Creature Classic: TEETH!

hiding a mouth straight from your dentist's nightmares. Discover this more as we answer the angel question, which animal do you least want to see with human teeth? Joining me today is friend of the show Garfield Expert, Award winning Indie filmmaker and writer for the show Spirit Rangers, Joey Clift. Welcome. Yeah, how's it going everybody? And thanks so much for having me back. Um yeah, I gotta say, um I am.

I think I think I'm a teeth expert now because I actually started in Visible Line a few months ago and my teeth were just a little crooked at the start of the pandemic, and I was like, I gotta take care of that. So now I've just become hyper aware of like, uh, teeth care and all things teeth. So I think you could add teeth expert to to my title too. I my expertise, My expertise, My expertise in teeth is that, um, I like to grind them down into nubs because of anxiety. Wait, do you have

a mouth guard? Wait? You like that? No? I don't. Well, you know it is something that I am prone to do. Now I have a brux is. Um, so I clench my teeth and grind them. Um. So I do have a mouth guard that I have to wear at night, and I must say it looks very good and cool. I'm very I think, um way cooler than in visile line because like you can see it. You can see my mouth guard and it makes like my mouth poke

out weird, so I look awesome. Um Something that I love about having in visi line is that you have to take it out whenever you eat or drink anything that's not like cold water. And um, I feel like when I first started having in visiline, if I was ever like you know, eating around friends or something like that, I would always like very shyly be like I'm taking my visil line out and I would like, don't look, and like then I realized that it's really gross when

you pull it out. There's like always like a like just like a line of slobber, like a second sound. So like now I've taken power from that, and I just stare the person down and I'm like, I'm gonna take my invisi line out. Now. You could watch if you want. If not, I guess, turn your head. Put the onus on them to turn their head right, like, don't want to get little bits of this shrimp cocktail

stuck in my visiline. Excuse me one moment um. It's also like you like, um, I have a lot of friends who have also started in Visilene kind of during the pandemic because we're all wearing masks, and also just like because you know, we're largely in our homes now, like there's a less pressure to like go to events where you know, taking out your teeth to like you're taking out your invisil line to you know, drink at a party or whatever. It isn't necessarily a thing you

have to worry about. So oftentimes when I'll pull my invisil line out, just like in the open. The person I'm talking to will be like, I actually took mine out quietly in the bathroom, and I was like, you coward. I mean, proud, be proud that you're grossing people out with your mouth. Yeah, I mean, you know, it's a when we're in a pandemic where we have to cover our mouths all the time, we might as well do some like some work on our mouths, you know, some refurbishment.

You know, I did get. I had to wait until the worst of the pandemic was over to even get my mouth guard replaced because I could not go to the dentist. So that was It's great to have both the anxiety of a pan dimmick combined with like untamed brux is um um for waking up with a sore job. But yeah, I'm I'm doing better now um and so yeah, but that's just with our our the fun stories that

can happen with our human teeth and humans have. You know, our teeth are interesting because we are we're omnivores, right, so we have fac molars that are good for grinding up plant matter, and our front teeth, like our canines, is decently good at tearing up meat. So our teeth are themselves fairly interesting. But once you go and explore some of the darker alleys of the Annual Kingdom, you'll find some mouths that are way weirder than Joey taking

out is invisiligne, like when you're out with him for lunch. Uh. So, uh do you like sea turtles? I think I do like sea turtles. They seem fairly friendly. They've got those flipp ers. They can I think that they can be you know, crazy old, right, like sea turtles can be like hundreds of years old. Yeah, I mean they tend to live. They can live around fifty years, but you're right that there can be really old ones that live up to around like a hundred and fifty years old.

So yeah, Like, I've never interacted with a sea turtle, but I would say that I am an admirer from afar, which is the right thing to do. You should not directly touch and hold a sea turtle because that is not good for the sea turtle. Um. But yeah they are. They're adorable, sweet ocean babies that we love and cherish. Um. But if you look them in the mouth, like you should never look a gift sea turtle in the mouth, because you will be met with a nightmarish horror like

the Sarlack pit in Star Wars. It's just a gaping mam of spikes. So Joey, what do you think like looking down this, now, this is a leather back uh turtle, sea turtle mouth that you are staring into. Okay, so I'm gonna say this is probably the first time that I've ever seen an animal with teeth in its neck. Like usually you just have teeth in your mouth, but no, no, no,

sea turtles have us beat. Um yeah, definitely this looks like um but it looks like the Starlac pit from Star Wars, but somehow more scary because instead of having tentacles, it just has more teeth. Um. Yeah, like it really looking at this like I'm getting some zeno, moreh vibes and that, like you know, you can picture that like the neck teeth like extending out of the mouth for

like even more bites. It's really I mean, it makes sense as to what they eat, as to you know, I'm sure they probably like eat on the go and digest on the go, so why not chew in your neck too, I guess. But yeah, looking at it. That's that's a real scary Yeah. So there are few things that I want to clarify about this whole sea turtle mouth situation. Yes, it is true that you are looking

down into like a spiky tube of death. Um, but these protrusions are actually not teeth, even though they are so tooth like, They're not made out of denton like our teeth are made out of. Um. These are actually called esophageal papilla, So we actually have papilla on our tongues. They're the little bumps that you have on your tongues or taste buds. Um. But yeah, just these like little

bumps and uh, those are called papilla. But on sea turtles, these have grown into these enormous spikes and they are all down their throat, on the top of their mouths, on the bottom of their mouths. Uh. It's pretty horrifying to look at, especially leather back turtles. So leather back sea turtles are the largest species of sea turtle and

they have the most frightening mouths I think. Um. But yeah, so these uh, these quote unquote teeth are actually made out of keratin, so they're more like a bunch of throat claws than throat teeth, which I don't know, I feel like that's worse in a way. Yeah, So basically, like this reminds me of I want to say, lions have such coarse tongues that if you were to be licked by a lion like once or twice, it would like your muscles and skin would be gun. Yeah. Yeah,

you're exactly right. And it's a great comparison because those spines on their tongues I believe, are also made out of keratin, and they are also extruded papillae from the tongues, And you're also great that they those are designed to tear meat off of bones from their price, so when they're licking a bone and licking their prey, they can actually rend meat from these bones. So if it licks your arm, it's just kind of pull your skin off. What is what is of greater interest to you petting

a lion or having skin? Because I feel like I would really like to pet a lion, and if it's like if my if my if my trade off for petting a lion is that they got to is that they got they got to lick me once, and it was just like oh goodbye for arm skin? Would like that? Would I trade that off? Would you trade that off? It depends on how I guess it depends on how

much skin I have in the game here. Um, so like how much skin I gotta I gotta give this line because if it's all of it, no, because I need that to keep out pathogen and keep my meat, you know, keep my meat safe. Um, if it's a little bit of skin, you know, they want to lick, give me a little kiss and it takes off, you know, kind of like parmesan grads off a little bit of my cheek. Like you know, all right, fine for the to get a kiss from a lion, I'll do it.

Not really, that's a joke. Don't do that. Nobody do that. Yeah, I guess that, like but like, but think about it, if like if a lion gives you, guys, just like a little little peck on your cheek, just a little lick on your cheek, and it just like shears off, just like a chunk flesh off your cheek. Yeah, I feel like it would It would probably be more like if you rubbed your cheek with some coarse grits sand paper,

right like it wouldn't maybe tear off chunk out. It would just be like if you took the really core sandpaper and rubbed it on your cheek, you're gonna start to take a little bit of skin off. Yeah, it's like but like if you had that scar, but like in exchange, if anybody asked how you got that scar, and you'd be like, I got it from my lion friend, right, I gotta kiss from a lion. That's pretty good. That's a pretty good trade off. Yeah, that would be tough.

I would have to think about that trade off. Um, but yeah, so that's exactly a great comparison because the lion does have similar keratin structures on its tongue. Of course this uh, the turtles have it all throughout their mouth and all down their throat, and they actually use it in a much different way than something like a lion uses its tongue or like we use our teeth. So it's not really for chewing, but it is for trapping.

So um. One of these sea turtles most favorite foods is jellyfish, which seems surprising, like it doesn't seem like jellyfish would be that good to eat, but sea turtles love them. In fact, some species, like the leather back sea turtle, almost exclusively eatjelly fish, and they're hunting method is being a vacuum cleaner, so they suck in seawater along with their jellyfish prey. But they don't want all

that extra seawater. In fact, it's too much salt, like they already deal with a lot of salt in their diets, so they regurgitate the seawater um. But when they regurgitate seawater, the problem is, well, they don't also want to regurgitate the jellyfish that they want to have in their tummies.

So all these spikes that are actually facing downwards, so the spikes are facing towards the back of their throat, and when they regurgitate the water that has the jellyfish in it, the jellyfish gets stuck on the spines and there's only one direction that jellyfish can flow, which is down towards the turtle's stomach, and on its way to the stomach, the jellyfish is getting shredded by these spines, and it's also protecting the sea turtles throat from the

jellyfish's stingers so it doesn't hurt it. And by the time the jellyfish reaches its stomach, it's been kind of mutilated. What that makes me think of is I feel like if I had those spines in my throat, the way that I would do that is I would like I would just shotgun like bubble bubble tea, like Boba tea, and then puke up the tea, but keep those sweet, sweet Boba bubbles trapped on my neck spines. That'd be

like the most horrifying game of plank. Oh. I can think of boba things going down, the ding ding ding ding ding down the spikes. Yeah, but like what an efficient way of like you know, look, I can't drink a ton of bobas, but if I do that, I can, like I can eat a lot of the bubbles. That's exactly right. Yeah, that's exactly how this works. I mean, and I'm not saying that sarcastically. It would be like if you want to eat the bobas, but you don't want the gross coffee or whatever, and so you toss

it down and all your throat spikes catch those boba's. Um. Yeah, it's like I wanted to chug a chicken noodle soup, but like I didn't really want the broth. I just wanted the chicken. It's like this would be a great way, this would be a great salt. Okay, you get out of this show. You don't want the broth. Broth the best part out, get out. I mean, look, I'm just

saying in theory, look I also like the broth. I'm just saying in a crazy world where I just want the chicken and noodles but not the broth, come on my show, tell me you don't want your chicken broth. My god. So uh, in places like Hawaii, you might actually spot a sea turtle on the beach which appears to be vomiting blood. But if you see that, don't necessarily panic. This could just be normal turtle feeding behavior. So they will regurgitate seawater like we talked about before,

uh filtering out jellyfish. But during red tides where there are red algeile blooms, seawater can look red and like it's blood, and so you'll see these sea turtles that look like they've just, you know, exorcist style, vomited up this blood, but it's really just red sea water, and they're just doing that so that they can filter out the jellyfish, which you know, pretty metal sea turtles gotta

hand it to you. Yeah, I mean there is also a chance, with like how polluted our ocean is, that like that also might be put well, the that's a good point in the real danger to sea turtles is plastic waste because the plastic bag floating in the ocean

look exactly yeah. Uh, So they'll try to eat it and it'll get caught in their throats with the same mechanism that they used to catch jellyfish, and so they can't regurgitate it, so it has to go down through their digestive system where it can get and snagged and caused an intestinal blockage and killed them. Um yeah, that sucks. Yeah. When I heard that, I like all of a sudden felt really bad about using plastic bags and throwing them in the ocean, like I do. Joey stop that. Joey

was the one. He was the one with all the plastic straws, just tossing him in the ocean. One by what, I was like cutting all my plastic bags specifically so they look like they have It was like jelly fish gotta cut these plastic bags up and then just like like a smiley jellyfish face off them. Wow. Uh, that's you're going to get in trouble with the I believe the TikTok TikTok girls really hate it when you mistreat the sea turtles. Or is that like a trend from

a few years ago. I'm really not. They've moved on. They've moved on to something else. It's no longer about the plastic straws. It's about something else, Like I don't know, they don't care about sea turtles anymore. It's probably something like, uh, and I don't care about like global warming or something something silly like global warming. Yeah, something something wacky like

the future of the planet. Something wacky and silly, like they're very lives from the Yeah, something silly like them seeing that like will all be underwater and them being like, wait, it'll still be alive then, and then it'll be a good saying that that they like defended the sea turtles, because the sea turtles will remember and be like, hey, welcome underwater, thanks for not killing us with plastic straws.

I guess you can join our cool kingdom. Yeah, it's only worked that way penguins, though penguins have nearly the same creepy and cool mouth situation going on as sea turtles. They also have esophageal pepilla made out of caraton, lining their mouths, throats, and even on their tongues. Uh. And like the sea turtles, these spines are angle downwards and

inwards towards the stomach. Instead of eating jellyfish, penguins eat fish, and their spines act like a bunch of fish hooks that trap the fish and only allow the fish to move in one direction, one direction down towards the final resting place of a penguin's hungry Tommy. So, penguin's adorable on the outside, horrible on the inside. Um, I gotta say with penguin's um. So this this first photo that

we're looking at, is that the penguin's tongue. That's like that we're seeing That's like kind of okay, got it? Got it? Because the way that looks looking at it is it looks like the penguin has two sets of jaws. Once again, very easy and influence, you know, more esque. Um.

But yeah, it kind of looks like a comb. It's like, I guess that I'm less scared of a penguin's mouth than I am a sea turtle's mouth, because like, I recognize the penguin's mouth as like not being eldric horror, whereas like the sea turtle's mouth just looks like like just a hell mouth, you know, just a tunnel to hell. So, Joey, we've talked about horrifying teeth being used against jellyfish and against fish, but some fish have their own oral horror

show that I want to talk about. Uh. Fish are one of the most diverse groups of animals in the world. In fact, it's kind of weird to even call fish fish. Um. But given that, all right, given that they're so diverse, the situation going on with their mouths is always going to be pretty interesting. So uh, one fish I want to talk about is the Pacific link cod, which are ill tempered, omnivorous oceanic fish who grow to be about

four ft long. Uh. They have two sets of jaws. So, Joey, earlier you we're looking at this penguin mouth and since its tongue has spines on it, it kind of looked like it had to two mouths. Well, lincod actually do have two sets of jaws. They have a front set that they can extrude to grab prey, and a rear pharyngeal set of teeth that are these rows of teeth un modified gill ridges for tearing and grinding. So grabbing, tearing and grinding. It's like a really cool kitchen utensil

you can use to shred a potato. Yeah, what this looks like to me is um, I can definitely recognize the first set of Jaws and that you can clearly see teeth on it. It makes a ton of sense the second set of Jaws. Is that what we're seeing kind of in the far back of the image around kind of the red spot. Yeah, exactly. So you see you see that front and then you see the back.

You see those rows right like they they are these like concentric circles going down into the throat and they those are actually modified gill ridges that have teeth on them. So yeah, it's a it's not good to look at

or to matchin going inside. Yeah, what's terrifying um to me about this is it looks like it's like you can see their rib cage within their mouth, So it kind of looks like it's basically like if we did not have a head or a neck, but like our shoulder blades opened into a mouth, and then we had like a hollow chest cavity where you could see the rib cage, and then like our pelvis, there was another set of teeth. Um Like, it looks kind of like that where it's like it looks like it's also like blue,

which is weird. Um Yeah. And also I think I can see like gill openings on the side, so that looks crazy, yeah, because these things that look like ribs are actually gill ridges. So it's like if we just had rib like structures going all the way down, but then they open out into the air because that you

breathe through them. I mean that's like, that's like less that's okay, So that's less scary to me because I feel like in a world where I'm a tiny fish that um is, you know, swimming right through this thing's mouth, I feel like you could like escape patch out through the gill. I mean, that's why they have so many teeth for first grabbing you with the front set of jaws and then grinding you down with the second set of jaws. So I feel like by the time you

see a potential escape route through the gills. You've already been pulverized pretty bad. Because these guys have four hundred teeth, which you know, that's more than humans have. Um. Yeah, yeah, we have. We have easily half that. Um yeah, okay, yeah. So it's gonna say any fish that gets bit by the first jaws and then doesn't try to like escape through the gills, there's a word for that, and that's a quitter. That is, you know, counting your teeth before

they've hatched. I don't know, but yeah, a quitter fish. Um. But because of all this chomping and chewing, and they are truly vicious fish. They love to eat anything that moves, including their own species. They can be cannibals opportunistically. Um. But because of all of this, they do lose teeth. These they can be these little spine like teeth that just break off with all this chewing and chomping. But because they lose teeth so quickly, they also replace them.

So they lose and replace around a day, which is an insane turnover of teeth. Um. Okay, so what would if you replaced your teeth that quickly, Like if every day you like shed twenty teeth is there something that you would do with your teeth. Would you like to make a necklace out of them? Yeah? That makes sense, that's yeah, crown. I feel like we're hitting a point

where it's like a brooch. I would I feel like I would make it just like a shirt out of my own teeth Chaine mail out of teeth, Yeah, teeth Chaine mail, teeth gown. Imagine the sound as you rustle on by and your teeth gown. That genuinely gave me the shiver. It's basically like it's basically like your teeth grinding,

but like while you're moving and it's your clothes. Just yeah, that's a it's an interesting, uh, interesting situation to think about for a long period of time when you're in bed at night and it's dark and you look in the corner of the room and you think about someone wearing the teeth dress just slowly moving towards you. Um. Anyways, to talk about something less horrifying, how about a frilled shark that has rows and rows of teeth like fields

of corn. So. The frilled shark is an old old species of shark, sometimes called a living fossil due to its primitive form. They live near the ocean floor in the Pacific and Atlantic outer continental shelves. So these aren't exactly These aren't like deep deep sea fish, but you know they're they're deeper than like coastal fish. Um. They

like to eat fish, cephalopods and sea slugs. It's called a frilled shark because of the rows of gill slits that make them look like they've got these frilly sideburns. It's kind of cute. Um, you know, all things considered, Hey, frilled shark, take those sideburns back where they belong. The seventies got them. You have roasted this shark. Males can grow to be up to about five and a half feet or one point seven meters, and females can grow to be about six and a half feet or two

meters long. Another wind for feminism in the animal kingdom. I say that, ye, yes, I stand a frilled shark. Queen, Yes you toothy queen. So um, So what I like about the frill shark is like it looks like besides the frill sharks very large wind for feminism is um, it looks like the frilled sharks teeth have teeth, If it makes sense, Yeah, it kind of looks like that. It's like they're these trident shaped teeth, so like they have three prongs like a trident, and not only that,

but then there's a whole row of them. So it's uh, I would say in iimidating, um. They're these vertical rolls of pointy, tried and shaped teeth. There's about three hundred teeth in total in this mouth of theirs. How often do they shed their teeth? I don't know that, but I think like most sharks, they do shed them and then they can sort of replace them. So these rows may kind of push upwards over time as they're getting replaced. Like like most sharks do actually have teeth behind their

teeth that come in to replace the front teeth. They're just not as many as say the frilled shark, because these go back all the way down their mouths. I feel like, based on our previous animal, now I'm sizing up every shark's teeth to be like, what article of clothing would I turn that into? And I feel like, okay, yeah, I feel like pacific Ingrid's teeth, Like yeah, that'd probably make for like a really cool, like you know, chain mail shirt. I feel like, uh, frilled shark teeth. That's

like that's a crown. That's like a really nice crown because like it's like the tridents give it like a cool, like you know effect to it. Like I feel like that would be like I'm not saying I'm not saying that I would hold down a frilled shark and yank out their teeth to make my crown. I'm saying I would. I would hang out around one and as it like

its teeth naturally fall out, I wouldn't a crown. I like the the image of you just like hanging out with this frilled shark with like a little net, just being like, come on, eat the hard candy, Eat the hard candy. I need this. Come on your sideburns. Sorry about the sideburn burn. I think that so uh, they can actually extend their mouths. Their mouths and jaws are very flexible, and they can eat prey larger there and larger than their bodies by extending their jaws and distending

their bellies. Um. And so not only do they have these rows of trident teeth, but they have this flexible jaw that can just chomp down like a pac man, and it helps snag prey, so like once they've got it in their mouth, it's going to be hard for the prey to pull away from the shark because it is now sort of fish hooked in there. Yeah, they do.

Like looking at other pictures of frillish sharks, seem like an animal that is like all spine and no ribs, if that makes sense, and that like you can see that there's like a distinct spine, but then like everything else seems like I don't want to say structure lists, but like it kind of feels like, you know, it's like if you can bind a shark and a snake a little bit. Yeah, I mean that's an interesting observation because they are very very primitive. Uh they you know,

when you have these early fish. Some of the earliest fish didn't even have a spinal cord. They just have out of note a chord, and they were more of these kind of eel like not quite as bony, but more cartilage filled. Fish and sharks have a lot of cartilage, even the more evolved shark. But this one is pretty pretty primitive, pretty old. So yeah, it is even it does have a spine, but it is you know, there's a lot of this kind of these cartilignus cartilaginous structures.

You know, they have more of that snake or eel like structure than say a ray finned bony fish. Um um. Oh. And the other thing that their teeth can accomplish is, uh, some biologists think it may act as allure. So because

their teeth are so white and they come in these rows. Uh, that contrasting white and dark pattern is thought to maybe trick fish into thinking that there's some kind of food food or something interesting to look at, and so they wander closer to the mouth and then the last thing they know is like, hey, this is a mouth, and that's it. Lights out there there, They're done. Yeah, that

is something that I appreciate about. Like really, I think that that's something that you can say about like our last to fish, the pacific ingrid and the frilled shark, in that like, their mouths look very like I know that they're the mouths lilding creatures. So to call them organic seems obvious, But they seem like organic in like more of a natural environmental way. Like there's definitely a way with the pacific ingrid's mouth, which is very blue,

could look like a cave or something like that. And like same with the frilled shark's mouth. There's a lot of blacks, a lot of reds, Like the structures of the teeth kind of seemed like coral a little bit like where that could seem like it's you know, it's a safe space to hide and not the least safe space. Yeah, it is interesting. It like it kind of looks it looks like a plant, maybe like the spines of a cactus,

not the teeth of a fish. Yeah, for sure, speaking of teeth that look like other things or other teeth or teeth that shouldn't go in the animal that you think it should go in, sheep's head, sheep's head fish, uh have. I'm sorry to say it human like teeth. It looks like you photoshopped a bunch of human teeth onto a fish. And I don't like it. I don't like it one bit. Um. Yeah, you know, it's like speaking of it, viz. Line, somebody you got to give this fish line. Um, Joey is really on a roll

roasting these fish. Hey, I mean, look, somebody's got to what's that nice smell? It's Joey roasting a bunch of fish. Yeah, Look, if I can't roast them literally and eat them, I am going to roast them with jokes. Fair enough, fair enough. This is why I constantly have food poisoning. Is the way that I try to cook my meat is I just make fun of the animals. But yeah, something that's wild about the sheep said fish is that like, yeah, their mouth their teeth are very human like. Um. So

by extension, they're like, you know, their mouths. It looks like they have lips that are very human like. Um. But something that's crazy about them in very Uncanny Valley is they also have teeth, like on their tongues basically, yeah, teeth on the bottom of their their mouths, and teeth on the top of their mouths. Also, so teeth, it's

going back there. It's like if you had multiple rows of teeth on both the top and but yeah, on the top and the bottom of your mouth, instead of just one row on the top and one bottom, which is very freaky. It's very unsettling because it not only looks like human teeth, but way too many human teeth. Um. I also just like, I don't trust fish with human teeth. That's not right. That's probably why I really didn't like

that old movie shark Tail, Remember that? Yeah? Yeah, So basically what you're saying is that if a fish with human teeth was like Katie, will you co sign my loan? You'd be like, no, there's something about you and untrust. Yeah. No, I mean, like anyone else I would. But as a fish with teeth, no, yeah, other than their uncanny valley mouths, Sheep said fish are relatively normal looking gray and white striped fish that can grow to be a little over

a foot long about um point five meters. Uh. It's body is sort of disc shaped, but it's sort of like when its mouth is closed, it's a pretty normal looking fish. Uh. They're found along the coast of southwest Florida, which you know, of course, as well as the western Atlantic. But as soon as they open their horrible little mouths, they reveal that front row of human like teeth and then those rows of little nubby teeth. So they're not really sharp teeth, they're these sort of nubs, and they

actually use these teeth for grinding. So they like to eat barnacles, fiddler crabs, clams, oysters, and other small hard shelled prey, and so they use these like rows of teeth, sort of blunt teeth to grind the shells up so they can eat their prey, which you know, I don't know what's scarier like a sharp a bunch of sharp teeth or a bunch of dull teeth that just grinds you. Hey, rise and grind, I get it. Wait. Also, wait, we talked about this earlier as somebody who grinds their teeth,

and I'm speaking to somebody who also grinds their teeth. Um, do you look at this fish and feel like a sense of empathy or are you just like acculate with fire. Uh? Not empathy because they grind their teeth on purpose to get a delicious meal. More jealousy, because it's like if I had a bunch of if I had way more teeth right to grind, then I probably wouldn't wear down my My pathetic set of teeth is quickly. Yeah. Like, as we've established, you love grinding your teeth. It is

your favorite favorite thing to do. I love the sound, especially on the jaw fields. Apparently the sheep's had fish taste really good. But there's not a chance, no way I'm going to eat a fish that has a human mouth. That's no. Yeah, I mean that's sort of the like that's the mermaid conundrum, right, and that like if you eat, like what kind of meat is a mermaid? If you eat the top half of a mermaid? Is it human meat? If you eat the bottom half, is it fish meat?

Is it canimalism if you eat the top half? So yeah, I really I agree with you in that. Like, I like, if I saw a picture of this fish, I'd be like, that's way too close. Yeah, yeah, it's too much. It's too close to a mermaid that I wouldn't want to eat it. Related question, do you think the sheep's head fish floss is as much as they should? Uh? Uh? Now, Joey, they're fish, they don't they don't do that. Oh yeah,

speaking of fish, they definitely don't flies. So hey, Joey, I heard you like teeth, So I put some teeth on your teeth so you can chew while your chew. So that's my way of introducing the crab eater seal. So crab eater seals are adorable sea puppies with psychedelic nightmare teeth. Crab eater seals live in Antarctica and are very cute, blubbery little guys with light cream colored coats.

They grow up to over two meters so about six and a half feet long, and they weigh up to your round two hums around a four hundred and fifty pounds,

so you know, just a little bill, blubbery bobs of cuteness. Um. So what I love about crab eater or seals teeth is that, um, if you think back to like drawings of sea monsters, you know, in you know, kind of medieval times on maps, oftentimes those creatures would have like, yeah, weird teeth, horns and things like that, and like, you know, you can look at that and think about it as just like abject craziness. Um. But like I've seen, I think this exact drawing of a tooth on those old

medieval paintings. So it's like, you know, it kind of makes you think. It's just like, oh, do they just like see a crabber ear seal and like half remember what that's a dragon? Like get a crab eater or seal skelton. I was like, yeah, this is a seed dragon for sure, and I wouldn't blame them. So their teeth are these they curve backwards, so they are sort of this triangular shaped tooth that curl backwards. But then on the teeth they have smaller curved teeth jutting out

from them. And it's it's kind of interesting too because it's sort of like comb like and but it's kind of pretty almost in a weird way. The patterns these make it kind of looks like an mc essure drawing of sort of interlocking uh curves and then smaller interlocking curves like a Pacific linkad teeth are chainmail teeth and a frilled sharks teeth are our crown teeth. These are for sure necklace teeth right here. These are some high

quality necklace teeth. What's interesting is that you would think that then they would use these really wild like medieval sea dragon looking teeth to chomp into things, maybe like they're name like their crab eater seals. Maybe they use them to crack open crab shells, but actually they don't eat crabs. Whoever named this seal should be arrested. Um,

So they like to eat krill, not crabs. And krill, you know, it's one of the smallest, wimpiest creatures of the sea, So why do crab eater seals misnamed crab eater seals or maybe we should call them krill eater seals have such wild, dastardly looking teeth, and like a lot of our weird mouthed friends on this show, their teeth are actually used not for biting but for filtration.

So they use the same method that actually baling whales use where they second sea water and then push it out and filter out this teeny tiny krill, which it because their teeth with all these little protrusions actually for once they've clamped it down, forms this like sieve or sieve that the krill get trapped in, that the krill get trapped in wild the seawater can escape. Um. Something I feel like scientists don't think about enough in terms

of like evolution and why things evolve. Is just evolving so it looks the most metal as it can. So I feel like, yes, I'm sure these are. I'm sure these are. There's the practical use of filtration, which only makes sense, but also just like this is just nature being like, hey, you want to have a mouth that looks cool? Yeah? Yeah, man, I'd love to have these weird Fibonacci teeth honestly, Uh, those would be fun to grind.

Oh yeah. At the end of this, we have to have a rating of like would you grind it if you had these teeth, would you grind? Uh? Yeah, I mean I guess the sheep said. Fish in terms of grinding is probably you know, the one built the most for grinding. But yeah, no. So so these crabb eat

or seals amazing looking teeth. And I think it's also interesting because while these are definitely teeth and not something like bailen, whereas like bailen is actually made out of keratin, similar to the turtle and penguin mouths we talked about earlier. But you can see this convergent evolution of like two mammals who both separately made their way from the land back to the sea. Like seals and whales are actually

not that closely related. They both independently, uh, had a journey from land to see and then of those there's a seal that has also evolved a filtration system for krill, as did baleen whales, just using very different mouths. So I find that pretty interesting, pretty fascinating. It's sort of like, um, something that's something that's really fascinating to me is seeing the different technology that the Soviet Union and the United

States used in the space race. So like you see, um, like they built Soviet USSR space suits kind of like independently of United States space suits for like moonwalks. There's like, um, there's a Soviet Union moonlander moon were over that we're like not used because they didn't make it to the moon.

But it's like you can kind of see the thing of like, oh, these are both like coming, these are both doing the same job, but they're clearly coming from like different minds and schools of thought is to like how to do it, but they like don't look dissimilar. You know. Is that parallel of invention though? Or is it spying spycraft? Um, it's probably a little bit. So I guess what I'm saying is the crab eater seal. They've been spying on whales. They've probably been spying on

whales for a long time. Yeah, it's got them. We busted them. The last couple of animals I want to talk about, um, are not because of the teeth that they do have, but because of the teeth that they don't have, which is all of them so mammals without certain teeth or any teeth are known as identate mammals. All identate mammals lack canines and incisors, but some have

no teeth at all. Ant Eaters and pengulins have no teeth instead, they ditched their teeth for a long, sticky tongue instead, So ant eaters belong to the suborder vermin lingua, which actually means worm tongue. So I guess there either uh ant eaters are big Tolkien nerds or Tolkien was a big ant eater nerd b by Tolkien being an ant eater nerd. So they live in Central and South America, and there are multiple species, and they include the giant ant eater, the cute and tiny silky ant eater, the

Southern Tamandua, and the Northern Tamandua. Pengulans, meanwhile, are an instance of convergent evolution. They look a lot like an ant eater, but they live in sub Saharan Africa. Um they also have no teeth. They lap up ants with their really long sticky tongues, and their body shape is very similar to ant eaters, but additionally they have caratinous plates that armor their bodies like scale male armors, so they can curl up into a ball when threatened by

something like a lion. So so it's like their bodies covered in teeth. So here's how crazy it is. Here's how amazingly close these are in terms of their conversion evolution. So both pengulins and ant eaters have prehensile tails, both have extra sticky saliva for lapping up ants. Both have really long tongues and tube shaped mouths, and their tongues actually have a base way back near their stern um um.

Because like the high oid bone, which is where your tongue connects, actually has a bunch of muscle on it and it's the base of the tongue. But because they have such a long tongue, it doesn't all fit in

their mouths. So their high oid bone, for for pangul ins, their high high oid bone actually goes all the way down, uh, from their sternom down their abdomen, and like it's actually kind of this wishbone shape of these two prongs and then on those is all this muscle that can quickly retract and extend this really long tongue that sits in their mouth and throat but kind of folds up a little bit, whereas ant eaters also have a really long uh base of their tongue, but it just goes down

to their stern um um and also both ingest small stones to help grind up their food because even though they don't have teeth, it does help when they can get that grinding in and it helps them digest their food more efficiently. So yeah, So a question that I've got about this, and it's just based on the photo, is like, is the way that they eat like it it looks like their tongue is yeah, like kind of

in their abdomen a little bit. So did they essentially just like use their tongue to like grab ants and stuff like that, and then essentially their tongue deposits the ant into their stomach, deposits it into their throat and then down and then it goes down into their stomach. Yeah. Wow, that sounds like such a convenient way to eat. I mean I feel like that's how I eat cereal, just kind of like lapping it up. Yeah, I just like I don't even show it. I just try to cram

into my throat. I'm choking all the time. Yeah, I think I'm starting to understand why you might have needed in bus a line. Yeah, because I just don't use my teeth. I just try to like I just sort of guzzle down like entire fish or whatever I eat, like Heathcliff, where I just take a fish, put the entire thing into my mouth behind my teeth, and then pull out the skeleton. Yeah, yeah, that's I've seen you do that. It's it's very disturbing, more disturbing than like

when you take out your invisil line at lunch. Yeah, it's very much. It's really painful and it's not efficient. And I choke a lot, and uh do not cutting off your mouth to get them out with those fish bones? Oh yeah, cutting up my mouth a ton also, Like yeah, it's definitely not It's definitely a very painful process for like, I also have constant heartburn. This is not not good for whatever, not good for my insights to do this. But like, hey, I'm not going to learn a different

What am I going to use my teeth like a sucker? Meanwhile, here I am grinding down my teeth into a fine powder because it's fun, good habits all around. Well, before we go, I want to play a game. It's called the Mystery Animal Sound Game or Guess Who's talking or guess who's squawking? I guess so good, it's pretty good. Maybe I should change change my brand, my brand. So

last week's hint, um or sorry? Last week I played an animal sound and the hint was is it win she windshield wipers, an owl or someone trying to find his damsel in distress? And here is the sound. Yeah, so the question is was that windshield wipers, an owl or a man searching for his damsel in distress? I didn't say a man, I said someone, Oh got I gotta got it. Um, So I'm going to say that was okay, So I think it's the obvious answer is owl.

But the rain makes me think wind shield wipers. Well it's not wind shield wipers and it's not an owl, and but it is someone trying to find his damsel in distress. And here's another hint. Actually, what you think it sounds like rain is the popping and crackling of little shrimp clip cliping little claws. Wait, so okay, wait, so it's a So it's a person searching for their damsel in distress. Also, there are shrimp. There. I didn't say a person. I said someone searching for his damsel

in distress. Wait someone, wait, someone or something? I mean someone something, some kind of animal. So you know, we're all we're all, uh, we're all the brotherhood of life here on this on this planet. I'm so confused, Joe, it's an animal of some kind of making this sound? Oh, okay, is it? Is it a Balian shark? Um? I mean that's actually I shouldn't laugh at you. I was laughing at your tone because you were so scared. But no, that's not a it's not a bad guess. In fact,

you are right that it is a fish. Um, and it is actually a damselfish mating call. Oh I see what you did. Yeah. So it's incredible because we don't think of fish being able to make sounds underwater, but in fact they do. We just can't really hear it due to our human ears not being good underwater. Instead of using vocal cords, fish can make noise by wiggling their swim bladders or rubbing their fin bones against their

bodies like crickets. And I wish I had a swim bladder. Uh. The winner of last week's mystery animal sound game is ery L, who asked me if it was cheating if they found the same article that the sound was from. And no, it's not cheating. Go ahead and use Google. He's Google all the time, so not cheating. Great job. So now onto this week's mystery animal sound. This is the hint. It may be related to an elephant, but

you're in for a surprise when you see who's saying hello. Um, that sounds to me like, okay, so I heard like kind of a clip clop. So part of me wants to think that, wants to say that it's a horse, but like I think that that might be like a seal or something, maybe a crab eater seal with its weird teeth. I could have been the clip clopping is. Yeah. Well, the answer to this week's mystery animal sound game will

be revealed next week. Um and so if you think you know who is making this mystery sound, who is squawking, who is talking? You can write to me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com. I'm also on Instagram at Creature Feature Pod and on Twitter at Creature feet Pod. That's f e T not ev et is something very different Joey, thank you so much for gift and on the show, where what are you up to? And what can people fall work? Where the heck? Where the heck

are you? Where can people find me? Um? Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Um. You can follow me on Twitter at Joey Tageman. You can follow me on Instagram at Joey Cliff And uh, if you're listening to this and you're also straightening your teeth during the pandemic, uh, tweet at me and tell me how it's going. Tell me what trade you're on. Uh yeah, I guess. I guess it's a weird thing we're like because it's something

I'm constantly dealing with. I love talking about it. So I guess I'm a teeth straight and an influencer now sure, why not? Um so? And then things I'm working on. Um Katie mentioned I'm a writer such consulting producerper sperit Interest on Netflix that comes out sometime in two Um. I have a short film that's going through festivals right now called My First Native American Boyfriend that you can probably watch, you know, in a festival near you at

any point in the future. And Um, I just released an animated short through Comedy Central called how to Coporative Team changing its Native American mascot. It's about just like all the weird kind of things that people are going through now that like native mascots are changing for a good reason. So you can check that out on all comedy centrals, socials and uh yeah. Other than that, just you know, bombing and social media and you'll find out about all the crazy stuff I'm up too. Yes, please

do check those things out. Highly recommend, highly recommend. Uh and uh yeah, thank you guys so much for joining me today. If you're liking this show and you leave a writing and review, I really appreciate it, and I read all of them. I promise you I do read them, and I really appreciate all your feedback. Uh and thank you so much to the Space Classics for their super awesome song Exo Alumina. Creature features a production of I

Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the I Heart Radio app Apple podcast or Hey guess what where have you listened to your favorite shows? I do not judge you at all. See you next Wednesday.