Listener Q's: Bird Robots, Two Headed Snakes!

So if you have a question and you're like, hey, wait a minute, I want that answered by Katie, you can send it to me at Creature Featurepod at gmail dot com. Any questions about evolutionary biology, your pets, ammals, I will do my best to answer them as an armchair zoologist. All right, so let's get right into it, Hi, Katie. Let me start by saying that Death Bloat Corpse Parade is actually a really good pretend metal band name. I

have a question about bird sounds. Some birds can mimic or have calls that sound almost mechanical or robotic rather than melodic. Does that have something to do with the mechanics of how birds produce sound. I've wondered this for a while, but the recent mystery sound White Bell Bird reminded me. Thanks as always for the great show, Carolyn. So, Carolyn, this is a great question and one I've wondered about

many times myself. I think what have come to the conclusion is that the reason they sound more mechanical is how they can produce crisp sounds with rapid trills and fluctuations that are loud, clear, and distinct, as well as producing more than one note at a time. So when human singers produce trills, there's a sliding between notes. Now I'm not a singer, please don't laugh. This is what it kind of sounds like for you. And you're like, oh, you know, you have this sort of like in between

the notes. It's not like, oh, although really skilled operatic singers can do that quite fast, not as fast as a bird can, which makes it sound mechanical right, like it sounds like a keyboard or an instrument. It doesn't sound like something biological because it's so fast, it's so precise, and there's no sliding around. So yeah, a bird can go from one note to another extremely quickly without having

to make that slide in between the notes. So the question is this a mechanical or learned difference in bird's song versus human sounds or other mammal sounds. So surprisingly, it's actually kind of a combination of the two. It's not purely mechanical, but the mechanics are really important. It's also how birds learn. Song Birds have a syrinx instead of a larynx. The syrinx is the sound producing organ in birds, whereas the larynx is the sound producing organ

in humans and other mammals. There are some physical and mechanical differences between the syrinx of a bird and a larynx that allows birds some special techniques. So the syrinx of songbirds actually splits into two bronchial tubes, each of which can operate independently of one another. That means they can produce two notes simultaneously, something that is very difficult for a human to do. There are actually a few exceptions to this in terms of humans being able to

produce two notes at once. Tuven throat singers and other overtone singers can produce two notes at once. This is accomplished by an extremely skillful manipulation of the tongue and throat while singing to create a base, humming and overtone simultaneously. It's really really cool. It takes a lot of skill to master. Birds, of course, can do this more naturally. They also have a lot of other mechanical differences, right, They don't have lips or the shape of their mouth

openings that well. They do in a certain ways, so like a large mouth that they can open really wide can produce a louder volume. That's the case for the white bell bird. But the precise control of shaping the sound with like our mouths that we do with human language, a bird can't do. They don't have the lips for it. They also don't use their tongues as much as humans

to manipulate sounds, or as much as other mammals. They do use their tongue sometimes to shape sounds, especially parrots when they're mimicking human speech, they can use that tongue in a much rougher less We're much more skilled. We have more muscles and fine motor control over our tongues such that we can produce much mo more complex sounds

with our tongues, whereas birds can't do that. On the other hand, they can produce very complex sounds through the contraction of muscles inside the syrinx, which changes how the sound vibrates. We also do this. You can experience it yourself by humming with your mouth tightly closed. Clamp it shut. You start to hum. All of that is coming from your vocal cords, right, the vibration of your vocal cords, and you can hum pretty complex, right mmmm. It's all

coming from those vocal cords. None of that is really coming from your lips or your tongue to produce that sound. So birds are the masters at this muscle manipulation. Their syrinxes are also longer and thinner than mammalian larynxes, which makes the production of sound more efficient, so they can produce really complex, precise sounds that doesn't have as much of the fluidity perhaps as human speech. Right, Like, we have this sound that we kind of shape with our

mouths and our tongues and it comes out. And for birds, they can just kind of hit that note with shifting of those muscles from one vibration to another, which is quite uncommon for humans to be able to do. We can't a bit though, with and there are certainly people who can mimic the sounds of birds through impressive larynx control. One of my favorite recent news stories is about a little boy who learned to mimic birds in a way

that I've personally never heard before. I'll try to play a clip for you right now.

It would be more difficult for us to learn that, because as we get older, that kind of language ability, the ability to manipulate sounds and learn how to manipulate sounds, it just gets harder. It's not impossible if you want to learn how to do bird calls. Don't be discouraged if you're older. But yeah, it is easier as children,

which is interesting because birds are the same way. Young birds can learn how to make really complex song, but there's this crystallization period and after which birds really can't learn that. They're not that good at learning new songs or new noises. Parrots are something of an exception. There are some birds that can learn into adulthood new sounds, but younger birds are really really the best at it, and for some songbirds that's really the only period of

time where they can learn new sounds. Unlike humans, where we can be learners our entire lives. It just does get a little bit harder. Maybe when we're adults we have to as it's not necessarily harder to learn, because we do learn how to learn better as we get older, but it is less. We don't absorb things as instinctively as adults. We're not like a sponge, especially in terms of acquiring languages, which I'm learning as someone trying to

become good at Italian. It's so much harder now as an adult trying to learn Italian, even though I've learned how to learn. I'm probably more disciplined than I used to be in high school. But when I was in high school, with that younger brain, language acquisition was just a lot pastor came a lot more naturally to learn

these things and just have them sink in. So, if there are any kids listening, if you want to learn an instrument or learn a language and you're still a kid, you know now is the best time to do it. But it's never too late. That's the cool thing about being human is we do have a lot of neuroplasticity all throughout our lives. So it's actually it's actually fine. If you miss your chance to learn how to play the violin, you can learn as an adult. It's just

a little more challenge. Onto the next listener question. Hello, I always enjoy learning about animals, which is why I'm a big fan of Creature Feature. Thank you, thanks for doing the show. Well, thank you for listening. I've also been watching some VET shows and a recent episode that I watched had a baby two headed snake. I was wondering how common are situations like that? What would cause a snake to be born with two heads? Are other

animals ever born with two heads. Any information would be great. And here are a couple photos of my sne headed kitties, Erica, Erica, I have to admit I misread your email. At first, I thought you were saying here's a couple photo of my two headed kitties. And I was aghast and I was like, oh my god, how do you have multiple cats with two heads? Because it is very very rare for animals to be born with two heads, particularly mammals, but it does happen. Any animal can be born with

two heads. It can happen in any species, although it is extremely rare and even rarer for the individual to survive past gestation. So the key thing is it's not really one organism that has somehow decided to grow an

extra head. Right, we don't really have like a headbud, you know, Like it's sort of like with there are certain types of having an extra something that can happen, like if you have an extra finger, you know, that can happen in humans, where like with polydactylism, or you kind of have like an extra site where you have like stem cells creating another finger. Right, that's not really the case for heads, for having an entire extra head.

For both humans and any other animal, you really need to have a specific situation that would result in what's called polycephaly having more than one head. So during embryonic growth, a few things can happen to create an extra head. And it's the same types of situations that can also create conjoined twins. So an embryo while undergoing division and

development can sometimes make an error and partially split. So a full splitting of the embryo might result in identical twins, but a partial splitting can result in conjoined twins or an individual that seems to have two heads. Right. In that case, it's actually conjoined twins, but they're really limited in terms of having like one body and two heads, but they're still conjoined twins. Another situation is two embryos

that form at the same time that merge together. So normally embryos developing together that didn't result from one embryo or one blast is splitting in two are fraternal twins, so they're non identical twins. It could be a boy and a girl, they could look a little bit differently, but they are developing at the same time in utero, and so this happens with you know, it's pretty rare that that happens. But it's even more rare that these twins will actually kind of push it into each other

and sort of merge during development. Actually, there are some cases in which one of the twins it's kind of a miss. Like sometimes I hear like, oh, a twin eats another twin in utero. It's not eating. What happens is one twin absorbs the cells of the other twin almost entirely. It's called a vanishing twin. And then you really only discover it if you find maybe part of like the twins cells or organs inside the living twin later on. So it's not really eating another twin in utero.

There's nothing intentional about it. It's just at that point cells absorbing other cells. So for an animal with two heads, what could happen is these two embryos mostly merge, except for partially, you know, the part of it where they have two heads. And so again it is a case of conjoined twins, but in an extreme case where you know, there's basically one body and two heads. So these types

of genetics shenanigans are really rare. It's rarer still that one would survive two fetal maturity, and even rarer that the newborn individual would survive past that to the complications that arrived with conjoined blood vessels and a single heart pumping for more organs or body parts than it bargained for. So having two heads is a problem, mostly in terms of those structural issues that would usually result in a miscarriage. But even with a newborn it's going to make it

really hard for it to thrive. But interestingly so snakes, turtles, and other reptiles seem to have this sort of two headed, conjoined twin situation more than we see in other animals, at least like more in terms of what we observe. Why this is, I'm not one hundred percent certain. It could be that there's an increase in probability of there being an incident. Given that reptiles lay eggs. They lay a lot of eggs, and so there's two things that

go on with that, or actually three things. One is that eggs are exposed to an environment more than say an embryo that's developing in utero. The embryo developing in utero is exposed to whatever the mother is exposed to. Through eating, but an egg can be more directly affected

by environmental conditions like temperature, by pollution, et cetera. The other thing is that in utero, right, one of the interesting benefits of having a live birth is that the animal can, the organism can kind of determine whether this embryo is viable or not and whether it wants to spend the resources on it. So in some cases, the maternal body will not consciously just decide that the embryo is not viable and will do a spontaneous abortion. And

it's a natural process that happens in all mammals. All animals that are live give live birth, And this might in a lot of cases, say, happen in the case where you have like some sort of abnormality with an embryo, like an embryo splitting partially or merging or something, it may result in a miscarriage in a library animal, whereas maybe that happens less often that like in an animal

that lays eggs. Obviously it's not going to necessarily miscarry during the during the development of the egg, just whether the egg continues to develop or not. Write the maternal the mother's body doesn't really have any say in it at that point. So also they lay you know, large clutches of eggs, so you just have more chances for something interesting to happen. Now, we probably only see a great number of two headed reptiles due to the frequent

breeding and key being of reptiles. I think otherwise we probably wouldn't see that. There may be also an element of safe we're breeding them selectively, right, there might be some inbreeding. I'm not really sure. There's not like great research on this that I could find, and I was curious in say, other examples of egg laying livestock or domesticated eggling animals. It is true that like chickens will have high rates of sort of conjoined twin cases, but

usually they're not viable. Usually it's something where they either don't hatch or they die pretty shortly after hatching. So it is really interesting to me that with reptiles there does seem to be more, say snakes and turtles especially that actually survive at least a few months, if not longer, with having two heads. I don't know exactly why that is.

I couldn't find good research on that. My guess would be it has something to do with the circulatory system being more amenable to having that extra pressure of having two heads, right, and somehow it being easier to bifurcate those blood vessels. That does not arise in greater fatality rates. But I really don't know. It's a really interesting question. So, but to answer your question, it can't happen in any animal.

It's just very very rare. And the situation itself when that could happen is very rare of embryos conjoining or partially splitting, but it's even more rare that that pregnancy would come to full term, or that the egg would even hatch, and even even more rare that this animal could live, you know, and be able to say, eat or breathe normally. So yeah, very very rare, but it

does happen, which is pretty wild. And I mean, there are cases of conjoined human twins where it's they essentially have one body and two heads and you know they're conjoined. Twins are two individual people who do have complex situation in terms of internal organs, but it's not like it's not I want it to be clear that it's not

like a two headed person. These are two people and they just are conjoined, but in a very complete way where really they cannot be separated at all, right, because they're sharing a lot of organs and so it seems like it's a two headed person, but it's really two people conjoined twins. So onto the next listener question. Hi, while listening to the most recent episode, I immediately recognize the American woodcock. Please be sure to mention their flexible

beak when talking about them. I adore them. My question may be strange, but as someone who's around all kinds of animals during my life, I desperately need to know if they recognize when we repeat or mimic their sounds back at them. I'm mainly curious about cats for this question. I have a few in the home and a feral population nearby, and I'm always curious to know if they judge me or enjoy when I repeat their sounds back. But I'd love to know if different animals have different

understandings or reactions. This is from Max. My max great point about the woodcocks, So this is true. The tips of their beak have a bit of give to it, which allows them to open up just the tip of beaks, so like you press your fingers together kind of tightly, like your two index fingers together. You can kind of just open the very tip of your index fingers together, and so remember that sort of feeling of like opening your index fingers together fully and just the just kind

of the tippy tip of it. So this this is called disto. This is called distal rinko kinesis, and it's also common among sandpipers. And the reason they have this features that they can then dig their beaks into the sand and open just the tips of their beak to grab earthworms or other kinds of insects. And it makes it a lot easier, right, like if you're looking at your fingers right, it takes a lot less effort and force to just open the very tips of your fingers

versus the whole like opening up. And if you combine that with, say you have a bunch of pressure of packed sand, bird's not necessarily going to be able to open their beak fully under the ground or in sand, especially a long, thin beak, but they could just open that very tippy tip of the beak and then that's exactly what they do to snatch up their prey from

inside sand or inside dirt. So onto your question. There are definitely ways to kind of mimic animal sounds or gestures that they can understand as being in their sort of way of communication, right, including cats and dogs. So if you've ever slowly blinked at a cat and you see it blink back, that's a form of communication it understands. It's kind of a way of saying like, I'm chill, I'm relaxed, how about you, And if it blinks back,

it's kind of saying, yeah, I'm chill, I'm relaxed. It's a show of trust of you know that things are cool, like you're not anxious. Everything's cool. If you've ever fake sneezed at your dog, I mean I highly recommend it. You kind of just do it and they might sneeze

back and it's kind of a playful gesture. Or if your dog sneezes at you and you sneeze back, they might actually sort of then drop down into a play bow because they're saying, oh, you want to play I sort of as like making this fake sneeze sound, which is, hey, I'm feeling kind of playful. You sneeze back, and now I'm in a play bow with their little paws on the ground and their butts in the air because they're thinking, you just responded to my place sneeze, so you want

to play. So if you're a dog or cat owner, you probably have these like interesting little interactions all the time. You may not even maybe just natural at this point, right, but you are communicating with them using their language when you kind of learn these cues from them. Now, specifically with cats, right, Like, I mean, anyone who's had a cat or interacting with a cat, I'm sure we've all faked a mew at a cat, tried to fake a

perretta cat, right and watched their reaction. Now, it's really interesting because cats don't really mew at each other that much. They do, but like say feral cats or cats just sort of left in the company of other cats. They uh, they do me ow at each other occasionally, but the main purpose of meowing in say the ancestors of cats, the African wild cat, is to communicate between the mother

and the kittens. And then there's a lot of other vocalizations that cats might communicate with each other, either for mating or for territoriality, which is going to be more

of a growling and hissing. Right, So cats do communicate, but the kind of mews that we so associate with cats and are so frequent and adult cats seem to be unique to domesticated cats in their communications with humans because meowing at humans gets them attention and love and stuff, and it's an instinct from when their kitchen, from when they're kittens where meowing gets them attention from their mothers, and then when they're in the care of humans, it's like, hey,

I'm meowing. I'm an adult, but I'm still basically being taken care of by my human mommies. So I'm gonna keep mewing and getting attention, eating food, getting cuddles. So because of this, it's really interesting. There there is some research in terms of like how cats respond to human communication, and there's some evidence that cats can tell when a human is addressing them versus just talking to another person.

Our tones, i think change like when we look at a cat, we're like I missed the wish girls like our tones kind of change into this kind of like

baby talk cat talking. Cats, it seems, based on this research, actually respond to that they can tell that it's being addressed to them, or at least they pay more attention to those vocalizations, seem to heed them more then say the way I'm talking to you right now, it's cats may think nothing of this kind of conversation, but if I suddenly go, oh, heng you on, miss you wish girls, your cat might sort of perk up, pay a little more attention because that sounds like something that is like, Okay,

I know this, this is something that's meant for me. It's probably a learned response, right, They probably learned that these kinds of things are aimed towards them. And it's also the exaggerated change and tones. The high pitch probably also helps them be able to into it better, sort of your tone in the same way that like a high pitched meal is different from a low pitch like growling meal that's like stay back right. So, uh, when you meow at a cat, you're probably not really talking cat.

I would imagine I think you're It's it's almost the opposite, like when a cat meow's at you. They've learned how to modulate their vocalizations to be more supplicating to you. So those kind of like you know that an adult cat makes is something where it's like I've learned that they respond really well to this, and sometimes they even make these little purring sounds that are a little more whiney towards people because they found that that's more effective

to get the person to pay attention to them. So when we meow back at a cat, we're kind of like mimicking the cats who are not quite mimicking us, but the cats who have modified their language for us, So we're not doing a natural cat sound, but we're kind of playing back for them this like this sound that the adult cat has learned to make for our

for attention from us. And uh, I think probably if we're basically copying what they sound like, right Like if you're if it's a high pitched now that your cat is making when they have relaxed body language, and you kind of mimic that, or like a purring sound while they're also relaxed, because purring can be done when they're anxious. It's all a lot of this is a combination of the vocalization and their body language. You can tell when

a cat is relaxed or agitated. Uh So if you're mimicking the sounds they make when they're relaxed, they probably just see it as a way of you saying like, I'm also relaxed and I'm paying attention to you. You're not really speaking cat necessarily, but you are finding a commonality with the cat, like a common kind of way to communicate with them that you are paying attention to them,

and also that you're also chill. You're fine. Obviously. I think if you try to antagonize a cat, which I would never recommend, and you like hissed or growled at them, you could make them upset. The actual application of this is like if you have a especially with a dog

who's barking. If you yell at a dog who's barking, you're just basically encouraging them to bark more because it's like, oh, you're barking, so then or the dog is barking and then it hears you yelling, so you're matching that emotional heightened like anxiety like, oh, you know, I think something's wrong. They also think something's wrong, so I'm gonna bark even louder.

That's the same thing with cat. It's like if a cat is growling and hissing and you get really kind of severe with your voice and really intimidating sounding, they're probably going to be even more scared or be even more upset. So when you match your pet at sort of where they are in terms of if they're upset or agitated, they're going to get more upset or agitated, even if you're using human words right. In some cases, I don't know if there's been research on this. I've

just noticed it with the pets that I've had. When you have, say, if you have a pet who's scared of thunder, sometimes I mean certainly for me with my dog, I've developed a voice where it's like, oh poor baby, and you know, coddling her, and I think sometimes using that tone of voice actually makes her more anxious because she associates it with the bad thing, Like oh, right, this is what Katie sounds like when there's thunder and I'm kind of scared right now, So she hears the

oh you poor baby, and she'd get she like maybe either gets more anxious or leans into the anxiety response because she's getting attention for it. Whereas if during a thunderstorm, I kind of choose a very cheerful tone like oh hi, Cookie, how'd you go on? Cookie? And then play with her maybe try to play with a squeaky toy or act like things are fine. It tends to help her anxiety.

It doesn't make it go away, will never go away with thunderstorms, but with bad and other things like you know, stroking her back or putting on a thundershirt, those things do seem to help. In addition to a tone of voice that's like light and care free and it's like, oh, you know it's thunder it's okay. And then you know, playing with her and trying to make things seem like fun and like a game that can actually help them.

So animals are really responsive to tone of voice. Doesn't really matter if you meow at them or you use human words, it's really the tone of it. I think they respond to the most purring, if you like fake a purr at cats. I couldn't find research about this. I don't know why someone should do it, but I imagine that might actually be something that makes them feel relaxed, right, like,

because you're sort of mimicking that relaxing sound. And cats do per around like kittens will pur around their mothers when they're feeding, So I don't know that adult cats typically pur around each other. Like say, in like feral cat populations, but I think domesticated cats also, like say you have more than one cat, you might notice like, hey, these cats actually do seem to meow at each other or pur around each other. I think that's kind of

a learned response in this unusual situation of domestication. So anyways, I would say, keep meowing at your cats. I'm sure they love it as long as you're meowing in a nice way. All right, guys, So I I think the last few weeks we had a few reruns. But the mystery animal sound hint before I went on a brief break was this. This fierce little carnivore is like a wolf that you can fit in your pocket. And here is that sound now, all right, congratulations to rees I,

Rob and Ali D for guessing correctly. This is a grasshopper mouse, so they howl and this very hard to hear, high pitched frequencies. I actually got a lot of emails from people who could not hear this sound. I tried to turn the volume up a little bit. But part of it is just as are like for some people, we just can't hear these higher frequencies. For me, it's barely audible for my dog. She could certainly hear it and did not like it. So I apologize if your

dogs out there are unhappy. But yeah, they howl and these really high pitches to defend their territory. They're also fierce predators, eating in vertebrates and even smaller mice, and they stalk their prey like a wolf and pounce on them. So very terrifying but very tiny. All right, guys. So a quick programming note is I might do a few more of these listener questions episodes in a row, so please do send me your questions and I will do my very best to answer them and thank you guys

so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you leave rating or review, it's always appreciated thanks to the space cause it's for their super awesome song ex Alumina. I'll just repeat the email if this might be useful. If you do want to send in a question, you can reach me at Creature Featurepod at gmail dot com. Creature Future is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit Dieheartradio app Apple podcast or Hey guess what where of you listen to

your favorite shows. I'm not your mother. I can't tell you what to do. I can tell you, though, if you hear a tiny, high pitched owl could be a grasshopper mouse that could be trying to have you for dinner. I mean, if you're the size of a grass. See you next Wednesday.