Horror Movie Knockoffs

fox say? Is it? Joining me today are two horror movie specialists and hosts of the Gamefully Unemployed podcasts, Tom Ryman and David Bell. Oh spooky sounds Between us, we're also probably hosting tons of parasites. Oh yeah, my skin is rippling. Everyone has mites on their eyelashes, so you know, m There are symbiotes. They're not really positive or negative. They just sit there and eat your dead skin. It's I still feel like they're they're getting something over on

me though. I las spiders. Yeah probably. I don't think they actually do anything good for you, so they're, you know, just kind of sitting on theres a get a job. I think it's fun though, because you're never truly alone. You're never alone when you got ice spiders, little tiny ice spiders. Are they wait, do they look like spiders? They look like spiders. They're actually mites, which are you know, related to spiders. They're not actually spiders. I like to

picture my might swearing jaunty little hats. Yeah, they probably are. I like. I like the idea of them, like sort of matching my outfit every day. Like, hey, you're wearing a flamingo shirt. Me too. Yeah. Cute, very courteous little eye spiders. But guys, enough of the cute talk about spiders. Let's talk about haunted deadly lakes. That's right, spoo spoop spoo sky lakes. You did say lakes, right, Like, well,

this is one leg. I'm sure there are other spooky lakes. Look, I'm not saying that this is the only spooky lake, can I. I I think all lakes are spooky. They're just they're giant like bodies of water of like stagnant water, which is things in them that's spooky. You don't want to go in those. I wouldn't say stagnant water necessarily, but still yeah, still water, which is uh, yeah, you know,

I just assume if every lake is loaded with ghosts. Yeah, it's got to be loaded with all the ghosts of the micro organisms, right like tiny just really haunted by jack fish. Yeah, fish with unfinished business, finished fish business, a turtle that never got to say goodbye to its mom. That's actually sad you brought the podcast down. Yeah. I thought I thought the fish business would be like, Oh, I really wanted to pick up that pebble in my mouth and spit it back out really badly, and I

never got to write. I feel like it would be be like I wanted to try like swimming in a loop de loop and then I hit my head on a rock and died. But now I'm going to try it again. But yeah, no, this is an actual spooky lake. So this is a lake that turns dead animals into terrifying stone sculptures. I mean that sounds pretty dope. It's it's it's pretty tight. Yeah, it's pretty sounds like it turns them into fun collectibles, into precious moments. The moment

of death isn't that precious though, you know. Yeah. Lake Natrone in northern Tanzania a salt lake that is highly alkaline. So if you're highly alkaline, you have a very high pH. So you're basic, You're you're basic, like a basic bit right, Yeah? Wait, this lake is a basic lake, is very basic. It's a basic lake. I got you know what. I followed this lake on Instagram and everybody got that. But it's not basic like basic, but it's basic like it is full of base, as in it has a high pH.

Like there's assets low pH, and there's bases high pH and acids can be very caustic, and bases can be very caustic as well. So it is so basic due to high amounts of natron found in the lake. Natron is a naturally occurring basic high P mineral salt. This gives the lake a pH of over twelve, which is a about as high as ammonia. Sure. Yeah cool. You could say you could have said anything and I would. Yeah. I don't know. Yeah, I don't know what any of that means making this up. It's got a pH is

high as glorge. Oh yeah, glory. Yeah, I remember hearing about glorge in high school. Yeah, it's really a powerful household solvent. Yeah. Well, so the lake is only about ten ft deep, which is about three meters, but thirty five miles long about fifty seven kilometers long, and the lake is pretty hot. It's about a hundred degrees fahrenheit, if not more. And it is the world's most caustic lake. Mm hmm, No, you know it'll cackle if you go on it. Yeah, it's so caustic. It shouts at people

as they walk by. Yeah, it's like this lake is like a real, real, real trash lake. Like Gilbert Gottfried's voice turned into water, the liquefied voice of Gilbert gotfreed, Gilfert Godfried's voice melted across ten miles or ever, why it was. The pictures that you have here is this is this the lake? This red, this terrifying red splotch of land. Yes, I'm gonna say I appreciate that it's blood red. That is very considerate of the lake, right,

truth and advertising. Right, Yeah, So the satellite images of the lake show a creepy kind of portal to hell red gouge in the Earth's surface, and even up close to the lake can be red. So not in all parts of the lake are read. It kind of depends on what part of the lake you're in. Like their shallower bits, they're deeper bits, they're a bit sort of closer to the shoreline, that might be bluer, but like in the center of the lake, it may be redder.

It also, so it's red because of ciano bacteria that has this deep red pigment. So cyanobacteria are these little um, very tiny organisms that also they can either live independently or they can live in red algae, and that's what gives red algae that bright red color. That's what happens like when you have a red tide, not not the euphemism for a lady's period, but an actual red tide sham in the ocean. And not not to be confused

with the Tony Scott film Crimson Tide classic film. So other than microorganisms, little life finds this lake hospitable save for a few fish that live around the less salty and caustic margins of the lake. And also flamingos. Flamingos

are hanging out in this lake. Flamingos are hanging out in this lake, so they actually feed on some of the algae and they because they can fly, they can actually fly into these mud flats that form seasonally due to evaporation and breathe there lay their eggs and allow their young to hatch, and that actually keeps them safe from predators because basically they're on these little islands and predators don't want to have to swim through a blood red, hellish,

highly basic, caustic lake. It's like it's like how they always say, if you get attacked by a bear, light yourself on fire and then the bear won't touch you, be gonna have anything to do with that, right, But the flamingos can basically survive it because they're on those mud flats and they can fly and their their hatchlings

when they hatch. Basically they have to time it very specifically so that they can walk across a land bridge that forms with evaporation, and they have to be pretty fast about it though, because young flamingos can actually die on the journey from these these salt uh salt lakes, like if their legs start to get too wet because salt crystals start to form and it weighs them down and it can actually kill them if they just get so weighed down by the salt crystals forming on their

legs that they can't move. So this is after they're born. They have to get out of this lake. Yes, that's awful. That's like real high risk reward here. It's it's it's building in the middle of like an acid moat. Well, right, but then if you're surrounded by predators that want to eat your babies and they don't want to go through the acid moat and sorry, guys, it's not an acid moat. It's a basic mode, basic basic. But like it's just they didn't ask for that. It's it's like it has

to be born. Yeah, just like welcome to the world. Now you have to get through the Mario lava level. I love I love the emo Flamingo. It's just got like one little tuft of like black feathers and it has to be born an acoustic lake. Mom die in its feathers black. That's great, But for most birds, this lake is a deadly temptress because migrating birds will crash into the lake surface. It's waters are highly reflective due to the dense mineral content, and it forms a natural mirror.

Do they think it's more sky. They think it's more skyle. Literally, they're like wow, sky direction. They're like, well, I've never seen that before. This is gonna be awesome. I mean, it's probably very disorienting because you look down and there's just more sky and you're like, huh, I got more sky to go in. Yeah, some bird scientists thinks they've discovered a window into another dimension. O. Man. Growing up, we had a lot of windows and we would you know,

the birds would hit it. So I remember one year my parents had the bright idea of putting like butter fly stickers on the windows, and so they're just more birds slammed into it, but hungry birds. You should have put a pis somatic butterflies, butterflies with warning coloration on the windows, Dave's mom, or just like a big owl. Yeah that they sell hock dee cows you can put that would be super awesome. Though you just have a

bunch of screaming hawks on your windows. I don't really have a problem with birds crashing into our our windows, but now I just want to cover them all in in hocte cows just blazing ferocious socks. That's protecting the birds. But yeah, so like they will crash into this and if you're you know, flying, and then you suddenly crash into a highly caustic lake at full speed, you can die. Either just from the impact or you know, from the

caustic lake. Them being murdered by a lake is just the start of the horror story because then inside the water of the lake, the bodies of these dead animals will be turned into McCobb's sculptures. So the dead animals, semi decayed bodies are preserved through calcification, So calcium salts in the lake will be deposited into soft tissue, turning it into like this hard semi mummified dead bird or other animals. There's like bats sometimes get in there as well,

but it's still all sleep birds. So I want you guys to take a look through. I'll also provide a link to these in the show notes. But this gallery of calcified animals that were turned into statues by lake neutron, which is not just to clarify something about these pictures. They were calcified, turned into statues, and then some jerk for photographer fished them out of the water and put them on these perches, right yep, okay, because they didn't

calcify in these poses twigs. According to the photographer, they were in these poses, but they were not like sitting on a branch so they were collected by him and local I guess volunteers. I don't. I don't know what what Briberry system went on to get locals. So just like, hey,

get some dead birds from me, will you. So this is photographer Nick Brandt who took these photos, and he would get acquire the dead birds and sometimes dead bats and pose them by just taking their hardened, calcified body and putting it on a branch and taking a photo. But he says that he didn't manipulate their bodies anyway, like trying to pose them. I don't even think you could break break Man. The goth flamingo would love these

in its room. They have a whole whole thing of him. Yeah, if all lined up on the wardrobe trying to shock its parents. Yeah, if you guys could get calcified. Um, if you if that's how you go getting calcified rapidly? What pose would you strike? Because these birds, they chose a good pose. I would probably go in an attack pose, attack pose. Yeah, with my fangs bared. I would hope to be holding a guitar so I could be wailing on a guitar in the pose. We can make this happen, Dave,

we can, we can, you can. We can go to Tanzania and you can jump into the lake with a guitar and just jump in this freaking sarlac pit. Yeah. I think I would have like one hand like a kimbo and kind of like sassily be sort of jetting my hip out and then like one hand sort of like blowing a kiss. And then I feel like that would be cool for people to Instagram post with, oh yeah, make a little money while you're dead, right, and then

charge people. People could put fun like coins in my hand and then my bony, calcified fingers like clasp over the coin and I'll be like the is struck. Yeah, there's okay. It's so have they like stuck cameras in this lake? Have they looked in the part where the animals can't go? I don't. I mean, it's not that no animals can survive in this like, uh, fish can. Some fish, very hardy fish can actually live in certain parts of the lake. I mean they're stout fish, fisher,

bulletproof fish going around. Dun't bar me. I don't know what they're complaining about. Dun't bar me. I just find it hard to like you're describing like one of those you know, those weird flowers that like spiders fall in and bugs fall in and they drown and eats them. Like it just seems like it's some elaborate trap, right, But it's just a lake. Yeah, but what's the lake? Want the lake? Yeah, I feel like like, yeah, it's

entirely possible. We'd go to the bottom of this lake and find like a mouth, yeah, hello, big big, like big juicy lips, like yeah, just a human mouth. Well yeah, you know, I don't know if there have been like underwater videos taken, I don't know if you would get much Also, if you if you got film exposed to the water, like if somehow water got into your film

or on your camera, it would destroy the footage. It's yeah, it's a racket, like we we don't know what's down there, right, Yeah, it's it's it's at the very least, it's a portal to hell. What if it's this photographer. What if he like turns into like a like a like a snake or something and like slithers into the water at night like a silky Yeah, and it's it's the lake's elaborate scam to sell black and white photography of animals. I like that that this malevolent blood Red likes ultimate evil

scam is photography. Oh yeah, hey, look sometimes monsters want, you know, to be artists too. But these are these are astounding photos. There's a wholeful a mingo, a bat uh swallow, some other bird I can't really tell what it is anymore, and an entire eagle, and I think a dove. Who I think the dove is my favorite because its wings are sort of folded in front of it. It looks very much like an angel of Death kind

of thing going on. Yeah, it looks like a like a prop for the movie The Crow, right right, or like a Gearmo del Toro creation. Yeah, yeah, again, good on these birds of taking these majestic poses. At the moment of their death, They're like, I'm dying, but I must pull my finger. There's a cheese space in a in a peace sign. Yeah. I mean, I think that being turned into a statue is sort of a It's a it's a theme in horror movies, right, like in House of Wax, where they like turn horny teenagers into

wax statues. Greek mythology like Medusa turning people into stone statues. I guess, horny Greeks, the classic story of gargoyles the cartoon, Right, that's sort of the that's sort of the opposite problem. Yeah, that's that's that's a good point, um, Tom, if we were we're talking about horror movies, Tom, we we literally just watched a movie like this, or should I say a segment in a movie, Tom, Yeah, creep show too. Yeah.

The raft it's about a lake where a bunch of college kids, you know, going on on one of those wooden rafts that's like anchored in the middle of the lake to bone uh and uh, there's in horror movies you can never have sex without like consequences, in this case being attacked by what appears to be like a gooey trash bag that floats around the lake and dissolves them, eats them. Yeah, that's pretty nearly. That's cool. That is

kind of like this. Yeah. I was going to ask you guys if they are like killer lakes in horror movies, and it sounds like there are just the one, really that one. Yeah, I don't know, you know, there's some. I mean, it's not really a horror movie. But in Dante's Peak, the lake turns into acid. Yeah, and and eats Grandmama, eats Grandma. Yeah she kind of Yeah, she totally has it coming in the in the context of

that film, Grandma, it's very satisfying. It's a villain death when you think about it, She's the chief villain of the piece. I like how this podcast has suddenly taken a very anti Grandma's dance Grandma. Yeah. Like if you watch Dante's Peak, you would be like, oh, yeah, I know exactly what you're talking. We're saying Grandma's in general are cool, and we don't we don't want you to get devoured by legs of acid. Yeah, we should say

the character who I believe is named Ruth. Ruth. Just before we move on to the next topic, I want to do sort of an honorable mention for spooky horror movie environment. So this would be the clathrus are carry fungus which is also known as the octopus, stinkhorn, the squid, word, mushroom, or Devon's fingers. So it is a fungus that looks like a tentacled alien bursting out of an egg, which I think is pretty neat. Yeah, why does this exist? How can I avoid it? Um? So to answer why

it exists? Uh, I don't. I mean that's very deeply philosophical. In short, basically, these tentacle arms come out in order to distribute its spores, and they smell like rotting flesh when they're mature to attract flies and other pollinators. I guess that actually didn't answer why they exist, but just added on to sort of more of how they exist. So basically, the it looks like a white egg, and then out of the white egg are red tentacle arms with black goo inside of them, sort of bursting out

of the eggs. And sometimes they come and hold clusters, so it looks like a nest of little eldric demons. It's the shrimp fingers and beetlejuice. Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like. Yeah, that was the first thing that came to mind. I don't remember shrimp fingers. Uh. It's during the famous scene where she dances and sings. Uh. And then at the end their meals grab them, grab their faces and throw them. That's fun. That's what these

fungus do too. No, not really, they do smell like dead flesh and oh and then this is just a fun thing. From the Wikipedia sentence says, quote the young fungus erupts from a sub rumpant egg by forming into four to seven elongated slender arms, initially erect and attached at the top. So I never actually have heard the term suber rumpant, and I googled it, and every everything on Google just led back to this Wikipedia article. So I don't know if this is a real word or not.

Rumpant is a real word. It means bursting forth through a surface. But I guess like sub or rumpant means like the egg is the thing from which the tentacle fungus erupts. I don't know, but I'm just sounds like somebody's making stuff up on Wikipedia. Kind of sounds like somebody's making stuff up on Wikipedia, but it's it was trying to slide suborumpant in there. It's like it's a perfect crime, right. But I'm like super into this word, so I kind of wanted to be a real word.

So I'm just gonna start using subarumpant and act like you don't know what's subarumpant means that embarrassing for you. I'm just I'm now automatically thinking of horror movies. This reminds me. Splinter comes to mind. Say, it's not quite the same, but that's I was trying to think of what our fungal horror movies. Uh, And of course there's The Last of Us with um like it's often a

zombie genre. Splinters similar to US as a game where zombies are taken over by the court accepts Fungus, which is actually based on a real fungus that infects ants and other insects and bursts from them, like some times from their heads into a fruiting body that releases spores, which is pretty horrifying. I think we've talked about it on the show before, but yeah, it's pretty cool. Yeah.

Also the movie Cargo, which was like a zombie movie with Martin Freeman that not Australian, the Australian Outback, and I think that him and a baby, him and a baby, and I think it wasn't that whole. There was like sort of I think they based some of their Yeah, it's more zombie ish. It was a good, very good premise, which is that he's trying to get this this. I think it's a baby to safety having been bitten. So he knows that in a certain amount of time he's

gonna eat that baby. Like he's just gonna he's not gonna he's gonna be a zombie. And then that baby is screwed. Bay, Yeah, the baby. I don't think that baby could handle this. Oh, but you know what it is. It's not that it's not that the virus itself is a fungus, but they based the human beho aaviors on the behaviors of ants that have been infected with Court accepts. So like the humans in a stage of infection, they are become very like photo sensitive and like hide their

heads in the ground then burst forth becoming fully zombified. Um, And I think it's with ants, it's not quite the same thing. They just go crazy and walk up a stem and then like clamp down on the stem and start to clamp their head onto the stem and just like stay in that locked pose. So I think that's actually really I like that idea of like an infection sort of like having you do this weird behavior in service of the virus or fungus fungal infection. A non

zombie option. It's not really a fungus. I'm cheating, but the movie Apostle has sort of a fungal quality to what's going on. It's it's more like nature. Yeah, this is also this is also a little reminiscent of Annihilation. Yes, yes, oh yeah. God. I couldn't watch that movie like all the way through, but I have just watched bits and pieces of it to get the overall vibe. E didn't like the tummy worms, I didn't like the that's going to say, did you make it to the Horror Bear?

And yes you did. Yeah you your love of animals. I feel like there's certain horror movies that would fascinate you to some extent and horrify Yeah, Apostle being one of them. Yeah. It's funny because while I think I'm extremely empathetic towards humans, seeing animals suffer in movies somehow is worse. Not that I not that I think that

I like value animals over humans. I think it's like when I see a human actor suffering in a movie, I'm like, Okay, part of my brain is like, oh no, I'm upset, But then part of my brain is like, that's a human actor. You know they're they're acting. Right When I see like a dog in a movie, even if it's even if I logically know this dog is trained to make this sound, it's not actually scared. The concept of a dog actor portraying fear but not actually

being afraid doesn't really resonate with me. So I'm just like, oh, no, baby, Like in the Thing, the worst scene in that movie is the dog being attacked by the thing. They're like making these horrible scared dog noises. And I'm sure, at least I hope very much that these were just really well trained dogs. First of all, it's um white Thing

is one of the dogs. The dog actor who played white Fing is the main dog in that I think, right, yeah, I think it wor if you watch some of those shots where the dogs are getting like sprayed with thing goo, yeah, like you're definitely seeing irritated dogs. I don't think you're seeing dogs in like afraid, but I think you're seeing dogs being like what the hell is man? What is this? Right? But there's like a dog that tries to bite its

way out of the cage because it's so scared. It's like, oh, puppy, probably peanut butter all these I know, I know, right, but like, screw all these people, like save the puppies. My favorite is when a dog or animals trying to be vicious and you can kind of tell they're just having TILSA. That's so interesting about the and this is

a total tangent but I just watched it recently. So the dog is infected by the thing, which is this shape shifting alien evil entity, and the dog actor is so good at being kind of uncanny the way it's it's such a good dogs, such a good dog actor, and it kind of is creepy, but it's also like I'm just so proud of such a good good boy. What a good boy. It's white thing like that. That's that is like the Jack Nicholson of dogs. Uh, it's great. Yeah,

the name is Jet Jet. The dog was in the thing and white thing and white thing to get him, get him an Oscar or an Oscar Mayer weener. I know, we're I know, far down the rabbit hole. I just have to say. The dog has one self credit where the dog plays itself and this is blowing my mind. Uh, it plays itself in the video documentary Dead Kennedy's the early Years, a documentary about the punk band The Dead Kennedy's.

I don't know why White Fame is in that, but Jet the Dog was there in the formative years of the Dead Kennedys, so they couldn't they couldn't do a comprehensive documentary without talking to him. Right was Jed the first singer. The cast of this documentary is the four members of The Dead Kennedy's and Jed. That's all that's listed on IMDV. The dog in a pair of glasses like facing count. Yeah, well, you know, I do there early years, and to be frank with you, it was

their sound was pretty rough. So now we're going to talk about ants. Ants can be scary, but ants could have their own horror movies like Attack of the Ant. Mimics. There are species of predatory insects and arachnids that mimic ants visually, behaviorally, and sometimes through pheromones. Reasons for the mimicry range from being able to sneakily live among the ants to stealing the ant's identity to avoid predators, Predators who are rightfully afraid of the wrath of an ant colony.

Some mimics are ruthless murderers using their ant shape to sneak up on an ant, kill it, and eat it, like John Carpenter's The Thing. So before the break, we were just talking about the Thing, and I was kind of there aren't that many like shape shifting super animals that can assume the form of any organism. Unfortunately, But when you think of evolution as sort of like it, like on this grander scale of evolution, shaping animals into things in order to prey upon other animals, that behaves

very much like the Thing. And so I want you to take a look at these photos because it shows a couple of ant mimics. So the first photo is of a jumping spider ant mimic. Can you tell which one is the ant, which one is the spider? Yes, But until I knew what these pictures were of, I just assumed I was looking at two ants. I'm very I'm surprised, like now looking at him, like, oh, that is a spider pretending doing its darndest to be an ant. This is a real It's kind of cute. Yeah, this

this spider is really this is this is diabolical. Yeah, Like I feel like if you saw this spider and like squinted at it, he'd be like, don't don't blow this for me. Shut up, dude, don't be an aren't Well this first one is a little less diabolical, I think, because this is actually a jumping spider mimicking an ant, not to prey on the ants, but actually to steal

their identities so other spiders don't prey on it. Because if a spider eats an ant, a real ant, it runs the risk of the ants sending out distress pheromones and then the whole colony coming in and attacking killing the spider, which happens frequently. So spiders are like, okay, I don't want to, like, you know, attack an ant.

So the jumping spider, which is often smaller spiders are often the prey of bigger spiders, and the jumping spider, a cute, little baby spider, is often the prey of bigger spiders, so by imitating an ant, it is actually standing a better chance of avoiding predation from larger spiders. I love that a spider eating an ant will erupt into a gang fight. Yeah, Like they'll just cut they'll just come out and stump at spiders as right, No,

I mean like that's they have. That is their whole thing, right, safety, numbers, safety and the colony. And if you you you have to establish that basically you can't mess with us, or else you get the whole whole colony up your butt. Sometimes literally, Yeah, it's it's like the entire philosophy of the ant I feel like is they showed up on this earth and they were like, crap, we're ants were like the smallest things we better like stick together exactly,

that's all we have. They probably start out as solitary insects, and it ended up the more social they were, the more successful they were. So the second photos are interesting because this is a little more devious. Now these are not ants. They look basically the first one especially looks exactly like an ant, but this is actually the ant mimicking predatory spider called the Karena ant like jumper, and

they are found in Southeast Asia. They mimic weaver ants, and this is a form of aggressive mimicry because this spider will pretend to be an ant, you know, sneak up to an aunt, be like hello, fellow aunt, and then you know, eat it if it gets caught by another ant. It's like just doing normal ants stuff, you know, taking care of this dead body, and they're like, I'm going to have to report you and we're gonna have to. Don't be a total buzz killed dude. This ants pretty

suss exact. Yeah. And then the and that's the female. The female looks very much like an ant, and it's like front legs kind of look like the feelers of the ant even though their legs and they'll actually hold them kind of like feelers and mimic the ant's behavior. And male karinga ant like jumper spiders, actually are away crazier. And I think I may have mentioned this on the show before, but there's another detail that I want to

point out. So male karnga ant like jumper spiders, look like two ants where one ant is holding the other quote unquote ant, but it's just one spider, and like the second ant is, it's giant things. So unlike the female, it needs to compete with other males in mating, so

it needs these big set of things. But ants don't have generally speaking, giant long fangs, so in order to continue to pass off as an ant, it makes itself look like two ants one carrying the other, except for the horrifying moment that one of the ants splits open into a giant set of fangs. It's the it's the spider equivalent of two kids in a trench coat. Yeah, the spiders really having to juggle a lot of things, right,

but yeah, it is. It's like it's like the thing if the thing had to look like it was holding a child, right, like then the child burst into tentacles just has like like you know, child has like one of the other ones like on the shoulders, and he's like, hey, guys, this normal stuff. I love how these ants, like are these spiders The female one has like terrifying spider mandibles like the but like ants do too, just like slightly

different ones. So like an observant aunt would just be like, oh, you're slightly more terrifying looking than us, not much more, but your your creepy mouth is even creepier for some reason, right, And they probably do a lot of like since just sort of by feel, by tactile recognition, so probably their eyesight is not super great, so but by like just sweeping a leg over the spiders like oh you're you're, you're, you're basically ant shaped, right, yeah, the male one, though,

it just feels like evolution just continuing to like right over itself over and over again, like not erasing anything, just adding and adding, like the like the female has mastered it. That thing looks like an ant. The male looks like a goblin. Yeah, females walking around like, hey, I'm an aunt. The man was walking like him. I'm everybody's like it comes. Hey, guys, just two ants. I don't think that guy's two ants. I don't know what

that is aunt favorite beer. We were talking about Annihilation earlier, but it is interesting because, like when you look at evolution on a larger scale, that idea of weird transformations, like in a weird melding of like different forms. Actually, while it doesn't really happen across species like it does in were distantly related species, in Annihilation, it does certainly happen.

We're like, we just had an episode actually Aban Bridget We're on and we talked about carsonization, where everything just starts to turn into crabs, like every uh, everything is crap, Everything is crabs. Every crustacean starts to like evolve into crab form at some point, I preferred like everything. You're just like you turn on the faucet and it's like crabs spiders. Spiders are starting to be more. They're like

crab spiders and look, maybe humans are next. I don't have any quote unquote research to back that up, but I like the idea that Mother Nature is like endgame is crab like that Crab game. Yeah, we're all just we're all just on our way to be crabs. Different different age of Ultron kind of thing where he does the he does this finger snap and everyone gets turned to crabs. That would have been a better one. That'd been a better wish, better magic gauntlet. Wish my wish.

Everyone's crabs now crab world. So another horror movie trope that ants do is that scene in World war Z, you know, the one where all the it's like the only good scene in the World war Z the movie, but like where all the zombies are piling on top of each other to get over this wall. So ants do this where they form bridges out of their bodies.

So at first it sounds, you know, pretty innocent and simple enough, like these ants kind of cooperating together maybe, but like when you actually look at the reality and science behind it. It is very scary and it's like even worse in some ways than that World Wars Z scene because like in the World War Z scene, they're just sort of creating like a pile, a zombie pile. You know. It's like, okay, yeah, I guess kind of threatening. So army ants have this behavior where they can actually

make these long bridge chains of ants. So I want you guys to check out that video just for a second. Oh, I've seen this. Yeah, I want to hang off of it. Do you think you think they'd let me hang off of it? No? Maybe? Don't you think I just end up covered in ants? Maybe he dress as a big aunt, like, hey, I'm here, I am also an aunt because they seem pretty too. Yeah, describe what you're seeing here. It looks

like a jump rope like it. It's it's the awning of a house, and it looks like from afar someone has hung like maybe a cable of some sort off

off the edge of the house. Cable you could like plant something on it, and then once you press play, it does indeed begin to move and it it appears to be honestly the most useless ant bridge I've seen because they're forming this big loop list like drooping loop so that they can get the equivalent of like one and a half feet that they could probably just crawl on the awning to get. It does seem like they're

showing off. So it's like a it's it's a big chip purely made out of ants, this big chain of ants like thick as a thick as a big cable that goes from like sort of one end to the awning sort of loops down and then goes up towards what is actually a wasps nest. These are army ants. So army ants describe a number of species of ants that form aggressive groups of foraging ants, and this can result in rivers of ants, towers of ants, and just

huge bridges of undulating ants. And when you you look at this, it's like, okay, so why how are they doing this? Like are they do they have some kind of like pheromone signal where they're like, okay, make a bridge, or is it some kind of altruism sort of thing or like cooperation or emergent multimind or like the queen going like okay, guys, go form a bridge. And the

reality is actually kind of frustratingly simple. So there is just this very and we actually talked about this, I think last week, just about how a very intelligent seeming behavior can actually be really dumb simple behavior. But once you multiply it by a bunch of individuals, the swarm actually seems to be acting very intelligently. So here's the basic algorithm that researchers have worked out that each dumb

little aunt brain does. So aunt comes across a gap and it pauses because you know, it's like, oh, a gap, and it stops. And then another aunt comes from behind the first aunt, and that ant walks over the first ant and then gets to the end of the first ant and stops, and it's like, oh, I can't walk anymore. And the first ant, when another ant is walking on top of its back, it just instinctively freezes. And then so when there are so this keeps happening over and

over again. Right, So it's like now there's like two ants that are like stopped because like the first ant is like, oh, someone's on top of me. I freeze now, and then the second ant is like, oh, I can't walk anymore. I stopped walking now. And the third ant comes walks over both of them. They're like, okay, we're stopped now. But this keeps happening over and over again until you have an actual bridge of ants between the gap,

and then ants can start to cross it. So basically, when there are enough ants trampling on the frozen ants backs, they will stay in place because there's so much foot traffic on top of them. But when traffic starts to lighten up, they'll actually start to break apart and keep moving, like as soon as they don't have so many ants

trampling over them. And this is like this very stupidly simple algorithm, but then you multiply that times thousands and thousands of ants, and that actually results in this very complex group behavior that allows them to build bridges which

can increase movement efficiency and reach places of interest. Now, in this case, it is interesting because like this looks to be fairly unintelligent, right, like why would you form this big loop of ants when you could just like walk from the hive back to the like, So they're they're going to the wasps nest in order to rate it, like get all the larva and stuff and eat eat all these things, and then what they'll do is they like break apart their prey and then like bring it

back to their ant colony. But the fact that they've formed the seemingly like superfluous loop instead of just walking across the awning. It could either just be sort of the algorithm just being kind of dumb. I mean, like any computer programmer probably knows when this happens when you write a program, and sometimes it's not completely efficient because it just happens to start this behavior that will keep going.

Or it could be that like there are ants that are trying to walk across the roof, but it's harder for them to carry things on this flat surface upside down or something. I'm not sure. It's very interesting. They're just trying to get their their their wiggles out. I was gonna I was gonna make a joke about like the the uselessness of being one of those bridge ants just sitting there like in one place, not not serving a very simple purpose to make this flimsy bridge for

the better ants to like walk across. And then I remembered like society and jobs, and was like, oh, all right, you remember we live in a society. Yeah, we live in a society. Do the ants get to like talk to each other, at least when they're in the bridge, you know, how's your how's your aunt wife? And then the other times like we're all sisters, what are you talking about? And then the third ants like I'm not a spider, guys, a spider, the spider would know how

to do it right. The spider would mess it up, really give it give itself away in this situation, who do you guys? What do you mean? Hang eight? I mean, is there is there a Pixar movie in this where a spider like is gonna eat the ants? And then like or it's just it's just trying to get away from its spider family and does this and then like it's you know, the ants find out and they accept them anyway. So let's talk about ancient aunt vampires. Let me tell the story of this ancient ant vampire, and

someone please write a fan fiction. Make it really, make it really horny and inappropriate. Yes, would be vampire right? Nice, very good. So a million year old chunk of amber was found with the demonic vampire hell ant inside. So this ant is extinct for now, we do have it trapped in amber, so you know, you know where that it's blood and make dinosaurs. Yeah, I mean make just make more of these ants and call it aunt Park and people still die and go out of business part

by each gigantic island. Uh set up big fences and just release the It's like that seeing this the big reveal where the two paleontologists are like, they're like, oh my god, there's actually dinosaurs, except like one. They're like the music swells and you look out and there's like nothing there, and then they're like, you know down there, and then it's like donna na closer. Done on. I still can't know. Okay there. I think that's one right

of it done on on on. There's one Jeff Goldblum type who's like, you can't do this and they're like, what you think it's irresponsible? Like no, it's just a bad business, terrible idea. Nobody's gonna pay money to see these ants. I don't care about the morality. It's just it's just there ants. Well, I think these ants are cool, you guys anything. I think if you hear about these ants,

you'll think they're cool too. So this is called a lingua mar Max vladdy Sure, lingua mar Max Vladdie and I'm imagining that Vladdie is referencing Vlad like a vampire, a species in a group of ants called hell ants, because their mandibles were just giant sides, like big curved blades. So these sides like job swooped down on the underside of the jaw and snap upwards and like this very

very violent underbite. Most modern ants, like their mandibles move horizontally, like side to side, you know, just a little kind of thinging on there. But these ones it was like up and down, like this sort of upside down guillotine made out of sickles. And their jaws are surrounded by sensitive hairs that allowed the jaw to snap shut. So like these trigger hairs that if something brushes against them, the jaw is kind of flap shut, which probably easily

decapitated unsuspecting prey. And on the upper part of their jaw is a hard, flat anvil that actually had metal particles in it to reinforce it. So basically they have like a chopping block on the top of their jaw and like a big axe on the bottom of their jaw that comes up and chops against this like anvil, and if it doesn't decapitate their prey. It like crushes

it or punctures it. And uh also, um, there are vampires because when you have a guillotine on your face, you can't really chew, so they had to suck the blood and other essential goo out of their victims. Just dudes like trap chaw the heman villain. Yeah, this ant's ready for the spider, the spider. Like this is like a reverse trap like the spider. It would come up like, hey,

I'm just an ant. If the spider comes in there, like the Steve BUSSETI meme, Hello fellow, it's only seeing the ant from from the behind, and then the ant turns around, so it's like, yeah, yeah, this thing, this is a cool ant. Why don't we have these ants anymore? I mean potentially trading off your ability to chew things with a giant guillotine face. I guess probably like the more streamlined ants one out in that. Yeah, yeah, but

they're less cool. Yeah. I feel like evolution would have favored them if they existed when we existed, and like ant farms would be a more lucrative business. We'd love these ants. I would I would have an ant farm. I mean artificial selection. Definitely in terms of our human preferences. We do love a monster, look at love a good monster. Yeah, this is basically the pug of ants. Let's let's let's do like weird cross breeding until all of their legs

are sickles too. Yeah about pugs right, yes, yeah, talking about turning pugs into just these little knife beasts. Ye cute, dug the pugs, but it's not nice. Yeah. Ants can be pests at picnics, but are they actually dangerous to humans? While most ants may not be able to kill you, some species can. The Maricopa harvester ant found in the southwest United States and in Mexico have been a more potent than honey bees that produces extreme pain and humans.

It can also be potentially deadly because they send out an alarm pheromone that triggers other ants to sting as well. A few hundred stings and you may be dead meat if you don't get medical attention. When we return, we're going to play a little auditory game, So turn your headphones up and your lights out. Imagine you're camping, the sun has set, the stars are out, and you're sitting by a dim dying camp fire. There's the din of crickets, the wind blowing through the trees, and all of a sudden,

you here. So, guys, we're going to play a game. I'm gonna play a sound, and you're gonna guess what it is. Okay, do you guess what that one was? Yeah? Go for it. Um, I don't know. I feel like, is it is it? Is it? Bobcat gold Swate, Yeah, it is it? Bobcat gold sway on acid in the woods. UM's no, all right. The first instinct some kind of bird, because birds are allowed all the time, and so that

sounds like some sort of crow. But I could actually see it being some kind of actual like Bobcat, not gold, not gold slate, but also gold Swate sounds gold regular, regular, Bob Bobcat classic. This is actually the call of a red fox, which is like when I think of a fox, I don't think I think of them sort of maybe going like rank or a meal. They don't really mew, but you know, I just think like a fox noise to me is definitely not like ra Yeah, like an

existential screen. Yeah, they make like weird chirping noises. They do that too. Yeah, fox noises are really unique. That's the that's the that's that. I guess what was a Swedish music video with the Fox saying like wrap up and that isn't it? They were wrong? Yeah, no, that is not what the fox there. The Fox does sometimes say that as well, But they also say this and this is either a territory warning call or I don't know, potentially a noise they make while they're mating. I think

this one is the territory morning call. But they do make weird screams while they're making as well. I like that. We apparently can't tell the difference between those two things. I'm sure a foxologists could, but I care one of them big city scientists. I'm no big city Fox lawyer. I'm going to play another sound for you to guess and one and a two and here we go, all right. That had an evolution, Like at first I thought was

someone distantly having a party. I thought somebody was like playing some steel drums for a second, and then I was like, oh, is a coffee maker running out of water? And then I was like, oh am I hearing hell? Yeah? Is this hell? Um? Is Satan choking? Satan's choking on a pretzel? Satan's chicken bones stuck in his throat. Yeah, I'm going to guess some sort of monkey or ape. Oh, I'm gonna guess some sort of reptile or amphibious creature like a frog or something. Yeah, like some sort of

stupid toad. This is actually a koala. I don't like that at all. Get that right out of here. This is a male koala showing dominance behavior, announcing his position with a low, growling rumble. And this is so the

koalas don't have to fight as much. So like if they have a territorial call, much like in other animals that have territorial calls, they are announcing their presence basically saying, hey, this is my area, and that just kind of helps reduce the amount of scuffles they have to get into. And koalas will scuffle. They seem cute and cuddly, but don't they are. Yeah. Is this the koala equivalent? Like if you have property and you don't want people to wander on, you can hang like a bunch of doll

heads and nobody's coming. You know, no one's going to cross that property line. Is this the koala equivalent where they're like and other qualies like I don't know, I don't know what that playing kid rock really loud? Ye your speakers, Yeah, I don't do it both that in dull heads that Yeah, you're guaranteed not to get any guests, all right. So now onto the next sound and just a little, a little additional one here. So what do you think that is a poltergeist? I think it's I

think it's a Nicolas Cage performance. You know, what it does sound like is one of those rubber chickens that you squeeze and then when you release it like screams. I got a little bit of wolf howl at the end, and so I'm guessing it's some sort of dog beast. I'm thinking of bird a right, Dave, You're actually very close on this one. This is a new Guinea singing dog, which actually is probably makes the same sound as the new Guinea Highland wild dogs because they're very very closely related.

So a little background. The new Guinea singing dogs are dogs that were probably domesticated from Highland wild dogs or even just tamed. I don't know how genetically different they are from the wild version of these dogs. They do not bark. Instead, they sing or how which often has that spooky thing at the end where it sounds haunted. I'll play it for you again to see you remember.

And what's interesting is that wolves and other wild canines do not typically bark, at least not in the same way that dogs bark, because barking was an adaptation that domesticated dogs developed after humans selected for watchdogs. So it's very significant that these dogs do not bark much because it indicates that they are more wild and earlier on

the evolutionary tree than your typical dog. So it's there's a lot of like debate about like where they are in terms of dogs evolution from their wolf like ancestors, But it seems like it may be sort of a separate branch that like remained wild for a while longer before humans sort of re like took that sort of like wonky branch and then domesticated them a little more. Okay, so there was domestication involved, because I'm looking at a

picture and it looks like a domesticated dog. I have a theory, sure is that we domesticated them then they started doing that and we stopped domesticating them. We were like, oh, never mind, I can't have you in our house every if every time the mailman comes, I think I've crossed over into that. No, thank you, no, thank you, dog. You win, you win this round of domestication. Here's a fun fact. They can rotate their pause to help them catch prey or open door knobs. You know. Oh no, oh,

that's not good. I don't need this thing coming into my house again. You get one. It walks into your room and like opens the door and goes it's knock, door knob, just slowly turns in a little dog face sticks and it's like, not interested. Dog. I don't need any of this. So now here's my last sound for you guys to guess about. And what do you think is making that sound? I'm gonna go with wishful thinking and say it's a worm I wanted to be. I

want a screaming worm to exist yet like an angry bat. Yeah, I can see something like that. This is actually a barn owl. So most owls make a lovely little like sound, but barn owls scream like they're being murdered. And the call is used by males to attract mates and to invite females to check out potential nest sites, whereas females use the screeching call to ask males to give them food.

So it's actually a pretty like sweet thing. Basically, these owls are screaming at each other, but then in the subtitles, it's like, honey, would you like to come over and check out this nesting side. I think it has an excellent view. Honey, could you get me that dead mouse? I'm feeling kind of peckish? Right? Yeah, that owls are the weirdest things we have. Yeah, there's sky cats. They don't they don't. They don't seem to have like bones.

They do have bones. I don't know they're they're they're real. They don't have bones, but they have ears that are asymmetrical, so one earhole is lower than the other earhole to give them more depth perception with their hearing. Okay, um, yeah, alright, cool the sound of a of a defeated man. You you you implied they established owl relationship with these screams.

You can both be a come on like to sort of I was thinking, like, hey, baby, check out my path, right, like to seduce some mate, But it can also be to communicate with a mate, like check out this nesting site, or I'm hungry, please feed me, which is what the sound that I make when I'm hungry. Also there's yeah,

it's just I will. This is exactly the kind of the kind of malarchy i'd expect an owl to do because they gotta make They're just having a casual conversation and they got to freak everybody out around them because that's just what they do. Yeah, yeah, I mean, I I do like an owl. I also like how you look at you like sort of lift up there sort of skirts skirt feathers and you lift them up in their legs are just big and swollen. It's very good. I'm not against I'm not against owls. It's just there's

always what now with owls. Like if I saw an owl and then it suddenly like like turned into two owls, like separated the two, I'd be like, I guess that's the thing they can do, because like, nothing would be surprised me about owls. They're they're weird little creatures that just flutter around and go about your like what are

what is their world? There's nothing better than a group of baby barn owls sort of as a group because their feathers haven't really grown in yet, and they're very defensive. So you take a video of them and they're kind of waving their head around like what are you going to do about it? Huh broke, what are you gonna do about it? And they're like basically naked. They look like aliens and probably one of them's gotta like a mouse,

how down its throat? Like? There are a lot of videos that you can see where you know, barn owls just top notch, top notch animals in terms of just making a dramatic scene, the real Edged Lords. Yeah, have you seen the owl documentary um Legends of the Guardians the Owls of Goole? No? I have not, so clearly I don't know everything about owls. Have you seen a Dave? Yes, this is a good movie. M hmm. It's definitely got a lot of owls in it. Yeah, it's definitely of

one owl? How many els? Too many owls? Like a whole lot of owls? Are telling me is that this movie was not a hoot, not a hoot. It has owl fascists in it. Well, alright, so I'm gonna go with not a just gonna do one more. We're going to do one more sound. We're going to end the episode on that note. What do you think that is? Shoot? Oh man, that's definitely like, yeah, that's some some kind of really angry extinct creature. Possibly that is the rare

brown tufted, red chested to malan. Yeah. Yeah, and that is the call that it makes during mating. Uh huh oh god, you just really disturbed me with the implication that every time he makes that sound he's horned, because he makes that sound a lot he does. Yeah. Well, thank you guys so much for joining me today and playing my animal sound guessing game and checking out some real life animal horror movies. Where can the people find you? Uh? We were? We have a Patreon for our podcast network

called Gamefully Unemployed. You can check us out at patreon dot com slash gamefully Unemployed. And also thank you for having having us on. Yeah. Always a delight. Indeed, this was fun. I've been meaning to have Tom on for a while, but he can only come on at midnight on the present Moon. Yeah. No, it's it's a whole thing. Yeah, every time I do a podcast with him, I have to I have to crack open like a skull has to have. He has to have a blood meal to

have the energy to get through an episode. You gotta you have to play a haunting European folk song backwards. You can find the parent cast on the internet at Creature on Instagram, at Creature feet Pod. On Twitter, that's E E T. You can find me Katie Golden K T I E G O L D I N on Twitter just my Katie thoughts. You can email me with cute pictures of your pets at the email actions Creature

feature pot at gmail dot com. Send me your pets to your questions, or if you find a cool b a cool twig I don't know, send suck it to send send Katie bees. Yeah, do you have a mailing address for the bees po box? B B And thank you so much for listening. I really do appreciate it. If you're enjoying the show, please leave a rating or review. It really helps the podcast and I do read all of the reviews and it makes me feel good inside.

Thanks to the Space Classics for their super awesome song ex Aluminate Creature Features of production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the I Heart Radio app app podcast or Hey Guess what. Wherever you with your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday,