Crow Boarding

and that list is way more extensive than you may think. Mammals, reptails, and insects to have been caughstious, screwing around and acting like idiots for the hell of it. Why do animals play? What the hell are they doing with that octopus? Discover this and more as we answered the angel question. Can turtles play basketball? So why do animals play? It's to prepare for adulthood, right, to hone predatory skills, to hone

social skills, to learn and get smarter and better. While that may all to a certain extent be true, Honestly, there's so many different documented forms of play, and some of them have no clear explanation. In fact, play can be dangerous. Daredevil animals who fall a too hard can injure themselves just as humans can. So could play sometimes just be for fun, a side effect of having a conscious brain, rather than some kind of way to become a better animal. A few studies have tried to tackle

whether play is always beneficial. A night study found that kittens, when equipped with vision distorting goggles and rendered incapable of playing, were compared with kittens that got to play with toys and romp around and pounds normally, But they grew up to be just as effective as hunting as the kittens who were able to play. So the kittens who were able to play had no observable advantage over the kittens

who couldn't play. Furthermore, a mere cat researcher found that while mere cats are an extremely playful face de bunch, the frequency of their play fighting seemed to have no effect on their success at dominance, and who they chose as playmates didn't seem to have an effect on their camaraderie later in life. So could kittens and merecats play

just for fun with no real benefits? Today we'll be looking at all sorts of different forms of play and see that sometimes a fun cigar is just a fun cigar. Joining me today to play in this space is after comedian bird enthusiast Kenya Apornia. Hello, thank you so much, thanks for joining me. I didn't even know what the theme was going to be, but I am plump. It's a fun one. We've been doing a lot of gross ones lately. It's a little breather from all the terrible

darkness that has been my October spectacular. But did you say spider for play? Well? Yes, I mean but if you don't see that as a positive, I don't know what to tell you, because we're very spider sex positive on this show. My god, I'm so sorry. Okay, Well, I want to start out with something kind of fun. So have you seen that video of the beluga playing with the rugby ball? Oh? I that sounds familiar, but I probably a no. Just so I can see it.

Let me let me show it to you just in case, and it's always worth given it another look because it's pretty great, so you can see. So it's this guy on a boat in the Arctic and he's got a rugby ball and he tosses it and this just chases after it really goes long, really goes long, and like a dog picks it up. There he's got it, and then he's well, okay, he fumbled a little bit, but

he's you know, he's he's a good candidate. He's not he wasn't strong in his first season, but I think he's gonna he might shape up to be a real, real MVP next year. He's got the raw talent, but he has no idea how to play the game right exactly. I mean, he hasn't. He's not developed as a team. He's he's developed as an individual, but he's got to learn to play with the boat rather than just playing it for hims self. Totally. I'm pretending like I know

anything about rugby. But he brings it back to the humans. So he's playing fetch basically. It's basically fetch, and he waits and then he tosses it again and then he's going to go after it again. He's clearly, very clearly playing fetch. What a good boy? What a good boy? Or you know, I don't know. I just always think of you know, I always think of dogs when in this context. But I'm like, well, They're just all animals

that have similar that's what we're talking about exactly. So little let me give a little background on below belugas because they are one of my favorite of these cetaceans. So, cetaceans are aquatic mammals, which includes toothed and baling whales. So that's basically all the sort of flippered mammals you can think of in the ocean, like whales, dolphins, from humpback whales to orcas to little porpoises to dolphins. These are all in the cetacean family. So blugas are toothed whales.

So twos as you probably have guests, means teeth teeth with teeth, yeah, instead of those toothbrush teeth. Set the toothbrush teeth. Right. That's balians that like that big brushy like uh, you know, the like weird eyebrow like fish trap, the fish trap exactly. Broom broom mouth as we like to call them in high school. Okay, they're broommouth. Uh. So. Blue gas live in the Arctic oceans. They are white or light gray in color, and they have round, fleshy bodies.

Pretty cute. They look like anything you could mold out a clay. Yes, they look they look pretty squidgy and soft. They're firmer than they look though. There you know it's it's blubberry. It's uh but yeah, I know right. They can grow up to ten to eighteen feet long. They weigh from one thousand, five hundred to three thousand, five hundred pounds. Males tend to be larger than females. They used to be thought to live only about thirty years,

but recent evidence suggests that they have similar lifespans to humans. Yeah, yeah, hundred right, yeah, at least maybe for for you, but uh, for for me when I toss back like entire canisters of cookies and gummy worms. Maybe slightly. Yeah, But it's not about what you do. It's about how medicine can keep you alive. That's true. That is true. I what I do is I'll eat a cookie and then just take a pill, a random one, a random medication. I'm

sure it'll do something good. You shouldn't keep it random. But they are unusual amongst whales in that their neck vertebrae are not fused, which means it can turn its head from side to side like a human and other mammals so think of a dolphin. You're not used to seeing a dolphin kind of swivel its head and then it can't do that, But beluga can. It can. If you call out a beluga, it can like side at you. It can turn around and look right in your eyes

and be like, who are you calling? Call them blubberry? Like is kidding? I know, I've got lots of blob. It's great, I love it. So it is also known as the white whale and the melon head due to the bulbous shape of its head. Sounds like an insult. But one problem with calling it a melon head is this name has already been taken by another species of dolphin called the melon headed whale. Oh that's so confusing, I know, right, So what we'll keep calling it the beluga.

But the reason so many their scientists are so eager to call these things melon heads is because their heads are kind of melon shaped. And also the melon is actually the real term for the anatomical feature of cetaceans that help with echolocations, So so their heads are literally called melons. Yes, well it's that head bump. It's not the little sensor the bumpy. It's actually not the sensor. But it is. It's a head bump. Okay, it's like that cartoon bump you get when the anvil falls on

your right exactly. It's the badonca donc in the front, the front, the head, the head butt. Yes, uh so this is called the melon. It's made mostly out of adipose, which is fatty tissue. It is actually a sound lens, so it helps focus and project echolocation, calls, clicks, chirps, and other vocalizations. So it's sort of like a megaphone made out of squishy, fat tissue. Yeah, exciting, it is, right, it's like a flesh megaphone. I wouldn't well, I don't

have to. Well, you can just project naturally out of my mouth, which is a flesh megaphone. I actually I have a very soft voice. I have to like basically eat the microphone for anyone to hear me. So I could use like a melon microphone, like fleshy microphone, a metaphone, you know, with where medicine is at, I'm sure we can PLoP one on your face. I'm sure we can

do just plot. The medical term is plopping it into the face after you age one, right, exactly, I will have a body you with just a bunch of random medications, and doctors will will be like, oh, you know, we didn't think the technique of taking random pills every time you ate a cookie would work. But it turns out you're a medical marvel. You're gonna live forever. Jokes on everyone else. Let's put this melon head on you so

you can talk louder totally. So blue is our special amongst the dolphin family, and that they can change the shape of their melons at will. They can even wiggle it. It's really funny. It looks like they're just kind of squishing winking their heads. I don't know about that, squishing that around. What's wrong with that? It's weird. It can change the shape of a the thing on its head. Well, right, it's imagine said this wasn't the spooky episode. No it's not.

It's cute. It's adorable. Imagine you have a fleshy lump on your forehead, Uh, already out, already, don't like it, and then you wiggle it around by blowing air through your sinuses. Or let's say I love it you you would love it. They certainly seem to love it. They do it all the time, so it thought that this may help focus and modulate their clicks and calls. So they're sort of it's like the when if you have you ever played an instrument like a brass instrument or

anything that you played the keyboard? I see, Ah, well, great, so I don't have any band geeks to back me up on this one right now, which is sad for me and kind of the story of my life. But uh so, yeah, if you change the shape of your lips, that's like the armor sure of your lips. You can change the way that you're sort of vibrating the mouthpiece and then that creates different sound. They're kind of doing that but with their their forehead lip forehead lips right right,

which aren't their actual lips. It's just this protuberance of fatty tissue exactly. So. The beluga is also known as the sea canary due to it's birdlike calls. So mariners were able to hear their calls through the holes of their ship and it actually sounded similar to bird sounds, like a canary singing. So let me give you play you a little clip that may give you an idea of why they were called the canaries. Of the sea. Yes please, kind of like a techno canary. I know.

I was like, there's that tweet tweet in the back, but then there's also all that static and a canary remix robot bird. They also can manage some pretty interesting sounds above the water, very different. That's not quite a canary sound, more of a more of a foghorn sound. Let's let's hear another another interesting oh ut, Yeah, they're they're pretty good at noises. Pretty cool. That's a bird. That's fully a bird. Yeah, that is not a bird.

That is a blog. So they are able to make a lot of really interesting noises, and that's why they're the sea canaries, or to me, they're more like a sea huge sea bird that squawks and does techno, a techno turkey. So, like many cetaceans, they are highly social. They form cooperative groups or pods, which are typically about ten individuals big. They will hunt together and seek out interpersonal contact with each other. Some researchers suggest that their

unique anatomy encourages even more social contact meanings. So there, since they can turn their heads, they can look at each other more easily. They that flexible malleable melon on their head maybe can direct vocalizations at another individual more easily, so that they may be really anatomically better at socializing with each other. That's amazing. Are they allowed to talk

to other pods or just their own? No, they will actually coalesced into huge groups of sometimes up to thousands of other beluga where there are many different pods coming together. And then they will actually sometimes form these nursery groups, which is a bunch of mothers and their babies and adolescents. So mothers will form triads with like they'll have a baby and then an adolescent and the mom and they

do this childcare together. But then sometimes they will form big nursery group like like mommy play dates with other other mothers and there's this positive pro social interaction between the mothers. Sometimes they'll they'll just like voluntarily be midwives

for each other. So that means helping the new mother lift up the newborn calf to the surface to take its first breath, which is a really critical time because they they are mammals, they have to breathe the air, and so the calf is not strong enough to swim to the surface, so you have to physically lift it up and so all these moms will come together help each other lift their calf's up to take their first press. As beautiful it really is, and then the adolescents will

babysit and learn how to raise raise the young. So it's it's really adorable. It's it's actually really cool, beautiful form of pro social behavior that's fantastic. And their whistles is this form of communication there. They also echolocate, so a lot of the clicks are just I'm trying to see my environment. So you know how basically echolocation works. You send out a click, it bounces off, comes back.

They have these huge sort of visual cortex processing centers where it's like or not visual sorry, um, auditory processing centers where they can interpret see their environment through the second locations. Really cool. But then they'll they will also make weird squeaks and stuff, and that seems to be communicating with each other basically talking, making out alarms community, you know, a form of some some kind of bluega form of speech that goes like and then and then

cute whistles, bluga jokes. It's like it's like, uh, what what do you call two melon heads together? What a picnic squad. That's a really terrible joke. But in my defense, I think it's true to what a beluga joke would be. Right, And belugas are highly playful, so they will rub up against each other, chase each other, or sometimes they spit water at each other just for fun, exciting, and they'll

they will also spit water humans. By the way, So if you're if there is a bluga in captivity for some reason and it's like your walk and around, sometimes a little spit a jet of water at you because they want to play, because they want to play, maybe they want to annoy you. But hey, put water back in their face. Did I do that? Yeah? I think so, just spit at him. See what happens if you're out of zoo and you do. Yeah. They also like to play with c junk that they find, like plants would

would like driftwood, Booye's trash. One even was observed carrying around a dead reindeer skeleton just out of curiosity. That's the weird one. No one touched. I found a new toy. Yeah, we're gonna go play over here. We're gonna make more bad melon jokes over here. Oh my god, But it got away from that guy. But you know, that's probably why this bluegol was caught on video playing rugby, because it's part of its natural behavior is playing around with objects.

And I do really believe it was smart enough to figure out that if I bring this rugby ball back to the human, they're going to throw it and it'll be fun. They're highly social, highly intelligent. I think that often you'll see a video and it's like, oh am, I anthropomorphizing too much? Like is it? But in this case, I think sometimes we can the desire to not anthropomorphize too much actually flips the other direction and we don't

do it enough. We think that everything an animal does have some kind of practical function rather than just maybe it's just having fun. And so this is it's as I said, it's very similar to how dogs play fetch. So I actually wanted to look into more why do dogs play fetch and how did that behavior come about? So wolves aren't great at fetch, which I think is interesting. So we have definitely bred dogs to be better at

playing fetch. Obviously, sometimes we've selected for that behavior in particular, like with the Labrador retrievers um. It's in the name it is in the name. But one of the theories for why they're so playful in general, including fetch, is that they have retained juvenile traits, like puppy like traits, and we've selected for the more juvenile the dogs. We did this to the dogs. I mean, we made dogs, dogs from registered trademark dogs, copyright what dogs, patent pending dogs.

We made dogs. Yeah, I understand. So what's interesting is that wolf puppies are show a great capacity for playing fetch. So if you taught you can train a wolf puppy how to play fetch, but a wolf adult, they don't. They're not as playful. As part of this exactly too mature, too cool fetch. Huh yeah, I used to play that. Now I'm into like like I'm into you know, sitting here in the space devo. That's better. But with dogs, we have potentially bred in these traits that are called neotony,

which is basically dogs being kids forever. So neatanus traits means a juvenile trait that lingers on in an adult. Uh So. Some of the common notatinus traits in dogs is uh, floppy ears, shorter muzzles, smaller size, large eyes, and ears big ground foreheads kind of generally puppy like looks. Yeah, we did all this, we did. Yeah, I mean we bred dogs not just to have juvenile behaviors, more friendliness, more playfulness, but juveniles. Sometimes we selected for those juvenile

physical traits because we find them cute. It fits into the baby schema of you know, the eye to forehead ratio, where you have this big forehead, big eyes, and to us that just strikes us as cuter. And sometimes juvenile physic could traits like floppy ears just happened to be attached to more friendly behavior. Like so your cartilage and a lot of domesticated animals gets weaker when you select

for less aggression, which is really interesting. Okay, Yeah, so one of the juvenile behaviors of wolf puppies is more playfulness. So with dogs, they are it's almost like they are just eternal puppies like Peter Pan exactly. Yeah. So, and so in terms of like playing and fetching and retrieving, we we also did that by making them eternal children. We made we made fetch happens. I don't know how to feel about it, but I guess it's fine. Yeah,

I have a dog I like dogs. Yeah, but to think that they didn't exist until we decided to make them this way. I mean, we wanted to make fetch happen, so we made fetch happen. Yeah. My dog isn't good at fetch though, so I don't know what that means. She's only good at it if you have treats. She's oh to bring back the thing you see. Yeah, doesn't do that. No, no, no, she she wants something out

of it, which is really sad. I thought that she was more pure of heart, but she's a cold blooded capitalist. She looks at me, she has the toy. She's like, well, and now I expect a transaction of treats to dogs. Yeah, I mean that's a smart dog. Yeah, it's a smart dog. But is it? Is it a fun dog? It's the dog of now it's it's dogs are no longer fun capitalist dogs, capitalist dogs, I know too much. Now she's running for president. Oh yeah, i'll vote. I don't know

who I'm voting for my dog. So it plays sometimes just for fun and a characteristic of young animals. Does it really serve no purpose? One way to approach this question is to look into why humans play. It's easier to know why we want to play, since we understand our own feelings reasonably well. Playing is fun, But there is something about play that maybe been a ishal to humans. Many child behavioral researchers emphasize the importance of play for

children in cognitive, social, and emotional development. It's not that play makes children better at hunting or better at dominating social hierarchies. It just gives them a more enriching emotional life and makes them happier, more well adjusted, and healthier. And for animals, when playtime isn't just honing a certain skill, maybe it's simply enriching their emotional lives. Animals, after all, can get bored, especially when they're taken out of their

natural environment. When we return, we'll talk about some animals you wouldn't even think are capable of playing, and some curious little creatures who use playtime to cope with being abducted to a very strange alien environment. Will be right back.

Remember being a young adult, Remember all those times you went out on a limb to try and meet someone new, maybe even find someone to go out with all that awkwardness as you fumbling Lee talked to a beautiful stranger with long, slender legs, curves in all the right places, beautiful shimmering eyes, glistening hair, elegant meaty chillis terrae, and soft beckoning pedipalps. She's a stunning single spider and she's

wrapped her long forelimbs around you. She's been flirting with you all night, and she playfully put your head in her fans and whispers call me. Sometimes we can mate, and I'll rip your head off and eat it for real. That time, I didn't any of that. Well, sorry to say that. Researchers at the University of Tennessee have observed a tangle web spider playfully flirting with each other. So this is the I think it's pronounced nalosimus studio syst.

That sounds right to me. Yea, yeah uh. And it is a type of These are tiny little spiders who build clumpy, tangled webs. That's why they're called tangle we are these the ones that I've seen on like to know where people are like check this out and it looks like a little fluffball and then they poke it. A million spiders, I don't think. So there are, yeah, there are social there are so let me just say they do live in North and South America, so you

may encounter these at some point. They're so within the same species. They can be social or a social. So social individuals live in communal groups. So it's I don't think these are the ones that form the big clumps, but they are sometimes found in big groups. So yeah, but they're they're nice little guys, So don't don't be too po say bugs are a fear of mine. So I'm just gonna be this way through the spider section. Let's see if let's see if I can't seduce you

to this, to to like spiders. So the social individuals live in these small groups. A social ones are kind of as you would predict, aggressive to newcomers, don't really like interacting with people, really like posting memes of the joker online. And it's thought that the social phenotype developed in response to harsher environments, so that made communal living a more viable survival strategy. Uh. And these social spiders of the species have also been observed flirting, so you

may wonder how do spiders flirt? That is what I wonder. Yes, so juvenile females and males will engage in mock copulation or essentially dry up umping dry humping. The females are not yet sexually mature, so they can't reproduce. There's zero point to pretending to make because they can't, and but they still engage in the behavior, just sort of grinding against each other. It's the flirt part. I go straight for the dry hump, straight for the dry hump. They

do not leave room for spider. Jesus. It's a disgrace and I don't know where their chaperones are. But what's interesting is it's not just they don't they're too stupid to understand that they're not ready or sex because the females seem to understand that this is not actual sex. And we know this because they don't eat the male's head after they do the dry humping for real one right, when it's a real connection, when you've made a true sexual connection and you have been intimate as a spider,

you you eat the dude's head. I'm supposed to You're supposed to have sway me to like spiders spooky. But it's a commitment, it's an ultimate commitment. Well, okay, to be fair to spiders, there's only about a thirty percent chance that they're going to eat the male's head. But so when researchers looked at the play, the playful flirtationous humping, they found that the females never ate the male spider's head, which I think is really polite of them. It's like,

you know, this is just a dry run. This is a you know, this is a test run. I'm not gonna, you know, kill you during the practice game. But in the finals, yeah, I'll probably you'll probably get your head eaten. But that's fine because that's that's the for real one. Yeah, that's that's the real show, the real performance, is it, Because then the eggs are laid inside the body that's left over. Oh my god, now you've got me going crazy.

I mean, there are obviously there are many insects that do lay their eggs inside the bodies of prey items. But this is just a case in which the idea is that when females do eat the heads of the males, it may help increase the viability of their eggs, So that extra snack that they get is good for good for them, good for the survival rate of their eggs. Yeah, but they don't. I mean, come on, don't be gross. They don't lay their eggs and the bodies of their victims.

You're sorry, I'm being grossed. They're not like the tarantula loss that paralyzes tarantulas and then lays their larva on the tarantula, and the larva eats its way outside of the tarantulas it develops. Come on, Kim, come on, don't be weird. Okay, well, okay, so you look really uncomfortable, So I think we will move on from spiders. Hey, that learning was cute. It was adorable. Wink wink wink, wink, wink wink. All the eyes keep winking. Oh my god,

that's real spider blurting. So let's talk about geckos in space. Space, Space, space, geckos in space. So, uh, did you know there are space geckos hovering above us? Maybe even at this moment? Well there are. So Geckos are much studied animals in unmanned spacecraft because researchers are really interested in seeing how they manage that spider Man trick of climbing up walls. So geckos, as you may know, are really good at climbing up stuff, and like really sheer surfaces, so they

can even climb up glass. If you've ever owned a gecko, you know they sometimes can climb up the glass tank. Kimmy it, come on, I'll go out and get a gecko and a bunch of spiders. Yeah, you're supposed to go, Yes, and I'll get a bunch of geckos and spiders. Yes, and I will. So a specific species of gecko was studied, So I'm going to talk about the Turner's thick toed gecko. Um, I mean it's got the thick toes though sees thick

to double ts. So these are a species of gecko who are found in southern Africa and also in space space. So scientists have long been curious about how gecko has managed to climb up walls. Uh, and researchers have sort of I think they may have pinned it down to Vandervald's forces. So I gotta preemptively say I'm not a physicist, so this is slightly out of my wheelhouse, but I'm going to try to explain Vandervald's force. It is an

attraction or repulsion between molecules over very short distances. So the way that maybe geckos are able to use Vandervald's forces is they have these microscopic hairs on their toepath adds that interact with the molecules on the surface that

they're climbing. So these little, tiny, tiny, tiny hairs have these little molecules that get really close to the molecules on the surface that they're climbing up in these weak Vanderwald forces make it stick together, and then you just multiply that by there's so many hairs on their foot that they're able to stick. So this is just like so small, something that's so tency. Yeah, you'd never real

to see it. Yeah, I mean, well you can probably see it under like an electron microscope, yes, okay, yeah, but like you know, like in the Spider Man movies where you see Spider Man and he's got his fingers, he looks at his fingers and these tiny hairs like poke out of his fingers kind of like that. That's great. Yeah. Researchers are of course interested in seeing whether they can still do this in space, so they put geckos in space. Essentially,

story short, we shot them into space. We couldn't just keep them down here in those fake space you know, atmosphere thingies. We don't we spent all the money to time, I don't think we have we don't have those anti gravity space chambers yet. What we don't have those officially on the record. Oh yeah, we gotta we gotta cut this all out of the podcast. Get Get. The FBI is just busting down our door. The area forty one. Okay, so you don't even know, well, no, the thing is

they want you to focus on area fifty one. What's going on? And two that's where it's actually happening. Gecko aliens. So, in fact, they found that geckos can climb walls in space, so great cool, But they also found something else. They found that geckos like to play games in space. So in space, so on board the buy on M one unmanned spacecraft turners thick toed geckos were caught playing around in zero grab, which is a great headline. I'm very

good at headline writing. Is good. What happened is one of these space geckos wriggled out of its collar and went rogue and was just floating around like a little sneaker, and it was holding its collar and just kind of like the collar floated away because they're in low gravity. And the gecko started playing with this floating collar. They would boop it with their no kind of push it around. One gecko tried putting it on, trying it on, tried

to put his head through it. One of them tried pinning it to the floor and then like releasing it and seeing what happened there, just experimenting, just playing. Yeah, who's the real scientists, the scientists or the geckos. But yeah, still the scientists, well okay, but they're doing experiment experiments on their collar for fun. I'm also imagining that they are all having little tiny bubble helmets over just their heads.

There's just like some kind of like science noise beeping in the background, and one of them has a little helmet. They're just like floating around exactly essentially, that's what's happening. I mean, it's zero gravity, but it's not zero oxygen,

so they're they're probably fine, that's fair, that's cute. But yeah, no, no, they do have a little time space suits, good little tiny NASA patches on, and when they're getting on the spacecraft is just the slow walk of geckos with a little helmet under their arms like don't dunk, don't d don't and like a little gecko is like, oh, I'm so worried about my gecko husband. Oh I hope they don't forget about me. Read three to one stof the geka is like just like their faces going yeah, yeah exactly,

all the all the space things. It's like, here'ston, we have a problem. There's just a gecko turd floating around. Oh my gosh. That was real though, when people went up into space. Yeah, where do they poop the poop in bags? I know, well sometimes I float around. Yeah, I read about that. I've been here. I know they had to poop somewhere and it must have been in you know, the pooping baggies and dehydrate them some time

at times. And that right, there was an incident where like the poop baggies accidentally got released, yes, and that you can there's like a recording I think it was an Apollo flight where they're joking about poops flying around. Anyway, someone fact check that. It's like, oh, is this is this dehydrate of No? Not I screaming guy, So how do we know that these geckos are playing like? I mean we to be fair, we don't like we can't get inside the brain. We can't avatar inside a gecko

brain yet. Um. But there's a good chance it is play based on some of the criteria that we've made for like what is play versus another behavior? Years So Mark Bekov is a behavioral ecologist at the University of Colorado Boulder who talked to Discover magazine and said that even though play is difficult to define, it can fit a few criteria. So he said, quote, play is a kaleidoscope, a mix of different behaviors from lots of different contexts,

like predatory behavior, aggressive behavior, sexual behavior. And it's this mix that allows animals to know that it's play and not something serious. So play is loosely defined as being fitting this mix of criteria, so being voluntary. There's no obvious practical function. Uh, it's different from practical functions. Uh. It can be repetitive. Uh, it can be predatory, sexual, aggressive, or a mix of these behaviors, and the animal playing

is not distressed, and it's for the most part healthy. Uh. And then if you kind of hit most of those criteria or see a combination of those things, there's a good chance that that qualifies as basically playing, because what else is it going to be. We've talked about this on the show before, but octopuses will play. They like to, So there's a super smart they're very smart. Yes, you should check out the aliens under the CEA episode. It's we have a guy who lived with an octopus in

his living room and made friends with it. He's like an octopus researcher, and they're incredibly smart. They have been seen playing with So these researchers put an empty pill bottle in their aquarium and so it's buoyant and it floated around, and the octopuses were playing fetch with themselves. So they were letting the bottle like float out and then it like would like push it with a stream of water, and then he would float back and then

push it again. So it's playing ball and also turtles. Surprisingly. Now what's interesting is some of these animals that we're

talking about are not super intelligent. So obviously spiders basically almost don't have a brain, have like a cluster of neurons that can is almost like hard to describe as being like a fully functional brain, and yet they still do this interesting mimicking behavior and so turtles are obviously more complex than spiders, but they are not maybe as intelligent as like a bluego or an octopus, but they

still engage in place. So uh. In the nineteen eighties, there was this African soft shelled turtle living in the National Zoo in d C. And his name was pig Face. I'll show you a picture so you understand why. They have really weird snouts like snouts that. Yeah, they're they just they're not unlike hard shelled turtles where they have this distinct hard shell. They are squishy boys, squishy boys animal squishy. Yes, this is definitely squishy. Yeah. It's like

a lump lumpy turtle. Okay, yeah, with the pointy nose, and they are pretty funny looking and they have pretty long necks. And unfortunately, pig Face was having some behavioral problems. It kept clawing at itself client scratching its own face, and zookeepers were very concerned, and the common knowledge at the time was like, well, turtles can't be bored, so

we don't know what why it's doing this. Well, it's literally ripping his face right and then well but yeah, and then the zookeeper was saying, well, you know, I think he could be bored, actually, because he seems pretty bored. And so they gave him a couple of basketballs to play with, and at first it didn't seem like he was doing much with the basketball. Official size, well, you

know what, I don't know for turtles. Maybe for the Turtle Basketball Association, the t B a t t B A. Yeah, So but they recorded, They set up a camera to record and see what it would do with these basketball and when they were reviewing the footage, at first it didn't really seem like much, but then they sped it up to watch the whole thing. And then once they saw it at this higher speed, it was very clearly

playing with a ball like a little puppy. They don't do sloma replay right exactly fast fast, because the turtle isn't a fast animal. It's not like a puppy that sprints around. But then when you speed it up to basically what the animals activity level is, it was playing with it. He was frolicking around, booping it with his nose,

having a good time. And I think it was a real testament to this this idea that first of all, even animals we don't give that much credit for for being intelligent, can still be bored, can still need stimulation and enrichment, especially if they're not and if they're in a tiny enclosed environment. I always think about that. But these animals that are like being rehabilitated in zoos or just have grown up in zoos where I'm like, what

do you guys doing a small space? You just swim this way and then you go that way, and yeah,

that's it. Yeah. I mean I have a friend who she would go around the world and try to teach people about animal enrichment, especially in captivity and rehabilitation programs, because it's really important that people understand even if you provide for all of their needs like food, shelter, a good amount of space, if you don't give them entertainment, social stimulation, and in these other kind of just like fun games to play, they'll get bored and they'll start

to exhibit neurotic behavior that's really a sign of bad things happening, Like polar bears will pace a lot, they'll like overgroom themselves, and then when they introduce more toys and more social interactions than those kinds of uh, those little behaviors of of kind of almost like O C D like behaviors stop happening. Wow, that's amazing. Yeah, so it's I think it's really important to understand how playful animals are, not just because it's key and fun, but

because it impacts like how we actually treat them. They need it, Yeah, they need it. Just one one fact, rats who get tickled giggle what they don't It doesn't sound like human giggles. But researchers found that when rats would get tickled, which they love, by the way, they love getting tickled. They do they Yeah, they would run around, they they would they have these squeals that were specifically

associated with getting tickled. Okay, well, but I thought tickling was bad, Like when humans get tickled, isn't it your body freaking out? That's why you laugh? This is what I heard. I mean, I don't know, like body tenses up and it's like natural reaction is to like laugh, but you're just like panicking so much you don't know what to do. Well, I think everyone responds to tickles differently, right, Okay,

I mean it is it is. That is true. Like there are some theories about laughing being about like being so overstimulated that you just don't know how to respond. And certainly tickling can be really unpleasant, but you know it kind of I think in the rats case, at least, it wasn't like they weren't finding the worst spot and then tickling it relentlessly and then holding its head down

and being like, well, you're tickling yourself while you're tickling. Uh. You heard about this the rats driving cars, about how rats like to drive. They like to drive, and that's I think what's interesting about that is that's another instance of play because they don't need to drive, they just enjoy it. So they made these little vehicles for rats and they could learn how to drive them to get

through a maze. But they found that even when the vehicles offered no actual advantage for the rats, like didn't help them with anything, they still seemed to really enjoy learning how to drive and going around honking at each other, going like oh and if you cut me off. It brought down there like stress levels and anxiety, which is

the opposite of how I feel when I'm well. It's kind of I mean, I think that originally probably the first people who drove, like when cars first came right like cars one point, oh, the start of cars, it was probably really fun because nobody was around. So for these rats, like for now, it's great, but wait until it's an actual traffic jam, a real rat race. So I mean to see if it's fun then when you you gotta get to work and there's some guy head who's got his blinker on for a mile and yeah,

totally yeah, so they have it. They think they've got it so good now at least instead of hear me out, instead of automated driving like driverless cars, I hear where rats driving the cars, so they have fun. Yeah, we get to not drive the cars. Many will die, However, isn't it worth a shot? It is called Google. Serious dial Google, I know what burning question you have? Could dine the stores have enjoyed playing? Could a t rex have romped around playing with some poor triceratops's skull? Some

evidence suggests that yes. So let's look at crocodiles. Now, crocodiles didn't descend from dinosaurs, but they're about as old. They evolved two hundred million years ago during the Mesozoic era, and crocodiles love to play biologists at the University of Tennessee at Knoxville have studied the play behaviors of crocodilians,

using over three thousand hours of observation. Their play behavior includes tossing around a ball, blowing bubbles in the water, snapping playfully at streams of water, carrying around bright flowers, and giving each other piggyback rides. But what about the direct descendants of dinosaurs. That's right, I'm talking about birds. Birds love to play, as many bird owners may already know, Even the more serious seeming birds love a good time.

Birds of play like screech owls will pounce on leaves or in captivity, cat toys, corvids which is os and ravens love to play with all sorts of shiny objects, and a crow was caught on camera in Russia taking a metal lid to the top of a snowy rooftop, sitting on it, and sledding down, only to repeat the process again and again. Black swans have been videoed surfing the waves, flying out onto the beach, finding a wave that's just crusting, surfing it to the shore, and repeating

the process. I'm definitely including links to these videos of the show. Notes seriously check them out and tell me with a straight face that these birds aren't having a heck and good time. So here's the here's the crow snowboarding. He's gone to the top of the roof, snowboards down, picks up the lid, bottom, gets back up there again. And the great thing about being a snowboarding crow is you don't need to scala, no weight, tiring back, no wait times. You can just fly back up and he's

gonna do it again. Ah yeah, right, that powder dude, that's some good. He's got something. He's got some good air there. It takes a lot because he's like, he's also using his wings, so it's like a skill arding crowboarding. Nice, that's what it's said on the video. Come up with that. Well, it's a good one anyway. Here's some swan surfing. So here's a group of black swans going out into the ocean.

They find a good way to surfing, and then what's incredible is it doesn't seem like it's just a mistake because then they fly back out find another way. You've got to try that again. Yeah, bro, catch the live Oh nice tubular dude, that's swell. In fact, it seems more likely that most animals engage in some form of play, whether it's locomotion playing like enjoying, sledding or surfing or crowboarding, play behaviors and pretend flirtations. But there can be a

dark side to playing. When we return, we'll learn that mother nature lets you playing with your food, and sometimes your food plays back. Imagine you're strolling along on a nice day. The sun is shining. The birds well, that's weird. The birds have stopped singing. Something is off. You feel a deep trembling, something rising from the ground. Suddenly, a huge appendage rises from beneath you, tearing apart the ground. It scoops you up and tosses you high into the air.

You fall down, expecting to meet a quick end. But that's when you land on something soft and fleshy. You come to the horrible realization that this giant monster has caught you on its appendage. Well, this is it. Hopefully getting eaten won't suck as bad as you thought it would. But then you feel the air whoosh around you as you're tossed again high into the air, so high the air thins and you can barely breathe. You land again

with a thud into the monster's grasp. You're pretty sure most of your bones are broken at this point, and again it tosses you. Why doesn't it kill you? What is It's some kind of sick game? And that's when you realize it is a game and you're the ball. It's not spooky. That one's spooky too. These are all spooky. I'm sorry, this is one if you can believe it. This is a less spooky episode. The other ones have

a lot of parasites and you know, disembo say no more. Although, speaking of disembolpment, Jimmy, I want to welcome you to the life of a fish who was unlucky to encounter nature's most adorable anshole, the dolphin. So dolphins love to

eat fish right out of the water. Dolphins have this hunting strategy where they will forcefully kick a fish out of water with their flipper and when the fish is stunned obviously after flying through the air and exactly it's like someone just threw you into the airness can't breathe right. So the dolphins will take advantage of these shocked fish and then eat them because they're horrible monsters. Little everyone

loves a dolphin. But what's interesting is they don't just do this to hunt, so they will also play with their food after they've already caught it. Dolphins have been observed tossing fish over and over again before eating them, and it's speculated that sometimes this is practical, so they may be making sure that the fish or octopus that they caught or whatever prey item is truly dead so that they can swallow it without choking, which is a

pretty reasonable thing to do. But sometimes they just do it because they can, and it doesn't seem to have any real practical purpose, and so, as we talked about before, that would qualify it as play. Uh. Dolphins have been observed playing ball with things they have no intention of eating. Uh. Sometimes dolphins have been observed dragging seagulls under the water, dunking them, playing around with them a few times before

releasing them unharmed but super frazzled. I think we can't say play, and we need to call this bully dolphin bowling. I mean, yeah, I guess uh, I guess it is. They are essentially like giving the birds swirlies exactly. Yeah, They're they're the big big man on campus, a bunch of footballers playing around dead fish, dunking on seagulls, a nerd bird like yank um underwater dang. So. They also like to pull and tug on turtle tails and legs, which is super mean unless I got a crush on

those turtles. Give them old tug. I don't like you. I'm just shut up. I'm gonna chase you, though, not because I like you. They will even stock sharks and mimic their movements. Wow. The more we talk about these are they're about jerk teenagers, right, like, look nice, leave me a little look at me over shark. Yeah, I don't know bones, I got cartilage do Let's see you're good at this. Maybe it was a dolphin in the in the past life and Orca's who are actually members

of the dolphin family like to go shark tipping. They will flip over sharks, which makes them really easy to torment and eat because when sharks are tipped over, they go into this state of catatonia where they don't move. They just kind of like sheep like sheep. Yeah yeah, So it's just it's kind of like cow tipping, but with sharks, and sometimes they do eat them. Also, yeah, the orcans will eat the sharkscause we're on kay. Orcas are are dolphins, But that's what I'm thinking of, you know,

the black and white whale. Yes, yes, but it's and dolphins are whales. Understood, it's confusing, but they're all called was that first category? No, those are so so to the to the whales are dolphins and other other toothy whales and orcas are in the dolphin family. Will remember this, Yeah, us, so dolphins are whales or because our whales or because

they're also dolphins, and yes, cool. So this actually reminds me a lot of cats, Like how cats will play with their Oh yeah, they're flicking their food around, looking around. So I had a cat when I was growing up. She's a real, real sweet cat, but just a vicious killer. Would kill probably, you know, killed off a few rare bird species in her lifetime. She would was very good

at catching mice and birds. She loved to come up to our back door, which was a clear glass door, and you could look out and she saw us and she'd have a dead mouse and she'd like this was her little stage, and she put the alta show and she would toss this mouse up disembol it just a confetti of blood and guts, and she was watching. She would look at me to make sure I was watching

as she tore this mouse to shreds. And she had so much fun, and I think she was probably this is sort of a maternal or social behavior where she's thinking like I'm gonna show you how it's done, and had a really good time. But I think it was also just fun for her. It sounds like Benny Hannah makes me think of like a It's just like around does that little onion volcano, but it's made out of dead mine exactly. So like dolphins, cats may play with their prey partially to kill it and disable it so

that it doesn't hurt them. Uh so it makes him easier to eat, it prevents them from scratching them. But it's probably, I think, also really fun. I mean, cats also play with toy mice for no purpose. They seem to really enjoy it. Did you see that video of that cat that ran out onto the football field? That was Okay, you gotta link that. So here's here's the cat running out onto the field. Just it's so fight.

So it's this huge black cat it's real chalker and uh he or she, I don't I don't know who this cat is, but runs out onto the field and looks momentarily stunned as thousands of people look on, Oh my gosh, this is a cat's nightmare. I mean, but do you think the cat is do you think this is like a cat form of streaking, or do you think that one of those cats, one of that cats. Buddies was like, I'll bet you can't do this, but you wouldn't run, no niggi across the field, I would go.

Would watch me? Just watch me? I I wonder. Or do you think the cat was like looking for the bathroom, made a wrong turn and suddenly it's in the middle of the stadium. It's like tables and bits. Just keep running, you just keep running, and everyone saw you when they're all looking. So one thing that I think is really interesting is that big cats, like lions, leopards, tigers, all those all those big old, big old furry death machines are basically just big cat. They're a lot like domesticated

cats and vice versa. So big cats love to play with their food as well, and it is truly psychotic. So there was a video of a leopard cot who was dismembering a wart hog corpse. I mean, which is that's normal? So far, so far, so good. It's butchering this wart hog corpse to eat it, normal normal leopard stuff. But then it picks up the wart hog's jawbone and

uses the jawbone to stir around its own carcass. So it's like it's mutile, basically mutilating this wart hog just for fun, right, It's like, han, it's got this this jaw bone. It's like, why are you hitting yourself? Why are you hitting yourself? Really psychopathic behavior, right, And it doesn't seem to serve any like some people were wondering, how is this tool use or Something's like, no, it

doesn't serve any purpose. It didn't accomplish anything. It was just like one or what happens if I shove this in here? Yep art that art I've made? Art uh. And big cats will also play with their prey while they are still alive. Often a big cat like a lion, will catch something small like a little antelope or other ungulate, and once the prey is tired and stops running that sometimes the prey will just like go into the state of catatonia where it will lie down and stop trying

because it's so exhausted. And this is actually not a bad technique always, because if you don't have any more energy to run, your best bet is to lie down hope that there is a break in the cat's attention so that you can make a dash for it once you've recollected yourself. But once the prey has calmed down. Uh, Sometimes, like when it's just stopped running and it's just laying there kind of like dumb struck, the cat will play around with it, like kind of smack it around and

put a big paw on it. They'll even groom it. Sometimes. This is sick, I know, right, And they can appear really gentle, like, oh, I'm now adopting this this little antelope. This is scary, you said, this is so spooky. That's to be like, hello, my pretty, I'm just taking care of you. I'm just gonna give you a little brush. It's like so good. It's like that it's split that that I didn't see it. The trauma personalities. Yeah, what what's that actor's name, James McAvoy, Yeah, I know, I

just play stupid about movies. But no, it's he's got these multiple personalities, and one of his personality, or I guess a few of his personalities are crazy, actually, but one of them wants to kidnap and eat these kids, these girls. And I'm going to see this movie. And I didn't watch it either. But what I like to do is there are movies I'm too too scared to see, too spooked to see. But I read it up. I read it on Wikipedia because I'm curious, but I don't

actually want to see it. I am a weenie. And so he catches these these girls, and then one of his personalities is like the sweet grandma or sweet mother, and he starts like braiding their hair and says, I made you a sandwich. I made you a sandwich. Oh, you have such pretty hair. It's basically what these lines are doing. So most of the time, once they get bored or hungry, then they just kill the prey. I don't just so it's such a such a jerk thing.

It's like, well, I'm bored now, so as long as you're very entertaining, right right, It's like it's like wait, wait, wait, wait, I see I can juggle cartoon lion King was accurate when Scarhead does you Trapped and every damn that movie has a lot of inaccuracies, but that's that's the one that is correct exactly. Lest you think that it's just male big cats that are jerk, lionesses are just as terrible.

So lionesses were observed killing doves even though they had no need for the dove meat because they were like neck deep in an elephant carcass. So uh, they were clearly not hungry because they had just finished gorging themselves on this elephant carcass and a flock of doves landed nearby, and they paused to admire the beauty and elegance of these doves. It's like one of them was just like,

I'm going to kill them. So they start jumping around playing with these doves, trying to snatch them out of the air, and there was no need to do this, absolutely no need. One of them caught a dove and killed in. It was just like that was fun. I mean, it's the same thing as when your cat who is fully fed, goes out and kills a bird and disembowels it and doesn't eat it because it's just fun. It's just fun to Yeah, now I'm now I don't like cats. Well,

here's a fun of in stories. So sometimes your food will play back, Okay, it will be really annoying. So there is this video of a hippo playing with a crocodile. Now, typically adult hippos are not on a crocodile's menu because they are big and they are scary, and you should be scared of hippos. They will mess you up, That's what I've heard. They are not kidding around. Yeah, they'll chase you, and they kill a lot of people more.

I think they kill more people than any other animal. No, no, no, no, no, I've got a deliver lit No. I mean the number one killer is probably mosquitoes actually because of diseases. But no, no, they kill a handful of people every year. But they're they're not like, they're not super dangerous. They're just more dangerous than like, if you're afraid of I think lions. I think they kill more people than lions. Essentially, even if you're crocodile, you don't want to mess around with

adult hippos. But hippo calves are soft and squishy and delicious. Apparently, if you're crocodile. But there is a video of a hippo calf who is maybe a little too much of a mouthful for this crocodile, and she just tortures this crocodile, plays with it, and she's not being aggressive. She doesn't show any like signs of aggression or bear or territorial nous. She's just having fun. So she chases the crocodile around, tugs on its tail, romps around, wrestles with it, and

the crocodile keeps trying to escape bold little hippo. I know. It's really funny because and so the crocodile is surrounded by other hippos too, so it's probably thinking like I can't do anything without getting completely destroyed, so it doesn't try attacking the hippo. It just keeps trying to get away from this playful little little hippo. And uh so here here's the hippo, and it's it's really just really

interested in the crocodile. The crocodile seems less than thrilled and keeps trying to get away, and I was just yelping like please tell um, yeah, And it's pretty funny. It just like keeps torturing it runs around like like plays with it underwater, pulls it underwater and rolls around. It's just hangs. It's like you're my new best friend. And this crocodiles like please know, so over it, Like wow, even on land, I thought I could escape band sniffing

his but get out of here. So it's like literally just like pulling on its tail. It's kind of funny to see because it's you think of crocodiles as being these ruthless killers, and really they're kind of WIMPs when they know that the tables could easily be turned against them, and I like to see that bothered. And the croc only got to escape when a herd of elephants showed up and chased off the hippo, probably because the hippo was being really annoying. Uh. There's this another really cute

thing where I mean hippos. Hippos are bold. So there's a photo of a hippo just kind of like sniffing around a hyena in its nose, and it's usually what's interesting to me too, is that these are young hippos, so they're more curious. And this this young hyena and this young hippo. We're just kind of sniffing each other.

They're not they're naturally not really friends because Hyena's I mean Hyena's I don't think typically go after fully grown hippos because that would be a very bad idea of bad matchup there that yeah, it's not gonna work out in their favor. But definitely a little baby hippo would be more more their style. Uh, and they work as a pack so they can take down things that are

pretty big. But yeah, it is. It is funny that it's you've got these two guys that are kind of natural enemies in the sense, but they're so young they don't know, they don't know. It's like it's a fox and the hound exactly. Oh yeah, that was a sad movie, really was. I don't understand why she didn't just like murder her neighbor, that the old lady who had to get that's what she done, all right, because like he keeps trying to shoot her fox like he does. He's

like why have a fox as a pet. Well, then she just shoots him and was like, oops, I thought you were a fox waink wink and dying much better. Ending.

That was a screwed up movie. It was, because doesn't it end with the So the fox makes friends with the hound when they're both puppies and a kid and a puppy, and they have to kill each other, right, and then like he goes hunting, the old man that owns the hound goes hunting, and the hound that used to be his friend is like, oh, but I have to kill you because I'm It's like, no, you don't, you don't have to, you don't have to, and then it just ends with them I guess, sort of deciding

not to kill each other. But then the older Yeah, the older dog dies or gets in No one dies, right, because then they show him at the end of like there's a Disney movie, the dogs are just in casts. Dog has like a leg cast and yeah, the fox signs it like I know you're trying to kill me for sport, but I hope you feel better soon exactly. Don't break a leg. Oh you already did a won't won't. Do you have any any fun play stories? Do you have any pets or any kind of like fun playtime stories.

Let's see, Well, my I guess this is normal dog stuff, but my dog rips up all of his stuffed animals. But here's the fun fact. I have a one eyed dog and I was putting his toys away. This is just like a couple of months ago and I found three of his toys where he'd bitten one eye off of each toy. Like, this is great. Does it your one eyed dog? You can go Yeah, I have pictures of it that I can show you. I think I think I saw you posted this. I was on Twitter.

I was like, my one eye but one eye? It's crazy? Is it always the same? One? Know? Your dog so stupid, can't be consistent? Is right from his left one? An idiot? That is interesting? Yeah, you think he has? Do you think it's like some kind of like body relation thing where it's like, no, I only have one eye, so everyone else must. Has he ever made to go at you like, I see you have two eyeballs human, Let's

see if we can't fix that. He has played with my parents dog and there was a moment where like they got too tired of chasing each other and they're just both laying down and my dog was like wicking my parents dog's eyeball and he's like, huh. I thought that was like an Elvis. You let it take him. This is like an inn is like an im night show and movie where it's it's the dog has one eye, but then it goes insane and decides everyone must have

one eye. I think that's what's going on. Yeah, yeah, boy it was like I must steal the eyeballs, think, oh you go, boyd, the eyeballs will be my mask's got a big fixation on eyeball. Sometimes I cat looking at himself in the mirror like he didn't remember that he just got the one and he still one eye. I must correct the situation with my toys exactly. Yeah, that is that's fascinating, pretty wild, that's pretty crazy. Dogs are smart? Dogs are they are uncannily smart? Yeah? Yeah,

my my dog. Her claim to fame is she likes to fart as soon as she sits in your lamp and I claiming you Wow, I don't like that. I mean, I don't like the idea of a dog trying to like d eyeball everything that comes across him. But you know, oh sure, judge my dog dog. Well, thank you so much for joining me today. You got anything a plug?

Can people fall you on things? Can they look at you yes, yeah, if you got well, if you want to see this dog photo, I think I pinned it on Twitter, so go at child Clown underscore because someone else had to be child Clown and they won't let me have it. Or on Instagram at child Clown also great. Got any got any shows? Or um I got shows? If you want to come by to UCB in Los Angeles, I perform on the Herald team Lee Roy, so check

the schedule and come check us out Noise. You can find us online as always on the Internet, Creature Feature Pod dot Com, Creature Feature Pod on Instagram, Creature Feet Pod on Twitter. That's f e A T, not f e e T the other one of the verb different. Uh. Thank you so much for listening to this here dang

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