Legend Smashers

finished on some copyright there. We're going to um, you know, let me get out my thesaurus. We're gonna wallop some legend, explode some old wives tales. We're gonna disable some fables and contusion some illusions. So throughout history there have been some pretty ridiculous animal myths. In eighteenth century Sweden, folklore had it that which has turned themselves into wild hairs

who would suck the milk drive from cows. In medieval Europe, authors of b series thought weasels conceived through their mouths and gave birth through their ears, and Europeans used to think that maggots were spontaneously generated by meat or food that had been left out until in sixteen sixty eight, when Francesco Ready had the brilliant idea of testing rotting meat in jars, covering some and leaving some open, and found that, interestingly, the jars left open where flies landed

would start to generate maggots. He then observed the maggots developing into flies and put two and two together. These old myths may seem silly, but evolutionary biology is a continually evolving field, and science has always been open to new and contrasting information. So we're going to look at some popular myths today, burst them wide open, and talk about the truths that are even more fascinating than the

myths and the myths. Joining me today is co host of Netificent, comedian, TV writer, and Goku apologist if he Wadaway, Hey, how's it going great? Like my mizies, I think it's great that they used to think weasels conceived through their mouths and birth through their ears, because that's like, that's like something like a five year old me would have probably thought, like, you'd get pregnant by kissing and then

like the baby comes out of your ears. I'm sure there's some like you know, Japanese like, uh, anime art of birth being given through Yeah, I'm sure if you google that, turn that safe search on, although that's going to help you. Yeah. No, uh yeah, I totally remember the maggot thing because I remember that diagram. It stood out to me in my biology book in elementary school of like why is there a meet in the jard Oh there's maggots there? And then I was like, oh,

this is a cool experiment. Yeah, I mean it's it's funny to me because it's like, uh, you know, you you kind of you see the logic of you see meat and then you see maggots, Like, well, wait, just the right out of the meat, because flies they're real sneaky they get in there. Yeah, they don't look like maggots, so why would you think they're the same thing? All right,

So first I want to talk about Komodo dragons. Uh, Andrea interested and there's a there's a big myth about them that I think is but when you look at like the actual truth, it's a lot cooler. Um. So, just to catch everyone up, Komodo dragons are big, giant, enormous, scary lizards. Their native to the Indonesian islands. Uh. They grew up to be a maximum of ten ft long and a hundred and fifty pounds, which is like the

size of like a you know, huge person. Um they're machines, right, yeah, I do like that unit that really gives because if you've ever tried to lift a fax machine. They're carnivorous predators who hunt and kill their prey, and their main diet is well, they'll pretty much eat anything they can get their teeth on, but it's deer and carrion. Uh so dead things and deer, and sometimes they'll eat their own young, you know, you know, as they do as

you do in nature sometimes. I mean a lot of animals do that, so they're not they're not weird for doing that. You remember the video that went viral of the crab mother eating all the baby. I didn't expect to be as unnerved by it by well, you know, and the Christmas Island crabs are so numerous that the adults will just like eat a bunch of the kids and it's fine because there's like millions of them, so

you know, um so uh. They also Commodo dragons are pretty aggressive, so they do attack humans, and I think they've actually killed some people. Uh you know that. I wouldn't call them dangerous because it's not like you'll encounter one. But if you do encounter one, it could remember the did you see uh what was it? Skyfall? The the craggy one. Uh. They had like a scene where I think they tried to assassinate him with a Komodo dragon.

I love when movies employ animals to assassinate people because it's like, you're not Aquaman, right, Like I'm gonna put a snake in his room and then it'll bite him. It's like, get him, get him, Francis who It's like, uh, just hanging out, snake in one corner, like just chilling out there. Um. Yeah. So the myth about komodo dragons that you may have heard of is that there they kill because their saliva is so full of bacteria that it like puts their prey into septic chocks. So like

they bite their prey. Their slive is so nasty and full of dangerous bacteria that it literally like infects the wound and then they uh slowly stalk their prey and then wait for it to die. And they wait. They can wait for many days for their prey to finally succumb to their wound. Um, and that that's certainly the story that I've heard and I used to believe. Um, this is not true at all. So here's here's the fact. Uh, commodo dragons are venomous because of all the venom and

their venom gun, not because their spit is gross. That's so funny, because that was gonna that was gonna be my guess of what the myth was that there. Uh, they're venomous. I was gonna say poisonous, but that's wrong. Well, poisonous is ingested. Venom is contact or injected. Yeah, they have these serrated razor sharp teeth that are just like a bunch of knives with you know, the kind of that serrated barbs are really great at shredding things up. Um,

and those rip open wound. Uh. And then the venom found in glance and their lower jaw will cause shock and the animal, by decreasing their blood pressure, works as an anticoagulant, which makes them bleed faster, and so they will typically die within thirty minutes. So they don't even need to stalk. No, I mean they stalk before the praise dead. So you know, to like you know, you can imagine a lioness kind of stalking prey and then killing it. It's it's a similar thing, except it's a

horrible lizard. Um. And they actually have one of the most complex venom duct systems and reptiles. Um. It's not that doesn't make it better, it's very inefficient, but they have these venom ducts between their teeth, uh, and so when they bite down, it kind of ear gates into the wound, and so they kind of as they pull and shred that um like goose, is the venom into the wound like kind of like a syringe. Yeah. Yeah,

it's like its mouth is full of syringes. And they actually, in terms of their saliva being nasty, that bacteria is similar to other carnivores. So even though they do have in bacteria cultures in their saliva, when they measure other carnivores, it's basically the same, so it's not unique to them. Uh.

They also practice pretty good oral hygiene. Uh. They've brush their teeth with leaves, so like like after they've you know, maybe made a snack of some dead deer, they will like mush their face into leaves and brush their teeth and then they lick their lips for like ten to fifteen minutes cleaning themselves. And so there's no rotting chunks of flesh hanging from their mouths. They're they're actually pretty fastidious. Like fifteen minutes. That's better than me. Yeah, that's a

very long time. Yeah, um and yeah, so they don't slowly stalk their prey over days. It usually takes about thirty minutes. There's probably outliers, and maybe that's why what people have observed, um, where maybe some prey got away and survived a lot longer than it typically does. Uh. And then the assumption being, oh, it must do this intentionally. But when all things go to planets in and out, in and out Komoto Burger. So if I were to fight a Komodo dragon, I should stay away from the teeth,

is what you're saying. Yeah, I think that's generally the good strategies. So yeah, I mean, first of all, I want to say you probably shouldn't fight a Komoto dragon. I wouldn't necessarily recommend it. I mean, how speedy are they? They're pretty, they can be pretty fast. Feel like you know, I'm pushing toy if I just get on top and hold the you know, you know they got that lizard motion, just get down on them. Yeah, I mean, you know, I think if you, if you really wanted to fight one,

which again, don't do it. Not not advocating for that. Lawyers get off our backs. We're not saying you should fight specific I'm the only one quied exactly exactly, so nobody else try this at one, but you, if you were fighting it, I would definitely like try to grab its tail, sort of the crocodile hunter esque thing where you grab its tail so that you can always be behind it, um, because you don't want it and it's going to try to whip around to buy you. Um.

It's basically it's super bound, right exactly. So if you if you can get that tail and then just kind of like keep twirling it around like you're dancing like a dance partner, then maybe you know you can it's tired until it's tired or it falls in love with you. It's like, wow, you can really dance, all right. So the next animal myth I want to cover, and this is a really popular one, is that wolves have an

alpha and beta pack structure. Um So The idea is that you have a group of adult wolves and they get together and the alpha males will fight for dominance. So you have this wolf as just wolfier than all the other wolves. Uh. It fights and bites its way to the top, and then it's elected leader of the wolves just by merit of being the most aggressive. And maybe there's also an awful female that does the same thing.

She like, you know, bullies all the other females. Uh. Comes to work with a bunch of flowers and it's like, hey, yeah, my my husband got me these. Oh you didn't get any flowers. I'm sorry. Uh. So you know alpha uh and so, but this is not true. The way this came about was in the nineteen forties, this researcher, Rudolph Schenck uh documented wolf behavior and he observed wolves fighting for dominance. Um. But the problem was he was studying

captive wolves. So wolves in a zoo uh and captive animals often behave differently than wild animals due to their different environment. Uh. And they will be in conflict more often because don't have as much space. So in the wild, when you have fights between animals, uh, the one of the animals will often have an area to retreat and cool off and kind of give the the aggressor some space and then they kind of work it out that way. So it's like, you know, if you're in an argument

with someone, they they storm off. But if you're if you're in a tiny room with someone and you argue, there's nowhere for you to go, so the argument is just going to keep going and going. Um and so, uh that doesn't necessarily happen in the wild. And in fact, um now what's thought is that wolf packs are just basically family units. Uh So a mom and a dad and children. Um and uh So they may the parents may use intimidation at times, and it's not as if

they don't do dominance displays. But these are more within the family structure. So they didn't become the alpha male and female because they fought their way to the top. There the alpha male and female because they're the mom and the dad and so there is a wild biologist L. David Mick. He used to write about the alpha wolf structure, and like he used to subscribe to that um belief, but uh as he continued to observe wolves in the wild, he realized he was wrong and he was like, Okay,

actually these look like these are just families. Um and yeah, they like fight it out and there's dominance and submissive behaviors, but that's within the family structure. Uh. And one source I read said that like the older the individual, the more likely they are to be dominant, which makes sense, you know, older, older brothers. That's when I started fighting with my dad. Hey Dan, I don't like these rules,

you get your own pack. He's like, if if you do not like these, didn't go and start your own back if you do not want to be in my back. Yeah, this one hits pretty hard for me because there was this game when I was in high school called for Kadia. It was a was a furry game, but there were different worlds in it. He would go and I was, I was real in the wolves. I liked ever since

American werewolf in pairs. Was like, I was a wolf guy, right, and so we would So we went to the wolf world and then me and the girl I had a crush on the time, we had a pack and so I was the alpha wolf. Were spreading misinformation among the among many crimes committed by the Furcadia community, one of them being spreading wolf information and apologized to wolves. Well, apology accepted on behalf of holds. I speak for the wolves. Um. I think, uh. The one of the effects that this

has had has been on dog training. Because dogs descended from wolves, that's true, uh, and their behavior is similar to wolves in a lot of ways. Obviously they're very different because of the you know, thousands of years of domestication. But that idea of the alpha pack structure I think has informed dog training. And because it's not necessarily true and wolf populations, that means that a lot of the information we have about dog training might not be correct.

So dog training is going under a constant evolution of trying to figure out you know, hey, maybe there's different ways to uh communicate with your dog and UH sort of potentially like dominating your dog might not be the answer. I'm certainly not a qualified dog trainer, so I don't want to say like, oh, no, there's only a certain way to train your dog, because I don't know. But I think it is something that we have to continually

examine as we get in new information. My dog and I I've found that there's no way to really dominate my dog. She's tiny, she's like thirteen pounds, but she's she's um. Her personality is not she cannot be dominated. There's no you know, there's no way I'm going to do that. It's always a negotiation with her, a sort of tepid negotiation. We'll see. That's why you got to try the family structure. And let's right, hey, buddy, listen, yeah, listen, buddy. Yeah,

I feel like we don't talk anymore. Yeah, she's looking across. Yea. When I was your age, you know, I felt the same way, right right. I mean, granted, when I was your age, I was, you know, not licking my own crutch. But you know, sorry, sorry, we all we all grow around pace sucking on a pacifier, looking your own crutch, exactly, exactly, alright. So one one last animal myth here. So bulls are those fearsome male cows, and of course I'm gonna stay

off top. Like bullfighting, not not a big fan of it. It's got a trash yeah, I mean, like I I understand the cultural history of it and I respect that, but you know, I like the more modern bullfighting where you don't actually hurt the bull. Yeah we could, I mean, we can make a w w I mean, like I'm still kind of like I don't necessarily think it's good to even just harassable like that. To me, it's also

dangerous and yeah, I just don't know. But I like, if we could have like an updated bull fight where it's like a robot bowl, I'd be super into that Mecca bowl. Could you imagine that, I mean in the challenge, because this would be a bowl with like a computer's intelligence, and so you still keep the macheese right right right, I mean you need a gun obviously, but um, like a laser sword. Yeah, I think a laser sword. Is

that that's that's showy. Um. So I'm sure a lot of people think that bulls are angered by the color red because that's you know, part of I mean, that's that's a that's a fact that we're taught from a very young age. But Looney Tunes cartoons, And the thing is that's not true, as you might have guests from the structure of this podcast, But bowls can't even differentiate between the red, red, and green, like their red green color blind, so like they can't see in that within

that color spectrum. That doesn't mean they ancy colors. It's just like red and greens are gonna sort of be the same, yes, because I was like, yeah, because they're color blind, but I didn't know they're only red green. Yeah. Yeah, I mean it's but you know, the basic principles the same, where they can't really distinguish red um and they're not there's no evidence that they're angered by that color ring, yes, exactly. So it's the antagonizing motions of the bullfighter that uh

you know, it's maybe frustrating for them. Uh you know, it's it's kind of a funny thing to me where it's like you have the sky waving things around and like it's poking them with sharp sticks, and it's like he's mad at the color. I think doesn't care for red. I guess he's more of a winter it's really in the pastel um. But here's a cool fact. Bees actually are the ones who are angered by the color red. Bees are of one that seems like something that's people

should not. Yes, So if you don't want to anchor bees, don't weigh red at them. Is there a reason? Yes? So two bees, red actually appears black like a dark color um, and black and dark colors are the colors of predators that they are on high alert for, like bears and honey badgers, these pesky like Pooh bear type animals. Wait a second, Pooh bear wears red. It goes all the way to the top. Um uh. And so they're often under attack by these hungry bears going like I

want some money. Um. So when they see those dark colors, are like, oh, this is a this is a bear trying to get our precious him me, and then they go out on the attacks. So if you don't want to get attacked by bees, you shouldn't wear red, but you should carry red paint if you know you're ever going to encounter a bear, distract distracting, distracted by covering and paint, the bees will get You're safe, right right, Yeah,

I'll imagine how cute that would be. You just like painting a little red shirts, like like you're waiting to pooh and then it just rips you apart. But your last few moments will be key. Yeah. Well, you gotta get the speed, you gotta get the low. You see.

The thing the scary thing about bears, uh, you know, is that there's conflicting rules for different bears, Like like I think it's the grizzly is the grizzly the one that you're supposed to be make yourself bigger, like one you're supposed to make yourself bigger and one you're supposed to play debt. And that's yeah, I think I'm pretty sure. Okay, don't take my word for it. I definitely want you guys to double check this before you go out and

antagonize any bears, which you shouldn't do. Yeah, okay, So if he's the only person who can fight bears and komodo dragons and gorillas and all right, yeah, that's look, see we can have this conversation right now. I've just you know, made strength of strength. If a gorilla's arms were weighed down so that they had the strength of a human, well, couldn't they just use those weights though?

Is that's what everyone's saying. But it's not heavy enough if they're using them weights and it's making them hit me right, the weights aren't heavy enough. They need the strength of a Here if you put like really like if you put like really slippery shoes or like roller skates on a gorilla, so it's center of mass is like out of balance, like you put roller skates on. All Okay, you put roller skates on its hands and its feet, then I think maybe you could be beata.

Otherwise I'm not sure the origin of this dumb bit of me fighting a gorilla from when I was writing on at midnight that video of the two gorillas fighting that went viral went and I've never, like all the gorilla videos I've seen have been very docile, very and I realized that that, and for some reason, my only reaction in seeing that gorilla charge across the like the enclosure an attack that gorilla was well, I guess I

can't fight a gorilla. And everyone stopped and goes, wait, Iffy, up until this point, did you think you could fight a gorilla? That was And then I, you know, I doubled down and I was like, you know, I feel like under the right circumstances, I mean, and I can understand that, because I mean, you're seeing me, you can tell I'm not necessarily a fighter. Um. But when I think about, like say a mountain lion, attack him, like I could kick a mountain lion away, I think I

could do it. But you know, you don't really grasp that the pure muscle like a mountain lion. It's not like partially like you know, sort of fatty tissue where it's just like, oh, you know, like a like a like a pudgy little kiddy where you know you can fight a cat. But mountain lion is just coiled muscles just oh, just ready to like they're built to pounce.

It's it's so funny because it's that conversation and always comes up on why men uh live shorter lives than women, And I feel like there's this inherent idiocy and men were like, yeah, I think I can. I think I can.

Look at a Kimodo dragon. You hear about its like mini venom glands and its sharp teeth, and then you think, but couldn't I. I'm sure it has something that goes deep down into our evolution of the peacocking of to look like the like all the strongest hunter in the tribe, where it's like I can do that, I could do it, bro like like blowing clothes off broke. Yeah, it's it's funny, but yeah, no, these animals are terrifying at all times. Yeah, yeah,

that's true. I think that's that's the message I want to get out. We should love animals, but be scared of them, love and fear them. Sometimes animal myths aren't just silly, but can actually be dangerous. Take for instance, peeing on a jellyfish sting. This myth holds that urine somehow deactivates jellyfish venom. In fact, the opposite may be true. When a jellyfish stings you, it rubs stinging cells onto your skin. These cells contain neematosites, evil microscopic balloons filled

with venomous barbs that inject venom. Rubbing the sting will make it worse, as that causes more neematicists to activate. But urinating on the sting or even running fresh water over it will cause a sodium differential between the inside and outside of the neematasyst again causing them to sting. The solution pour salt water over the sting, which will

help wash it away without necessarily provoking the neematosists. Unless your pa is really really salty, Urinating on your sting will just make it hurt more and cover you and p Good job, pee pee leg. When we return, will explore some more human medical myths and find out that there are some incredible animals that are more amazing than the myths of themselves. Throughout human history, we have attempted

to quantify medicine, and well, we've often failed. We used to think that our eyes worked by shooting beams out of them until ten eleven, when Arab mathematician Hassan al Hasan conducted experiments on the human eye and concluded that instead of emitting rays, the eyes received light that bounced off of objects, thus forming an image. Though you may not have heard of him, he's one of the first ever implementers of the scientific method, pipe centuries before Renaissance

scientists figured it out. There are still, to this day plenty of misconceptions about the human mind and body. But the thing is, sometimes the truth is even weirder than fiction, as me and my guests are about to discover. Don't you think it's crazy that like we don't know about Hassan al Hazan, like, like I feel like, I mean, it's probably part of the reason is our education is pretty eurosick, like pretty western centric, like you know, Europeans,

we've discovered science that's not true. But yeah, it's like he was one of the like ten eleven, ten eleven, Like we hadn't even gotten into the teams yet, and he discovered how the I functions and he used the scientific method. It's pretty incredible. And this kind of ties into the first thing I want to cover, which is this fact that is often spread around that we only use ten percent of our brains. Um, So have you ever heard that? Yeah, there's so many premises as a nerd,

there's so many premises that are basic. That scar Jo movie. Yeah, well you took the Limitless right, right, right? Right, scar Joe? She only uses ten percent of her brain? Am I right? Roasted? Um? Yeah, but like in that movie, I think it's like she gets a drug that let's her use a hundred percent of her brain and then she becomes psychic? Is that right?

That's always what it is for some reason? Right, It's like as if somehow, if we used all of our brain and we could somehow receive brain signals from other people? Was it? Lucy, Lucy? That's right? That's right? Yeah? I remember that. That drove me a little crazy. Like those ads and what is the like because like you, you know more about biology than the typical person. What what are some like ads or premises that have made you roll your eyes? I mean, that's that's a big one.

The ten percent of the brain being repeated ad nauseum um. I think uh. I mean there's a lot of also just pop psychology, where it's like, oh, women like this because of this reason, or men like this because of that reason. It's like, well, I mean, you know, like oh, men like trucks because of some something way back in our revolutions. Like I don't think they that tracks because like there weren't trucks back so you can't necessarily strack

that to that level. Or like, uh, you know, the like oh it's in our DNA is used pretty commonly. It's like is it really I don't know if it is, you have to prove it, um. But with the ten percent of our brains thing is uh? I mean, what is true is that at a given moment, maybe we are only using like ten percent of our brain in terms of it might only be firing. But that's not like throughout the whole day, we'll be using all of our brain to varying degrees depending on the task that

we're doing. Because imagine the alternative if like a hundred percent of our brain was firing all at once, that would basically be like some kind of crazy psychotic experience where you just your brain explodes. Yeah, if I, if I nerd it up a bit. Uh, the CPU was your brain, the computer, and you put that under a hundred percent load, you're going to fry that bad boy, and you'll need to spend another large sum of them.

Every experience of motion and thought you could ever possibly have, Like firing at once, That doesn't even make sense because your brain doesn't really work just by I think. It's not like you have certain information stored in your brain that you just like turn on and turn off. It's

patterns of activation. So your neurons forming a pattern, um where it's kind of a domino effect when you're on fires and then like this domino effect of all these neurons firing in a pattern, and that it's that actual pattern of activation that is the thought or the memory or whatever. Um. So, uh, everything firing at once. I don't even know if that would be a conscious experience. I'm not sure what that would be. Um. But so,

but we use all of our brain. It's not like there's a part of our brain that just you know, crickets, cobwebs doesn't get used. Um, According to Scientific American, this fact may have come from historical psychologist William James, who wrote, quote, we are making use of only a small part of our possible mental and physical resources, which I don't think

that's uh. I'm not sure that's true, buddy. I mean maybe for some of us, like uh, in general, like when you think of a person's potential, but the human it's not like the human body has hugely untapped brain power that if only you took the right supplement, you

could get to um the muscles. It's it is true that we there is more we can exert, Like we hear about times where people's adrenaline goes and like you can be triggered into your body working much more than it usually does, like being able to lift something heavier than you usually can't. That's true to some extent, But it's not like, oh, if we could only tap into of our body, would we would become like the Hulk,

except when he's smart. I guess, um, and uh, yeah, so not true that we used in percent of our brain. But here's the fact that to me is crazier and it's completely true. It's called uni hemispheric slow wave sleep, and that means you can turn off half of your brain. One half of your brain is asleep and the other half is awake. When I say you, I don't mean you, because this is only something animals can do. Um so. Uh. Certain species of dolphins, whales, seals, sea lions, manatees, and

birds exhibit uni hemispheric slow wave sleep. So it's literally one eye closed, one eye open, one half of the brain off, and the other half of the brain on. Essentially, I mean one half is asleep. It's not off off, it's like a sleep. Um so. Uh. And with our eyes and our brain, the hemispheres are actually kind of mixed up, so like your right eye or your right field of vision is connected to your left side of your brain and vice versa. So when the right eye

is closed, the left side of the brain is asleep. Um. And these animals, uh so why would they First of all, I mean it is kind of intuitive why you'd want to do that. And when I heard about it in uh school, I was like, this is in college and I was like, huh And so I would like close one eye during lectures because I was so sleep Yeah, I wonder if you can like close one eye uh, like your left eye to sleep with your right eye and then be really smart with your left braining. Yeah,

it didn't. It didn't work for me. Um. So for sea mammals, the reason for this is pretty important. It allows them to continue sleeping while still surfacing for air

because they have to breathe. They may look like fish, but they're not fish, so they gotta still breathe, and so sleeping can present a problem for them when they need to continually breathe, and so that half sleeping allows them to surface and also to continue uh um swim patterns and migration patterns while still kind of half sleeping. Same thing for birds, so they can half sleep during

long migrations and still detect predators. Uh So, actually birds can completely fall asleep while migrating, which blows my mind. So they can go into slow wave sleep while uh migrating over long distances and still navigate somehow. Um tesla's that are driving us, you know, well grating and we'll go to sleep. You know, they say not to do it, right, don't do it. You don't do it. I mean, I don't think the cars are there yet, right, They're not like fully automated, so you have to you have to

be at the wheel. I think there was a story about some guy who was like drunk in a Tesla and like the Tesla just like parked him on the Golden Gate Bridge or something, and like the cops came up and he was like dead asleep and it's like self driving. It's like and I think the car that he had didn't even have the full self driving feature. Yeah,

it's you know, it's still a work in progress. Do over their updates, but yeah, there's there's been some like sometimes it'll male function, right, but I'm waiting for those like Honda mech legs that just like walk you places, um, and then you could be asleep. Did you ever watch

Wallace and growmant very little? There was one where it's like he's got these mechanized trousers because it's British, and then he's asleep and he's his upper torses just flopping around while his like Mecca pants are walking him around. Um right um. And so what's really cool about the birds who do the do the half asleep thing is that it's the birds, typically the birds on the edges of the flock, who are sort of have to be aware and birds will like switch positions and stuff, and

it's this kind of interesting communal situation. And so if they're on the outer edge, half of their brain will go asleep and one of their eyes will close, but the eye that's facing outward will be open and alert to predators. So say they're on like the right side, their right eye will be open, left him sphere which connects to the right eye will be asleep, so they can stay alert to predators UM while they're flying in

there on that outside And so that's that's really cool. Uh. And the way that they their brains can do this is um acetal colline, which is a neurotransmitter that can regularly brain activity and wakefulness. UM is withheld from their sleep portion of the brain while still being present in the away half. So it's like this neurotransmitter being selectively released in different hemispheres of the brain. That's awesome. It's

really cool. I wish of the many superpowers you could get if you were an animal, this is the one I wish the most. Just half sleep. I tried so hard. I really wanted it to be true. Like I would close one eye and then it's like, am I resting? I can't tell my my teeth hurt? Is that normal? I was so sleep deprived in college. Um. Alright, so here's another UM biology interesting thing, which also reminds me

of college. Is the thing of like, oh, women synchronize their periods when their roommates or their friends and they lived together. Have you heard this one? Yeah, I've heard it too. It's uh, it's an off repeated thing being a fact, and it's not um so UM. This is based on I think a nine study UM where researchers looked at a group of female college students and uh, they the sample size was pretty small and it was only over like eight weeks, and they're like, these chicks

synchronize their periods. Don't you get a load of these games? Actually the seventies, So what would they be These mamas periods all sync up. Oh man, let me write this down in the medical journal. Baby, they're somehow making their who has work together. Yeah, so that's not No study has been able to replicate that UM, and researchers today point out the many methodological problems and small sample size of the original studies. Uh so it's really probably not true.

So it's technically unconfirmed. Obviously it hasn't been proven to be negative necessarily, but there's no evidence that it's necessarily true. Um and I think most likely if you I feel like it's true anecdotally, it could be that, like, you know, periods aren't it's not like every twenty eight days on the dot like it kind of like shift around. So you're going to have that occasional you know, synchronizations like oh my god, our periods are like the same, We're

like twins. We're blood sisters. Blood sisters. Yeah, yeah, I mean which is that would be metal. I'd love to just be able to become blood sisters, but unfortunately it has to be the old fashioned way where you do human sacrifice anyways. Um, but uh, there is an animal who does do this. Uh yeah, um, lionesses do synchronize their periods. They are blood sisters, and more than this is on one they are uh yeah, they like to

eat things. See that's you know, that's a deleted scene from the Lion and surround are like like, are you in a stress? Me too? We are coincidental. Yeah, there's a lot we've talked about on the podcast. How inaccurate the Lion King is man there would be so much more killing, a lot of killing. Um, I mean, there would be no way. So when Scar takes over the pride, like he would kill all the cubs. So there's you know, it's just And also it doesn't make sense that no, no,

it just doesn't make sense. So you're saying they wouldn't be enemies with hyenas that, well, I mean they would be. Actually that part is true because hyenas and lions are natural enemies because they are in the same sort of niche in terms of their prey. So hyenas will hunt, they're not just sick gavengers and and lions and hyenas will both try to steal each other's prey, so it's not just like a parasitic relationship between hyenas and lines. And lions will eat hyena cubs and hyena's we eat

lion cubs. Typically lions are the bigger jerks because they're just literally bigger. But you know, you get enough hyenas, you can overpower a lion. That's what I'm saying. You know, that's that's exactly exactly that part true. Um. And actually, uh, hyena's, like we've talked about before, they were a matriarchy, and they have pseudo penises. They're really cool animals. Um. But

lionesses will synchronize their estrus. So um. Most animals other than humans and some primates don't really have periods in the way that um human women do. I sounded, so we're like such a weird human women. Show me your women, the hemin female. Um, Yes, I love human women. What why would you think that I'm from outer spice That tender profile, It's like you don't It's like a trench coat all the way up to their eyeballs hands Like, like, I enjoy human women and their human body, and I

like their chest meats. Um. So by going into astros at the same time, this allows them safety and numbers for their cups, so their cubs all happen at the same time. So statistically speaking, uh, some of them should survive. So like, if a predator tries to pick off some of the cubs and you have this big group of cubs, like the likelihood that your cub is going to get eaten not as much, which is a really touching thing.

They The nicer thing is they do it also so they can communally raise the cubs, so they can babysit and like they're all sort of in the same maternal mood um and taking care of each other's cubs and and that's nice. Um, what's not so nice is that um, one way that female lions go into estrus is when their cubs are killed. So if a new male takes over the pride. And as we've talked about on the podcast before, prides aren't really a patriarchy, although they're kind

of seen that way in in popular culture. It's like the the core group of lions is typically females that have passed on from generation to generation. So uh, you could look at it as a matriarchy in that way.

I mean, it's true that the males do assert their dominance and by killing all the cubs when they take over a pride, but it's like it's kind of like, you know, they get this new lion leader, like not a leader though, because like the female lions kind of control the pride throughout the many many years the males come and go, it's females that form the core of the pride um and so uh uh, it's just like it's they're so cool, these these super metal lioness's blood

sisters synchronizing their periods. Uh, like interesting deeper story like what if the Lion King was less about this, you know, exchange of power between the men, but these men who come and go. But one lioness loved one cup so much that she hid it from the new lion. Now he's growing up with these cups that are not his brothers. I really like that idea. That's awesome. I mean that

see that would be a much better movie. Um. I mean if they remade Lion King, why not do you just remake it, do a new plot, don't show us uncanny valley lions? Yeah? Um, but yeah, I would love to see some biologically accurate animal movies because the reality is so much cooler. And like you said it, it would you could have a much more interesting plot. Like that's almost like what is it? Um, that's almost like the Moses plot of like you know, putting it's like

a Moses lion. So instead of cribbing from Hamlet, like crib from Moses. Um. Yeah, that'd be really cool. Um. And so one one method that they used to synchronize their estrus is potentially pheromone signals. They like smell each other. It's like you want to have babies, I'll join you just want to go to brunch and have some babies. So here's another um claim that, UM, I don't know, I've kind of not heard it before. I actually found

this on Snopes. Um, but I think I've heard things similar to it, which is that the human body replaces itself entirely every seven years. Have you heard this one before, right? Yeah, exactly, Like I've heard similar stuff like, oh, you know your body, like every cell in your body is replaced, and so you're like a like the ship of theseus thing where it's like, oh, are you really used since we were place all of our cells and such. But um, it's it's kind of a mixture of myth. In fact, so

um uh cells do that. It makes a lot of sense though, Why why people would think that the entire body is replaced Because cells do die, It's a process called apoptosis, and then they regenerate through cell division. Um and uh. Some cells can um kind of renew very rapidly, like skin cells. Um. And the seven years figure may have come from a study that found that the average age of a cell in the human body is around seventy ten years old. Um, which is kind of like

crazy to think about. Like, wait, I'm only seven years old. I knew it was okay to like Power Rangers A bunch of brownies feel very vindictive. Um, but that's just an average and uh, you know average is is not It's not like most cells are like this. It's like you have um cells, some cells regenerating extremely quickly, like from days to weeks. UM. Like epithelial cells, which is like skin cells lining of the stomach especially that regenerates

very quickly because of the acidity of the stomach. UM. Organs, blood vessels uh also have epithelial cells that regenerate more quickly than other cells in the body. Uh. And then other cells like connective muscle and nervous cells last much longer. And and bone also lasts quite long um so um often like I think bone has replaced every seventeen years ish um and Uh the average age for non epithelial cells around fifteen years old. UM. But some cells last

way longer, I mean, like your entire life. So certain cells were born with and we'll die with Like these cells inside the center of our islands were actually born

with that, and we'll die with that. And then our brain matter is a little younger than that lens cells because we are developing our brains really rapidly when we're a little like until two years old, it's like you have this massive and I mean, obviously the brain continues to develop after that, but we generated a bunch of this new tissue, uh and then um, so that but the brain tissue on average, and I think it's like they measured tissue inside the cerebellum and they found it

was about as old as the individual. Um. And but there are certain parts of the gray matter that uh does regenerate more quickly. Um. But you know, so basically some of our body does regenerate really quickly, some of it regenerates more slowly, and then certain cells are going to be there basically for our entire lives. Um. Which and it makes sense to me that the brain, I

think is one of the more constant ones. Um. It is still crazy that it isn't necessarily like you're not born with your entire brain and then you die with your same brain, which is a little bit key. But it isn't like like your brain is completely new from like seven years ago. It's uh, you know, parts of it are going to be basically the same once your

brain stops growing until you die. Um. Yeah, and you stop developing brain cells at a certain age, right right, Yeah, Like you're not going to grow a bunch of new brain cells. Um. The main changes is the neural plasticity, where it's not so much that you grow new cells but your brain. Um that the cell the neural pathways that form in your brain can change throughout your life. Obviously they have to, otherwise you would never be able to form new memories or learn anything new. Um. So

you can. Your brain can change throughout your entire life. Obviously, the greatest changes are from age zero to like twenty five ish. But you know, your brain continues to change throughout your life. But the cells themselves mostly um, stay the same once you've reached a certain age, and some parts of the brain, some parts of the brain or generating more quickly. Um. But here's uh, there is an animal that is basically like a Benjamin Buttons where it

can completely regenerate. Um. And it is the immortal jellyfish. Yeah. So these are teeny tiny cute jellyfish found in the Mediterranean and Sea of Japan. They're about like the size of a fingernail um and uh they along with a couple of other jellyfish species who are dumb and I'm not gonna kidding. I think there's like the moon jelly. There's a moon jelly species that also does this, but they can revert back into a polyp, which is like the baby form of the jellyfish, and then become reborn um.

So this is called reverse metamorphosis ums bingebin buttons, where they uh, turned back into a polyp and then that polyp turns back into an adult um. So biologists liking it to a chicken that turn into an egg and then that egg hatches a new chicken UM. And to accomplish this, it goes through cellular trans differentiation UM, which sounds like, you know, full metal Alchemists. You know that right? Wait, what's the anime? Is it? Full is full Metal Alchemist

a anime? Yeah? Okay, I'm getting it confused with full metal Jacket? Yeah yeah, which is a Stanley Kubrick. Yeah yeah, full metal Alchemists. Like maybe they try and transmute different things. How he gets his little brother trapped in that suit of armor. Yeah that's right, and like he gets a new hand, but it's a man out of his dead mom. Is that right? Okay? Yea too deep into it, but I think it's very dark and bleak, right, um, But

it sounds like something from from that anime. But it's uh where one cell type is converted into another cell type, like a skin cell becoming a neural cell um and humans like basically only stem cells do this, um and we don't. It seems like they're so cool, the fact that they can turn into babies and then regrow into adults and do this potentially indefinitely until they're a snack

for something else. We don't actually know that much about them, Like we haven't studied them that thoroughly because they're really hard to cultivate in a lab. In fact, from one article I read, there's only one scientist who has been able to reliably grow them in a lab. His name's Shin Kubata of Japan, and he's like in this tiny office and growing these miraculous jellyfish and he's got very little funding and he just does it because he thinks

it's really important. That's so there's something like really mysterious about this, this one man who knows how to grow these and is trying to study them and basically is one of the few people who can nurture these. And he is funny when he talks about them, like he kind of he's like he's really proud of them, Like, there my little babies, little guys, a little immortal guy. Yeah, you would think that an elon musk would be injecting them. It was a bloodstream to try to be yeah, what

if we Yeah, what what if that? We have that ability? But with those parameters like you can you can regenerate your body, but you you don't have to go back to a baby. It's almost to me, at what point is right? At what point is that just like when we have kids, you know, because wouldn't you be I guess it depends on how much like of a you know, biological essentialist here you are. But I feel like we are not. We're not just what we're born with. We're

all the experience we've had, you know. It's nature and nurture kind of working together to create you as a human.

So I feel like at that point it wouldn't even though maybe your body would be immortal, your mind wouldn't like you once you revert back to a child, or an embryo, that would be you dying essentially, even if you're reborn again, that would be a new person sen in my opinion, um, just based on I think because we're we're a pretty special animal in terms of how much we can learn and how flexible our brains are.

But I think that also means that we're kind of some of our experiences in our environment, and then that is who we are. And that's why you know, when you have a brother or sister who's very close to you genetically, they can be super different. Um. And like or you know a child who's you know, maybe similar to you biologically, but they're you know, going to be really different because they have different experiences. Mm hmm. That's

very interesting. Yeah. Like I said before, sometimes the truth is actually wilder than myth, and what you might think of as myth collides with science. In the monasteries of eastern Tibet, Buddhist monks practice g tunnel meditation, a technique that is legendary for increasing the body heat even drying wet sheets wrapped around the monks bodies as they meditate

in the freezing Himalayas. But is there any truth to this researchers and monks well practiced in forceful breath g tumma meditation put it to the test, the scientific test, and found that by meditating in this way, they were able to increase their body temperature even up to mild fever levels. And more interestingly, it wasn't just the breathing that was important. The mental visualization of the g tumma meditation technique was important in enabling the meditators to continue

breathing properly and to keep their body temperature up. So I want you to visualize this podcast returning after a short break. Breathe in and breathe out. We'll be right back. Welcome to who wants to be a Millionaire? That is the owner of a million spiders. I'm your host Meal extra Bark. So if I want to play play a little game title I want to lose, I don't want, so I'm gonna ask you some questions about animals and

reel some unexpected truths. Perhaps um all right, and it's going to be about like what you think the characteristics of these animals are. So question number one is who do you think has more eyes? Spiders, scallops or scorpions? Do do do do? Do? Do do? Is that helping do? Because I think spiders. But based on the premise of this game, I'm gonna say scallops, you are correct. So spiders have zero to twelve eyes. There are some spiders who are eyelis, like the blind huntsman spider of Louse

and the blind cave wolf spider of Hawaii. Uh. Scorpions similarly have about zero to twelve eyes. Same thing. Some of them don't have eyes, some of them have twelve eyes. But scallops have up to a hundred eyes. So here I want to show you this picture. It's pretty beautiful. Oh that is extremely terrified. I think it's kind of neat. So you see all those little blue dots, Those are all a bits eyeballs. So they have from tint to

a hundred eyes. The scalp is found all over the world in our oceans, on our plates, if you know what I mean. Um, but imagine this next time you're eating a scalop. They just have hundreds of eyeballs. Um. They can actually swim around by opening and closing their valves there by valves, meaning they got two valves. Uh. And um, they have these eyes which tend to be brilliant blue. They look like little blueberries, but hundreds of them,

and they're all staring at you. Um. So their eyes are actually really interesting because they don't have lenses like most animals. Um. Instead, they have a concave mirror made out of guanting. And if guanting sounds familiar, that's the same protein found in DNA. But guanting crystals can form this like shiny um substance that uh, it's actually found in like on the skin of like chameleons and another things. But it can actually turn their eyes into these tiny telescopes.

So these guanting crystals form a mirror, uh, and that mirror focuses light inside of the eye, like you know, you've seen the giant mirror for the herbal telescope, and you know how that helps redirect and focus the light.

Works the same way for the scallop. And although their eyes can't make out distinct shapes, they can accurately since changes in the environment, like changes in light and dark in a shadow passing over them, and even like different water conditions, So they know like how to evade predators, or where to swim to find food, or or whether they need to avoid some poor water conditions. Um, and we don't know much about the scalop brain, but uh, like like what's happening from the eyes to the brain.

But I don't think they're very smart. Um, so it's it's but it is interesting that they're just lined with all of these kind of like century eye eyeballs. Yeah, it looks um, it looks very I guess like David Lyncheon, he's he's like the alien guy, right, yeah, with all the like weird mouth tentacles and eyeballs and uh yeah,

just think about that. Next when you get one of those nice Gordon Ramsey scalops on a plate, yep, just like how I know, like when I eat like crayfish, it's like a little little tiny eyebow stare up at me like why it's really hard? Um? All right, Next question, which animal can grow a proper handlebar mustache? Horses, Banobo's or the bornean bearded pig? Dude, do do do do do? Horses? Yes, you're wow, you're too. I just saw a viral Twitter

image of horses with mustaches and this one. Yes, yes, so the Gypsy Vanner Hort draft horse of Ireland can grow luxurious mustaches and there. They really just look like a human mustache. Paste it on a horse with no exaggeration. Um. Usually that's because like the owner styles it a little bit, like if you leave it just to grow, it turns into this big mop. But the owner will like trimming,

you know, like curl it. It just like looks like a little you know, one of those eighteen hundreds mustaches. All all these guy named Bartholo Mule. That's one dastardly horse pencil mustache. Um. Bobo's actually don't have mustaches, um, although they are one of our closest primate relatives. UM. The bornean bearded pig actually grow reverse mustaches. So they grow a bunch of hair above their nose. Well that's very weird. Yeah, yeah, they like grow this bristly hair.

That's like imagine, you know, like the bridge of your nose. Imagine if you just grew a band of hair from the bridge of your nose all the way around your chin. That's the worst. Go that's that's a the worst than Guy Fiory, though definitely worse imagine though like with like must it all over it still worse. I mean, okay, then that's worse all right, last question and This is actually inspired by uh someone, so I asked on Twitter

for some questions from people this. Madeline sent in a question. Um, but first I'm going to ask you which of these animals poop in cube shapes? Is it the naked male rat, the wombat, or bees. I'm gonna guess bees. You are incorrect, you almost got um. So it is actually the wombats uh and they are of Australia, and I'm just dangerous. They look like brownies. They do a little wombat brownies worse than accidentally eating weed brownies, even worse if the

wombat ate weed and you um so. Uh. The question from Madeline is why how is wombat poop cube shaped? Are there other animals with similar scat um and so, as far as I know, this is the only animal that creates poop shaped cubes cube shaped poop either way? Um and I did a little research on this. Uh. There's actually the conception, here's another myth that they poop and cube so that the poop doesn't roll down hills, so that they can mark their territory. I don't think

there's actually evidence that this is true. Again, it hasn't been like proven falls. It's just so I read one um biologist who studied wombats. He's like, they just poop wherever they poop, where they they poop. The cube shape isn't necessarily for marking their territory. And recently there's research by bodily fluids expert Patricia Yang and her colleagues at

the Georgia Institute of Technology in the US. You know, UM, so they shipped in in UH wombats from Australian These were actually road kill wombats because it's you can't like it's hard to source wombats, um, and so they ship them in from Australia. They examine their intestines and they found um that the cube shape is probably due to, first of all, how dry the feces are. So um

wombats are living pretty dry environments. They have to preserve a lot of moisture, so they suck a lot of the water content out of the poop as it goes through their intestines. UM, and that allows it to maybe be shaped into that more brick like UH shape. But um. One of the way the mechanism of forming it into cubes is they tested the elasticity of the intestines and most intestines have a pretty uniform elasticity, but with wombats they have these two ridges that are more elastic than

the other parts of the intestines. So they almost formed these like pockets where they like I guess, kind of get like slide around and get squished in to like a cube shape. Hands man out of intestines squishing them into here you go. Um. So there they might be poop crucibles for making the square poop um, and so that there you go. That's why I want bat is poop is cube shaped? And how it happens? Um. I didn't know I needed an answer for well, and now you do, and now you can all that sleep you've

been missing. It's because deep down you needed this answer exactly. It's question answer. No longer have to try and sleep with one eye exactly exactly. Thank you so much for joining me. Do you want to talk a little bit about your podcast, Nerdifice got anything to plug? Oh? Yeah, so Nerdificent. Uh you know, it's with me and Danny Fernandez. We do nerdy deep dives into topics and have a guest on and talk about their experience with it. It's

very casual, very fun. It's a you know, it's a nerdy podcast for everyone, whether you you know, just got interested because you saw the new Apen Marvel, or if you've been a long time person and you'd like to reminisce over you know, the good old times. And also I do a podcast called Who Shots You. It's a movie podcast with maximum fun where we you know, it's

just a it's a movie podcast that isn't just white dudes. Yeah. Um. But besides that, if you Wadyway on Twitter and Instagram, if he's on Twitch, if you like to watch people play video games, and you know, just come hang with what's your favorite like animal themed superhero? Oh, black Panther? Yeah, Nancy, because you know, I had the bonus of being an African superhero, Nigerian American. I was like, yeah, weirdly, comic

books are kind of white nails. Yeah, so not only you know, not only that we got Black Panther, you've got them pretty early too. He came out like a year after Spider Man, and you actually came out before the Black Panther party. Oh wow, I didn't know that the Panther the superhero existed before the party. So like the imagine that Hughey was at the comic book Stayings like, huh secretly a nerve? Yeah, well that's awesome. So did you You mentioned where people can find you on Twitter? Awesome.

You can find us uh, Creature feature pod dot com on Instagram, Creature Feature Pod on Twitter, Creature feat Pod, f t Don't Don't Do t um and you can find me at Katie Golden And I'm also at pro bird Rites where I am definitely a human and not a bird. Oh I saw your account the other day. Yeah, it's very it's very funny. Yeah, thank you. It's it's pretty silly. It's got a lot of misspellings which are totally on purpose. Thank you guys so much for listening.

If you're liking the pod, you can help support us by leaving a comment or giving us a rating and subscribing and all that good stuff. Thank you so much. I'll see you next Wednesday. Bye, and thanks to the Space Colssics for their awesome song Exo Lumina