Listener Q's: Potoos!

is this real or AI slot? So thank you for this, Will and anyone else out there. If you see something online about an animal that looks weird or too good to be true or too strange to be true, or you're trying to tell the difference between something that's fake and real, send me an email and I will try to help you out with that. So I really feel you. Because there's so much AI slop out there. It is getting harder to tell the real animals from the fakes,

which isn't great. But fortunately the video that Will scent is very real. It depicts this bird that certainly looks like a Jim Henson muppet. It does not look real. So this is a species of po to bird. These birds have huge, gaping mouths, they have giant eyes. They're mostly nocturnal. They look like owls sort of, although they are not owls. They have these beautiful camouflage feather that looks like tree bark, which allows them to perch on

stumps to blend in. They'll even lift their little heads up at an angle so that their sharp profile looks like a split piece of wood jutting out from the stump.

And they will lay their eggs on these stumps, which kind of sounds stupid, except that they carefully select a stump that has a cranny or a nook that they can wedge in the egg and when they're incubating the egg and using this amazing camouflage that makes them look like they're part of the you know, like when you see some wood and a tree's fallen or snapped in half, and the wood's uneven and there's like parts of the

bark that kind of are jutting up. The po two mimics this look by using kind of the angles of its body and then its coloration to look like a piece of bark. It's very convincing and so when it's incubating the egg, the egg's completely hidden from sight. I think I've also read that the egg can kind of look a bit like maybe some fungus on the on the bark, so that might help it, like say, if a parent is not sitting on it. So in the

video that will sit and it looks like. This is a great po two which is found in South America, and they have this really creepy call, which I'm going to play for you right now. Ah. So that's a call that was recorded in Colombia. Here's another recording that was done in Brazil, so you know that would be sort of disconcerting to hear at night. And then when

you look at them, they are also pretty creepy. Their iris is dark brown, but when their pupils are expanded, it looks like they have these huge, solid black eyes, like a doll's eyes. They're about a foot long in height with a wingspan of over two feet. They are predators and they chase after mainly large flying insects that they'll find in the rainforest, or even the occasional bat or small bird. Whatever flies in the air and can fit in their mouths. The po too will try to eat.

It's kind of terrifying to think of if you were that size, like if you're a little fairy. There's this thing that perfectly blends in with a stump, just looks like a piece of wood, and then it sits there until you fly by, and then jumps out at you with this giant, gaping, muppet like mouth and just eat your right up. So I would think, given that this bird is so strange looking and has such a kind of creepy call, that it would have a few sort of like myths about it cultural stories about it, and

I did find some. So one is that parts of its body are sometimes uses charms to ward off seduction, which I guess, you know, if we listen to that call again, Yeah, I can kind of see how that would be considered a ward against seduction. It's not a very seductive call. But there's also apparently a story told by the Shuar group a it's a group of indigenous people of the Ecuadorian Amazon. Now, I unfortunately struggle to

verify whether this is actual folklore. I could only find references to this on sort of the Park National Forest Lodge websites, So I apologize if this is not culturally accurate,

but this is what I read. In the story. A husband tries to get space from his wife by climbing up a vine, and then she follows after him, and he is frustrated with her following him, so he cuts the vine, which causes her to fall, and she's so hurt by his actions that she turns herself into a bird the po two and starts to cry out in the night, my husband husband or I shearu, I shearu.

I'm not sure if this is the actual story, but it's thought that this, like the call, is this mournful cry of this wife who was spurned by her husband. So yeah, I mean, it's a It's a fascinating looking bird. It is very real though, and it does look like something out of some strange fairy tale, a weird puppet

or maybe AI, but it is absolutely real. Just a sort of a tip with identifying AI animals, you kind of want to look for a lot of like weird smoothness, the lighting being like really perfect for a strange animal you've never seen before. Sometimes those are giveaways, right, because if there's a newly discovered animal, it's unlikely that it's

going to be in perfect studio lighting. But you know, on occasion there are animals that are well documented to have really good photos taken of them that are absolutely bizarre. So yeah, it's getting harder and harder to tell. So go ahead, and if you have any questions about things that you're not sure whether it's true or not, I'll try to look into that. Next listener question, Hi, Katie, I'm not sure if you ever want to discuss this issue on the show, because it's very dark and controversial.

I was wondering if you had any great academic resources or studies on the topic, though too many I've found have an agenda. I volunteer at an open intake municipal kill shelter with the dogs. The city requires SPAE and neuter, but it is a secondary charge, not animal control. Walking around checking to see I am in the South. She means the Southern United States. How has the North conquered this problem? We have a partner shelter that takes at least one hundred dogs from US a year and they

get adopted anyway. What are the reasons that SPAE and neuter campaigns never took hold down here in the South? I read we have more strays because we have milder winters. I know animal cruelty and hoarding exist outside this region. Attached are some shelter pups. Thank you, Caitlin. Hi, Caitlin. First of all, all the doggie is so cute, so cute.

I hope they get adopted. I understand how challenging it must be to work at a shelter knowing that not all your animals will find homes, and in order to be humane, some of these animals have to be put down. And I know there is this stigma against kill shelters. I mean, the name itself sounds very violent. It's important, I think, for people to recognize that shelter workers never

want to have to put animals down. They're not doing this, you know, for any other reason except that there's simply not infinite resources, infinite amount of space, and so if these animals aren't adopted out fast enough, you know, rather than letting this animal starved slowly to death and suffer, the decision is made to humanely put them down, which is very sad. Of course, I don't really like the

term kill shelter and no kill shelter. It just I think it would be more accurate as Caitlin kind of phrased it to say open and take shelters, or with the no kill shelters. I think a more accurate name would be limited admission private shelters, because what the no kill shelters often do is they'll reject animals coming into their shelter that they know will probably not be able to be adopted or if they don't have space, which is of course in their right. I'm not saying that

these limited admission private shelters shouldn't exist. I think they can do good work. But these animals that get rejected from the limited admission shelter have to go somewhere, and often that is like a municipal shelter also known as like a kill shelter, because they take in all of the animals that come in off the streets and because they don't again and have unlimited resources, infinite amount of space,

and they can't adopt them all out. Rather than keeping these animals in like confined conditions where they're all in tiny cages where they can't move around or they don't have enough food, they are they're euthanized, which is which is really sad, I think, but it's not it's not done out of cruelty, it's done out of compassion for

these animals. So onto the issue of how to different shelters manage to when we're talking about like municipal shelters, like why do have some have lower rates of euthanasia than others? And it's usually resources issue and the number of strays, And of course the best way to reduce the need for euthanasia and shelters is spaying and neutering programs. As our listener pointed out, so you know animals that

are both strays and those with home being sterilized. Preventing an overflow of animals like so spain and neutering programs as well as the habits of owners fixing their own pets will very regionally. Uh. There was a survey that

looked into this discrepancy. There's a paper by Carrol Glasser called Attitudes towards Spay and neuter in the US population Urban versus Rural Cat Dog and Demographic Differences, And there's some interesting results from this survey which found that there wasn't as much of a discrepancy in attitudes between oral populations and rural populations as was expected. Set there seems to be maybe more of a generational generational difference. So,

for instance, millennials, surprisingly that's my generation. They're less likely than older generations to understand spain and neuter programs like what why they're important there, or to understand what the process is. They're also more likely to be concerned about the health effects on their pets, and they're also less likely to see it as morally positive to have it done to their pets than older generations. So there seems to be sort of this like shift in attitude towards

spang and neutering to be less favorable. There's also a slight gender difference, so women are more likely to find spang and neutering to be more moral than men. I can't say why. I don't really know why that is, but I think it is interesting because the main thing is, this survey doesn't really seem to indicate that there's a difference between say, an urban setting, or a huge difference between an an urban setting and a rural setting in

terms of attitudes towards spang and neutering. But you know, this is one survey, So in terms of answering Caitlin's question, I looked into a some other research. So the first thing is to confirm that Caitlin's observations reflect a wider trend of there being more stray animals in the South versus the North, and in fact that does seem to be the case. So there was a twenty eighteen review called Dog Population and Dog Sheltering Trends in the United

States of America. This is by Andrew Rowan and Tamara Kartal. They are affiliated with the Humane Society, so you could argue that they may have some bias, but they did observe that quote. While New Hampshire and New Jersey have low intake and euthanasian rates and have significantly lower numbers of stray dogs, other states, especially in the South, report much higher numbers. So this does seem to back up Caitlin's personal observations as someone who works in a shelter.

So also, according to this review, in places like New Jersey where they have lower euthanasian numbers, there are eight wide low income spay and neuter programs, So the decrease in euthanasia seems to be driven by lower levels of animal intake to shelter. So what that means is if there's less animal intake to shelters. Usually that means there's

less of a stray population. Uh So that seems to be driving the euthanasian numbers down, which would mean there's fewer strays in these areas, which might indicate that these spay and neuter programs that are funded by the government and low income areas for low income families with pets for strays does seem to be having an impact on the amount of straight dogs in the area, And adoptions have also risen slightly, but they just don't account for

the majority of the decrease in the euthanasia rates. So I would say, given that, like you know, these both these studies seem to indicate that it's possibly more of a policy issue rather than say a cultural difference, I would say that the most likely driver for the difference between the North and the South is whether there are these statewide spaying neutering programs that cover the cost for

low income families or low income areas. Probably, if we want to see if you're animals being euthanized, we would have to increase funding for these spaying and neutering programs in these states. There might be more I'm not really sure. I'd love to hear from people who are more familiar with the politics regarding these issues in the South, but there might be more political resistance to bills that fund

these programs. Maybe there might also just be more poverty in some of these states, so that would compete with funding. So that would be my educated guests, But I am definitely not an expert on this topic. I think it's really important to talk about though, thank you Caitlin for writing in. I think it is a sensitive question, but I think that even though it's sad and it's kind

of difficult to discuss, I think it is really important. Otherwise, powerre we ever going to figure out how we can get those the shelters less full of dogs that can't be adopted, Like we can't just sweep it under the rug. And I think it's also really important to note that for so called, you know, like kill shelters, like, it's absolutely not morally wrong to adopt from these shelters that

euthanize animals. In fact, by adopting from those shelters, you are helping to reduce the number of animals that are in the shelters. And then that leaves up more space for animals, and that keeps the euthanasia numbers lower as well. So please don't just avoid municipal shelters because they use euthanasia, because those animals also need to be adopted. And it's again like the private shelters that are no kill shelters.

I'm I don't have a problem with those, but it's the animals that they reject, like they don't take in, will ultimately end up going to a municipal shelter. So it's not really that they you know, I don't know that other than the fact that these private shelters may increase capacity for their being more shelter space for dogs, they're not it's not necessarily that, you know, they are

just voluntarily not killing dogs. They are just in a position where they are able to not take in all the dogs off the streets, so they are able to not employ euthanasia. So you know, that's that's the situation. It's a it's a sad one, but yeah, I think it's a it's a really important thing to discuss, and I really appreciate you writing in and anyone else who is familiar with these issues or works in shelters or has an opinion on it. Please feel free to write

to me. I'd be really happy to hear from you. All Right, on to the next listener question. Dear Katie. Today, in an orchid house in Estepona, Spain, I learned about the parfumier bees U Glossini. I would love to know more about them, and about other artisanal wars Bauer birds and a few other artisanal courtiers I know a bit about,

but more is good, So back to Uglossini. According to Wikipedia quote, the male Euphresia proparata is highly unusual among insects and seeking out and collecting large quantities of insecticide. Dressler discovered in nineteen sixty seven e Proparada collecting aldrin and Roberts in nineteen eighty two observed them collecting DDT in huge amounts from houses in Brazil, amounting to several percent of the bees weight without suffering any harm from

the activity. Exclamation point always a fan. This is from mary Ann. Hi, mary Ann, this is a really cool topic. Thank you so much for writing to me about it. I think as much as it's important for us to reduce our the amount of pollutants like pesticides that leach out into the environment. I always find it fascinating when animals manage to adapt to the nasty stuff that we come up with. It's really really interesting. So orchid bees uglossini are a group of brilliant jewel like bees. They

have this beautiful metallic coloration. There are many species, including Euphresia preparata, so these are found in the Amazon basin in South America. They are this metallic green and indigo bee. And as listener Mary Anne pointed out, it is attracted to insecticides, including DDT, which is normally really bad news for insects and also birds. So orchid bees, the orchid bee species in general, collect scent producing compounds from flowers.

So basically the males create a perfume for themselves to attract females, storing them in their leg baskets, so they're behind legs like a lot of bee species have these little divots in them where they can store pollen among these kind of like grooves, and in these bees, the males will store basically compounds that create perfume scents and females.

These these leg baskets that the males have like they act as like diffusers sort of incense diffusers, and the females prefer males with a good cologne, and they're more likely to successfully entice a female to mate with them if they have perfume in their little leg baskets. So Euphresia proparata seems to find DDT and other types of pesticide compounds to have that genesicua poffume that smells good

to these bees. So it's similar enough to orchid compounds that they typically for them to also use that to try to attract females. And because the bees only collect a specific broken down compound from say DDT or these other pesticides, and they also don't consume it, they store it in their leg baskets, the compound does not seem

to harm them physically. Now, what I don't know is how successful it is with the ladies, whether they prefer actual orchid compounds or this kind of like pesticide knockoff. I don't know. I'd be really interested to find that out. So, guys, these were fantastic questions. I really love them. They help me learn as well, by the way, Like I have to do research for these questions to make sure I'm giving you the right answer and that helps me on my learning journey. I hope I helped you a little

bit on your learning journey. Do you have any evolutionary biology animal related questions photos of your pets? You can write to me at Creature Feature pod at gmail dot com. Again, thank you so much for these questions, and thanks for the space classics where there's super awesome song Exolumina. Creature Feature is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app Apple podcast or Hey, guess what where have you listen to

your favorite shows? I can't judge you, just don't go spraying DDT on yourself and expecting your date to go well, it only works for bees. See you next Wednesday.