No Elephants in the Room

a strange superpower. These are all elephants, but they're not actually elephants. Joining me today to talk about these elephants who are elephant Imposts is friend of the show, the audio genius behind Fake Doctor's Real Friends, Boss Level and New one Upsmanship, d J. Danil. Welcome, so thrilled to be back, especially to talk about elephants that are an elephants. Yes, so I love elephants, big old, big old gray and brown with the big old trunks, floppy ears. We're not

talking about those today. They Yeah, we're talking about animals who are called elephants, but they are not in fact elephants, and I love that. One of the naming conventions in evolutionary biology is like this animal kind of looks like another animal, so we're just gonna put that animal's name in this animal's name. Uh So, you know, like rhinoceros beetles, like you're like a rhino. We can't. We ran out of names, so now you're getting that name every everybody.

Everybody's just passing around their names till everything is an amalgamation of other names, right exactly. I mean, like, where's the creativity why you call like a rhinoceros beetle like a jungus or something. I don't know. I like that jungus, does it has it? I'm horrified to like look that up on Urban Dictionary to find out it means something terrible. But yeah, I do like that jungus. It's undoubtedly some prison drug that you make by doing something doing some

hard jungus. Um No, I don't endorse doing jungis on this podcast. But uh So, the first thing I want to talk about is a one of my favorite animals. And I I don't know, if you listeners out there follow me on Twitter if you want to, you can. I'm not stopping you. Katie Katie Golden on Twitter dot org Twitter dot Net. Um. But yeah, I I shared with the world the elephant true and uh not to toot my own horn, but my tweet did do some numbers. People did numbers. It did numbers. People were wild about

these elephant shrews. Um, And I can't blame them because I'm wild about elephant shrews. They are amazing. And I on Twitter if you do want to look up the thread I shared elephant shrews yawning, which is the best thing you will ever see with your eyeballs, so adorable. It is amazing. So elephant shrews are these weird little dudes who are found in Africa. Who I guess the best way to describe them is they have the body of a mouse and the snoot of an elephant. I guess,

kind of an abbreviated snoop. Yeah, it's not quite as long and wrinkly as an elephant snoop, but it is an elongated snoot, so like a little mouse, but if you like, pulled on the nose out until you know, stretched out a little bit, kind of kind of a hoovell shrew. Yeah, yeah, I can see that. Uh. And there are many different species of elephant shrew. But they all have one thing in common. They're completely ridiculous looking,

and they have a wiggly little snoot. And they also so instead of kind of like waddling around on like really short feet like I see like uh, I don't know, I think um mice uh and kind of have like shorter stub your legs, these elephant shrews actually have longer legs. So they have this very like kind of almost runaway ready sort of long legged strut that I really admire. They're really they are. They are models. They are America's

next top shrew. They are working I believe it is called but with the E W E R K I and so yeah, so they're they're very agile, but their faces are incredible. Like I said, there are many different species of elephant shrews. They all have like slightly different faces. Some of them have like big mouse like ears and maybe a slightly shorter nose, although it's still it's still long and pointy. Others have really long faces and like short and stubby ears. Some of them kind of look

more like maybe an ant eater. Some of them look more like a mouse, but they're all elephant shrews. Adorable. They're really super cute. They are super cute. I love it when I love the cuteness of animals that have kind of strange distinctive feature like this long like tubular wiggly nose. It's just it's yea. It gives them a uniqueness where it's like, you know, you don't have to win me over always with just the puppy dog face, big eyes, like you've got a weird wiggly nose. I

love you, your door. I'm starting to think that long wiggly nos is like a positive trait in general. I think about my aunt eaters, which also have a very long snout or or what will correct me whatever that thing is coming off of their face. It is so cute. Yeah, it's a long snout. It's so cute. It is very cute. Yeah, I mean I think it's called. The technical term for these things is a proboscis, which is that's a great name. Now,

that is a good name. I'm glad that we do have some creativity and naming things in evolutionary biology, because like, what was it like a what did I call it? A jungis jungis and then proboscis, I just I like those. It's a good word. Yeah, definitely a solid word. Just a positive, a positive attribute in the natural space. Big snoot bigot fans only I can't think of a big snoot. I don't like a pronounced proboscis. Yes, very good and uh So these are called elephant shrews, Dan, can you

guess who they are more related to? Elephants or shrews? Well, sho Katie, looking at this picture right here, I'm gonna you know, my gut tells me shrew. Yeah, well you are wrong. Uh what what that's right? Suck on it? Uh. You know my goal here is to humiliate my guests. So I've been subverted, played right into my my sweaty hands. So the uh if you guessed that the elephant shrew is actually in fact more related to the elephant, you

are correct. As strange as it may seem, these tiny shrew like mammals are more closely related to the huge elephant than they are too shrews. And again, most most of these are little. They're like mouse sized fits in your palm. They are also called singis. Uh. They're found exclusively in Africa. They are actually more closely related to elephants then two shrews. I mean, they're not extremely close to elephants. I wouldn't say they're like cousins or anything

like that, but yeah, just it is interesting. I mean phylogenetically, they are closer on that branching tree of life to the elephant than to the shrew, despite their small size and generally shrew like appearance. Very shrew like, yes, but yeah, there there are a lot of different species, but they all have that long, wiggly nose that they used to sniff around and locate insects. And this is nose is a very interesting thing because it can be moved around, uh,

to sniff and search and pinpoint prey. So they can like wiggle it from side to side. I mean, it's got some it's certainly not as versatile and mobile as an elephant's trunk, but they can't. They can move it and so like like as if you're using a metal detector, they're using it as a smells detector. Got it. They're sweeping the ground exactly, and so they can find tasty insects to eat their insect gang. That makes sense. They are tiny, okay, okay, and even though they are not

really that related to ant eaters. They can use their long tongues to flick small insects into their mouths like an ant eater, but for bigger bugs, they actually got a crunch down with their little mouths. So uh. But here's the problem. Because they have that long snoot. If they just try to like eat direct like eat it off the ground directly in front of them, they're snoop walk in and get in the way. It's a problem.

And so what they have to do is they approach it from the side, so they like turn their heads and say they've got like a big juicy grub or earthworm, and they put it like in the side of their mouth like bugs bunny eating a carrot. And then and then like they hold it, they pin the prey down, the earthworm or whatever with their with their little front paws. Like have you ever seen like a dog eating a bone and it's got the bone way too much? Literally

all the time every day. Katie, my little puppy, Kelly, she is none on that bone and just like holding it down like we're going to take it from her, Like Kelly go off chew that bone all day long. Yeah, I know, my dog always acts like I'm jealous of the thing that I literally just gave her like five seconds ago. She carries it off. Yeah, I just I handed it to you and said enjoy, And now you're looking at me like I'm going to steal it. Um. But that's what these uh, these little elephant shrews do,

but with like juicy worms. Uh. It's adorable. Uh. And then it like apparently they're very messy eaters, so they have to like lick up all the crumbs of the beetles and grubs that they spill everywhere with their little tongues. So just a door bowl I would love. They don't eat spaghetti, but I'd love to see one go go on and plate of spaghetti and see that, see that

whole scene. That would be really uh man, it seems so daunting for this little shrew, but that would be such an adorable trip to see them just like go off on some spaghetti, just going with hand on the noodle. That's like if I could have like an like one free pass for like an unethical thing with in terms of animals, it would be to see elephant shrews eat a plate of spaghetti, maybe like two of them at the same time, and they get one noodle and then they kiss like in they kiss in like uh like

the tramp, but then they like slurk up. The nose also gets in their mouth because it's kind of like a noodle. You know, that would be really funny. There's there's wow. Okay, I love that image. That's very funny. So there are two plenty species of elephant shrew. There

are a lot of them out there. Yeah, and some are small and gray and more miss like, but some are larger and they have a different coloration, like they can be black in this kind of rusty red color, but they all have long, sort of mouse like tails. The largest elephant true is the gray faced singy with black red and gray coloration, who is about one point seven five pounds or point eight kilograms. Uh and including the tail, it's over twenty inches long, so fifty six centimeters,

so you know, like not huge but sizeable. It's relatively significant. I mean I was definitely looking at them thinking they were tiny, tiny. Yeah, that's that's that's that's larger than I thought they were. Okay, that's that's even cuter. Honestly, it's very cut But a lot of them are tiny so like the smallest elephant trewe species are the short eared elephant shrewe, which way about an ounce or twenty eight grams and are four inches long or ten centimeters.

So little guy, popular, little baby. I would get so nervous about animals that are too small to even see sometimes because they're so cute, but it's like they're so prone to us large feet beasts. I would hate. I would hate to be just walking around the you know wherever. What sorry you said they were in Africa as a particular region of Africa they're in. I mean they are

found in like sort of scrubby, grassy areas. I think they're found kind of all over because there's so many species, but I think the majority of them are let me see here. Uh yeah, I think they're they're found um found mostly in the sort of southern parts of Africa. Uh So, but you know, they're they're like kind of different areas that they um inhabits. Sometimes forested areas, sometimes more scrubby areas. There's some that live in like more of the like arid mountain regions, so a lot of

different species will have their own niches. But yeah, I think they tend to be in the southern regions of Africa. Got it very cool? Um? Yeah, well, I just would hate to see get stepped on by some other large beasts. And it sounds like in the southern anges of Africa there are some large beasts that they could in fact get stepped on by, and I pray for them. Well, don't be too worried about them, because they are surprisingly good at evading danger and probably easily evade being stepped

on by you because they are extremely fast. Their legs are relatively long for their bodies, and some species, like the western rock elephant true which is one of the smaller species one of these little mouths like cuties, they can run up to seventeen miles or hour or twenty eight kilometers an hour. Yes, yeah, those long legs, Yeah yeah, those long legs really help them out. The legs really

do it. Holy smokes. Okay. In fact, certain species of elephant shrews will maintain specific roots for themselves by trimming grass so like they will create hiking pans or little roads for themselves that they can run along. These like little running trails, and usually they lead to some kind of safety. But this allows them to run without tripping over anything away from predators. So, uh, it is really cute because these just look like teeny tying mouse roads

and that's essentially what they are. Wow, I have I unfortunately, I have more questions. I don't know if this is I don't know if this is part of the research, but like seventeen for a beast, for for a beast, for an animal that's small, feels like proportionally super fast. Yes, it is like that is so fast right there? It is? Yeah, it'd be. I mean I can't God, I don't know if I can do the math. But let's say, yeah,

that's right. As I was saying, I was like, that seems like this seems like one of those math problems you get in here. So a road to run this distance in this amount of time. Let's pretend that I did the math and it's like a human running like a hundred miles per hour. I don't know that. I mean, like honestly, size wise, that feels about right, That seems right.

I don't I don't know, but I'm going to say, like we're we're like maybe a hundred probably more than a hundred times bigger than these so times definitely, I don't know. That's how math works. Probably that's how math works. Definitely,

that's how supportive. That's fast fast. Yeah, it's like, not only are they really fast runners, but they will like design their own running tracks so that it's something's coming at them, and they have memorized these tracks the know how to run along them, whereas their predator doesn't, so they can really quickly zip around and it's it's like a super smart thing for them to do. It's really amazing. That's incredible. I love that great animal. Yeah, big, big,

big fan. Actually, their brains, even though they're tiny and their brains are small proportional to their body size, their brains are relatively large for like when you compare other animals their size, So they may be you know, it's always difficult to measure a different species intelligence, but they may be a little bit um. You know, they've got

some wits about them. I would suspect brains. I mean, look into their eyes, Look into their eyes and tell me that they they're not thinking about stuff, planning things,

making plans, having feelings. And another really awesome little trick they have is that at night they go into version of brief hibernation called torpoor, so they slow down their bodies metabolism, and that way they are able to conserve energy, which is really important if you're going to run seventeen miles per hour and be so small and need that

constant diet of insects. So you can basically just put yourself in sort of a version of stasis overnight so that you're not burning as much of that fuel and you can start your day ready to run along, you know, put on your tiny little elephant true hiking or running shoes and your your little teeny tiny nikes ready to go there. Yeah, And in terms of their social lives,

they're relatively solitary. I don't usually quote Wikipedia, but I have to because I found uh this from Wikipedia, Spilling Spilling the tea about the romantic lives of short eared elephants shows let's hear it, the mess they are messy. They are. They are toxic and messy. So quote, although they live in pairs, the partners do not care much for each other, and their sole purpose of even associating with the opposite sex is for reproduction. You just got

red by Wikipedia. Harsh. Just baby, it's just baby making. That's come on, there's so much more to life than that. I know, Like, are you just going to grow together as partners if you're just all about the got to have to baby just running away from commitment like they run along their little paths that they make explode. Pa, got him God roasted, Get read. And then here's an

adorable family moment for these elephant shrews. Baby elephant shrews, once they are weaned off of milk, are fed mashed up insects that the female elephant true stores in her cheek pouches. Love it a little mommy throw up. Yeah, baby food, but man, shoot up worms love it, that's all. My mother had chewed up worms. I mean protein, right, a lot of protein. You do what you gotta do. She said, this is a scoopful of dirt and proves your immune system. I was like, hey, you know better

than I do. I'm a baby. You said that to her? Hey? Did? I said, yeah? I deferred to you, mother. I'm a baby. Indeed, I'm a baby. Yeah, yeah, no, that's a I can't imagine that too. I can see saying that baby. Yeah. But I just I love these elephant shoes. They're there. They have an audacity to them to even exist like this that I love. I respect them for it. I mean, the speed is something bad is very is both very impressive to me and also kind of like a there's

a reason that they exist. Still, there's a reason that we have these beasts, that that they're able to just skiter away from any situation and do so with elegance, with grace, also with a plan of the tracks. Amazing. Yeah, man, uh no, sorry, an elephant true plan. Yeah, perfect, Yeah, we love we love a Paltrow. I've had like, I think six of this much water in the last three hours. I've resorted to jug life. Have one of those, one of those huge analogenes. I need I need a big

old I need. I need a big old water jug, just like I do. I have a backpack for hiking. I should just fill that up with water. Yeah, I've I've got a camelbag. I should be utilizing that. Throw that on. Just sitting there tying, yeah, no, this is this is gonna improve my work, my work productivity. How does she do it? Constantly drinking water? I'm constantly drinking and urinating. That is my whole life now, drinking urinating.

I've just become a tube. Um, So sadly we must move on from the elephant trewe even though I love them so much, and talk about the other elephant in the room, who, again, not a real elephant. This is the elephant nose fish. Boiler alert fans. It is also adorable if you want, like a mermaid version of the elephant. True, it is the elephant nose fish. Unlike the elephant. True, these are a fish, so they're not super related to elephants. And you know, oh man, I was ready for you

to give you the question again. I was gonna be like, Okay, well, surely this one that's maybe not related. I mean, I didn't look into this, and maybe I should have. But I know, like fish are so old and there's so many of them that there are some fish I believe that are more related to like mammals and other terrestrial animals than they are to other fish, because it's like, you know, I mean, it's just it's such a like there's so many fish and it covers such a huge

amount of time. Some of them are going to be closer, more closely related to us than they are too, like some other fish that's way more ancient, way more different huh yeah, wow, that is I mean, I I guess I guess that tracks. But that also that's still I mean, that's still surprised me that I could be swimming out there with no fishies and one of them sipers in

my ear. You know, you're not so different to you and I like, yeah, you're my brother from another spawn mother YouTube, spawned in a pool of hundreds of your brothers and sisters. Yes, well not really what Yeah, it must be weird for fish like you just like you poop out the eggs and like spread some fertilizer on them, right, and then they make babies something like that. Um, it's like me and my bougan Dailia. Yeah yeah, just growing a crop of babies. Uh so babies. Yeah. So there

are so elephant fish. It's not just one species of fish. There are many species of elephant fish or elephant nosed fish. Uh and actually you know, hey, they are also found in Africa. They are raith and fish found in fresh water river systems in Africa. They are usually gray or black or brown. They've got um they're kind of uh a longer fish like they're not like sort of the chubby type of fish like a goldfish, there's a little bit longer. They can grow to be around nine inches

or twenty three centimeters long, so they're not that's small. Um, but they're not, you know, they're not huge. Um. They've got like there, uh it's called their dorsal and anal fin. It's it's just like a fin that um come. Yeah, I mean it's just the location of the fin um. But it forms is kind of like triangle um or like this this sort of diamond shape on their back, which is that it's pretty neat. It's a pretty neat

looking fish, all things considered. And then, but the moment we've all been waiting for is the newt the proboscis, the proboscus Scott. I love saying proboscis. I gotta say it like Richard Nixon, the proboscis. Al Right, enough of that, I guess. Um. So, yeah, they have a long proboscis and it looks like this long nose, like they're like you took an ant eater and a fish and you jumbled their DNA up in some kind of ungodly science experiment. But it's not actually a nose, so it sure looks

like a nose. But it's not. It is actually a protrusion of their lower jaw, which actually, now that I say it, that is a little more similar to the ant eater because the ant eaters whole proboscis, like it is not just a nose. Their mouth parts are actually located on the end of that long proboscis, as is the case for this fish. WHOA So okay, you said. You said it's an extension of their lower jaw. That's right. So is it kind of like a big old underbyte.

That's right. Yeah, their mouth does occur like there. So some of them their mouths are actually like located closer to their face, so it really is just like this long protrusion of their lower jaw that like sticks out.

But then I think that some of them, like their mouth is it is kind of closer to the end of that weird underbite, so like some of them have more of like the tube mouth with like just like little mouth parts on the very near the tip, and some of them just have like this long underbite, more of a Jim Carrey in the mask situation. But it got it. Yeah. Oh, and I should say that there is another species. There's another fish that is called an elephant fish, but it is not related to these elephant

uh nose fish. So like, um, the Australian ghost shark is sometimes called the elephant fish, but unrelated. Um. And I don't I don't quite agree with calling them an elephant fish because I don't think they look as like an elephant as as these guys do. But it does have does have kind of like a long, like weird, long twirly proboscus. So I guess that's why, uh it's called that. But yeah, no, these are elephant nose fish

elephant fish, but they are unrelated to the Australian ghost shark. Okay, cool, a ghost shack, but that that proboscis right, that extension of their lower jaw. It has a name, and it's a good one. It is called the sna An organ. Yeah, now an organ. Man. If I had to guess the country of origin on that one, it's French. No, yeah, so it is called the schnells An organ. I am really hoping this is actually what it's called, not like some elaborate prank by the study authors of these biology papers.

It's like, if we call it a sns an organ, can we convince podcasters that out, like just as it's a real name and not just like some undergrad is. Like I'm just going to call it now as an organ and see if anyone notices. Someone had a lot of fun at the lab that day, Like, hey, you think I think we can just we can just slip this by, right. I feel like that's like most of

how these names and evolutionary biology come to be. It's just like someone like slipping a word into a paper to see if anyone notices I call this Schnells an organ proboscis exactly. So, yeah, the schnell is an organ as well as other parts of these elephant fish body is actually covered in electro receptors, which will be really important information about one minute from now. But first we

got to talk about the elephant fishes. But because it generates a weak electric field with that but it Yeah, I mean, so to be clear, elephant fishes don't really have a but like humans do in its tail like at the back side of it. It has this special electric organ that generates a weak electric field. Huh, so what is the what is the purposes said electric field? Yeah, this is really interesting. So by generating this weak electric pulse.

It can create like it's creating like this field around itself, and then that field interacts with objects that gets in its way, so like it could be some smaller fish, it could be a rock, whatever it's gonna like bump into this electric field. And remember how I said that it has electro receptors as well. Now it can sense its own electric field, and when something disrupts it, this fish knows that something is there. So it's a form of being able to detect its environment even in low visibility.

So it can detect its prey, it can detect plants, it can detect stickles. It's kind of like in a Lucy Goosey way. It's kind of like how bats will use their their sonar, yeah, sure, where they like send out a pulse of sound and then the location location a little bit. They send out the signal and then when it comes back to them, they are able to

tell like, hey, this is uh, there's something there. Now this is slightly different because instead of it like you know, they they these fish kind of detect the disturbance in the field, a disturbance in the force around them, and they can sense that and use that to hunt or also to avoid obstacles or avoid predators. Wow, that's really I mean, okay, first of all, amazing love to have a little force field. That's dope. Yeah, So I guess my, I guess. My next question is do they share a

trait with the elephant true of being pecularly fast? Because once they get that data, what do they do with it?

Are they I think that they are. I mean, I don't know if they are particularly fast compared to other fish, but they do have an advantage because if they are in sort of low visibility, like something is kind of silty or like in these sort of freshwater systems, you may often have some some silt or debris, and so if they are in this environment and you can't really see very well with your eyes, they are going to have a an advantage where they can zero in on

their prey avoid obstacles, whereas, like you know, their prey like smaller fish or invertebrates, may not be able to see so well. And so this is actually it's interesting because this is actually the same technique used by platypus. Is so uh yes. So they also use electro reception where they can detect the weak electric activity of of their prey. And they also live in sort of silty

freshwater environments where they there may be low visibility. And so it's really interesting you have two completely unrelated animals both using a similar system so that they can hunt for prey, avoid obstacles when they are in this kind of like muddy silty situation. Perfect. Yeah, okay, so they got they got the jump on, They got to jump on their enemies, try to face them, try to oppose them. Yeah, it's like if you use a smoke bomb and then you sneak up on you know. Uh yeah, it is

really interesting it. But also they do have another similarity to the elephant, true, which is they have a large brain to body mass ratio. They probably need a lot of processing power for that complex electro reception. But it's also thought this may be a relatively intelligent fish, especially compared to its size. Wow. Cool they I mean, like, you know, to have to have all that advanced technology, to have all that radar on board, I imagine that

you know, that's kind of translate into some form of smarts. Yeah, yeah, use that information effectively. That's that's smarts in its own way. You gotta know how to calibrate yours an organ organ I literally forgot for a second. I know, I had to remind you is an organ Nelson organs. This fish has a Schnaston organ. We find very fascinating. Love that love that one more elephant. This is the last elephant

of the day that is also not an elephant. But we've talked about two elephants that are an elephant true and an elephant fish a k a. Elephant nose fish. But they're kind of small, you know, they're they're they're not like microscopic, but you know, ma size to about you know, a little over a foot long. You know, they're certainly not elephant in their proportions. And they were

named elephants such and such because of that proboscis. Now this animal was named elephant due to its ridiculous proportions. It's ridiculous size. This is the elephant bird. Have you ever thought about like what a you know, how like humans we have extinct ancestors, right, we have these apes these Uh god, I just forgot all of human evolution. But you know what I mean, yeah, humans, yes, here you go, so like, but like, have you ever thought about like that for big bird? Because big bird is

much like a human bipedal um complex language. Um. You know, uh, like what would the ancestor to big bird look like, because like, uh, it would have to be some kind of large flightless bird because big birds, I mean it uses its wings. Now, the big bird to like, I guess as kind of hands rudimentary hands, um, but it does it is. It is flightless. Um. And big bird is also quite large. It's eight ft and two inches, which is two point five meters. So yeah, that is

I mean, the name really does fit. It's like, big bird looks very cuddly, but I also feel like I would be intimidated to, like, you know, just look up at this big yellow bird because big bird is literally that big which quite large. Oh, it's it's quite it's quite large. And also you know, okay, so let's let's let's be real sesame street big bird Like yeah great, I mean, you know, what what a what a what a sweet, warm, cuddly you know, creature being for sure.

But if you're seeing a raw, untamed big bird out in the wild, raw big bird, we're talking, we're talking, we're talking primal uncensored big bird. Are you going to come up to you and be trying to poke your face distance yea, my distance. Birds do not back around, No, they really don't. I think it is worth noting that birds are dinosaurs, that that's not an exaggeration or like a joke. Like they are literally dinosaurs, and the fact we call them birds not dinosaurs is just sort of

it's just factually inaccurate. Yeah, I mean it is inaccurate. They're they're literally dinosaurs. There's I mean, it's I suppose like if you really like you can make a distinction between birds and like dinosaurs, but a lot of like bird researchers feel like there's no reason to separate them from uh dinosaurs completely. So they are they are a type.

They are a form of dinosaur or that is still alive and and so you know, you could say that like the ostrich is big bird's ancestor, but I don't think so, because ostriches are only around seven ft tall, and they just don't have the meatiness of the big bird, you know what I mean. Oh, I mean, well, you know, if they really did have the meatness of the big bird, I would be even you know, kind of more horrified. Yeah, I just fem so cautious of birds out in the wild.

There's there's definitely a level of bird that I am comfortable facing down. I had this, there's okay, have you had if you're on the show, Yes, if you want away, if you want to of course, classic friend of the Friend of the pod, Friend of the many pods, if you want way. He has a stance that he could fight a gorilla, which is of course ridiculous. Never couldn't happen. But there's there's definitely I definitely have a little hubers

when it comes to certain animals. Birds do not fit into the category of ubris of where I'm like, I could take bird. I could take a bird, could be like a bird that I can hold in my hand. But like even like geese, like I'm not trying to find with the geese. They are mean. They're mean, they are serious, and they when like you know, a lot of animals will offer empty threats, not birds, no empty They're coming from you up, They're gonna peck your face, yeah,

I mean. And like it's like even the nerdy birds like Corvid's like they hold a grudge because like you know, it's like, oh, these are sort of the nerdier birds are smart. They don't have a lot of brawn, but they will remember. They teach their young to like if you mess with them, they will teach their offspring to hate you. The whole horror movie about this whole movie about this a documented snakes on a plane. The government's

covering it up. That exactly on the point. Yes, So, given given your your cautious attitudes towards birds, how would you feel about a bird that was nearly tin eat tall or three meters one thousand and six hundred pounds or seven hundred and thirty ms, the heaviest and tallest bird in the history of the earth. So I mean, so with great awe and reverence, am I trying to

with this bird? Zero percent? But I might trying to show somebody a cool video of this bird, like walking through a village and everybody's like, oh my god, look this bird. Or it's like walking into like a town square. There's like a bunch of people in the market and then this bird just like walks through and people are just like, I'm out, Yeah, that's that's what I support. It's the kai Je of birds. But this was a real bird called the elephant bird who lived in Madagascar.

So of course, of course Madagascar the home of every wild looking everything like Earth's foreign planet. Yes, islands, islands do stuff because like when you have an island, you have this like interesting. I think it's like you you have an isolated system and stuff just goes wild. I don't know if that's like scientific, but that's my opinion.

Like when you have I feel like the less interrupted other parts of the other parts of the world are the less they you know, get the influence of other species or you know, seeds or you know, every everything floats on the wind, so it's like as if nothing's

getting over there, nothing's affecting it. Shout out trees. Yeah, I mean, I think it's like that's how you get I mean certain islands, um like New Zealand or Mauritius, they have these amazing ground dwelling birds like the Kiwi's or the extinct do do because you know, you didn't have if you if you don't have too many predators that will take advantage of that, uh, then you can be just basically this big dumb bird that roams around

on the ground. Of course that was and by the dodo was killed by the Dutch who came in with their cats and their dogs and their rats, which it probably wasn't the human hunting that did them in all of that. That certainly helped, but it was the cats and dogs killing them, and then the rats that they inadvertently brought that like out competed them. So those combined factors. So these closed island systems can have really really interesting animals.

And these elephant birds despite its size and long ostrich like neck like, these look like they looked like ostriches on steroids, like much like meteor thicker legs, thicker necks, but they still had the long sort of ostrich like neck um. So it's like if you just if you just bulked up, yeah, bulked up an ostrich or an emu protein shakes ket ketoed all the way out, all the way ketoed. Chia seeds, you know, es seeds. I don't really know, Yeah, go ahead, no no, no, no,

I don't know. I was just gonna say, I don't know if that's what you do to build bulk, but it totally is ground chia seeds. Your body can process them a lot better. Sometimes regular chia seeds straight through you round chia seeds. You just sort of like just eat the powder, just crunch it down. Yeah, that's how

you crush. It sounds good. It's kind of like it's kind of like so basically like for the protein shake, I am the shrew mother who's grinding up the grubs that are the chia seeds in my mouth to then feed them into my smoothie, who then feeds me. But you know, yeah, just I need to see this. I need to see this cook cooking home cooking with Danial to make a chees smoothie and he's just spitting a

chea mash into a cup that's per picked. Yeah. I hope those sound effects earlier we're enough for the audience of this audio only podcast. Yeah, yeah, no, it's a it's a s mr. You just like chewing, chewing up cheese seeds. So actually, you know what, Yeah, I think that would actually there would be people out there into that, not that I want to find out. They follow me on twitch. Yeah, so like, yeah, it is actually it's despite looking like a beefed up ostrich, it's closest living

relative is not the Ostrich but the Kiwi. And yeah, is that weird? Again? This is what the elephants true in the elephant, how how are we looking at this fish and like its close to kiwi for sure? What? Well, it's because there is a lot of parallel evolution or

convergent evolution. So parallel evolution is when too pretty unrelated independent species both arrive at a similar evolutionary path because they probably had similar evolutionary pressures, whereas convergent evolutions where you have two related species who also both independently evolve similar traits, but they're they're more related than species who

are involved in like parallel evolution. So parallel evolution would be like both the elephant nose fish and the platypus developing that electro reception um, whereas convergent evolution would be gosh, let me think that would be the fact that there were two species of ground sloth, the giant sloths that

used to be around but are now extinct. They ended up becoming the tree sloths, two toad sloths and the three toad slavs, who are related, but they independently evolved into the two toad and the three toad slovs, So which is really interesting. So the I think they're closely related enough to ostrich is that this would be a

case of parallel evolution. I'm not sure on that, but yeah, so, like these birds are becoming more ostrich like or Emu like through sort of this parallel evolution, but they are more related to the Kiwi. But like the Kiwi, the elephant bird had proportionally huge eggs, and Kiwi's are They're relatively little birds, like you know, about the size of a small I don't know, small milon, a small melon, or a small never mind a large kiwi. F Yeah, so the Kiwi lays really huge eggs compared to its

body size, which I'm sorry Kiwi ladies, that sucks. But because the elephant birds also laid relatively large eggs, but they're also incredibly huge. They had bonkers, gigantic eggs, the largest eggs of any bird and likely larger than most, if not all, dinosaurs. The eggs are over a foot tall or thirty four centimeters and weighed over twenty two pounds or tens So yeah, huge, huge eggs. And so you might think that this bird is one of these ridiculous animals that died out a long time ago, long

before humans ever existed, one of these like legendary mega fauna. Um. But no, they actually existed with humans for quite some time. Really, yes, Oh my gosh, did they absolutely terrorize us? I mean, I guess imagine looking at one of these tin foot tall monsters. I'm sure that people were scared of them. But fortunately they were frugivores, so they ate forest fruits. They had no taste for human flesh. Um. And so in sort of the contest between humans and elephant birds,

humans did win in the end. Um, but they died out. Is actually a topic of some disagreement. It used to be thought that elephant birds kind of went extinct when humans arrived to Madagascar, and that this happened maybe over a thousand years ago, and they were just hunted to death by people arriving to Madagascar. But there's right, But there's new historical evidence that suggests this is not actually

the case. So there. So, first of all, there may have been a sighting of the elephant bird in the seventeenth century, as written down by a French explorer, but even more convincingly, newer analysis of fossils show earlier human arrival in Madagascar, which would have humans and elephant birds coexisting for around ten thousand years, So so yeah, like humans probably hung out with I mean, maybe not hung out like buddies, but you know, they were inhabiting the

same island with elephant birds possibly for ten thousand years, and there was evidence of humans hunting the birds because they were like butcher marks on some of these fossils. But if they were living together for ten thousand years, uh, you know, they were able to hunt them for a while without driving them to extinction. So why they went extinct is a bit of a mystery. I mean, it's possible maybe they're the human population grew larger and then

they started over hunting it. But there's also the theory that it wasn't hunting but the burning of forests and pasteurization that ultimately killed off the elephant birds. So like the terror terraforming of the they're now like habitat loss essentially, which I think makes a lot of sense. A lot of species don't necessarily go extinct just because we hunt them too much, but because we destroy their habitat and

they just do not have any recourse. They don't have anywhere to live or to eat, and so they die out. It was poor bird ease, I know, we just came and invaded their home. I mean, like, this is so human, it tracts so clearly. Yeah, but you know we did. We meant the nice thing is we managed to live with them for ten thousand years, which I think it's a pretty pretty good, pretty good for the human track record.

But yeah, there's like there's some other theories too that maybe it had to do with like climate change, that these birds like start like they just couldn't cope with some changes in the climate or change the natural climate change. I was gonna say, I feel like at that point we probably were into the industrial era. No, no, this was long before anthropogenic climate change. There there's like, you know, there's still natural climate change, but it's the anthropogenic climate

change that is. Uh, it's happening way faster than it should be happening, and you could say it could happen here. Yeah. Yeah, shout out, shout out to the Robert Evans Show, which you know it's uh, you're probably noticing it's pretty warm right now, So yes, that it is. That it is. It's like when we talk about like the effects of climate change, it's always been like, oh, this will happen sometime in the future. And I don't know. I feel like over the past ten years it's just been like, no,

it's already, it's happening right now. Yeah, yeah, that was. That was the magnificent elephant bird. It is awesome. I mean like it makes an awesome steed. I think it probably would want nothing to do with me, but I would maybe bribe it with some fresh forest fruits and hopefully it wouldn't stomp my head in like a like a ripe smell on. This would be a great beast to be friends. Would be like if this was if I was running a D and D campaign, I now

want this is my familiar. This, this is what I want by my side when we charged in the battle. If if not for its steed quality, at least it's pecking ability. Because wow, that that that beak looks big, big beak. Yeah, there's that. There's that viral um girl, Oh Hillary something she got Emmanuel the the Emmanuel Emmanuel Todd something or other. That video is so sweet. Yeah, yeahm yes, Emmanuel is an EMU. Emmanuel is part of I believe it's like a a refuge or or a farm. Yeah.

I literally just started following her. I can't remember what her name is Taylor Blake, and she takes these videos of of the of the farm. It's like a hobby farm, I think, like where they just take care of these animals. She'll like do videos of the various animals kind of educate people about them. And then this emu named Emmanuel will like interrupt her videos, walk in front and then

knock the camera over. And it's so incredible, it's so great, and they have a wonderful, beautiful friendship and it's I just I love I love this, this friendship between human and bird, human and dinosaur um. But imagine emmanual but like, gosh, like ten times as big. Maybe that's too many times much bigger, so much bigger, because sogers are relatively like they're they're they're big for birds, but they're still shorter

than humans. You know they're You can tell because you can see her like hugging him with her arm around. It's so cute. So it's very sweet. But like if if if you could have an Immanuel bird friend but just like ten feet tall, just thunderously stomping around would be scary but also great. I mean, like it's yes, great in the in the great in the grand scheme, how great it would be to have giant animals again. But also I maintain terrifying birds. Do not back around.

This bird is coming to poke your eyes out. You know, maybe it just looks on you with pity and it's just like instead of like trying to kill you, it's like, I'm just gonna give you one solid push with my foot and remove you from my place. I think it's like, yeah, like I will stomp on you if you, you know, try to take my melon away. Yes, don't take my

belton away. So yeah, I mean I think we have addressed the elephant, the many elephants in the room, many elephants in the room, the many elephants, the elephant shrew, the elephant fish, the elephant bird, but we never actually addressed the an elephant, which you know, sorry past You

know what, elephants, elephants have had their moment. There was just that one elephant that stomped out that woman's funeral, who was like, gosh, it was perfect, just you know what, great, I'm good with that elephants are having a moment, So all elephant should have a moment exactly that that elephant. No, no, coincidences that elephant knew what it was doing. Oh, it knew what it was doing and they never I mean and can there has to be something that went on

there that you know, it's a case for POORO. Really, I'm team elephant if it wasn't clear for sure, if they want, if they want to, it's could have been the sweetest like like sweetest old woman like making cookies and this elephant just comes in and recks her life. I don't know, they see something that we don't Who knows that, who knows that woman's politics? Where the elephant was a hired hitman? You don't know? Wow? Could you imagine? Yeah,

I'm I'm thinking about it. Elephant. Wait, that would be so funny and hiring that's just that is a brilliant scheme right there. Someone needs to start a business of hiring elephants to kill people, because you should know the like most elephants for hire are actually undercover cops. So you know, yeah, Nial's gotta gotta make some flight plans to Mexico. Yeah, I got I got some mixed emotions about these. So does a cab apply to elephants as well?

I'm only the elephants that are undercover cops. That's fair, okay, fair, not not all elephants. All elephants, okay, good hashtag No. I love elephants. They're they're great. So now I think we gotta play a little game game. It's called Guess Who's squawking? Play music? Now, Yes, it is Guess Who's squawking? The Mry Animal sound game. Every week I play a Mr Animal sound and you the listener, and you the guest, kind of guess just squawking. Last week's Mr Animals sound

hint was this. You won't be surprised to learn that this is called a screaming party. But who are the party goers? Okay? Uh dnimal, can you guess who is squawking? Okay? Lots of hints in there. Police sirens, so some sort of like you know, some sort of uh domestic urban area with with with people, some kind of animal that's an emergency responder, some kind of animalison mergy responder. It feels like a smaller animal kind of a high pitched,

high pitched sound. Um. It also has kind of like a ringed or like a particular kind of tambre to it that doesn't necessarily sound like a bird. Almost sounds like a bug, or maybe like some sort of like weird amphibian or something that's like an Indian that's like putting out some interesting But my gut tells me bug, So I'm gonna go with I don't know if I could. I can't. I can't tell you the bug. But if I was going to choose a I don't know which

kingdom filing class order, how far down it goes. But if I had to guess one of those, I'm going to go with insect insect interesting. And this is last week's clue, right, This is last week's clue, so you're going to reveal it now, that's right, So congratulations to a bunch of names here. The winners are h mac I, Joey P. Robert Us, and Shada, who guess correctly that these are swifts. So uh you Dan. I love the

creativity of thinking these are insects. There are, in fact a lot of loud insects that come out in the summer. Cicada's will make really loud noises. But swifts are a species of birds. Always birds, sometimes it's birds. It's not always birds in this game, but sometimes it is birds. I like to switch it up. You never know when

it's gonna be birds. But yeah, so, like these swifts will come out in great numbers during the summer and will form these screaming parties where they just fly around screaming. It's beautiful. So that's what's art. I mean, it's interesting because while they are birds, they're very strange kind of bird. Like you look at you see them flying in this sky, just looks like a bird. You look at them close up,

they look like tiny drones. And I'm not going to play into the whole like birds are just you know, conspiracy by the government, you know, blah blah blah. No, birds are real. Just because they happen to look like drones does not mean that they actually are drones. I mean some of them are FBI informants, but that's a separate issue. Um. They they just have such a sleek body, and that's because they are evolutionarily designed to spend most of their life flying in the air, barely ever stopping.

So they migrate from Africa to Europe in the summer and back to Africa in the winter. And they can eat, drink, and even sleep while flying. Uh, they fly so much and they spend so little time perching or you know, resting, that their feet have little use. They do not walk, and so their feet are small and underdeveloped. Basically just these like little hooks that they can use for gripping onto the sides of buildings or trees for when they

need to nest. So it's just like landing gear. Yeah, exactly, that's it. It's landing gear. Right now, they are in Europe, although I think that by the yeah, they they're probably starting to leave Europe to fly back to western and Central Africa to avoid the cold temperatures of winter and follow the flow of insects because they will catch a lot of insects like in the air. Um and it is it is, Ah, they're amazing little birds. We I

talked more about it on UM. I did an episode a few weeks ago called Around the World and eighty Birds was an interview with an author, Mike on one. So if you want to if you want to hear more about that, I interview an author of that book Around the World in eighty Birds, and we talk about the Swift's But yeah, amazing amazing birds loud as heck though, my god. Yeah, and they they are um. They are like they are right around here where I live in turn,

and so they I've been hearing them all summer long. Yes, I like it, Though they don't, I'm enjoying it. So onto this week's mystery animal. Saydun, here's the hint. Today we just talked about elephants in the room who aren't elephants. But what about the rhinoceros in the room, who's not a rhino? What was that? What? Oh my god? So can you guess who is squawking? No, I'm kidding. I mean, so there were there were two sounds there, and I

just want to clarified. There was there was like one that sounded kind of like birds in the background, but then there was a much closer sounding kind of like squeak or like a sucking noise almost. It sounds like someone sucking through the very end of a straw. Yeah, yeah, exactly, that's it. Okay, I'm taking another shot in the dark here, or not shot in the dark, but but but going for like a subverted answer. It sounds like a mammal

of some kind, like some sort of like rodents. M hmm, call Like I don't know if it's a maiden call or calling for help. But I'm gonna go with I'm gonna go with small rodent. Interesting. Well that that is a guess and you will not know whether or not it's true until next week when I reveal the answer to this. That's right leaving real cliffhanger. Um. But if you out there think you know who is squawking, write

to me at Creature Feature Product gmail dot com. But if you have any questions you can write send me an email too. I'm also on Twitter at Katie Golden. That's GEO L d I in. Uh wait, should I spell my first name? People know it's k A t I E. Okay, the full name here It is from kidding kay A t I E g O L d I in. And then you can check out that dread of elephant. True's fun. It's it's very good, very good to see them me on because their little nose has

to like go whoop up upwards. It's very funny, it's very cute, it's very um. Play podcast is online to it creat your Feet pod on Twitter. That's little different. Still where find you? You can find me all over the internet at DJ Underscore Daniel that's d A n L. You can find me on Twitter, Twitch, Instagram, TikTok. Regrettably, you can find me on all those places and I will be And if you want to interact with me and see me, do dumb. I am live on Twitch Wednesdays,

Fridays and Sundays. When does the show come out again? And said of Tuesday or Wednesday? Wednesday show? Oh perfect. Well, if you're listening on a Wednesday this evening at five p or seven pm Pacific, come check me out playing video games Twitch dot tv, slash DJ Underscore Daniel d A n L And I will see you there and thank you so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you leave a rating or view that helps him in slee I read every single review and I

really really appreciate them. They make me so happy. It makes me motivates me to keep doing the podcast. When I see your positive feedback, Uh yeah, it's great. It really helps out and I really appreciate it. And thanks to the Space Classics for their super awesome song Exo Lumina. Creature feature is a production of iHeart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, Visity I Heard Radio app podcast or hey guess what, or if you

listen to your favorite shows. I don't care, I do not I literally whatever, man like, I don't know why I'm telling you what. You're clearly listening to me right now. You found the way that you've found a way to do it, so you know this is my favorite ct A ever. Keep doing what you're doing, then it's working. You're listening to me, you're hearing me, you're clearly doing it. See your next Wednesday.