Creature Kringletimes Special: Teeny Penguin Naps

Welcome to Creature Feature production of iHeart Radio. Creature Feature.

It's Creature Cringle Times, a holiday special about our furry friends. Today we'll learn how hibernation works and what's up with these chaby bears, snail hiberneters.

Slivers with fat taiales join us. Says we learn and love in their.

Sleepy little penguins perfect power naps. It's a sleepy, cozy winter time.

Welcome to Creature Feature production of iHeart Radio. I'm your host of Many Parasites Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and on today's special Cringle Time show, we're getting cozy and snugly and talking about the warl world's best, most creative, and most interesting sleepers. From hibernations to teeny naps, these winter animals know how to catch a few holiday z's.

Happy Creature Ring, Happy Creature Ring, a big Creature.

Joining me today is comedian and host of the podcast Jeff Has Cool Friends and Other great podcasts. Jeff May welcome.

Hey, I just woke up. This is great. Yeah, fact I just dehibernated. Be mad? Yeah.

What's your favorite way to get cozy during the winter. I mean, I think you're still in La, right, I am. It doesn't get too cold there, but it's still nice to get cozy.

So it actually gets really cold inside. I don't know if you remember La, but there's no insulation in any of the houses, so for example, like in my house right now, it's like the high fifties. So yeah, not what you would think would be great. I actually prefer a fireplace. Yeah, airplace. I had a fire last night. It was delightful. That really is something for me. It's getting pricey, getting a little pricey. The wood has gone up,

It's the best feeling. It's the best. I'm finally living somewhere where it does occasionally snow, which I love. And I also just like being inside watching either rain or snow. But you're cozy and you're warm, and you're under a blanket, maybe you even have a hot drink. It's just such a good feel. It's like this intense smugness about your position versus like the weather outside. It's like a very cozy smugness and I love it.

Yeah, it turns out that the weather outside is actually frightful.

Right, But the fire inside meanwhile, that's delightful, right, that can be delightful.

Yeah, no, I very much am that as a new Englander. Like snow is two is two things for me. One, it is a dangerous labor because you have to like shovel your driveway or you know, you have to drive extra specially careful carefully. I don't know I didn't add an adverb into that sentence. But then on top of that too, like being inside when it snows is the best, right Yeah, no, you like you forget you're just sitting there.

Yeah. I've never had a home while I lived, like a suburban home where I'd actually have to shovel snow or deal with it. So I've always just had a good time in the snow because i haven't had a car or home while being in an area with snow.

So that's the labor of snow.

Yeah, disappears right, exactly. But yeah, very very on theme, because today we are talking about animals who do their best to avoid the discomforts of winter in bad weather and we'll just sleep it off, but in very specific physiological ways. So first we're going to talk about bears and this idea of bear hibernation. Now there's going to be a twist here, so get ready for that. But first let's talk about fat Bear Week. So have you heard of fat Bear Week?

I love fat Bear Week so good. Of course, standard bear Week as a Massachusetts former Massachusetts residence Bear Week itself of course very popular in Provincetown in the summer. Fat Bear Week, that is a winter holiday.

The Fat Bear Week is a celebration by the Cadmeae National Park and Preserve in Alaska of the bears in the park putting on their winter weight. This year, it happened in October and ended on what the Park Service calls fat Bear Tuesday. So the way it works is that the public is allowed to watch the bears on these park cams and then vote online at fatbearweek dot org. Obviously, fat Bear Week has already happened, so a winner has

I love this, I love all this information, but I do feel like we did sort of gloss over the fact that they do Fat Bear Tuesday, yeah, which is what Mardi Gras d'Ors or something like that, like it's Mardi Gras, yeah, yeah, yeah. But for bears, I love. I love all of that energy in there. And I love that she just partied. She's got some bead around, beads around her neck, and she is just chasing dudes off. I love that about her.

Yes, and she and these bears. Every year, bears put on an enormous amount of weight in the summer and fall uh to survive the winter, and so the point of Fat Bear Week is to celebrate these bears and all their girth and you know, pick out one of the bears who has one. I mean, it's like, I don't think it's necessarily just a way in right, they're not because they're not weighing these bears. It's not all

Now, the photo that you shared first off, must hug bear. Yeah, bear, it's friend. And then the information that you shared bear is not friend.

Bear is not friend.

Yeah, it's also but also bear's friend.

This is the contradiction of bear. This is the biggest sort of like it is an The oxymoron of the bear is that they look like the world's most huggable animal, and in fact, they may be one of the world's least huggable animals in terms of the speed with which they could rind your bones from flesh and absolutely turn

Be like I'm going to feed myself to my favorite bear that I have put money on.

I become part of the bear. In reality, this would be really bad because then once the bear gets a taste of delicious human, it would probably go after other people and then they'd euthanize the bear.

It is it? Historically speaking, we don't taste great? Is that? Is that right?

Like?

I know that like sharks, sharks aren't actually fans of our flavor. It's I think it's a.

Fat to like bone ratio. And also we have clothing, and I think all of that is kind of off. But there are frogs legs, Yeah, there are, Yeah, we're a little We're just not It's like like with insects, right, like we are not used to eating insects. I mean some cultures, certainly they do eat insects. But when you're raised in a culture where you don't eat them, if someone's like, here, you have this cricket and you're like, ah, this kind of feels weird. But it doesn't mean the

Yeah, I mean in nature there's there's options, but if there's no options, they're like women to eat that obviously.

Right of course. Yeah, and bears will potentially eat people. I mean typically though, like even grizzly bears don't generally go after humans, but but they can. They will if, especially if they feel threatened or you try to get close to them.

Or they do a lot of cocaine.

Yeah, I know, there's that Cocaine Bear movie, which is really kind of I feel like a're really setting a bad example for bears, and I feel like we need to do like a dare program for bears like bear beardar to teach them that no cocaine is actually really bad for bears. Don't do it just because you saw a bear on the movies.

Maybe you could do it not being so lame.

Yeah, well you know.

With that, maybe stop trying to ruin the party.

You know, I just I want my bears thick and fat and full of salmon.

So bear body shaming are you because.

No I'm saying that, I'm I'm I'm just saying that the best bears are fat bears.

Okay, well I'm saying all bears are beautiful. So like mark that down. Put that in the notes for people when they listen.

To by bears. So why do these bears put on so much weight? It's not just to look amazing. It is which you can actually see these before after photos of these bears.

If you go to Rubenesque Bears.

They are Rubenesque bears. Go to explore dot org slash meet the dash Bears. I'll put that link in the footnotes. But yeah, it's really cool because you can see live streams of parks, old videos of bears like eating fish and stuff, and also the before after pictures of bears after having bulked up. But yeah, they put on this huge amount of fat so that they can get through the winter, and they go into this state of dormancy during the winter. This is often called hibernation. But if

You know what's funny is I have this weird, insane fear of being the bed. I don't know why, Like I've nevergett had then to have that fear, but I do. I have that fear. And so if that feeling, if I'm cozy in bed and that feeling hits, I'm like, I gotta do this or else I'm going to pee the bed and everyone will find out they'll have to buy a new mattress. Like I very much have that thought in my head at all.

I like to roll the dye. Someday it might burn me, but I like to roll that dye. Yeah. Actually, so with the with the urination for bears, they can still produce urea, but what they do is they recycle it into proteins and that means they don't have to pee and they there because while they're you know, in their state of torpor, they are converting the fat that they've built up into usable nutrients to keep them alive, to keep their muscle mouse from deteriorating. So they're living off

It's colloquialism at this point. Yeah, like it's a widely It's like when literally and figuratively are now interchangeable because the language has accepted it as.

So yeah, no, exactly, and it's like it's a subtle distinction, right, Like true hibernators their body temperature drops and bears theres don't. They can wake up easier, so it's like it's a subtle delineation.

My question for your New England listeners is when Katie said black Bear, did you guys immediately because of what we've been talking about, did all of you start thinking about Clark's Trading Post in New Hampshire. Because Clark's Trading Post is a very famous New England attraction that is propagated and sort of pushed as this big trained black

Is that the one where like the bears stand on their hind legs or something.

For They do a lot of stuff. They climb up poles for fun, they like roll around in barrels, they eat ice cream, they live like they do. I'm assuming that the version of ice cream that they have is something that they make for the bears. I'm not going to pretend that I know enough about Clark's Trading Post to guarantee you that these are not abused bears. But what I can tell you is I have seen the bears many times.

Yeah, I mean yeah, I don't want to make any judgments not knowing exactly what what it is, but in general, I'm skeptical. I'm always skeptical of like when animals are in entertainment, like SeaWorld or this Clark's Trading Post.

But yeah, and nothing can be like, oh, well, we've been doing it for so long. I'm like, yeah, that kind of makes me feel like, you guys did it worse? Yeah, yeah, it's Clark's Bears. Do they call it Clark's Bears now? They literally changed the name named Clark's Trading Post until twenty nineteen. This is huge.

I mean, it does make sense if your main thing is bears to have bears in the title, because like when it's like Clark's Trading Post, that sounds super boring. If you're like Clark's Bears that eat ice cream, now you've got something.

If you do a quick cursory Google image search, the second photo will give you the entire gist of what Clark's Bears. I hate saying that Clark's Trading Post is all about because there's like a weird mountain man that like chases the train tour, there's trained bears. It is a glorious experience. And coming on here talking about bears, I would feel like it was my duty to at least say there is an absolute trained bear theme park that was from my health.

There's like a bear in a small car. Look, I'm not gonna lie and say like I don't get some kind of you know, enjoyment out of seeing a bear in a tiny car. But I don't think this is probably the best thing.

For the bears, probably not the most ethical.

Not probably not the most ethical thing for these bears.

I get it, you know, like I understand that they're my footprints are bloody in the world of of of consumption and entertainment, I recognize this.

Yeah, I mean you know this is this is exploitation is woven into the fabric of America. What can you say, but uh, but in this uh, in this paper, I know, I know, like talking about bears in tiny cars sounds really interesting. But what about it paper on the Eurothelium, Jeff, does that not also sound Yeah? Exactly so. So they My point in bringing up this paper is that it actually so they like were doing studies of the bear urinary track because of this interesting way in which these

I worked at a trucking company where a truck driver ran over a bear. Oh yeah, and just like didn't report it. He just kept going realized and then like immediately all of his lights went on, just like Abbs destroyed his truck. Yeah no, he ran over a bear.

Yeah you can't. I also think you have to report it, right if.

You hit a bear, you'd think so, And I think he thought he might.

Not have to and then do I'm pretty sure.

Well, especially if you're a bear law doctor, trailer shuts down and you're like, well, there's no way of getting around this, I hit a bear.

Yeah, yeah, so that's very unfortunate. But there were some bears that were euthanized because they were called nuisance bears, which I guess is the technical term for bears who are interacting with humans in a less than ideal way. Col bears, no exactly, I mean rebel bears, bear rebels without a cause.

I just add out some pause.

Yeah, I mean pretty sure they don't have pause anymore. They've probably been have some other researchers studying bear pause, but yeah, I mean it is. It's one of those things where it's like I get it right, Like if you have a bear who's going around neighborhoods, you know, getting into stuff and like interacting with humans or being aggressive, Like I get why they have to euthanize them, but like, do we have to add insult to injury by calling

You know what I mean, Yeah, they got to do what deer did and just create a new disease for to combat suburban sprawl. Like lime disease exists because the deer were like, screw these guys starting Connecticut, by the way, another New England tradition. Oh yeah, bears and lime disease. Is there nothing we can't do, Like.

There are a ton of lime in Martha's vineyard. Probably I think there's like because like it's like weird. It's something that like there's a lot of lime disease and like wealthy people because they all get it from Martha's vineyard or somewhere nearby.

Yeah, it would make sense too, because here's the here's the tragedy is the more outside you are, the more apt you are to get it because deer ticks are a much harder to spot tick, yeah than your standard would tick. So yeah, so we would, we would. We were taught, you know, because I grew up in the eighties and nineties, so that was when lime disease was like all the rage. Yeah, so so we were we had to be very very careful to look out for those and my brother ended up getting it.

Oh oh no, I'm sorry, it's his fault.

These bears. However, they're not nuisances. They're just cool.

Yeah, I know, like calling them like nuisance bears, it's like, could we call them something else, like, you know, yeah, cool bears.

The spirits had to take out some cool bears and everybody would get it.

Yeah, like we had to ethanize the bear for being too cool, which is a tragedy, but you know what I mean, like, yeah, this is like the this is the body and Clyde of bears. It's you know, so yeah, I get it. I get why they have to use the nize them, but can we give them a nicer label? Anyways, So after winter, bears will emerge from their dens and their metabolism will slowly kick back into gear. Sometimes they will lap up snow fleas to kind of like as

Honestly, I mean, let's give that a dry let's call saltan straw and have the next flavor saltan straw.

So I miss saltan stra so much. I think it's a California thing, right.

It's a West Coast thing. I believe it's actually a Portland thing to say.

Okay, okay, so it's a West Coast thing. Man, if you live on the West Coast or you visit the West Coast, saltan Straw is the best ice cream place I've ever been.

To the Land of Gelato, yes.

But honestly, like look no offense to to northern Italy where there is some amazing gelato, saltan straw is still really holds its like it's really good. Also, like in the US they know how to make waffle cones really well, whereas here it's much more rare that you get a pasta because they're made out of dry pasta, like they.

Kind of ice cream.

We have a basket, yeah, they we have like a basket out of pasta. No. I mean, you know, the gelato's great, especially in Florence. But you know, like, honestly, America, you got some amazing ice cream there, so be proud.

Yeah, we have nailed the tastiest, most absolutely terrible.

Food, right, which is why these bears are eating it at the trading post.

A bear sitting there eating like ice cream and a grilled cheese or like, this doesn't seem like this is the thing they should be eating. Probably not fairy. Is dairy a big thing for bears? Because I don't really see how that would.

Think so, But you know, I still feel like if I saw a nose deep into a tub of ice cream, be like, you know what? Good for her?

Yeah?

Let it out, girl, be there in your feelings.

You've had a week. Yeah, you've earned.

This, you've earned this. Well, we are going to take a quick break, but don't go to sleep. When we come back, we're going to talk about a couple true hibernators that are perhaps not what you typically think of when you think hibernation. So, Jeff, did you know that snails hibernate?

Are they true hibernator?

They are true hibernators. They also estivate, so estivation is hibernation, but during hot or dry seasons. So both terrestrial and aquatic species of snails can hibernate when the temperature gets too low and estivate when the season gets too hot

You have anti freeze in your blood. Sounds like a grinch lyric that didn't make it into the song.

It does, doesn't it? Man? I can hear the voice too, Can you do the voice?

Earl Thurl ravenscrop It's Tony the Tiger.

Oh he did, Tony the Tiger.

Yeah, if you listen to the song, it's literally Tony the Tiger's voice. He doesn't, he doesn't really alert in your soul, mister.

Oh my god, oh my god, my mind has been blown.

Two huge Christmas songs. Sorry, I always have to bring Christmas into it. Two huge Christmas songs are named are sung by people whose last name whose names are you are l. We have Burl Eves and Thorough Ravenscroft, and those are two names you do not hear every Berlin Thurrele are responsible for a good I'd say ten percent of your holiday listening.

Berlin Thurle sounds like an artisan like sheets company, like a company that makes sheets, like wool sheets for your bed, and it's already yeah.

They're not that comfortable, but they're like, yeah, they're sustainable, and then you're like all right, and then you try to sleep in them, you're like, this was a huge mistake.

Itchy, but it costs five hundred dollars, so you do use it all the time. Burl and Thurle, the sponsor of this this week's podcast Berlin use code Creature to get ten percent off the itchiest blankets you'll ever have. But they're made out of one hundred percent human hair at Gosophical Rash, ethically sourced rat hair. So yeah, this is these snails drop their metabolic rate. They have this

Some would say that adding another mucous membrane onto your body is gross, and I would say, you're not a snail.

Yeah, you're not a snail. You're not thinking snail.

You got to think you're thinking people.

Yeah, I don't know how.

I probably wouldn't do great with an additional mucus membrane on me, But not a snail.

Yeah, I mean, like, I don't. The other cool thing about this mucous membrane, this epiphragm, is that they can use it to stick onto things. So have you ever like had a snail and it's like inside its shell, you can't see any of the like meat, of the snail. You're trying to pull it off of like a tree or a rock, but it's like stuck.

No, you know what, I didn't have access to snails when I was a kid. We had slugs, but no snails.

Oh, I'm so sorry. That's that's a terrible childhood to not have snails.

It is, well, we made up for it with the lime disease in the transmit. Well, I have lots of childhood experience somehow.

San Diego, we had a lot of snails and I would, I guess, harass the snails a lot. I was curious, and so I would try to like pick them up, but they'd be like stuck, and so you kind of like try to pull them off and like it. They'd be like the suction and like you could kind of rip them off. But I'd kind of feel bad when I would do that because it feels like, oh, I did something, I broke something. Well, what that is is

Yeah, So come on, guys, you know how this works. You know words, this is academia come on, yeah.

I mean, to be fair, a lot of academic papers are very difficult to understand, and dare I say it sometimes written poorly in a way that's hard to comprehend. But yeah, still like, uh, this seems to be wrong. If someone out there is like, hey, I actually know where this comes from, or that you think it is real and you have a source, you could send that to me. I would love to be wrong about this because hibernating for three years as a snail sounds super chill. That's like ultimate cozy.

I just don't It also seems a little wasteful, like how long are you living, man.

I don't know, three and a half years.

We might want to readjust what we're doing with our time here? Our time management needs to be fixed.

Maybe the snail shell is like a pokey ball and there's like a whole universe in there though, you know what I mean, Like to the snail, this could.

Be what an effective Pokemon that would be right to get out immediately gets pikachuwed to death? All right, it didn't react quick enough.

It's well, you know, snails have their strengths. Combat is not generally one of them.

But you know, I mean, to be fair, there might be a snail Pokemon that I have no idea.

There has to be there. I'm googling snail Pokemon because there there has to be snail Pokemon. It's like weirdly, Uh, there's mag mag Cargo, which is a magnum snail. It looks like it's made out of lava an obsidian.

I mean that sounds like a pretty bad ass snail. Yeah, there you go, so subsidian and lava snail. There's some going to pick that one up off a tree.

There's some aquatic looking snails like Ohmannite omanite. Yeah.

Have you ever done a creek feature that was just like sort of about the sort of apocrypha of pokemony just play it a real episode?

Well no, So I actually had Ellen Weatherford, she hosts a podcast called Just the Zoo of Us, and we talked about Pokemon and then like the real life animals that are seem to either have inspired these Pokemon or by coincidence, these Pokemon are very much like real life animals.

So or that or that one magician that sued Pokemon.

Someone sued Pokemon.

Yeah, Urigeller. Urigeller had like an injunction on one of the characters because it was clearly a dig on him. It was like this really corrupt It was this corrupt magician that would like hold a spoon and he was famous for like us as a spoon bender that ended up becoming sort of revealed as a fraud.

Huh.

And yeah, it was this whole thing. He'd like just he just rescinded the lawsuit like very recently.

But I thought that was like a I thought that the fake spoon bending was like a classic thing, right.

Like I think it's because of your igeller. Really yeah, I think it was like a whole thing with Carson. Yeah. Well, I mean I think it was like famously like that's where like he's the fame famously debunked magician and it was like this big scandal and uh so he like just recently rescinded his lawsuit or complaint and like apologized to like the children of the world for like has.

He apologized to spoons, because like what the hell of the spoon's done that He's just like I'm gonna bend this perfectly good spoon.

I mean, I don't know, the spoons not have feelings? Am I a utensilist? If I say that, I just.

Think it's sad to be a spoon and then not get used for ice cream instead get bent by a jerk.

Or get kidnapped by a dish.

Right man, the dish ran away with that spoon, But did it ask the spoon for It's what it wanted to do? I don't think so. So. Yeah, snails, they can hibernate and uh with that anti freeze in their hemal lymph and but they do not. I have not seen anything to indicate they can hibernate for three years. They can hibernate for around four months, which I still think is pretty impressive. Now we're going, yeah, no, that's good man, Like, why are we making stuff up? That's

I don't feel like I need to guess on this one. I feel like it's pretty much been established that this is where they store their fat and nutrients, yes, for their torpor or their their hibernation or whatever.

They can do exactly exactly, so these can be considered true hibernators because they kind of meet all the requirements. Their metabolism slows down, their heart rate, breathing all slows down, and their temperature drops, and that fat tail allows them to hibernate without needing to feed. So just as bears developed that big belly for winter, these dwarf flamers developed this like fat tail. They put all their fat in

What what what Mada Gascar movie? Do they address that in?

Oh gosh, you know what? Like they have so many fun like like actual animals in those movies, like fosses and a bunch of different lemurs who I think I think basically all of the lemur characters are actual lemurs, Like, yeah, I don't think they made any lemurs up. And there's a lot of them, like Matta Gascar is lemur Land essentially so that there could.

Definitely eat ice cream and they play around in barrel.

Pretty much the closest thing lemurs get to a resort. But yeah, like it's it's like a lot of these these lemurs are endemic to Madagascar, meaning they're not found anywhere else. So there is this research center called Duke Lemur Center, and they've done a lot of research on lemurs in general, including these fat tailed dwarf lemers.

You say Duke, you just mean like Duke University.

Yeah, but it's Duke Lemur Center. Be fun, Yeah, and you know what, Like I feel like I would I would love to be a card carrying member of the Duke Lemur Center. So they've done all this research on these dwarf fat tailed dwarf lemurs. It's actually really cute because they have they have like lemurs that they studied

I really do? I really do want them.

That's what That's how I like. Whenever I'm like working with my plumbing, I'm like, man, I wish I could shrink down and curl up and go to sleep in this you trap.

Yeah. I hope they don't fall asleep in a potato gun though, because that could be a problem, could be a.

Problem, could be really cool, but you know, just a matter of perspective. So yeah, the their research has found that these uh fat tailed dwarf lemurs can rouse from hibernation every six to two days and hibernate for up to seven months. So just because you're hibernating doesn't mean you can't occasionally, like wake up during the winter. Like some hibernators, especially like smaller hibernators, will wake up occasionally to move around, maybe even eat something like if they

Go to sleep with my big fat tail.

Yeah, just wrap that, man. You could also use it as a pillow. It's just it's such a good idea, like this is.

Yeah, it's a lot of opportunities with that.

Yeah.

No, absolutely, I store the food I eat in my ass a lot too, So that makes it, does it?

Is? You know like Thanksgiving butt is a more comfortable butt.

I gotta say, yeah, you're we're in prime. But right now, these these these months that we've been in, you know, it's just like really we're getting ready to hibernate as.

Humans, though we don't really get to. We don't like store all our fat like in one perfect pillowy location. It goes wherever it goes, usually based on a combination of genetics and your activity or whatever. But it would be really nice if it's like, yeah, I just want my fat to go in like my butt or my tail so I can use it as a pillow. So yeah, I feel like these dwarf lemurs really have it figured

I mean, that's it's pretty great. That's like college I mean college athlete level.

I mean, I know that some people can't hold their breath for a really long time, like they're divers who like work on it and practice it. I think there are some divers who can get near that level, right of holding your breath for that long.

Yeah, I know that they're like like three minutes tends to be like the a big threshold for people like your average person. And then it was it ranks up. I remember I was running for a while and I got my heart rate tested when I was running, and it was like really good. It was like forty two beats a minute or something like that.

Nice.

It was like really impressive. My breath holding is so bad. I don't know how to do it. T train it. I'm like, I don't think I can.

Yeah, I just I did a quick Google search and apparently, like there are some professional divers who have held their breath for over twenty minutes, which is just ridiculous. You can't do you can't. I want to caution everyone, you cannot do that. You can't, just like you cannot decide I'm going to go try to do that. There have been people who have drowned trying to hold their breath in the pool, Like people who are practicing, like say they want to be a good surfer or a good

To hold your breath in the Victorian age.

Anyways, we're gonna take a quick break and when we get back, we're gonna talk about penguin micro sleeps. All right, we are back, and Jeff, penguins are cute.

Right, I think that, well sort of. There's that one with the red eyes and the yellow.

Hair like a rock hopper penguin.

Yeah, yeah, I'm gonna say no that that's an ugly ass penguin.

Well, chin strap penguins are some of the cutest penguins. They They are these little guys who live on islands near the Antarctic or Southern Pacific Ocean waters. They have this characteristic strap of black feathers that go under their chin, and then they also have like a black cap on their heads, so it looks like they're wearing like a little black helmet with like a chin strap.

It looks like they have little cartoon faces.

They're adorable and I must have one. I must, I must illegally acquire this penguin. So uh, they they are adorable. Uh and they are, but they're they're not the biggest penguins.

Uh.

And they have a lot of stuff to worry about. So how do they get a good night's sleep? Well, there was some research by Leborel a all, sorry, let me do that again because I got too French with that Liborel at all, who strapped sensors onto the chin straps. So they already got their chin straps. Now they got sensor straps. These are strapped strap penguins.

Uh.

And they measured their brain activity and motion. They used like this remote electro encephalogram uh. And they found that the penguins engaged in my grow sleeps, which were four second long bouts of dozing, so like four second naps around ten thousand times a day.

Well, okay, like in my head, I'm like is there, I'm like doing the medal? Are there forty thousand seconds?

Yeah? That's forty no, no, yeah, there are forty thousand seconds in a day because this is about eleven hours of tiny naps.

Yeah, so there's ninety thousand seconds in a day. Roughly. Yeah, yes, that map is probably wrong.

Math No, that sounds right ish almost sure almost so. Yeah, forty thousand seconds of tiny naps, which is about eleven hours total of tiny naps. And so this is really interesting, right because you'd think, like, well, but sleep in order to be good sleep, you need like long sleep. You need to like really kind of get into it. You can't just have like little tiny sleeps.

Well like little Einstein's right line stegns, wasn't that his thing?

Like, yeah, little naps, little cat naps, that's.

True, called catnaps, penguin naps.

We should call them penguin naps.

I guess sittin chaps. Chin strap penguin nap.

Yeah, that's like a really fast one that's like head down on the table and then you lift it back up so fast you get whiplash.

So that means that you fell asleep and then hit the table.

And then you're like, that's a chin strap nap. So, uh the yeah, they found that these penguins were still able to successfully nest, forage all the normal penguin behaviors. Uh. So the question is, well, why are they doing these micro sleeps rather than like just a full night of sleep or even like an hour nap at a time.

Delightful.

It does. I feel like human, like new human parents would be really envious of these micro sleeps.

This is how I sleep on planes, by the way.

Oh yeah, oh it's so weird man. Plane sleep where you fall asleep and then you wake up and you're like that must have been an hour and you look at the clock and it's like that was five minutes.

Three minutes. Yeah, yeah, I always think I can, Like whenever I would go home, I used to take the Red Eye and I would be like, you know, I'm going to sleep on the plane. This time. It turns out I'm too big to sleep. Yeah, Like there's no comfort when you're when you're of a certain height, like you can't comfortably sleep, there's no like you're it messes every part of your body up. And I was so stupid I forget every time, so all of my sleepes would be like me falling asleeping and wake up and

I very much sympathize. I am a small and compact person, so I can sleep on planes. But my husband is not, and he he has a lot of trouble just even kind of like sitting planes are really like made for us sort of average smaller folk, which I think is unfair.

It's like turn of the century Eastern European factory workers, right, Like that's exactly like that's when I was like house shopping back in Massachusetts, Like that's who the houses were made for half the time. So I like wouldn't fit in the room because I'd be like this is for where the tallest person was five to nine, And I'd be like, that's fair. I can't walk through this house. I'm not going to pay money for it, right, same thing with planes, Like it's tough. These penguins, however, they

Smell horrible, but I'd love it.

Like probably it would probably be very cold in there.

It would smell like rotting fish, probably like fish arts essentially.

Like a Spirit airline, just like.

Spirit airlines, so it wouldn't be that different actually, So yeah, that is an amazing superpower that these chin strap penguins have. I'm incredibly jealous, and I'm actually a very good napper, but my naps tend to be longer, like about an hour at least at a time, like I wish I could do really short naps. I'm sorry, I love napping so much.

If the sun is out, I'm awake, Like, for example, like I woke up at five thirty this morning, not by choice, but I because I'm an early morning person, and once if the sun peaks through my window, my brain is immediately like you're up. And I've tried.

I'm a little jealous of that. I have struggle a lot with like maintaining a good sleep schedule.

I don't have a good sleep schedule. Lessons like you know, I found it out. I found that out I had done during college. I got two good paying jobs that were on opposite ends of the day. I was so at night, I was a doc worker, so I was a forklift operator basically from like six pm till ten pm, and then I was a mail sorter the next morning. Every and I would have to arrive at four am to the post office. And I was like, well, I'll just sleep four hours at night and then four hours

Well some of them do do that, like you know.

Yeah, like cartoon Ones. Yeah yeah, it was like yeah one sometimes. But yeah, so that was that was how I found that out. So I'm jealous. Anytime you mentioned somebody being able to nap, I'm super super jealous because I'm like, I wish I could do that.

We got to like inject you with some like uh chin strap NA.

Penguin DNA. Yeah, of man have penguin. Yeah, I think that would just be the penguin.

Right, You'd just be the penguin, but instead of like kidnapping people, you would just be napping in your house.

Wave the kids out of it.

Well, before we go, we got to play a little game called Guess Who's squawk in the Mystery Animal Sound game. Every week I play a mystery sound that you the listener, and you the guests, try to guess who is making that sound. Last week's mystery animal sound hint was this, don't add this fuzzy fellow to your fruit salad. All right, So you said you think you know the answer, can you I do?

Is this a Southern Hemisphere animal?

Uh? Yes?

Is it a bird?

Yes?

Is it a kiwi?

It is? Indeed? Good job, awesome. Congratulations to the fastest three gissers, Michael D, Jared M and Grant W.

Good fun story. I eat kiwi fruit with the skin on. Oh what Yeah, I wash the skin and then I eat it. It's very tart and so it actually mixes really well with the sweetness of.

The kiwi is fuzzy, man, that.

Doesn't matter, So what no like honestly though, I know people probably think I'm a psychopath. I eat kiwis like a little apple, and I gotta tell you, the tartness of the skin mixed with the sweetness of the kiwi is so gosh darn delicious. And nobody's got like everybody listening to this is grossed out by it. Yeah, but I'm telling you it's amazing.

I mean, look, you'll get no argument for me that tartness is good. The hairiness, man, it's quick. I can't even deal with hair on a peach let alone a kiwi.

Okay, Well, if you can't handle a peach, then yeah, this is not for you.

Makes my teeth feel bad, like you like scraped the peach with your front teeth. It makes me want to rip my teeth out of my skull.

I like it.

I hate that low Anyways, this is a key.

We you're like Anyways, It's like mochi. Mochi is basically ice cream covered in people's skin.

It's the I can't do it. I can't do the texture of mochi either.

So there's something that is skin that is people skin like people. They have approximated people's skin in the exact perfect.

Way they are. They look good, but they feel bad in the mouth for me. So yeah. Kiwi birds which I would not put in my mouth because of the fuzziness. Uh. This is fantastic audio of a Kiwi call, which is very hard to on camera. This is captured by the Russell Nature Walks. It took them like three years to get this on video. I'll have the link in the show notes. This is a male Kiwi calling for his mate. Kiwis are from New Zealand. They are flightless birds with fuzzy,

That was like me with my mom. Oh god, I'm so tiny, and I came out pounds nine and a half.

Oundsh ah, your mom's like the human kiwi.

Yeah, my mom like like non pregnant. My mom weighed under one hundred pounds. Oh man, I came out ten nine and a half. That's a crime.

You're just like the alien chest burster.

Yeah yeah, I did actually get you could kind of. I got my foot caught in her rib so you could see like the like a little indentation of a foot at one point in time. So like, yeah, I guess that's probably pretty accurate. No, it's bad, it's bad. My mom. My mother is a saint for giving birth to me, because you was just like.

Do you just reign presence upon her on Mother's Day? Just complete like she's a florist.

Mother's Day is a bad day for her. Oh no, but her gift is that she gets to make the sacrifice. My mom loves loves being like a martyr. So like the fact that she gets to sacrifice her Mother's day for all of the other mothers, Well, it's the best kiss gift she could have ever gotten.

Well, I guess, uh, I guess you kind of have to be a martyr tod cut to uh be a human kiwi bird. I mean that very respectfully and respectfully.

So that's that is very true. She's great. She makes that exact same call, and she taught me.

It's it's a beautiful call. Onto this week's mystery animal sound. The hint is this, these are the best friends to have in a gorilla style snowball fight. All right. Any guesses when.

You said gorilla style you said g U E r I or is that like a homonym thing that we're doing right there?

No gorilla style like warfare, not talking about gorillas the animal.

Okay, Because I was going to say from the hint, only I would have said a Japanese macake or cock. I forget what that monkeys are.

Yeah, but no it's not not gorilla like like, okay, it is not a gorilla. I'll give you that played the sound one more time, Yes, yes I can.

I don't know that. The best guess I had was Japanese macachu.

That is a very good guest. Well, we will find out next time on Creature Feature who is making this sound? If you think you know out there, you can write to me at Creature Feature pot at GML dot com. You can also write to me your questions, your pictures of animals, your pets, whatever. Jeff, where can on people find you?

Well, you can find me across all social media, including my YouTube at hate Their Jeff Row. I do a lot of really neat stuff. I mean, obviously we brought up Jeff has cool friends. I do the great show Tom and Jeff watch Batman with Tom Ryman, Yeah, game employed. I do a lot of shows with Adam Todd Brown on that you Don't Even Like podcast network, such as you Don't Even Like Sports, which is a sports podcast for people that hate sports.

Lots of fun that ironie, it's a lot.

It's most of our fans, It's why we did Why We did that show Jeff has Cool Friends. If you listen to that, you can also hear the Amazing Nerd with Dre Alvarez, which is also under the Jeff Has Cool Friends umbrella, and at patreon dot com slash Jeff May, you can act early access to unsunsed episodes with bonus content, including the exclusive ug Fine with Kim Krawl. So that's podcast.

You luck Man. I would love to watch videos of people just like cutting soap up into little pieces. So oh that sounds great.

Oh the sounds yeah. So there is an ASMR aspect when you open up a pack of trading cards as well, But like man, just it's so fun opening those cards and I give them away to follow up my Patreon. But it's just so fun, like it's just this glory of it's like the first childhood form of gambling.

God as a kid, because you're like that it is actually it's like literally gambling though. That's the thing is, it's like it is actually gambling, but you know, but for Pokemon or whatever other trading cards. Yeah, that sounds fantastic. Do check those out. Jeff is a fantastic podcaster. And if you enjoy any of those shows, thank Jeff's mother for giving birth to a frighteningly large baby.

My poor mother, Katie. It was a blast having you on. You're an absolute delight and even though we are across the world, I'm glad we are so yes right now.

Yeah, and thank you so much for coming on, And thank you guys out there for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you leave a rating and review, that is that really helps the podcast and I read every single review. Hope you're all having a great winter time, and thank you so much to the Space Cossacks for their super awesome song Xolumina. I hope you're all cozy out there ready for your winter Hibernation, Happy Creature, Kringled Times Everyone, and uh go hug a Bear, Don't do that.