Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and today on the show we are talking about cute, adorable, sweet, patible animals, except maybe not really because they are serial killers. These animals love killing and they're really good at it, from little critters to animals that you might not want
to touch either. Joining me today is Animal Lover, children's book author and writer of the book Cute Animals That Could Kill You Dead, Burah Cartman.
Welcome, Thank you.
This is one of my favorite topics.
Love.
I both love talking about animals that look terrifying but are really sweet and wonderful, like say a whale shark right looks like something that would eat you, but they're really sweet. They're really hard rmless. And of course the inverse of that is talking about animals that are adorable but are just the most fierce little killers of.
The animal kingdom.
Exactly.
And so your book is it's for children, so it's a little more it's more focused on the animals that kill other little critters like insects or other small animals.
Correct, that's true. I mean I tried to make it fun where it's like, okay, kill you dead, maybe you is sort of metaphorically like if you happen to be an avid or you know, a rodench or something like that. But there are a couple of animals in there that you still would definitely not want to mess with that if you didn't have a hospital or at least a very well stocked urgent care nearby, that there was a potential chance of death. Oh do tell your future.
Tell what's one of these?
I mean, for instance, if you think of this low loris, which I've heard is a very favorite animal of a lot of kids that know what this is, a lot of people have no idea what this lolres is. It's actually a primate. It is adorable. Like if you look at this thing, it looks like it shouldn't exist. It looks like nature was like, let's take a kawai anime of an animal and make it exist like a poke, right, and it's like a panda bear but like cuter. It's so hard to explain until you actually look at a
picture of us lolrs. These are the only venomous primates, and so what they do is they have a gland in their armpit, and when they feel threatened, they lick this gland, and the gland has toxins that they produce, and then they put those toxins on their teeth, and so if they bite you, it can cause this like necritizing fasciatus, like a very severe like yeah, so maybe not instant death, but like maybe you should go check that, get that check that pretty soon.
Yeah. On a scale of one to go to the hospital, it's like a twelve, right, exactly. Yes, they are extremely cute and you'll see them. Actually, I've seen some videos of people who bewilderingly have them as pets and they'll be like lifting up their armpits and it's like, oh, look, how cute that is. It's like no, that no, that's he's thinking about biting you.
And that's an interesting point because one of the sort of behind the scenes purposes of writing this book is that we often see these cute animals in real life because they're out in the wild or are there a zoo, and you know, you people like, oh, I want it as a pet, and it's like, you know, they're adorable, but a lot of wild animals need to just stay
wild and the slow Loris is one of them. They're actually being traded on the illegalist sometimes illegally, on the sort of this underground pet trade and what people are doing, and this is kind of horrifying. They're taking out their teeth, the slow Lorus's teeth, because that is how they would bite you, and that's what they lick to, like, you know, distribute this venom. And so they're like, oh, well, I want to slow Loris as a pet, I'll just take
out its teeth. Like it's like, no, maybe we just not do that.
Maybe we leave it not.
Maybe we leave the slow lorises alone and let them keep their teeth. Yeah. I've seen them as uh pets, unfortunately, and I always assumed that maybe they removed like the I realized they took out the teeth.
That's awful.
I think sometimes they do both. I have heard. I've heard both. I was just on another podcast recently when you're talking about the illegal slow Loris pet trades like the dark Side, No, it's cute animals.
I just you know, I'm a huge advocate of pets on this show in terms of the pets that are have had such a long history with us, right as cats and dogs. These are exactly ideal pets because dogs have co evolved with us.
And they are so cute.
And cats, if you want something wild, more exotic, the cat, which cats is barely domesticated, it is, and yet it's tiger.
Yeah, like exactly, are like basically a tiger. If you want your own tiger, just go get a house. Just get a cat.
Let's get a house cat. And it's a mutually beneficial relationship. If you're feeling real wild, hamster, guinea pig, those are good choices too.
I have a guinea pig in the cage sitting next to me right now, and he would one hundred percent agree with you. He would definitely not like to be turned wild anytime. So it's like I've got my soft fed I've got my pound of veggies that I'm given on a daily basis. I've had this mound of hay that i can lay in or eat as I please.
They're tiny cows essentially, Yeah, they are.
He gets kind of the run of the house. Sometimes we let him like just kind of explore the house as a leisure, but he just prefers his cage most of the time. He's like dude, this is my safe zone. Okay, so he's really would not like to be a wild guinea pig anytime soon.
No, they're pretty content sitting there munching on their alfalfa. I had a guinea pig growing up, and its favorite thing to do is to run up my pant leg, which it's because I think it thought it was like burrowing, but you know, I would scratch the heck out of my cat.
My leg, so it's not it's not super comfortable.
But yeah. So my feeling is that there are a lot of pets that already exist that that need homes. Right you go to your local shelter, there are tons of pets that need.
Homes, tons of them so cute.
That doesn't require you to remove their teeth so they don't bite you because they want to invenimate you because they're scared of you.
So, and you're not buying them on an illegal like black market pet train. You're just going to your shelter. You're rescuing animals that already need homes. They want to live in your home with you. You are doing them a favor. So please go rescue all the animals that need actually rescued. Now as far as this lolors goes, I mean, they do need assistance in that their habitat is endangered because you know, deforestation and all that fun
not so fun really stuff. But then that's where you have like sanctuaries and wildlife Protection Acts and things like that, like donate to those places, like support those places. You know, go visit your local wildlife sanctuary or you know, you're accredited zoos that are doing their best to make sure that these animals like are sustained for the future in a healthy environment where they don't have to get their teeth removed. Yes, they can just live like they want to live.
Yes, exactly exactly. I mean I think that people who really have this strong need to become directly involved with these animals. The best thing to do is to look for a career in wildlife conservation and rehabilitation because then you can get in there and have to clean up their poopies and uh but yeah, it's I think that it is really important that cute does not equal harmless. It also does not equal friendly.
Uh right.
One of my favorite examples is the blackfooted cat.
Yeah, which do you know? This one?
Is this in your book? I book oh, perfect, perfect, wonderful. I picked this one out. I didn't know realize it was in your book. But that's fantastic.
So the world's deadliest cat and it's also one of the world's smallest cats. It's crazy cute, it's adorable.
It's got a sixty percent kill success rate. That's that is much better than say a lion. It is really good at killing.
And it will kill things that are bigger than it is. Yeah, so if you think about that, that would be like a lion taking down which I guess this kind of happens, but like a water buffalo but on.
It but on its own.
I think it's pretty rare for a lion to be able to take down a water buffalo on its own.
Usually it works in a group to be able to take it.
But yeah, they is just like lone kitty, Yeah, in its own out there hunting.
Than they're around two to four pounds. That's trainy.
Like in my book, I liken it to a can of soup. So imagine taking a can of soup and that is like how much these things weigh. And yet they're out there just like like hunting machines or like the terminators.
Now I'm imagining one extremely angry blackfooted cat inside a can of soup. Oh yeah, yeah, that would be That would be a way to weaponize them. You have them in a can of soup and then you unnourse them on your enemies and they scratch their eyes out.
It's like the world's worst jack in the box. Yes, right, yeah, get nuclear warfare. Let's just unleash a bunch of blackfooted cats on people, like we would win instantly. It'd be like we surrender, We're done. We can't take it anywhere. Either that or they would just cute the heck out of them. Yeah, like look at them and they'd be like, oh my gosh, we can't take it anymore. They're adorable.
It's like that scene in Shrek where Puss and Boots gives them that really adorable lie and then the cats them and I assume kills them all.
I don't know.
I didn't watch all of me at.
Least incapacitates them in some fairly brutal way, right right exactly.
They're called ant hill tigers because they're so fierce and feisty and they're my gosh, they're not friendly to people. They do not enjoy the press people. They do not want to be pet They will know if you It's like if you when you try to take if you have a cat, when you try to take your cat to the vet, that murderous energy that you have in your cat. But twenty four to seven seven days a week, right, Yeah.
And you think your cat begs for food all the time, like this thing. They have one of the highest metabolisms of all the cat family, and so they are constantly on the lookout for food. They just like want to eat all the time. They're like, well, if it's moving, if it's made of some kind of protein, I am going to eat.
I will kill it and I will eat it. They walk miles a night, which when you scale that to human miles, that's like one of us walking a thousand miles a night, right, and then just constantly eating burgers or whatever, right.
Like fitting in every every Jack in the box, every in and out burger, every McDonald's on the way, yeah, and then back again exactly exactly.
And they're great at catching birds mid flight they which you know, if you've ever seen your own cat try to do that, I don't. I think my cat tried. My childhood cat would attempt that she'd wait by the water fountain. Now, I don't this was back in the day. These days, I would recommend keeping your cat indoors if you live near a lot of wild birds. Right back then, we didn't think about that so much. So this cat would wait by this bird water, found this terrible situation right,
and would try to ambush these birds. She didn't really get them, fortunately, but she would try, and she would try to jump and catch the mid air.
Didn't work. These guys are really.
Good at it. They can with a pretty chilling accuracy, catch a bird mid flight.
Right. What's funny, though, is in my second Cute Animals that Could Kill You Dead book, which is coming out next fall, fun with even more cute animals that you could kill you dead. I actually have the house cat in there because it's like it is, people just don't even realize it. Like they kill millions of animals a year, of small animals.
They are, you know, efficient murderers, very far in a terrifying way.
It's not it's not good for the environment.
I know.
Earlier I said I'm a big fan of people having cats as pets. I'm not a fan of free range cats, especially when it is near areas where you have endangered wildlife.
Yeah right, you have a lot of little birds and things like that, squirrels that are indigenous to that area. You know, like maybe not so much. Maybe keep your cat in the house. If you have a mouse and you have a mousing cat, like, they will be your best buddy. Yes, yeah, yeah, like you on a farm.
Yeah, cats, it's a different story because they've got plenty of mice to.
Go after mice exactly.
But if you live near a place where there are endangered birds, it's not not a great situation. It's also a lot safer for them if you live in say, like a city or somewhere where there's a lot of streets and roads. It is. They trust me. You can entertain a cat. If you play with them, they'll be okay.
But yeah, no, they are. Cats have been.
The masterminds behind a lot of bird species either going extinct or becoming endangered over the world, yes, the world over right, like it is. It's hard to think about this because they're adorable and we love them, and it's not.
Bring them with us right where there are pets. So we take them, We take it into this new new country or whatever that we're exploring, and then they go and they're like, Yay, thanks for introducing me to all this new fair. It's like going and taste sampling the local fair, right, I mean kind of endangered birds can I eat here?
Right? Especially when the birds have not evolved with predators like hat. These birds don't have any natural defenses. So it's similar to what happened to the dodo, right. The Dodo was not just hunted to extinction. A lot of people have this concept that the Dutch just couldn't get enough dodo keep eating it until it was extinct. It was also the rats and the cats and the dogs that came along and they.
Share eggs, yes, because they lay their eggs in the ground because they had no natural predators. They were like, sure, we can lay our eggs on the ground. Who's going to eat them? And I was like, oh, actually, all these things that in case people brought.
Over exactly exactly. So yeah, it's surprising, but our very own Maybe it's.
Not surprising to people though.
When you look into a cat's eye and they give you that malicious look, right, and.
You're like, I can't tell if you're gonna murder me. In my sleep, or just beg me for some kitty snacks, Like what's going to happen here?
Yeah?
Right, the exactly, And then we contemplate murder.
Well, we're gonna take a quick break, and then when we get back, we're going to talk about more adorable widow animals who do secretly want to murder. All right, so we are back, Brook, tell me about another animal that is oh so cute and loves to kill.
Okay, so I have several obviously, I mean I wrote books about them, right, but the grasshopper mouse. Have you heard of the grasshopper mouse?
Yes?
Okay, Yeah, So they're adorable. They look a lot like a gerbil, but almost slightly cuter. They just are a little bit fluffier and like more compact. So these little guys, again highly predatory. They will go out. They will kill all the things. They will kill things bigger than them, bugs, you know, lizards, other rodents, birds, all kinds of stuff. It's made out of meat, like, they will go after it. They will eat it. However, their favorite food is scorpions,
so they will eat scorpions. And the way that they have evolved is that the more the scorpion stings them, the less pain that they feel, they convert. They have an enzyme in their body that converts the scorpions venom into painkiller. So like they're like, yeah, dude, hit me some more then I'll just you know, that was nice.
It's like, yeah, right, that fell good, right off? Yeah yeah, yeah, well, I mean that's that's incredible because we actually sometimes do that with other types of venoms. So the mouse does this naturally, The grasshopper mouse does this naturally. Humans have figured out that sometimes you can take venom, even the worst venom out there that would cause incredible pain if you got stung in the wild. We take it into
the lab. We isolate certain compounds, and we can actually turn it from this awful venom in right, pain killer.
Right, it's crazy. And so it's like your mother nature has done this on its own for this cat mouse. Right. And so the other crazy thing about this mouse is when it kills something, it rears back its head and lets out this little adorable shrieking howl like a wear right yeah right, And so they're actually called werewolf mice because they howl like a wolf when they like kill
these things. I mean, it's crazy. It's I mean I want to I want to have like there'd be like a Twilight remakey except where it's like were wolf mice and so it's like everything's in miniature.
I would be so you can't, like I was never super into Twilight. If you manaturized it, if you turned it into a mouse love story, I would be so.
There on board, on board.
Yeah, they're they and they look just like normal mice. They don't have any tails. It doesn't look like a wolf shrunken down, even though that's how they act.
They don't look vicious. They look adorable. So you're just like, look at the cute mouse and like, oh, never mind eat scorpions. It's like immune to venom and it howls at you, like what is this thing? What is this thing again? Like it's like the Pokemon. It's like this weird genetic like crazy amalgamy.
Yeah, and the bush predators too, right, they sneak up on things and he pounce on them.
It's it's so because you don't.
We do not When we think of ambush predators, we think of a lion stalking in tall grass, not a little mouse stalking in the medium sized craft, right.
Right exactly, and yet you know here is just like all of that, but in miniature and again taking down larger predators than itself.
So adorable, adorable. I want to ask you, have you heard of the marsupial mole.
I have heard of the marsupial mole.
They're very cool.
So they are those moles that they're actually like technically not moles, nor are they marsupials. They're or sorry, they are marsupials, but they are not moles. A bit confusing, right there are. These are found in Australia and the desert regions of Australia. There's actually another mole that looks similar to them. It's called the golden mole, and that is also not a mole. It's really you know, we
really get. The problem is there's a lot of convergent evolution going on with the mole shape being fossorial, digging in the earth, having vague claws. That was just a really good design for a digger. So you have a bunch of things that kind of look like moles, but they're not true moles. And this one is a marsupial. It is in Australia. The hint is if something's in marsupial. It's probably in Australia.
In Acelia, except.
For the North American poss them awesome. Yes, So these uh, these are very cute. They look like these little golden, sandy colored adorable hamsters almost, and they are the weird thing about them is that they are blind, so their eyes are entirely covered by their skin. They only have these vestigial lenses, so they kind of look like fine hamsters. They look like little balls of fluff. And they do have these really capable digging claws. They don't actually create
burrows there because they live in the sand. They just sort of swim under this loose sandy soil like they're like tremors exactly.
They're like they're like.
Cute tremors or from Dune, you know, the sand words exactly. And they will if you are a lizard or an insect or something small enough to be grabbed by one of these guys, they will trimmers you.
They'll grab it down, pull you down, and eat you.
Oh my goodness, I am writing another cute animal's book. I might have to look these up because I thought I had all the animals, but I might have to look this guy up to stick him in there like that sounds awesome, alley.
Because just the sheer terror of your lizard. You're minding your own business. You're just sitting there on the yeah, and something comes from beneath the sand and grabs you and pulls you down. There's a picture of one of these guys with its goofy, little muppety hands with half a lizard in its mouth. It's like, oh, oh my gosh, yeah, they are yes. Also, because they're marsupials, they do actually have a pouch. But the pouch, you know how a kangaroo has a pouch that the little pocket that the
joey goes in. This one is flipped upside down because as it's digging, if it was right side up, it would fill with sand.
With sand, so that the side down, crazy crazy evolutionary like that. That's just nuts kind of stand exactly, mind boggling exactly, so.
Very cute, very strange, and they kill in the most upsetting way right where you're just sitting.
There on the sand, minding your.
Own It's it's a hundred percent. It's the sheep. It's the sheep minding its own business. You know, there's like the random sheep head like standing there, what just happened the sheep? Exactly? Oh my gosh, I love it.
Hit me with another one from your book.
Okay, so we can go straight up like poisoned dart frog, right if you want to go, like it will keep you dead. And I mean, I think most people know these animals, but the part that I liked writing about them with my book was just like how deadly they are. Like it's like, this is no joke. Oh hey, you touch them and you'll be fine. It's like, no, they could kill you, like several times over again, Yes they are.
Maybe we just slowly mess with them. Yeah, right, And but it's one of those things again where it's just
these these tiny bright frogs. And the other thing I talk about in the book is that bright colors often signify no touchy right, So here as humans and I don't know what the joke is that we were involved to assume bright colors is awesome, Like let's go touch like Easter time, let's go buy all the bright blue peeps out there, or the jelly beans or something and eat them, because in nature, if you did that, we would all be dead, Like we would just all die,
Like every animal that is bright colored in nature is like, that's that's for a reason, because it's like, dude, don't mess with me. I will literally kill you. And so poisoned dart frogs are one hundred percent that, Like, they're all these pretty jewel colors. Maybe it's bright beady eyes, and they're just super tiny, and it's just like, oh
my gosh, as people. How many people do you think in the history of humanity have died bipores and dirt frogs before they were like, we do not touch these anymore.
Probably quite a few.
It is interesting because with a lot of deadly, brightly colored animals, something that's called apisimitism. It is actually a learning process, not just for human beings but for other animals.
And you have this interesting calculation where some of them are so poisonous to consume that they'll just kill the animal, but some of them are poisonous enough that they will cause a very strong reaction but not actually kill the animal, which can be beneficial because in that case that animal then learns I can't mess with these guys, and you
have mimics. There are frogs that actually the poison dart frogs who also have that brightly colored skin, right, and they take advantage of the fact that, oh, this is like a warning sign, right, So I mimic that. Now I get protection without having to create the toxin, my toxin. Because the toxin everything, any kind of defensive strategy usually has some cost associated with it. For poison dart frogs, creating the toxin requires resources, so they actually eat it
in their diet. That's why you might see if you ever see someone holding a poison dart frog and like a photo or something, don't think it's safe. Is probably a pet because they get there most of this toxin from the diet that they have in if.
They feed them like fruit flies, then it's not a big deal because exactly they're not ingesting this tox on a regular basis, and so they're not producing it in their their.
Skin exactly right, And so there's a cost to producing that toxin which comes from the nutrition that they get. And so for a mimic, they can get the same effect of hey, look, I'm dangerous. I have this bold red and black or yellow and black, without the cost of producing the toxin. But what happens is you have these population fluctuations because of the learning process of animals
testing things eating. If there are too many mimics and animals are like, hey, when I eat these guys, nothing happens, then you actually have this population shift where the animals start to eat more of them, and then the mimic population starts to go down as well as a bit the poisonous population, until the mimic population is low enough that that signal, the apisomatic signal of brightly colored equals
zone comes back and play exactly. So there's this really there's all this math that I'm not going to explain because I'm underqualified, but it's really it's really really cool that you can see these relationships. It happens a lot in butterflies too, because those are yes. But yeah.
And caterpillars, yeah, same exact, same idea exactly. Yeah. I've got a couple caterpillars that are in my books. In my second book, there's the puppy faced saddleback catterlepillar. Oh cute, and that's adorable. If you have not seen this, I mean, you can wait for the book to come out next year, the second book, not the first books books. First book's already out, but the second book has this in there, and it's this crazy looking caterpillar. Yeah. These guys, seriously
they look like these it's weird. It's like that's a dog, Like, that's a puppy with these big eyes and they're like green, and then they have these like floppy like ear fuzzy ear looking things on them and it's like toxic spikes on your Like, maybe we don't touch this puppy on its ear.
It looks like it looks like one of those what are they called the little little scotty terriers, Yeah, scotty dogs. But the dog a green blanket on his back.
Or who was lady in the tramp? Oh?
Yeah, it's she's a cocker spaniel, yeah spaniel, a little like a cocker spanielton and she's got this cute little blanket on her back and she's very adorable looking. But yeah, with those there. It's confusing with caterpillars because some of them have fuzz and spines that are actually not toxic toxic. They might not even be rdicating, meaning like these sears that are kind of irritating, but a lot of them do. So my advice with caterpillars is just don't touch it.
It looks fluffy and cuddly like that might be the worst.
Yeah, there's a wooly slug that I'm currently working on a third book, and the wooly slug is going to be in the third books. It looks like this floppy, like ungroomed shaggy dog. Yeah, I mean it's like this little it looks goes soft. Yeah, it's like a mop that somebody like disconnected from the broom, from the handle and just is like crawling around. But it's the most toxic caterpillar in all of North America to cardiac arrest.
Kind of looks like a two pay a little bit.
Yeah, exactly.
Yes, So if it's if it's fluffy and it's a caterpillar, unless you really know what you're doing, probably shouldn't. But with this, with the puppy face caterpillar, it's really interesting because for us, we have this evolutionary response to big eyes, big foreheads. That's cute, and we like a baby. It's a baby, and we like it, we want to bab up.
We take care of it with a little baby bottle.
But in nature, so this evolution was not done for us. It was not made for our benefit. This was done for birds, I would assume, so birds and other potential predators for this caterpillar. Where a lot of caterpillars will employ these eye spots where it's like, hey, I am a bigger thing than you think I am. So some of them have even evolved to have this incredible mimicry of say a snake, so having the eye spots. Yes, and they will move a little bit like a snake to try to fake out birds, right.
And a lot of time that's on its butt, yes, like its head is its butt and its butt is its head, because it's like, attack my butt because you think it's my head, And then I'll get away because actually I'll be scooting opposite direction exactly. You might maybe take a little bit of pecks off my rear end, but I'll be fine. I'll get away and I'll be able to reproduce at a later time.
Yeah. One of the wildest ones there are the wingtips of that Atlas moth.
Have you seen it's I know what an Atlas moth looks?
Yeah?
They Yeah, what tell me about them?
So, like the if you look at the whole Atlas moth, it might not be super obvious, but if you look at just the wing tips. Yeah, it kind of looks like a snakehead. And yes, yes they can when they have their wings kind of folded, it looks like these snake heads. And it's incredible because it looks like this
detailed art of snakehead. And it's just it's just wild that through millions of years of these yeah mutations, you get to this point where it's like these bombs that tended to have their wing tips look a little bit more, you know, probably started with a simple eye spot and then came a.
Lot more detailed.
Yeah, exactly exactly. So yeah, just wild.
Is it's so wild. And I have a gecko actually a flying gecko in my book, so similarly and kind of along a different evolutionary path. Geckos, as you know, as you probably know, you know, their tails can fall off. So you have the bird attacking this like wiggling looking tail thing. The tail falls off, it continues to wiggle, and the gecko just gets away. Yeah it's it grows back, and so here it's like it's weird. The bird actually kind of gets a snack out of it, and yet the fine, Yeah.
Better than getting entirely eaten exactly. For sure.
I mean you still have to regrow a tail. Yeah, it takes the time, but at least you're not officially dead.
There's actually a type of scorpion who can lose its tail like that, but instead of regrowing it, it's just like, well, I've lost my tail, so now I'm just not going to have a tail for the rest of my life. And it doesn't even it doesn't even poop for the rest of its life. It just lives as long as it can hopefully reproduces before it dies and then dies.
Oh my gosh. Yeah, that's crazy, you know, core scorpion. Well, I kind of feel for it. Yeah, sorry, buddy. It's like those fish that have the the worm that infects its mouth.
Yeah, yeah, those are parasitic copapods or not copapods, I'm sorry, parasitic isopods that hang on because its tongue, the tongue. It's actually so like the the tongue is still there, but the isopods sort of hang on and they drink blood from the tongue and they they and they eat part of the tong and the tongue is so the problem is that the they are really not that beneficial to these fish. They don't know, they don't they're not
it's not yeah exactly. It's not like, oh, now they have a tongue, but it's like a little friend, who's your tongue. The fish don't get as much nutrition. And then when the parasite completes its life cycle, because usually these are females, and then they manage to complete their life cycle by laying offspring, they will leave the fish and then the fish has this like mangled stump of
a tongue and they usually don't survive. Yeah, so it's not a good it's not like a fun thing of like eat your tongue and drink your blood.
But it's fine, totally fine. We're all fine.
It's not just like wait what it's.
Like, I'm calling my layer.
I don't think I got a good h It's wild to see though, when you open up these fish mouth and you just see this little ice of pod and if you're wondering what it looks like, they kind of look like a large white version of like a roly poly. So they're just like sitting there. It's like, hello, yeah, it's gross. Thanks, it is pretty nasty.
Well, we're gonna on that note. We're gonna take a quick bite.
We're gonna take a quick break and then talk about cuter animals who are no less menacing. All right, we are back. And when you were talking earlier about these poisoned dart frogs, I have to bring up the blue ringed octopus because I love I love octopuses. I think they are so cute. All I want to do is pick them up and squeeze them, because they look very squishable. I wouldn't do that because I respect the octopus. But there's one that you should especially not do that, both
out of respect and also because you will die. This is the blue ringed octopus. They are adorable looking. They only grow to be around five to eight inches. They are found across the Indian and Pacific Oceans near Australia and Japan, and they are covered in the these beautiful bright blue rings, and they are so so cute, and the rest of their skin is kind of a model brown, so they usually blend in a little bit with their environment.
But they do have these bright blue rings, and it's like, that's interesting, No, why would it have these really bright beautiful rings on its body. When they are provoked, they turn into this brilliant yellow as well. And if that's not enough, because it's given you a couple of warning. It's like, dude, I have these blue rings.
On my body.
Now I'm turning bright yellow, and now I'm flashing my blue rings because octopuses have these incredible cells called chromatophores that can actually change their pigment dynamically, so they are flashing at you like my color is meant to tell you bad idea, let me go. And if that doesn't work, finally, they will bite you, so ye, which is funny. You'd think that maybe it's their skin has some toxin in it, right,
like the poisoned dart frogs. No, they actually have a little beak and they will bite you, and they are chock full of the neurotoxin tetratotoxin, which they will release into your bloodstream. And they have enough venom in their adorable squishy little bodies to kill around thirty adult humans, which yes, they can kill you within just a few minutes. So they can cause heart failure, respiratory arrest, or total paralysis. So you need treatment yesterday. If one of these guys bite you.
You just don't want to present.
You just don't want to touch them.
Don't touch them. They're in my second book, Awesome. I was like, I gotta put them in here somewhere. Yes, and they're adorable, cute little octopuses. Like, who doesn't want to the cute little octopuses? Yes, Oh wait, it's full of tetritoxin.
It is full of toxins.
I feel like they're really polite about it, though, because.
They do give you so much warning. They don't.
They don't like, they don't want to be they don't want to go after you proactively. They're not hunting you. They're just like, dude, leave me alone. Okay, I mean, okay, unless you're a crab. If you're a crustacean, yes, then yes they are actually hunting you. And yes they're going to actually inject you in with that talk, in that talk, with that toxin intentionally because they want you to die so that they need them.
Yeah, they need that, ye crab bake exactly. Yes, but that's actually that is actually the case for venomous snakes as well. This is something that animals that use their venom both for hunting and for defense are often much more hesitant to use it for defense because that means they don't have that for their hunting. So if they think they can ward you off, you know, it's like how a rattlesnake will rattle at you. It's actually it's trying to give you a chance, like, please, just don't bother,
don't bug me. I I just I'm very shy. I struggle with sort of social situations. I don't want to be touched. I have boundaries, but trying to establish their boundaries,
it's very important to listen to them. There's actually also a lot of snakes who will do dry bites, so they have the ability to invenimate you and they will bite, but sometimes they actually don't release their venom because it's a valuable resource and for them, they would rather you go away with just a dry bite than have to waste their venom on you because they need to use that for hunting. Right, So it's very similar with these little octopuses. They don't want to waste their venom on you.
They don't want to antagonize you. They just want to be left alone. So that's why they use all of these various warnings like look, I've got these bright blue rings. Okay, you're touching me. Now I'm bright yellow. Now my rings are flashing. You got to leave me alone. Man.
It's like a stoplight. It's like you've got the green light, but then you've got the yellow and it's like, oh hey, slow down, and then you have the red light. And it's like if you're still going at their red light, then maybe we need to have a conversation about, you know, our impulse control, because let's just stop right, Yeah, don't go touch the bright blinking octopus that's literally giving all the flashing warnings.
Yeah, it's it's not a light show for our benefit, it is. It is a warning.
So on the chromatic warnings. I have ladybugs in my first book too, because we think of lady bugs as
being these adorable little bugs. Right, They're so cute. They're like little roly poly they're rosy, they have these cute little spots, but if you look at them under a microscope, they have these serrated jaws because they are one hundred percent predator and their rosy color is actually a warning for other predators to get away from them, because they have a foul sort of a taste and smell to them when they are eaten, and so predators are like, okay,
it's like part of that. You know, red means stop warning that we again, as people who are sometimes dumb, are like, oh look it's cute. This is cute red, you know, spotted color. It's adorable, and I have them in that book because they are hundred present predators to aphids.
Like not only do the adult ladybugs eat tons and tons and tons of aphods all day long, they just like want all the aphids, but when they're born, when they hatch as larvae, they eat aphid larvae, and so it's like the babies are eating the babies, and then the adults are baby wore adults and the other baby. It's crazy. It's like they're just like these little like detonating machines. That which is why you know it's lucky to have them in your garden because you want them
to eat all the aphids. But again that's sort of evolved into this like oh, the adorable little ladybuget it's like that's a predator. Like you have a little mini predator, yes, in your garden, which, yes, you want that, it's great, but like that's that's it's like, what's cute to us. If you were an aphid, you would be running away in sheer terror because these things are like these giant, massive like megaladons coming at you.
Also, if you've seen their their larva, like the the more juvenile forms of the ladybug, they're horrifying looking, right. I remember, I remember the first time I saw one as a kid. I was terrified. Yes, and I think I showed it to one of my parents. Is this very scary bug I found? It's like, oh, that's a baby ladybug? That No, this is again, this looks like an alien that's gonna wriggle its way into my ear and control my brain. This does not look harmless exactly.
You're like, I saw this on Star Trek. I know what, I know it's happening. Let's not mess with this thing, right.
Also, I was a very I I loved picking stuff up as a kid.
Thank goodness. I did not live somewhere where there were I was not.
I didn't grow If I grew up in Australia, I don't know if i'd be sitting here talking to you right now. So I I did learn not to touch black widows, so that's good. Or scorpions another good thing, but everything else I would try to pick up and I would pick up a lot of late bugs, and I would hold them in my hand and I'd be like,
we're best friends now. And then I'd smell something kind of nasty and yep like in my hand and there'd be a little orange fluid and I would think like, Oh, did they throw up?
Did they poopy?
Did they peepy? I didn't realize when I was a kid that this is its defensive mechanism of saying like, look, I'm nasty. You don't want to eat me? Of course I didn't want to eat it. I wanted to be friends, best friends with this lady bug. So I didn't get the message.
But right, nevertheless, I oh left me at present.
Yeah, I like very yeah, and it has it had a very almost metallic, unpleasant smell to it.
So a slight detour. Have you ever heard of Jay's the j Family of Birds doing something called anting?
Yes? I love this, Yeah, sobs.
So and I mean sounds like you totally know what I'm talking about. So, and I'll just kind of go through it.
No, no, no, explain it because this is antieatic.
So on the when we're talking about the ladybugs and excreting this like sort of smelly, nasty substance. So ants also will do this when they're eaten and they kind of like embody this this kind of gross like toxic substance.
And so to force the ants to excrete it, jays will pick up the ants and they will rub it like around themselves and then around like the dirt to force the ant to push this substance out somewhere else, and then they will eat the ant because it's like it's like squishing the seed out of a grape, Like you eat the grape and then you eat the seed, you're like, oh, that's gross, like you want to spit it out, But if you get the seed out first, then it's like, oh hey, it's a pretty pleasant experience.
And so jay's and probably other birds I only know about the jays.
There are a lot of species that do this, but jays are well known for doing it.
And then have they figured out maybe you know this or not, have they figured out is there a purpose for them to put because they have been witnessed as like putting rubbing this toxic substance like on their wings, and so they don't know if maybe that's like an anti like a flea or maybe anti parasite, kind of like almost like putting on a bug dope or bug spray on your body. They're thinking it's maybe similar to that. But I saw this in my yard two years ago.
My kids and I were outside and we saw two stellars js and we saw one of them on the ground by the window, and we're like, oh my gosh, what do we hit the window? And then we were watching it and we're like, well, it's not acting stunned, like what the heck is it doing? And it had its wings outstretched along the ground, and it was laying very down close to the ground, and it's another one was kind of close by, but it wasn't acting like
it was concerned. It just was like kind of like guarding, like, hey, you know whatever, you know, finished doing your business and then we'll fly off.
If you've remember been a girl at a bar and you go to the bathroom with your friend, like right, that's the.
Same same situation. So the one that was on the ground was taking its head and it was running it along its wings, along its outstretched wings, and like going off one side and then down the other, and we were like what And then every once in a while would like rustle its feathers down into the dirt a little bit and like rustle them up in the air, and then it would like put them back down and it would do the same thing. And then eventually it like flew off like no big deal. And I was like,
what the heck is that? And I went down an Internet Google rabbit hole, and at the time that I researched this, I found one article, a single article, that was like that we think that they might do this thing with ants, and it was because somebody else witnessed this sometime and they were like, we think we've seen this before. We think this is what's happening. And I'm like,
I'm pretty sure that's what we saw. And then fast forward to this last summer and there was like a whole article that came up like Hey, this is what these birds do and they do this like thing and it's called anting and this is what it's all about. And I'm like, oh my gosh, like I feel like I was on some groundbreaking, like ground level research this yeah, discovery that these birds do this. It was so crazy, So yeah, tell me more if you know more about it, like I want to hear all the things.
Yeah, so that the idea, the theory, because of course we don't know for sure, but the theory that the ants release the formic acid, this little acidic substance that is a form of defense.
And so the.
Birds get this two fur right by rubbing the ant, they make it release this formic acid, and then the formic acid, by coating their wings potentially helps them kill mites that exist on the feathers.
Yea, so it was like some kind of parasite that its mites, Yes, mites.
So yeah, it's sort of as if you could eat soap. Right, you rub yourself with the soap, you help groom yourself, and then you're like.
Great, yeah, now the soap is right.
I mean, I'm sure they make that. Somebody somewhere probably is made of edible soap.
I yeah, I don't know if I would want to eat something that I've just used to scrub the filled.
Top of my b body and mites and like, yes, right, scrub parasites off me. Yeah.
Closest will get is take a bath and eat cereal, but not same time at the same time.
But I don't mix the fluids.
So right, yeah, that might be a little strange, but.
Yeah, that is that's the theory is. And of course, I mean one of it is interesting to see, especially when you these observations start to happen more. You may have seen something as a kid or even five or ten years ago, and then suddenly you see, oh, there's all this research.
Now on it.
It seems like we should already know everything about everything because we've been on this planet for a long time and we've been around. But it's hard, especially for behaviors that may not happen all the time, where we may not be around when they're happening. It can take some time to not only make formal observations, but to catalog them, to put them in how to them exactly in a quantifiable way where we can confidently say this happens, it
happens routinely, and this is why it happens. That takes time, so and you know, of course, even sometimes once we come up with a theory, we may have evidence that supports that theory, but we don't know one hundred percent for sure why they do it.
But yeah, the leading theory is that they're.
Using the formic alcid to help ward off mites and then they get a tasty snack out of it.
Right, And how many theories have we had over the years of not just animals but everything. We're like, yeah, this is one hundred percent true. And then fast forward five, ten, twenty, you know, more years, and we're like, oh, wait, no, we have no idea what we were talking about. We
were idiots. I mean, think about dinosaurs, like, think about I still see all these pictures of dinosaurs that have no feathers on them, you know, and it's like, no, we now know that many of these dinosaurs look like chickens, Like they literally like urn around like with feathers in chickens. Yeah, they were. They were just the cute.
They were probably t w reck that was probably quite adorably adorable. The babies, I would imagine, really fluffy, really cute, and extremely deadly, right, bear like bears are adorable. They look like something you should be able to hug, but you really shouldn't.
Actually, growing up in Alaska is part of what inspired me to write the book that I did. Cute Animals that so you did. Because we get all these tourists that come up and they're wonderful, like we love our tourists, but it never fails. There's always the tourist who does something really stupid like try to pick up pet the otter and then gets bit or wants to go move in with the bears and then they literally die.
Yes, that's the idea, especially do especially some of the bears you got up in Alaska, Like polar bears are one of the I mean they're the biggest bear and they're also the one bear that sees us as food. Potentially they literally will see you as food, right, I mean, like you have to be careful because there are people who work up on the North Slope and they will be stalked and hunted by polar bears. Yeah, and die, Like it's just maybe not go at the polar bear. Yeah.
It's one of the rare examples where we say we talk about sharks, and sharks don't actually.
See us as food.
We can reassure people even things like alligators usually don't see you as food unless you go into the water and flash around.
Roll around ye brown.
Yeah, Grizzly bears and black bears typically don't see you as food. If you really entice them, they might, but.
Now they might see you as a threat something that is annoying them, in which case they will still have no problems ripping your face off'ugging me. It's like you swatting a fly, Like you don't really want to eat the fly, You just want it to go away, and so you're just gonna swat it, and you are way big and stronger than the fly, and so the fly is probably going to go to fly heaven.
Yes, also depicting on a grizzly bear's mood. If it does kill you.
It might be like, well, I don't want to be wasteful.
Yeah, I don't want to be I don't waste You have that cool soap with the cereal, right, so you could have an interesting flavor.
I might enjoy that, right. Yeah.
But yeah, polar bears actively stalk people to kill them, which is I think we've grown a little bit comfortable as humans where we don't see ourselves as prey anymore because we've created societies and taxes, so it seems so remote that we would be prey.
But yeah, polar bears.
Definitely, if they have the chance, they might go after you.
If you are alone wandering back and forth to your bunker. Yeah, out on the Arctic, and they see you and they're hungry, which a lot of polar bears are these days. They might be like, well, you know what opportunity strikes, I'm going to take it.
Also, people I think who don't live in the northerly regions don't realize how enormous moose are.
And yeah they can.
If they want, deadly they and they are also not like incredibly intelligent. I hope that there's no moose listening it.
Don't mean to offend, but they are really dumb. And so the thing with moose is that a couple of things will happen, like a there's a lot of cases out there of people feeding moose and the moose is like, oh hey, thanks for the snacks, and then you literally turn away from the moose and the moose like forgot that you have the same thing that was feeding it five seconds ago, and is like, oh no, I'm being attacked and we'll rewrap and pick you in the head
and then you die like or have a concussion or like our brain dead, like like no, no good things happen from being kicked by a moose, right, no, and so and then The other thing that happens is that they see themselves as the biggest creature out there, which in most cases they are, except for now. We have things called cars that have only you know, been in existence for the last hundred years, and especially up here
in Alaska really in the last fifty years. And so when most see a car, they just walk out in front of it like it's just like, it's no, there's no concept of that the car is going to mow me down. It's that I am the big animal. So if something's coming at me, like come at me, bro, Yeah, let's dance.
They will play chicken and the when you're playing a game of chicken with the moose, I mean, you're both gonna lose.
Yeah, nobody wins that.
Nobody's gonna win that because the moose isn't gonna farewell with that, and you're certainly not. Because I mean, I would I don't know the statistics of this, but I would imagine there are plenty of fatal accidents for both the moose and the person drive one hundred percent because the moose is so big. It's not like hitting a rabbit or I mean, people do die, people do die hitting deer, but it's maybe more rare because the deer unfortunately it doesn't compete as well with the.
Car, but a moose can compete even.
With say like a truck, And so sad energy's got to go somewhere, and it's going to be in the moose and in you, right.
And the other thing that people don't consider too when they're up here and let's say they rent a car or they've just moved up here and they're like, I
need a vehicle. I'm gonna get a sedan that's low to the ground, is that moose are big, and they're tall, and they have these long, gangly legs, and so when you hit a moose, the brunt of their weight is in their body and their body can come up then because of the force of the impact and the fact that you're hitting them down against their legs, and they come up and they land on top of the windshield in front of the car area, and so they are crushing.
That's what happens with a lot of these driver fatalities when they hit moose, is that the moose come up onto this like they literally their body like flies into the sedan and you have all those one hundred pounds of weight and they are literally collapsing right down onto the front of the car and crushing you know, the windshield, the top of the car into the driver. Yeah, no, it's not. I had a friend of mine who hit a moose many years ago, and she was in a
super outback I think, is what it was. So not like a tiny car, but not like a super huge suv. And that's exactly what happened. The moose, you know, came up onto the windshield, onto the you know, top of the car, crushed it down into her and she ended up being in the hospital with multiple stitches, concussion, multiple head lacerations that had to be restitched up, and then you know, constant like pulling out fragments of flass, even over the last over the next several weeks. Yeah, to
go in there and pull them back out again. So it's not a joke. Like moose are just you know, I wouldn't say that they're like they are kind of adorable, depending on like how you look at the movement.
I think they're cute.
It can be cute.
I'm very happy to appreciate them and admire them from a distance, from a good distance because as cute as they are, as snugly as their big floppy faces. Look, I'm not like do it I personally I'm even when around horses, I respect the horse a lot because even though horses are ridiculously chill with people, they are usually yeah it's they also have very powerful kicking power and teeth they can bite as well, So I like to
be very respectful of large animals. I don't just feel cool around a large animal because I assume, hey, this is an Arab of war, it should be fine. Urban wars can seriously mess you up because they've got to have some defenses against predators. So don't assume it's, oh, this doesn't meet me, it won't mess with me. It definitely will. And it's if anything, erbal wares can be way more dangerous than predators because if they think that you're gonna kill them, they've got nothing to lose, so
they're gonna really mess you up. Where As a predator, if you make it not worth their while, they'll think, Okay, i'll check, I'll find a more edible, right animal.
Right right, kind of more worthy meal exactly, or an easy meal that I can just go after.
Yeah, yeah, Well on that note, I like to play a little game called Guess Who's squawking the Mystery Animal sound game. Every week I play mystery animal sound and you the listener, and you the guest, try to guess who is making that sound. The hint for last week's sound was don't try to cut into this guy for breakfast. And the other hint is that this is found in New Zealand. So you got any guesses?
Ooh, do I have any guesses? New Zealand?
Do not cut into this guy for breakfast? Hmmm.
I'm trying to think of like, what is what is the pun? There's the pun in there. I'm like trying to figure it out. I like funds, so I'm thinking like breakfast, eggs, ham, bacon. Am I even on the right track?
Not really almost think of a balanced breakfast with your fruits and see me.
Yes there we go.
Oh my gosh, New Zealand.
I was like, okay, okay, congratulations to Emily M, Nicole L, Miriam R. Trish H. M.
Root K and Marianne D.
My brain was on bird of course, and so then that just wasn't helping me with the Kiwi like at all, even though it is a bird. It's like it's a it's a ground loving bird, a little tiny Actually saw a picture of Kiwi wings the other day. Somebody a little video and somebody was like pulling up the little kiwi wings to show you what a kiwi's wing looks like. And they're there, like they're just like these tiny little nublins, like little furry, like little feathery neblins.
Yeah, they're actually they're actually related to other other ratites, so ostriches EMUs, these other non flying.
Birds, lightless birds. Yeah, interesting and so.
But unlike them, they're very cute, very small and kind of they're actually surprisingly big. They're not the size of like a kiwi fruit there, they're a handful, right, yeah, I like the size of a I don't know, decently sized, say bunny rabbit.
And they My husband was out hiking one day down there and actually got one on video, and of course my kids and I were all jealous for like, seriously, you get to go hiking. He's a pilot for his job, so he flies to all these you know, locations, and he's like, what should I do today? I guess I'll go hiking on this game trail and oh, you know, just get a random video of the KeyWe just send back home.
So yeah, yeah, not fair. They are really cute. They are another one of those animals that look adorable. I would love to pet them, but there's absolutely no way this thing wants to be pet by me.
No, it does not. It doesn't want to be messed with. It's like, leave me alone. I'm going to be over here and you just stay over there. Okay, personal space, personal space.
They have to give birth to, well, not birth, but they have to lay an egg.
That is a huge egg.
Yeh their total body weight. Yeah, an animal that can handle that is not going to have patience for your shenanigans.
I think it's the size of a goose egg if I remember correctly.
I think it might even be larger than that.
It's it is. It is a ridiculous proportion of their total the size.
Of its body.
Yes, yeah, it's almost It's like it's on the same line of ridiculousness as human birth, Like we're we are ridiculous animals. The fact that we give birth to a baby with such a huge head and is.
Just sort of risible.
That compared to a lot of animals that will give birth the little blind pink things because it's easier to give.
Birth to, right, and they can give birth to like seventeen of them at once. Yeah.
Yeah, we're kind of like the key we where we give birth to like one very big baby massive, yeah, one massive baby, and then invest a lot of resources into it and.
It does it doesn't.
There is a benefit to having a large egg harder to eat. You know what's a snake's not going to have an easy time get not down it scollets. So there's benefits to it and there's negatives to it, which is you have to.
Get car around seriously.
Yeah yeah, moms, poor Kiwi moms. All right, onto this week's mister Animal's sound. The hint is this, this bird has one of the loudest calls in the world. So I'm giving you a lot of information here. Ah, this is a bird with one of the loudest calls in the world. All right, you got any guesses?
Uh? It sounds like a really annoying alarm, a se journey system.
I think that I should probably replace my alarm clock with this sound and I will up.
Oh my gosh, what is that?
Because I'm someone who sleeps through alarms, So I set like twenty of them because it's like alarm number one, alarm number two, alarm number three. Seriously, get up now, alarm, but this would probably wake me up. It is as loud as a pneumatic drill, so it is an extremely loud creature. If you think you know the answer, you can write to me at Creature featurepod at gmail dot com. Fork tell people where they can find your book.
You know, you can find cute animals that can kill you dead just about anywhere. Barnes and Noble, Amazon, Target, Walmart online if they don't have it in the store. But I like to support local businesses. So if you have a favorite local bookstore, go to your bookstore and say, hey, if you don't have this book, could you please order it for me right now? Then you're getting your book, and you know, maybe they'll let you order it online
if they have that feature with your local bookstore. You can also go to your local library and if they don't have a book that you want to get you I don't know if you know this or not, but you can actually go to your library and you can request them to order books. And I believe that it depends on the library, but you can request up to
maybe five or ten books a year per person. So if you have kids and you know, like the library doesn't have a book that they want, they can even request books that they want as well, and you can all request all the books. So sometimes they also have a feature where if you request the book, then I
believe you are the first one to get it. Amazing to have the opportunity to check that book out, so it's not like they're like, oh, yeah, we got it and then we just put it in there and somebody else checked it out, so yeah, you Yes, libraries are the best. So support your local library, support your local bookstore. Find all the.
Books there amazing, and you're you're coming out with a couple more of them. So that's fantastic. And thank you guys so much for listening to the show. If you're enjoying it. Writing and reviewing always helps me. Always appreciate it. Read all of them, and thanks to the Space Classics for their super also song XO. Lumina Creature features a
production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast or Hey guess what where have you listened to your favorite shows.
Not your mother.
I can't tell you what to do, but I can tell you. If you find something brightly colored and alive in nature, don't put it in your mouth. Leave it alone. Not gonna taste like candy. I can tell you that much. See you next Wednesday.