Listener Questions: From Aircrafts to Zebras!

and existential questions about evolution. Discover the summores, me answer the truly age old questions zebras black with white stripes or white with black stripes and are they related to the band The White Stripes. So here is my first email. Hello Katie and the rest of the Creature Feature team. My name is Ayumi. She knows z Aki, she her,

and I love your podcast so much. I've been trying to catch up on the pod, but also keep listening to newer episodes immediately and I'm just endlessly delighted with the je episode. Thank you. I am writing this after having listened to your delightful Bunny episode with Joel Monique, who was also delightful. I agree Joel is delightful. So first, a kind of response Firstly, of course, Pika in terms of the written form, looks similar to Pikachu, but has

a different pronunciation. Pikachu's name comes from pika, pika and automonopeia for sparkling or shocking all that makes sense, and chow the automonopeia for mice equivalent to squeak, so you could say Pikachu's name means spark squeak or light squeak. I love that. Also, you made comments about rabbits having ears big enough to fly, and it made me think of something interesting about Japanese and rabbits. One of the most complicated aspects of the language is that we have

a million ways to count things. Sure, there's a standard way to go one to three, but we have a different word to count balls versus sticks versus chop sticks, and in that regard, we have a different counter for animals and other non humans versus birds. Like you can count birds with the standard epiki niki san biki, but

why would you. Rabbits are special in that they are not birds, but they also have traditionally been counted with the bird counter ichi niua sanba because in the past, when there have been bands on eating meat, bird meat was not considered part of that legal definition. It's considered different the way some people today might not quote eat meat but eat fish no problem. So since rabbits have these long ears that could be seen as wings, we

counted them legally as birds and ate them up. Oh no, Also, I have some questions. First question, A lot of robots in sci fi are made to look like humans. But what animals do you think, structurally would make a good robot inspiration. I know there are robot dogs, but they seem to all be cops for some reason. Second question, I have a podcast dedicated to the magic called girl genre, and one aspect of the genre are mascots, which stem

from the idea of which is familiars. While the most famous is alien cat Luna from Sailor Moon and her Family. Over the years, many magical girls before and since have had animal companions, some of whom are distinctly based on specific animals, and others that are vaguely an amalgamation of them. Are there any animals you think who would look like great companions to magical girls, whether they fight crime or simply want to use magic while living more or less

a mundane existence. I hope you're having a swell day full of burbs au me she no Zaki. Thank you so much for all those cool linguistic facts and am I love that rabbits were kind of classified as birds just so you could eat them, poor buddies. But they do have those big years, which I guess could be

mistaken for wings. So in answer to your question the first question of which animals would make cool robots, Uh, well, I kind of want to look at some of the animal inspired robots that actually exist and are very strange. One of my favorite genre of machines are machines based on birds, because it's so counterintuitive. We figured out how to make machines fly like airplanes, helicopters, and drones, but we also insist on making ornithopters or machines designed to

fly like birds. Instead of using spinning rotors, they actually use flapping wings to fly. So the first person to try to invent an ornithopter, at least the first recorded person with Leonardo da Vinci, who designed one of the first ornithopters, but his designs never really got off the ground, so to speak. It was designed to hold a human and flap large membranous wings with foot pedals, but it didn't really work. The first ornithopter to achieve flight was

built in France in eighteen seventy one. It was the size of a small songbird and used a wind up rubber band to flap the wings. In nineteen o two, an ornithopter large enough to hold a human was built, but it was unable to fly, so whoops, didn't really work. I think that the most efficient way to get a human to fly is actually the gliding method, which we found with planes and even with the non motor propelled

early planes made by the Right brothers. But nevertheless, in nineteen forty two the first successful manned ornithopter was built by Adelbert Schmidt, who managed to fly about sixty feet or eighteen meters in a small plane with flapping wings that used a bicycle chain mechanism. It's much less efficient than gliding planes we use. In fact, this is also true of birds, so large birds such as condors and albatrosses tend to use gliding rather than flapping or most

of their air time. So for humans, heavy humans are a heavy plane, it makes much more sense to use gliding motion uh basically lift from air, going over and under the wing the ber Neowly effect to achieve lift and flight. Rather than flapping big wings. It's just the bigger you are flapping starts to make less sense in terms of physics of flying. In the nineteen sixties, larger ornithopters with a wingspan of eight feet were built by

Perceval Spencer. They used an internal combustion engine to flap the wings and were able to fly successfully. It's just kind of wild to me that we already figured out how planes work, but we still insist on trying to make a big mechanical bird, which I don't know, I think that's great. Um. Other weird robots that were making that I think is worth mentioning is the octopus robot, a sawft bodied robot who can swim and grab things with its arms. All include links to us some videos

of all these guys in the show notes. But it's really really weird. The you know, you think of a robot is being made out of metal, but when you start to make a robot out of like silicon and like you see these like undulating floppy arms, very uncanny. Uh. There are fish robots who undulate very convincingly like fish it's it's again a kind of Uncanny Valley, but with fish, Like the Uncanny Valley is full of robot fish. Uh,

and you know I'm into it. Besto Robotics, which I believe is a German company, has made underwater jellyfish robots, so basically soft bodied robots that undulate their arms like jellyfish would. Um. But they've also made an air jellyfish, so like I believe it's a helium inflated balloon and then a ring of robotic arms, so it loats like a jellyfish, but in the air. It's really cool, really really cool. Okay. So part two of the question is

what would make some good Magical Girls sidekick animals? There are so many, so many real life animals that look like they'd come from a Magical Girl manga or anime. Here are just a few. There's the Japanese war flying squirrels, who can glide through the air with skin flaps. Uh, and they look more adorable than Pikachu. In my opinion, they are absolutely adorable. There are giant purple squirrels found in India called Indian giant squirrels. They are enormous squirrels

with huge tails. Their body length is about a foot or thirty centimeters. Tail length is about a foot and six inches or forty five centimeters. And their coat colors are beautiful. They range from reddish brown to maroon with patches of yellowish cream colored fur on their arms, face, tail, and belly. Uh, and they're not ture. Fur color kind of looks like a rainbow of beautiful colors. And they just look so festive and definitely look like they belong

in um Magical Girl anime. And if your Magical Girl isn't squeamish about squay mates like lizards and snakes, there are some really cool dudes like the armadilla lizard that looks like a tiny dragon in it bites its own tail to form a little ball. And there are rainbow snakes who scales are iridescent enshine like a rainbow. Definitely lots of really cool animals that would be right at home in an anime. So, um, we're gonna take a quick break, but then I will be back with some

more spooky listener questions. All right, and we're back, and here is another listener question. Uh, and I believe this was about the episode we just did with bridget about the fact that the planet is haunted. Um. All right, so here is the email. Dear Katie. When you said ghost dogs on the most recent episode, my first thought was about the English folk tale of the church grim

or graveyard grim. I don't know if it ever actually happened, but the basic idea is that before a church could be built or graveyard established on a new piece of land, a dog should be buried there so that its soul would be a permanent guardian against evil and shepherd the

freshly interred to the afterlife. The various versions in details of this folk tale can be quite dark, but I prefer to think of them as eternal good boys, mostly because I grew up next to a cemetery and our dogs definitely thought it was their job to guard it. As the dogs passed away, we would bury them in the backyard. A few years ago, my parents sold the house, which was torn down so that the cemetery could expand

onto the land. When I really start to miss them, it's actually pretty nice to imagine that they're there to comfort the mourners and befriend the dearly departed. Oh that's so sweet. On a more lighthearted note, I have knowingly eaten bugs, and my review is pretty bland. First there were the meal worms. They pretty much taste like whatever you cook them in, and the hard bits get stuck

in your teeth like popcorn colonels grows. Second was the chocolate chirp cookie, which you might guess was a chocolate chip cookie with feeder crickets baked in on the top. They had a mild sort of nutty flavor and a papery texture that my uncle said was from the wings shrug emoji. Oh God. Overall, I would eat bugs again without too much fuss, but only if I really had to. Thank you so much for making this podcast, sincerely, Gretchen.

Thank you so much, Gretchen. Oh and then, just as an added email, someone else mentioned the mouth feel of bugs, so I thought I would add that in as well. Here here's another email. Hi, there, I've eaten lots of bugs. I traveled around Southeast Asian the military most of the time. The whole cooked bug is just a salty, crunchy treat sold as street food. While in Thailand I had delicious

cook scorpion. Their stinger was removed, but the claus had the crunchy, then soft taste you talked about on the podcast. Thanks Kendra and Kindred sent me a picture of a dog wearing a scarf, which I love. Uh. Yeah, thank you both so much for your review of the mouth field bugs. Uh. It sounds a little bit like popcorn shrimp, which I already like. When I have popcorn shrimp, I like get halfway through a plate of it and then suddenly get this gross sensation that I'm eating like sea bugs.

So thank you for reinforcing that. No, I'm kidding, but that is Yeah, that's very interesting. I think I think a lot of the texture and stuff it's like similar to a lot of foods we already eat. It's just psychological why we don't like it when it comes to bugs, Like you know, a bug might taste the same as like a lobster texture or shrimp texture, or like a popcorn texture, but then just the idea of it being an insect can be can turn people off of it.

But that's all just cultural. And Gretchen, thank you so much for bringing the grim in your stories about your dogs. Um. I think we talked about the grim a long time ago on the show one of the earlier episodes. I think it was called were Wolf there Wolf in February. I think I might have mentioned on the show that I was wondering if the dogs association with the graveyard was similar to crows, where they're attracted to the smells of the fresh burial sites because they have such a

keen sense of smell. And I wonder if dogs would sometimes come and like sniff around the graveyard and then people would associate them as spirits of the graveyard, protective spirits. But yeah, dogs are so good at smelling um bodies, and they have such a keen sense of smell that they're actually used to recover bodies human remains detection dogs are the best at finding das of any tool that

we have. Uh. They're trained to detect the chemicals that come off of cadavers, and they need to be trained. And because they need to be trained, guess what that means. They have to be trained by sniffing and playing Hide and go seek with real dead body parts, which horrifying, but weirdly cute but still horrifying. I keep vacillating between cute and horrifying. But now let's move along from the topic of death to the topic of birth. The birth

of baby birds. All right, here is an email. Hi Katie, my name is Patrick and I like birds. So I just listened to your Jurassic Park debunking episode and absolutely loved it. In your viewer question, you talked about the imprinting of birds to their mother and father, or what they see as their mom and dad. Then I'm not sure if you touched on this in another podcast, but cowbirds do we know how their brains are wired that they don't try to mate with the birds that raise them,

rather than knowing to just lay their eggs in those nests. Basically, why don't cowbirds imprint on their adoptive parents? Thank you so much for your email, Patrick, This is a brilliant question and actually when I hadn't thought about. So, just to give some background, cowbirds are a type of brood parasite bird similar to cuckoos, who lay their eggs in

a host bird's nest so they get pregnant. They find an unsuspecting host bird's nest, lay their eggs in it, and make basically trick other birds into raising their own young. So this is actually a case of rude parasitism, but it's very cute because they're baby birds um, But of course the question is, like birds when they're learning bird calls, when they're learning behaviors, they pick it up from their parents,

so they imprint upon their parents. They learned bird song from their parents, and often when you have cases of a bird being raised by a different bird families say, like in a research setting, they have found that birds will actually pick up the song of their adoptive parents.

So why doesn't this happen with cowbirds is a really really good question and one that is of interest to researchers because it seems that parasitic brooding birds are resistant to imprinting by their host families and still grow up to have cowbird songs, cowbird behaviors, or cuckoo songs and cuckoo behaviors, which is kind of mind blowing because either these birds are an exception in their development or there's something sneaky going on, and some recent research seems to

indicate there's something sneaky going on. So a recent study that was published in the Journal of Animal Behavior found that juvenile cowbirds leave their host nests at dusk and return in the morning. So there are a bunch of juvenile delinquent cowbirds who sneak off at night to go hang out with other cowbirds I assume probably listen for the cause of other cowbirds, and maybe they actually sneakily go and learn cowbird behaviors away from their host nest

and then return to go get fed and everything. So this must be when they're fledgling, so capable of limited amounts of flight. So yeah, it's really really an interesting question when you have basically a parasite that has to figure out other ways to have the normal experience of a bird growing up because they have managed to bypass the whole need to feed their babies, but their babies still need to somehow learn um how to be an adult cowbird. So really interesting stuff. I'll keep my eyes

open for more studies about this. But thank you so much, Patrick, that is a really really good question. Uh. And with that, we're going to take another real quick break, but then we will be back with yet another question of kind of an existential nature. And we are back, and there is a question I really wanted to answer. I think I got more than one questions like this, but I M really think this is important to address, all right, So here is the email. Hi, Katie, I love your podcast.

It's the best. Thank you. As a newer ecology student, it seems like in every species and population I learned about, the idea for quote winning at evolution in life is to stay alive and just reproduce. This is super weird to me in human context because I never want children, logistics simplified by being gay too, But as a humble human organism who wants to win at life, would the equivalent for me be donating my eggs when life but

also wash my hands clean of overpopulation issues. It seems completely healthy to ask my favorite evolutionary biology podcast or my personal reproductive questions, So tell me what to do. Thank you, Kayla, Well, thank you so much for your question. Kayla. First of all, I feel very underqualified to answer such a philosophical, philosophical and existent, uh existential question. Wow. So I can't even say the words, and yet you're asking

for my advice. But yeah, it is one I wanted to address on the show because so when I talk about evolution sometimes I use kind of shorthand, like you know, if you get this trait, like you win at the evolutionary game, like say you you have some kind of um adaptation and it's like all right, and then if you have this adaptation and then you survive long enough to reproduce, then it's there. You've wanted. You've wanted this

game of evolution. But this is all in terms of explaining the reasons for why you see these evolutionary patterns. It's not really winning or a victory in any kind of like human sense or moral sense or anything. So the thing is like humans are a unique species and that we actually get to question whether it's worth playing the game of evolution and if that's the most important thing of life. I mean, maybe there are other species

that have some metacognition. I don't know, maybe elephants and dolphins, some other primates have some ability to kind of have a metic cognition other than just their instincts. Um, but you know, uh, generally speaking, I think humans are the most advanced in terms of we are actually able to question our own existence. We are able to question our own environment and have discussions about it like we're doing right now. And what that means is that we get

to not be controlled by like evolution necessarily. So there's no sacred meaning to evolution. It's not like it is what it is. It's like any kind of biological process. It doesn't dictate morality and it doesn't dictate value for humans. So, for example, uh, there are frogs who will eat their own babies because it makes a lot of sense in

terms of evolution. If they have a surplus of young, they will eat some of these babies and it increases the chance of their own survival to make even more babies. But certainly eating babies doesn't mean morality, even if it's a successful evolutionary strategy for some animals. We cannot learn morality from baby eating frogs. And when you think about like, oh, well, this frog is being unethical, Well, cannot frog really be ethical or not ethical? I don't know. I don't really

think so. But humans can. So we are very distinct and we have developed a sense of morality and senses of value, and I guess just like have experience beyond that of something like a frog. So we've also evolved, not just on the individual body level, but on a societal level. Our our culture, and our society is constantly evolving. And what all of this means is that we get to break free from some of the chains of natural

selection and evolution. Like we get to recognize the value in a single human lifetime and human experience just existing and enjoying life, being conscious, having thoughts, you know, loving people,

loving things. You know that all I think has intrinsic value. Uh, it's not something like, oh, well is this good or not for evolution, It doesn't really matter because we just just being able to be alive and be exist and be aware and you know, have fulfillment and enjoyment is to me, because I'm making this decision with my own flaw, Sophie is to me a really valuable thing. It's even

to me valuable for animals. Like if I have a pet dog, you know, she's spayed, she's not going to have any puppies, but her life is so important to me. You know she's and I hope that she's very happy too, and she has a really happy life, so you know she she's Uh, even if that's not you know, good quote evolutionarily speaking, it's a good thing for the world in terms of um keeping dogs happy and and and safe and and it's good for me because she makes

me happy. So you get to define what is meaningful to you, like what is winning at life for you? Is that there's no reason that that means producing offspring. It doesn't need to have any intrinsic value to you. It could like, if you want to have children, because you want to have children, you know that that will have meaning to you. And if you don't want to have children, that doesn't need to have any meaning to you. And there's no there's no objective winning are losing anyways,

it means something different for everyone. Think of one of the huge champions of evolutions. So some of the animals who are just absolutely winning at evolution are things like mosquitoes. There are countless, countless mosquitoes, they do really well and there's very little chance of them going extinct, whereas there's like you know, pandas, where there are very few of them and there's a much higher chance that they're going extinct. But would you value a mosquito over a panda? Uh?

And even though mosquitoes are you know, quote unquote winning at evolution, would you want the life of a mosquito the experience the short, very blood soaked the life of a mosquito, even though they're having hundreds of successful offspring. Probably not, because mosquitoes don't really have any much depth to their life experience. I apologize mosquitoes if I'm wrong, if you if you have a very full and rich life,

but I don't person mol see it's so uh. In my opinion, winning at evolution is meaningless outside of the context of just explaining like why you see some kind of evolutionary trait, because evolution just has no intrinsic value. It doesn't have any intrinsic meaning. And where in this unique position as very highly intelligent animals, humans um to be able to decide what meaning we want in life.

So I think that it's you know, I've said all this in a way to like not directly answer your question, because I think that it is up to you whether you want to donate your eggs, whether that would be something that would make you happy or not. Um. I think that in terms of uh, some people see children having children, like biological children, as a way to kind of achieve immortality, maybe like, oh, well, I'm passing on,

you know, my genes and achieving some immortality. But I kind of I'm not sure that's much different from just making an impact on the world and giving people memories of you, positive memories doing things that that have a lasting positive impact on people. That's that kind of cultural evolution that if you do something good in the world, it doesn't even have to be a big thing, just

making other people happy. That has that lasts, you know, much longer than your lifetime or even the people that directly knew you their lifetimes, because it has this domino effect of like when you're when you're a good positive person, um, you know, you affect the people around you, and then they'll affect the people around you. So I think that there's really no answer to like, well, you know, should I have children or should I have some kind of

like biological legacy. I just don't think. Uh. I think that is, you know, entirely up to you whether you want to do that or not, and it's you have to find that value from within um of of what you want. But there's no there's no objective answer to that question. There's no universal answer to that question. Um you know. So that's uh, that's me getting really philosophical. Sorry about that, everyone, I don't know. I am not a philosopher, so really kind of punching above my weight there,

But I hope that is helpful in some way. Um So, now, I want to take it down to a much less existential question, seemingly very simple question. Alright, so here is the email. So this is probably a dumb question, but our zebras white with black stripes or black with white stripes? Thank you Roberts. So this is actually not a dumb

question at all. It's a very interesting question. I know it's it's a little bit of a cliche, but it's really really interesting because it makes you examine like some of our preconceived notions about evolution and and traits and animals and how they actually work. So zebras have black skin under their fur, and they have white and black

alternating patches of fur. So in the simplest form, that is like what anatomically is going on, So you could say an answer to that question, they are black skinned with black and white stripes. And in terms of their development, embryonic zebras develop stripes in the wombs, so they start out striping. So the question of like, well, wait, you know what comes first, like the white fur the black fur,

isn't such an easy question. Um. And in terms of like, in terms of animal stripes, we have this idea that like they have an underlying fur color and then stripes over that fur color. But really that's not how coloration and animals work because they it's not like they get painted over like they don't Like you don't have like a baby zebra or an embryonic zebra and then some process that like paints over them with the stripes. Actually side note, that is what happens with eggs, So not

the actual chicks, but the eggs. Like if you've ever seen egg shells that have like splotches on them, that's because as they come out of the chickens reproductive track, there are glands in that that like spray them with color. So that's really interesting, but typically that is not how colorations, pigment melanin works in like animal skin and fur or scales. Um. So, all right, but I'm still going to try to answer

this question definitively. So if you look into their genetics and evolutionary history, uh, like, can you find out if they started out as white furd or blackford and add added the stripes later? Um? Or like what's going on at the genetic level, Uh, you can get closer to

the answers. So genetic abnormalities and zebras can result in nearly all black zebra with small white patches, And this seems to indicate that the zebra's default for color is black and the white fur results from an inhibition of melanin in stripes. So if the inhibition gene isn't working, it defaults to black. All right. Well, that's that's an interesting part of it, um. But what about the evolutionary

history of zebras. Uh. The closest living relatives of zebras are horses and donkeys, but the quaga was an even closer relative before going extinct. The quago was possibly a subspecies of the zebra until it was killed off by European invaders in South Africa. It diverged from the plains zebra species a couple hundred thousand years ago. So quaggas had a diverse range of coats, but they typically were a primarily dark brown color with thin white stripes and

a white belly. Sometimes they would be dark brown with both white and blackish brown stripes. So to me, us is further evidence that the striping is a result of a gene shutting off the production of the melanin. So you can have a band of brown and white or black and white or even brown black and white. But the common denominator is how much those genes are turning off the melanin production. Uh. So, in my humble, uh non zebra expert opinion, they are black with white stripes.

But if you have a different idea, right into me, argue with me. Um, you know, yell at me on Twitter, and you can do that by finding me online at Creature feature Pod on Instagram, at Creature feet pot on Twitter. That's f e a T not f teeth head is something very different. You can write to me, uh Creature feature Pod at gmail dot com, and you can write in your questions and hate. When I do another one

of these, maybe I'll answered on air. Uh. And thank you again to everyone who wrote in with your wonderful questions. I hope you enjoyed this listening to me answer everything from existential questions about existence uh to zebra stripes. Thanks to the Space Plastics for their super awesome song ex Alumina. 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 wheor Hey guess what where?

Have you listen to your favorite shows? See you next Wednesday,