Creatures of the Night!

what draws you to the horror genre. Oh, it just grew up watching a lot of scary movies and being very much into, like, you know, the comic book world of things. I actually have a really big affinity for bats, which I know, like you know, the most known nocturnal animals. Yeah, I love bats too. We actually had a whole episode on bats. I think it was called Batty for Bats, and yeah, bats are fantastic. They're one of the most diverse group of animals in the world. They're just there's

so many different species. They have this amazing divergent anatomy that I absolutely love. Today, we're actually not talking about bats as much, so you're gonna meet some new creatures of the night. And first I kind of want to talk about what being nocturnal means and why. There are different types of activity patterns. So there's actually more than just being diurnal and nocturnal, So diurnal being kind of what us humans do, so being active during the day

and inactive at night. Nocturnal being active at night and inactive during the day. There are other types of activity patterns. So there's crepuscular, which is being most active at twilight. Not talking about vampire sexy book, so from dusk to sunset and from dawn to sunrise. So some examples are actually some species of bats aren't really nocturnal, they're more crepuscular because they come out during twilight. There's also rats and hamsters and jaguars and deer and many other animals.

So lots of animals love this kind of twilight uh period of time because they get to capitalize on having some light but maybe being awake at a time where other animals aren't quite awake yet, maybe being able to take advantage of the temperature being sort of more moderate, like not too cold, not too hot. So yeah, it's it's an interesting period of time. I think that we don't think of that much in terms of you know, we think oh, you're either nocturnal or you're awake during

the day. But there are actually little niches of times that animals sometimes capitalize on. There's also cathemeral, which is it sounds like a really kind of mystical word, cathemeral. It sounds a little bit like a ghostly catheter, but it is actually defined as being sporadic activity throughout a twenty four hour period. So some primates are cathemeral. There's some guesses about early he's being more cathemeral, like we would wake up during the night more, we wouldn't just

sleep through the entire night. Here's a couple of examples of animals that are definitely cathemeral. There's the common brown lemur found in Madagascar, and the fossa, which is the largest carnivore in Madagascar that looks like a cat. It's actually more closely related to mongooses, isn't it. It's really interesting looking, isn't it. I love its arms and the grip on this image and of the stick in this image.

It's protective and like brave. It looks like it's that stick is its staff and it's mystical creature or like from Redwall, remember the Red Wall books. I loved the Yes, yes, it's more familiar. We need before turned into like a wizard or something exactly. It's actually gripping onto the tree branch because these are tree climbing animals. They're of small and sleek and really great at jumping from tree branch to tree branch, which allows them to hunt lemurs. So

what's interesting is they're both cathemeral. It is interesting to see how predator prey relations can also affect the animals activity schedule. Lions, bobcats, and coyotes could also be described as cathemeral. So it's this sporadic activity. You're just you're basically you are awake and then you take a nap, and then you're awake, and then you take another nap, and you're awake and then you take another nap. And some humans I assume are like to uh, not me.

I need to sleep a lot, sleeping big chunks of time. But so now let's go back to talking about nocturnal animals. So why are some animals nocturnal? And there are a few reasons. One of them is to avoid predators. Many predators use their vision to hunt, so naturally, if you're active at night you avoid these predators. Another reason is avoiding the heat. So, especially in deserts and places where there's extreme climate, being nocturnal is a great way to

avoid extreme heat conditions. And there's also sort of the counterintuitive thing of when you're a prey animal and you're going around at night to avoid predators, Well, if you're a predator, then you can capitalize on that, and then you become nocturnal, evolve these traits that allow you to hunt better at night, and then you inhabit that evolutionary niche where you are no longer competing with predators during the day. You've developed these special night vision and night

senses that allow you to hunt at night. So you can see there's this complex interaction of animals trying to escape predation, but then predators trying to take advantage of that niche of animals that are only active during the night, and so like they basically just evolve them to kind

of meet that need exactly exactly. It's kind of an arms race where you know, you have you have predator and prey sort of constantly trying to outsmart each other, and and predators to competing with each other and pray, competing with each other for resources. So you see, animals will basically go into these these niches where they can compete be competitive. So in order to become a nighttime predator, or even just to be nocturnal, you need to develop

some pretty interesting adaptations. And I want to talk about one of the most famous and iconic nocturnal animals to discuss these the owl. So owls are I think when you think of nocturnal, I get a sound effect in my head that's like, you know, just like the owl. And they are incredible animals that are so I find them cute. They look like flying kiddies. But I think I think if I was mouse size, these would be the most horrific monsters you can imagine because they are

perfectly designed to hunt you down at night. So owls have amazing eyesight, and they have huge eyes for seeing in the dark. In fact, their eyes are so big and take up so much room they can't actually rotate in their sockets. So you know how we can look back and forth, we don't have to move our heads.

Owls can't do this. That's why their heads rotate many degrees so that they can get that full visual scope, so they can rotate their heads two seventy degrees around and ninety degrees up and down so that they can get that full visual space without having to move their eyes in their sockets because their eyes are actually kind of tube shaped, so they could there's no they're like held in place by bones. They can't actually move them. So yeah, I know if when an owl swivels its head,

that's the only way it can see around it. It's so interesting because I play Animal Crossing and I actually tend to play it a lot at night, So my favorite time to play is during the meteor showers. When the owl comes on the island does exactly what you describe. You know, it doesn't like move for eyes, it's like head moves and its swivels does a crazy like star looking thing whenever polls do start, and she's so cool. I love Animal Crossing and Celeste and Blathers that the

two owl characters identify very strongly with Blathers. But I saw this meme recently that was like, oh, when you have your firstborn child, you must give it to Blathers. He must have the first of everything you give. You an Animal Crossing, you hunt for bugs and specimens and fish and you give them to Blathers to donate to the museum. So uh, and then he'll give you cool animal facts. We actually had an episode about animal crossing where I went through all the Blathers facts in fact

checked Blathers and it's actually surprisingly pretty good. There were some things that needed some elaboration, but yeah, it's I love all of the real life facts you can get through animal crossing. So, like we're going to go from talking about cute animal crossing to some horrifying facts about owls. So, the eyes are so big, they're about three percent of

the owl's body weight, which is kind of crazy. They they just like their heads are basically just this holder holding space for these massive eyeballs, and the eyes take up so much space that in some species of owls, such as the northern saw itt owl, you can see their eyes by looking through their ear holes, so they do they don't have external ears like humans. They just have a hole where sound gets funneled in by their

face shape and feathers. But like if you pull back the feathers and you look into their ear whole, you can see this oval shaped membrane at the back of their eye and you can actually see the back of their eye, so yeah, it's you can get prep stuck in their eye from their ear that well, yes, but they do have feathers covering it, so unlikely. But yes, technically I don't like this demensation of like cutting something in your eyes. Yeah, Joel, I know, I know. This

is uh. I'm trying to convince Joel not to hate birds, but this is probably not helping, oh, birds the way Blathers is about insects. Probably Joel has a problem with birds and this is just making it worse, I imagine. But yeah, I was. But yeah, Owls should not use Q tips. Actually people shouldn't. This is a thing. You shouldn't put shove Q tips in your ears. You can hurt your ear drums, but especially if you're an owl,

because then you can poke your eye. So their eyes also have a really dense collection of photoreceptor rods, So our eyeballs have rods and cones. Rods are especially good at taking in information in low light conditions, so they have a bunch of these. They also have a tepe um lucidum, which is reflective tissue found in many animal eyes that they use to refract light so they can see in the dark, so it's why cat's eyes glow

like a little demon at night. They have this reflective eyeball tissue that helps them second light and use it for their vision. Owls also use their sense of touch to navigate in the dark, so their eyes are specialized for far sits, so seeing far in the distance. They're not as good at seeing up close, so they have a bunch of bristles on their face just like cat whiskers that help them sense things in their immediate surrounding.

Like something makes the bristles on their face vibrate, they since that they know something is close, so then they are using touch, which is another great adaptation to be able to see in the dark. Sound they are highly adapted to be very very good at hearing, highly sensitive hearing like I was talking about. They have the just basically ear holes covered by feathers. Their heads are shaped to divert sound into their ear holes, so it's kind of this like disc shape that has this way of

like acoustically funneling in sound into their ears. They also have a symmetry in their ears, so some species of owl will have one ear hole higher than the other so that they can gauge distance and location more precisely. So an example is the barn owl's right earhole is lower than the left, so it's closer to the ground. And what happens if sound is louder in that earhole, they know it's coming from the ground, and so they use that to be able to precisely pinpoint like the

little scuttling of a mouse. It's kind of fascinating and scary how good they are at exactly pinpointing where something is.

They're like the most advanced. Yeah. I had a really weird, probably terrible dog parent moment recently where um, my husband and I went to go look at the meteor shower at Malibu State Creek parking lot and stuff, and some of the area was a little open, and we decided to walk our dog right outside our car and literally a barn owl flew right overhead us, like very closely, And I was like, oh, I probably should not have had my my very small dog out in the middle

of the where taken for a small animal. So what kind of dog have a sheet? Yes, perfectly snack sized. Yes. So I was like, I am a terrible parent. Like that was an awful call, but is majestic. I saw the majestic wings above me. I was like, whoa, it's the last and it's a meteor shower. But also I'm going to put my dog, and it's here to eat your little fun sized dog that's adorable and also scary, but cute and scary. So a nocturnal el's brain can create a complex map based on sound and use it

to exactly zero in on its prey. And it has these really soft feathers that allows it to fly very quietly, almost silently. I don't know, did you hear that outcoming from far away or exactly? I was just like, whoa, wings, And then I was like, oh, all right, ol dog, yeah anymore. Usually, the only time I know that an owl is nearby is rustling of leaves in a tree, like it's landed completely silently, but then the tree kind of rustles and I look up and suddenly an owl

has appeared. So let's let's summarize the owl. It has soft feathers so it can glide noiselessly through the air. It has incredible vision with giant I tubes that can see really far in the dark. It's got hearing that has been designed in order for it to exactly pinpoint where a sound is coming from. This all creates the perfect nighttime killing machine, and they're adorable. How would you turn this owl into a monster? Oh my god? Which you need to know? I mean, like, I don't think

I would need to. It's like it hunts your pets, you know. I think that's very terrifying long line right there. If it was like a horror villain called the Almand, the Almand Alman? Yeah, what what what would it be? What would be its m O? And what would be sort of it's its whole killing pattern? Oh man? I mean like I I would like to do some body horror with it as well, you know, because I would just imagine someone developing like owl eyesight and abilities and

like sprouting out feathers. So I definitely feel like Cronenberg with it a little bit with the transformation, or to like the fly um and have them, you know, go out and start like hunting for things to eat. Maybe I love that like a cryptid similar to like Mothman. Yeah, would it have the owl's freaky long ugly legs When you lift the owl's feathers up from its butt and

you lift it up. It actually has really long, strong legs because it can take off from basically a sitting position and then suddenly take off because it has these very powerful legs. So yeah, it has a nice set of gams under all those feathers. Yeah, I love that. I really like that idea of Sabina. I want to

see that. I think that's perfect horror thing of Can you imagine a human being who can't move their eyes, They can only move their head, so it's and then they can turn their head two hundred and seventy degrees around so their eyes don't move, but their heads twists in your direction. Yeah, I did to make it happen, and might I might actually I might actually make that happen if you do, let me know. And I want to want to listen to a radio drama out a

spooky owl Owl person owl trivia time. Did you know that those ear tufts, the feathery bits that stick off of an owl's head aren't ears at all, They're just feathers. Their real ear holes are actually behind their eyes. The great horned owl has an impressive set of feathery tufts that certainly looked like cat ears. But they have nothing

to do with hearing. Why do they have them? Well, the scientific jury is out, although there's some speculation that these tufts, called pluma corns, are used in social communication by lowering and raising them based on the owl's mood. Whatever their purpose, these plumic corns seem to help the owls in some way, So I guess Owl's well that ends. Well, when we return, we're going to discover some nocturnal animals from your deepest dreams or darkest nightmares. You be the judge.

M Imagine you're taking a stroll during the cool, dark night. Well, I have some bad news for you. You're not alone. There are burrowing, bulging eyed sex craze critters who are barking mad, and a furry, flying nighttime creature the size of a koala, and a carnivore with long, bony fingers and giant, greedy eyes. Zabina. Now, I want to talk about nocturnal animals that I will bet you've never heard of, and probably a lot of people have never heard of. And they seem like they come right out of a

fever dream. And I feel like you will appreciate this is a creative person who likes to come up with horror elements. Unfortunately, I find them all really cute. I couldn't help but these were all adorable. But still it's I think there's like some creepy cuteness that could be kind of mixed in, but it love. I'm very excited. Yes, So first I want to talk about things that go bumping uglies in the night ding do dude do do?

So we talked about the owl and all of its fantastic adaptations, but one adaptation it doesn't really have is a sense of smell and taste. But unlike them, reptiles like snakes and lizards use special receptors on their tongue to quote taste the air, so it's sort of like a sense of smell and taste that they use to

detect things nearby. And this is used by a little sex crazed lizard called the barking geck, which uses it's tongue to smell and taste the air to help it detect predators at night because it likes to use nighttime from everything from hunting to a one night stand mostly one night stand. It. Yeah, these are they are little castanova's. It looks so small about how big would you say they are because I see it's head. Yeah, they're pretty small.

They're only about two inches or five centimeters long. They have little stubby heads. They look a little bit like a turtle head, and they have these fat little tails, and those fat tails actually is a fat store that allows them to store up nutrients for later. And they are a tan rust color. Often they have little spots. They're very cute, and they have these big eyes with pupils that can be little slits, and then they can dilate to almost encompass their whole eye. So they live

in hot deserts in southern Africa. They're actually a whole genus of small lizards called the barking geckos, and during the day they like to stay in their den and cover up the entrance to protect them from predators and the heat, and they actually dig down quite a bit so that they can get down deep into the cool ground. And then at night, especially after rain, they'll come out

and hunt for insects. But being such an introvert is a bit of a problem when it comes to reproduction, so males are actually too afraid to leave their dens in order to search for females even at night, because again, there are a lot of night time predators like owls and other specially adapted predators that will come and get you,

especially if you're a cute, tiny little lizard. So they will first of all taste the air, check for predators nearby, and then they, the males, will stick their little stubby heads out of their den and bark, making these little chirping noises to seduce females and convince them to come to them to mate and lay her egg. Oh my gosh, is that the universal sound of calling a girl or potentially you know, like like, I love it. I just love the serious little faces popping out of the ground

going like hey, hey, hey, hey, are you hey? And the female is very choosy and selects only the sexiest of cat calls coming from these geckos because she has to make this pretty perilous journey over to the din scrub for the no no, no, no, no, no out no. This is not first night auditions on who America's Got? I forgot? What's it called? American? What the singing one? God damn it? American Idol? American Idol. This is not This is not the first night auditions of American Idol.

She needs a pro, she needs an Adam Lambert of Geckos. So once she selects her romantic partner, she will rush over to his den. They'll do the business inside of his den, and then she kicks him out, like all right, this is my din now. Now mind that she has done him the favor of coming over to make babies with him. He didn't leave it all. He just like stayed in his man cave and was like, hey, you won't come over, and she's like, great, okay, now this is mine. You get out, and so he will oblige.

He'll leave and go dig himself a new in. And so this is kind of it's actually a pretty equitable trade off because the female is taking this risk and going all the way over to his den. He doesn't have to take that risk. But then he does get to pass on his jeans by mating with her. And so once he's exited, sure like he has to go out and expose himself and build a new din, but he's already passed on his genes. So he's won. He's

won the game of evolution already. And then she also kind of gets a little bit of a win there, because then she gets this nice new din, she doesn't have to exit and take an unnecessary risk. I love that though, the rapidness of their relationship where it's like, okay, so let's move in together. Actually I'm moving in and you're moving out. So so now let's go from the scaly nighttime cuties to one of the fluffiest animals I've

ever seen in my entire your life. It looks When I saw this picture, and I've seen a lot of animals, I was like, no, this is a stuffed animal, like because like that that sometimes happens. There are these viral images of an animal and it's like, wow, look at this animal. It turns out it's fake. It's like these

are fake looked into it, no real real animals. So this is the Australian Greater Glider and it is looks like a fluffy teddy bear plus a koala plus a squirrel with a tail that looks like a giant feather boa and it looks like a cuddly made up dream animal, like an imaginary friend you'd come up with as a kid, or like a stuffed animal for a kid. It does not It looks unreal speakers are so chunky. Yes, yes, it has huge ears, just big teddy bear ears. I

guess it kind of looks like a furby. Yeah, total ears. And they are actually a nocturnal marsupial found in Australia, and they range from being an ashy brown to grayish white with very soft, shaggy fur. I will obviously include a link in the show notes, but you have to see this. Their face kind of looks like a little combination of like a mouse and like a bat face, so that kind of the v of like a bat. Yeah, it's got a pointed snout, little whiskers. Yeah, it's it's adorable.

And their tails are unbelievable because their tails they are longer than their overall body length and they are extremely fluffy. So its head and body grows up to be about seventeen inches long, which is about forty three cimeters, but its tail grows to be longer than the rest of it at about twenty inches which is about fifty centimeters. And despite being relatively large animals, they are able to glide.

They are a gliding marsupial, in the largest gliding marsupial in the world, so they use their super long tails to help them balance and steer as they glide. And they have membranes on the sides of their bodies that act as like a built in wingsuit, and it stretches from their ankles to their elbows that they can extend to glide from tree to tree. And they glide by tucking their paws under their chin and holding their elbows out as they glide, so it's like the cutest thing

you can imagine. They do a little chin shells, like a cute little head shot where it's like, look at me, I'm so cute, and I'm going to glide over to this next tree. That's magical, yes, And so they are not very scary night. They may kind of freak you out if you're out at night and you don't know what's happening, because suddenly this big thing just swoops through the air and lands and all you can see is its glowing eyes. But they're actually herbivores. They like to

eat eucalyptus leaves. They are totally harmless. I think if I actually saw one, I would think I was high or having a dream, having a lucid dream of cuteness. I mean honestly, like just their pose, Like I mean, are there I need to see videos of this, and also if they could be like Instagram influencers. But that's the thing. Because they're nocturnal, it's actually really hard to get good videos of them or get good images of them, and so yeah, it's it's they are very shy, even

though they are very grammable. Yeah, too bad. So the next nighttime creature that absolutely looks completely made up, it looks like it comes from a dream is the tar siar. So. Tarsiars are deadly carnival ris predators with huge eyes and long fingers that murder their prey at night by pouncing on them. And you're making faces because this is actually, despite my description, incredibly cute. Yes, so they are very small.

They're one of the smallest primates. They're extremely adorable unless you are an insect, a spider, a small bird, batter lizard. Because they are one of the only completely carnivorous primates in the world. They eat exclusively meat, whether it's an invertebrate or a small vertebrate. Cute but deadly. They have soft brown fur, long fingers and toes, very good at giving tickles. They have stubby, little mouse like ears and

enormous eyes. Their head and body grows to be about six inches long, so that's fifteen centimeters, and they have this really long, long, thin rat like tail that grows up to about ten inches or long, which is kind of disconcerting when you see it because the rest of its body looks adorable like a cute little little mouse monkey thing, but then it's got this long rat tail.

And they are voracious. They will eat up to ten percent of their body weight every day, so their eyes are much bigger than their stomach, and actually their eyes are bigger than their brain, so their brain is literally smaller than their eyeballs, and their eyes are huge, which allows them to see in night at very low light conditions.

And much like the owl, they have trouble actually moving their eyes in their heads, and instead of that, they just move their heads so they can move their heads a hundred and eighty degrees around instead of moving their eyes in their sock it. And they also have an

extremely keen sense of hearing. Like as cute as they are to us humans, if you're a little invertebrate, these are little monkey rat demons that can swivel their heads, like Linda Blair, can hear and see you in the dark, and they can grab you and pounce, and they have these really long fingers to get in little crevices so

they can just snatch you right up. So yeah, kind of horrifying, but to humans, very cute, very cute, but also, like you know, I think it is prestworthy looking and but I'm also not surprised that they can get very hansy and dangerous. They're found in Southeast Asia, typically on islands, and they are arboreal, so they live in trees and they are small, so they are prey to many predators.

But they don't. As cute as they look and innocent as they look, they do not make themselves easy prey, so they typically live in groups with one male and multiple females. But when it comes to fending off predators, they will join forces like the end of Avengers and Game and just gang up on this predator and shrink at it and attack it. So unrelated groups of Tarsiers will come together and kick predator butt and scream at

it and attack it. And it's I love that they just look so cute and unassuming, but they take no bullshit how would you incorporate the tarsier into a horror story? Okay, so for the tarsier, you know, I just would like this idea of distilling the certain like abilities from these nonclernal animals for like a like a scary thing, you know. I think it's so freaky that it is so small

and so cute, but is like vicious and carnivorous. So I mean also would be fun to like see what would happen if like this animal was you know, blown up to be bigger size version of it would eat human. I would, oh, absolutely it would. I love that idea because that reminds me a lot of a lot of these b horror movies, like The Killer Shrews I think was one of them, Just these movies where the premises you take an ordinary sized animal and make it big

and now it's killing everyone. But absolutely these would be horrifying because they could find you in the dark. They have super hearing, super site and these very long fingers, long skeletal looking fingers, yeah, they and then these really long rat like tails. I also imagine sort of a like a human version of this with a giant eyes

head that rotates a hundred eighty degrees and really long fingers. Again, it's kind of like a crypted sort of thing, like you know the tarsier Yeah, a group of people that win a trip to this island. Yeah, and this island is inhabited by all of these like humanoid uh, nocturnal and kind of a sci fi or fantasy book where it's like humans being forced to readapt as being nocturnal.

I feel like we would potentially have these adaptations like get huge eyes and long fingers and like maybe sort of weirdly placed body hair and whiskers to like be able to sense things in the night, and we would a lot of clicking sounds to mate midnight cat calls. Tarsiers are a strange sort of primate, not only due to their looks but their brains. Their brains are so structurally different from other primates, including lemurs, monkeys, and of

course apes. Neuroscientists suggest that these little guys are a blast from the past and independently evolved line of primates from one of the earliest primate ancestors. It's too bad they're not more evolved, but because those long fingers could play the hell out of the piano when we return, we're going under the sea because the night's better downward, its wetter. In the night sea from Cathulu to the Kragan, there are many terrifying beasts we imagine coming from the

depths of the ocean. But what really happens in the ocean at night? Is it dark and full of terrors or a glowing wonderland. I think one thing that is not exploited that much in both in terms of like horror movies and when we think about the night and nocturnal life is the ocean. We think about nocturnal animals as like some kind of cat lurking in the dark with the shiny eyes, But thinking about what happens in the ocean at night is it's just not as imagined

as much. And I think part of that is it's so hard to study the ocean at night because it's so hard to get any light down there. It's very dark. I feel like there aren't that many horror movies that actually deal with the ocean at night. I know that there's Jaws, but they didn't really focus on the nighttime

aspect of it. What else is there? There are a lot of shark movies, There are a lot of like I think there are maybe a couple of films that do go into like you know, deep oceanic aquatic monster work. I mean there's always you know, like the really in sort of thing, um any of like the giant shrimp, shrimps, Giant shrimps are sure I got giant trump from maybe I'm imagining what I like for dinner later, um, but

giant Spid's um. One of the most recent films that did kind of do a little bit of like a deep sea creature he sort of monsters was Aquaman, which is which was really by James want More in like

a comic book form. So I don't really think they are too like true to the real like horrors of the deep, but it did give a really fantastical interpretation of the sort of creatures that are, you know, just way down that terrifying and prehistoric even Yeah, there's even there's a specific scene in Aquaman where they're on a boat and just a swarm of just like freaky looking deep sea creatures are like all around this ship, and I thought it was way more awesome gold Creek. Yeah,

I don't find sharks that scary. I love sharks. Maybe that's partially why I do love the movie Jaws. Sharks don't fill me with fear. Obviously, if I was face to face with a shark, I would like poop my pants, But just conceptually, sharks don't scare me. But the idea of being in the ocean at night, not being able to see even if you could breathe, like you're in

scuba gear or like say, or in a submarine. The idea of being surrounded by darkness and maybe sensing something like creep across your arm and you can't see anything, and then just seeing like glowing spots of bioluminescence. I love that. And also like if you watch footage of deep sea submarines where they just have this one spotlight coming from the submarine and then a deep sea creature just slowly creeping into the spotlight. It just like I

get such chills. I love it. It's it's the kind of creepy that I love and I want more of where it's just like I get such chills thinking about that that's like just a beam of light and then this this creature no one has seen before just slowly floating into into the light. But stuff, I mean even of like the scene in Finding Nemo where they're like light Finding Nemo had some wonderful moments of marine biology. Yeah, the the deep sea anglerfish luring them in, it was

a wonderful scene. I love that. So the ocean at night is a fascinating place. I think there's so many fascinating things that happen in the ocean at night that it's surprising to me that it's not more entrenched in popular culture. I watched this documentary series called Night on Earth. I think it's by the same people who did Planet Earth or Life on Earth, and it's on Netflix right now. It's gorgeous. It's an absolute beautiful documentary. I highly recommend it.

And I got some of my inspiration for this section and some of my information from one of the episodes where they go look at the ocean at night. It's it's fascinating and it's beautiful. You really, you really have to look at it. It's gorgeous. But something happens at night in the deep ocean that's absolutely fascinating and it's not well known, but it is the biggest mass migration

in the world and it happens every night. So at night, Zooplankton these tiny little creatures rise from the bottom of the ocean to feed on algae, and they make this huge trip. Now, these are zooplankton, which are teeny teeny tiny animals. They are real animals, even though they look like flex of nothingness. But they are either small animals that will always stay that small, or they're actually larval forms of bigger animals that will grow to be big

and in some cases actually quite big. So all of these little creatures rise from the deep sea up closer to the surface to feed on algae. So the reason all of these little zooplankton make this huge trip in such a massive numbers is they like to stay deep in the ocean, deep down in the depths during the day to avoid predation. They're so small, so delicious that they go down where there's not as much population of predators.

The deep sea does have predators who, again, like we talked about on the surface, we have these niche predators that have these special evolutionary traits that allow them to hunt deep in the sea and deep in the dark, like the angler fish that we were talking about from

finding Nemo. But they stand a better chance down there because it's harder to evolve to that niche, and so they still need nutrition, and the deep ocean is very sparse on nutritions, so they have to migrate up closer to the surface of the water where there's algae that does not exist deep in the ocean because that algae requires sunlight in order to photosynthesize. So they go up

in order to feed on the algae. And so that makes the the open ocean at night during this mass migration, the largest nursery in the world for these larval forms of fish. And they are I'll include a link to a photo gallery of some of these fish. But you have to look at like you know, you see like baby lion fish and baby cephalopods, octopuses and squids and cuttlefish and baby jellyfish, and they're these translucent just like

they look like fit tiny fish ghosts but perfect. In California, we recently had a lot of voluminescence on the coast um. I even watch a vlogger on YouTube named the Tim Tracker, and in Florida he went over to the Indian River to do bioluminescent kayaking in clear kayaks. So that's wonderful. Do you know when it's the New Moons. It's the darkest town and you just see like them just like

pulse around the boat as you're going through. And it's yes, a ripple, yes, well, yeah, we did just have one in l A. It was in May, right, yeah, it was early in the days. But yeah, it's beautiful. Like the waves literally glow with bioluminescence, and that type of bioluminescence. Now there's a whole bunch of bioluminescent animals in the ocean, but that specifically when it makes the water glow, that's caused by bioluminescent dinoflagelets, so tiny, tiny little creatures, and

they use this bioluminescence to ward off predators. And so that's why when you disturb the water, either with your hand or a wave or a kayak, they flash at you and it's an attempt to scare off or ward off predators. But for us humans it's beautiful. It doesn't. It's just so you can literally walk through the water and your your footsteps will glow, and you move your hand through the water. Every time you move it, they will glow off because they're responding to being agitated and

they'll give off this. Basically they're piste off at you, but it doesn't matter because they're they're beautiful. So, like I said, sometimes these zooplankton aren't just permanently tiny like dino flagelets are always going to be small, but sometimes they are these larval forms of these bigger animals, and they can go from being teeny tiny to being one of the biggest fish in the world. So, ocean sunfish have you ever seen, well, you've played animal crossing, so

you've seen the ocean sunfish and animal crossing. Right. They are one of the heaviest bony fishes, so bony fish meaning they have, like you know, baically this bone rigid bone skeletal structure, which excludes sharks um. However, actually sunfish are interesting because even though they're technically a bony fish, their skeletal structure is heavily supported by cartilage, which allows it actually to grow so big, and they do grow enormous.

They weigh over two thousand pounds, which is a thousand kilograms, and they can grow up to ten feet tall, which is three meters. They are very strange looking. They're like these big disks. It looks like you took a giant

fish and flattened it into a pancake. And despite growing to be so large as adults, when their babies a little freshly hatched, they are only point zero nine inches long, which is two point five millimeters, absolutely tiny, tiny zoop LinkedIn And I think it's one of those things where it's like, obviously we all, all of us start out really tiny when you think about it, you know, we're

just a sperm in an egg. But to see this little gooby fish, this little tiny goober because they because they hatch and they swim around at this size and they may somehow really by yeah, I mean their eyes are big as adults, but just compared to its body. But they just look like these little tiny beans with eyes and fins, and then they get to be gigantic. It's I'm granted a lot of these guys are not going to survive. It's a law of large numbers for them,

but it is incredible. So it's like you see this zooplankton, you're like, oh, it's just like these little small things, you know, but some of them grow up to be giant, which is incredible. But the ocean at night is not just filled with little cutie's. It is also filled with tiny murders. So I want to talk about the spiny tiger shrimp, which is one of the tiniest serial killers in the world. Uh. Spiny tiger shrimp are beautiful colorful

shrimp there orange and black. They only grow to be about point eight inches or two centimeters big, but two small prey. They are frighteningly deadly predators at night. They are a very rare species that live mainly in this very nutrient rich straight called the Limba Straight, which is off the coast of Limba Island in Indonesia. It's this area that's just so flush with nutrients due to the way the tides kind of like churn up nutrients from the ocean into this area. It's got this huge amount

of biodiversity. These little tiny tiger shrimp are actually like little tigers, not just in how they look but their behavior. So at night they are incredibly good predators. First of all, each of their eyes can move independently and detect distance, so they have an incredibly complex visual system in their brains. So they can take two images from these eyes that

can both separately assess distance and make pictures. And then all This information goes into their little brains and they create a full map around them, which is impressive for such a tiny animal. It has scales on its body that can detect pressure waves from fish, so if they're

incredible eyesight doesn't do it. If it's an especially dark ocean night, they can find fish and almost total darkness like a son So they have these like pressure plates on their body, and then as something comes in like basically a fish moves around, it changes the water pressure and then it hits there's scales they know where that

fish is and sonar. Meanwhile, you're actually sending out it's it's what dolphins and bats use, where you're sending out a pulse and it bounces off something and comes back to you. This they don't even have to send anything out. They just passively wait for vibrations in the water to hit these these pressure scales on their body. So they can also strike extremely quickly and act as ambush predators where they sneak up on a fish and then just

grab them like their tiger namesake. So they are Yeah, they're teeny tiny, deadly tigers that can not only see in the dark, but they can literally feel you in the dark, and then one last nighttime ocean animal I want to talk about is maybe the funniest to me. It's extremely funny because they look like angry demon fish.

And these are called flashlight fish. It is a nocturnal family of fish, and they have a pouch of bioluminescent bacteria under its eyes that glow, and it looks like, you know, like how the Spider Man mask is where it has like these glowing like he's got kind of glowing angry eyes on his mask. It looks like that Spider Man fish. You look like Spider Man. Yes, Spiderman into the spider Bird. They look so angry because it's

basically like it's a half disk under their eyes. But you look at it, it it looks like these mad little demon glowing fish or even like venom. Yeah, yeah, it does look like venom. Yeah. So these glowing spots are likely used to either communicate, attract prey or award off predators because these aren't huge fish. They're about they're a little bit. They're they're like less than the length of

like a human hand. Um. They look incredibly menacing, and you know, there's it's I don't know if it's entirely known why they have these glowing spots other than sort of the the guesses of it's probably to tract prices, probably to communicate. It's probably to ward off predators. My guests would be it also implies a much bigger animal because they look like huge eyes. You're like, oh man, you you must be a big animal. So like in the dark, you just see these pair of angry, huge

eyes coming at you. They tend to travel in groups or like solitary lee you know. I don't know. I think in this image we do see a few of them, but that might just be because they're captive ones. I don't think they necessarily clustered together like that in the wild because just just squad of demon fish. But when they're not in the dark, like in there in the full light, they actually look pretty doofies. So they are

no longer look like little demon fish. They just look like a doofy little fish with a little bug eys, and they look kind of like they've been found out, like when you try to spook someone in the middle of the night and then you turn on the light and it's just like someone with glow sticks going like whoo, calding glow sticks under their eyes. So, now that we have discovered all of these incredible nocturnal animals, what is

your idea for your next horror story? I actually really do not want to create some sort of owl creature that you know, can't like move their eyes, so it is just staring and like, you know, can move its neck in the crazy amount. I love that spooky creepiness. Actually think we are currently working on something that could lend itself to that for our animations. So I might like circle back to my animator and be like, hey, can we make this creature do this really owl thing?

I love? I love that. I love to be the inspiration for horror stories. Yes, so yeah, well, thank you so much for joining me today. Speaking of your creations, do you have anything to plug? Sure? So, I'm a writer for the Something Scary podcasts and show on YouTube, which is hosted by Marquia McCarty based on the show

created by Sapphire sandalo Uh. It is women lead and written and it's spooky campfire stories where all we'll do like videos and animations inspired by its things like cryptids or just strange things that are happening on the internet. Of like scary news and stuff um. And we have you know, the weekly video that drops every Tuesday as well as a podcast with which has additional stories that are fans submitted, and we kind of just celebrate all things scary. Um. And it's a it's a good time.

That's amazing. That is right down my alley. And there's like for me in general, I love like all kinds of spooky things and animals, and you know, like there's always this misconception of like, oh, spooky animals there, you know, like scary or bad or whatever or like related to like the double but that's not always true, you know, I really sometimes they are related to the devil fire bat, you know how the other bats bad? No, fine Empire

bats are great. They don't kill nobody. They're just they're just like a little blood. And there's only one species of vampire bat that's ever been known to feast on human blood, only one, and there's so many other ones. I did have a question though, about the giant bat that has shown up on viral like videos and pictures, the the Indian flying fox. I think or like, I don't know if it's in the Philippines or Indonesia where there's like a bat that's like four ft tall. Yeah,

that's a flying fox. They are frugivores, so they will eat fruit. Totally harmless. Bats are a vector of some diseases, so you don't necessarily want to eat them, but they are as big and foreboding as they look. They are typically typically they will eat fruit, and that is a yeah, but I find them extremely cute. You can look up a fruit bats eating banana. It's a great video fruit

bats swaddled in blankets eating a banana. Yeah. For me, culturally, my family's from Michiko, so you know, bats are so important to to us as just like fertility, and you know, like the Mayan's regarded them in such a way that they are a part of life, you know, like because

of them. Uh, we have things like tortillas or the amazing tequila because they Yes, they're huge pollinators in Mexico and uh in South America, it's there are some bats that are such good pollinators that they will actually become completely covered in pollen, so they look like little yellow poofballs. Where can people find you, Mayby, We can find me on Instagram and Twitter talking about speaky things. And things

like bats and adventures I have with friends. My Twitter is at Sabina has No R. You can find me on Instagram at that Lady Greaves. And you can find us on the internet at Creature Feature Pod on Instagram at Creature feet Pod. On Twitter, that's f e A T, not f e ET. That is something very different. You can find me on Twitter at Katie Golden g O l D I in just by Katie thoughts you know about the general state of the world. So that's fun, all right, you guys, Thank you so much for listening.

If you're enjoying the show and you want to leave a rating or review, I read all of them and I really enjoy everything everyone says and all the feedback you've given, And that also really helps us because it teaches those algorithms that people are people are listening. Thank you so much to the Space Classics for their super awesome song Exo Alumina. Creature features a production of I

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