Monster Mash

the Agel question, can adopt lick you to death? So lest you think that evolutionary biologists are too stuffy to care about Halloween and spooky monsters, one of their favorite things to do is to name newly discovered creatures after horror film icons. As listeners of the show, you may know by now that evolutionary biology is better at concocting horror than West Craven, Hitchcock, and Stephen King combined. A lot of animals may get their spooky names after their

appearance is alone. Take, for instance, the Halloween Crab, an adorable little terrestrial crab who lives in Central America who is orange and black and looks like a little Jack lantern pumpkin. There's also the Halloween snake, who lives in South and Central America. Who's got orange, white and black stripes. But don't pet this dangerous candy corn noodle. They're highly venomous. Some animals not only get a spooky name in Halloween colors,

but their behaviors are truly bizarre or downright horrifying. Joining me today to celebrate Halloween by going on a haunted safari through the world of spooky species is comedy writer, co host of The Bechtel Cast, and proud owner of an animatronic twerking. Mommy Janey loved us credit for Las. How are you pretty good? I'm terrified already this there is yeah. Researching this like, I was like, Okay, it's not too scary, but there is one part where I

got nightmares from it. They just look scary or they doing scary things as well. Oh you'll find out. So first I want to talk about the vampire squid. So, first of all, the vampire squid is not really a squid. It's also not really a vampire. So right, so probably wondering why is a vampire Let's go, well, it is a deep sea creature in the order vampiro morphidia. Wait, no, vampiro morphida. That's it. It's ancient form of cephalopod that

arose before squid and octopus is diverged. So it lives in the deep sea at depths of up to three thousand feet. So it's it's in there. What is just leg numbers? Yes, it's kind of well, so squids can have different numbers of legs from octopuses, but there's also other morphological differences, like in their mantle and um. But so there used to be one but then they diverge. Yes, and I don't think the vampire morphia is the common ancestor, but it is sort of like a predecessor from that time.

Scary uncle, scary uncle. That's a good yeah, yeah, uh so. Uh, they're in tropical and temperate oceans all over the world at these deep depths, deeply deeply in there, scary deep down in there. They're cute little guys who can reach up to a foot in length, and unlike typical squid, it has a rounder head and eight webbed tentacles. Uh and the underside of its tentacles are aligned with flesh spines. Uh. So it's kind of like the cape of a vampire

or a nightmare umbrella. Oh, that's cute. It's the door here. Let me, I'm gonna show you. Yeah, I want to see a video of these guys because they are Wow, they are pretty adorable. Okay, little emil umbrellas. Oh my god, it's actually scarier than I thought it would be. Picture it's cute. It looks like a lump of flesh and look at it. Go wow. Oh it turns itself inside out, yes,

indeed to reveal spiky sparks colored. Yeah, so it's kind of a fleshy red on the outside and a black on the inside, kind of like a reverse Dracula Cape's. It is very goss you know. Yes, it's super gonside. When threatened, it will dramatically turn itself inside out, wrapping itself in its cloak and revealing it's many spines underneath. It's such a drama. Queen Dracula squid. I am not a squid, but I am very spooky. Oh the poor god. I feel like that's a little insecure squid. I know,

it's kind of like hiding inside of its cloak. Do you think like that's why Dracula is always hiding behind his cape? Is he kind of insecure about his teeth or something? I know. It's like it's either insecurity or a flair for the dramatic, right, it can sometimes be both at the same time. Dramatic cape swoosh, God, that was so that will hunt me? The fleshy blob in

the sea. Just think of him as like as a theater kid, like who got his handle on the cape, And it's like doing cape swooshes, defining itself by creature of the doc. You're like, yeah, sure. So some of these squids are actually pure black, so they're very super extra goth. But they also have these bright blue eyes and they feed on sea garbage otherwise as marine snow.

So you know, like when you look at like these deep sea cameras and you see this float, this floating detritus stuff in front of the camera, Yeah, exactly, that's marine snow. H It's organic junk that floats down the water column. It's man out of dead things, flakes, whatever. Yeah you don't, yeah exactly wow. And then they're like good enough for me. See it's insecure yeah, yeah, secure garbage,

like hold yourself to a higher standard. I guess I'll hide in my Mydracula cape and eat this garbage like you deserve more. Poor little emo cephalopods trash all day trash. And it eats by dangling a long thread like appendage called a filament from inside its cape, So it's like it spits out this little floss and then there's these tiny hairs on this filament that pick up the marine snow,

the sea garbage. It just sucks it back in like a like a spaghetti littlekebob, Yeah, exactly, and then it uses its tentacles to like pull the marine snow off of its little thread thing, and then it forms a ball made out of mucus and the marine garbage. So it eats like garbage snotballs. Gross. Oh come on, I mean, who hasn't look basically today, I eat like a garbage Yeah, I mean I eat the equivalent does it snot garbage constantly? So you can't judge too harshly. God, he sounds like

a weird middle schooler. That's like the vibes and getting from it's a weird middle schooler. I don't know what that would be like what you're talking about, middle schooler. It lives in a minimal oxygen zone and it has a very low metabolic rate compared to its squid and octopus relatives. So it moves very slowly. That's nice. Yeah, it doesn't suck blood. It's only called the vampire school

it because of its stage presence, because of its cave. Okay, uh so, not only does it have the habit of turning itself inside out and wrapping itself in its cloak to reveal all those spines underneath in defense, it has another technique, which is his glowing blue eyes, which are

not actually realizes it has. Yeah, those were scary. Well, so those were his what you saw were his real eyes, but in complete darkness, there are these two blue glowing dots that look like eyeballs, but they're actually just these little spots on its mantle, more like more ornate, like

just ornaments exactly. Well, the thought is that potentially they use those eye, those glowing bioluminous and eye dots to distract predators, and then if the predators bite them on the top of their head, it's fine, they'll they'll live. Oh they'll they'll be like, well, my head, but yeah, it's not an important It's just like a flushy part the head that's not as important. So just like different eyes, right,

that's you know, I see there up here. I see that there's there's some sort of like weird joke to be made there. It's like, I, I mean, yeah, I see where evolution was going with that one. So it also has pockets of bioluminescent bacteria on the tips of its tentacles. That's what causes those eye spots to glow as well. So bioluminescence is often caused by bacteria. The it can trigger these bioluminescent spots at will. And it's also to me because like it has the eye spots

and I haven't actually read any evidence for this. This is just my intuition. Take that for what it's worth, which is nothing. But the very tips of its tentacles have this bioluminescence. It's got these eye spots on the top of its head. I think it makes it look like a much bigger animal. That makes sense because when you think about you have, you're limiting the amount of

information you're giving off. Where you have like a dot sort of like a mo cap suit where you have a dot on each tentacle, so you just have but it's on the extremities, like the eyespots are on the very top of the head and all the other glowy bits are on the very tips of its tentacles. So to me, it looks like it's sort of hinting at a much larger creature, right like your You wouldn't see those dots and guess that those are absolute extremities and

that there'll be more around, right, I get that. Yeah, that makes sense. It can also so it doesn't have ink sacs, but it can eject its bioluminous and mucus from the tips of its tentacles. Extra yes, distracting predators with like a gooey light show of muca see rave fluid. I would be constantly getting in their personal space. Just it harmful, No, it's just distracting. Like if you were about to eat something and then it's suddenly like exploded

glowing snot, I'd be a little distracted. I'd be like, huh are you good? Yeah, I leave you alone. Wow, it's everything about it. It's so cute. It's cute and goth and and sort of like dramatic. It's just such a drama queen look at and it's got those spikes that you see on its underside. Again, that's all. That's all. Bark, no bite. They're totally soft, completely soft, harmless. They just look menacing. And that's what they're hoping that you'll love

the eyeballs, but are are really something else. The real those are the real ones. The ones on the side of its head are real. The ones at the top of its head are the fake ones. So I think if we're looking at it, these ones might well, it's hard to tell. Actually those might be real. Yeah, I can't they If those are fakes, those are very good fakes. Yeah, I think the fakes don't look like real eyes like in the light. It's just that they glow so in

the dark. In the dark eyes, yeah, it's sort of decoy. Yeah, Like if you use some glow in the dark paint to just draw on a bunch of extra eyes on yourself, that's a great costumer all eyes, right, And it's great. It's a day to night look because you can like be dressed in the day not have extra eyes, and then day to night, now you have a bunch of extra eyes. No one's going to know where to look exactly.

So onto our next Dracula contender, I want to talk about Goodbye Goodbye Dracula Squid you are very melodramatic and adorable. Grow out of it. It's just a phase. So now the vampire finches, which are a little more serious in terms of they're not just cosplaying as Dracula. They're really mean there there. I would say they're a little bit kind of assholes, a little bit okay, And they're cute

little finches that live on the Galapagos Islands. So typically they eat seeds, uh, you know, normal finchy nous cut so far, cute, so far. But when they run out of seeds during a drought, they need something else to say their hunger, so they attack boobies. No, okay, this show isn't going lewd. Uh. They attack blue footed boobies, which is a large sea bird with blue feet. I'm sorry, I I really taste that one. It's like that is

a hard turn from the middle. Still squid the boobe flare, Oh okay, so it goes after it, which is it's larger than them, much larger. So the finches about what would I would say, like a orange cute clementine, you know, little tiny, little little things, and the boobies are bigger. They're about i'd say about like three ft Okay, yeah, they're much, but they're they're like a large seagull. Yeah, when the booby is resting in its nest, the vampire

finch pecks at the boobie's flesh. I'm not going to get over the flesh of the bo the flush of the booby, the soft flesh of the booby, until it starts to bleed. Then a small crowd of finches will gather around the wounded booby and start start drinking the boobies blood. Right, isn't that the saddest thing. The finches are careful to be as surgical as possible so as not to aggravate the booby so that it can continue

to lap up its blood. And there's a video of it, and they're like peck and add swings and then the boobies kind of tries to like flap him off with his wings. But then they're like, oh, well, you know, we'll be more gentle this time. But they're sucking it's blood. Right, Oh geez. Okay, so these these are like little tiny killers. I would see a movie about this. Killer finches. Klor finches cute by day, but when nightfalls, they drink blood

from your booby this Christmas. This does seem very this does seem very contemporary horror, you know, very literal take on the horror genre where it's like here's a sexy lady, but she's in danger. But you know, if you really cut to the chase, it's like, here's some boobies. They're in danger. But in this case, protect your boobies. In

this case, the boobies are actual birds. But you know, you get the idea, but like you know, symbolically, symbolically and they stand there there a synectic key for the boobs. I don't know, the poor the poor blue footed babies. It's so sad, Like do their friends just bail? It seems like it would be I think they're all they all get injured that it sounds like it would be

easy to kick these finches assies. Well that's the thing, is they they One of the theories why the boobies don't just kick their asses is that this behavior may have started as a symbiotic parasite eating where the finch would go on the booby, eat the little bugs off the booby, you know, mutually beneficial. But then probably they kind of learned it's a lot easier to just like, you know, stab him and drink a little savages. They're

they're a little stinkers. Yeah. And also yeah, like they really do try to minimize the amount of discomfort that they're putting the booby through so that they don't ruffle its feathers um, and they don't they don't really hurt, like they don't well, I mean, I'm sure they hurt the boobies, but they don't kill the It doesn't kill the booby. It's a booby's clot. And then they're okay, yes,

the boobies survive, and but it's probably really annoying. Yeah, you're like, these little stinkers keep coming to my house and cutting my legs out for food. Oh, they'll also steal and eat eggs just because at their dicks they're real, they're real little. I think the weekends they need to the boobies need to beef up their security detail. It felt like they're really like being taken for a ride

here kind of literally. Yeah, I mean it's like it's like if you know, like babies were stealing from us and we're like, oh, it can't there's baby you know, I mean, if you there's enough babies though honestly, you don't. Don't think about babies like one on one with the little baby. Yeah, but like when it's you've you've found several babies that are like biting you. Yeah, and the other adults are like, well, you're not gonna die. Right,

Just come on to kind of flip the script. Now, we're going to talk about Dracula ants, okay, which I just love. I love the evolutionary biologists. I just like, you're a Dracula, You're a vampire. Another Dracula, gonna mix it up? I know, I p say that's true. Like, can't we get like an Edward like like the Edward ance Edward? What's another vampire? Like an Edward? Call it? That's what I meant. Okay, yeah, yeah the Twilight Ants?

Are there any other vampires? I'm pretty sure it's just Dracula and Paler was the historical figure, right, oh nose for all too, yes for all to those actually would be a good name. And Rice and Rice is a vampire and ri ant right Antrice? Oh my godfact, Jamie, Jamie, you should be in charge of naming animals, thank you. Accept So these ant rices are found in the African

Asian and Australian tropics. So an interesting little kind of evolutionary thing here is that the adult ants can't process food, which seems like a little bit of an interesting quirk. Yeah, it seems like a detriment, right. Um. So they have a good solution though, which is that they suck the blood of infants, you know what, creative. So they specifically larva, so their own their own babies, uh yeah, in the family. So the adults will go out and hunt prey and

then they bring it back to the colony. Then they feed the prey to the larva and there their praise. Like other insects and small things. Yeah, the larva can eat and process the prey and the adults, I mean, they still are living creatures and they need nourishments. So they'll chew a little pinhole in the larva and suck it's blood. Um, And insects blood is called is hemolymph um basically insect blood. Yeah, bud blood, bud goo and this is uh. I saw one article where they called

it a communal stomach or social stomach. Gross, just a social stomach flopping its way around town talking about talking about other stomachs. This does sound sound like, Yeah, this sounds more like a family family drama shoe. It's like a show succession, like all these rich people suck at each other's blood metaphorically draining the life from the youth in order to live longer. Calling you out, boomer, you're

suing us dry here. Uh, the it's called it's a cannibalism though that doesn't actually kill or harm the larva, and it helps the success of the colony. So it's it's called quote non destructive parental cannibalism, which you know, I feel like therapists take issue with that. Kind of

does sound like some trauma. But then I guess if you think about like I don't know, if you think about it, like reverse breast milk, Yeah, who is sucking blood right, Like you're like technically draining m Maybe this doesn't work, we're technically sorted. Well, No, it is reverse breast milk in a way because with babies they can't

process solid food. We eat the solid food. We you know, leak fluid out of our chest parts into the baby and they receive nourishment in these in these dracula ants, the babies eat the food and then the adults suck their blood. It's the same thing. Well, but the babies get but you're still putting food on the baby because you're going out and hunting, you know, providing them with the food. So you're feeding the baby. You just also suck the baby's blood. It's just a cultural difference really.

I mean, you know, you can't really judge these ants until you've walked a mile in there. Yeah. Um, so the workers will also regurgitate this baby blood into their queen's mouth. Oh see, that's weird. It's at you know, that's interesting. So, like I said before, the larva are unharmed except for a bunch of holes and scars in their bodies, which you know, all the adults have those two from when they were baby, because I think the larva as it as it pupates in um morphs into

the adult form probably I guess heals up sheds it. Okay, So it's just emotional scars, yeah, exactly, and exactly, which who cares about emotional shows. We're all barfin in the mouth of the queen at the end of the day. That's so profound. That cuts me deep. Though the adults can't eat solid food, they're extremely good hunters. As of the dracula ants, mandibles are the fastest known moving body

part in the animal kingdom. They can snap their jaws at two hundred miles per hour, which is five thousand times faster than blinking. Ah. This is fast enough to generate force that stuns and kills their prey. Uh so, listeners of the show or maybe just people generally interested in animals, and you know that mantis shrimp are also

really fast at snapping their claws. Mantis shrimp can snap their closet about twenty three ms per second, whereas the dracula ants can snap their mandibles at ninety per second. So it's way faster than the mantis shrimp. Now, I don't know if it generates more forced than the mantis

shrimp because there they're the mandible. The way the mandible snap are very different, So that mantas shrimp has sort of a pocket and like hammer situation, the dracula ant has sort of snaps its mandibles like it's snapping its fingers, where it rubs one mandible against the other and it like kind of creates a force against each other and then it slides past it and releases like when you're snapping your fingers same basically the same kind of thing.

Uh and uh it's uh, it's still incredibly devastating to the little prey items that are in their path. So I mean getting back to the baby blood, is a baby blood acting as some sort of hyper stimulants, like mainline, like baby blood will make you really get your mandibles all quick. Well, you know there's no evidence for it, but I almost feel like I do love the image of a bunch of these ants like getting together and being like there's nothing The best part of waking up

is baby blood. Your cup really put some pep in their step. It gets right in the day like a number one mom cup and then it's just a bunch of baby blood in her own baby's blood. So, speaking of blood and things and people drinking blood and all that happening, um, I want to tell a personal story about my dog licking my own blood. So my dog likes to lick me. It's kind of annoying because she'll like lick the same spot over and over until snub and it's kind of painful and gross and annoying, but

right exactly, but she's so cute. And then also when I tried to move her. She starts growling at me with and she was really she was like licking my shoulder. I was really into it, was like, huh, that's interesting. And then I look over and just pouring blood. Oh my god. So apparently I had like a little cut or blemish there that she had started licking because it

was maybe bleeding a little bit. But here's the thing is, she kept looking at like opening up the wound war so it started to just bleed and then it's it looked like a lot more blood than it was because I guess it was mixing with her salivor's like it around like oh god, oh my god. And I was wondering. I was like, uh, she drink like drinking my blood.

But to her, Yeah, So I think that. So, dogs and other social animal mammals will often lick each other's wounds, and wound licking is not technically a form of parasitism because it is a supposedly mutually beneficial activity, like rats who lick each other's wounds will have been found to increase the rate of wound healing. Of course, a dog licking your wounds is not necessarily good if anything. Yeah, seems like it could make the matter worse. In fact,

it does sometimes to the really horrible extent. Uh So sometimes if you're extremely unlucky, if a dog licks you too much and you get dogs aliva on you, you may have to have your limbs amputa. I don't want to be alarmist because you have like a one in a million chance of this happening. So don't like throw your dog out off of your couch, but your dog in the trash. Don't put your dog in the trash um.

But this does occasionally happen. So a woman had to get her limbs partially amputated after getting an infection from bacteria present in dog saliva. As I say, had like a one million chance of this happening, and she was a winner, poor woman. So she developed gangreen in necrosis in her arms and legs. Um so for that, yes, yeah, so um. She they weren't all completely amputated, but partially amputated.

Her immune system went crazy in response to this bacteria found in the dog saliva, and it caused these blood clots that killed off the tissue in her limbs and so they couldn't save it. So they had to do a partial amputation. Wow, But you know, if they hadn't caught it in time, she would have died. So technically your dog can lick you to death, does it? I'm just trying to I'm like, I don't know. If I don't,

I don't know how. My dog has some empathy, but not as much as your average dog, right right, So it's like, did they I wonder if they think that they're helping, even if they may be giving you gangreen. Yeah, I don't think they ever intend to give you gang green. I don't think that that that you can sort of like scratch off. Not malicious, definitely not malicious. I don't know if they know whether they're helping. I would assume

I do. Personally, I do think dogs have some empathy for if you can call it that, it's at least affection, at least like a positive emotion connected. So I think that when they lick a wound or they lick you, I think it's a social activity and they feel gratified doing it. Probably helps that our skin is salty and tasty, probably helps that our blood taste delicious. Uh, But I do think it is a pro social behavior, and I

would if I had to bet money on it. I would think that they feel not like they're getting away with something, but that they're doing something positive because they'll like lick each other and it's a positive thing. So it's it's the golden rule, like my friends, like others, as you would have your self licked. That makes sense. Okay, Well, so my dog isn't like actively trying to kill me. He just might do it by mistake. Well, I don't know your dog, but you know I would. He's a

he's a nightmare. He's going to hell. So your dog can accidentally look you to death. But it's typically out of misguided love rather than a lust for blood. But can animals get a taste of human blood and crave seconds. Some animal conservationists caution that when certain predators like big cats, get a taste of human blood, once they pop, they just can't stop. And it turns out it's because our

blood is extra delicious. Dr maheshawar to Call, a biodiversity expert in the Ministry of Forests and Environment in Nepal, warns that leopards who get a sample of human blood may never want to go back to the crumbing blood they've got it. Home quote since human blo it has more salt than animal blood. Once wild animals get the taste of salty blood that they do not like the other animals. Like dear Dr de Call says, Apparently we're

season to perfection. The most notorious serial killer kitties where the savo lion man eaters of who let's be fair, would probably eat people of any gender. These lions eight construction workers on a railroad in Kenya and had an estimated thirty five victims. According to one worker's diary quote bones, flesh, skin, and blood. They devoured all and left not a trace behind them. There's a theory that these lions preferred human flesh as they had some dental problems making it difficult

to hunt less soft creatures. But hey, we have salty, delicious blood too, So are these big cats serial killers or food snobs? When we return, we're going to look at another classic movie monster Frankenstein. Could a real life Frankenstein exists and we'll be looking at some horrifying scientific experiments conducted in the nineteen forties. Imagine that you've been kidnapped by some creepy Soviet era scientists. Cool they lay

you on an operating table and put you under anesthesia. Great, awesome. You lose consciousness for what seems like only a minute. You awake, relieved you're not dead. You're surrounded by blurry images, the smell of antiseptic, and a weird churning sound. A bright light shines in your eyes and you blink. You hear the excited voices of the scientists. Then someone coax you in the eye. You try to lift your arm

to bat them away. When you realize you can't feel your arm or the rest of your body, You look down and are horrified to see that instead of your body, there's a mass of tubes and red fluid and what looks like a vat of churning blood. So, Jamie, this is one of the more disturbing things that I'll talk about on the podcast because it involves humans being assholes. This is yeah, the worst, Okay, So I feel warmed up. We started with the cute stuff, the cute and have

your happy space beat the Dracula squid. I will go back into my theater squid. If I get scared, I'll just hide myself in my spiky cape. Yeah, yeah, your mental spiky cape. So there's a Soviet film, which is apparently a documentary called Experiments in the Revival of Organisms, showcasing experiments by Soviet scientists Sergey S. Bruconico. Yeah, that's a that's a Russian name. Uh. If you're a dog lover, you may want to skip ahead, which is also a

horrible pun, as you'll find out. Yes, but yeah, it is genuine. This upset me. I have a pretty strong constitution that comes to creepy things. Not like I'm a dog owner. I'm I have a little dog. And when I was like reading through this, I was just imagining this happening to my dog. I was just like, this is awful, this is horrifying. So it's a little you know, I'm gonna take my chance. Yeah, yeah, I mean Jamie doesn't have a choice, but you the listeners. Um so

uh it's this old timey medical film. Let me show it to you. Um, Okay. At least it's black and white, so it feels less like it's happening to send me the dog. It's got creepy music. Great, uh, and so here's it starts out with a heart that they claim is uh and you hear this like creepy detached narrator the whole time. Yeah, in this part, they have what they claim as a dog's heart attached to a sort of artificial pumping mechanism that's pumping blood in and out

of the heart and keeping it beating. Um, so they show they show some footage of the heartbeating. Yeah, a giant thing pumping blood into it. It's all extremely terrible. Boy. And then um, and that's not the worst part. They also show a pair of lungs being quote unquote brought back to life by this artificial pump that's pumping in blood. That scene in Midsummer is there what happens, I guess

spoilers is not relevant to the plot. They're like one of the guys they kill and they cut him open and hang him up like style, and then his lungs are still. You're like, oh no, oh, yeah, they call like a death eagle or something. Yeah, that's awful. I'm scary Swedish stuff. This is there's a cartoon. Yeah, it's

it gets worse than a cartoon. But as you can see by the diagram, it's a dog's head attached to a machine and the issue the machine is called an autoject or that pumps oxygenated blood into the head and allows the used blood to pump out of the head, and so it's allegedly functioning as an artificial heart. And

I keep saying allegedly. I'm going to talk about whether or not this video is actually real and just a bit, I know, right, So they show an actual video of of a dog head reacting to sounds, reacting to stimuli. So they the eyes twitched when being poked, the nose twitches when being tickled with a feather. The dog licks its mouth when citric acid is placed on its lip, and citric as it is just like the stuff in

like lemons and stuff. It's okay, we're kind of going a little bit yeah, yeah, and you can see you can see it licking its lips and sort of reacting like a dog sort of normally would um right, well, Soviet Russia, like we've gotta now, do we, although I got to say America is not much better, as we'll find out in a little bit for sure. So uh. Later in the film, a dog is drained of all of its blood and is allegedly brought back to life by the auto jector, and the film claims it goes

on to live a normal life. So we've gone through it does so we've gone through all the horror of this like artificial blood pump supposedly bringing dogs back to life. So let's talk about the veracity of the film. This was actually really hard for me to find out. I would love if like, save you're a listener and like this is your field of study and you know everything about this film, Like, please get in touch with me, because I really want someone to just tell me, no,

it's not real. Um. So here's the issue. The film never shows like the whole experiment, just like the doghead. You can't even really see the stuff hooked up to it. Um. It's highly possible that they just sedated a dog, stuck its head through a whole in the table, and then started doing this stuff. Um, you know, doing all these reactions. But there is so the film itself could be kind of like fake ish. But there are scientists who went

and observed the experiment and they claimed that it was real. However, far from the doghead surviving hours as the film claimed, uh, the dog had only survived a minute or two. Um, which makes more sense, to make more sense, and it also is more brutal somehow if they're like, look, we can bring a dog back to life for a minute for no reason. Yeah, Well, to me, actually having it live for hours is worse because it's like, at least for a minute, maybe it doesn't have enough time to

register what's going on, really feeling Yeah, good lord. And then furthermore, witnesses to the experiment where the dog was there's a dog that was exanguinated, which means all of its blood was drained out and then brought back to life with this auto ject or. Rejector is also a very villainous. It's a terrible name for a thing, right, and it's like, it's so just let me describe it,

just in case it's kind of unclear. It's like a vat of blood that gets artificially oxygenated, gets pumped into the poor creature's head, and then the deoxygenated blood gets pumped out. So it's supposedly working like a real heartwood, but horrible in every possible conceivable way. It does look like a movie problem. It does, which also makes me slightly suspicious it is. But you know, there are there are witnesses who claimed that this is sort of you know,

at least has some truth to it. So witnesses to the experiment where the dog was drained of its blood and brought back to life claim that the dog had severe brain damage and didn't live for more than a couple of days, which again a normal life, right exactly. It's I mean, that's the thing is I would really

hope the film is like a d percent fall. I have a feeling it's sort of mixing creative cinematography with maybe some realish results, but then like vastly out of proportion, like very overblown results, like you bring a dog head back for a minute in a terrible way, like yeah, congratulations,

right exactly. Uh yeah, So there are eyewitnesses accounts of doctor Bruko Nico being able to keep a doghead alive for at least brief periods of time, which is horrible, And so there are other experiences that have shown that this kind of very maccab science is possible, even though it's still like why please don't I think the intention isn't just to be insane, but I think it's too Oh here, we could save people's lives by bringing them back to life in this way from right, that makes

so you know, maybe not cartoonish villain, but also awful, terrible stuff going on here. Also like even worse that they're like it sounds like falsely reporting the results. Yeah, we could bring someone back to life. It would be for a very short time and there would be an immense pain. But right, they could do it. Their life would be confused, agony, but hey, right, it's like Jesus.

So the US, US of America, the United the USA of America heard of it, Yes, decided that it, being the Cold War, we have to get in on this horrifying, dog brutalizing action. So in I know, right. In nineteen sixty five, neurosurgeon Robert J. White conducted some really creepy experiments.

He transplanted the brains of dogs into the necks of other dogs, which you know, of course, sure why not cool right uh, and showed e G activity in the brains, indicating that they were alive to whatever extent you could imagine. I don't, I don't know, like you don't know if they're conscious, you don't not. It's like dog in a neck now, probably not getting any sensory information. That's horrible. Um,

And so that wasn't enough existential horror. To satisfy Dr White invent, he transplanted the head of a reesus monkey onto another monkey's body. The monkey could supposedly see here and taste things, or at least reacted as if it did, though it was paralyzed and only lived for about a week of what I imagine was just pure horror. Just tear it like the worst week of your second life, right, exactly? God, I mean, so, I don't want to you know this,

this show is a very pro science podcast. I don't want to get down on I think there's a lot of really important scientific research that involves animals that help um pure disease and stuff. I feel like the Saint it chief. No, this feels a little overly ambitious and clearly has failed a number of feels flamboyant in a way, like I'm gonna decapitate a monkey and so it's head onto another monkey. It's like, is that really necessary? And

is that actually? Is that the best use of your Yeah, exactly that, And it's that the best way to science? You know, I don't know that it is. It feels like it feels I'll say it's a bit much. It's a bit much um, speaking of a bitch month much you uh may have heard of this guy, Sergio Cannevero, who is or Canevero, who is an Italian neurosurgeon who claims he is getting close to be able to do human head transplants. Oh no, I didn't know that. So

here's the problem with head transplantation. I mean, actually there's a few problems, Okay, So primarily it's the problem with any kind of uh organ transplantation, which is the donor body or head may reject the donor body or head. I don't know what you would cut. Would you call it the donor head or the donor body because the head is sort of it feels like where you would think donor probably, yeah, I guess. I mean the body is bigger, so you think of it as being a

donor head, but the head is you. I guess you're getting another person's brain. Well, but then that would be you. I'm confused. Are they trying to bring the body back to everything? You're trying to bring the head back to life, right, right? So that's so it would be a donor body, right, a body transplant really, because you're you're the head and you get a new body Uh, that sounds like a bad dream. Yeah, it's not. It's not to me. It's not a group. Well, let me talk about the problem.

So you there could be rejection of the body or head and or both, because that's a big problem with donating organs, and often people have to be on medications that help the like kind of calmed down the immune system for the rest of their lives and they get a donor organ. So with a head and a body seems big step, high us, high us. The second problem is that this is all terrible and horrifying and Jesus Christ,

this poor dogs and monkeys. I just anyways, Um, but no, So the real second problem is that mending the spinal cord between the severed head and the body is not something we can do just yet. Um. As you can imagine, like if you tried to transplant a human head onto a donor body, you probably get a result pretty similar to that poor poor reeseless monkey where you're paralyzed and

only live about a week. And it's probably probably and it's you know, not to say that people with paralysis can lead very happy lives, but I think it's significantly different when it's just you're being brought back to life under what we can assume as vastly different circumstances. Yes, exactly. No one asked for that. I don't know. I mean some people might mean, like you know something certain movie moguls.

Well that's the think. Isn't that like that, even if the people can find a way to make that process work, wouldn't it just be used to bring back like assholes? Okay, so let's skip it, asshole transplant scaler, Like, let's bring assholes of the past back to life because they had enough ego to preserve brothers back like right, like we do, thank you? Wow? Finally yeah, because only do you insanely rich would be able to do this. Insanely rich are

often extremely afraid of death. So it's it's, you know, like some Peter Teal stuff. Peter Teal would protect his own head totally. Elon musk. He's going to freeze your body replace his body with like he's yeah, he's too narcissistic to even accept a donor. Body's like, no, grow me a new one. I want a fresh body. He'll get a clone donor. I mean, I'm sure there's just like a big storage facility full of clone mustle just

ready to go horrible. So here's the problem with mending the spinal cord is that is very difficult and hard to do also, so we're getting better at spinal repair in extremely skilled spinal surgeons at the Lady Cilento Children's Hospital in Brisbane, Australia, repaired to Toddler's spine that had been internally decapitated. Okay, which sounds bad. I know this sounds bad, but this is slightly less alarmingly called a C one C two vertebra dislocation. Slightly more alarmingly, it

has a sixty eight percent fatality rate. So basically, this poor little kid's school had become detached from the rest of his spine. Now I wouldn't be talking about this unless the kids survived, and the kid did survive and full recovery. Very so happy ending. Don't want to creep you in spend su um. So after surgery, like I said,

Toddler could walk within three weeks, which is incredible. So the key was that the spinal cord itself, which contains all your bundle of nerves going from your brain to the rest of your body, it hadn't been severed, so it was just the vertebrae that had become broken and dislocated, so which still it's an extremely tricky thing to reattach the vertebrae prevent there from being any any damage to

the spinal cords. So they were able to mend the spine, prevent the spinal cord from becoming damage and the little kid made a full recovery, which is great. And there's been obviously a lot of research into mending spinal cords or regrowing spinal cords, but it's a very new science, uh, and it's it's an exciting path of research because obviously this would be revolutionary for people who have paralysis and nerve damage. And it's obviously it would open up a

whole new field of medicine. But if we have this technology now to do head like if we could do a head transplant, we could certainly do much more in terms of healing paralysis, one step at a time. Right. However, Dr Canavero claims that mending spinal cord damage is very different from a head transplant because you can precisely and surgically decapitate someone, making reattachment easier um And he demonstrated this at a ted X talk about uh yeah, with

bananas and spaghetti of course. So he he's like, he holds a banana and he's like, so, first I got to make a disclaimer. I'm skeptical of this guy. I'm coming from a place of skepticism. Yeah, I can't imagine why. So he holds a banana. He's like, this is like a spinal cord that's gone through damage through trump and then he squishes it and throws it on the ground, which accurate scientific model of a spinal cord goes through

when it's physically damaged. Then he takes a banana and he's like, this is what would happen if you surgically decapitate somebody, And he like slices it with a knife and he's and then he starts poking the halves together. It was like, see this can be repaired. Checks out right? Yeah. He also he also has this cool way of demonstrating how he would reattach the spinal cord by sticking a bunch of spaghettis, dry spaghettis and a banana and sticking

them into another banana. This is like obsurd. Okay, I don't trust this man. I mean what's cool is that we share a lot of animatomical features with the banana. Yeah, I mean I think it really when you cut me open, I bleed spaghetti. That's why my dog was looking. She loves spaghetti. She's probably watched this guy's ted talk and she's like, oh my god, she bleeds spaghetti. Wow. There. I don't I don't know. I don't know about that. I mean all wrong. I did study psychology, but I'm

not a neuroscientist. However, my layman's opinion is that spinal nerves aren't really exactly like uncooked spaghetti. I mean I think that that is a fair inference to make. Yes, yeah, well, someone tell this man with the PhD that I mean, to be fair. He's probably using this as sort of a demonstration of what he you know, like like a visual aid for the uneducated. However, it doesn't, like you said, it doesn't exactly inspire confidence, you know, if someone's like, no,

it's exactly like this is gonna work. I mean it does have like the fatality rate is not good. If a doctor walks into a hospital room and like says, all right, let me give you a visual ADI brings out a cucumber and like some baby carrots. I'm gonna leave, Like I actually think I'm good unless he's offering me a salad, and which guy is I'm happy for? Uh? So, you know, I think we're a little ways off of actually reattaching human heads. Sounds that way. I mean, look,

I don't think it's impossible. And he makes a sort of interesting point with like, if you surgically sever a spinal cord with a really thin knife, it isn't theory easier to attach because like that's what a lot of like complex surgery use very thin things, so you can reattach tendons or nerves, and we can kind of do that to some extent. It's just the spinal cord is way more complicated. And this is I think we're a few decades at least away from this, um, I trust you.

But we have, however, made the big milestone of reanimating dead pig brains. Oh good, if this sounds familiar to anyone, we have actually talked about this on the show before. I think in the Eat Prey Diet episode, Yale neuroscientists brought pig baines back pig brains back to life, kind of maybe so the pig brains were taken from a slaughterhouse and we're pumped with artificial blood called brain X. Now, scientists, let me let me talk to you here for a second.

Just just when you're naming your like blood pumping device or your brain artificial blood, maybe go with it names other than auto jector or brain X, because then you just sound like a villain. You did, Like, it's so easy to not You just need to give it a complicated name to people, right, understand, right, like you know synthohemo or something. Right, You're like, oh, that sounds boring, sounds want. Here's the thing about medicine. I want to

be bored by medicine that sounds smarter than me. Right, that's the best case scenario. When a doctor talks to me and I'm bored, that's good, that's good news. If a doctor talks to me and I'm confused and alarmed, that's very bad. Why does this sound? Why are you talking about brain? Explain anyways, not to not to demean these extremely intelligent neuroscience at least that is true, you know, like just like what about I mean brain jelly is fun? I mean it's like if you're going to go that

way all the way right exactly. Yeah, So they brought the brains back to life for up to thirty six hours. Um. Now, the researchers reported that there was no evidence that the brains had regained consciousness, which is good. However, we don't know how to measure consciousness. So I don't know how

you can say, well, it's a complicated science. Because you know, you you can there are certain signs that maybe you're conscious in terms of brain activity, and so you can often sort of say, okay, this this is brain death because there's not this activity or this isn't showing conscious thought. But it's again, it's it's not. We don't it's not like completely well defined it. We can't. We don't have like a consciousness meter, which I would call call the

contracts God. Okay, so I mean thirty six hours old. That's like, that's better than that's better than the scary dog guys. That's true, and it maybe it's it's more it's like it gives you time to finish your unfinished pig business. If you could be time for some some good hard conversation, right, like if you could put uh,

I mean you know, you have this pig brain. Maybe it has a way to like you got some robot eyes and like a way to communicate, and like you have to tell them that they're using their body and some kind of like taco bell, you know, Nacho Cheese, bole stack, Cheetah's dust and crusted nightmare, and they're like

really really, but it's not. I mean I would come back to life, reconcile with my son and then be like, Okay, I gotta I gotta go back to this and your son is to be clear, that animatronic twerking mummy that you posted on Twitter, right, yes, of course. So I'll explain it for people who are not aware of the twerking mummy. Jamie, um, my good friend Jamie here, she has bought a twerking mummy from CVS twelve dollars for

twenty dollars. Um, I've actually seen I saw a bunch of these at another CVS and my first thought was like, oh, it's it's his cousins. People have been sending me videos of them. I mean, this is disruptive in the CVS. I wouldn't say you should do it, but starting that one absolutely do a little. But to go up. You can't in Unison. You cannot stock your store with animatronic twerking mummies that you can as a consumer test and not expect that to happen. It's an occupational hazard. Truly.

I hope that people who work at CVS absolutely despise them. I wouldn't tip CVS workers because like I would like if I, because then maybe it would be like, look, I know this is gonna be annoying and it's gonna play like what song does it play when they're working? It's like a B side pit Bull song. Yeah, so

that's bad. That's really heinous for the work there. But if I could tip them, like a nice tip and be like, look like nobody's happy about this, but I have to do it, but like, hang in there, ill be worth the journey. God, they're so fun. Their butts are so big. Why are they're but so big? It's happy, happy butterween Alligators don't need the help of creepy Soviet scientists to cheek death. They do it by entering cryogenic stasis. So have you ever wondered what happens if an alligator's

habitat freezes over? Alligators don't typically have to deal with frozen waters as they live in warm areas in the South, but they do sometimes live in North Carolina, where a cold snap can cause the swamps to suddenly turn into a sheet of impenetrable ice. For example, there's an alligator preserve called Swamp Park which once froze during a cold snap. The manager looked out and saw all these little alligator noses sticking out of the ice and panicked, thinking they

were dead. Turns out they were just fine. They instinctively positioned their snouts above the water so that when the ice formed, it's sealed around their nose, so their nostrils were sticking out of the ice. What happened is their bodies enter a state of brumation, which is hibernation for

cold blooded animals. Their metabolism and heart rates slows down to a crawl, and all they need to do is chill out, suspended by their noses to the ice, breathe in and out, and essentially take a deep, deep nap. When we return, Wait, what's that I saw something? Oh no, it's a ghost. We'll be right back from the spooky cock. Now it's time for a ghost story. Did you know that Nashville's Belmont Hillsboro neighborhood is haunted by a goose dog, according to the novel ghost Dogs of the South Yeah.

Ever since nineteen sixty two, there have been tales of ghostly barking and ethereal canine encounters in the sleepy little neighborhood. Apparently, a friendly dog who was a boxer named Preston was accompanying tricker treaters on a Halloween night. A truck driver didn't see the little tricker treaters on the dark streets, but before the children were hit by the speeding truck, Preston dove in front of the truck, pushing the tricker

treaters out of the way into safety. But Preston was hit and flew into the air, landing into a nearby yard. But when the horrified children ran over to check on the dog, there was nobody to be found. Ever since then, tricker treaters have reported hearing ghostly barks, a spectral wet nose on their hands, or sightings of a phantom pooch.

Legend has it that Preston spirit roams the streets, gently nudging trick or treaters out of the street to protect them from cars and probably leaving ghostly duties on the side walk. That's so cute. That's the cutest dogs ghost story ever know. Also, the source I read said that there's a lady who left out biscuits every Halloween for the dog, just in case, just in case, in case, ghost dogs eat ghost dog. I love ghost dog, ghost dog, so I would watch that movie, I know, right. Uh,

so you know, are there real life ghost dogs? I don't know. I'll let you be the judge. But there are real life ghost sharks I'm in which are like the puppies of the sea. So ghost sharks. These are some spooky boys. Um. They are not actually a shark, And I mean, are they a ghost? I don't know. Look, I'm not a ghost ologist. Um. They are an order of fish known as chimera forms. I believe I pronounced that correctly, which includes a number of species. Uh. They're

also known as spook fish or chimeras spooky fish. So spooky. Um. So this is not to be confused with the motion picture ghost Shark. Oh. I was about to ask, this is my favorite movie we're talking about. Have you heard of this movie? I have not. Um, well, it's a supernatural horror romp um Uh. Let me first, I'm gonna show you just some clips from this movie, because it is peak shark movie. It's a very it's a very good plausa. I don't think it is. I think it's

someone who looks like it. Oh, here comes the ghost shark. Done, done, ghost shark. Oh, it's all glowy glow. It's a glowy ghost shark. Don't anger that ghost or not. Shore people just splashing around in the water. Here's the infamous pool scene where teens at a pool are having a good time being teenagers. But ghost eat someone right as he's about to do a sick cannonball. That was a quick that. I mean, this is a great this is a good scene. Um,

this is good for women, I think. Actually, let me first explain some of the mythos behind behind Ghost Shark. A shark is tortured by a fisherman and his daughter. As the shark's dead, tortured body drifts down to the bottom of the sea, it is resurrected as it sinks to the bottom and lands in a supernatural underwater cave. Now, this shark is hounngry for revenge, and revenge is a fish best served cold. I like this idea a lot. This is a real movie. I'm this is not a bit.

This is an actual movie. You can look up and watch sci fi. Yeah, I think it was on sci Fi or something. So the shark kills the fisherman and his daughter out of venge, but then also everybody else on the boat. And uh normally this is when the ghost moves on, like you've settled your unfinished business. But not Ghost Shark. Now she wants to eat the entire seaside town of Harmony. I don't actually know the shark's gender, but I feel like I'm just gonna say she because

this it progressive women right exactly. I'm going to offset some of the gratuitous bikini shots with making the protagonists a a woman shark love it. So with her new spectral ghost shark body, she is able to teleport into anybody of water, such as a pool, bathtubs, buckets of water, or glasses of water, killing anyone who dares approach any amount of water, no matter how small. Uh So, Ghost Shark even kills someone by operating at the end of

a slipping slide and just chowing down. Perfect And also explodes out of a person at some point. I'm not I mean, I'm not really sure how that happened exactly. I can see it though, yeah it So here's the let me, I got it. It's just too good. So here's here's the women is doing the car wash thing, you know, the whole thing where you get get dressed in your sexiest clothing and then you you get in a car for five crap all over your boobs. Yeah yeah.

And then here's here's a guy like doing some plumbing and then oh oh no, plumbing technically is water. So and he goes gets sucked up by the ghost shark. Here's kids on a slip and slide, which is ironically shark themed. And so this, this little ginger kid is a gonzo because now comes out of nowhere and eats him off the slip and slide. That was a brutal that um. And now, so you think you're safe with a bucket of water, Sorry, but no ghost shark can

be inside a bucket of water. And they're really lingering on the bikini and not getting to the shark eating the ladies. So I'm gonna yeah, I don't know if the shark is a woman. If this is the p I mean, I mean the shark just eats everyone. The shark doesn't discriminate, just a cold blooded killer. Right. Well, I'm now bored by all of the actual plot of the movie, but suffice it to say that shark pops out of a bucket and and kills a lady slip

inside kill was terrific. That was good. That was perhaps the most incredible cinematography moments in film history. Yeah, that's going to be in the history of film that always shows up that iconic scene. So the mayor of this town is uninterested in the plucky young teens who wants to solve the ghost Shark mystery as he is up for a re election. So the plucky teens team up

with a grizzled, drunken lighthouse keeper. Together they solved the mystery of ghost Shark and finally end her reign of terror by laying her body to rest by blowing up the supernatural cave in which ghost Shark was resurrected. So problem solved. This is this is perhaps the best movie. I love this. Yeah, I'm absolutely hooked. It makes sense. I think we can all as in a logical progression of ideas and plot points. Yes, um, and the shark eats some kid off of a slipping slide. Like, what

more do you people want? Yeah, if you want to, I'm sorry, snobs. So now let's move on to the real ghost shark. So deep sea fish, as I said, a chimera form. Uh. And it lives at depths of around eight thousand, five hundred feet under the sea. They grew up to about five ft long. They're not huge, but they are very spooky looking. So let me show you a video of the real ghost shark. Oh wow, Oh was cuter than I expected. Exactly right. They got like a weird little nose, a lot of a lot

of fin fin action going on. Uh. And they are they're squire, they're little jelly boys because like sharks, their skeletons are made out of cartilage. Um. And unlike sharks, they kind of have a retractable weiener on their foreheads. Oh well, I mean that's fun. That's a little bit of kinky fun. Yeah. To be fair, it's not a real weener. It's more like a retractable vibrator. Um. It's it's not a functional penis, but it is used to stimulate the female sex organs and to pull her closer.

So it's like a sex toy finger forehead, a finger for finger, but only for pickering, right exactly. And it looks like a spiked club. And here is a picture of it. Oh that is phallic. Yeah, very sex toy esque. Um. It's called scientifically, it's called a class berm, but I like to call it a dongus because that's what it looks like to me. Uh. They also have a venomous spike in the dorsal fin. Just for fun, I guess

some of them also have a weird floppy snout. And now, since they're deep sea animals, whenever you bring a deep sea animal up to the surface, it's always gonna go through a process of what I like to call dupification, where they look a lot more doofy out of the water because stuff happens to their skin because they're under immense pressure. So when they're brought up out of that, it's um. So here here he is, though, and it looks pretty boy, what a saucy little kid, these guys.

He's got a floppy nose and this kind of weird mouth and he looks um. He kind of just looks like a dufus, just a nice guy, I know, with the kindness and the thoughtfulness of having a dongas on his forehead. I really yeah like us for her, for her, for her pleasure, ribbed for her pleasure. Most species would never I know, right. I mean, this is like a progressive shark. This is a shark that cares if you

come or not. And that is a beautiful thing. Um. And so you also don't really have to be worried about this shark killing you, first of all, because they are kind of small, and also because they mostly eat invertebrates and shellfish and they don't really have teeth. They have grinding plates that they use to crush up clams and crabs and other small invertebrates. So they are I like these guys sweethearts. They're sweet little they're they're just

a little bit golf. They're sweet little dongases. Yeah that's nice. That was an uplifting line, I know, right, um, And so uh now I want to talk a little bit just to kind of close out the show about lemurs. And the word lemur comes from the Latin word for ghosts and the whole so there's not too much that is ghostly about lemurs except for and they're very cute. If you've seen lemurs, cute little guys. Their calls, like their vocalizations are the creepiest sounding thing come out of

these cute, fluffy bodies. So let's start off with the call of a ring tailed lemur. Yeah, it sounds like it sounds it sounds like a horror movie sound effect, you know, like, yeah, it sounds like like if you googled like scream stube or the shrieking violins and psycho. Oh I benef you layered those. Yes, yes, yes, this is I mean like it sounds like like Heredity, you know, the horror movie Hereditary Heredity. Yeah. God um, And now

let's move on to the black and white ruffed lemur. Oh, it just sounds like he's going to like eat your bones. Sounds like audio glitching too, right, like some kind of demon computer very seven days to Live or like the you know, like how that horror movie thing of like things like you know where it's got that sound to it, which but then look how cute he is. He's got a chin beard. I know, I was like, I trust him, but I'm like, he's he's got a dark side for sure. Right.

Um so these vocalizations are thought to be, or or have been sort of historically thought to be, like the calls of the spirits of the Island. Yeah, that's kind of cool because they do sound pretty uh. I mean these are some ordinary spirits though, I got a say. Yeah, and they chose the cutest possible vessels. I know, I give them that. It's like it's like a haunted kitten that just goes like like, oh, but it's so cute.

I guess you can come home with me. Wow. Well that is that's all the horror that I have for you. It's a very haunted episode. I know, it's very spooky. You got any you got any spooky stories, Jamie, Any spooky stories? Um? Well no. Most of the spooky stories were made up. And my my dad was really good at like making up speaking stories before bed. He would always talk about a sports editor at his paper that didn't exist, who would cut his fingers off for missing deadlines?

Do they give you're not gonna be two hundred words per minute, I'll remove your fabies. It was a whole series of stories. Yeah, people who go mysteriously missing from the sports department. My dad did this thing when I was a little kid that freaks my little brain. It was he got a it was like an encyclopedia or dictionary where they had the pictures and he said, I'm going to do a magic trick. I'm like, okay, sure, dad,

And I'm like five years old. And I was a pretty you know, pretty cynical five year old, and I didn't think necessarily that's okay, you can't do magic with a dictionary. But he, uh, he got a He was like, here's a picture of a jack rabbit. I'm like, yeah, okay, sure dad. Cool cool tricked out, this is boring. Then he turned the page and like, here's a picture of an antelope. And I was like, yeah, alright, cool dad.

And then he waved his hand over the book and he's like here here, and we're combining them with magic. And he opened it up to a jackalope and I was like, oh, what the hell I was? I was a like certain that my dad was a book sorcerer. It freaked me out. Wow, I thought the book was haunted. That's a very smart deception. That was a good dad troll. That's a very good dad troll. Yes, that's off I used to tell my brother that there was one book in every library that if you took it off the shelf,

the whole library would explode. And so he that's actually true. That's actually true though, Yeah, there's it's not actually that the library explodes, it's that there's a load bearing book that if you remove it, the whole library collapses. Well, my mother to this day has never read a bout. Okay, she really helped with his education. Thank you so much for joining me on this spooky Halloween special, Jamie, than for having you got any you got anything a plug

other than your trking mummy? Oh, I mean check out the twrking Mummy. Twitter dot com got flagged by t s A last week because of the tworking Mommy. I thought something was in the ass. It was they thought it? Did they think it? They thought that there might have been drugs. Oh, they thought there might have been drugs in the app. It is a plump as you could

fit drugs in it, hide something in there. So check out the mummy and then listen to the bec del Casta, which I co host right here on our radio with Caitlin Toronte every Thursday. Yeah, I've seen you guys around doing things. I was sure. I wasn't really sure what you're doing in here, in this here studio. Larking around has to do with the dogshead. Where can people find you? On social You can find me on Twitter at Jamie

off His Help and Instagram at Jamie christ Superstar. And you can find us on the internet at well first of all, Creature feature Pod dot Com, Creature Feature Pod on Instagram, and Creature Feet Pod on Twitter. That's f E a T, not f et. The other one is very different. You can find me at Katie Golden and of course, as always I fight for the rights of our A B and overlords at pro bird Rights. Hell yeah,

thank you so much for joining us today. If you're enjoying this show, you know there are a variety of buttons available below the episode that sometimes they're in the shape of stars. He could go ahead and just click on all the like the full stars maximum starts available, leave a review and all and subscribing all of that. I mean, but just for listening. Thank you, that's great. I really appreciate it. Happy Halloween, stay out of traffic or else ghost Dog Preston is gonna gonna get mad

at you sort of. He's got your back. He's got your back, that's true. He's a friendly ghost dog. Thanks to the Space Classics for their super spook tacular song. X Alumina Creature feature is a production of I Heart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from I Heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.