Leftovers

store their leftovers like their leather face on steroids. Animal chefs and foodies with very peculiar tastes discover these animals and more as we answer the angel question. Is eating civit poopa crappy thing to do? So what sets us apart from animals? It's our gourmet tastes, right, Unlike our lowly animal cousins. We prepare our foods, season it, add some garnished aloquately, use a utensil to put it in our mouths, and poop it out like civilized humans. But

maybe animals aren't so animalistic with their eating habits. Sure, animals may not have mastered the art of cooking things, but they can get pretty close with their fancy food prep. Joining me today for this Culinary Creature feature are the hosts of Saber, a podcast about the culture of food eating, cooking, masticating that means chewing at perverts. So welcome now to Annie Reese and Lauren vogel Bomb. Hello, thank you, Thank you so much for having us. Yeah, I'm really excited

to have you guys. I think with evolutionary biology, there's it's basically food and sets, and right now we're going to talk about the food part, all right. When we think about animal eating behaviors, sometimes it's restricted to, oh, predators chasing down prey and how awesome that is to see a lion just like totally take down a gazelle. But I think there are other eating habits that are really fascinating and things that people wouldn't really imagine animals

are capable of. Oh absolutely, yeah. I mean, you know, I've seen my cats play with their food for sure. So yeah, and I often feel like I'm being more animalistic and how I am eating than perhaps, you know, I never feel I never feel less human than when I'm attempting to eat a salad. You know, I actually crack open chicken bones to eat the bone marrows because it seems kindable waste. Yeah, and you know, I don't live. I don't even let my dog do that because it's

dangerous for the dog to eat the chicken bones. But here I am like eating sharp shards of bones. I'm sure that will never go wrong for me. Oh yeah, no, you're gonna be fine. You're fine so far. So that's that's a plus. So on your podcast, you guys like to talk about the culture of food and cooking, and I think it is a huge lynchpin of human culture. It's something that is so necessary and so integral to

society that it just becomes part of everyday life. And I think this is true of animals, especially are close relatives in the primate families. So first I want to talk about capuchin monkeys, which are really cute. I sent you guys a slide show since I'm talking to you virtually, so you get to see these adorable little monkeys. Oh they are so cute. Oh no, okay, all right, that's fine, I'm fine, I'm back. Look at their little fingers, all right,

let that sink. How cute they're what you're looking at our wild black striped or also known as bearded capchin monkeys who use stone bludgeons and anvils to crack open nuts, and their behaviors go way beyond just simple tool used. So these monkeys are found in the tropical wetlands and savannahs of Brazil. They're really cute. They have a penchant for cracking open nuts, as you can see their hand with black markings. They're very furry. They kind of got

Eddie monster vibes with their little hair. Do that really high, widows, yep, I see it. So researchers have found evidence of old stone tools that shows they have been cracking nuts for over three thousand years. They even have special adaptations such as stronger leg and back muscles to allow them to carry heavy stones. So are you are you guys fans of do you guys like cracking open nuts, like getting the nuts and shells, especially over the holidays, or or

are you sort of let someone else do that? That was a family tradition of mine growing up. We would always have a little handheld nutcracker, not like the fancy ones that come to life sometimes and chase you around in a ballet manner. But yeah, just just the little silver handheld ones and a bowl of nuts on the table. It's still a big tradition for me, although no one else in my household has ever dealt with that before. So they're like, so there's always it's just me, and

then then looking really confused and hurting themselves. Me and my dad are sort of the nutcrackers of the family. Uh. And it is funny because yeah, we have one of those little metal nutcrackers, the actually the fancy nutcrackers. When I was a kid, I was like, okay, I'll use these two crack nuts. You know, broke the nutcracker. They aren't apparently, despite their name saying they're nut crackers for cracking nuts, they're actually nuts get broken by nut ters.

They're not good at cracking nuts. It destroys them. It's the name is so misleading. It's kind of an oxymoron, destroyed by the very nut that you put in their jaws that they were meant to crack. There's some deep lesson to be learned there, I'm sure there is, such as maybe we should I mean, if we had a capuchin to do this, obviously they would be able to, so not only do Capucheans learn to crack open nuts, they also know which les are the best for the

nut job, and it depends on the nuts ripeness. So cashows are one of their favorite nuts. Do you guys like cash E's buttery delicious? The monkeys they love the cash shows. The fresher cashows are softer and easier to crack open, but they're covered with a fleshy lining known as the mesocarp, which actually contains a caustic defensive substance.

So even though the fresh nuts are easier to crack open, the monkeys will actually use larger stones to open them, so they're more likely to smash away the caustic lining. And so this indicates that they have an awareness that sure, these these less ripe nuts are easier to crack open, but I'm still going to smash it with a huge rock so that I just blast away that caustic lining. Conversely,

the older nuts are less toxic. They're a little harder to crack open, but still they don't use those huge stones. They use slightly more appropriately sized stone tool just enough to crack open the shells because at that point they don't have to worry about that toxic mesocarp that the nut has grown to protect it from those very very predators that wants to eat it. Yeah, I wouldn't figure out how to do that. I'm like the first person to go down in the zombie apocalypse. I would not

be able to feed myself in the wild. I mean it is interesting because plants do develop these defensive strategies against their potential predators, like monkeys or like humans, and we are in an arms race to figure out how to get past those defensive strategies so we can eat them.

Oh yeah, absolutely. One of our favorite topics over on Saver is how a lot of those defensive strategies wind up being delicious to humans, Like we're like suckers, Like we like that, Like onions like sorry about it, Like we we decided to want the onions just didn't know. We're masochists and we like it. Yeah yeah, or hot peppers or yeah yeah, I love these plants are like I'll hurt you, and we're like, oh yes, please, the hotter,

the better. Baby. That says a lot about humanity. Another species of capuchin, the white faced capuchians, will wrap toxic caterpillars and fruits and leaves and rub them against soil to rub off the surface toxins so that they can kind of neutralize them and just eat them. Which I think is what's so fascinating to me about that is that indicates a level of trial and air that I

would have long been dissuaded against. Like if I ate a caterpillar or a fruit that gave me a real sick stomach or throwing up or bad bathroom times, I just I just not have that fruit anymore. But I love that. They like, well, now if I wrap it in a leaf, does that I get better? Yeah? I like that too, very scientist. Yea, yeah, let me try

this way. No, and I'm saying it I do. Maybe I do do that because like like when when when I eat food that just destroys me, like dairy products or Chipotle or anything that has flavor, basically my stomach goes like no, no, no, no no no. Um. Well but see I I love flavor, and so I just deal with it, and so I find outweighs like now if I eat this but with ginger ale, maybe that'll

that'll work. That'll please the stomach. God? Oh absolutely, yeah, I have Um, I have a lot of friends who will only eat like pasta with red sauce with a glass of milk because the acidity of the tomato sauce, Like they it's delicious, but their stomach can't take it. And I think it's the grossest thing I've ever heard of in my entire life. Like this is what more

parmesan cheese is for. Like I can neutralize this in a way that isn't a glass of milk, But yeah, I don't like, I don't like to just drink milk.

But apparently if you're into spicy foods but then it destroys you, you should drink milk that that neutralizes the spicy food, right hypothetically, Yeah, yeah, this is also hypothetically why people serve a ranch your blue cheese dressing with I like hot wings because really down now, we were talking before we started recording that we have a mutual hatred for ranch in mayonnaise, which I'm really excited about because I think I consider myself someone interested in food

and I get a lot of flak for my hatred of mayonnaise. But it's not a food it is it's it's like a food lotion. It's a food emollient that to me is disturbing. It's like, oh, I got a lotion up the sandwich, so it'll slide down my throat better. Yes, oh I'm neutral, but yeah, yeah, I can't have this no neutrality over here. But why do you not like mayonnaise? I'm not somebody who normally cares about texture, but it's like the combination of texture and a temperature, Like it's

something about it being like cool and like slimy. I don't know, and it just feels like it coats and it's crazy and oily and slimy. I think that should be. That should be the new branding of mayonnaise is cool and sliming, a refreshing, gelatinous treat. They should lean into it.

So chimps, as you may know, like to dip tools into ant intermite colonies to collect insects to eat, but sort of like spicy food, there are spicy ants that like to bite youa So when they get bitten up by aggressive army ants, they'll actually per themselves just above the ant colony by hanging from nearby tree limbs or trunks, so they can keep dipping into the ant colony without

getting stung. Which I think is an interesting It's sort of like how humans, like we developed these strategies to deal with spicy foods that we still want to eat. These chimps figure out, Okay, so these ants get mad when I eat them and they bite me, We'll I'll just be off the ground then. Yeah, yeah, I got some respect for that. I wonder if the answer for bite their tongues though there are certain animals that certainly try.

They keep on fighting all the way down. But I think if you're a little aunt and if you're getting chimps do have those really nice grinding teeth because they're omnivores, So I wonder if they just kind of get ground up. But yeah, maybe they may get a get a few tongue bites, but maybe that's just spiciness, right. Yeah. I have to admit that I'm asking this question because I've definitely been bitten on the tongue by ants before. Really,

because yeah I did. I did the not smart thing and left like a picnic ate on the ground by my side, and then like just kind of reached down and like took like a slice of girled squash and popped it right into my mouth, and I was, and I was like, what's this, what's this kind of acidic flavor coming from? And I was like this peak ant flavor. Yeah, this anti kind of oh dude, yeah, wiggly bity lagy flavor. When I was a kid, I ate insects because I

had no concept that you didn't do that. In fact, I was actually ahead of my time, because there's no reason we shouldn't eat insects, but I would eat ants. And I gotta say, of the insects, they do have a nice flavor because they're kind of peppery and as long as they don't bite you, you know, which I'm sure is a little unpleasant, but that they do have that nice peppery aftertaste. I love that you're a connoisseur

in this. Yeah. I think the only insects that I've ever eaten intentionally were crickets and really kind of taste you know, kind of I don't know, like like what like um, they sort of I'm like they sort of taste crookedy, like just a little bit like like like like savory kind of crickets? Did it? What was little texture where they was it? Could you feel the legs or were they just sort of crunchy. Um, you could

kind of. I've only I've basically only ever eaten them in like like stunt food kind of ways, like when they're sort of like whole and fried or something like that. And so so yeah, there's they're a little bit kiteny um. But I mean, like if you've ever eaten a whole shrimp, like a little baby shrimp or something like, it's basically the same thing. Um, it's not too pokey like it's like really once you get over like looking the little dude in the eyes and going like i'malla eat this insect.

Like once, once you get over that moment, it's fine. Yeah. I mean I've had them like flavored with ranch stuff like that ranch out of that. The cricket I'm fine with. You know, honestly, I would rather eat a cricket than eat ranch. No joke, not a bit. Yeah. So, speaking of ants, did you guys know that adult ants can't

eat solid foods? Yeah, they're so their digestive system isn't built for solid foods and they i mean they've got that little tiny hour glass waste they literally cannot get food through it that's too big, So they have to obtain all their food in the form of liquids. Often it's honey dew or regurgitate from ant larva. And there's a species of ant called the Theodo spadonia that places food into a special chin shelf that's on the larva.

So they imagine the larva, which are these little maggoty, wormy guys, and they've got their pretty pudgy they've got a little shelf right under their mouth that the adult ants just tuck a little he's a food in and

then the larva will spit enzymes onto the food. And often the food is like a little a fly or another little insect that the ants have scavenged or killed, and then they will digest them externally, which is a frequent behavior in the animal kingdom of just spitting your enzymes onto an unfortunate prey item and turning it into a soup before you slurp it back up. So once the larva does this, the ants and larva share the

fly soup together. It's really cute little family at Yeah. Oh, that's also like I've heard, you know, like I've seen like the fly right where, Jeff, you know, like like spitting on donuts right, Absolutely all of those good Cronenberg documentaries. But but I like that this ant like farm like it's it's like chef, this is what I'd like you to prepare today. I'll just put it right here for your consideration. Yeah, it's it is kind of neat because the kids are cooking for the adults. In a way.

My plan for when I have children is to train them from birth to cook things for me, Like as soon as they're chubby little hands can hold a knife, Like, all right, you're cooking, You're in the kitchen. I like that plan. Yeah, yeah, I guess Annie's family has done that to her though she's the one who cooks their entire Thanksgiving meal. Really, really it falls upon youth. I was that is at larvae. Now you can go like, what am I a larva to you? Yes, that'll really

show them. I'll make them listen to this and be like see see eary. Biology is like years of family therapy. That's true, saving me a lot of money. They cooking give us a leg up on evolution catching fire. How Cooking Made Us Human is a book by primatologists Richard Ringham which makes the case that cooking food gave us the nutritional benefits necessary to allow for our physical evolution

from apes to modern humans. Cooking food not only makes it tastier, it helps increase its nutritional efficiency, making it easier to chew and digest. The smaller streamlined digestive system of Homo erectus our evolutionary ancestors may have developed as a result of cooking. This more efficient digestive system been

allowed for larger brain growth. In particular, cooked tubers, which our root vegetables, may have given our ancestors a nutritional boost year round, But the archaeological evidence doesn't necessarily paint such a clear picture. In order for cooking to have influenced the evolutionary path of Homo erectus, it would have been invented over one point eight million years ago. The earliest archaeological evidence of humanoid made fires was only two

fifty thousand years ago. Of course, this doesn't mean fires didn't credate these records. We just have no evidence of them. But I do wonder, given the number of animals who manipulate their food, could we have mastered some other form of food preparations, such as fermentation or grinding up food of which we have no evidence that's definitely a question for someone who knows more about our theology than me. When we return open up those fridges, we're gonna pick

over some leftovers. Well, the holidays are upon us. You know what, It makes a great gift. Foot coverings, sorry, I mean socks. Bomba socks are some of the best foot coverings I mean socks available. Most people don't ask for socks, but that's just because they haven't had the experience of wearing a Bomba sock, which feels like a soft Koala hug. I have my own pairs of Bomba socks. They are truly some of the most comfortable socks around.

They're form fitted to my foot, give arch support in a way that I didn't even know I needed in a sock. They come in really fun patterns. I have some Sesame Street socks that are adorable. There are Bomba sucks for a variety of activities. I got super soft Marina wool socks for hiking. I even got some dress socks.

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sale November through December five. That's b O M b a s dot com slash creature for off Bombas dot com slash creature. As you pay your way through Thanksgiving leftovers, or perhaps the leftover pizza that's been drying out in your fridge, why don't we go on a little trip to imagination Station. Imagine you're out on a nice starry night. Maybe you're a cool teenager out on the town in your green nineteen fifties Buick road Master, hanging out with

your hot date. Driving up to the top of makeout point, you hear a weird noise outside, a sort of sniff sniff sniffing, and a scratchy You make some corny joke to your date about there being a monster. Your date says that's not funny, and just before you make out, suddenly a giant shrew breaks through the window of your buick road Master, a giant shrewe that's not so scary, right, Well, just as you're about to laugh off this oversized fuzzball, it delivers a swift bite to your leg and you

feel an icy chill run through your body. Your limbs go limp, useless as your body forfeits to the tocks and rendering you completely paralyzed. As your date shrieks and tearror. The shrew drags your limp helpless body along into the forest and into its din. At this point, you're hoping for a quick death, but oh no, this shrew has other plans for you. To your horror, the shrew starts to nibble on you just a bit, and then it takes another bite. You still can't move, You just watch

as it munches your toes off. Then it leaves you to wonder what sort of God would allow this to happen. It returns hours later to nibble on you some more, maybe a finger here and ear there, And that's when you realize you're the leftover. Alright, So have you got did you guys know that there was a actually a creature feature called the Killer Shrews back in the nineteen fifties. I had no idea, no, no me either, but it sounds like there should have been. Absolutely. It's a nineteen

fifty nine indie film called The Killer Shrews. The movie post Stir is a shrewd tail running over a woman's high heel, which is great. It's one of those one of those be creature feature movies that actually I kind of based the theme of the podcast on, and I love this movie. It's there. I think people get stranded on an island. If I remember correctly, they get stranded on an island. It is full of scientists who are trying to solve world hunger by just shrinking down people.

It's kind of like that Matt Damon movie that just that came out of a little while ago. We're okay, so we've got world hunger. We have the technology to shrink things, I guess. But instead of making food bigger, they make people smaller and they but of course the science goes wrong, as it always does, as we should know from movies to never try to do science because

it'll go horribly wrong. And it makes the shrews really huge and monsters, and they start killing everyone and killing everything on the island, and they try to escape the shrews. And of course, if you dare try to go outside of the hero's narrative, you're gonna get eaten by one of these shrews. And what's interesting is obviously the the huge giant factor is not true about shrews, but the murderous, venomous thing is actually very accurate. So I want to

talk about the Blorina revocatta, which is a venomous shrewe. Now, the shrew family includes some of the only mammals that are venomous, and the North American short tailed shrew, found in northeast North America, are a species of shrewe with an overall venomous personality and bite. And they're just they're awful little monsters. They're pretty cute. If you look at that picture, they're they're not. They don't look that's scary. They look like a little mole. They have cute, little

fuzzy bodies. They are dark gray fur, a little fluffy tail, yeah yeah, a little little fuzz tube, yeah yeah, fuzz noodle, fuzz tube. I like that. They do have those beady little eyes that is sort of a hint at their personality, and they have a pink little nose, and so they are cute, but not if you're one of their mini victims. So they are voracious little monsters who consume up to three times their body weight a day, which sounds really impressive.

It is they do only way about one ounce, but still, I mean if you scale that up, that would be like eating what like five turkeys a day? How much does a turkey way? Oh? Uh, I mean there's a whole range. I think genuinely twelve, you know, it would it would be, it would be a lot. If I I definitely don't eat like one of me a day, let alone three of me, right exactly exactly, Yeah, yeah, it'd be it'd be like eating you know, tin turkeys.

I'm I'm gonna say the math is right on that one. Uh. So they eat insects, earthworms, snails, salamander's voles, mice, and actually other shrews if they're small enough, and it's salivary glands contain a paralytic toxin that can immobilize its prey, and unfortunately for its prey, that is not a quick death. They like to store their paralyzed victims in their din and snack on them for days until their prey eventually

dies from its injuries. And so this strategy sounds really unnecessarily cruel, but this allows them fresh food for long periods of time, up to fifteen days, which is horrific. Kind of want to just give them little tiny fridges so they don't have to be so insane. Yeah, because their metabolism is so fast, having that late night snack is can make the difference for their survival, even if it is a horrific torture show going on. Yeah, gosh, I mean, like, I guess we do that with plants.

Were like a ha ha Tomato, Like I will take one of you today and one of you tomorrow. But we don't think of plants as being conscious, so like it's not that big of a deal. This is reminding me of Jurassic Park of the of the copries. Yeah, yeah, yeah, they also I mean, you know again in this documentary right right right, the domumentary, the classic documentary Jurassic Park and the Fly. Yeah, I think Killer Shrew. Yes, that one is actually a lot closer to reality than one

might think. It's one of the more realistic B movie I think other than the whole shrinking people to solve world hunger, which I think is silly. You obviously make giant or you know you you you make a giant, true, right, and then you eat the shrew their world hunger solved. Not really sure what shreue meat tastes like though, might

that might be a bit of a gamble. But one thing scientists have done, speaking of mad scientists, is they have synthesized shrew venom into a substance called sore sit in, which is hoped to be used as a sort of botox alternative, which is used to treat migraines, myofacial pain,

neuromuscular diseases, and of course also wrinkles. Now this is still in the works, they haven't actually put this on the market yet, but I actually get a pretty bad t m J pain, the transmendibular joint pain in my jaw, and I would love to inject some shroud venom just to see what it does, right, Yeah, I uh And and it's just a different type of gross than thinking about like like batuli um bacteria creating your treatment. Yes,

I so I like this. You're changing it up. Yeahs out, I feel like I would trust I think I trust shrewd ven um a little more than botuli is um because shrew a shrewd bite might be kind of nasty for human, but it can't it doesn't generally cause much harm to people it's but bachuli is um it can. It can do a doozy on a human. So I

don't know. I kind of want to go with the shrew ven him and the great The best part is you don't need to invest in needles because you can just get a shrew and then tease it and a little bite you Oh so much cuter batina them. I love this. I like that a shrewd attack is being

described as cute. Can you imagine going to a doctor's office and they have their latex gloves on and they're unwrap one of those sort of medical looking things with the medical tissue, and then there's just this shrewd lives shrieking shrew and they're frantically flopping around and it's like, well, here's your treatment. It would just leave you in the room. I don't know, then good luck. See if you contame this shrew. No, well that would be an interesting doctor's

party for sure. Now, I have to ask you, guys, do you keep secret food stashes at your homes? Oh? Everywhere everywhere my home, my desk, my purse, like essentially like the mother of a five year old, but the five year old is me, and I just have to eat like constantly, So like, yeah, I always have snacks. Yeah, secret snacks. I I am a big fan of secret snacks.

I like to tuck. Usually. What happens, though, is I'll tuck things away in my purse and then it kind of gets pulverized over time, and then by the time I remember that I put a snack in there, it's just turned into like cookie dust, which I do eat. I still eat it. I'm not saying I don't eat it, but it has sort of worn away by the time, and the movement of the purse has turned it into a sort of crumble rather than a whole bar or

a whole cookie. Yeah. I've destroyed many a granola bar the same way scientist can't explain what happens once you put something in your purse. Granola bars kind of explode on contact. I don't think you have to do much to make them turn into dust. Like you touch one and it's sort of just atomizes that seems to be there purpose faulty design. Perhaps it becomes vapor immediately in granola vapor. Yeah, which actually should not never breathe in

granola vapor. Oh no, you'll get you'll get granola along. Nobody wants that, nobody. I want to talk about another animal who likes to store leftovers in a pretty cruel way. This is the Eleanora's falcon, and I also have a picture of that for you guys to check out. And it is a It likes to keep a larger of live prey, but it goes about it in a much

less scientific way than the shrew. So. Eleanora's falcon is a medium sized falcon found in southern Southeast Europe and North Africa, and they like to winter in Madagascar, which is These are some hoity toity falcons, so typically they eat insects, but during autumn bird migration they enjoy a smorgas board of smaller birds, which include swifts and hoopoos. These are the little little birds that just make great

snacks for these falcons. And since the falcons don't have refrigerators and they like fresh meat, they just shove their bird victims into rock crevices and save them for later. So I have another picture in that slide up for you where it's a bird in bird prison, just awaiting the falcon to return to eat it. It's very sad, but yeah, you see, he's just kind of tucked in a little little hole in the rock and it's a

tight squeeze, so we can't really get out. Sometimes they'll even pluck their praise wings and tail feathers and then just toss them in a big hole because then they can't fly out of the hole. And it's just at that point I think they're mocking them. Yeah, oh my gosh. This okay, see I was, I was down with the shrew thing. I was like, look, I understand you want to keep your food fresh, but like, and you know, and it's not your fault that you're venomous, like you

just yeah, that's just what you do. But this is this is intentional, This is on purpose, This is premeditated. Yeah yeah, well, this way they'll have fresh bird meat for themselves and for their chicks later. So there. It runs in the family. It's it's one of the things that brings family together, is just torturing and murdering birds. I think that's a good Is that a good summation of Thanksgiving? Actually? The bird actually bird murder and torture holiday? Yeah?

Basically yeah. I mean, especially if you're dealing with like a tur ducan or something, boning three birds and stuff in one inside that, I mean that's a yeah. And really what is that all about except you feeling like you've got some power? Yeah? I really? How far can I push the limits? Yeah? Because those things, I can't imagine those taste very good. Their nightmare to prepare because the meat would cook at different rates. So I don't

I don't quite understand how you do that? Do you? Guys? Know? Have you ever tried that? Like, does it actually taste good a turkey ducan? Or does it just I've never I've never made one. I've never had one. Um I I I don't. I don't really understand how you're supposed to cook it and right and have it come out like good at all, because like it's hard to cook a single bird and have it be like juicy and nice.

And apparently there's like layers layers of stuffing involved that they're supposed to offset the moisture issue, like if you leave a turkey in the oven like one second too long, it turns into chalk. So now I'm supposed to stuff a duck inside and see how that works. It's just I think it's just I think you you guys hit the nail on the head. I think it's about showing how good at murdering we are. We're like, well, we've got this turkey, let's see how many more birds we

can stuff inside. Like I killed tin animals to make this dish. It's a total power play. It is, it is. It is supposedly in like the seventeen hundreds. In France, this one guy invented I don't know if you ever cooked it, but he invented, like I think, it's like a seventeen bird. It went from like a buzzard on the outside to like this little wren all the way

on the inside. France actually had Katherine Spears on of the smart Mouth podcast and we we talked about these like horrifying some of these really horrible dishes that we had in history, and yeah, that that's it's like it's stuffed a It was a large bird that then you stuffed it with like a turkey, and you stuffed that with like a guinea fowl, and then a pheasant, and then a quail and then a I think at the very end you're like shoving a little bee in there

or something. I'm not sure, but yeah, it's it's a nightmare. I don't you know. I think that there is a certain at a certain level predators, and that includes humans. We do seem to relish in just being evil. So, speaking of which, I want to talk about a cute little caterpillar who is a pretty pretty nasty little customer. Now,

you guys had a whole episode about scargo. I do not eat scargo, but when I was a child, I would eat raw snails because, like I said, I didn't I didn't follow up your the man's rules about not eating this animal or don't put that in your mouth. I I put whatever I wanted in my mouth, and that included snails, which my mom found out because I would come out from the backyard inside and I was this little, like two year old, and I had like

snail shells just stuck to my little cheeks. So she's like, well, she's been out there eating snails again. But she didn't think. I mean, there was nothing harmful about it, so she didn't stop me. That's pretty impressive as a two year old. Get a little get, get some get some olive oil and some some salt. But you guys have had a scargo, right, Can you describe that experience for those of us who have not partaken in the snail food? Oh? Yeah, sure. Um,

they're they're really tasty. It's sort of like a slightly chewier oyster maybe. Um, it's sort of almost like a like squid, like if you've ever had fried calamari can be a lot like that because they're usually especially in the scargo preparation, they're kind of like kind of like sauteed in a lot of butter um and uh and they turn just kind of like chewy and uh and but a little bit tender and they don't have a very strong flavor, especially once you've got all that butter

and like garlic and parsley and stuff in there. But yeah, they're they're real good. It's interesting you bring up like other shellfish because mollusks, they are related to molluscs, and they are related to squid in a sort of roundabout way. They are snails are gastropods. But they belong to the mollusc phylum, which does include things like cephalopods, squid to octopus and other shell shellfish. So it's not to say that that would necessarily make them taste similar to it.

But I do think that is that is an interesting connection. Is there is there a reason why you don't eat a scargo? I think, you know, it is interesting because you'd think that as somehow, being a child who would just shove insect after insect in my mouth, that I wouldn't be grossed out by it. But I think that was kind of my undoing. I remember when I was a little kid, I would collect snails as pets, and I didn't quite understand how to recreate their natural environment.

So well would happen is they would die in large numbers, and the smell of these dead snails was very bad. So I think I don't associate dead snails with food. I associate it with existential horror as I realized that I am a bad little god and I have destroyed my citizens. So um, maybe that's why I don't. But

I think that's fair. Yeah, You're like, I've already killed my lifetime share of snails, destroyer of snail worlds, I'm already in the red when it comes to snail karma, so I'm not I'm not fiddling with those numbers anymore. But so there is another caterpillar who may have more crimes to answer for than me, called the hyposmocoma mollusk givora. I sure, I'm sure I pronounced that correctly. But it's a tiny species of caterpillar from Hawaii. So this little

caterpillar eventually metamorphosizes into a moth. But as caterpillars, they're little brats and they're pretty rude to snails. So these are case bearing caterpillars similar to bagworms, which means they spin themselves a shell out of their own silk. Now,

have you ever seen these guys. They it looks like a little tube of a sort of junk, like a kind of it looks like a bunch of cobwebs kind of wrapped around in a tiny little tube, maybe some dirt and stuff on the outside, but then it kind of moves around and you look and then like a little worm where a little caterpillar pops out of it. And it's a really interesting way that these guys protect themselves. Yeah,

I like a lint armor, essentially lint armor. That's the Yes, these are a little lint boys that like to wear lint armor. Sometimes they even decorate their little silk cases with snail shells, which will become even more grotesque as we go on here. So not only are they snail wannabes, they also destroy snails. So they'll roll up to a snail and they start to use their sticky silk to

trap the snail against the leaf. So, you know, snails are not too fast, so the poor snail is too slow to be able to escape even though the net is just being woven around it's shell in real time. So if you can imagine you're just so slow that this this little caterpillar comes up with a set of knitting needles. Not not really, but you know biological netting meals starts to make a net and be like, oh, how's your day going, Yeah, I'm totally gonna eat you.

Would you would you turn to the right a little bit? Yeah, that's right there you go. Oh no, It's like it's like it's like the quicksilver, but but you're just a snail. It's kind of like if Psycho just happened really slow, like Psycho but with slobs, just like really slow. You see it coming, but there's not, and you're both kind of like, you know, all right, well how you know it's I'm about to murder you? But hey, did you

see you see the Mets game or whatever? This is gonna take a minute, so let's just get to know each other a little bit. Yeah, I feel like, yeah, I feel like like slow murder small talk would be really awkward word like maybe a little more awkward than regular a small talk. Although if you with small time so well, sometimes you know, I want to be murdered

in small talk is death is preferable. So the caterpillar then uses that weird little body case that it has sewn to wedge open the snail shell opening like one of those tiny scargo forks. So I actually have an

image of that you guys can look at. You can see the snail shell is tied down to the leaf with the sticky strands of silk, and then the caterpillar has lodged its weird oblong uh silk casing into the snail shell and then that way it can just crawl right into that snail shell and like corring it in its own home, which is pretty scary, and then it just yeah, that gets right in there. And to eat the snail alive that is so gnarly. That is like the very worst version of like the call is coming

from inside the house. Oh gosh. I mean, yeah, I think it is. We're pretty messed up, I think as humans in terms of our food presentation. But I don't know if we're at the level of eating animals alive in their own homes. Like we don't like get a bird nest and then just start eating the birds. You're not not today, That's not something I've done. I mean, actually,

I don't know, is that going back to oysters? Isn't that sort of what we do crack open their houses and when we serve When we serve snails, we do like take them out of their shells to cook them, but then we put them back in their shells to serve them. So it's like, well, I mean that's just

a presentation. Though. Gotta remember, gotta remember this was a snail, God forbid we forget this is this is a slimy snail that used to crawl all over the ground and and eat bird poop and stuff like I would not find that appetizing without that snail shell. Come on, and they're very pretty. It's true, that's true. We can't forget

the presentation. Yeah, so it's interesting their shell is made That outside is made out of calcium carbonate, but the inside of the shell is it kind of has that a little bit of that pearlscent hue if you've ever looked at it. And that's because it's actually made out of naker, which is the same material in mother pearl shell and uh, that's secreted onto onto pearls in oysters, which I think is really interesting. I don't think we think of snails as beautiful mother pearl oysters, but they do.

Their shells are very similar in terms of their composition. I love a snail shell. I think they're beautiful. Yeah, and bonus, I always feel like like ur slow the sea with if I haven't and the whole thing jewelry resembling that. But unfortunately it doesn't give you the powers to sing like her. No, I mean not unless you go to the trouble of trapping a mermaid and getting her to sign a like devil deal with you, right. The whole thing with Ariel here's something that bothers me.

All of her friends are sea creatures. She's got a lobster or sorry, is it a lobster? Crap? I think it's a crab, right, she's got and in that musical number, oysters and clams are singing along. Now her bra is made out of clam shells. I feel it'd be really awkward if she visited some of her friends and there's like, oh, have you met here? Here's Clyde the clam. It's like, oh God, is that my grandmother's exoskeleton? And it's just these this shell like well whoops. See it's part of

the storyline that wasn't really well explored. But the the reason that all of those animals like aerial and they all get along so wel together is that they are all metal ast and and so they really they really just love that, like that like death metal kind of culture. Yeah, yeah it is. I do love the whole when she's talking about being on Earth with humans so that she may rend flesh from her her fellow fish and and enjoy the food that is cooked from her friends. Yeah,

that was that was good. I was like that was a good movie. Ultimate Revenge Tale really revenge, Like I gotta get all land and then I'm gonna eat all like like your dad's like, no, you can't go on lands. Like I'll go on land, dad, and then I'll eat you. Yeah, maybe I'll cook you in another fish make a dad ducking.

We've gotten to the heart of the little mermaids. But it's really about Obviously, the invention of the fridge gave us a huge advantage when it came to storing leftovers, but humans have always found a way to make food last. From smokehouses to fermentation to salting, We've figured out ways to keep our food from going bad. Throughout human history. We've discovered how to store our food effectively, and it

depended largely on your climate. In the frozen tundra, the world was your fridge for better or worse, and you could store meat on the ice. In warmer climates like the Middle Eastern Rome, you could dry out fruit and meat by baking them in the hot sun. One of the earliest recorded instances of stored food was found in Kessum Cave in Israel, dating back up to four D twenty thousand years ago. The Paleolithic people there stored animal bones for snacking on later, like when they were up

real late reading cave wall comics. Researchers determined these bones were leftovers due to the markings. Fresher bones are easier to scrape out the marrow, whereas older booneses turn into marrow jerky, meaning there are more scratch and cutting marks on the bone. If you think eating bone marrow is weird, by the way, it's not. I've had it and it's delicious. Wait until we return. I think you'll be surprised. Some people and some creatures have pretty odd tastes when it

comes to meals. So let's take a trip down to imagination station. You're a friendly little fish, swimming along, maybe saying hi to arial, and suddenly you feel a bit of eye irritation. There's no vision for fish, so you continue to swim along with your fishy business, but you start to feel kind of lazy and sluggish. You just want to slow down, not move too much. You take a bunch of lazy days. This all works out fine for you for a while. In fact, you seem to

attract fewer predators. Great, but then something jane inges inside you, like a switch has been flipped. Now you've got a fierce case of the wiggles. You want nothing more than to splash around swimming, wantonly dancing and not caring who notices Well, loops, maybe you care a little bit because you see a huge bird flying down towards the surface of the water. You pause, freaked out, trying to stay still so the bird won't see you. But then that

urge to wiggle around to dance. You just can't help it. You've gotta move around. Well, the bird eats you the end, So that guy's that is the end of your story. But it is just another part of the fish eye Fluke's life cycle. This is part of the episode that we're gonna get a little gross, I guess. So, how do you guys feel about parasites? You know, I'm gonna be honest. They make me a little nervous. Yeah, I'm of of all the things that I'm not squeaked out by.

I think that anything that crawls into your body and makes a home there that's larger and like a bacterium really freaks me out. Well, bad news for you, because we're about to talk about the eye Fluke, which is uh parasitic flatworm. There's a specific species called diplostom Um pseudo path which again I'm sure I pronounced that. Well, I'm a champion at Latin. Now that name sounds bad, and they are if you are a freshwater fish. So basically, these ie flukes will swim around until they find an

unlucky fish, which is often a rainbow trout. Then they will infect their eyes, so the eye fluke pierces the fish's skin, then swims up through the body to find real estate in its eyeballs because it's location, location, location, am I right? Oh yeah, great, great views, right, a great waterfront property. Uh no, Oh, did I mention that my other squid is eye stuff? That's great. You guys

haven't ever eaten eaten eyeballs? I have not to my personal Actually, I mean, I guess I've had like like whole like like shrimp or or those true, So so you've eaten it's kind of been a package deal for you with with eyeballs. Uh. Yeah, I've eaten a fish eye before, at the behest of my friend who told me it was very good and it was fine. It tasted pretty salty. Now I don't know if that's because

they salted it a lot, But I don't know. I think it's a little bit there's something psychologically a problem for me with that, because it's like, I'm eyes are a window into the soul, and then I'm eating that window and it just kind of doesn't work for me mentally speaking. Yeah, no, I don't want it. It is a strange thing to eat an eye. I guess it's kind of like an ultimate power move, like what if the what if the chicken and the turduccan was just

filled with eyes? Oh, why would you say that it's a monster. You're the one who brought up eyeballs. I brought up eating eyeballs. I didn't bring up filling a turkey like making a turkey pinata. But it's filled with eyeballs. Good lord, I thought I was that nightmare. Yeah, I thought I was the horror master. Here. You're welcome. So the fish eye fluke has a pretty good reason for

being in the eyes. So the eyeball doesn't contain much blood, so there's no immune response to the parasites, so it can happily swim around in there, absorbing nutrients and just kind of hang out in the eyeball as long as it dang well pleases. Recent research suggests that not only is the eye fluke making a cozy little cottage out of the fish, I, but it's actually altering the fish's behavior.

So this is something we've talked about before on the show, where a parasite will manipulate its host by interfering with its brain chemistry. So have you guys ever heard of t gandhi? I is that? Is that the toxoplasma or the or the fungus with the ants? You're You're on the right track. It's the it's the it's the parasite that infects rats and makes them lose their fear of cats. Okay, yeah, yeah, totally. Yeah.

Sometimes the way that they influence the host behavior is mysterious. Like, I'm not sure that we know how the eye fluke does this. This is pretty recent research. But let's say that it does some kind of maybe it releases some kind of chemical that interacts with the fish's brain and causes some malfunction. Is now, I don't know this. I'm kind of I'm kind of winging because I don't think we've I don't think science has determined exactly how the eye fluke controls these fish. But that is one of

the mechanisms that these parasites can use. So the eye fluke influences the fish too at first swim more sluggishly. Now, as listeners of the show might know, often the parasites mo is to make the host look as noticeable as possible because often these parasites have the goal of winding up in the stomach of a predator, like in the

stomach of a cat or in a bird. And while that's true, these eye flukes kind of have finessed it a bit because when they're juveniles, they're still developing in the fish I they don't want to get eaten yet because they're just not ready. They're not ready for that commitment. Yeah, they will make the fish swim slower, more sluggishly so it isn't targeted by predators. And then later in the eye flukes lifestyle, when it's a an adult, it's single,

it's ready to mingle. Then that's when it kicks into high gear and makes the fish just wiggle around like crazy. It makes the fish want to swim closer to the surface to swim more actively, and normally when a bird attacks a fish, the fish is responses to freeze to try to reduce its visibility, and but the infected fish will very quickly start to dance around again, swim around again, So it makes it really easy for the birds to

just scoop that right up. And at that point the the iye fluke and the fish will escape into the bird's gut and that's where it has its singles bar speed dating night and mates, and the reproductive cycle begins a new Well. That is quite the method. Yeah, I guess when you don't have tinder um, you know, you have to figure out your own way to do stuff. You have fender. Oh wow, that is when you when when you get an oh well from Annie about a pun,

I feel like you just won. You wont like the whole month you Yeah, I have so much respect right now. I don't know what to do with it. I can only aspire to make as good fun with that. There's even another step in their weird life cycle. So once they've reproduced, their young escapes out of the bird into the bird poop, and that bird poop then gets eaten

by snails, and then the snails. When these are aquatic freshwater snails, they will be in the water and then they will escape out of the snails and then swim over to a fish. So it's a complicated life process, a lot of a lot of steps. I think it's kind of a way for these eye flukes to sort of feel, you know, they're like constantly at a midlife isis no matter at what point of their lifestycle cycle they are out like I gotta do something. I gotta get myself a new ride. I'm gonna get a snail.

And it's like, no, I'm gonna get myself a new ride. I'm gonna get myself a fish. I Yeah, No, that's great. I mean you're traveling your right, having new experiences. Uh, they're really pushing yourself. Yeah, doing it for the insta. So that's that's great. That's that's so gnarly. I love it trying new food, new home. I do feel I do sympathize with these these eye flutes a little bit. I think one of the ways I feel like I can reinvent myself is to try just a slightly different food,

nothing way outside my comfort zone. Not like a big bowl of mayonnaise, but you know, a slight like maybe maybe a little bit of a spicier food. And then I feel more worldly, even if it's just down the street from my apartment. I'm like, I've done a thing. I've I've discovered a new food, and then I somehow feel accomplished even though I didn't do anything, feel more alive. Yeah, No, you did something. You went out and found something and I put it in my Yeah, it was a bit

different than normal. That is Why do you guys think that is so satisfying to you? Discover new food and you it's like there's a certain conquest in putting something new in your mouth, and it's like I have made this mine. What do you think that is? I think for me, there's a UM, I have a weird thing I call it collecting experiences where I'm very much I want to try as much as I can. So I think if I discover something that to me, I've never had anything like it before, it's very exciting. Um, and

my my mouth is like, WHOA, what's this? I've never had this combination of flavors and textures. This is great, And I feel like my brain gets really excited about it, like, oh, You've got to find other things like this, And there's just something about that for me. Excitement of it of finding something I really like that's got set off a

new hearing. It's for me, absolutely, And I think that there's I think there's some brain chemicals that get set off when when you do try a new combination of textures or or flavors that your brain is like, well, is it danger? Is it cool? And which is really basically the same emotion according to our brains. I mean, you know, there's also chemicals involved in the nostalgia of eating something the same but or or similar to something

that you've had a long time ago. We did an upsote on that, but uh yeah, yeah, no, no, the definitely it's it's it's a it's a thrill. Yeah, well, I love adrenaline. It's like I'm trying to find it wherever I can get it. It's the safe risk taking, Like I'm not gonna go go cliff jumping, but i may put something in my mouth that I'm not sure it's gonna create a good situation with my stomach, but gosh darn it, I'll try. I like that. I'm going

to start thinking of trying new things with it. With food. Is cliff jumping? Right here we go? Right here we go? You know, saddle saddle up in testines. We're going on a ride. I think your's open. It's a good one, much much safer than like than yeah, than like, I don't know, buying a motorcycle or something. Yeah, yeah, it's an adventure in your mouth and your stomach and possibly other bathroom times that will not discuss. So there's another

parasite that likes to eat eyeballs. If you you guys, thought we had escaped the eyeball eating conversation, oh I'm sorry, but now we're back. Now this is a This is a slightly different parasite and it specifically likes to eat the eyeballs of sharks, and a specific type of shark called the sleeper shark. And these are a group of sharks that are slow moving deep sea. They look like ancient, prehistoric creatures and they are actually in fact, so we've

talked about the Greenland shark on the show before. They're these really huge sharks and they're very slow. They are carnivorous, but they have a really slow metabolism so they don't have to move very fast and they basically just sneak up on their prey and then by the time the prey realizes it's surrounded by teeth. It's too late, and but that is not the horrifying thing we're talking about today.

The horrifying thing we're talking about is called omatta quita elongata, which is a copa pod, a type of crustacean, and it's this pink worm like creature that grows about an inch long, and it likes to attach itself to the corneas of these sleeper sharks and it slowly eats away at that juicy shark. Guy. Okay, that's uncool. I'm just gonna go ahead and say that's not chill. No one should do that. Yeah, and you've and you've sent us

pictures and it's and it's. Yeah, this like little worm like thing just like just like dangling out of the eyeball of this poor, kind of dirty looking shark. Yeah. I feel a lot of sympathy for these sleeper sharks and the greenland shark. I think I like them. I think they're cool. Little guy, they're not little. They're actually huge, huge sharks, but they're they have an overall pretty chill personality.

They aren't super aggressive. They do eat other fish and things, but basically they just the rest of the time when they're not killing, they're they're pretty chill, they're slow moving, and they Yeah that these little stinkers, these little eyeball eating crustaceans, get on their eyes. And because the shark doesn't I mean, the shark doesn't have hands, can't do anything about it, it just seems kind of mean. I mean, I guess, I guess the coupe of pod is just

you know, it's just trying to eat. It's just trying to make a living. It doesn't know any better. Like it's like in the flintst Owns, those animals, like the the copa pod like looks at the camera and it's like it's a loving time to eat the eyeballs, like another day in the eyeball. The shark eyeball mines. Oh No. Also reminds me of the times throughout history humanity has really latched onto some weird fashion. So I wonder if in the shark world this was ever like fashionable to

have the worm. It's sort of like a monocle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The psyches of sharks will never know over sure, Yeah, And I mean it damages their visions, so maybe like if they have any mirrors down there the sharks looking at It's like, I look pretty good. Look at me looking good. I'm kind of a blurry blob, but I assume I'm quite attractive with these eye dangles, little eye tassels. Oh so then when when they rule their eyes, like say something sarcastic and roll their eyes, they get a

nice sort of like pendulum movement with with the eye tassels. Yeah, that's actually kind of best of Yeah yeah, shark burlesque. This is great shark burlesque. Right, Yeah, Well we know what goes on because the little mermaid the sharks wearing sexy sunglasses and it comes in. It's like done done, done done, and then it just like takes off the glasses and it's the shark the eye tassels. Yeah, sexy hot cool. Oh yeah. So, actually, the the sharks don't

necessarily mind it that much. I mean, we don't know how they feel. They may mind it a hell of a lot, but it doesn't affect their survival too badly, so they they don't rely on their eyesight too heavily to hunt. So they are a functioned pretty well even with these eye dangles going on. And there's actually an un proven theory that oh a lagatta, these copa pods have a mutualistic relationship with the sharks they attached to because they have a bioluminescence, and the theory is that

the bioluminescence actually helps attract prey towards the sharks. So the shark, as we know, who is kind of a lazy Garfield like character who doesn't really want to work too hard for his food, just opens his mouth and chomps on anything foolish enough to approach its glowing eye tassels. But that theory is not proven. I do. I am fond of that theory. I really do want it to be true. So I hope they discover that, yes, these burlesque sharks have neon glowing eye tassels that prey just

finds irresistible. I want that to be true as well. Yeah, I think that if you're going to have to have an eye tassel, it better be working for you. You better be getting something out of that relationship. You need eye tassels to make eye tassels, and then you use those eye tasks and make money. And I like the idea of some poor, unsuspecting prey just like pretty shiny thing.

Oh my god. I mean that happens a lot in the in deep sea areas because you have so little light and bioluminescence is this chemical reaction that happens with bacteria that a lot of animals have adopted. And so if you're in a deep sea angler fish, if you're a deep sea octopus, you can use that bioluminescence both to attract prey as a defensive mechanism to make yourself seem bigger. It's a really handy tool when you're down there and you're in the dark and there's very little

visual information other than this bioluminescence. So yeah, it tassels for everybody. We've really come full circle. So I know you guys are probably wondering, Hey, can my eyeballs get eaten by tiny horrible creatures? You know that had occurred to me. Yeah, so bad news. The answer is yes, uh, and it is, but it is not quite as horrifying as a huge worm dangling from your cornea. It is pretty horrifying, though. So there are, in fact, I am bas that infect human eye So these are tiny microscopic

organisms that love to eat human eyeballs. The Acanthamiba is the little stinker who likes to infect and feed on human cornias, and this condition is known as Acanthamiba carotesis. It can even cause blindness if not treated. It's very rare, so for the most part, you don't have to worry about it. But if you wear contact lenses, do either

of you wear contact lenses? Nope? Nope, yeah, neither do I. I stick to glasses, and I'm glad I do because contact lens users have to be careful with how they store and wash their lenses because they're at a higher risk of getting infected by the acanthemiba. So if you do wear contact lenses, don't I'm not saying rip them out of your eyeballs right now, especially don't rip them out. But you're you're okay, don't don't panic. You just have to remember that you should not ever use tap water

to clean the lenses. You shouldn't wear your contacts while showering, swimming, or using a hot tub because that can increase your risk of infection. Because what happens is that contact lenses provide a nice surface for the amiba to latch onto, and so normally they would kind of maybe just get flushed out of the eye. But with the contact lenses, they just they have a little like it's a little restaurant for them to sit at and then they can hang out and multiply and eat your cornia. It's a

cornia copia, get it. I feel like this is some personal full of eyeball jokes, kind of personal punishment for us, Like you're gonna tell you about this thing. They can eat your I used to wear contexts, and I'm nervous for my past self. Oh well, you seem to have gotten through it. I was very not good about taking care of my context I like found another I was putting in one and then another one popped out and it was like completely hard and I have no idea how long I don't know. Oh my gosh. I mean

that does happen. Like people, you'll forget that you're wearing one and then you put another one on, and it can even be bad. You've got to be careful, and I would suggest for all you you cost players out there, be very careful with the sort of cost playing lenses, the decorative lenses. You should. You're at a much greater risk of getting an eye infection from those as well.

So I would advise generally, ED would advise against it, honestly, But if you're going to go with it, I would go get them from a reputable like ophthalmologist, like from a professional, and not just the internet. Yeah. I read a story of someone who got this amiba infection by getting cool cat I contact lenses from a swap meat. So don't do that. Oh no, don't, don't get her swap contact lenses. No, don't get don't get contact lenses from a flea market. Is my honest to you, that's

not a second hand item. Gosh, like I'm I'm I'm weirded up. I said, no, it's not a second hand item. It's a second eye item. Oh you set yourself up for that one. That one should have seen it coming. And there goes my audience. They're gone, now bye bye. Well, if they stuck with you that, I think they're good. They're good with parasites. I don't know about puns. I don't know. Well you'll find out. Yeah, this is the time. Maybe I can win them back with some civet poop.

So now I want to Yeah, so I want to talk about Asian civits and this is I want to it's the capstone to our food related podcast because it's both about their eating habits and are Weird eating habits when it comes to their poops. So, Asian civits are a small cat like animal that is actually more closely related to bent a Wrong than a cat. Now, for those of you wondering what a bent to wrong is, I actually have talked about it on the show before

Are Weird Anatomy episode. I think it's actually called nature You're Drunk, But it's so, this is a bent a wrong looks like a Doctor SEUs fluffy cat, and it actually smells like popcorn because of some anal glands. It's a pretty interesting animal. But yeah, it's related to this civit and the Asian civit is much. It's a little guy. You guys, see that picture of it. It's like it looks it is similar to a kitty, but it's kind of like if you crossed a cat with like a

red panda or something. It's like an even cute raccoon. Yes, yes, and they live in South and Southeast Asian forests. They're omnivorous, but they love to drink palm flower sap and they eat fresh coffee beans. So they're also known as the toddy cat, despite not they're not a feline. They're not a cat. But you know, back when we were naming these animals, we didn't know so palm sap tappers would collect palm sap to ferment into palm wine, which is

a type of alcoholic beverage. And there are stories of these palm civets getting drunk on the pots of fermenting palm sap. So then they got the name Toddy cat because Toddy is the also the name of the palm wine. Have you ever had like a hot toddy it's like that sort of Swedish or not Sweedish, but that's sort of sweet alcoholic drink. Yeah, oh yeah yeah, so it's

simil delicious similar to that. So yeah, these civts would would get get drunk, and it's, uh, I think it's kind of another terrible influence that humans have had on animals is now we're now we're a bad influence and getting them, getting them drunk and have them go out on parties. It's it's terrible, you know. Um, it's not hey, like we want to have a good time. They want to have a good time, like we're just providing. We're

providers at the good time. Yeah, that's if that sounds like you're trying to evade responsibility for leading these that's down a dark path. Hey, I'm sure we always say drink responsibly. I've never personally gone up to a civot and been like shot shot shot, So I feel like, I mean, that's oddly specific. So I feel like maybe you have so the lady duff to protest too much. So, as you guys may know, we actually do eat civitt poop in the form of coffee and it is called

kopelo wak. I hope I'm pronouncing that right, And it is made out of coffee beans collected from civitt poop. Now, apparently the civits digestive system for mince the beans so that they come out tasty in their poops. And there are also claims that the civit will choose the best beans to eat, so they poop out the most premium of coffee beans, like like premium selection in this civit turd a. I see. So, so okay, I've been wondering about this actually, like is it is this chill for

the civits like, are they happy doing this? Well, so this is the sad part of the story. It is if we just picked up their poop after they left it in the forest, that would probably be fine. I mean, as long as we there was some. Obviously, if we collected all the poop, I think that would be bad for the coffee plants because then that would reduce their

ability to spread their seed. In fact, civets are really great at spreading the seeds of various plants and trees because they eat a lot of eat a lot of berries and things with seeds in it, and then they go and poop somewhere else and that that is great for the forest. But yeah, I mean, if we if we just collected some poop occasionally, I think that would be okay. Unfortunately, we're humans, so of course we don't stop at that. Because of the popularity of Coopilua, it

is becoming a big problem for the civits. Civits are being trapped and kept in cages and they're being fed coffee beans just so they'll poop it out. So it's uh, you know, they're being farmed in a way that I think is really not It's very bad for the civits. It's bad for their populations. We don't really know what effect this has on their natural populations, but it's not going to be good. And their living conditions are not

good either. So I would say, as tempting as it is to eat civit poop coffee, I wouldn't do it because of the problem of the sourcing and these these not not very good practices. I have so many mixed feelings about this. I you know, it's it's I do like trying new things. It's a shame that I shouldn't try that. But I don't know exactly how upset I can be about being like, well, not that poop. I'm just not gonna eat just not gonna eat that poop.

It is. It is a big conflict because, on the one hand, the opportunity to drink poop and pay he it's very expensive, so you're paying a huge amount for poop coffee. I would love that. That's living my best life if I were, if I was a rich person, you bet I'd be paying thousands of dollars to drink poop coffee. But of course the moral aspect, I can't.

I couldn't bring myself to do it. Like, I think the idea of just just kind of picking up maybe with the doggy poop bag some of the Civett poop and harvesting the beans, that's pretty charming, but obviously the reality is very different. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, I would agree, I would agree. I mean, and everybody poops, uh, that's true. Yeah, And you know, we talk about bacteria poop and used poop all the time on the show, but usually usually that's like the micro poop is the only poop we

get to talk about. So this is this is fun what you talk about. You talk about like the sort of fecal material that gets everywhere. Oh no, just about like a just about fermentation of any kind. It's really you know what you're talking about, bacteria and stuff. Yeah, bacteria poop. Yeah. Yeah, you're drinking, Yeah, I mean we're drinking. We're drinking bacteria poop when we drink wine, exactly, sure, And it's delicious. I mean, bacteria poop makes everything better.

I mean, aren't the civits kind of hypocrites because they're drinking fermented palm juice, so they're drinking bacteria poop. But we can't drink the civet's poop, I mean, ridiculous need to fight for their better treatment so that we can drink. That's true. That's true. I feel like, yeah, free range, free range poop, cage free, free range civet poop. Yeah, I think it's Unfortunately, it's probably pretty difficult to source the poop. I don't know how you would determine whether

this was humanely collected poop or not. So I would if you're worried about the the the humaneness of it, I would probably just avoid it. I mean, it is incredibly expensive anyways. So it's kind of sad because it's it's one of those things that at first it's kind of charming, like, oh, you know, drinking drinking weird civet poop as a fancy drink. That's fun. But then it's like, oh, of course we have to be crappy about it. Not

that was. I didn't mean that as a pun. That was I wasn't trying to make a pun out of a terrible situation. Okay, maybe it was a little bit to sue me. Yeah, sue you get get that important civet poop money. No, no, no no, I'm big civets. Oh god, well, so, I just before we go, there's like a couple of news items I wanted to really briefly talked about. Apparently, baby t rexes were fuzzy, little turkey sized monsters, which

I love. There's new fossil evidence that indicates that they had this little fluffy layer of feathers sort of down like feathers, and then that they are we're about the size of a turkey. That is. That sounds so cute and no, less terrifying than a normal regular t rex. I thought you're gonna say, no, less terrifying than a normal regular turkey, which would also be accurate. Oh no, absolutely no. I don't like birds. Okay, I realized that I heard a bird hater on this show. Just you

get out of here. I'm not a bird hater. I'm just a bird. Respect a bird. Feel there, I see you fear the power of birds. That's appropriate. They will, I do, they will? I mean, the bird revolution is nigh, it's imminent. You are wise to respect the authority of birds. Okay, no, no, work, We're cool now, that's fine. Oh yeah, no, no, like they want to eat your eyeballs and they can fly,

and they're dinosaurs. And I don't like that combination of things. Yeah. Yeah, I wonder though, if if we lived it, Okay, if if we had dinosaurs, right, if we had a Jurassic Park, there's zero percent chance that we wouldn't do a t rex duck in right, like we would do do a tyrannosaur stuck and just start shoving ever smaller dinosaurs inside of the t X. Yeah, No, we would. It's true, we would, and I just don't think it tastes good. But it wouldn't be about the taste. It wouldn't be

about the taste. It would be about teaching the dinosaurs a lesson, like, look, you try to any more of our amusement park visitors, Look, what's going to happen to you? You're going to become an abomination of solid dino meat. Yeah, we're like showing them the menu, like pointing at it very emphatically, like that could be you there, big margarita's at hand. Yeah, I mean maybe that's kind of about right. Maybe that's I guess that's sort of what we've done.

We talked about that last week on the episode. I talked about the domestication of of turkeys and chickens, and in a way it is it is kind of I think we are trying to humiliate dinosaurs to kind of let them know, like, never try again to own this planet, because we will humiliate you by turning you into really fluffy chickens. Wow, echoes across time. Yeah, if any of them ever have a time machine, they're they're gonna flash forward now and go like, oh no, we better keep

in mind. I feel like that's the turtles in time. It's coming for sure. Um. I was also thinking, I don't know if this is true, but when I was in Australia, there's a saying piste as a parrot, which meant drunk as a parrot, because parrots would get drunk fermented berries and you would see them just kind of flying around, crashing into things and shouting weird, weird stuff. So that's kind of like, yeah, the the drunk bird, they're trying to deal with the ramifications you're duck in

they actually have. So this is it's a common thing where they have bird drunk tanks because a lot of birds get drunk off of fermented berries, and there's like, especially in Canada, they have a lot of these winter birds that in the winter the berries free and but the birds still eat them, but they've fermented, and so they try to rescue these drunk birds and hold them in the bird drunk tanks until they feel better so they can be released sober up birds. See. See, I'm

not that was There's no peer pressure there. I'm not responsible for that. You cannot blame me for the natural process of fermentation. The civit thing maybe, but you're like you, But I'm not out sneaking up behind a wax swing and just going shots shots, shots, shot, shot shots. I'm onto you. That's just gonna miss scaled. The problem is that's just gonna make the bird revolution come more swiftly and more angrily. So you know, really we're writing our own,

our own history here. It's true. Well, thank you so much for joining me, ladies. I love I love your podcast. I think especially around the holidays, it's a great list because it talks about the culture of food and do you want to talk a little bit about how you get why you guys are interested in talking about food

in our culinary habits. Uh? Sure. I think one of the things we really enjoy is that we all have to eat and there's this very powerful sense of connection and shared culture and history and when you stop and think about I don't know, if you're eating something that you just never pause to wonder how did this get here? And why do we eat it this way? Yeah, and like just the traditions around it and the the stories behind it, we find some fascity. Yeah. And also the

science is really cool. Um, just the way that plants work, in the way that animals work and how they grow and how you know, what they eat and how they can feed us. Um. And so that this has been a real treat because like usually we're like, okay, like look at this cute monkey. Here's what it tastes like, and it's it can get real weird, real fast. Like talking about animals and not talking about eating all of

them has been really cool. Yeah, a lot of times we have to be like, look, we're a food podcast. We want to talk about snail six all the time, but we've got to move on. So, Yeah, this has been really wonderful. Well, it's been lovely having you guys, so again, you guys can check out Annie and Lauren on Savor Podcast. It's also here on the the How Stuff Works. I Heart Media Network. So it's been great to talk to you, and is there anything else you

guys want to plug? Like any social media people can follow you on Oh sure. Our website is uh is saber pod dot com and we are on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook at saber Pod. We do hope to hearten you. Yeah, and you can find us on the internet Creature Feature Pod dot com, Creature Feature Pod on Instagram. It's mostly pictures of my dog creature feet it on Twitter, that's f e a t f e et is something very different and you can find me as always at Katie

Golden on Twitter. I'm also at Pro Bird Rights, where I fight for the rights of birds to take over humanity and get the world back on track. So yeah, you you really done gooped when you revealed your anti bird propaganda there, Yeah yourself, I'll just quietly leave you. Thanks to the Space Classics for their super spooctacular song Exo Lumina. Creature features a production of I Heart Radio's

How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.