Palms Sweaty

We're going to find out that when it comes to cooling down, no bodily fluid is off the table. Discover this more as we answer the age old question why do dogs pants? Is it because they don't want to skirt? Joining me today is Front of the show my producer producer at I Heart Radio of Many a fine podcast, an overall wonderful person, Joel Monique. Welcome, Fie, Katie. Thank you so much for having me back. I am so excited to have you back. I love recording with you

and it's always great to catch up. Yes hell yes, especially in this heat. Uh listeners, my air conditioner has just kicked on. Hopefully it's not interfering too much, but it can't go off because it is extremely hot out here. It's ridiculous. We can tolerate some air conditioner white noise in the background to keep you from melting. That is acceptable. Uh. Yeah, it is hot here. We've been having temperatures and like the mid nineties. Some days it breaks a hundred. It's

pretty bad. I live in um Tour in Italy, which is a northern Italy. It is even hotter in the south. Uh. And you live in southern California. Yes, I just got a new roof deck to you, and I thought, oh, I'll just go hang out with my bare feet just on the roof. It'll be classic Californian and my feet that You've got to put some sts on back in that house before we die of It was so hot. My dog was trying to come out. I was like, no, your poor pads on. Your absolutely not. It's just it's

unbearable until the night comes and then it's lovely. Yeah, yeah, it is. It's hard. I think when it's just so hot, there's so little relief unless you stand in front of an air conditioner seven and that's expensive, so so it can get pretty bad. Of course it's getting worse. I probably cannot do this animal themed, environmental themed episode without mentioning global warming the elephant in the room, although that's that's mean to elephants. Let's not put that on thee

But yeah, I mean, there are record droughts here. It's pretty bad, and you know, it's just it's another reminder that global warming is not some distant thing in the future. It's happening now and it sucks. Yes, it does suck. I'm keen. We should sleep during the day. We have to adapt as our ancestors did, and we should be sleeping during the day and the sun is out so we can be come nocturnal creatures and enjoy the night when it's acceptably cool. This sounds good to me. I

like this idea. Also, just like we should become semi aquatic if I could sleep in like a water bed, not a water bed where it's dumb and it's like full of water, but I mean, like in the water and be right without drowning. That's the trick. How do I do that without drowning? Scientists, you know, stop worrying about stopping global warming and get on, you know, the

water bed the submersible beds. So yeah, it is. It's very hot, and humans have some techniques to stay cool, but as do all sorts of animals in the animal kingdom, and there are a lot of really interesting ways to stay cool. But first, I do want to talk about sweating, because you know that you're probably familiar with I don't mean that as an insult. I'm also familiar with it personally.

I sweat a huge amount while doing podcasts. I don't know why, even when it's not hot out, I just like turn into a bucket of sweat when I'm podcasting. Is that t M I I'm sorry, now you know, uh, now you have a horrifying visual to go with what is happening in your ears. But yes, so humans sweat a lot, and we sweat to keep cool, but we are not the only animals that sweat. Humans. Primates and equines meaning horses, zebras, and donkeys also sweat all over

their bodies. You may have heard that other animals don't have sweat glands that you know we sweat, whereas dogs don't sweat or your cat doesn't sweat. But actually most mammals do have sweat glands. They just have them on their footpads and maybe some other sparsely furred areas of their bodies, like their chins, But they don't use these sweat glands for their primary method of cooling down. Uh.

Only humans, primates and horses. All kinds of horses in the horse family have sweat glands all over our bodies and use it as a primary means of cooling so akrin. Sweat glands in other mammals, while possible to use to cool off, has another primary purpose. The sweat is usually on the footpads like I mentioned, and is excreted when the animal is stressed. This actually helps the animal grip surfaces better, providing friction. It's why our hands get sweaty

when we're nervous. You know, we started out with a lot of sweat glands in our hands, and when you're nervous or excited, you will get very sweaty hands. I mean, I'm sure we've all had that experience when we're on a date or doing something like public speaking and your hands get really sweaty and yeah, and it's like hard to hold your nervous to hold hands with someone or shake hands with someone because your hands all sweaty. That

is not your fault. That is the fault of your ancestors who used that sweat to better grip onto things like tree branches as they were fleeing a predator. So they would feel nervous, not because they're on a date or giving a presentation, but because they were being chased by a predator and their life was on the line. Yes, and so does the sweat would make it just so that you could like he said, it's for grip, but flick,

I feel like it would make you fall. Yeah, you're like, I feel like our bodies are betraying us all the time. I just want to say, um, y'all, don't act in the best interest of us emotionally or um representatively. We are just sweaty, nervous beings. But there are no lions after us. Why why do we have the same interaction. Well, it's interesting because, yeah, sweat, when you're trying to like hold onto someone's hand or holding a slick sort of like man made surface like a steering wheel, is not

going to give you that much friction. But when it's against more natural surfaces like on bark, it actually does give you some friction and a brief, you know, amount of sweat as you were fleeing a predator. Just a little bit of sweat. Actually, it does make your hands a little more sticky. It's like you can do kind of a fun party trick when you're really sweaty. You can like hang spoons or something off your body where

you're sweaty because it sticks. Uh, if you have too much sweat, of course, it will start to get kind of slippery. So like when you are in a state of sort of constant stress, constant anxiety, you might start to get a little bit too much sweat and that might start to affect your grip. But generally this was for fast and dangerous encounters with predators. So get in

a little bit of sweat. Getting a little sticky on your hands really helped you grab those tree branches, give you a slight edge because even a matter of like a fraction of a second could mean the difference between life or death. When we were back in the old days, when we were like little tree shrewd type animals, I take back what I said, body, you're doing great. Thank you for supporting us and saving our lives. Bless yes.

And so that is why we still have a lot of animals that have sweat in their footpads, but it's not really used as a main method of cooling. However, for humans and those other species that I mentioned, sweat is now used for cooling and it's very effective. So sweat is water, salt, and some other ions that are excreted by millions of sweat glands all over our skin. A lot of sweat is concentrated in our palms that relic of our early ancestry, and that is why your

hands tend to get so sweaty and uncomfortable situations. Um, but we have a little bit less in terms of sweat on like our trunk. Uh, but our feet can also get quite sweaty. But why why sweat? It's annoying. It gives us big stains in our shirt, big pit stains, makes us sticky. It's gross, Like it seems like you don't when you're out and you're like, I'm so I'm hot,

and now I'm like hot and sweaty. It's gross immediately exactly. Yeah, it's it's not a pleasant feeling except when you're trying to get a little cooler, especially with a nice breeze. So if you have ever experienced that where you're in the hot, hot sun. You're so hot and then you get just a little breeze and it just feels so good. The reason that breeze, even if it's a hot breeze, is making you feel so good. It is facilitating evaporative cooling.

So when sweat evaporates, it cools the skin. And this is because the conversion from a liquid from that liquid sweat form into a gas by the sweat molecules takes energy in the form of heat. So to convert it from a liquid to a gas, it requires heat. It's gonna draw some of that heat from the ambient temperature, but some of it will be from your body. So it's taking heat from your body to fuel this conversion into a gas. And so as it's evaporating, it is

leeching heat out of you and it feels very good. Wow. I never questioned how sweat work before, as I was like, it's pouring out of me. I wish away. That was my relationship with sweat before. Yeah, I know the whole chemical reactions are happening there. Yeah. Yeah, there's a lot of shame around sweat, like it's unhygienic, it's like, you know, we try to cover it up, but it is. It's

serving a very important purpose. And I know that when I am walking around in a hundred degree whether, I am very very happy that I am sweating, because I do appreciate the cooling effect, Like if you don't have that sweat, you don't have any efficient method to cool your body temperature down in the heat, because we are not equipped like animals and that they have different methods of sweating. Um, but our human way, and I should

also include other primates as well as horses. Uh. The fact that we can sweat so much and have that as a cooling system has been speculated to be the reason why we're able to be such good marathon hunters, because we are not Yes, we're not the fastest, we're not the most naturally armed animals out there, but we were really good at having really good stamina and basically just tiring our prey animals out and being able to out marathon them so that by the time we caught

up to them, they were exhausted and we were okay. And one of the reasons they think maybe this was the case is that we were so sweaty, so we were able to cool down much more efficiently than these animals that would often have to pant and rely on things like large ears, which like having a really large ear will allow your blood to be cooled down, but having being drenched in sweat gives you really good evaporative cooling.

It's really as long as you have a replenishable water source, it is really efficient in terms of cooling you down. And so maybe this is why we were such effective hunters. Humanity is so dark, like, well, I don't have the natural claus or strength to to catch my food. I'll run it until it's exhausted. I'll just stop you until you're like, fine, guy, I've done. I think about Willie Mammoth and the tactical effort it took for hunters and

packs to take these things down um as metal as hell. Yeah, and again never stopped to think about how sweat played an actual like effort and roll in their ability to do that. Yeah, yeah, I mean it's we are at tiring species. We we just annoy and uster animals to death. My dog knows all of that. She's like, yes, every day, she's all over me. I want to sleep on this couch. She's gonna kill me one of these days. I would

never I lust she. I'm a babysitting my sister in law's cat and she's very sweet, but every time I try to pet her, she looks at me like she's the cool girl and I'm trying to sit at her table and she's like, what really you think you think this is appropriate? Every time lines up from a nap, who are you? And why? Uh? They are our best friends and it is an unequal relationship. It is a little bit unrequited. So equines like horses, also sweat all over their bodies as well as primates, and they are

also really good marathon runners. So they actually instead of using the crime sweat glands, they use apple crime sweat glands, and so it's slightly different sweat glands, and it's slightly different sweat. So sweating means that both humans and horses need to drink a lot of water. We also need to replenish the electrolytes that we excrete out inner sweat,

and that's the salty mineral mixture that sweat is. Like if you've ever tasted sweat, I mean I don't recommend it, but it's salty um and there are other minerals, other ions in it, but horses actually have higher concentrations of these ions in their sweat, so they are more in danger of electrolyte loss through sweating, and equestrians people who care for horses worn of a white foam that can form on their skin if they're sweating out a lot

of electrolytes, which actually so when it rubs against their harnesses, it produces a lather, It produces a foam and you can see this this kind of foamy thing because it is not just water, it's salt and other ions, other minerals that is forming this lather. And so, yeah, if you have a horse and you have it in the heat, um, you have to be very careful to make sure it both is getting a lot to drink, but it's also able to replenish its electrolytes through food or other supplementation.

I thought this was a horse stepping out of the shower before you what it is. They are dripping. It looks like they didn't get all the soap of yeah, other chest, but no, that's taked on salt from the sweat, right, Yeah, it's like it's a it's a lather. So it's not just salt, but it's other ions as well. Uh. And it is um. You know, it's not necessarily like a really bad sign if there's a little bit of weather on a horse, but they definitely need to then replenish

their water in their electrolytes because they're excreting a lot um. Yeah. Yeah, and actually, uh, plants also sweat kind of so we don't think of plants as having these kinds of animal like yeah, but they do so uh. There are pores in their leaves that allow water to evaporate and causes the same evaporative cooling effect that we get when we sweat.

So while it's not technically sweat, they are uh, they are able to benefit from evaporative cooling as water is basically whisked out of their pores and turned into a gas and the same process happens, which you know is

good for plants to keep from overheating. Uh. And it's also why sometimes when you are in a forest you will feel a lot of coolness, not just because of the shade, but you may also be getting sort of a secondary benefit from this evaporative cooling from these plants and one other animal that is said to quote unquote sweat is the hippo So hippos seem to sweat a

reddish pink fluid. It's actually called blood sweat. It's not made out of blood, but the oily substance is not technically sweat, and it is not used for evaporative cooling. It's actually us Yeah, so it's actually a sunscreen, skin moisturizer, and water repellent skin protector, all in one naturally produced ointment. Sephora could never, they could never, that's right, bottle it. Oh god, Yeah, there's gonna be there's gonna be new

hippo sweat cosmetics. Hopefully not hopefully the hippos don't let you get close enough to them to rob them of their precious pink sweat. But yeah, to stay cool, hippos hang out in the water. They're semi aquatic, so they don't really need sweat to benefit from evaporative cooling, but they use this oily sweat to protect their skin from the sun and from absorbing too much water. Uh and

so yeah, it is. It is, you know, technically not a sweat, but it is an interesting use of you know, sort of the sweating action to produce something that actually protects them not from the heat but from the sun and from other elements. If you've ever been to a retirement home in Florida, you you'll understand the look. It's uh, a lot of like brown tannish. It looks like carburetor oil sort of dripping down for hippo's forehead. Yeah, it paints quite a picture, but I'm glad they found a

solution that works for them. Yeah, it does look like you know when someone uses some some of that like spray on die or or what is it like real like touch up your hair, or like spray on tan in it like drips down. Uh, but it's meant to look that way, So no judgment here. So we've talked about sweat. That's how humans stay cool, it's how other

primates stay cool, It's how horses stay cool. But what about other animals, Like we have talked about how they produce some sweat on their paws, but that's not really enough to benefit from evaporative cooling to really get their body temperature down. So there are a couple of ways that animals can reduce their temperature that you will see in your own pet animals. So cats and dogs both

demonstrate two different kinds of of cooling methods. And so cats do have sweat glows like on their paws, but it's not enough, like I said, so they have to lick themselves to cool the rest of themselves off through evaporation. Dogs meanwhile, use panting as their main method of cooling. So you see your dog, it's panting, its tongue is lolling out. Uh. And so the reason this helps cool down the dog is it is another form of evaporative cooling.

The movement of air over the mucus membranes inside their mouth, inside their nose causes evaporation. And like sweat works, it is leeching heat from their mucus membranes and they expel it. It's like when you when your dog pants in your face, you get this hot, hot, stinky mist. They are expelling that evaporative cooling right out at you. So face. Yeah, my my, I got my dogs some new salmon treats. She loves them so much, and so I keep giving them to her. But ah, the breath, it's so it's

so foul. But I will do anything to make her happy. So listen, they need to treat bought my dog duck treats she's got off for them equally gamy, bad breath. We again, as you said, we do it for love. We do it for love. We will endure the stink for love. So you may. If you're a cat owner, and you may have noticed that your cat does occasionally pant, cats can pant, you actually will see that sometimes with lions and other wildcats. Your domesticated cat won't pant too much,

but occasionally, uh. They typically don't need to uh so unless they overly exert themselves or are anxious. Otherwise, licking themselves does basically cover them for that, so they can pant. They can cool themselves that down that way, but that's really only rarely when they've really over exerted themselves or or when they're nervous. It's a kind of self soothing thing that makes sense to me. I too, will get

the shower. I don't have a cat's tongue, so I can't prefore say wait to get myself cool all over. But I do understand being like, what if I just sto in the shower, frank cold water all over me for five minutes? Yeah, yeah, I was when I was still living in Los Angeles when we were having a heat wave and we had I don't know, it was like it would get up to like a hundred and

three hundred and four at night. Still it was still that hot at night, and I would just like wake up, go to the shower in my pajamas, turn on the shower, you know, just like get drenched, even wearing my pajamas, squelched back to bed and just flop down. Uh. And that was the only way I could make it through the night without I don't know, breaking down sobbing, which

actually the sobbing might help might help cool my people. Yeah, yeah, so yeah, getting getting your body drenched really helps you stay cool. And kangaroos know this, but they don't use uh they don't use a shower. They do use spit and so like your cat, they will lick themselves to stay cool, but they do it in a very specific way. So kangaroos living in the out bag must endure temperatures

exceeding a hundred degrees fahrenheit or thirty eight degrees celsius. Yeah, it's pretty hot out there, so to cool down they lick and spit on their arms. Just go to town. You can see their arms are like soaked in saliva and they enjoy the evaporative cooling that I've talked so much about on this podcast. It is such an effective way to cool down that it is no wonder that multiple animal moles have developed this technique. So why their arms, Like,

why are they focusing their licking on their arms? So their arms actually have less fur than a lot of their body. Their arms also are full of many, many blood vessels. One way to cool down is to cool down your blood. You'll see this in animals that have big ears, like the wild African hair has these huge ears, and UH, it's because you have their blood vessels spread out over a large surface area and as air passes

over it cools down the blood. It goes back inside their body and so it lowers their internal body temperature. With kangaroos, by licking their arms until they're soggy and covered and spit the evaporate of cooling, UH is cooling down the many blood vessels that run through their arms, and thus is cooling down their entire body. I thinking of every time I gave lions eight cong and she

came back to me covered with peanut butter. Her elbows and like all you have to do is eat a little bit of it, and you just put your whole self in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it is. It gets messy, and it's kind of funny because they just like their paws are very like hand like. They're not hands, they don't really they don't have true opposable thumbs, but they kind of have a hand like look and they just stick out their arms and just start going to town licking,

getting you know, just dripping with spit. It's gross, but it's effective. You gotta do what you gotta do to stay cool. Listen, we can't judge. I've I have in the past to get cool, driven around in a minivan with the air conditioning pumping because we didn't want to try to cool an entire space with just a window box fan. I have sat in front of a window box fan and just played games for hours waiting for that heat. So who am I to judge you covering

yourself in your own spit to cool down exactly. There are some restaurants that have misters in really hot areas, and so my technique is to like go to the restaurant and I don't want to eat there, but gosh, I'm so interested in their menu. I'm just gonna stand here for a little while as the Mr spray me, like, do I order a drink from right here under the spray? Yeah? Yeah, yeah, I really need to study this menu, sir to make my decision about your fine restaurants. So please leave me,

leave me be. So a lot of animals, a lot of mammals will lick themselves to stay cool, and this includes rats who also like to lick a specific body part. Uh but it is the males and they like to lick their scrow ums. Oh boy, So the males promise they're just doing this to cool down. It is nothing weird, nothing perverse. Ah, These little little rats just telling scientists like, yeah, it's too cool down. Yeah, you don't worry about it,

can't worrying on towards This is just how we sleep. Yeah, sure, turn away, dacty say, and don't worry about this. Um. So, yeah, rats don't only lick their scrotums to stay cool. They will lick their whole bodies. They mostly focus on their feet, their tails, and the males like to focus on their scrotum. Uh. So if that sounds like they're just a little weird little kinksters. It is actually because of a similar reason

why kangaroos like their arms. They're focusing on their body parts that have the least amount of fur because this is the most efficient when it comes to evaporative cooling. The cooling effect is the closest to their blood vessel. Uh, And so they may lick their scrotums um and get some coolness down there. And look, little buddies, whatever you gotta do to keep cool in this heat. You know, listen, you don't want to reach that point where you're like,

I can't hardly breathe. I am so like just my lungs feel sticky that when I lived in a place that was humid, that was the issue, is I would be like trying to get in a deep breath that you would just feel the heat inside of your body. So, while we don't recommend you try all of the ways these animals are staying cool, we definitely understand that you have to do what you have to do. It's harder to sweat in humidity, so your body's natural evaporative cooling

technique doesn't work, and really high humidity. Yeah, So so it has to do with the fact that when you're in drier weather and you have a breeze and you have the heat, um making water vapor is relatively straightforward. But in high humidity environments, UH, the the ambient air is already somewhat saturated with uh with water vapor, and so the air has a certain capacity for water vapor.

So sweat doesn't really evaporate. There's not enough room for it in the surrounding air, and so you may feel like you sweat more in human conditions, but really you're just you're sweating the normal amount, but it's not evaporating, and so you're not really getting the benefits. So you'll be hot and sticky and muggy and you're not getting that evaporative cooling technique, which is why hot and humid is one of the worst experiences for a human being.

It's explaining a lot about Florida. I get it now. Every Florida man is partially forgiven because you had to deal with that. It sounds terrible. Yeah, yeah, you got it. You got a factor in humidity when people commit crimes. It's like, yeah, but was it humid? Because I kind of get it. Then stay cool, But yeah, so it is.

It's really like that horrible feeling you get when it's humid, Like it really reminds you how effective and how good our body system of sweating is, because without the evaporative cooling of our sweat, it gets really miserable. But when we get back, we're actually going to talk about some animals who do have a technique to try to cool down even in somewhat humid conditions. And so, you know, just lay back, lick your arms, and keep it cool and we will be right back. Joel, your favorite topic.

Oh no, it's it's birds. It's birds. Oh good, here we go, here we go. Okay, all right, tell me about birds. Sweaty birds. Well, unlike the mammals we talked about, birds truly do not have sweat glands even on their feet. Uh. And their mouths and tongues tend to be relatively dry, of course, depending on the species, and they really only typically produce saliva for swallowing purposes. So like preening their feathers, licking themselves is not going to be a super effective

way to cool down. Like mammals, they can't sweat. So how do these poor little birdies stay cool? Well, they have to get really creative, I mean really really really creative, just like storks and vultures, who have a very crappy way of cooling down, if you know what I mean, a real air crap fish and our craps really hitting the fans, so to speak. It's poop, it's poop, joel, Oh, no, Katy, what are you doing to well? Storks and vultures poop on their legs to stay cool. That we have found

the one time I would prefer to be hot. So this process is called euro hydrosis, and it's a method done by some species of birds to cool themselves down in the heat. So bird poop is usually more of a liquid. So bird's got one hole that does it all the cloaca uh so they do not have separate holes for separate functions like alone. Yeah, And so when they poop, it's often mixed with urine and it can be quite runny. That's why bird poop is typically pretty

running and therefore it is wet. And what have we learned about wetness evaporative cooling? So absolutely so, wetness can evaporate bing bang boom. Now you've got an evaporative cooler on your legs, man out of poop. I don't see what the problem is. It all comes out of one hole to start that problem. Number one, Now you're covered in poop. Yeah, I know sullivan evaporates, but I'm doubting that every last bit of it, that is you are correct in that assumption. Um. Sometimes you will see storks

and vultures with these adorable white stockings on their legs. Uh. And those stockings are actually poop. In fact, the poop so thoroughly covers maraboo stork legs that it is easy to mistake them for having white legs and black feet, when in fact they have black legs. Um, and all that white stuff is poopies. I'm struggling to see the good side of bridge. As scary as they were before,

and now they're unhygienic and disgusting. Well in terms of hygiene, at least for New World vultures who do this poop on their legs trick. Their poop is very hygienic. So vultures, despite having a reputation for being gross because they eat carry on rotting food and so you think they'd be real nasty, they're actually very fastidious and their gut contains very strong anti microbial antibacterial properties, so they don't get

sick when they eat rotting, festering carrion. And so it's speculated and being researched that their poop may also have antiseptic properties, and so when they poop on their legs, it may actually be killing harmful bacteria on their legs. And so not only are they cooling themselves down, but they are cleaning their legs, if you can call poop covered legs clean. I have never heard of a poop sanitizers before. Uh, my mind is a little bit blown.

I thought poop could only make things much dirtier and disgusting because typically we're expelling things like bacteria and microbes out of our system that we don't want to keep in there, and so it's coming out in our poop, and so that poop is very unhygienic. You know, you don't want to touch it. You don't want to you know,

get it around. And probably the reason we find it so disgusting is that is an evolutionary trait to keep us from playing with poop and getting it all around and getting it in our bodies, because that can make it sick. It's also a method of transmission of things like parasites. So yeah, our poop is disgusting, don't touch it, whereas a vulture poop potentially not as disgusting, more antiseptic. Now, I wouldn't trade in your bottle of hand sanitizer for

a turkey vulture quite yet. Um, but it is a topic of research. There are studies I think really recent, I think in two I don't know if they've actually come out with the results yet, but they are investigating the anti microbial properties of turkey vulture poop. So that is exciting. What was I just reading Turkey vulture poop monthly? Oh my god? Hopefully not. No, I lost it. I'm sorry,

but I will see. It's impressive the way the animal kingdom has adapted, and I'm sure it will unfortunately have to continue to adapt to keep themselves cool. I'm glad that we don't have to do it that way. Yeah. I prefer the refrigerated water inside of my house method of cooling. Yes, yeah, I mean not all birds cool this way. In fact, it really is. It does seem to only be uh storks and New World vultures, other

birds who don't crap all over themselves. Um, we'll actually do things like goal or fluttering where they flutter the gol or sack that's like the throat sack. Uh. And so this causes air to run over the inside of their throats and mouths, evaporating moisture from their mucous membranes. So they essentially pant like a dog, just using slightly different muscle action. It looks like a boa. And if I was ever going to do jag, this is how I would be, Like, this is how I cool myself down.

Get like a nice big boa. Now I'll make it flutter. It would be very fun that you'd be called miss gol or sack, which you know, I don't know. It's like I I like it. I think it's a good name. I love its gali sack. Let's go. So, so, why then if a lot of birds use this goal or fluttering, which does make them sound very southern bell, doesn't golor fluttering? Um, like they have some kind of like you know eighteen hundreds weird diagnostic we gave to women where it's like

wandering womb and goal or fluttering. But yeah, so why do some birds do goal or fluttering? Where as the storks and New World vultures seem to do this poop on the leg tricks. Uh. So, researchers are trying to

figure out why these birds evolve this strategy. Some of their observations about like the where these birds tend to be and what characteristics they share for the poop on the legs cooling air conditioner is that they tend to live in hot, humid and not super windy environments and so yeah, so it's like it is harder for us to cool off with evaporative cooling in uh somewhat human environments.

So like having a bunch like sort of drenching your legs in this over a wider surface area, you're maybe going to have a little bit more success with some evaporative cooling. It's like when you're in a really hot environments and maybe there's a little bit of humidity tool and your sweats not doing enough, you really just want to dunk some water over your head, Like take a water bottle and dunk it on yourself. It's like the

best feeling. I want to get one of those giant Yeah, It's like when it's hot out, that's like the only time I want to be a coach because it's like, yes, if I win the championship. Around it just feels like so that poop conditioner also only works if you have access to water while not living in it. So like, if you live in water, you don't really need to poop on yourself to stay cool because you're in water.

But if you're not living in water, however, you do have access to a lot of water, you can spare that moisture that you're pooping out. And it's sort of like if you have a bottle of water and you have access to a lot of water, you're not worried about it. You can dunk it on your head. But if you don't have a lot of access to water, you're not going to waste it on cooling yourself down because you know you'll be thirsty. Um. It's like that,

but in evolutionary terms, soity to adapt to any situation. Uh, it's kind of humbling. Yeah, I would never think to do half of these things. Again, I'm with you, find me a bed, submarge me in the water, h let me become amphibious. This is the only way I would It's the ingenuity of like, you know, hundreds of thousands or millions of years of just like, did this animal dive heat stroke or did it somehow managed to pass

on its jeans? And that's that's it, And it creates such an incredible complexity of like birds pooping on their legs to stay cool. It is incredible. Another aspect to these birds is they have relatively long legs. Of course, storks obviously very long legs, runway ready legs. To a lesser extent, New World vultures they do still have quite long legs, and they live in these similar hot, slightly human environmental conditions with access to water, but they're not

semi aquatic. So this seems to be the recipe for these birds to poop on their legs, and it's really interesting. Listen. I'm glad I don't live in a human space so I don't have to witness it. But I'm glad the birds have figured out a system that works for them. I don't want to shame anyone again for how they stay cool, so I'm just gonna stay good on you bird do want you must to stay cool, So I

hope this helped cool you down. Everyone listening, you know I'm not telling you to like lick your forums or poop on your legs, especially the latter. Um, I don't do that last part licking your arms, I mean if they're clean. You know, look who am. I don't think going to be very successful, but you could try. We have we have sweat that that is, we are already

equipped with a really good cooling system. But you know, if if you if you want to see what it's like to be a kangaroo, you know, go for it. I'll say that. But before we go, we've got to play a little game called Guess Who's Squawking? I mean, like some theme music like da da da d um. We can get you sound from the music life. Oh yeah, yeah, I'll hang on the future me put game show music in right now. Welcome to Guess Who's Squawking the Mystery

Animal Sound game. You could win a brand new car Boo. So yeah, I do love Cariboo too. Uh So last week's Mr Animal Sound The hint you can tell this is from a I think it was actually the week before last week because I had to take a little break last week, but the hint was I know Father's Day was the last week. At this point, is like last last my last, last, last week. Um okay continues, but it's still not too late to celebrate the amazing dad who makes this sound? M hm that hell mm

hm m hmm. What is that? Okay, it's it's deep. Might it sounds frog like in nature? But you're saying it's definitely a bird. I didn't say it's definitely a bird. Um, it is an animal. It could be a bird. M m hm. I never thought of a bird being able to go that deep, but I know they have a lit range. Ah, I'm gonna guess some kind of jungle bird. I'm gonna say South American. Mm hmm. I'm gonna say

a swallow. M that's very interesting. You were right on the South American part, but not so right on the swallow. So this is the Riha. It is a large flightless bird that is distantly related to the ostrich and emu and lives in South America. They are smaller than the ostrich, kind of like a fun sized Ostrich. So male reria's make this booming call to attract females to mate. It's a very low frequency. In fact, some of you out there may not be able to hear it at all,

depending on the range of your hearing. Uh, it is such a low low frequency. They will mate with several different females and they are great dads. So the females will lay the eggs in a male's nest, a scraped out area of dirt, and then the females are like, I'm out of here. See good luck, because I know their job is over. And the males are the ones who incubate and later protect the hatchlings. Wow, how do we aspire? Can we switch places? I too? Like listen,

they're like lit. We'll take many a lover, but we'll raise all the kids and women can go rest? Or do you have to carry the baby? So after that, you know, chill for a bit? I really I appreciate this style. I think to do modern world, we should all be adapting to what this bird is doing. They know what's up. Oh, let's inject rha DNA into our human DNA. I'm sure that'll end. Well, it's so onto this week's mystery animal. Sound the This monster can devour

entire hills. But are you still just a baby? Oh? Whoa, I'm gonna guess it's a real housewife of New Jersey. They were very disaster you it does sound a little bit of that of that like you and Devour Hill. Yeah, I'm gonna say with real House all right, Yeah no, that's a fair guess. Well, if you out there think you know who's squawking, you can write to me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com. I'm also on Twitter at Creature feet Pod. That's not very different, Joel.

Thank you so much for keeping it cool with me, learning about how animals stay cool and tolerating our discussions of birds crapping on themselves. Where can people find you? Hi, guys, thank you so much for having me back, Katie. This was wonderful. I always learned something new when I'm here,

and that's a gift. Uh. You guys can find me all over the internet, actually when you get to j O E L L E M O n I q u E. I also have a new podcast, it's called Comic Con metapod, where every week we do a deep dive into a convention. So we had a great episode where we talked to the creators and writers and voices

behind the Avatar, the last Airbendrew series. Last week we did a deep dive into a bunch of different Marvel characters and coming up uh next week, we're going to do a dive into thor Love and Thunder with one of your workal artists and my friend Rosie Night, talking about all things thor So. If you guys are into Marvel, DC, video games, movies, whatever, coming out with us. It's like going to a con without having to risk any of the concrude, which for the safety of your own home,

which is fly. It's my favorite. Speaking of sweat comic con, I don't mean and I love you guys, but deodorant is a gift um. But that sounds incredible, That sounds really fun. Please do I ask those people at Marvel why they have Spider Man but no Storkman, who his power is pooping on his legs. I'm gonna pitt you to fight you right now. Well, thanks so much for coming on a treasure always, and thank you so much

for listening. If you're enjoying this show and you want to leave a rating or review, I certainly do appreciate it. I really, I truly do read all the reviews and they make me so happy. So thank you so much for writing those, and thanks to the Space Costs for their super awesome song. Exo Lumina Creature feature is a product action of I heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the I heart Radio

app Apple Podcasts, or Hey, guess what a stork? But I don't care where you'll listen to them, Just listen to them. See you next Wednesday. Bye,