David and Goliath

and Goliath. Unlikely matchups with even unlikelier conclusions. Which of these underdogs will be top dogs in this dog eat dog world? Discover this and more as we answer the age old question what's the best way to round house kick a wasp? And stay tuned, we have a special interview with Dr Greg Paully, curator, herpetologist, and snake whisperer. So I'm sure everybody knows the story of David and Goliath, the scrappy little dude fighting and taking down a giant.

But what if we got it all wrong? What if David was a giant killing predator armed with a rock slinging weapon. In the natural world, it's not always so clear who the true underdog in this situation is, And in fact, there's a little David like spider who casts her own stones. She's called the bullus spider. The bolus spider group consists of several species of orb weaving spiders native to America, Australia, and Africa, who hunt not just by weaving a web, but with a handmade bullus weapon.

The human version of the bullus is similar to David's weapon, though instead of a sling, it's a couple of weighted balls tied to a cord, which, when world above your head and thrown, can be used to capture animals by entangling their legs. Bolus spiders use a sticky blop on the end of a line of spider silk their prey moths, which are often much larger than the spiders themselves. The spider will dangle her bullus out like a fishing lure,

then swinging as the moth gets within her range. The moth gets stuck to this dicky glove of stilk, and the spider reels it in even more sinister that glob of sticky thread is often laced with pharamones that attract mobs. The moms think they're about to meet a sexy single, but instead they meet their doom One more thing about the bullet spiders. Some species have developed a pretty creative

form of camouflage. They look like bird turds. They're lumpy, shiny, white and brown abdomens are meant to mimic bird dukies, an unappetizing prospect for predators and an unexpected source of danger for prey. So if one bullet spider says to another you look like ship today, she'll say, hey, thanks. So joining me today is Alex the clam Schmidt, or as I like to call him, the itty Bitty Schmitty Committee. It's gonna be We worked. We worked on those nicknames.

It's like when you have two winners, you can't choose, gotta list all the names. I also, when you were talking about the bullus is, I realized that my touchstone for those kinds of weapons are David from David and Goliath and Batman two. Yeah. Yeah, this sort of insert or a wonder woman to those kind of ensnaring West weapons with the swinging um. Batman's got the battering, doesn't he. Yeah? He well, he's he's weird because he has a whole belt of stuff. He's got a whole belt, a utility belt.

We'll suddenly have a page a dork. Yes, my favorite is in the old the Batman cartoons, like Adam West Batman, but the just cartoon version, like he had anti gravity spray just belt so as they were falling down a cliff, he just deployed that anti gravity spray. So I actually have a video of the bullet spider if you want to take a look at that. Here she is, she's

got her you can see it. It's like it looks like a fishing lure that she's just holding out with one of her legs and she's like, you know, doing this kind of come heather thing with it, um. And then shortly a moth is gonna just fly right right into her trap and she'll reel it in, and it's it's just so funny because it looks like they're kind of fishing, um, just like do do do waiting for him off. It's very it's very looney too. It's like dangling a carrot on a string. Yeah, like a wildly

coyote situation. It's just it's it's like it lifts it when it's when the moth is nearby and there it's it snaggs it and then it reels it in and it's times like the moth can be pretty big compared to the actual spider, So it's pretty because like the problem with moths for regular spider webs is that first of all, they they're quite big. They can like, you know, tear a web. But there I was about to save feathers.

But their wings have all these scales on them that can come off and allow them to escape a web. Um so interesting. Yeah, yeah, because you know, have you ever felt a moth or kind of dusty? So yeah, that's also just any time I think of an animal who eats moths, like they have completely the opposite moth opinion from me. They're like, you know, what's worth all

this effort a moth? Big mouth fulled moth. Even saying moth feels saying the word moth kind of feels like how having a moth in your mouth must must be Han't that moth in your mouth? Yes? Well so another story of a spidery underdog is the golden wheel spider. Uh.

It's native to southern Africa. It's kind of like a tarantula, but it's yellowish instead of black or gray, and you don't think of spiders as the victims that often, but they actually are like they they have their share of predators who um and one of them we've talked about on the show before. It's particularly heinous. It's the parasitic spider wasp, which will it's quite a menacing predator because they'll inject the spider with paralyzing venom. They'll drag the

spider into their burrow. Then they lay their egg on the spider and bury it alive, and as the egg hatches, it'll eat this still living spider who's paralyzed slowly, oh my god, just over the course of even can be up to months. And it's called the parasitic spider wasps. Yes, imagine imagine being such a parasite. Parasitic as on the front of your name, right right, Mr crimes So. And actually, tranchulas and other spiders don't really have much of a

defense against these wasps. They can't because the wasps are aerial. They can fly, so it's really hard for them to They just kind of try to defend themselves as best as they can, and they actually, because they're flying. The rangelas do the technique of like predatory birds where they kind of ball up, but that just leaves them even

more exposed to the spider wasps um. But then that's true, they got ninety nine legs and problems, well they don't have they only have eight legs, but you know, would help. So the Golden Wheel Spider goes full Sonic the Hedgehog, where it will becomes too erotic and its movie version becomes too highly detailed and disquietingly too many muscles in its face. Yeah, they will transform into a wheel and

cartwheeled down dunes. Uh, and it's they can go up to STPs which is my term for spidy turns per second um and they just it's really funny to watch because they just uh they see the wasps and the wasp is attacking it um and the wasp can actually dig it out, dig it out of its burrow. So and there it goes rolls down like Sonic and also the sand element makes me think of san true the Pokemon. Oh yeah yeah yeah yeah, and it just tumbles down the dune side down a dune, um away from the danger.

Whoever shot this got a lot of coverage. This is like ten different angles on that role. I love it. Drone footage of this spider um. So there's another victim of predatory wasps whom I think we don't think of as needing sympathy. But the humble cockroach. Oh finally, Yeah, I mean I do agree that they're gross. I personally have a very strong aversion to cockroaches. But there's still an animal. They got their own life and their own hobbies. I'm sure whatever they do. Yeah, do you have a

lot of bug phobia? Are not? Really? There's only really two insects that I'm phobic of, I would say, which would be cockroaches and silverfish. Um, those are the little gray ones that have a bunch of legs and they're just they're they're little, but they're just nasty. I don't know, And I'm not even phobic. I'm not afraid of them. I just they gross me out. But I don't mind spiders. They don't. There's not really many other insects that bother me.

It sounds like silverfish had great pr on that name. Don't sound like silver. They don't fish or mus they really they don't. They're not silver. They're just dirty, little, great nasty things, the dirty bug. So cockroaches also face

the predatory wasp. It's called the jewel wasp, which rides them like a cowboy, injects them with paralyzing venom and then a neurotoxin that actually allows the wasp to hijack their brain and steer them towards their spiders or their wasped in um and then like the like the spiders, the cockroach has become a meal for the wasps larva um where they bury them alive and then the larva slowly eats them over the course of like at its leisure.

And it's called the jewel wasp. Yes, the jewel wasp. Um. That's another because that sounds like like some kind of fancy They are pretty. They are pretty. They are shiny green um, and they kind of do they've they've got curves. They do look like a fancy lady. Actually, hey, they're a'm jewel wasp. I think they would be female. The ones that are predatory so um, I mean certainly the ones that do this behavior because they're the ones laying

the eggs. So they're like, hey, they're a good looking you wanna come to my burrow and have my young slowly you over several months, Well, you gotta be coordinated to inject whatever their poison is and hold one of those cigarettes on a longholder like my, my, sometimes I've got some neurotoxins. Um. But first uh so it choose the cockroaches antenna off and researchers aren't sure. Why could just be to be a jerk. Yeah, ruined their reception. Yeah,

I can't no channels, um the cockroaches. Dad is on the roof just fighting with it. It's more of an old tech reference. Children. We used to get our TV through like wires that we put on our roofs, and then when it stopped working, Dad would get up on the war roof and swear a lot, and then you'd fall off the roof and swear some more. That's how it was being a Dad was terrified. So it uses the remaining antenna to uh lead it to its den like a dog on the leash, and the neurotoxins have

just rendered it completely docile, like as zombie. Um. Then it buries the roach and lays its egg, and then it becomes like the zombie crib that also doubles as a larger for the baby wasp. Yeah. And animals are just so ready to use each other's bodies as like spaces. You know, like we're we're pretty brutal creatures ourselves, but we don't do a ton of that, right, Like, I mean,

we just don't bother. I mean, you know, so like all right, we wear the skin of dead animals and eat them, and that all seems pretty bad, but animals do it. I'm not saying that we should keep doing that. I'm just saying that animals also do that kind of horrifying stuff. Yeah, I've never been like that whale is going to be my house. Yeah that would be crazy. Yeah, not into it. I mean in Pinocchio, it looked pretty rumy. They got all the fish they could ever eat too. Well,

you're very open about it. Well, so the cockroaches, when faced with the seemingly insurmountable odds with the predator that just has like neurotoxins and can turn it into a zombie, they just rear up on their legs and swing their back leg like a baseball bat and deliver a roundhouse

kick to the wasps head. Oh yeah, finally roundhouse kicks. Yes. Um, And it's uh, it's really it's oddly precise how they can just like nail these wasps in the face and they say it's kind of funny, like they just send the wasp flying. U. Where is it on the VANDAM scale? Like one to ten mm nine point five? Good? Yeah yeah um, missing points only because they don't like mug at the camera after doing it. So Eastern honey bees,

which are one of my favorite insects. There, you know, cute they make honey, they're not they're not too mean. Sometimes I'll sting you, you know if you if you provoke them, Yeah, he's gonna be um. And these are found in Asia and they will defend their hives by boiling invaders alive, kind of like a medieval siege anti

seal weapons. Yeah yeah um. So when an invader like a hornet gets into their nest, the honey bees are outmatched in terms of size, but they can work together to defeat their attacker in one of the most gruesome

ways I've heard of. So they boil the hornet alive by dog piling it and vibrating their muscles um which increases the temperature of this like little ball of bees that are surrounding the hornet, until the hornet will boil alive at temperatures of up to a hundred and fifteen degrees fahrenheit, and this this also increases the levels of c O two, so that in combination, if the heat doesn't kill it, the levels of CO two also will get it, and that most of the honey bees can

survive this. They can survive the hot temperatures and CEO two levels um, but the hornet can't um um. So it's like they'll just kind of vibrate around this hornet and disperse and there's like a dead hornet. Yeah. Well, it would be kind of worse if the hornet could survive it, because then it's just endless vibrating. Yeah, like when you're on a real bumpy road and you you get out of the car and you're trying to get your land legs and your eyes are just jiggling in

their sockets. Yea. Well, it's interesting is hornets and bees have something called an I see you predator prayer relationship, which is an actual term. I feel like biologists have the most adorable terms for things. So so I see you is the really like it's when I am something that is often a prey item will signal to the predator that it has seen it, and it's telling the predator, hey, buddy,

I see you. I'm not worth your time. So it doesn't run away necessarily because and I think, um, some species of squirrels will do this in response to snakes, where they like lift their tail up in a way that's saying, hey, I see you. You've lost the element of surprise, so why bother. So the bees will do this, so when they see a hornet, they'll start beating their

wings violently and producing this menacing hume like. So it's not because the typical thing we all hear about is fight or flight, and this is some kind of uh, dissuade them from fighting. Yeah, it's a I would say it's like towards the fight end of the spectrum where they're they're saying, I we see you. You don't want our our jigglibe ball, do you? And then sometimes this will be enough to get the hornet to leave because it's like, I don't want to be in the middle

of a big, old, vibrant and ball. But that sounds a little fun, but probably if you get reasted to death, it's like a theme park ride, like if it we're not safe, it would not be fun right right, like thunder Mountain Jewels. Yet around it was built by Pias to kill me. I would not write it, but just welcome to be a world. We jiggle youa a lot. So. The kangaroo rat is another adorable little guy, which you would think wouldn't it's just a totally helpless piece of prey.

They look like kangaroo rat, they look more like mice. Um. They're they get their name not because they're in Australia. They're actually native to western North America in semi arid or arid areas like Arizona. They're adorable little mice like things, and their hind haunches are quite muscular, and that's why they get the term kangaroo rat because they kind of, you know, there's a little bit of that kangaroo nous and they can hop like there would be a great

minor league baseball mascot names that now the kangaroo rats. Yeah, like a softball team. You want any any regional animal with like one quarter, that's the best minor league baseball Arizona kangaroo rats across team a man to be taken seriously. Um. So, like the cockroach, the kangaroo rats will deliver a flying

kick to escape the things of rattlesnakes UM. They their first approaches, they try to leap out of the way of the snake strike um with a reaction time of just a few fractions of a second, so they have very good reflexes and very muscular legs. They never skip leg day, arm day a little bit. They got little tiny arms, but leg day. But if the snake actually manages to grab it, you think, okay, fight over snake

wins um. But no, they actually will sometimes be able to kick the snake in the face and produce act itself out of its mouth before the snake gets the chance to inject venom. And it's really really funny to watch.

I'm gonna gonna show and that just kicks it away. Yeah, So so we're taking a look and it the snake actually grabs it, and it kicks its head and the snake goes flying and it's really funny because its mouth is a gape and this video is in slow motion, so the snake looks like um, and that's it's just a yeah, it's so interesting to me when you have an animal like what what is more innocent than a mouse um and it but it they animals really want

to live and they will do their darndists to stay alive. Yeah. That it's like it even made sure. Okay, if they bite me in the middle, my feet are in a perfect position to keep it in the neck, right, great, good job. He landed one square in a snake's face. Yeah, and it one flying. It's very funny because snakes normally they look quite I don't regal, isn't the world, but but menacing. They look sleek and menacing, like killing machines. But a snake that's been kicked in the face looks

very funny. I don't see a lot of There was one time I was at a zoo in Ohio and we were looking at the like monkey exhibit and one of the given type monkeys was swinging, swinging, swinging, missed misses, the branch falls, lands and then like immediately gets back up and tries to look cool. Normal as snakes have like no limbs to make mistakes, so it just always seem interesting, right right, But if it's here, Yeah, if it gets kicked in the face, it's very goofy looking.

Imploying for lost. Yeah, it looked like Rocky. It's like a shot early in the fight when it's not going well right now, and he's like, oh good, you know later it'll be fine. But just slow mo and jaw waggling from some So. Another little cutie who actually has a great strategy to defend itself a bit against big predators are field fair birds. They are a small bird in the thrush family, native to northern Europe and Asia. Um their chicks make for very easy prey for ravens.

Um they're you know, they're they're bird babies. They're basically just little sacks of feathers and meat. Um. So the field fair birds are smaller and they really can't ravens are quite large, so they don't have stand much of a chance against them using conventional warfare. But they use whatever weapons they do. They use whatever tools they have

at their disposal, their poop. Yes, So first the birds down the alarm and that scrambles the birds they like, issue alarm call and all the all the birds in the area, the field for birds will start um swooping and swarming the raven and try to intimidate it into going away and if it if that doesn't work, this is how David Attenborough describes it, screaming with rage. They bomb the raven with their excrement. The duties. Yeah, because I will that name like field Fair. It sounds like

a place in the shire or something. I expected a very innocent bird, and they look innocent. They're like little songbirds. They look quite sweet and cute. Um. And the duties stick to the raven's feathers, making it difficult to fly. So it's not just a gross out tactic. It will actually render them immobile and in some cases that could be fatal for the raven if they dry off in time, makes them vulnerable to other predators. Um, like an oil spiller, yes, yes, exactly,

spilling a twelve. It's just so it's so interesting to me because you know, you have you have this little tiny bird. What what chance does it have? Well, it didn't bet on poop, did it. That's so I wonder. I wonder how purposefully they're like, oh I need to poop, but I should hold on to it as a weapon

just in case I need. This is ammo, right, right, I mean that is very David and Goliath though it's whereas literally slinging you know, well, um, yeah, it's it's, um, the smaller the animal probably the more creative they have to be in terms of how they defend themselves. Um like be it with poop or flying kicks or you know. I actually, you know it's interesting because, um, when I'm walking my dog as a you know, smaller person of the female persuasion, like you just got to be alert.

I mean, everyone has to be alert at night. But you know, it's just like be alert. You know. I'm try not to be paranoid of everyone. But I noticed, like after my dog poops and I have that bag of poop, I feel empowered, Like I feel like I have a weapon. I have like a morning start made out of poop. So I feel like if someone came up to me and meant bad, I would just throw the poop at them. And now I'm armed with poop.

It's a good it's it makes me feel safe. I think I understand gun owners now, except my guns would just shoot poop. Yeah, and yours is all natural, all natural and organic poop gun top That second Amendment was second amendment more like number two amendment. I'm no biblical or historical scholar, but I wonder how much bigger Goliath really was than David. Was he actually a giant or was this a case of collective Alice in Wonderland syndrome.

This syndrome, known as Todd's syndrome or dysmatropia, is a neurological syndrome that affects visual perception. Remember in Alice in Wonderland, where our girl gets shrunken down, or blown up, the world growing or shrinking around her. That's what sufferers of this syndrome experience, either micropsia things appearing smaller or macropsia things appearing larger, or even objects appearing closer or further away than they appear, a sort of mental side view mirror.

The cause of Alice in Wonderland syndrome is varied. It could be a brain tumor a migraine, a symptom of the epstein bar virus, the cause of mono or psychoactive drugs. I mean, we all know Alice was probably tripping her yarn balls off. The general causes in an abnormal amount of activity in the visual processing parts of the brain, resulting in increased blood flow to the area. So maybe David was sky high on shrooms. Probably not, although anyone who shows up to a battle with nothing more than

a few rocks might be a little high. Hey, we'll get your rocks off, but first we got to take a quick break. When we get back, I hope you have the stomach for it. It's gonna be about animals eating each other. We're about to discuss some animals who bite off more than they can chew. But first, do you or anyone you know have miss aphonia. It's the term for a strong aversion to the sound of chewing.

I'm not talking being mildly annoyed by popcorn in the theater, but the sound of munching and slurping and gulping being enough for you to lose your appetite or even fly into a rage. For people with missophonia, chewing or other repetitive sounds can trigger the flight or fight reflex. Researchers looked at the brains of those with messophonia using fMRI I and found that while listening to trigger sounds, there was an increased brain activity in areas responsible for emotions,

long term memory, and fear. The culprit the anterior insular cortex, which seemed to spur this increase in activity. The anterior insular cortex is responsible for a variety of functions, including sensory processing, cognitive emotional processing, and even things like interpreting the meaning of one's own heartbeat, imagining pain, and judging how painful something is. If you think you may have missophonia,

there's some good news. Cognitive behavioral therapy has been shown to help, and even better news, we're about to discuss an animal who doesn't chew at all. In fact, it likes to swallow prey items wigh larger than its own body, all without chewing. So, Alex, what are your opinions on chewing? Yes or no? I do it when I've come across one or two people who I think have that misophonia becas I'll be eating with them and they're like, can

you stop? Stop eating? Maybe can't be more closed than it is, like chew with your mouth clothes like I but my mouth has to open a little right right, Or I can just shove the food into my mouth like Whimpy from Popeye just Burgergergner. Well, if you did that, you would be like the black swallower, which is a fish. It sounds it sounds like, you know, like the black night from the stuff when it sounds like the worst swallower in the road, sounds like some kind of warlock

who's like, did you die the relex swallower? What's your powers? I swallow the night all the King's food. No. Um, So I'm gonna show you. Well. Wait, actually, first you're just gonna describe it. So it's a deep sea fish that can grow up to nine inches and it has a habit of eating things way bigger than its own body. It's found in deep North Atlantic waters at depths of two thousand and nine thousand feet. Um. So it's one of these spooky deep seafish that are all bony and teeth.

I know Alex doesn't like these, so I had to include it. Yeah. They're all like it's like if a zip lock bag was angry. They're all like glowy and hard to look at. It looks like one of those stress balls full of the little like beads and stuff, but instead of beads, its bones. Yeah. And you can see all the organs ter pumping away everything. All their blood looks black. Yeah, so we should exterminate the species. Well,

it gets the and better, Alex. It has a distintable stomach that can hold prey twice its length and up to ten times its mass. It's just can swing down and open large enough to eat things bigger than its own head, kind of like a snake. I'm going to show you a picture of ah man um. So what I've just shown Alex is a terrible looking fish um, and its stomach looks like a water balloon and it's full of I think a squid. Maybe it's hard to tell,

but you can still see. So the stomach can stretch, but it's so stretchy that you can actually see through it. So it just looks like this big bag of squid attached to this fish that it's otherwise pretty shrimpy looking. Well, it looks it looks like if someone told you, hey, I need a photoshop of a minnow eating like a massive animal, and you didn't have a lot of time, you would just draw a big egg under the men with the animal in it. It's a child's idea of

eating um. Sometimes its eyes are bigger than its stomach so much that it accidentally kills itself um just too much. Yes, so prey can burst its stomach or more gruesomely, if the prey is so large that decomposition sets in before it can be digested. The decomp gases will force the black swallower to float to the surface, killing it. Uh. In fact, this is how most specimens are collected. It's

just like it's it's such a huge meal. They've just like, well it's it doesn't have time to actually digest it. And it's so it's so creepy, like the de comp gases fill its body and it's like now I'm buoyant. Yeah, well it's one of these animals that's just such a killing machine. It's dumb, you know, like it just knows how to eat stuff, so it's doesn't know how to not die. Here's a picture of one with its stomach just like torn open by a huge squid. Yeah, much

bigger animals just leaving. It's like it just do it doesn't You're right, it doesn't look real. It doesn't look like this should actually happen. But its like it doesn't look like a real stomach. It looks like a plastic bag attached to a fish where it's like, well the food goes in here, I guess. It's so it's so creepy, like draw a trout eating two pounds of beef. Yeah, I don't know, it's just on the bottom of it. I don't know. Okay, And in space is kind of

do you feel like this This one's dead. So that's kind of tragic, I suppose, but it's face likes kind of do be like, well because I bone this one up? Uh So, Alex, on this show, we like to go to a little place I like to call imagination station. Okay, alright, on board, on board, all board the brain train to chicken chicken. Um. So, imagine that you're just about to sit down and eat what's your favorite food. Oh boy,

it's gotta be like a really good lemon pepper chicken. Okay, So you've got your lemon pepper chicken and it's it's in fact, it's like inviting you to eat it. It's going Come here, Alex, come hither and partake of my succulent meats. In my head, the little box of wings is talking yeah yeah, yeah, yeah yeah yeah, just like, come here, Alex. We're delicious and covered in lemony zest. And you open up your box of lemon chicken and

you're you're you're bringing it towards your mouth. And all of a sudden, just teeth pop out of the chicken and bite you in the face. I'm not going back to that wingstop well you know, I mean Chipotle, am right? Yeah, that would be uh psychologically scarring, especially for me, an intelligent animal. Be like, well, never again when your food fights back. So I want to talk to you about such a case. Uh it's this little guy called the

epimus beetle. Uh. They're only about a half an inch to an inch big as adults, and they look innocent enough. They're just like your average kind of semi shiny green beetle. Um. But they're called obligate role reversal predators. So the obligate part means that they must do that to survive. And um, the role reversal predator is someone who like pretends to be prey and then when their predator gets close enough, they strike. Oh yeah, like uh sort of film fatale,

but their beetles and acting like food. Yeah. I just saw the first season of Killing Eve. It's like when she's in that club down there and she who's the guy in that's not a reference for people, but anyway, no, but that's that's cool. So like she she's kind of

like luring someone. I mean that is that. Yeah, there's one episode where one of the one of the detective people is pursuing her and she purposely leads him into like one of those crowded you know, like euro disco kind of clips and it's just tons of bodies, and then there's a part where she just turns around and smiles at him and you know that she knows he can't get away, she can't get him, and then she does. Yeah, that's creepy. That is like this that is so similar

to this beetle because it's just like wants it. Well, once it's got, it's uh, it's victim like it takes its sweet time. Um so um. The it's actually not the adult beetle, but the baby beetles. The larva that will do this behavior. Um, the bet a larva will make sort of helpless, prey like movements like oh yeah, I'm just secular, little larva. Give me, I'm so delicious

and tastes good. So it draws in predators like frogs, and as the frogs about to chow down on what looks like, you know, slimy but satisfying lava, uh, they do they dodge the frogs attacks. Then the beetle lava bites the frog in the neck or underside, disabling the frog. It's just so gruesome. Then they attached themselves to their frogs and slowly feed off them, like just sucking out their juices like blood and stuff, just taking just like yeah, like they they'll slowly eat at them, kind of like

a parasite. But I think they work quicker, right, not like those lazy parasites. Yeah, she thought it was just tasty little grab who's eating who? Now that's my grub voice, because that's amazing. It's only the babies. Then the adults maybe see this brutal behavior happened, and they're like so child,

Well the adults are also predatory. They but they instead of playing the like innocent little baby kind of thing, they'll sneak up behind their victim do a surgical strike, which some researchers think they're severing the leg muscles, which disables the frog and allows the beetle to eat at its leisure. Just like there's so there's such assholes, like just why can't they just kill it, get it over with and eat it. But instead it's like looks like you can't moving that shame kiss, I'm gonna I have

to eat your legs. Man. And frogs are such a target for these guys or frogs. Well, it's frogs and other amphibians. Um like new and such. Uh well nuts Ham comment, Oh yeah, I love it. What a specific brutal thing. I know, it's it's pretty metal, but it's also it's just there's something so devious about it. Yeah, it's creative but devious. Yeah, like a murderous baby. That's such a creepy troup. Why do you think it is? We're so creeped out by murder babies, you know, like like, ohmen,

what's another like murder baby? Boss Baby? Was that the plot of boss Baby? Uh no, he murders a bunch of people. I know, an embarrassing amount about the entire movie I've seen. I watched boss Baby. Um actually for this podcast once. There was a pilot episode that didn't we didn't end up airing, But I watched Boss Baby before, which was great, good use of my time. Then the makers of Boss Baby killed the show. Yes, raw boss Baby creators called this up. And it's like, you don't

understand it's not lawyers. We will kill you if you does, boss baby. Um so it was a great movie, Okay, Um yeah, those things like the omen or. There's one called the Orphan's Tiny adult. Yes, yeah, they do that a lot. Yeah. Yeah, like pretending to be I mean that's the whole family guy thing. Is Stewie is uh is a tiny larva? Yeah? Sure, yes, if the frog's name is Lowest I write that classic naughty family guy humor,

that raunchy naughty family guy humor. It's really good. So, Alex, I want you to imagine who you think will win in this fight. Although I feel like maybe the title of this episode is a a little bit of it. Maybe, but uh so we're in Maine and New England where it's all snowy and beautiful, and we have two kind of elusive predators, the fishers and the lynxes. They're kind

of like the sharks and the jets. Fishers is that I think I've heard of a fisher cat, which actually might be a minor league based thinking about it, Where are the fisher cats? And we need to be taken seriously? Um well, actually no, fishers are small house cats sized animals in the weasel family. Um. Weighing in at only about eight pounds. They're weasels. Basically, they look a lot like weasels. Um, they're they're not. They're a little bigger

than weasels, but they're about the size of a house cat. Okay, surely the much bigger Lynx destroys it in every fight. Yes, yes, uh, because I mean look at these they're they're cute little noodle boys. And then the Lea, the Canada Lynx, which is a relative of the bobcat. But they're bigger and fluffier. Weighs in at a shocking twenty five pounds. It's a lot of fluffy. Yeah, they are very fluffy. But yeah, so they're a little bigger than bobcat. They look intimidating,

they can. They have a little more of the saber tooth tiger kind of look very fluffy, very sort of ice age looking. Um, so you think you Alex, you dummy, right, idiot. Well, researchers were pretty surprised to find that these little, tiny noodle e fishers were actually often the winners and fights between Lynxes and the fisher's noodle. But researcher Scott McLellan says, uh, a fisher really doesn't have any boundaries in the size of the animal it's willing to attack, which is great. Yeah,

now I need big Fisher energy in my life. No, nothing's too big. Yeah, I got Yeah. They are. They are saucy little noodle boys. And this researcher has I love this guy because he has such a way with words. He also says, um, we know that fishers are very opportunistic. They're just a ball of fury. So they tracked links Is with some radio collars and they when the radio callers stopped moving there like, I think that links might be dead. Oh god, these are researching what's the accent

like in main Is that? Is that almost a Canadian accent? Or is that that's a good question. I haven't seen enough Stephen King adaptation. I imagine. I imagine it is Fargo, but I don't think that's right. But I'm gonna go with a Fargo accent because you know, so they're like, oh, yeah, we think that might be dead. The radio colors stopped a going uh, And they arrive at the scene where the Lynxes were killed, and they have to do like a bit of biological forensics because they pieced together the

scene of the crime. Uh. And it's actually kind of hard because the lynx is often ripped apart limb from limb. It's a nasty, nasty scene. Uh. And they found fisher bite marks and tufts of fisher fur in the lynx's mouth, indicating that there was quite a fight. Um. So it wasn't that, you know, It's like there's a chance that maybe the fisher was just like scavenging on the dead lynks. Like no, no, no, the links, the links had defensive

fight wounds. Um. In fact, when they looked at the animal tracks, it pointed towards the fisher's stop king the lynxes, hunting them down, rather than just like defending themselves or getting in a little scrape, like they are actively murdering these lynxes. Oh, I don't know, boys, I think we got a murder on our hands. Um. And according to Scott McLellan, who God, I love him so much, quote, they just buckle on. They have a pretty powerful grip

and they know where to attack. Um. And after the fishers have killed the lynxes, they get a little Jeffrey Dahmer creativity. Uh, McLellan says, quote it might drag a leg up into a tree. It might drag a leg into a bush pile or under some snow somewhere, just like dag a leg. Here's a leg, there's leg. Everywhere's

a leg. Leg. Because when you're in a creative project and you're in the early stages, you have no wrong answers, no wrong ideas, no wrong in a tree, listen, we're just sticking things to the tree, and see what stays in that tree. We're gonna put some links body parts up the flag pole and see who salutes it. Also, um Fishers have these very spooky screams that sound well, I'm just gonna play a brief clip of this for you and see what you think. It sounds like someone screaming,

like a ghost person. It's just it's so creepy because I feel like if I lived in Maine and I heard that, I would just assume someone was being murdered. Oh, because it's such a haunted steak. Because yeah, like some ghosts are getting re murdered. Oh yeah, I didn't know. It's so steam Kings from main Oh yeah, he's he's all about it to wonder stories are there? Yes, the Fishers screaming at night murdering lynxes that scarred a young

Stephen King. Well, they because, especially these animals, they feel like something that would be in There are a lot of Stephen King stories where it's like a horde of sort of small things being a problem, like lang leers or something. Yeah, they would be He would probably call it the noodle boys and animals. And then then noodle boys reared their heads and entered my body with their teeth. So we know that scrappy little David's in the animal

kingdom can take down Goliath. But I was wondering if there's any truth to this principle when it comes to human psychology, specifically in group dynamics. Human beings are social animals, so typically are Goliath like strengthler relies on us forming groups. But can there be a downside? There's something called the

bystander effect. It's a sort of group thinks situation in which crowds of people failed to help someone in need, not because they're callously indifferent, but because each individual group member thinks, hey, someone else will handle it. Of course, who even deals with crowds of people anymore. We're all safe inside on our phones browsing Twitter and read it or the TikTok's and the Instagram morbles will not so

fast there, my fellow millennials. A study by the Tavistock Institute of Human Relations found that the bystander effect was present even in online information sharing communities. When looking into how many people in online groups would respond helpfully to questions, the smallest groups fared the best, with the highest person of responders. Medium sized groups were the worst, and larger groups were better, but still not as good as the

smallest group. The researchers speculate that while the smallest group avoids the bystander effect, the reason the larger groups tend to respond more than the medium sized groups was due to the increased anonymity, reducing social inhibition. After all, who's going to remember your particular handle. We'd go K sixty nine if you're in a form of five thousand members, so it's safe for you to offer your potentially bad ideas.

But when measuring the quality of helpfulness, the small and medium sized groups fared better than the larger groups, so still the smallest group one out in terms of how helpful they were and how often they were helpful. However, what the researchers didn't take into account is that if you have an anonymous intergroup, small enough of the users could be sock puppets, with the remaining ten percent being you and two dogs trying to lick the chicken grease

off a keyboard. So maybe dogs on keyboards are the real heroes. We'll be right back after a quick break, and I'll be joined by Dr Greg Polly, who's here to dispel some reptilian myths and to talk about a very slithery David and Goliath story. Here with me today is friend of the show, Dr Greg Paully. He's a herpetology researcher and curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, and he is here to talk to us about snakes as the one thing I want people

to get from this podcast is to love snakes. That sounds good to me. Yeah. So snakes are notorious gluttons, and we're talking about today David and Goliath situations. So nothing is more emblematic to me than like a snake eating something huge in its little tiny noodle body. Um, and it can unhinge its jaw and swallow prey many times its size. Um. How do they do this? Without exploding or do they actually explode. They can explode. So first I'll say, I will say they don't actually unhinder

their jaw. What's really interesting about snakes is that their jaw actually consists of three bones. So we think about like we have a mandible and a maxilla. Yeah, but what snakes dove is I actually have another bone in between those. In us developmentally, that bone is part of our middle ear, but snakes, which don't have a middle ear,

that bone is part of the jar articulation. And so what they can actually do is they put their jaws really wide because of the fact that they've got this you know, these basically two joints the bone system, right, So it's kind of like a door hinge where it's like you know those top the top hinges in hotel doors that lets the door open pretty wide. Does that make sense? No, No, I don't know anything about it. Spent more time with hotels. But it's too it's basically

two hinges basically the whole point. It's like two hinges have two ing so it can open up in some cases, and some species of snakes they get almost two, which is you know, pretty amazing. So yeah, snakes. I mean, I think that they have this reputation sometimes it's sort of being gluttonous, but you know the reality is that, you know, a snake might only eat one or two meals a year. So I don't know as somebody who's like going to have three meals and maybe two snacks.

I feel like it's not my job to call to call a snake gluttonous when it's eating like once every sea. But yeah, there's these unbelievable situations. So not a snakes ceo like intermittent fasting to exactly. So not all snakes do this, but particularly vipers and boas and python, some of our really like heavy bodied snakes, they take on

huge prey items. So some of the biggest what we call relative prey mass, that's sort of what we refer to this in the snake literature is some of those biggest numbers will be like snakes eating prey items that are like a hundred over a hundred and fifty of their own So I think the record is like almost up to one point seven times their own mass. So that's like, you know, imagine something like uh, let's take

you know, like a twenty pound boa constrictor. That's like one of those snakes eating like a thirty pound meal. So it goes from being a twenty pound snake to being a fifty pound because it just ate this massive meals, get some terrible meat sweats. Yeah, I would, and so that's right. I mean, so then what do they do for like the next couple of weeks is like nothing.

You know, crawler in to some spot where they feel a little bit protected, idea that there's a little bit of sunshine, and they stick the they stick that chunk of their body that's got that big digesting prey mass out into the sun and then it's slowly digests and you know, weeks two months later they take a giant poop and got rid of it. All. That's that actually

sounds like a wonderful life. But there are these situations where like the snake kind of misjudged what it was trying to eat and actually something that's so big that it actually does end up tearing the inside, so actually tearing the digestive truck and in some cases actually causing

the entire animal to rupture. And there's actually this this photo that went vil of This is a non native Burmese python in the Florida Everglades that had taken out a rather large alligator and it actually ended up being too large and it ended up you know, how does the animal the snake from the ruptured and you can see the gator through the snake, So how does it take out a gator in the first place? It kind

of wrapped construction? Actually, Yeah, so that's the thing. Like these these species that we see doing this, like bows and pythons, are like really big, strong, constricting snakes, and then the other ones we see doing it are things like vipers right where you know them. The snake strikes the animal, venimates, it waits for that animal to die, and then goes and consumes it. Yeah, how do they

normally manage like without exploding? Because they must have some pretty flexible muscles to be able to allow them, because like if we tried to eat something twice our size, like that wouldn't that wouldn't work. We would instantly die or choke, Like how do they how do they not choke?

How do they not always? I mean basically, a snake is just this giant tube, right, and so if you can sort of fit into that tube, you're kind of good to go, like they're there's a reason that a snake doesn't have a small neck in most cases, right, and it's because that neck would then be the sort

of limiting factor of what you can fit down. And so what's really amazing is like snakes have all these ways of sort of like being able to expand, you know, you don't see things like we have we have like you know, we have this rib cage that's fused in a few places, and so our rib cage doesn't expand that well, well, snakes don't have that, you know, they don't have a rib cage that fuses all the way around,

so that they can expand a lot. When we see a snake, what we mostly see or like we see all the scales, but actually if a snake is like eating a huge meal, then it's expanded so much that you actually see all the skin in between these scale roads, and it'll be almost as wide as the scale roads

itself if it's really distended. And so they can just take on these you know, really big meals, and their body can expand to accept a lot of it those of course limits, but even the stomach itself can expand lengthwise and take up a huge chunk of sort of that tubular body if it has a big meal or maybe not just like a big meal, but maybe you know,

maybe it's an egg eating snake of something. Yeah, so maybe you just got lucky and you've got you know, you found the henhouse and you just got you know, six at once um. And some species of eggating snakes actually rupture the eggs and regurge datum, and some actually just swallow the eggs hole. So like for these ones that swallow hole, he's gonna pack like you know, do they poop the shell outer or it actually mostly gets digested.

So snake stomachs are absolutely amazing. Like you know, you see these snakes that like you know, take like a you know, take a take that big bow con Church I was talking about. Let's say it does you know, let's say it eats a small monkey of some sort. It's not it's not pooping out a little monkey bones. There's not like a femur that's coming out, you know, a mammal femur coming out you know, two weeks later, now that all gets the snake stomach is so incredibly efficient.

It digests all well, you'll see in the long one, you just see a little bit of hair and that's about it. Maybe some claws off the feet and stuff. But I kind of want to change my funeral plans to being eaten by a snake, because then I would be one percent snake at that point. Yeah, they actually have a pretty high rate of you know, sort of recovering, sort of the energy efficient. Yeah, um, I don't know it. It's uh, it's not that far fetched. It's rare for

a snake to consume a human. There are a few species that occasion that very very very very rarely do it. Um. And and the key is you need to be a sort of a smallish Yeah. So yeah, if I if I turned into a little lady, then that will be my funeral plan. There you go, get a big snake,

big enough snake. So you wrote a blog post about these incredible flying wrestling matches between snakes and hawks, which, uh sounds a lot more entertaining than anything out of the w W E. Can you tell us a little bit about it, paint us a picture of the scene to our audience, and and how how are snakes able to fend off these hawks? Yeah? So, I mean this is a sort of. I think it's sort of a

great David and Goliah story. Like, you know, we have these aerial predators, hawks, eagles, other birds of prey, and they love to eat snakes like it's you know, it's

their Italian fair. It's a tasty little and so. But sometimes what happens, this is particularly true for juvenile birds of prey, is they haven't really they haven't gotten their technique down and they haven't maybe figured out that you know, sometimes you can buy it off more than you can chew, and so you might get something like a juvenile redtailed hawk, which is you know, really widespread species of hawk across across much of the United States, that might see something

like a gopher snake, a bowl snake, a rat snake. It's sort of those are the species that we offer about how big, So you know, this is this this is I mean, you know, this is a couple of pound bird, you know, but it might a juvenile reddel hawks still might have you know, two two and a half a wingspan um and then these snakes might be two and a half three three and a half, you know, up to four or five ft long, but they're just but their noodles, whereas exactly town's crushing beaks. They can

fly exactly, horrible mean predator. And there's this cute, adorable snake cruising around, going about this business for the day and join some sun, and this hawk comes out of nowhere and pounces on it. And so sometimes times with these juvenile hawks is they'll come down, they'll grab something like a gopher snake, and they'll start flying off with it. But you know, the snake is like two two and a half three ft long. It's oh and it's a

constricting species. And so what the snake will then do is a defense mechanism, is it just wraps up the hawk. And so here's this hawk trying to fly and now it's got you know, it's got it. You can't move one very well because like the snake wrapped a coil around that it's like mashing kind of one talent into the other talent. It's got a coil around its neck,

like getting tangled up in a hose. Yeah, and so what happens is like you'll see these reports every now and then, and this is like one of the great things, like people post this stuff on social media because it seems absolutely absurd, and it is, but it actually gives us an opportunity to study these sort of rarely observed events.

And so what happens You get these photographs every now and then that show up of like, you know, a hawk that has like landed in the middle of the street, or not even landed as much as it's like fallen out of the air into the middle of the street. There's a hawk like wrapped up around or there's a snake wrapped up around it, and you know, nobody knows what's going on. And what's going on is the snake is fighting for its life and it's the last ditch effort is like can I mess up this hawk enough

that I can get away? And usually what sometimes happened in these cases is that actually the bird gets so exhausted that eventually the snake is able to crawl off and get away. You know, maybe it's got some talent injuries or something like. Yeah. And what's really neat is with social media is we see this now all over the place because people post these like absurd videos or

absurd photos. But because they're posting these, you know, onto the internet, you know, we see observations of this like same sort of thing going down in like Africa and going down all across the United States and going down and you know, other parts around the world. Different species of you know, birds of prey and different species of snakes. But we see that there's a lot of different snakes that are capable of sort of doing this is like the last ditch effort of like trying to trying to

save themselves and slay the evil hawk goalize. Yeah, so is is that is that kind of a common behavior that they do where they try to wrap around a predator um and but just in this case they happen to be flying. Yeah, I mean, I think in general, you know, I mean a snake's first line of defense is like, don't get seen at all, rely on camouflage, rely on stealth, try not to get seen. You know. The second line of defense is just flee, right, to

try to crawl away. That's they teach you in self defense, Like the best thing to do is to run away. Yeah, don't get seen and then don't have any contact because

you run away. And then you know, if that fails, then you've got to scare try to scare off whatever it is, you know, And so the snakes have all these bluff to s yeah, and other snakes will like try to rattle their tail to kind of mimic a rattle snake, or they'll hiss, or they'll they'll strike at you, but like totally in ways that are never going to connect. It's just these defensive strikes. And they do all this stuff to like, you know, they inhale a bunch of

air to look big. You know, they do all the stuff to like scare away potential pitter. But if that fails as well, then you've got no other choice but to fight for your life, right, And so that's what's happening. I mean, this is a snake fighting for its life. The hawk is fighting for a meal, the snakes fighting

for its life. The snakes got way more to lose, gives it all it can and sometimes it works, you know, But then you have to imagine, like in these situations, like that snake is probably you know, snakes have home ranges, they have territories. So now it's dropped off in the middle of nowhere. So I think I forget the exact street.

But like the blog that I was writing about was literally like a guy was driving down the street and took this photograph, and I want to say, like Echo Park here in Los Angeles, of this redtailed hawk that just plumbing it down in the middle of the roadway with this snake. Yeah, and so sometimes it can be as like conspicuous as a spot as that. But of course that snake is now, you know, totally in a new abitative has no idea. You gotta rebuild its snakes,

like totally rebuild its whole life. But at least it's alive. Yeah, at least, Yeah, you gotta try. I wish that, um that I think it's the Mexican flag that has the hawk in the Yeah, that's exactly right. They should replace it with the snake just totally wrapped around the hawk and like just battling it out. Well, thank you so much for joining us. Um. If there's one thing you could ask people to do to appreciate nature and more,

what would it be. Oh, since we're since we're talking about you know, sort of rarely observed things, I would say, you know, if you see something out there that's really bizarre. You see a snake in a hawk crashing to the ground, you see some lizards mating, you see um, you know there's probably other cool stuff going on in like non

reptile examples. But you know, you see something interesting, take a photograph of it, and um send it to somebody at your local natural historyism because maybe it's actually scientifically interesting.

Or better still, download this amazing app called Naturalists and participate in this online citizen science project where you can upload observations of things that you see and share those with people around the world and create an amazing digital legacy of biodiversity records that scientists for literally hundreds of years we'll be able to use for their research. Yeah, and then you can maybe also use it for your

new metal band album cover. Absolutely, but share it with scientists first, please, Yeah, and then we can even give you advice. I'm like, yeah, you know what this is? Yeah, what what? What's a good name? What's going on with the correct scientific name of your metal band? Yeah, and then you can have a Latin influenced metal awesome. Well, thank you so much for joining us, Thanks for having me on, and we're back with Alex Schmidt. Um, so

that was a pretty pretty snaky advance. Sure. Yeah, I I don't know why so many people are afraid of snakes. They've mostly been like comedically hit the weird fights with birds, and I'm way into it. I know, I I do like snakes. I think they're actually kind of well, I guess Rattlesnakes aren't cute to me just because I associate them with venom, deadly, deadly venom. But the other ones are cute to me, Like pythons. They have they kind of like have a little puppy faces. They're cute. They're

little noodle dogs. Yeah. That Disney's Robin Hood movie where the snake is like a dupey advisor. Yeah, that's the one that got I had a lot of sympathy for that snake. Yeah, you know, he was just he was like like a lot of that stuff really good. He was sort of like the white shret of the Assistant to the False King. That was the Disney hit Robin Hood,

an animated tale. Yeah for yeah, where he was a fox. Yeah, I remember that's in history, Yeah, in history, Robin I don't know if you guys knew this, but Robin Hood was a fox. Yeah. Uh, that's a great movie that I love all just like they have Little John as Blue the Bears. Somehow it's like a Big Bear in it. It's the same voice actor as he did Blue and Jungle Book. Yeah, they're that brief period of reusing a

lot of the cells. That was a good time. I think we need more positive representation of snakes in in media. I can't think of like any good snake, Like, can you think of one like a good cartoon snake? Oh wait wait, Kung Fu Panda one of the snakes, uh is is one of the good guys, one of the good good fighters. And and she's a she's a female, which is um. I don't know why I called her. I'm used to calling animals females, but she's a woman

in the movie because she's anthropomorphic. Um. But yeah, And maybe that's why they're not in a ton of stuff is that it's a little hard to make them anthropomorphic in a super fun way. Although I did find I mean, like what they did in Robin Hood again hit Disney film Robin Hood made a tale of Robin Hood and his merriage historical documentary. Yes, is like the snake would like fold his late his not his legs, but fold

his body and kind of like funny ways. And I think that I think you can definitely do it just gotta gotta have empathized with the snakes. Creativity, give us more good representation of snakes. Please. They're great, They're good, they're good. Little noodle boys, we got, we got, We need fishes and snakes. Who do you think would win fisher versus snake? Big snake? You know that that's almost in the existing story of Ricky Ticky Tabby. That is true.

Ricky Ticky Tabby is a mongoose. And there was an animated movie of it that our library had on VHS. Remember that, I remember that. Yeah, it was like a Chuck Jones movie. Um. Yeah, And and that's story is accurate because monkeys do eat snakes, Yeah, often poisonous ones, and they all eat they're not poison as sorry, venomous. And they'll also eat um scorpions, and they have a certain resistance to yeah, to scorpion venom Tough little noodle boys,

tough little noodle boys. Yeah. Or would it just like if you matched up a fissure with a snake, would it just be like like flopping two noodles together, like a fight, like fighting with two poodle pool noodles, you know, pool noodle fights that you have you got anything to plug. My upcoming pool fights going to be uh no, the correct podcast. I hope people check it out and uh and then I'm doing a show in l A Friday July if that fits with Yeah. Yeah, it's a Stories

Cafe and Echo Park. It's called Difficult to Name and it's a great reading series. Now what's the show's name? Difficult to just come on, you can do it, difficult to name. I like you should come more prepared to these podcasts. You were so ready for that. Yeah. I was actually just on the Crack podcast, so that should be coming out soon, probably around the time. Well when is that coming out? It'll be middle agely okay? Cool? Yeah, sweet. So it's all coming together. It's coming it's all it's

all the way to the top. It's all coming together. And you brought great stuff, including animal stup so yeah, yeah, right, yeah, we talk about extinct kangaroos or are they what tough little kangaroo boy? So where can people find you? Alex? I'm at Alex Metty on Twitter, and then my website is Alex Smitty dot com and it has an email newsletter I do where it's ten tips on fun things that are free on the internet. Am I not subscribe to that? Maybe I think I don't talk about it enough.

I've been trying to. Yeah, that's amazing. I'm going to subscribe to that. I want Schmitty to Yeah, they come like once a month, obtrusively, the Gritty Schmitty. I feel like the room will fill with nicknames. There we are here. I invite everyone on Twitter to round Alex with your own nicknames. You of course can find us at Creature feet Pod on Twitter, a t U Creature feature pod

dot com, Creature feature Pod on Instagram. We're up here every Wednesday, and I'm at Katie Golden and of course I'm also at pro bird rites or is the bird meat? Or am I the bird? I'm just thinking about that bird that poops on its enemies. I know, I know, it's it's It is truly an excellent strategy of bombardment. Birds is nasty, nasty listen birds. Yeah, and thanks to the Space Classics for their awesome song Exo Lumina