Creaturekringletimes Special 2020!

and love. Die Heart is a Christmas movie. Yes, I know me to work his Nature's John McClay Creature Feature the holiday special, but we will not missing the all time, I promise, damn miss and happy holidays everyone at me, Katie Golden, your host a many parasites. On this holiday special, we will explore three holiday classics Rudolf the Red Nose Reindeer, Diehard in the Santa Claus and recast the leading roles as even more incredible real life animals Cream Good Creature.

Joining me today is writer producer friend of the show, Friend of all the animals except maybe swarms of creepy bugs, Joel Money. Hi, Katie, how are you doing great? Welcome back. I'm so excited. I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having me. I've missed you so much, so much. The animal facts have still been coming though, keeping on top of everything, getting warming up on the birds. You know,

I feel like they are beautiful. Obviously that's been proven, and you know, maybe they don't all want to kill me. It's just the ravens. We have slowly, slowly been working on Joel on her distrust of birds to really have her accept birds, as you know, are inevitable overlords. You know they will they will take over the planet once humans have had our time in the sun. We don't want to have, like, in any kind of animosity with our overlord. So I'm trying to get into like a good, friendly,

accepting space. You don't want to burn any bridges, even though I don't think birds really need bridges, but you don't. You still don't want to burn them. You know what if the birds burn the bridges to take control over right right there, bridges, the birds are like if only you had rings. I think that's probably how it's gonna go down when the the inevitable bird revelution incomes. But this episode is actually not about the bird revolution but

about the holiday times. Happy creature, Happy creature Kringle times is what I like to say, our our nondenominational holidays celebrating all things winter, animals, and magical. And last year on the show, we used our creature Kringle Time Special to build a better Santa out of animal dna. We called him hydro casocrotal clause, who is not sound like a child friendly Santa, hear me out. It is a hybrid of immortal Hydras, which is a Niderian, which is

this little sea creature that's related to jellyfish. Also a hybrid of the cats acotalist north ropi, which is the largest flying dinosaur ever to exist, which was the size of a small airplane. Oh lord, yes, Also it's got some crow dna because, as we know, crows have excellent memories and can remember everyone who's wronged them. Yes, they hold grudges. They hold grudges. Researchers have found that if you wrong a crow, uh, they will remember and pass

it down for generations. So that way, don't do that. That way Santa knows who's naughty and nice and remembers forever. Uh So yeah, basically a giant, flying, immortal bird dinosaur who knows if you've been naughty or nice, which is basically Santa. Right, it sounds cute, thank you. Well, this year we are actually going to talk about some classic holiday films and recast the leading roles as animals who I think may actually be better than the original actors

who were in these films. Oh my god, I love this idea. So we are gonna be talking Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer. We're gonna be talking about die Hard, which is apparently Christmas movie. A lot of people say it's Christmas Movies movie, and I will fight anybody who says differently. I'm not going to fight you on this. I'm not sure. I'm not scared. I'm not scared. I

just agree. I'm so glad. No. But and then we will talk about the Santa Claus, the classic Tim Allen movie where it is sort of a body horror where Tim Allan turns into Santa. Uh. Never thought of the Santa Claus as a body horror kind of. Yeah, it horrified me as like I could, and so I categorize it, you know, up with Cronenberg's The fly S horror movie. No way, I would read like a five page essay on how the Santa Claus is a body board. Well, if you look at my blog spot now. So yeah,

So let's in part one. We're going to talk about Rudolph the Red Nails Reindeer. So that classic, classic story, classic stop motion, slightly disturbing movie. It's always funny to me whenever there are these articles that are like, did you know that Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer is actually a disturbing movie because it has some conflict in it and stuff, And it's like, yeah, all kids movies have

weird things in it. The lion King, the dad dies, bamby mom dies like so many right off street baby who discovers the body in the middle of the forest. It's awful. We are back the classic Steven Spielberg movie, like crazy old dudes who stock children and force him to join the circus children. My god, I'd forgotten that movie. But you're totally right. It's so oh my gosh. First of all, listen and I think you're too far our track, but we're back to one of my favorite childhood movies.

It's not a great movie, but it is a moment when Steven Spielberg is so obsessed with dinosaurs. He makes two movies in the same year, About and a Sour features Jurassic Park pretty heavily in the background of We're back, and it's just and it uses a lot of the same dinosaurs from Dressy Parks. Tops and a t Rex are like the main feature dinosaurs, and then even the last raptor too. It's just it's like neard to be in that mindset of like, how would we deliver drastic

parks to kids? When Jasson Park essentially became a kids movie, At least in my household, we were like massively consuming it. But it but it was scary. There was some listen, We're back genuinely will horrify your child. This is all to say that Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer politics of the movie aside, Like yeah, it's not all kids movies

are disturbing. Oh, speaking of Christmas dinosaurs, I got some wrapping paper that has Santa dinosaurs on it and I'm trying to make a minora that's like a Stegosaurus Manora, a Stegga minoras. So I don't know why. I don't know why, but I love Holidays are going to be dinosaur themed and we need crafts and enjoy right now? Can we needna yes to put it all together more than ever before. We need dinosaurs. But we're actually going to talk about some animals that are stranger than dinosaurs.

So Rootolph the red nose reindeer, famous because his nose is glowing, and last Holidays, I think we talked about how, you know, Rudolph, in order for his nose actually glow, he would actually have to have some kind of bioluminescence, maybe some bacteria living in his nose that produced bioluminescence or some kind of chemical reaction in his nose. But it's unusual for mammals to actually glow like it. You see it in insects, in fish, and but like to

actually have a mammal that glows quite unusual. And yet we're discovering more and more that mammals can biofluoresce. So yes,

what's the difference between bioluminescent and bio fluoresce? Very good question. Bioluminescence, you actually create your own light through a chemical reaction, either using your own chemicals that you produce in like an organelle or your body, or by using bacteria that is living symbiotically inside of you, and then that bacteria has it produces a chemical reaction that will produce light.

That's bioluminescence. Biofluorescence requires the presence of UV light. So biofluorescence is when you can absorb UV light and re emit it to be visible light. So like you shine a black light on something and then it re emits as a glowing Usually it's something like glowing blue or green. It can be other colors as well. It's actually absorbing in that UV light and re emitting it into a glowing light that we can actually see with our human eyes although we can't see UV light. So these are

the black light posters of Neat. Yes, I love that absolutely. And we've learned a couple of weeks ago that Platypus is floras under UV light. Yes, we just talked about that on the show. Oh my goodness, so cute. Yes, so they will bio florus. However, there's an update because they are finding more and more mammals in Australia that are glowing under UV light. It would be Australia. It would be like, of course Australia, have you why didn't

occur to us before? Now to try throwing animals in Australia rave to see if they glow under black light, because of course they do. Animals were working their tricks to make sure we never did this. Really a disturbance in the underground party, just just this wombat going like I don't see you on the list. So Tasmanian devils are the newest mammal who have been discovered who also biofluoresce. Oh my gosh, this picture. It is so cool. Yes,

it looks like the universe is in its ear. I want to go inside the ice cavern planet of its ear. It's so pretty. Yes, because most of its fur actually doesn't glow, so it's like this dark fur. It's sort of a brownish black button in the dark. You can't really see it, but there are spots that actually glow blue. So around its snout or the skin around its eyes, their inner ear skin, all of these parts absorb and

re emit UV light as this eerie blue lights. So it looks like you turned off the lights and then the Tasmanian devil. Remember those like glow in the dark stars you put on your ceilings. The Tasmanian devil just has that, but it's on its face, on its snout and in its ears and around its eyes. It's beautiful. The Tasmanian devil. Beautiful is not usually an adjective describe them.

They are bushy, there hang out. They're kind of cute in an ugly way, right, they're cute, Yes, definitely, but when they glow my got etherious little alien bears space bears, space bear so cute. They are actually a marsupial. So what's interesting is platypuses are a monotream. They are not marsupials. But both monotreams and marsupials are kind of weird because they're they're both mammals, but they're sort of branches off of mammals that they're evolutionary path probably diverged from other

mammals like a long time ago in evolutionary history. So that's why monotreams are so strange. In their reproduction, they lay eggs, they don't have nipples. They just kind of leak milk out of their chests, and marsupials have a right. It's such a funny. It was just leaking, you know, just leaking a little bit of milk out of there.

But and then marsupials have a whole range reproductive system themselves where they have a pouch where these really tiny almost fetal babies when they when they're born, they have to crawl up and into the pouch. And they also have some very weird business going on with the reproductive organs. They all branch off into multiple kind of a maze like things. Anyways, this is all to say that there there,

they are mammals, but they are strange mammals. So it's really interesting to see that both monotreams and marsupials seem to have this tendency to biofluoresce. Tasman and devils are not the only ones who biofluoresce. Basically, what researchers are doing right now, it's just shining black light on every animal specimen. They have to see if it was make your moment in history to shine everything like, oh my gosh, and they think, like I really would like it. It's

butteretflies lit up under bioluminescence. I know there are some that like a little they do. Actually, there are butterflies like they would be gorgeous. Actually, scorpions also biofluorus, but there are there are butterflies that do biofluoress under UVY light. I think butterflies can actually see uv light. Butterflies are just fairies, yes, exactly exactly, but so are scorpions, so you know, like you can't judge, I don't they don't fly, that's true. I don't think there should be that deadly.

Scorpions aren't deadly, just to be fair. And some butterflies are toxic if you eat them, so you know, do not eat butterflies, don't eat them, don't do it in general, don't need any anything you just find that's flying around. But yeah, So the other biofluorescent mammals that they have discovered ore wombats and bilbies, which are sort of a weird mouse like marsupial. These are both more supi in Australia.

So the bilbie's ears and tails kind of glow, and the wombats sort of have glowing patches of fur around their eyes and around. It's a little less clear to me like what parts of the wombats glow, but it seems to be there. For it looks like a Coca Cola polar bear went to a rave and got some like lime green highlights and then got eyeliner that matched, and was like, let's do this, let's do this, let's whole crew. They are so cute. This little Bilbie was like,

it's like a little rapidly a little bunny here. Yeah, but that glow, I just feel like everything is just glowing and cute and I want to love it. But it's a wild animal, so no, yeah, yeah, probably don't like, don't take these animals to a rave. Actually, it reminds me very much of cyberpunk TV vibes, you know, very much. I could see these pets with the luxurious folks hanging out in the corporate district exactly exactly like you know. I started playing the game. It keeps crashing, so haven't

really gone very far. Yeah, I'm an hour in. I tried to drive a car. It's not working. Just no, I had a lot of glitches. Yeah, it looks like it came out to three. I'm gonna wait for the patches. Yeah. I enjoyed building my character. It was a lot of fun, yum on other things until this suck. It's fit. What a journey. I feel like very much the character creation and cyberpunk vibes with these glowing animals. Just yeah, it's a it's a whole look, it's a whole vibe. It's

like future futuristic Rudolph. So this is so funny. I have to share this. Dr Sarah Monks, who is a senior researcher at the School of Natural Sciences at the University of Tasmania, has this quote when she's talking about how they're now like shining all this UV light on various specimens to see if they glow. She says, quote, you mean, all these years we've been farting around with ordinary spotlights and we should have been using UV. I

love it. I love I love that. Like I think it's very humanizing to realize that researchers are reacting the same way we are, where it's like, wait, these guys glow. Oh my god, we got it. We gotta start shut like you gotta test all of them, must have Yes, yes, they're testing as many more supials and Australian mammals as they can to see who glows under UV light. And

it's not just because it's cool. They also want to find out if there is a pattern with nocturnal animals, like say, maybe some of them blow and some of them don't. They're finding that in general, carnivorous ones don't glow, which makes a lot of sense, because if you're trying to sneak up on your prey and you're glowing, yeah, you don't want to see the scene. However, so it's interesting because as we know, like Tasmanian devils are carnivorous,

but they do glow. And my theory on this is that it's because Tasmanian devils are more often than not actually scavengers, so they do hunt occasionally, but their preferences to scavenge, so it's not as much of an issue for them to have to sneak up on prey as it is for them to just find and intimidate others as they go and scavenge. For me, So that's that's my theory, and if it turns out to be right, I demand an award in the form of a and making the shape of a Tasmanian devil, a glowing, a

glow in the dark Tasmanian devil, thank you. So that is option number one to recast as Rudolph, and I do have to go and mention another option because it is I can't even begin to explain, well, I can because I have to. It's happening now on the podcast. But this is it's a bioluminescent sea unicorn. Yes, very magical. So pyrosomes are called unicorns of the sea, not because their horses or anything like that, but because they are such a weird animal that biologists are like, it's as

weird as a unicorn. They are the their tubes, I guess is the most essential way I can describe. Okay, do you remember those like jelly like liquid filled tubes. They have like glitter and like maybe a little star. Squeeze them and they will slippery. It looks like that, but it's an animal. Yeah, they were like these inverted like tubes and then you would like try to hold it and then they would like slide out of your hand. Because yeah, but yeah, that's they are. That's kind of

what they look like. They look like they're made out of plastic or maybe like silk stockings. They can be tiny, like the size of a little routini or macaroni in your palm, or they can be pool noodle size, or they can be bigger than an elephant's trunk. They can be gigantic, and they are often translucent or transparent. Sometimes

they're a little bit more opaque. They come in blues and greens and pinks, and they are actually sort of the borg of the sea because when you're looking at one of these things, one of these tubes, it is not one animal. It is hundreds or maybe thousands of animals. It's secretly swarms. This is a start. I'm yeah, Joel does not like it, doesn't like a swarm. I'm hoping this is one that it's sort of an introduction to swarms that maybe will ease you into the topic. It's

less visually freaky. Yes, yes, so far. Even though it's visually very weird, I still feel like I'm looking at a computer rendering or something and not an actual thing. It's so weird. I'm hoping it's comforting that they actually don't separate. They don't like come apart. They're basically all permanently holding hands together. Oh my god, it's so cute. Except they're covered in a sort of gelatinous sleeve like a sausage. Okay, so le's cute. It's like a sausage.

That's a community. I don't want my sausage. It takes a village to raise a sausage. As they say, oh, this is mentally confounding. Yes, so A pyrosome is not just one big worm or tube sock or whatever, but a bunch of individual zooid. So Zooids are animals that come together to form a single unit. Pyrosomes are called colonial tunic. It's which sounds like some kind of ancient war general old but it's not. It's a colony of tunicates. So a tunic, it is hard to describe to not

very helpful, however, I will try. So. A tunicate is a very strange animal, sort of a subphylum. There's a bunch of different species of them. They are all just so weird. Some of them start out life as kind of being these little tadpole like animals that swim around, and then they will settle on a rock and then become immobile and grow into this sort of tube balloon

thing and these are called c squirts. And yeah, so they'll actually lose a bunch of their brain matter and converted into other parts and go from being a swimming animal, uh, to just being something that looks like a plant but is actually alive but is immobile. It's very they're very weird. They're very weird. To just describe what happened to me doing quarantine matter. I transferred it to everything mostly just trying and stay alive. Must lets resemble human and more

Paladays we have all become sessile. It is it is a fact of quarantine. I got. I have these peppermint chocolate covered pretzels that I've just been filter feeding, just letting them fall into my mouth like a sea squirt. So unlike sea squirts, parasomes are mobile. They are free floating, and they are actually made up of a bunch of tuniquet smaller individuals, pretty small like sort of plankton size,

who joined together to create one giant creature. So they like to live in the open ocean, typically in warmer seas. They're not usually like deep deep sea, but they can be found, uh sort of in deeper deeper seas. The largest colonies can be up to sixty feet long, which is eighteen meters and made up of thousands of individuals. Yeah, so pretty incredible. And like I said, they are attached to each other through a gelatinous casing, which is also

called a gelatinous tunic, which is fun. Like, this color is nice. It looks like it'd be a comfortable material, right, It's sort of like an underwater renaissance. Fair like have you seen my gelatinous tunic? I was singu aus song. So they basically work as a unit and each zooid. So each of the individuals that make up this giant sea sausage will suck in water from the outside of

the sausage and filter it through to the inside. And as it filters this water, it catches all of the little particles of edible material in the water, like basically sea ocean snow, a little bits of organic matter, and then that's how it feeds. Yeah, so just like I keep calling it a sausage, but it's very delicate looking, so it looks sort of like a ghost stalking. It's very thin and and flowy, like it's made out of silk.

Do we know how tight their bonds are because it looks like if I just leave my hand in it all flute. Yes they are. Well, they wouldn't like separate,

but you can tear it pretty easily. So like they don't they don't separate on their own, like a flock of birds where if you try to run out of flock of birds that like part for you, it won't do that, but it will tear apart so they're actually notoriously difficult to collect for research because of how delicate they are and how easy it is to tear them, and so some researchers have actually developed robots that have extremely soft hands, like these are really soft handed robots

that they use to collect the parasomes. So yeah, yeah, it is they are extremely delicate. So in terms of movement, smaller colonies can actually somewhat move on their own, Like each of the zoids have cilia, which are the tiny hairs, and they move so that they filter the water, but that also creates a water flow that propels them forward.

Larger colonies, I think it's just more like you can kind of tell because of how big they are, it becomes harder to sort of move it just through this propulsion of each of the individuals because it becomes so so long and sort of like uh, floppy. But they do move mostly with the help of ocean currents, so just kind of you know, going with the flow, picking up little bits of seed to try to where they can, and just you know, just really easy, easy going chill.

They would really get along with Crush the turtle from Nemo, just living life, taking right here, seeing what happens. Do they also live a very long time? Like you know what there is? That's a good question. I mean, I think it kind of depends on a few factors, like how big they end up growing. You know, they're because they're so fragile, I don't think they end up living

that long. But it's like, in theory they could probably live for a while because they're made up of all these individuals, but I think in in reality, because they're so so fragile, they actually don't don't live that long. So maybe like a few years at most. But that's a good question. I'm not they seem like one of the more mysterious animals that I'm not sure how much is known about. I mean, that's fair if they shred when you touch them, hard to figure out how long

they live because this one just died. Crap, okay to start again, start in top. But the reason that they are a candidate for Rudolph is that they are bioluminescent, and they can be some of the brightest bioluminescent animals in the sea. So each zooid that makes up the pyrosome colony can haynes light organs that are chock full of bioluminescent bacteria. So these organs are triggered to light up either by touch or by the presence of other light.

So basically what this means is that you can have these waves of light that happened on a pyrosome because one of the little individuals is triggered to shine its light after its neighbor shines its lights. So you get these waves of light. It's an underwater light show, Disney, where are you at make the movie. It can also be triggered by the presence of another pyrosome nearby, so if a pyrosome is lighting up, another one will light up. It's just like a bunch of raving little c tubes

made up of a bunch of little individuals. It's it's really really fascinating. This animal wave sounds amazing. Would very much like to participate. It's actually really difficult. I had a lot of trouble finding videos of it. I would assume it is sorry exact, just sent us a message saying beautiful at night, nasty during the day, which is, to be fair a lot true of a lot of partiers, Like you know, you're beautiful at night and then you wake up and your your hair is covered and covered

in vomit and stuff. Anyways, not speaking from experience, um Zack Sar audio engineer, hilarious. So they will glow in white, green, or blue, but they can actually sometimes glow red and pink. So very good, very good on brand for Rudolph. So I feel like if there is an underwater Santa, He's definitely gonna want one of these parasomes to light up his sub submer sleigh, I just clause and c sounds good to me. It sounds yeah. But like I was saying, it is it is hard to find videos of these.

I found a few, so I will definitely provide those in the show notes. But I guess it's just tricky. It's both tricky to find them and then happen to have a video camera that can capture their light show, and then it's also hard to collect them as samples, you know, trying to get get these on video. But yeah, there there are just a few of them, and I will share them. I've sent them to YouTube, Joel for you to enjoy. But it is they are just they look like I don't know, like glow sticks, but big

big tubes, big pool noodle glow sticks. It's again, it's hard to think that. I really feel like this is a deep fake. I'm not I trust scientists, so I know it's not, but it just looks unreal. Yeah, there's one more candidate for Rudolph, although it may not get along with the other reindeer. Mega mouth sharks, despite being twice as long as a bus and having giant, fierce looking mouths, are actually filter feeders that eat tiny plankton by sucking them in and catching them in bristles near

their gill slets. Interestingly, they have a bright white band above their upper lip, like a glowing mustache. It was thought this might be bioluminescence, but more recent research suggests it acts like a reflective band. Denticles, tiny sharp protrusions on the band help reflect light given off by other bioluminescent animals. The function of this glowing mustache is still

a mystery. It may either attract plankton or serve as an identifier for them to recognize other Meccha mouth sharks, or maybe they like to jog at night and want to be safe from cars. When we return, we're going to reboot another holiday movie classic using an adorable flatworm in a hairy crustacean. There are many animals who can survive extreme conditions. Tarte grades can survive total desiccation, radiation, and the vacuum of space. Wood frogs can survive being frozen.

But there's one adorable little critter who could survive any action or slasher movie you throw at it. So now we're going to talk about die Hard. The classic Christmas tale of John McClain fighting Swedish terrorists was that. That's the plot, right, yeah, yeah, that's it. Okay, good. Yeah, And he's like in an office building and he's is he he's like trying to save his fiance or it's

his wife. Okay, but they're on the rocks. Yes, they've been fighting, and he's overworked cop, he's no time to do he he works with an outside cops try to figure things out. Once I think is it Russian? I think it's Russian terrorists Swedish? Check this, it's Snape right, Snapes in there, Yes with a wild accent because it's Alan Rickman. Yes, yes, Alan Rickman is there with crazy accent. How did it heckuars Jappy's own business by terrorist over

hi rise? Oh, it doesn't say their ethnicity or nationality. I should say the Swedish government has censored that on Wikipedia. I know. Wait, German, German, German terrorists. Sure, Hans Gruber, of course he's German together. I'm sorry Sweden by the way, for he's coming. He's a terrorists. Not take some money. John McCain, life, it's been rough. John McClain. McCain, Oh my god. John McClain is on the ks with his wife. So along with his police buddy, they tried to infiltrate

the building using back alleyates and stuff. The fun thing about this is this was a new building. I want to say it was owned by Sony at the time, so this production had to get special permission from Sony

to use the building. It was still under construction. That's why they could film and all of the floors and all of the sets and in the um shafts where the elevators were going to go, and so a lot of the scenes were written like on set because they were like what's around, Oh, we have this dumpster and like where they dump all they done go next? Um,

it was halter skelter, but it worked. Chovin Bruce Willis into every nook and cranny and like being like now crawl, damn it, crawl and it deals with all like the perfect like there is definitely a lot of debate about whether this is a Christmas movie, right. The reason I think it is because it deals with all of the holiday like themes of a family movie. So if you have holiday family movies are like are we going to make it? We're really stressed out. What's the reason for

the season? Um, a lot of interpersonal drama, growth the human beings, Like it's always about like family and how this season inspires the best of us and damn it, that night it is inspired the best in John McLean. You know he took out and it was writing and like he dressed on the dead dead German terrorists as a Santa. Right, so Christmas movie obviously being But the title of the movie is die Hard, and that is because it's very hard to kill John McClane. He's very

widely very hardy. So we're gonna talk about animals that are extremely difficult to kill, maybe even better at not dying than John mcclin. So our first potential cast member is planarians. Oh my god, planarians are a flat worm that are surprisingly and they can definitely walk over a floor covered in sharp glass, get all cut off, even get decapitated, and be totally fine. So I will explain. So, like I said, they are a species of flatworm, they

are actually sorry, they are a group of flatworms. There are all sorts of different species that live all over the world. They can live in salt water, freshwater, or in moist terrestrial environments, so they are a cosmopolitan species. Yes, very much like John McClain like. They can survive many different situations, even like office building Alan Rickman, holding you up for money and trying to save your estranged wife.

So they are in appearance typically pretty flat. I guess that's obvious because they're type of flat worm kind of a brownish color, and they have this like weird little shovel shaped head. And the most interesting part is that they have eye spots facing upwards on the top of their heads, and they look cross side and really silly like little cartoon characters. Are not there's are spots that look like eyes, yes, so they're eye spots are made

out of photoreceptive cells. And even though it looks like basically cartoon eyes where they have the whites of their eyes and the pupils like drawn in like a Looney Tunes character. It's actually because the dark part of their eye is made out of pigment cells that absorb light, and then the white part is uh um photoreceptive neurons that will take the information about the light to the brain. So it's not it's not a pupil and the white

of the eye. It's just it's happens to look like a cross side cartoon just because that's how that's how the neurons versus the the pigmented spots look like. But yeah, it looks like they're cross eyed and goofy and it's really funny. And it's basically they can tell the difference between light and dark and that's about it. So like me, as I get this kind of day, maybe planarians are incredible not just because they look like amazing little cartoon goofballs.

They are super bad ass, really hard to kill. They can survive being decapitated and can just casually grow a new body or a new head and become multiple individuals. Imagine a die hard where every time John McClean gets injured, he just grows another John McClean, like and then Alan Rickman. It's like I just thought, I we killed John mccleans. Like, now you've got to John mcclean's to deal with an

army of John mcclean's by the surrounding conquer. The amount of abuse that Planarians can take and survive, even grow into new individuals is truly incredible. You can split a Planari in down the middle, you can julian a Planari, and you can dice it. You can chop it pretty finely, and in most cases, as long as you have a big enough chunk of Planarian, it will grow into a new Planarian, or just it'll grow the parts that it's missing. So if you cut the body from the head, it'll

grow a new body. If you cut the body, the body will grow a new head. You can even bisect it partially, which sounds horrifor like this is like now planarians, saw you cut it partially in half. Those split heads will regrow and now it'll have two heads. That is some real body words stuff. Right, have to use this animal as the inspiration for the next great body horror movie, because at one point, don't they just beg for death?

They're like, this is untenable. You know, like how planes have the black box and you're like, why don't you make the whole plane out of the black box. It's like, why don't we make all animals out of planarians? Yes, keep all of the puppies. See just I don't even want to go there with puppies. No matter what you do, the puppy just keeps growing back into more puppies. It's like, eventually there are too many horrifying like a three headed puppy.

It's fine. I like that. I guess the reason that they can do this is that the wound site on the planarian, when you slice and dice, it can actually act like the cells there will act as stem cells and differentiate to form the missing chunk of body, whether it's a head or tail or middle. So with embryos, as they're developing, they have stem cells. They have cells

that can differentiate into different parts. It's how you can basically start with like, you know, two cells, and then like start to break into more and more cells, and those cells go on to form the brain, the eyes, the head, the feet, the toe is the I don't know, teeth, whatever, all the parts. I think I named all the parts of a human the bones connected to the hip bones

connected to the butt bone anyways. So yeah, and there's also some really weird science fiction things that happen with these guys, like researchers can induce doubleheadedness in planarians by exposing the wounded planarian to electrical fields or two chemicals that affect gene expressions. So yeah, weird stuff. Weird stuff. To start cross breeding clanarians, start with Jagons. I know they don't really exist, but I would like a canon

Jagon and defeat it. It's our new overlord now. But you know, if we take Bruce Willis right and cross them with some Planarian DNA, we can do like die Hard three, Die Hardest. Yes, you know, like that scene with him walking through glass. He would just be skipping through it, like and each time, like a toe gets cut off, like just a whole new Bruce Willis bros. It's just starts off really tiny though, because it grew out of a pinky tes Bruce Willis and John mcclin.

I'm gonna teach a terrace lasson. Oh my gosh, I'm seeing the vision of John McLean's at the end, because each like, who are all of these John mccleans like, we all love you. And then you know somebody who's always cleaning the house and she lives the perfect leg right, his cop buddies like, my god, there's too many John mccleans. And then his wife was like, no, don't you see, there's just enough John mccleans to fill the hole in

my heart. It's a true love story. It's just like various sized John mcclin's working around the house like a little short one and like a little apron make near breakfast like food, and they work multiple jobs. Now he has all the time in the world for me. Excellent, excellent, worthy, thank you. I think a better ending to die Hard, right, because like it's definitely improved upon the original material. Right.

Because if you think that you will resolve all your marital problems just through a mutually shared traumatic experience, no, you will not healthy. That's a temporary right. You will solve your marital problems if you regenerate into a bunch of us that are able to be on mass. A better you because you can spend more time at home with your wife, financially, more time to give to the reasons you know she you were having trouble the first

place right. It's like I gotta go to work, but my foot, which is now a whole new John McClain can stay home with you. You cant the to work boo ter Luck me, it's got a mouth on it. So our next John McClain can. It is the Yetti crab, also known as the Hoff crabs, which will be very clear. So I think we actually discussed these briefly during our crab episode, our crab episode where we talked about how the nature of things is to evolve into crabs, which

is called carsonization. It is such a fat in nature. They've actually come up with a word for it, and it's that crustaceans and sometimes Arthur POD's just like to turn into crab shapes because crab is best according to evolution, all right, And YETI crabs are another example of this because they're actually not crabs. They're squat lobsters who have

evolved to start having that squat crab shape. So but more remarkably, they are super hairy, so they are they are covered in silky blonde bristles that look like for That's also why they are nicknamed the Hoff crabs because of David Hasselhoff's hairy ches in Baywatch, naughty scientists. I thought it was hot like the planet in Star Wars, that that would be nice too. I guess that would fit a little bit. In fact, fit even more than you may think, because they can survive in extreme conditions.

So they live in the depths of frigidly cold southern oceans and congregate around boiling hot thermal vents that reach temperatures up to seven and fifty degrees fahrenheit, which is four hundred degrees celsius. So they are between freezing water and boiling water, and you know they are somehow able to find the water that won't kill them. So you know, their hair senses it. That's where all these fighter sensors are. Their hair actually does help them filter these weeks, these

toxic minerals that can come up from these events. So these events have these very they're very rich with minerals, which is good for some life, right, like a lot of bacteria that feeds on these vents. It's very good for But for a lot of animals, those heavy minerals

are actually quite bad for them. The yet eat crabs fur or those bristles are actually covered in this helpful bacteria that will filter out the toxic minerals, allowing the crab to feed and breathe without getting in those those minerals from the vents, and the crabs themselves actually do like to eat bacteria around the vents, and it's theorized that they probably also eat other small animals that live around the vents. They look carnivorous, they look like they

could hunt. Yeah, I think they're very intimidating, but also beautiful. Like I would like a YETI crab for co comfortable. That would be it would be a look, It would look great, it would look great, thank you. So they live at crushing depths, so like two thousand, three hundred feet under the sea, which is seven dred just absolute crushing depths, so they can withstand all of that pressure and managed to stay out of the freezing cold and out of the boiling hot by crawling in between these

thermal events. So it's just like John McClean in die Hard has to crawl in the vent to get through the building. These crabs are just very carefully crawling between freezing to death and being boiled alive and becoming boiled lobster or becoming cold lobster rolls. It's it's very, very tricky situation. I feel like these guys understand the struggle with John McClean, like they get it. They absolutely had

struggled to survive exactly. They're also crabby. The yetti has been encrypted with multiple sightings throughout human history in the Himalayas. Is there any truth to the legend. Recent research has analyzed all the evidence of a yetti, from hair samples to footprints, and has come to an interesting conclusion. Bears, it's bears. It was bears the whole time. You guys, brown bears live in the region, and their hair sample and footprints match those of the yetis so, how could

people mistake a brown bear for a yetti? Well, I have a theory. Brown bears can stand on their hind legs, and sure, I don't think people would mistake it for a yetti just yet. But if it's a brown bear with a rare white or light coat color variation, which can happen in brown bears, black bears, and grizzly bears, it may look just spectacular enough on its hind legs to seem like a mystical yetti and it would be

rare enough to be a cryptic siting. But hey, maybe yetis do exist and that big bellied white hair an't a mystical being. Has been a yetty this whole time? Or a bear? I don't know either way, you better be nice and not naughty for Santa Yetti Bear. When we return, we're going to discuss the body horror movie The Santa Claus starring Tim Allen and animals who would be way better as the leading role. Many animals go through incredible transformations. Insects go through metamorphosis from a larva

to a butterfly, beetle or wasps. Some animals transformed during the winter to better suit their environment, and some animals transform, like Tim Allen, to take on the mantle of a deceased leader. So now we are going to talk about the classic holiday horror movie, The Santa Clause, in which a man accidentally man slaughters Santa, who lands on his roof. He startles Santa, Santa falls, dies, and incredible. Can I

just say this movie is brave? I don't think I've heard of any other movie that starts in the first ten minutes with murdering Santa Claus and it's doesn't he It's been a minute since I've seen the Santa Claus. But doesn't he slip off the roof? Yes? Yes, okay, so not a man slaughter, you know, that's an act of God. He just slipped right off the roof. I saw a murderous glint and Tim Allen's I'll say that, don't we all to me as a child is closed a gap, which he was like, no one lives forever.

I don't believe the Santa Claus a fifteen sixty three. It's also bringing me presents. I saw this movie and I was like, oh, he just morphs into a new person, right right, got it. It's like a Highlander situation sort of right, only be one Yeah, so yeah in the movie. Then Tim Allen, after quote unquote accidentally killing Santa, puts on his coat delivers presence. But that's not the end

of the movie. It turns out by putting on the clothes, he has activated some kind of like Santa transformation sequence, sort of like that Ray Bradbury story where this pliontologist as symbols. Do you remember that, where like this paleontologist assembols some bones of some alien creature and then she starts transforming into an alien creature. Did not read this, Yeah,

but yeah that. I mean, like they're all sorts of weird transformation things, and this one is, you know, he's turning into Santa so he gets the Santa belly and he gets like a white Santa beard. He starts going ho ho ho, and like, you know, because you know, giving giving stuff away. So it's been a it's been a minute since I've seen that. Uh, And so we're going to talk about some incredible animal transformations that I

think rivals that of the anti clause. So I would be remiss if I did not at least mention one fun wintertime animal that goes through the yearly process of turning into a little snow version of that animal. I mean, everyone knows about the Arctic fox and Arctic bunnies that go through their incredible transformation and from like being brown and gray to being little puffballs of snow where they have these beautiful snow white coats. But there are also

birds that do the same thing. So what rock Ptarmigans are ground dwelling birds who go from a sleek, modeled brown coloration, which is I think really stunningly beautiful too, fluffy white balls of feathery snowy feathers, not feathery snow in the winter. They look like little snowballs with beaks and a face. O. God, I'm the last person to judge birds on beauty, but this wintry coloring it's giving

me like fall fashion EASTA. Yes, yes, it goes from sort of this like summer fashion to a winter fashion. And yes, also they have like these fluffy little ug boots situation going on. It's wild how differently they look like. One sort of like almost like a turkey, and the other one's like a dove. It's much like bigger. Yes, yes, they actually they look a bit turkey like because they are a ground dwelling bird for the most parts, so

they have that sort of more rotund squat body. They're actually a type of grouse and their feet are so fluffy covered in feathers. In fact, it's Latin name the pussy's or lapu sees. I don't know, maybe I think it's lap you see is not laps but it's Latin names. La puces means hair foot because it's are fluffy and covered in feathers and look like bunny feet, so these extra foot feathers keep their little feets he's warm and also allow them to walk over the snow like they're

wearing snowshoes by increasing the surface area. So like snow shoes will increase the surface area of your foot and displace that weight so that your foot doesn't go right through the snow. It's the same thing with these feathery little snow shoes, so that they can step step step over snow and not fall fall under the snow. And that of course, the reason their feathers turn white is to camouflage with the snow, and females are all white

except for some black feathers around their tails. And males actually still have this bright red eyeliner around their eyes which is present all year long. It's beautiful eyeliner because they always have to look they always have to look good, like a lot of birds. Well as we know with birds like males are always trying to look their best, and it is to look it is a really nice I would say it's it looks like it's both in eyeliner eyeshadow and like eyelash combination of just bright red,

which is very good. The red false's on a red eyeshadow is bold, but I really respect the choice. It looks great. He's ready for any like Paris fashion walk. Yes, I'm inspired. And with that that stark white white coat, it's very it's it's a bold move. But when I I to respect. They like to live in little snow

caves as well. And snow caves are these hollow bunkers of snow that often form around rocks and trees, and actually when you're walking out in the snow, it's something you sometimes have to be careful for, Like if you walk around a tree, you can actually fall down because like the snow will form this kind of like this little hollow cave when there's like roots or something that prevents the snow from piling up under it or or in between rocks. So they will get in these little

snow caves and it will help them keep warm. And it's really cute when they poke their little heads above the snow. It's just just like little It looks like it's a groundhog, but it's a bird. No, my good news. This is the first bird. I'm ready to go on record and say that I love we did it so so sweet. It's a creature Kringle Times miracle, Yes, beautiful birds, wonderful, and I think it's a much I think it's a

less horrifying transformation than in the Santa Claus. Yes, this is a fashion transformation, whereas Santa Claus, as we've already mentioned, is pure body horror. It's also I don't know if this has ever explained in the Santa Clause, but like, does he go back to his normal body when it's not Christmas time or does it? Yeah? And then next year he gets big again. Okay, don't even Santa Claus too, there is a sequel. It is amazing. H he cannot

shake being Santa Claus. So just like all of us then, really, yes, yes, once winter comes, we all bulked back up to our our hair um hair, hair turns white from stress. Start giving me all of our money. It's true, we all, we all really do become Santa Clauses around around the holidays. So in terms of I think what's interesting to me is that, in terms of actually following the plot of the movie, the animal that is most like the Santa

Claus are bees. So we are actually going to talk about bees in depth in a very special New Year's episode about bees. I'm really excited. I think you guys are gonna love it. It's got Jamie and Caitlin of the Bechdel Cast on it. It's all about bees and we review a very special movie which you may have guessed what it is. Maybe like a movie that actually requires analysis, Yes, because it's so Banana's wilds so important.

I was also on another podcast, I think it's out now, the frame Rate podcast with Abe Epperson and Michael Swain, and I also talked about B movie there, but I needed to do it on this podcast to to really get deep into the B biologies. So it's a it's a good it's a good check it out. It's coming out uh soon, so yeah, but we will talk in

depth about bees. However, this is I think an important point to bring up when we are talking about the Santa clause because bees basically follow the Santa Claus movie rules. So most B Larva will grow up to be worker bees. Worker bees are female bees. They're all sisters, and they do all of the normal tasks around the hive, from

collecting pollen to you know, defending the hive everything. This sounds like heaven and just the workforce of women's sisters united the hive, but a few select larva will actually grow up to be queen bees. And this when when a new queen must rise. And this is usually following the death of the old queen or the old queen becoming too old to become a good egg layer, which is kind of you know, kind of sucks just retiring

for gold. She's going to fly down to Miami. But it all depends on how it shakes out, how the politics. As with most royal successions so asassinations, creating the new queen is triggered by the workers detecting a lack of the queen's pheromone, which she normally distributes around the hive, so she if she dies or becomes less active, that queen pheromone will start to degrade and then the worker bees will be triggered to start feeding some larva mass

quantities of royal jelly. Royal jelly is a specialized honey that is nutrient nutrient rich and triggers the larva to start the process of developing into a queen bee instead of a worker bee. And actually I think all worker bees are fed a little bit of royal jelly as lava,

but just for the first couple of days. But queen bees are just fed a diet exclusively of royal jelly, premium babies, premium babies, and they will actually have a different body than a normal worker so their body is elongated,

much larger than a worker bee. They will have like I said, they have that queen pheromone which causes the bees to act differently, and they will breed and mate on like the worker bees, so that that queen pheromone actually suppresses mating in all of the worker bees, and so she will be the only one to breed and produce. She can produce thousands of eggs a day. When you have like a situation where you have an old queen and a new queen, sometimes it's fine, like the new

queen will just work alongside the old queen. But sometimes either the workers or the new queen will kill the old queen. You know, we can't have two queens. That's confusing messages to people. We gotta make sure we're all aligned behind end. Yeah. In fact, like a newly hatched queen, if there are any other queens that are developing, she will go around and stab them all with her stinger before they can hatch and become rivals with her. So I had no idea. There's so much bloody regicide happening

inside the hives. So imagine if in the Santa clause, if no the elves, the elves have to smell some kind of rich Santa cologne every day, and if they don't, they start raising a new Santa by feeding it exclusively like Santa cookies, and then one that Santa grows up, it will kill the old Santa and in any other developing Santa's and then become the new Santa. And start sinks to me that the Santa Claus is a horror movie, and now you have improved upon the original horror concept

of that movie. Horrifying thing, because then essentially they're getting a baby and just mediot Christmas cookies only for its whole life, so that when it grows up it's like huge and thinks it's Santa. Well that's basically what happens with bees as I'm sure any any entomologist would agree with me. Oh my goodness. Yeah, but those Santa Claus movies are messed up because like in the Mrs Claus, one doesn't he like kidnap a woman and essentially just

I don't remember the Mrs Laws one. In all these movies, it's like there's new rules to being Santa that the Tim Allen character finds out, and oh, in order for you to remain being Santa, you have to find a Mrs Claus And it's like Mrs Clause because it's a clause of some magical legal documents. She has to go find a wife and use his Santa magic to make her fall in love with him. You creepy. Yeah, I

don't know. I mean, I think it's more like he's using his magic to woo her, not to like mind control her, but you know, like I don't know what to watch. Yeah, like an omniscient Santa that knows everything about you and is using that to like date you. I don't know, man, We're like he's made to listen, he knows who's not nice, and he goes on like one date with her and then basically lays it out

on all on the table. Where's he? And all the elves are like, I gotta marry you to keep being Santa for Christmas to happen, And of course she's gonna say yes, you know, It's like the worst kind of public proposal, never proposed to someone that you have not talked about it with, Like, make sure they're okay with a public proposal, otherwise you just hi jacking, right, right, emotional hijack exactly like you you propose to someone in front of a big crowd, the pressures on to say

yes because then otherwise they don't want to embarrass you. But then privately later they're probably gonna be like, dude, what what No? Actually no, and now your heartbroken and looking like a fool. But imagine that, except it's not just a crowd of elves staring at you, but it's like Christmas on the line. That is so unfair. So again, unhappy children will be your fault, lady. Or maybe this is uh an analogy for what women go through every year.

Make our Christmas special. Dammit, they're just tired and they want to rest. Yeah. I feel like the Santa Claus too needs to be remade into a horror movie, sort of like The Invisible Man, where it's married to Santa and he's just super creepy and I would watch that anyways. That's why bees is Santa Kiwi d listen you have made our favorite holiday movies even better, enhanced them, enhanced

them with natural biology. Yeah, I will make Christmas scientifically accurate, even if it pains you, even if it breaks the childlike wonder in your heart. But I don't think it will. I think that nature is so wonderful and magical it actually enhances the magic of it. Listen, you want your fuzzy birds with surf feet to sleep across the snow. That's magic. That's magical, so cute, so wonderful. Are are glowing tubes? Are John McClain worms with googly eyes? It's

all incredible. This has been a wonderful creature Kringle Times. Joel, thank you so much for joining me. I have missed you so much, so this is a wonderful, wonderful Kringle Time reunion and we will have you back of course in the new year. Have you all on the show again, pleasure. I to miss you a ton. I love everything holidays spiritued. I do not skype to one holiday. I will celebrate them all. We need a much choice, and you know when we do animals and movies, that's my favorite things.

So thanks for having me back in Yeah, I'll definitely be back in here. Yes, yes, excellent. And where can people find you? Oh, well, you guys already you know I'm all over the internet at twelve one. That's j O E l l E M l N I q u E. And you do you write amazing articles. I love your TV show reviews. And you can find us on the internet at Creature feature Pot on Instagram at

Creature feet Pot on Twitter. That's f e A T, not f e E T. That is some are in different And yeah, thank you guys so much for listening. I really appreciate each and every one of you. I am so we're just so lucky to have people to listen to my podcast, listen to geek out about animals, and uh yeah, I hope you're all staying safe and having as much fun as you can this holiday season.

I know it's you know, it's hard and different for all of us, but yeah, it's uh I think that, you know, human beings are capable of finding light even in the darkest of times, and finding giant pyrosomes that light up your hearts even in the darkest oceans. So yes, thank you so much for listening, and thank you to the Space Classics for their super awesome song ex Alumina. Creat Your Feature is a production of I heart Radio.

For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday, and Happy Creature Kringel Times Everybody.