Listener Q’s For the New Year

Got a whole bunch of new creature features coming up in the year, you know, every Wednesday and so on. But yeah, I'm probably right now as you're listening to this, I'm probably full of some kind of beverage, eating some kind of snacks. So uh, you know, I'll be back

in the saddle pretty soon. I think next week I'm gonna air a creature classic that I pull out from the archives and the archives from the old vintage the seller, the pod Seller, where I've got a bunch of pods aging and brewing and growing mold, but tasteful mold mold that you find on fancy cheese. So look forward to that. I hope you guys all had a good holiday season. Oh let's let's get right into it. Let me answer so your question as Hi, Katie, please hear me out.

I love my pets. They are annoying, They demand a lot of time and attention, they don't really do much, and I devote a lot of time and resources to making sure that they are all as happy as possible. If I died, they would probably eat my corpse within minutes. Sure, I get a dopamine hint when I pet them, and sure, occasionally the cats even seem to like me. But the fish exist only to entertain the cats. And don't get me started on the dog. She is constantly trying to

eat as much garlic and plastic as possible. The struggle is just keeping her alive. Am I being used? If one of them wanted to replace my tongue, I'd at least consider it. Sounds like a parasite to me. Thanks, Will, So, thank you for the question. Will. Uh. Yeah, I think I've gotten a similar question about whether dogs are parasites. And I'm always interested in talking about the nature of

our relationships with animals because they're interesting and complicated. So first, let me do a little refresher on what isn't isn't a parasite and how biology defines relationships, So any close relationship between two or more organisms or species is called symbiosis. This could be the relationship between bees and flowers, or

a tick on a dog. Symbiosis describes a whole variety of relationships, from mutualism where both organisms benefit such as the bee and the flower, to parasitism, where only one organism benefits at the expense of the other, like that tick on your dog. In Between these two poles is another type of relationship called commence ali is um, where one organism benefits while the other has a neutral outcome.

So an example of this would be the cattle egret, which is a bird that hangs around unguluts hooved mammals and it waits for them to walk around and graze on grass, at which point the egret will eat the insects, fleeing the cattle. So the cattle doesn't really benefit, but no harm comes to the cattle while the e grit benefits,

and this is a commensil relationship. So relationships between organisms and animals is not typically simple, and this can result in a lot of debate about the nature of a relationship. So an example of this is whether oxpeckers are parasites or mutualistic. We actually just talked about them on the show. They're those birds who eat pests off the backs of rhinos and other large mammals, but they also occasionally occasionally

drink some of their hosts blood. And whether they benefit their host more than they harm them maybe up to some debate. So our pets parasites, are they mutualistic or commence al. One approach to answering this is to look at the history of dow geese and kiddies. So the origin of domesticated pets such as dogs and cats may

have started out as a commence al relationship. The early wolf ancestors of dogs may have domesticated themselves to some extent, with only the most calm, unafraid, and non aggressive wolf like ancestors venturing near human camps to eat things like discarded food left behind. This would have benefited these early wolves while not really affecting humans one way or the other, which would have made it a commensal symbiosis. But our relationship changed as humans may have started to interact with

these proto dogs more, maybe sharing food with them. Intentionally making them more dependent on us, maybe even selecting the proto dogs least likely to bite us. And over time, we really did domesticate these dogs, We engineered them even more precisely to do things like herd cattle or kill rats, protect us, and you know, entertain us, be our companions.

So it could be a case that these very early wolf like ancestors had a commensal relationship with us that turned into a mutualistic relationship over time as we started to capitalize on what dogs could provide for us. Cats actually probably were more likely to start out with a more mutualistic relationship with us because they were probably drawn to human settlements due to the rats and mice that

we're eating our food stores. And if they were eating the rats and mice, we would have benefited from that pretty immediately. And then of course we may have started to give them food intentionally to attract more cats to us because they got rid of rats and mice, which was good for us because it prevented the spread of

disease and protected our food. Uh. And so yeah, I mean it's uh in terms of where our relationships are with cats and dogs, now, I would still describe it as mutualistic both from a biological and I guess philosophical perspective.

Cat and dog populations are massive compared to their wild counterparts, which really shows how beneficial their relationship has been with humans and our quality of life as humans has also improved due to the domestication of dogs and cats, who have helped their society in terms of tasks like farming, protection, pest control, hurting cattle. Anonymal or emotional level, they are

companions who can make us happier and healthier. And in terms of the cats and dogs, maybe eating us after we die, it does happen, but that may not really change the nature of our relationship. And let me explain it by talking about our complicated relationship with domesticated animals that we don't typically keep as pets. So while it may seem strange, even our relationship with other domesticated animals could be viewed as mutualism. Even those that we eat,

such as cows, pigs, chickens, and sheep. We provide them food, shelter, and mating opportunities, while they provide us with meat or maybe even woolen eggs. Uh. In this case, we're looking at the symbiosis between humans and domesticated animals on a species level, not on an individual level. So mutualistic relationships aren't necessarily about the quality of life or morality. It's

about whether a species survives. So due to human farming, the chicken population exploded, meaning it's quote unquote good for the species. But this doesn't mean each chicken has a happy life. For chicken farming is good for the environment or anything else. It's just saying that because humans domesticated chickens and breed them, we propagate more chickens. It's an a moral argument. So while we can describe the biological nature of this relationship is mutualistic, the morality of the

situation is more complicated. Obviously, so when evolutionary biologists talk about the success of an animal, it's more about the animal being able to reproduce successfully, but giving an animal a good quality of life is more of a moral question. So that's all to say that if your cat or your dog eats your corpse after you die, it actually makes no impact on the existing mutualistic relationship. In fact, compared to our domesticated animal example, it's less impactful because

they didn't even slaughter you for your meat. They just patiently awaited your natural device, which I think is kind of white. So if you are enjoying the company of your pets and they're enjoying yours as well as the food you give them and the fish, entertainment and all of love and cuddles, I think you're probably in a healthy mutualistic relationship. And your pets did not pay me to say this. Next question, Next Question. That's my song

called next Question, So here it is. Hi Katie. First, I wanted to say that I am a big fan of the show. It's definitely my Wednesday treat. Well, thank you. One question that I've had is are there animals that work out? I get that some animals may play fight or do something similar that builds skills, but do any animals do any kind of activity that solely builds muscle or slowly builds muscle? Get it? Anyways, So thanks again

from Christian Thor. That's a very Thor is a good name for question about animals working out, So I love this question. Do animals get swolled? Do they work out? Do they go to the gym? Do they cross fit? So? Lots of animals can be very muscular, but typically it's due to their intense daily lives and maintaining a nutritional diet. Even early humans were probably pretty fit and muscular, but

more lean muscles. So as long as we had enough food from the daily walking, running and physical exertion it took to survive, we probably had a pretty lean, leanly muscled physique. Uh. Now, obviously a lot of humans have cushier lifestyles and we're not forced to walk miles and miles every day, or climb things, or jump over rivers, or do long distance running to chase down prey. So if we want to make sure that we build muscle

or stay fit, we have to do it intentionally. That said, I don't think that early humans were actually getting swollen. They probably weren't building a lot of muscle. There probably just wasn't time or resources to do that, and it didn't necessarily benefit them. They were probably more lithe and sinewy, especially our ancestors and hotter climates, who really had to do this long distance kind of jog running where we would literally just out endurance prey until they tired out.

Because we weren't the fastest, we weren't the strongest, but we were the smartest and most stubborn. So uh another this is a guess. Kind of a side note, but the reason we aren't just naturally swollen muscular like guerrillas or lean and muscular like chimpanzees is our genetics. So humans actually have a higher body fat percentage than our primate relatives. Naturally, we have a genutation that makes us store more fat as white fat than our ape cousins.

So human healthy body fat percentage has a pretty wide range generally speaking. I mean, I'm not a doctor, take that in mind, but generally speaking, it's around to over um, whereas other primates only tend to have around a nine percent body fat ratio. So researchers speculate that our ability to turn food into fat stores was important to keep

our freakishly huge brains nourished. Instead of burning off fat for warmth immediately, human store as white fat, and those stores can keep our incredibly big and energy demanding brains fed. So that means that when we don't have to constantly walk or run, and we also have this natural tendency to have higher body fat percentage to like build visible muscle that you can see you really that takes this effort of going to the gym, eating a lot, going

to the gym. These are not really natural behaviors for humans, and they're not natural behaviors for animals. Not being natural doesn't mean it's bad or anything, by the way, I'm just saying it's not. You know, we didn't we didn't have gym's back when we were nomadic humans, although it's hard to know, we may have had some kind of sports or fun play activities. Most animals do not have

to work out to develop their muscles. They just build them naturally with eating, normal activity, and their physiology like hormones, so their hormones can regulate their muscle mass and metabolism without them ever having to go on a treadmill. A really incredible example of this are Barnacle Geese. They go on these mass migrations every year, and you would think that they would need to work out before going on

these long distance flights, but they do not. Even though they don't work out, their wing muscles and their heart muscles actually get more conditioned and bigger right before their migration without them doing any kind of like extra physical activity.

And the reason for this is there's some kind of environmental change that triggers some kind of hormone that changes their metabolism so that they're eating a little more, and then that eating converts into bigger muscle mass, more conditioned heart mass, which you know, doesn't seem really fair, probably especially around the holidays where we gotta keep track of our heart health and stuff as we're eating all these rich foods, and a barnacle goose can just eat a

bunch and have good card. It's it's not fair. It's not fair, but you know, nature is not fair, I guess, So again back circling back to your question, because I've kind of been eating it a little bit. Do any animals work out and strengthen and build muscles. It's a

really good question because it's been very sparsely studied. So there was an article published in in the British Ecological Society that was actually bemoaning the lack of research on whether some animals have to intentionally exercise before beyond their normal daily activity. And you know, other than this like it. It does actually seem to be kind of a blind spot and research admittedly it's probably pretty difficult to research. The only real evidence that I personally have seen this

doesn't mean it's not out there. So because I you know, I am, I am fallible in my research ability. But the only real evidence that I've seen are what was a study that put exercise wheels outside, like little hamster wheels outside to see what the wild mouse population would do, and they found out wild mice, undomesticated, just wild little mousies would use these hamster wheels as free gems. So they loved these hamster wheels. They would get on, they

would exercise for no discernible reason. And of course this isn't really answering the question do they get swollen? You know, do they do this to build bustle, because we don't really know why these wild mice are doing it. It may be that they are not intentionally trying to work out, but instead there chasing that runners high that release of dopamine that when they run, they get this dopamine rush, just like humans do, and just like hamsters do and

their hamster wheels. And the only other guests I would have of an animal that may work out would maybe be dolphins. And this is a bit of a shot in the dark, because dolphins will sometimes jump out of the water. I mean probably seeing that a dolphin majestically leaping out of the water, and researchers haven't really pinpointed exactly why they do this. There are a lot of theories. But maybe because this is something that requires so much you know, abdominal strength and it's it's a you know,

energy demanding activity. Maybe it's some form of working out. Maybe they enjoy the physical stunt. There's no evidence for that. Uh, that is completely a shot in the dark. But since it is such a mystery what this behavior is, it's possible. So long story short, humans are the only animals that we know of who intentionally work out to build muscle, and early in our evolution we probably didn't do this.

We probably just were happy enough to try to retain the amount of muscle mass and fact that we had based on our food source and all of the walking and running we had to do. And this probably didn't make us swell, probably make a super muscular That being like super muscular, really muscled is more of a recent human tradition, I suppose tradition, not really you know, habit activity, life style choice, I don't know, but yeah, And then also genetic mutations gave us a higher body fat percentage

than like, you know, uh, primate relatives. So yeah, I mean it is we cannot judge our human body types on other animals where unique, uh, and our evolutionary history is very unique. And yeah, our our desire to go to the gym in shape our bodies are its kind of a it's kind of a bit of a strange quirk, I guess for humans. So yeah, it's also you know, probably in terms of human history, it's probably It's is

also a quirk of our current society. You know, like different types of body types go in and out of fash and throughout human history. So you know, don't be too jealous of article geese, is I guess what I'm trying to say. Actually, I'm pretty jealous of article geese. Anyways, Next questions questions in disguise. Okay, hey Katie, I love the squirrel episode. I never knew there were so many insane squirrels out there. I have a question. When I was a kid, my mom took a course to become

a wildlife rehabilitator. She would bring home orphan baby birds, all and squirrels from the rescue center, and my brother and I would help feed and care for them, and then, because we lived out in the sticks, we would release them in the backyard. A lot of the critters we

set free would come back for handouts. One time, after I had given one of our squirrels such a handout, I watched her dig a little hole nearby, pretend to put the peanut down, and then made a show of patting all the dirt over the whole with great care. I could see her running away with the peanut still in her mouth, so I went and inspected the whole. It was, of course empty. At the time, I thought the fool had forgotten to actually put in the nut.

Now I see I have been pranked. What kinds of pranks are other animals pulling on each other or us out there? I would love to know that I am not the only fool who fell for one. Thanks p S. Because we would sometimes get very small babies, we would have to bring them with us if we were going out of the house for too long to keep up with their feedings. One time we had a box of squirrels with us and had to stop the grocery store.

But we couldn't leave them in the hot car, so I dumped all the babies into my sweatshirt before going inside. Even very young squirrels are great at clinging to fabric with their hooked nails, and they were happy to crawl around in my shirt and peek out of my sleeves and collar. Many double takes from the other customers happened that day. It was great. I thought you would appreciate that and maybe even think I was cool, because the kids at my school definitely didn't. Anyways, love the show.

I am always very excited for Wednesday's all the best. Jata, thank you so much for that story. I love Oh my god, the little little squirrels poking out of your shirt. That's that's incredible. I would have been your friend in school for sure. So yeah, onto your question. I think this was based on the squirrel episode we did a little while back, and I have to catch up on emails, but yeah, I know this is a great question. And the point you were making about, uh, the squirrel intentionally

not putting the peanut in the hall. That was something we talked about during the episode where squirrels will pretend to dig a hole and pretend to put a nut in the hole, but that is just a trick to keep other squirrels who may be spying on them from knowing where they're bearing their nuts. And it is a quote unquote prank in the sense that they are tricking other squirrels in order to protect their resources. And as you'll see in these other samples will bring up of

animals pulling pranks. Animal pranks usually have some kind of intention other than just sort of the like prank you of human pranks, which are kind of pointless and sometimes mean. I don't know. I guess you can do a non mean prank, but I don't like mean pranks. Don't don't do mean pranks. I think a really good prank is something you can both laugh at and does not maybe causes the other person at most a mild surprise, but not don't you know, don't upset people Anyways, These pranks

are uh definitely not done out of empathy. So yes, there are animals who pull pranks, so to speak. Male topy antelopes like to prank females in short, because they're a holes. They want to keep females within their territory as long as possible to increase the chance of mating. If the female begins to wander away, due to disinterest.

The male will run out in front of her, looking in the direction of where she's going, while snorting, stomping, and keeping his ears alert, pretending as if a predator were lurking in that direction, and it's just a ruse to keep the female from leaving his territory. The males will only do this fake warning behavior when the females are in heat, demonstrating how targeted it is towards tricking their mates into staying longer and maybe mating with them,

which I think is a toxic relationship. Girl, you can do better. Get out of there. Dump. Um so uh, Actually, my dog does something very similar whenever we're trying to leave the apartment. Every single time we try to leave the apartment, she'll start growling, her hair will stand on in she like makes these sort of runs towards the door as if she has spotted some kind of danger outside.

And I am a hundred percent convinced that she is doing this, as you know, trying to trick us into thinking there's some danger outside and we have to stay in and stay with her and give her more treats and pets and attention. But I'm onto her. Oh yes, I'm slightly smarter than a dog. Here's another fun prank of the animal kingdom. Tufted capuchin monkeys, which are adorable, cute little monkeys, will do fake alarm cries to trick other monkeys so they can swoop in and sneak food away.

So there was a study done that found this was especially true of these scrawnier monkeys who were not able

to compete with the bigger monkeys or jock monkeys. So these scrawny monkeys tired of never being able to get the bananas that the experimenters would put in their environment, uh, they would issue these fake alarm calls, like they would cry cry wolf, like say hey there's hawk or some kind of dangerous predator nearby, and that would distract the jock monkeys long enough that these little nerd monkeys got to go in and grab the bananas for themselves, probably

play some monkey D and D. You know, I had a good monkey time until the bigger monkeys probably came back. He's like, hey, where's my bananas? Anyways, So one man's prank is another man's banana. Yeah, I think that's the lesson. So before we go, I'm going to do this week's game of Guess who squawk and the Mystery Animal Sound Game. So last week's hint was as adults, they look like a beautiful sunset, but as babies, they just don't want to be someone else's grub. So I'm going to insert

the winners here. I am actually recording this ahead of time, so I don't know if I'll have my microphone, so it's either going to be my voice with a crappy microphone, or maybe robot Katie saying the winners of last week's animal Mystery sound game. Congratulations to Antib the winner for this week. The answer is the Taiwanese squeaking silk moth caterpillar. These plump, green, fussy babies issue a little squeak when poked.

So this sound actually doesn't come out of their mouths, but out of tiny breathing holes called spiracles in their sides that they force air out of, like fleshy bagpipes. It's a spirical miracle. The squeak is meant to startle birds or other predators in the hopes that they will leave them alone, so very cute squeaks just like caterpillar bagpipes. So onto this week's sound. The hint is this is a trio of big babies who really wish you understood

their point. Well, good luck guessing that. One um, the answer will be revealed. Uh, let's see either next week or well, next week I might play a classic. So if I do play a classic, the actual answer will be revealed two weeks from now. Don't worry, you'll find out what this mystery animal sound is. And hey, guys, I really hope that you've all had good holidays and that your next year has filled with wonderful, wonderful times,

wonderful good times. Uh. And I really appreciate what you guys have done for me in terms of listening to my podcast. It means so much to me. I really enjoyed doing this and I really love hearing from you guys, all your animals, guesses, all your questions. It warms swarms my warms my heart, which is probably full of parasites, but you know, it still warms it. Uh. So thank

you so much for listening. If you think you know the answer to this week's animal mry sound game, if you want to write in a question or just say hi, you can email me at Creature Feature Pod act Gmail dot com. I can sometimes be a little slow in responding to things, but I try to get there eventually. You can also Hey, hang out at on Twitter website Creature Feet Pod. That's f a T not at the teeth, only very different. I'm also on Instagram at Creature feature Pod.

Uh and thank you so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you leave a rating a review, I read all of the reviews, every single one of them. I print them out. I like toss them on the bed like it's a big pile of money, and I go like like I'm rich baby, and I tossed him up in the air like I'm that kid from blank Check movie. Remember that movie was decent director v HS movie anyways. Uh And thanks to the Space Cossics for

their super awesome song excel. Luminous Creature features a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or Hey Guess what, Maybe listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.