Listener Q's: Otter Armpit Pockets

supposed to sleep at night. So I thought I would still do an episode this week, but make it a listener questions episode. So I hope that you guys like it. I as always really enjoy answering your questions. And if you have a question for me that is related to evolutionary biology, animals, even people, I guess you can send me an email at Creature Featurepod at gmail dot com. So let's get right into it. So this one is on the topic of otters. Hey, Katie, friend and I

were chatting about this little guy. He was saying, they have favorite rocks. I assume these are used as tools. I didn't even know that they had work pouches. And there's a link to a video of an otter stuffing stuff into its little armpit pouches. The listener continues, I was wondering, then if you knew more about what they do with these pouches and the stuff they keep in there, also if you knew more about other animals that have favorite implements that they hold on to. And this is

from PK, So yeah, otters are really interesting. They have these sort of armpits that have bit of loose skin in there, and it can envelop small items like rocks, and indeed the rocks that they collect are used to crack open buy valves and other hard shelled sea critters which they like to eat. So sometimes they will even store extra snacks in their pit pockets and they can

crack open their clams or mussels using these rocks. They can also use hard surfaces, but when they are floating out at sea, there's usually not much in terms of surfaces to be had, so keeping their little rock there with them in that pouch can be really handy tool to have when they find a tasty mussel or clam that they need to crack open on their belly. There are indeed other animals who specialize in tool use and

will retain tools that they like. There are primates who will have sort of like favorite rocks or poken sticks that they like to keep because they are really good at, say, poking through rotting wood to pick up termites or cracking open nuts. But the little utility pouch that otters have to store their rocks in is one of the cutest adaptations that I've seen in terms of toil use. But sea otters have a number of amazing adaptations for life at sea. Their feet are webbed and help with swimming,

as does their little stubby tail. They have incredibly dense fur, so they don't have any blubber unlike other types of aquatic mammals, and so they need a lot of fur to insulate them to keep them warm. So their fur is incredibly dense. They have nearly a million hairs per square inch or six and a half square centimeters of skin, so in addition to their dense coats, they have ex extremely high metabolisms to help them stay warm, and they need to consume around a fourth of their body weight

every day to maintain this internal furnace. Their jaws are really powerful. I know they look cute, but they are designed to maximize bite force, which allows them to crush the shells of bivalves or the spines of sea urchins their hands. Their forelimbs, meanwhile, are optimized for grabbing things so that they can use things like manipulate tools, and

they aren't really used for swimming. They usually keep them tucked at their side while they undulate their body and their tails and their webbed feet to be able to swim. They can also use their very large lung capacity to stay buoyant, and they can effortlessly rest by floating on

their backs. This is why the otters may hold hands with their mates, and mother see otters place their pups on their bellies, Otherwise they would get separated from their families just through casually drifting apart, but literally drifting apart

on the ocean. This is why sometimes mothers see otters will anchor their babies to like these floating kelp debris or kelp forests to have a safe point for their baby to hang out and they the mother can go and hunt for things and then return back to where she's left her baby, And sometimes they do this near humans, like in a human bay where there are boats, and then you'll see an otter place her little baby, her pup up on like some moorings or on a boat

because she is trying to keep it safe so it won't drift away while she is out collecting things. And it also helps the baby float because when they're young they struggle more to float. But yes, if you want to be a handyman like an otter, you would keep your tools in your armpits, in that flexible pouch of skin. And I highly recommend you look up videos of otters armpits. And that sounds weird and bad, but it's really cute, trust me. Next listener question, This one sent me into

an existential crisis, not really, but close. Saltier bugs will invade our home sometimes, and they seem to start out energetic and buzzy, flying into things and being weird until we a victim to the outside. But once in a while a bug will stick around, wandering the walls and slowly, slowly, slowly lose vitality until they make the great transition into the unknown. But how can you tell. I've poke bugs that have been motionless for days and they might fall

to the ground dead. But sometimes they'll startle and begin to walk. How can a creature be so apparently dead not be dead? Is life and death more of a content for some creatures? And this is from Janito m. Thank you so much for the question. Wanito. I wouldn't necessarily say that life and death is more of a continuum for some animals, but I mean one could make that argument. So death is defined as far as I understand,

like the total, irreversible cessation of biological processes. But I guess the closest you get to being dead without actually being dead is the slowing of biological processes. And this actually happens in many animals from the hibernation of certain mammals during the winter the estivation during the summer of many species of reptiles and amphibians. By the way, estivation and hibernation are only distinct in terms of this season.

So like hibernation is done during the winter during cold temperatures, estivation is done during the summer or during warm temperatures. Also torpoor, which is a more generalized term for the reduction of physiological activity to conserve energy. So an animal can go into torpoor daily, it can go into torpoor a few days at a time, a few weeks at a time, maybe even a few months at a time.

So insects can hibernate, they can estimate, and they can go into torpoor daily torpor or torpor for any number of days or period of time. So none of these insects or even animals that we talk about when they go into torpoor really quote unquote come back from the dead, even though it really seems that way sometimes because death

again is the complete irreversible cessation of biological processes. So like I feel, I mean, maybe this is pedantic, I don't really know, but like when someone says that they died on the operating table or something, I personally wouldn't really define that as death, say, even if your heart stops, because it's not an irreversible cessation of your biological processes because you're brought back to life in that situation. But I'm not here to gate keep death. I guess that's

not that's not my job. But yeah, so I would say that these insects do not really come back from the dead, but some come pretty close. So the mountain Stone Wetta of New Zealand must survive very very cold temperatures, so wettas. If you don't know, they look like these really large fat crickets. They're quite big. They're about the size of like an adult's palm. But in New Zealand, this species, the mountain stone wetta, lives in the mountains

and it gets quite cold. You've seen Lord of the Rings, you know that New Zealand ranges from being these beautiful rolling green hills to cold mountainous regions with snow. So they freeze in icing conditions in the mountains, but somehow they don't die. So proteins in their hemal lymph so hemal imph is essentially blood for insects, these proteins in

their hemal liff prevent their cells from forming ice crystals. Now, if you're been listening to the show for a while, you might say that this sounds similar to the wood frog, which also can be frozen and similarly not dye and also has kind of like anti freeze like proteins and sugars in its blood. Very similar, very similar, of course, different evolutionary paths, completely different evolutionary paths, but they've both

come to this in a sort of a convergent evolution. Yeah, so these these wettas will freeze and the proteins in their hemolymph prevent ice crystals from forming in their cells, So that means that when they thaw, these ice crystals don't explode their cells, which is very important if you want to keep living. So they can spend up to two and a half weeks in the state of being frozen solid at a time, and I would say this

is not really death. This is more suspended animation, the difference being that death is permanent and suspended animation can potentially be reversed. And so when it warms up, these wedahs will thaw out and they will start moving again.

And it is really really interesting. I mean, it does I suppose somewhat blur the lines between life and death, because you can have your biological processes slow or even stop without really being dead, because if there is a chance or a good chance that you will reverse that, right then you are not technically dead. I don't think, but I don't really know what that means for people.

Like if you could freeze a person before they've died, or as they're dying, cryogenically freezing someone, would that person not be dead if there's some hope in the future that they could be revived. I don't know, interesting thought experiment. I just know that a certain someone who invented a certain mouse is probably frozen somewhere and will be revived in the future to take over the world. Which mouse am I talking about? You couldn't. You couldn't say, and

so I'm unsuable onto the next listener question. Hi Katie, thank you for your explanation about bird bones. I didn't have a clear idea of how it works, and now my understanding is better. But as often happens, as soon as I learn something new, I have more questions. Without diaformatic pumping, does that er in the bone stagnate? Do birds have other muscle groups or some other mechanism to somehow keep the air inside this non flexible bone structure circulating?

Is it more about buoyancy so it doesn't really matter. This is from Amanda M. Hi Amanda, thank you so much for this question. I am very happy to clarify if I am able to. So It's true that birds don't have diaphragms like mammals, but like you guessed, they do have muscles that move to fill the air sacks that they have inside their bodies, facilitating the flow of

air in and out. So essentially, when you look at a bird, they have these air sacks both in the front of their body and in the back of their body, and they have lungs kind of in the center. But they also have these pneumatic bones, pneumatized bones, and in these bones, they're not completely hollow, but they have these huge air pockets. So they look sort of like a fluffy sour dough bread, except you know, it's hard and bone. And so inside of their bones there's space for air.

And I mentioned previously on the Listener Questions episode that this air can help increase sort of the total abundancy of air circulating through the bird's body. So to understand how this works, let's talk a little bit more about how the bird's respiratory system works. So essentially, muscles expand the chest cavity, which fills the air sacks, and then to deflate the air sacks to exhale. Essentially, these skeletal muscles will compress their lungs, however, remain inflated throughout this

whole process. They don't inflate and deflate like our lungs. There's a constant flow of air from these air sacks that kind of move in sequence that continuously ventilate the lungs. This allows a greater efficiency and a greater intake of oxygen, which is a really important adaptation for the rigors of flight, particularly for birds who fly at high altitudes and have no problem so their bones being quote unquote hollow in that they actually have extra space inside, but of course

they're not entirely hollow. They have struts, and there are some bones that birds have that are not hollow at all. They have marrow. They produce the cells, the sort of immune cells and blood cells inside of the marrow, just as we do. But there are bones in the bird's body that are pneumatized that have this sort of bubbly space inside, so this allows air to enter the bones, and the bones are actually connected to the respiratory system

through fleshy tub being called diverticula. So the diverticula connect to the bird's air sacks and lungs, so the air inside the skeleton is connected to the rest of the respiratory system, so this air doesn't get stale. It's connected to the airflow of the rest of the respiratory system. So we actually do have some pneumatized bones in our sinuses which helps airflow into our respiratory system. Just the difference between us and birds is that birds have these

air canals throughout their skeletons. Onto the next list and heer question. Just finish your episode about extraterrestrial like animals, and you mentioned a fact about the platypus that I hadn't been aware of. You mentioned that it has the ability to sense things by their electrical charges from sensors in its bill. Is this the same sensors that sharks have the ampules of Lorenzini. I'm one hundred percent certain I'm misspelling it, but hopefully you know what I'm talking about. Eh,

it's a tough word, I understand. Or if it's not the same, is it similar? Feel free to use this for you listener questions episode. Thanks again for your five star podcast. Your fan Dan, Hi, Dan, this is a fantastic question. So both sharks and platypuses are capable of

electro reception, the ability to detect electrical fields. This is also true of other animals including echidnas, lungfishes, rays, So sharks raise lungfishes, echidnas, and platypuses are capable of what's known as passive electrolocation, meaning they have organs that can

pick up electrical signals without sending anything out. There's also something called active electrolocation, which is when the animal generates an electrical field and uses that to detect its environment through the interference of the electrical field with things in its environment such as other animals or obstacles or whatever. So this is much like a bat who sends out sound a you know, basically a sonar ping that bounce off bounces off something in its environment and then they

listen for it with their ears. These active electrolocation species will send out an electrical field and then they sense when it bounces back to them as having an interference. So animals who do active electrolocation include elephant fish, electric rays, skates, electric eels, electric catfishes, and knife fishes. So let's talk about the ampulaa of Lorenzini. So ampulae of Lorenzini are sensory organs that detect electrical signals, and these are specific

to sharks, rays, skates, and lungfishes. Platypuses, meanwhile, do have electro receptive organs of its own in its bill that evolved independently. So these are distinct from the ampulae of Lorenzini, but researchers have noted that they are somewhat similar structures, and so that actually, I think was one of the reasons they were interested in whether these could be capable of a lecture reception, So they are somewhat structurally similar.

The sensory organs and platypuses are actually modified mucous glands. So these mucus glands would keep the bill moist, but these ones have been modified to actually be able to detect electrical pulses. So they are arranged in stripes along the bill, which is useful when you're trying to detect where the electrical signal is coming from, because you have an array of these sensory organs and then you can kind of know, like well, which ones are being activated,

and then you know which direction it's coming from. These are then attached to nerves. Now species of Echidna have the same system, but it's not nearly as well developed as the platypus. Platypuses have around forty thousand electro receptors versus echidnas who only have hundreds to a couple thousand. It's not super clear how much akinnas use these electroceptors, but platypuses definitely use them. And it's helpful for platypuses

because they live in muddy environments. The waters that they swim around and are often muddy and silty, so it would be hard to see something your prey like invertebrates, worms, small fish, and so they can use this electroception to see in otherwise visually unclear environments. Next listener question, Hey Katie, it's the puppet person again. Okay, note from me, Katie. This is a listener who sent me this amazing photo

of a drag a massive dragon puppet. It was like the size of two people that looked like it was made out of coconut crab exoskeletons. Really cool. Love it? Love a crab dragon all right. Back to the email. I've had an animal question flow. I'm partly formed around my head for a while, and today I found a way to express it. Why do so many patterns on secretors look like the patterns created by the magnetic fields

in this video? And they linked a really cool looking video of I think ferro fluid forming some patterns on like this microscope slide in a magnetic field. Back to the email. This video is the strongest example I've seen, but I've seen similarities while playing with both ferro fluids and the way sand arranges itself on a metal plate near speaker playing a clear tone. It's possible there is no link, but they do seem strikingly similar. I figured you have contact with a lot of weird corners of

the animal world, so might have some answers. Also, we made another animal puppet film. This one's about bets. I'm going to thoroughly enjoy this bat's videos. Cheers. This is from IZZYB. So this is a big question and it might be a little over my head because it has to do with mathematics, which I'm all right at but you know, I'm not a mathematician. In fact, this was something that Alan Turing was interested in and came up with a theory about regarding zebra fish's patterns. So modern

biologists have actually looked at Alan Tering's theories there. It's very interesting because Alan Turing was definitely on the right track, but he was mostly wrong. But it really interestingly he was kind of like coincidentally, not not quite coincidentally, but like he was, he opened up the path for figuring

out how this actually works. So basically, there are diffusion models based on reaction diffusion of chemicals, like these movements of chemicals of the molecules that result in these patterns. So in the case of a living organism, it might be the cells under development doing some kind of movement and there being some kind of pattern of interactions of movement of these cells which would result in the generation of asymmetrical patterns that we see in fish, in reptiles,

in you know, so many animals. But in fact, even though these patterns look very much like a reaction to fusion pattern at least in zebra fish, researchers of you know, modern day researchers have found that these are not actually the results of cell movement of cells sort of like moving around and interacting with each other, but cell growth,

which is kind of an interesting distinction. So essentially, there are rules in the way that developing skin cells and pigment cells interact with each other as they're growing and developing, and these rules in terms that guides like how these cells will interact with each other and grow next to

each other create these patterns. So it's basically the interference of these cells as they're growing and what you see with things like magnetic fields, or say you put sand on speakers and you see these like sound fields and stuff. You're getting kind of interference patterns. So same thing in terms of like water or laser. It's not necessarily all

them following the same rules of interaction. You're gonna have different rules with like interference of say photons versus water, versus sound waves versus magnetic fields, but they all are forming these interference patterns, and it is really interesting that you see somewhat similar patterns emerge with interference patterns, even though they're maybe following slightly different rules. But yeah, essentially

probably what's happening with cells and animals. You're getting this interference pattern not through movement, but through these rules that they follow chemical when they are developing and growing next to each other and basically interfering with each other's growth and influencing how they grow. It's sort of like there was this really old video game, I think just called Life.

There was just some pixels on the screen, but pixels would have just a few simple rules when they would like interact with each other and that would result in these interesting patterns, and so it's kind of the same thing going on here. If there are any like actual legit mathematicians out there who study this kind of thing about, like or physicians particle physicists, although I do know on I guess I could call him up and ask him.

But yeah, if any of you understand the math or the science of interference patterns and you want to write into me, I would love to read your perspective, because this is definitely a little over my head. But I'm hoping I'm giving a decent enough explanation, and I'm you know, I'm kind of guessing as well, Like you know, I

don't know. I just assume that, you know, when you have sort of an interference pattern with one thing is kind of partially coincidence but partially not coincidence, where you have similar patterns emerge from, you know, even different types of interference mechanisms. All right, So thank you guys so much for your questions. Love answering them before we go. I do have so we play game every week called Guess Hugh Squawkin the Mystery Animal Sound game. I don't

want to answer it this time. I want to wait until I have a guest on. So sorry for keeping you on tinter hooks. I know everyone's biting their nails about what animal is making this sound? Just the biggest cliffhanger in history. Anyways, here was the hint for the last mystery animal sound. Squeakers here doesn't like being handled. In fact, his own hands have turned into something else. If you can guess who is making that sound, you can write to me at Creature Featurepod at gmail dot com.

Next week, I am probably gonna have a guest on the show, so we're going to go back to the OG format of the show. But I do these listener questions episodes every so often. Again, if you have a question that you would like me to answer, you can email me at Creature Featurepod at gmail dot com. Thank

you guys so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you leave a ratio review, I read every single review and I appreciate all the feedback, and thank you so much to the Space Classics for theirs super awesome song. XO Lumina. Creature Feature is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, Visit the Ihart Radio, ap Apple podcast or are you guess what? Where? Have you listen to your favorite shows? I don't judge yet, See you next Wednesday.