Times, Oh Holiday Special about our furry friends. Today we'll go into the distant past and find out who Bold Cape Santasly.
Imagination Station.
Real life unicorns join us as we learn exploring.
The early elephants were really really rare, and horses used to be like you were boys Creecha feature the Holiday Special.
But we will not be singing the whole time.
I promise stay here.
Placed On gold.
Welcome to Creature Feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host. So 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 guided.
Its like Happy Creature cringle, Happy Creature, Congle, Happy Creature cry.
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 Paths are ready to spread joy to all the world's children. Or cave children or apes. When we go far enough back discover this and more as we answer the age old question, if you've got a shovel for a mouth, how do you kiss under
the mistletoel? Joining me today is friend of the podcast, host of Secretly incredibly Fascinating and jolly Human, Alex Schmidt.
Welcome. I have so deeply chilly after that song. Yes, I felt like we were both Clay madd and on a sledge. Yeah, 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 clamation 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 from a crappy clamation 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 sleigh.
So I love it. 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, 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 an RWL 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 listen to that like happy Unicorn power song from that one game, like the platformer from the internet. Yeah, it's not a good description of it, but you know what I mean.
Yeah, So, first, in order to discover this unicorn, I want you to imagine a rhino, just a regular rhino. You got it on it?
Yeah?
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 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 right, like your whole head balance and everything. 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 or 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. I think this is prehistoric, right we Yeah, it's it's departed in an age long ago.
It has they have gone on a big spaceship and gone to that great planet of the Siberian unicorns in the sky. So, yes, this is the extinct Siberian unicorn aka alasmatheriums sibericum that once thudded along the grasslands of your asia long ago. So alex, uh, you have it in your imagination, and now look at those pictures that I've provided for you as well.
Yeah, I'm pulling it up. And this is an extra good time to me because there's like an illustration first and then a physical mockup somebody made seconds. 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 gonna 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 that much in term of full intact horns of like adults. So the like it's like there's this indentation on the skull 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, I'm way into it. Yeah, 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 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. It was huge, it was larger than any living species of rhino and larger than its contemporary, the wooly rhino. So it weighed around four tons or two toyota tacomas, my favorite unit of measurement. It was fifteen 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 the prehistoric stuff. They do that 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 little, just lit, 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, right that scale The eagle is much bigger.
Yeah, 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.
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 is sort of a tank.
So it's funny to me that unicorns is seen as this like feminine kind of like 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. Oh, it can stop 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, fine, like if girls have to claim unicorns, it'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 on the ride, where we should go, how fast we should go. It's like every time I told it to do something different, it changed. It was like, okay, fine. But also I had learned how to talk to this horse like two seconds before getting at it. Yeah, 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 eh, you know. And I think that they are quite impressive, and they the idea of like being 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 know what I'm doing. And I would just let that board that I would let the horse take charge. Really, it's just like, look, don't ignore me, do what you want. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm even here. You want to carrot? Don't don't kick me?
Should have carrots? Yeah, I and you know, I made it back to shout out to Bud. Bud was the name of the horse, Bud. But there's 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 you're also on top of a cliff, right, and then a fireman animal can throw you off of the cliff at any time if it wants to.
Yeah, it's a motor 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 and likely required the Siberian unicorn to grow a large muscular hump on its back, sort of like a bison. 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 indiant found on its skull reconstructions, imagine this unicorn is being longer than its head and very very thick. 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 it huge and then a like not just like one of those sort of thin you know unicorn horns, a big one. It's a chonker.
Yeah. When you said the scientific name before, I think the phrase like them was part of it. Yeah, 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, theium is probably a big megathere oh mega too.
Yeah, sure, I don't know what the theeum room means theeum does that mean?
Oh yeah, I don't know.
I don't know Latin. I probably should have learned Latin at some point because of animals, but I didn't. But yeah, so this is yeah, this is a lasmo Theorium cibericum. So yeah, yeah, despite looking like they could easily shish kabab you and roast you over and 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 to 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 chompident chewing all of the time to buildup more horn, but also to keep going.
Yeah, right exactly, so that that temperature change really kind of screwed them. So in terms of why I think the Siberian unicorn would be a good candidate for Santa Cave Santa to bring back from from the I guess from the extinction, although I guess if it's Cave Santa Cave Santa would have been contemporary with this guy. So one is that there is huge horn to break ice or to fight off grenches. The Siberian unicorn is also vegetarian friendly. It only grass. 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 an eight reindeer pulling the sledge? Yes, And I feel like it's like a two columns of four reindeer. Is the general arrangement right like to 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 antlers, they're not sticking up each other's butts all the time, you know, so these guys could probably figure it out trust But.
The antlers are little less forward facing than this horn, so I guess they'd need they'd 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 pathing like yeah, window sock sort of structure it stick.
A little like ball of styrofoam on the top of that point there.
I think it could be festive going to work honey, and they put a huge one of those foam microphone covers over your horn.
Like it could be festive, little festive pom poms.
Oh, a lot of lights. You can put so many Christmas lights on.
Wow, that you could paint it like a giant candy cane.
Goshh So, Alex, I.
Know what you're wondering. I know what you're thinking. What do you get when you cross a snowshovel with an elephant?
Man? Finally, here I am 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 you do with a snowshovel in an elephant?
It's one of the great unanswered questions of our times. Well, I have an answer. It's the platy belodon, the world's doofiest 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 Suprehistoric Freaks Weekly. That was one of my favorite.
Yeah.
It was like it was like the evolution of the elephant, and it showed a just a bunch of weird, weird elephants, and I was fascinated by that, and it really, I mean I was already I already loved it. I think I was already probably addicted to animals at that point, but this was, this was amazing. And so the Platybelodon was one of the world's doofiest extinct elephants, possibly the world's doofiest 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 am if people don't know really made the bison. Emoji also vary into stuff like elephants, and I think just like large mammals or like big I define things I'm into. Yeah, and like when those when those Delexe editions of the original Star Wars movies came out. I was pretty excited about the do Bachs. I think that whole school of animals, I'm like, pretty good. But do Bacs 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 Plotybelodon 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 slots and this giant unicorn rhino, but sometimes it's smaller, you know. So this
one's a little bit smaller. Now, turn its trunk into a giant shovel like 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 tusts 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 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, uh, but possibly the least accurate, is the one where it has like stretched out daffy duck 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 skull, the lower jaw, what the upper fleshy part of their 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, 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 yea, yea.
So it's not that the Platybelodon had a similar situation going that it didn't like have a weird mouth at the tip of its preboscus, 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 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 gonna 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 with that. If it has an easily manipulatable upper preboscis, 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 bits where it would be able to chew and eat stuff is not at the tip of that proboscis or even at the tip of that jaw. It'd 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 longus. 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 uh duck like preboscis. But you know, it could have been flatter than a modern day elephant's 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, so not quite like a weird duck bill, but still a flatter, a little bit thicker and flatter elephant trunk. That's my unprofessional opinion.
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.
Yeah.
I think 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 yet I don't want to see him eat at all, so that really takes 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. Yeah, now there, 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, 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 that they used this lower jaw not to like as
a shovel, but actually as like a tree trimmer. So uh, it's like, uh, 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 this lower jutting jaw to like tree trim the tree, and then it's upper trunk to take that stuff it just trimmed and then push it back into its mouth.
I yeah, like a bucket for catching like an out. It 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, for some reason of imaginally some comedy sketch where like a tree has a mind like a human and is like, look at that dumb animal. Definitely eats marsh stuff. Doesn't fuck me, it's getting closer to me, don't need to worry about it. Getting even closer to me, doesn't matter. Stupid marshmouth. Definitely that Oh no, uh uh, it's definitely a tree driver's aw. Oh no.
So this is why I think the Platybelodon would be a good candidate for Santa's sleigh team. So even though it may not have used its mouth as a shovel, I think it still could, so emergency the snowshovel mouth for efficient rooftop landings, as long as the roof is structurally stable enough to handle the weight of a small elephant.
But in addition, those buck teeth would be useful for tree trimming, so cutting down Christmas trees trimming them all great proboscis could the elephant trunk part of it could be used to help tie Christmas presents And sorry, creature Kringle presence. I want to be clear here. This is for Creature Kringle Times, a non denominational holiday for all. Uh yeah, so creature creche Keva a creature Kringle Times presence.
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 Platybelodon because Platybelodon, like modern elephants, probably had a skeletal structure that means they can't bear the weight of a human rider and that can hurt hit them. So Cave Santa would know this because he's you know, magical and would use magical sleigh powder to help the Plattybellaton fly and there would be no pressure
on its back. And they're probably friends. So that's cannon.
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 a good stopper snacks.
Yeah, make sure to plant a lot of friendly, deciduous edible trees for the Plattybelloton, the creature Kringle times platty Beloton.
You're like, oh, 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 got to pay the piper. In this instance, an extinct elephant relative Yeah, there's a lot of rooftop damage too from the magical Platybelodon 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 singles 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, tiny any time. It's like tiny tim but tiny pony at.
Least, sir, may I have some ponies. It's like, I'll give you ponies. I'm actually very nice, surprise.
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 belt On the Siberian Unicorn, both quite huge megafauna. But what about microfauna neotini, tiny adorable animals. So let's look at the world's first horse 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, say, like, you know the first horse, and the first horse was so teeny and tiny inch bowl. Uh, it's it's so wonderful.
The first horse was the Prippis 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 kilograms. It was smaller than a modern horse's head. So wow, 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? This is it?
Right? Like, I guess fight, 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 that.
I feel like, if the duck sized horses want to fight you, you've done something to deserve it.
Absolutely, all one 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 cyphrippis had multiple toes. So it's like a teeny tiny horse with little tutsis cool.
Okay, yeah, I'll bet that's I'll bet that's helpful for walking. You have a little more control, grip, et cetera. 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 The hoof has some great properties in terms of like sort of suspension, weight distribution, things like that 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 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, any kind of like paved thing is going to be too hard on the hoofs and will wear them down too quickly. But wild horses are on softer terrain, but still having those like hooves does protect their feet and legs from the stress of like galloping and running, and they don't really need the other toes for things like they don't use
them for other things. So that is why generally speaking, like you'd 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 hooves, like caribou or reindeer have these like cup shaped hooves oh 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 hoofs. That's great. Yeah, that seems very.
Handy, very very handy hoofy uh.
Oh right, I'm so human centric, like those are probably bad and hands are the best, is my pet.
Interestingly, scientists are looking at how the cypripis 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 it's different. But even in the past, climate change did have a huge impact on the world. So 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 the Cyphripus species to get small, going from around twelve pounds to eight pounds, so they started off all 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 alarmingly fast rate. So the worry is that it's happening too fast for animals to adapt. 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. That's not necessarily a good thing.
But you know, yeah, that's such a man I never thought of that being a way things can go though. Even that's amazing. Yeah, 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 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. It's it's hard to know exactly. But anyways, let's talk about how we could get the Zepps to whole Santas Sleigh.
Also, can we can we celebrate the name zeph Come on, folks, well, actually fantastic.
It's got the acronym of your podcast in there. S I f R H I P p U s so sif. Secretly and credibly 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. Yeah, a tiny horse.
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 medieval like cirrippis, like you know, some kind of honorific So, uh, let's say that 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 prance are to answer, they're all ladies, Okay.
I Also 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 Like, I'm the one who has been through the most fully.
Alex 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 are we gonna 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 personal decisions going on. We don't understand. We're not privy to it, right, you know, how do I get in that meeting.
So, uh, female's weigh around two hundred pounds or ninety kilograms female reindeers, so times nine range, that's like one 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 gonna do any of that. It's creature kringleness. We don't have time.
So how many sifrippis do we need to equal this amount of reindeer heft sifrippists are only around eight to twelve pounds, so you'd need one hundred and fifty to two hundred and twenty five cifrif sifrippis tiny ponies to equal nine reindeer. So you would get to hear the little toe toe steps of two hundred and twenty five 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 to bring this guy back.
That's incredible, and I guess the naming situation is fine. You get to pick a lot of names. Maybe it's too many to pick, right, there's.
You know, Clarence one, Clarence two, Clarence three, Clarence.
Four, the first name we pull.
Yeah, they're all Clarences. I can't, I can't.
Event 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, 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 slay. Maybe they just want to hang out, chill out in grasslands and skip around.
Yeah. I also, I'm just realized sing how pretty that herd probably is. It's it probably looks like a flack of birds or something. Just that.
Guys, just 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 it 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? Okay, worried about it.
My proposal for like government funding is come on, teddy horse, come on.
Just at the the h or some huge government organization. You're just poking somebody like standing behind me.
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, 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 a minute and that's me, that's you. Yeah. Yeah, but yeah, it's history and science and stories about why something seemingly ordinary is amazing. And I'm also glad Matron's pick Snoopy because you know, folks love Snoopy. And also it turns out there was a lot.
More there, a lot of snoop pegs 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, ay, 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 Pod at gmail dot com. And thank you so much. Through to the Space Cossics for their super awesome song ex Alumina. Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or Hey guess what.
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Shows and people happy, Creature Criminal Times, enjoy it. See you next Wednesday.
Okay,