Welcome to Creature, feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, it's Creature. We we're bringing you some spooky species, some foolish genuses, tales that will chill you to the beat, and boat from undead fish, tailor rodents and flying zombies. These real stories will send shivers down your spine if you have one. Discover this and more as we answer the age old question can
you still be fashionable? From beyond the gray? Joining me today is front of the show, one of the maniacal minds behind the website one nine hundred Hot Dog and co host of the podcast The Dogaga the Zone, Robert Brockway.
Welcome, Hey, thank you for pronouncing all of the letters. Nobody ever does that, and I'm offended every time you did. Forget nine thousand. We put a nine thousand on there to make it extra hard.
To search, as anyone who listens to this podcast can attest to them. I'm great at pronouncing things, especially Latin names for stuff, and it comes out as a beautiful letters and vowel. Salad from my mouth.
Doggus zonicus from the Latin for the area of dogs.
Yes, exactly, exactly.
Thanks for having me for a spooky spook aween.
Spook aween. I should have called you rob Boot. There it is. Remember when we all did that with our names. That was fun. That was innocent times.
That was Twitter right before uh, before it fascism.
Yeah, a more innocent time. There's there's uh, there is Sean. I guess I'll let them in.
Oh yeah, just let him in.
I don't know if he's here. He says he's here, but it's just it's his ghost, his spooky ghost.
Oh, that's what he's doing. He's doing a bit.
He's doing a spooky ghost bit. I feel like we're gonna find we're gonna like reading the newspaper that he died, but he joined the podcast after he died.
Who was Shawn Baby? That's a game. I haven't heard a ny on twenty years. There has been dead the whole time.
There hasn't been a shop Baby here since the Great Bloodening of nineteen eighty seven.
Some say you can still hear him out there on that old innet.
What's this we've got. I'm sensing something it's coming through through the fog of my seance globe with my crystal ball. A figure emerges. Who is this? Is this the other co host of the podcast, the Dogogacase his own and one of the other maniacal minds behind the website one nine hundred Hot Dog. Could this be the legendary ghost whisper ghost Tickler shambaby dot com.
Yes, I'm I'm the legendary ghost tickler. That's what people know me. Yes, thank you. It's a pleasure to be back to tickle the ghosts.
Yeah, well we we we are truly shocked. We reached out to you through this sance. I thought it was a scam, but here you are.
You have to do it in a ghost voice whole podcast, ghost Voice, ghost.
Voice wherever that tickles Sean booms, sham boo, baby, Welcome, Welcome. We are talking about spooky animals on this podcast, this time on account of it being the spookiest Halloween of all. Thanks.
They like getting tickled.
Yeah, the ghost Tickler on to catch a ghost where they're like, hey, ghosts, why do you have a seat over here? I'm gonna tickle you.
And then I'm like, uh this Semas for me. I was here to show them the dangers of drinking six semas by yourself.
Yeah, that was good. Rest in peace God. I forgot that guy's name, Chris Hansen. Chris Hansen, he's.
Still or were you talking about one of the predators you're touching? Butts? That that was the man's name he had I legally changed. Yeah, we all should have seen it coming.
Ripping peace. I love those funny tombstones they put up on Halloween where they're like ripping' peace mister. But yeah, see more asses.
Yeah, we got some of those in our neighborhood.
Yeah.
I meet a lot of squares now as a parent, Yeah, there's a lot of You know, it's hard to like pick your friends group when when all your kids go to the same school, and so some of my daughter's friend's parents are like, oh, yeah, I gotta see are zany tombstones this year?
Have you ever have you ever gone to a haunted house where they put out bowls of cold spaghetti and they're like, ooh.
Too terrifying spaghetti. As a ghost tickler, I legally am not allowed near a bowl of cold spaghetti.
Have you ever just busted the fuck up at one of those tombstones, like you want to be too good for it because you're a comedian, but then you're like, no, never, classic clic.
The second I felt that coming on, I would kick it over.
I split my guts open. And when I saw tombstone and it said, uh, here lies the ghosts dead person.
Mister Butts, that one's pretty good.
That one's yes, that is good.
Today we are a square test and I caught both to you.
Yeah, well, you know, today we are talking about animals who are spooky spooky ghosts. We are first going to talk about a fish that can do skin magic from beyond the grave. This is based on a great article in the New York Times by Elizabeth and Brown or should I say Elizabeth and boo around. Okay, I'll stop that starting now. So, this is a fish called the hogfish, the humble hogfish it is. It is a fish that can do necrotic skin magic.
So doing some hog hogskin magic on this fish.
Hogskin magic, uh, tossing the old hogskin fish around. So hogfish are found in the Atlantic Ocean. They are a species of wrass that is this sort of patchy cream and rusty orange color. It is a boxy, flat, sort of trapezoidal shape with long dorsal spines. It's called a hogfish due to an elongated hog like snout, which it uses as a shovel to dig for small crustaceans in
the ocean floor. They're not small fish. They can grow to be around twenty five pounds that's around eleven kilograms, and they can grow for three feet long, which is almost a meter, So you know, they are interesting fish. I have sent you a photo of this fish. It is on its own, not that scary unless you're scared of fish, in which case it is pretty scary given that it is a fish.
Definitely definitely scared of fish, especially especially hogfish.
Yeah, it does. The face is a little un settling, you know, like that scene in Beetlejuice where Alec Baldwin kind of like stretches his face out. It looks a little like that.
He looks almost exactly like the guy that did piercings at the at the Central Organ Mall in nineteen ninety seven. He's got the three little spikes, the weird beady eyes.
Big old that did your belly button.
Yeah, yeah, and amongst amongst other things.
Did he Did he do a good job or did you get like a belly button infection?
Well, the belly button was fine. He actually did a piercing called the hogfish. Ah, yeah, that's that's left over. I lost some sensitivity that was big in the eighties.
So you know, this fish, it's uh, you know, pretty typical fish stuff. But they can I mean, they're interesting because when they are born, all hogfish are female, and they are what is called a sequential hermaphrodite, meaning they will change their sex as they mature, depending on environmental conditions.
So they become male when they become large, or when there is a political opportunity such as there being no dominant males in the group, and then they become they switch their sex from female to male and becomes it become a dominant breeding male. So you know, this is so far typical fish stuff, very normal, very normal.
Stuff for Yeah, exactly, like mayor a political opportunity.
I used to do the same thing in the fraternity. Yeah, sometimes convenient.
Look you know what they elect, they elect their mayor and then it becomes sexually male.
So exactly, I triple in size, Yeah, I get much more masculine.
Yeah, get uh you start like, uh being interested in sports?
Is that?
Is that a guy thing?
What I like to do for my sports? I like to take my snout and dig in the ocean floor. Yeah, and then I'll eat crabs.
Yeah. Man, such a guy thing.
So with the.
With the bros.
So another interesting thing these fish do is they change their color. They can change the color of their skin in seconds, from say, being a patchy, rusty orange to brown to white depending on their surroundings. Surroundings, they will change the skin color.
I have a fish question. Can they mix and match? Can you be like I'm going to be a rusty lady today or a white fella?
Is?
Are you locked in?
Always easier on the white fellas, always easier?
So yeah, I mean they they're The ability to change their color and their sex are not really super related. They they can both change their sex and change their color. Changing their sex is more of a like permanent thing, a change that they will undergo if there is a male power vacuum. Changing their color is something they can do anytime pretty much, and they do it to camouflage with their environment, so trying to blend in, so you know,
they they can't. Unfortunately, they can't like switch back and forth between male and female whenever they want within seconds. But that would be rad and it would be.
I love that it works, like like picking classes in Overwatch. Like just nobody's nobody's playing Boy. Really, nobody's playing Boy, right, I guess I'm not good at Boy.
Yeah, we need one Boy.
We need one Boy. Does anyone want to play Boy this time?
You know it's not fun.
I played Boy last time. It's your turn.
First playing Overwatch. I was just this is just like being a fish. Been there.
Yeah, well, so they can change much about themselves. Again, this is not like particularly unusual for a marine life. There is there are a lot of marine animals that can change their skin color, although this is not super common for fish. And what is odd is that researchers have noticed that hogfish are able to change their skin color from beyond the grave. So this is where I get spooky from a watery grave, because this is the ocean and it's.
All water by rusty hog.
So a marine biologist Lorian Skware god no waker Laurian Schweikert noticed a speared hogfish on the deck of a fishing boat was still able to change its skin color to match the deck of the boat, upon which it wasn't paled.
Wow. Yeah, did we check her for paint scientists? You can't trust him, that's what they tell me in church.
Yeah, there was, I believe there was. This must have been in the eighteen hundreds or early nineteen hundreds. There was like some experiment with like mouse skin, grafting skin up from one mouse to the other mouse. But then it turned out they just colored the mice with like a pin, so they colored in black markings on the mouse. So that does happen sometimes.
Yeah, and it's where Steven Stagall learned his hair life.
Yeah, that's right. He glues mice to the front of his face.
Right, it's like face off, but you just kind of scribble in those those Nicholas Cage eyebrows, face over your own face, straw Nicholas cage face in sharpie on your face.
Special effects.
Yeah. Now, fortunately this seems to be absolutely real. She and a group, this marine biologist Laurence Swikert and a group of researchers studied the skin and found that underneath the chromatophores, so chromatophores are color changing cells. Underneath these chromatophors, there's a cell type that contains light detecting proteins, So this is the first time that light detecting cells have been identified in the skin of a vertebrate, a vertebrate
being something that's got a spine. It is similar to the light detecting cells found in the skin of cephalopods like squid like octopus is clolefish, but this is the first time these kinds of cells have been found in a vertebrate, and the positioning of the light sensory cells
underneath the chromatophors may be strategic. So the chromatophor, these color changing cells are typically a reddish brown color which may filter out the abundant blue light in the ocean, and by filtering the excess blue light, they may be
more able to accurate the light detecting cells underneath. The color changing cells may then be able to accurately detect the color of their surroundings with this blue light filter and be able to better match the coloration where they are and camouflage better.
And this works completely independent from like the fish that it's living on.
This is what's weird, right, So after the fish dies, even though the brain has ceased to function. These cells continue to function for some time before cellular decay takes place, so an effect, the skin lives on longer than the actual fish.
So science says the skin it's haunted.
It's haunted, haunted fish.
Taken away from this. Yeah, so if I was to make a tow pay of this fish skin, I could have like hair that just changed color. Yeah, for are we talking like hours, days the rest of my life.
I don't know how long your fish skin to pay would last, whether it be hours or days. I would say not that many days, and it would certainly would offer a kind of unique perfume. But otherwise I think it'd be very fetching.
But for a special night out, like it would last through that for.
A special night out, Like, well, that's.
Good, it's good news. You're giving me great news, Kating.
You know, if you want a color changing fish skin to pay for a special night I'm not gonna say you can't do that. We actually have used fish skin to treat burns in human beings. So like using fish skin that has been especially treated, you know, and I believe disinfected, and then you put the fish skin over a burn wound. The fish skin helps to lock in moisture and help with healing by being sort of a a It's almost like a better bandage that is more gentle on damaged skin. So you know, is there a
future promising? Right? Is there a future in which we can choose instead of having like a wig or to pay to graft fish skin onto our heads and maybe keep it alive with our own blood supply without violently rejecting it. Maybe we are going to take a quick break while I called police, and when we get back, we are going to talk about carnivorous mice. So you
guys remember that book Buncula about the vampire bunny. Yes, that book was kind of unsatisfying to me because I think it was like the cat was paranoid about this vampire bunny and kept trying to kill it, but because it's a cat, it was stupid. So it thought like a steak meant like a surloin type steak, and like put a steak on top of the bunny and the bunny was like what And then it was like, hey, you were too judgmental, cat. But also it's vague about whether or not the bunny is a dracula, So I
don't know. I didn't understand the books so well. But the point, yeah, the point is there are mice that are basically like carnivorous vampires that are actually causing mass destruction and killing innocent bird birds.
Can we prove those birds are innocent?
You know, birds are innocent until proven guilty.
Robert your nanny bird state ethics.
I'm a I'm just being justice simple bird lawyer. But I thought in the country of the United States, birds was innocent.
Toll prove all birds are guilty.
Actually, this is not happening in the United States. This is happening and Marion Island, it's a small island south of the tip of Africa. In the eighteen hundreds, French seal hunters trapesed about this Marian island and went about killing seals, disrupting things, making croissants out of like, I don't know, seals, I guess. And they brought with them French house mice who quickly started running around the island and you know, making themselves real comfortable. And now they
are still invasive on these islands. Even though this island is not inhabited by humans, it is still inhabited by the mice. That the French sailors left on.
The island colonialist vampire mice. Yeah, no, word of mice.
No mouse is an island. But a bunch of mice can be on an island and be vampires. So yeah, I have a cross stitch live laugh vampire mice. So warm weather has caused the invasive mouse population to explode, unfortunately, not explode as in a fiery combustion, but to explode in number. And the mice must compete for food with a limited supply of plants and insects, so they have started to devel up a taste for blood, for the blood of birds.
Do anybody have a vampire mouse? Impressed? I don't have that. I don't have that.
I a mose. I don't belong on this island. Blo.
It's me Mickey mouse spire, and I want to suck your blood. And soon.
I'm going to suck your blood.
And then sue you.
Now and Francis.
Litigious colonialist vampire mouse, you buly sue you, exploding ligous.
So yes, these mice, uh what I.
Said, Travian madam s.
Okay, So these mice uh want to feed on the blood of these poor birds, These sea birds. There are millions of sea birds who live and breed on the island, including albatross. This school's king penguins, gintoo penguins, crawls, is shags, and many more. Uh so a lot of sweet, cute yeah penguins.
When you said they're drinking bird blood, I was like, I don't care, go crazy mice. But now you're talking king penguins.
No, now it's pain.
Something has to be done. Yeah, something has to be done.
There's something about penguins where it's like, I think humans are so biased towards bipeds. We're like you, you walk on your two feet, and you don't.
They're tummy, which is even cuter.
You got a tummy. Any any animal that has a tummy, we empathize with animal.
Any animal that wears a suit, that wears a little suits and you can dress up. Then you're you're okay.
My I mean every day is a black tie event for these tummy sliding best friends.
I think the tummy theory is strong, right because some of our most hated animals, like wasps, have the opposite of a tummy, and so we don't like them. But they got a tummy, then we like them. So, yeah, these are cute birds and it's an important area for them to breed in, and so, uh, the fact that these mice have developed a taste for bird blood is bad. And you might be asking, how does a mouse eat a bird to death? Well, it does it very slowly
and horribly. So the mice will attack chicks or I got this.
If they merge to form one man shaped mouse, yeah, and grab it with its swarm of mouse, swarm of mice mocking our human hands.
I like the logic of the mouse forming like a human, giant human shape, Like it's they're like, what's what's more powerful than one mouse? It's a bunch of mice. What's more powerful than a bunch of mice? A human made out of a bunch of mice? And then we just punched the birds. Well that would almost be more humane than what these mice do. So the mice will attack these birds. They attack both adults and chicks, and they will just chew away at the bird's skin over days.
So yeah, like the mouse can just like chew away at a bird. And the birds have not co evolved with these mice, so they don't really know what to do. And it's not like these are some of the more how do I put this gently, These aren't the brightest birds. These aren't like, you know, I talk a lot about how smart parrots and corvids are. These are you know, they're sweet, they are cute, but maybe they're not the most intelligent birds out there.
And so how would these birds know that they don't like their skin being eaten. They've never had the opportunity, yeah, in their revolution, to have their skin eaten, so they don't know not to like it. Of course.
I saw I think it was a David Attenborough special where it was one of those snakes that has like a bug tail, and so he's like wiggling his little bugtail. Birds like, oh hey, look at that delicious bug. And the bird comes over to get the bug, and the snake bites it and totally whiffs, and like the birds like did that did the back end of that bug just turn into a giant snake and try to bite me? And then it sat there hovering, and then it went back to get the bug. Like that's how dumb birds are.
Yeah, some birds. Look, we can't generalize to all.
Birds, but some birds hashag, not all birds.
Hashag not all birds, but yes, all all fish are you know, like they they Yeah, But actually that that snake you're talking about is a viper that lives in the mountains of Iran.
And it's cool that I remember that on these birds.
It's cool I remember that about it, but I don't remember the name of it. But it is a snake that has a tail that looks kind of like a spider, and then it wiggles it around and then a bird will like be like ooh, spider, and then the snake tries to get it, and it's like, oh, that was scary. Ooh a spider, and then the snake tries to get it again.
Yeah. So it's super easy mode if you already have a spider tail, I feel like you already have one up. And then the fact that the bird does not care if you like miss a few times while you're fighting at him.
Spooky, come on, spooky Halloween tip. If you just have a bunch of like fake spiders in your pockets, you can just throw them at people and escape, Like if you're in a tough.
Situation and something the birds attack them.
Yeah, and then you're like, uh, spiders, Now you've got spiders on you. Then you have time to get away while all the birds try to eat those spiders smart yeah,
so uh yeah. The mice will basically just like sneak up on a bird while it's asleep and start chewing on its skin, and even if the bird like wakes up eventually, essentially the mice kind of breaks the Geneva conventions like the the like they commit war crimes by continually disrupting the bird's sleep until the bird is just so exhausted that it kind of like it can no longer like keep waking up and trying to knock the mouse off, and so the mouse just like choose its
skin off. I have I've sent you a photo, the most sort of the least gory photo I could find of this of a mouse just sitting on one of these birds attacking it.
But I get this dock. I'm actually really glad I didn't get this.
It's it's a photo of a mouse sitting on the head of an albatross chick. It looks like and what it's doing is it is eating its scalp off. You can't really you can't really see that in this photo. But I have looked at the other photos where it's essentially this poor little bird that's been scalped by a mouse. Because like when I when I first read about these mice where it's like, yeah, these mice like bite these birds, I'm like imagining sort of just like little bite marks
on the bird. I was not imagining a bird just having an entire chunk of skin missing in this like really horrific way. So uh it is uh actually kind of disturbing.
And yet in this photo, if you have kind of bad eyesight, which I do, uh, it just looks like a bird cosplaying is dan Rather it's got like.
A little just some hair piece.
Yeah, yeah, it's just got like a real nice quaft, velvety kind of poof. Yeah, are we sure it's not symbiotic? Where like the bird just understands how good it looks?
Now are you asking? Was like if this is a ratituy situation where the ratituy is actually eating its scalp as well as helping it cook food.
Oh yeah, with the ladies with like the bird.
Lady right with the bird ladies, like you know, yeah, you goulnat want to go on to ask her what her name is? Can I eat?
In an exchange a little bit.
Of skin surround de bergiak ratituy. But he's also eating the human head.
Now that's the crossover I'd like to see. So, yeah, they are a problem for these birds, and conservationists want to get rid of these mice because, uh, you know, they are actually a big threat to some of these bird species on this island, and so they are trying to They are going on like a big Tom and Jerry style mouse hunt where they are they're they're they're pulling out all the stops, they're they're they're, uh, they've caught up Tom and been like, hey, Tom, what's some
of the ideas that they didn't let you use in those cartoons because they were so heinous. Uh, So they are used. They are using poisoned grain to try to kill these mice, which is tricky because most of the sea birds, while most of them actually eat fish, there are some species that are more unnow wrists, so the
bird might eat the grain. So conservationists are actually collecting the birds that eat grain, putting them in like protective bird jail while they spread poison grain for the mice to eat, and then once the once the mice have presumably eaten, the poison grain. Then they release the birds from from protective bird jail.
So I was writing that all birds are guilty. I mean, and they go to bird prison.
Look, I said, bird jail, and you're still presumed innocent when when you're in jail you know nothing of bird law.
You know nothing of bird law, you're born into it.
So what happens? What happens if this doesn't work, if the poison grain doesn't work, what's plan B?
Plan B? I don't know, Like I guess hammers.
See that's right, all the birds together into one big bird to fight the big.
Mouse helmets for the birds helmets.
I feel like we've solved it. You take the hammers, the birds have helmets. Just go crazy with the hammers. Just drop hammers out a helicopters, do whatever you want, because the birds have the helmets. You can't hurt a bird right with a hammer. No, we're not onto something. We'll get it.
Have like uh have like a movie that's like mouse film film for mice. Birds aren't going to be interested in this movie. Then all the mice go to the tiny mouse cinema and then.
You go quick where you drop hammers on.
Then you go Quentin Tarantino on it.
What about rat terriers? They're so adorable and I don't know if you've ever seen a rat terrier go to town, But they'll just grab a rat, shake it till it's dead, and drop it. That's they have no more interest in it. They don't want to eat it or present it to anyone. They're just bread to murder rats. So I guess you'd need to breathe smaller terriers, Like how adorable would that be? Like a mouse terrier?
I mean, I think you know, a rat terrier might go after the mice, not the birds. Might not be a bad idea, that's for me.
You put cats in the island, the cats are gonna kill the birds, right, crazy idea.
But a rat terrier, Yeah, there accountable.
Butting serial killers onto the islands to take care of all the rat terriers.
Right, okay, So then, but how do you get rid of the butting serial killers? Then you got to release the flesh eating mice. Now you've just four chan.
You release a four chan onto the islands and they'll all become preoccupied with it and will no longer venture.
Outside to kill makes sense, all right, We've solved a good job, boys, Conservation achieved. We're going to take a quick break, and when we return, we're going to talk about flying zombies. They fly now, they fly now, they fly now. All right, we're about and we're talking about flying zombies. You know, I feel like you're against him. I feel like the zombie genre, the zambre, has a lot of like iterations of zombies, like these are these are zombie Nazis. This is a zombie that you're in
love with. This is a storm trooper Nazi. Wait no, sorry, zombies storm.
Trooper are too many hooks. Zombies have too many hooks.
A zombie Nazi storm trooper who you can fall in love with, the whole zombie thing. But you know what, I haven't seen I haven't seen flying zombies in movies yet, you know, you know, like just a zombie that can Superman around.
Yeah. I think you're right.
That's the final frontier for just ringing every last drop of content out of zombies. But there is actual zombie flies. So probably a lot of you, and especially people who listen to this show, or if you've seen or played the Last of Us, you're probably familiar with Cordyceps fungus that infects ants, and the ants go a little bit nuts, a little batty, and then crawl away, and then the cordyceps grows out of their bodies. Uh. And that's that's
all horrible. We've are We've talked about that before. But I've got another one for you. Uh. There is a different type of fungus that attacks flies. So the fungus uh Intomothora mouse ski, also known as insect destroyer, infects a variety of flies, including house flies and fruit flies.
I mean good, nobody likes those bugs.
I'm gonna sweet name. I can't be against it.
Yeah, insect destroyer, Yeah.
No, just insect destroyer. I would if I was marketing for the fungus, Like, if the fungus hired me to mark, I would go with insect destroyer in like a heavy metal font. Yeah, and I was I would really embrace.
If I saw destroy If I had a bag, My wife thought, ah, one of those little plants that pitcher plant the flies, and she's super pissed off that it has not diminished the fly population. But if I if I had a bag of fungus that I could just release into the air, turn them on the zombies just have three or four days of zombiesuretically, they would fungus.
That is how all zombie movies start, though you realize that they're like if I could just release all of this and get rid of whatever I want to get rid of, then surely everything will Oh no zombies, Like that's that is how you get zombies historically, Like, like that's how you get ants. When you release sugar, that's how you get zombi.
Either you can either put some red wine vinegar in a cup and then put plastic wrap on the top and poke some holes in it, or you can release this fungus. And the releasing of the fungus sounds a lot more fun, although I feel like maybe by the end of this you might have like a shred of sympathy for these flies.
So first, okay, let's hear it.
Open your mind and your heart to the flies. First, the fungus lands on a fly via spores. The spore then invades the flies hemal lymph. So hemal lymph is bug blood essentially, so the fungus feeds on the flies hemal lymph and fat tissue. Then the fly's mind is influenced by the fungus, and it is driven to climb upwards and upwards. Its body is riddled with the fungus. Then it is induced somehow by the fungus. Now we researchers don't know exactly how the fungus is doing this,
but the fly sticks out it's proboscis. That's its little two blank mouth thing, the little like weird tiny elephant trunk thing that flies have that they use to suck up food. It sticks this out onto the surface and it uses this like sticky saliva that is probably infused with some kind of sticky fungal compound. And this drool actually forms like a glue, so it's glued from its like by the mouth onto the surface that it's on.
And so now the fly is stuck. And then the fly is for some reason compelled to extend its wings in this like upright position that's kind of unnatural for it. And now the fly has essentially become this fixed in place, perfect substrate for the fungus to grow and spread. And just hours later the fly has grown this fluffy white coat. And this coat is actually fungal filaments which will grow
spores at the tips. Importantly, the reason that the fly's wings are now stuck in this like weird upright position is to clear the way for the spores to fire off of the fly's body. So now these spores that are all growing out of the fly's body can basically pop off like popcorn or fireworks and then hopefully land on another victim who will go through the exact same thing.
Right, this is a nightmare.
Yeah, it turns It turns them into James Brown, kind of like a you've been down, kiss the dirt, stick your stick your legs up, stick your wings up. You put on a big white fluffy coat.
The other guy comes in throws a cape on you. You throw you got more to.
Do, and that cape infects and creates other James Brown's, as we well know from history. Yeah, I'm on board with this so far. I think this whip's ad.
Team Fungus. I think I think I'm.
Agreed Team Fungus. We're all team fungus. I would like to see a zombie movie where basically a zombie just sort of bites a wall and then starts growing a coat and sticks its arms out and like Superman position, and then the coat starts like just shooting off spores. That'd be fun.
Would it'd be a bit if I saw that, I'd be like this a bit much. Zombies.
Yeah, come on, it's a little dramatic.
It's a little hannibal lector it's like Writtner's The Majesty of My Death. You're like, take it easy.
I feel like the groaning and the moaning is already a little mill dramatic, Like we get it, you're dead, but you're moving around, understood.
I don't think you're gonna sell a lot of popcorn at that movie.
Hmmm. If if the.
Theaters aren't gonna like it, they make most of their money off of that.
Yeah, not gonna sell that. I like sauted mushrooms, like a nice cup of saw ted mushrooms.
Right right. They're not gonna sell a lot of fungal spores at the movie theater, if you know what I mean.
I'm a couple of spores here, get you a couple of spores, cold couple spores.
I don't know why he's at a movie theater. The all game was rutted down at the movies.
Now that's what that's what happens at modern cinema. Got someone walking through the aisles, screaming, yelling, yelling, hot dogs, get your three D glasses and your fule spores.
Watch out for Nicole Kidman. Her hair is being blown back.
Cinema, Yes, the magic of chinema. Well, so, yeah, this is this is the fate of this poor little fly gets turned into a mere vessel for the fungal spores and it literally just has to like kiss the ground and die.
Zero empathy for the flies.
Still like flies, Still don't like the flies. It's because it doesn't have a cute little tummy, isn't it.
No, it's because my adorable little dog is definitely afraid of flies for no reason. We can determine that. I'm on her side. Yeah, so if I could, if I could release this fungus and encourage it to destroy all flies.
I do it for her, one of the few insects. I truly hate our tics because of them being mean to my dog. Like, I'm like, how dare you beyond my dog and hurt her? I will exact vengeance. You will be contained in a bottle and drown in alcohol, which sounds good, but trust me it's not.
There are worst ways.
I guess it's.
Rubbing alcohol it's not like I drowned them in a really nice sort.
Of we don't know have standards chocolate. We were all teenagers once.
Uh. Well listen before we go, uh, and you can go about your ghoulish uh daily activities. We do gotta play a little game. It's called the mystery animal sound game. Uh I guess who's squawking? Every week I play a spooky and scary mystery animal sound and you, the listener, any of the guests, try to guess who is squawking?
Uh.
So, last week mystery animal sound hint was this? This ferocious wild carnivore would eat you if only it didn't fit inside your pocket.
I actually know this one. Yeah, that is a Hall of Fame pitcher Randy Johnson.
Ah, how did you know?
No, that's not maybe it's right in your pocket. That's right in your pocket, little Randy.
Little Randy, little pucker, that's what the Yeah.
And he would kill you if he had the chance. Be so thankful, be thankful. He's so weet, bloodthirsty.
He did kill a bird that one time.
Oh, with the ball? Was that when he hit a bird with a ball.
Yeah, he hit a bird with a ball, and.
That bird Uh, presumed guilty before being proven innocent.
Yes, that bird bunch of trial, one appeal.
Jury and bird secutioner. No, this is not that sports guy you just said. This is something else. This is called the rusty spotted cat.
Uh.
It is the smallest cat in the world and it is totally it is like the size of a kitten.
Uh.
And yet it is a full grown wild cat.
Oh my god, and you did not send us pictures. I'm gonna google.
Google it. You will be happy.
He's so cute, a little round ears in the big eyes. And that's as big as they get.
That's as big as they get. That's it. They are found in India and Sri Lanka and it is absolutely adorable.
Why did we pick other cats to keep? Why didn't we just get this and we get this cat?
Yeah? I mean you know, I think we made a mistake. We need to go back in time and instead of using a time machine to like prevent some of the world's greatest atrocities, we should go back in time and demesticate this little this little guy.
I think that would prevent some of the world's greatest atrocities. I don't think Hitler would have done what he did if instead of the German shepherd, he had this tiny little fella in his.
Pocket, cat or this little cat was gonna kill baby Hitler Warrior.
You could speak into Hitler's bunker with like fifteen of these in your pockets. Yeah, very nice to see you if you're and then boom, cats.
Cover him, whip out your trench coat and they all just explode out of all the secret pockets of kiddies that you have, you have kmit inside of there.
Yes, I mean they are. They are adorable. They are indeed sort of rusty and spotty. They've got little streaks, They've got little little white tummies.
They look like they can't wait to hear a secret.
Yeah, they look like they would sit on your shoulder and whisper in your ear, like like heal him, heal him for me, and you do it. I would absolutely do if this little guy sat on my shoulder telling me to go kill people at his whim. Not gonna say I'm not going to do it.
As long as they're all Hitlers.
As well as it's all Hitlers, they're like, trust me, Hitler, there, you must kill it like that looks that looks like that looks like a normal person. No, definitely not. You should go kill him.
God damn it, Randy Johnson. This is the last time, little Randy Johnson I have named my cat.
But yeah, it likes to live in the forest. It is very shy and in your pocket. No, Actually, that's a sad thing is it's extremely shy. Probably the reason that the our cats were domesticated from the African wild cat is that the African wild cat is a little more chill, a little more curious. This one is extremely shy, probably because it's so small. You know, it's like, I'm
a little guy. I'm a little guy. I gotta be shy, understand. Yeah, it'll it'll eat it'll eat rodents, it'll eat birds, frogs, insects, and little one once.
Now, if you showed me a picture of this thing on one of those big penguins just eating its skin, I'd be much more compus.
Yeah, that's the thing. I'd be like, you know what, Uh, I'll let you have it. You can take over the island. So cute, I mean, that's essentially what we've done with cats. Though we we were like, you're cute. You can be invasive on this island, on this territory and kill all the birds and indigenous species here.
If we could develop as we saddle small enough, we could put that on the penguin, slides on the tummy, kitty cat rides in the penguin.
Yeah, you know what. Look, I know that it's been a mistake. Every single time we've introduced a species to try to take care of another invasive species US a mistake. But maybe this time right Because it's so small, I don't see how it's going to eat an albatross and so, but it's not so small that it couldn't eat a mouse that's eating an albatross. You see where I'm going with this. I know every single time we've done this it's had a terrible outcome. I think we should try it again.
What's the worst that could happen? We lose some albatrosses and get an island of adorable kittens. Yeah, just swarming with kittens, the only life form left. Yes, four feet deep wading through adorable kittens.
And the great thing is there's no kind of saying about like running into a folly that has anything to do with albatrosses. Like it's not like like when something happens where it becomes a big problem for you. There's no saying that visa via albatrosses.
So they're saying, is uh getting a day terrific job?
Right, that's the saying.
So on, It's like my mom always said, like you never trust, never trust a tiny kitten. The tinier the kitten, the less.
It's what she says.
Is that what your mother said?
Yeah, she had some medication problems.
Was this here, Like you came home from school one day and you're like, I got I gotta be on my math test and she's like, never trusting kids.
Yeah, I have been looking for them ever since. These uh, these kittens that curse your math tests.
Yeah. Yeah. Anyways, moving on to this week's mystery animals sound the hint is this when he's crabby, he's happy.
Kawasaki crack chocket.
Yeah, I'm I usually have tried. I usually try to be coy about it of like, maybe you're right, but no, you're absolutely wrong.
I didn't get it the first history.
You won't be.
Politeness is earned and boys, you haven't earned it. Ah.
So no that skateboarding walrus skateboarding walrus.
Closer, I guess, but you will find out the answer on next time, on this very show, on Next Creature, on Next Creature feature Fellas, thanks for being on. I guess.
That's the They usually cut that part in the podcast, but yeah, we get that. We get that a lot.
It happens.
Thank you. I suppose where can people find you?
Take it away, Brockway, You're you're a much better plugger.
They can find us on our website one nine hundred hot dog dot com, which is the last home for internet comedy. If you like reading and laughing at texts with occasional images, that's it. Go to Patreon dot com slash one nine hundred hot Dog. We're the last ones doing it and we'll never stop. And you can also find us on our new podcast Big Feats, where we watch every episode of Mountain Monsters along with our co host Some Pargin. It's hillbilly monster hunting reality show. It
is lots of fun. Big Feats, Big Beats we completed.
How many are nothing to?
Is this?
Like?
I mean, this sounds like a podcast that Quentin Tarantino is definitely going to be a guest on.
You will get some Quintins.
All right, all right, well, thank you guys for being on the show and thank you the listener for allowing the show to enter your ear holes. UH. If you are enjoying the earhole experience and you leave a rating and or review, I would be very appreciative. I read all of the reviews and I look at all of the ratings, every single one. And thank you to the Space Classics for their super awesome song Exolumina Preach. Your
feature is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iart radio app app podcasts or guess what, I don't know wherever you listen to your favorite shows. I'm not sureman, I'm not to dead, not even your uncle. I might be your aunt. We don't know. See you next Wednesday.
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