Peer Reviewing Animal Crossing!

infected everyone's brain like some kind of parasitoid wasp. In the game, you create a village made of your animal friends, and part of your journey includes collecting fish, bugs, and fossils so you can hand them over to your good pal Blathers, the museum curator owl. This game allows you to get information from Blathers about various specimens and fossils. Some of these facts sound beyond belief, but are they? Today we'll be fact checking some Blathers facts about evolutionary biology.

Can goldfish grow bigger than a foot? Do they have teeth in their throats? Can tarantulas shoot butt hair at you? Discover this and more as we answer the angel question. What is Blathers the owl hiding? So for those of you haven't played Animal Crossing, it's a cute life simulation game that has become one of the most popular video games to play right now. You play as a person trying to start up a quaint village, but Twist, all

the villagers are animals. Disclaimer here, I haven't actually played the game because I can't get my plebeian hands on switch. And also this is not an ad. Nintendo hasn't given me a damn thing for this episode, but hey, if you're from Nintendo and want to give me a switch,

I won't complain. I've been watching gameplay videos of it because I love the fact that you get to be a virtual evolutionary biologist or paleontologist discovering specimens and fossils, and I was surprised to discover that the items you

can collect are nonfictional. The game does a pretty good job of giving you real, fat acts about real life evolutionary biology, but I did want to do a deep dive to examine these facts to see if they're true and to find even more surprising details that Bladers didn't tell you. Joining me today are my friends actor writer comedian Maggie may Fish and writer director Adam Ganzer, and they both host a new comedy podcast called I'll Show you mine if you show me yours. Welcome you, guys,

I thank you. I am so excited to talk to you guys about Animal Crossing now. Full disclosure, I actually haven't played it because I can't get my hands on a switch. But I love the game. I've been watching trying to live vicariously through other people who are playing it, watching videos. Do you guys both play Animal Crossing? Absolutely? In fact, our islands are currently uh in a in a rebellion arrival Adam. Yeah, Adam is trying to slowly take over my island. I've been planting items, I've been

doing leave behind on her island. Uh. But yeah, I've played over forty hours of Animal Crossing KG. It's a lot of it's a lot of crossing, and I've done that.

I can't take it back. I guess. One of my favorite things about the game is the fact you can collect specimens including fossils, bugs, and I guess fish, aquatic animals and show them to a little owl named Blathers, who will tell you Blathers facts about the things that you are delivering to him, because he is starting a museum and you are donating these items to the museum and as I was watching these gameplay videos and getting really into it, I was thinking, like, actually, these facts

sound mostly true, and I was really curious to explore the Blathers facts and see how much of it is true, if there's anything that could use further explanation. So I'm really excited to do a deep dive, deep critique on Blathers. And you know, maybe drag Blathers a little bit, but not too much. I mean, he's a sleep half the day that the museum is open. So if anyone's going to be dragged to the Animal Crossing University, you know

it's probably the person sleeping on the job. Right. He's also an academic, he can he can stand the critique, right. This is pres just review her review. So in this first part, I want to talk about the aquatic animals that you can catch in the game and turn into Blathers. So I love his enthusiasm for explaining all these facts. It is adorable. And I'm going to try to do a Blathers voice. I'm going to do some quotes from Flowers. Uh,

and let's see. I imagine him as being British, right, because he says what you know, like, yeah, it's implying he also, I think he's wearing a tie all the time, if correctly, and an argyle sweater vests, so there's no way he's not British. So when you turn a goldfish into blathers, he says a bunch of stuff. But one of the blathers facts, he says, is why they can grow up to a foot in length. And so let's look at whether this is true. So what do you

guys think about this blathers fact two or false? A goldfish up to a foot? Can't they get can't they get larger than that? Am I wrong? Adam? Dude, No, no goldfish will survive that long in a ganzer home. Uh so could you eat them? Is that? Well? Just just you know, containers too small for their ambitions. I guess I don't know. I'm gonna say this is false

because a foot seems impossible to me. So Maggie you're saying they can grow bigger, and Adam you're saying that there's no way they could grow up to a foot. I'm going well, before I reveal all to you, first, I want to talk about what exactly a goldfish is. So there are many different varieties of goldfish. The most iconic goldfish is the kerasas aratus, which is a freshwater carp that was a result of selective breeding in ancient China. And one myth about goldfish is that they are one

of the stupidest animals in the world. And while they're certainly not the smartest, they are a lot smarter than they're given credit for. They can you know, those saying like having the memory of a goldfish, saying they have like a three second memory. All that that is not true. It's slander against the goldfish. And they can retain memories for up to three months, and they can even recognize their owners and learn not to be shy around them. Some will even him up to you and beg for

food because they recognize that I had no idea. Wow, so you can make you can get a friendly goldfish. That's possible for that should be friendly, but you have to work on that relationship. Yeah, yeah, I gotta I gotta goldfish in college and it died. Uh within a day, it died. Uh. It was really sad. I was really messed up about it for the next It was shockingly affected me. Um. I don't know if I was very fragile at the time, or just like did you win it in a carnival? How did you obtain it? What

we bought it from the past store? And like presumably there was something you know wrong with it beforehand, because I don't think you did anything wrong, but just seeing him up ended the day after, you know, deciding to get a pet with your roommate, it's a real judgment. It's a real judgment. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I see. Maybe that's why I see, Kagie. I'm gonna live different now. I'm already I've already I already have things to repent of.

I'm gonna live different in light of this because every goldfish I've ever had was forced on me, like by a carnival or something. So I never thought of it as like, oh, this is a real friend opportunity, right, I thought of it is more like a like a visually pleasing chore. I see, sort of a fishy responsibility, right. And now I'm gonna live differently because I could I could have a friendly goldfish, Maggie, that might happen. Yeah, you're changing lives, Katie, And I'm gonna about to blow

your minds with more goldfish facts. So it's interesting you both are sort of correct about the goldfish. So, Adam you mentioned you don't think they can get very large in tanks, and Maggie you said you think they can grow over a foot in length, and you are both correct, although I guess I would say Maggie is more correct. Sorry, so, but he keep score this at one point at um, like I don't know, point three points. Uh yeah, in tank environments, goldfish do not grow very large. And why

is this? Well, when I was a kid and I heard this like, oh, goldfish can't grow because they're in a tank, I thought there was some I guess awareness of how big their tanks were, and like something in their brain was like, well, we can't grow that big, so we gotta we gotta stunt this growth. But that's actually not really true. So goldfish can, like Blathers suggests, grow up to a foot in length, and actually there have been goldfish recorded that have been even longer. And

goldfish are actually indeterminate growers, not indeterminate showers. Sorry, yeah, I am Adam. Did you know I'm Maggie's dad. Because of all the dad jokes, I'll accept this fact because I've already I need to I need to catch up in points so point for atom from me. So indeterminate grower means that they don't stop growing at adulthood and they can keep growing basically as long as they're getting

the right resources, nutrition, and are healthy enough. Obviously, their growth does slow down significantly once they're adults, so we don't have like just infinitely large goldfish, but they can in theory keep growing until they die. And in fish bowls or small tanks, because the water quality is typically poor, the goldfish growth is stunted. So it's actually not the dimensions of the tank but the quality of the water.

And obviously when you have a smaller tank, it's almost impossible to have enough water flow a good uh sort of microbiome in the tank that is healthy enough for the goldfish. So if you have a goldfish in a bowl, it's not going to live very long and it's not going to grow very big because a bowl is not a great environment for a goldfish. If you have like a a big old fish tank with a nice filter and like, you know, twenty gallons or more, it might

live a little longer and grow a little bigger. If you had a wall sized aquarium Maggie, and then like all that was in it was like three goldfish that are six ft long. Yeah, that would really crush you would that would really crush. That would really crush you joke, But I have thought of something like that, like get just a huge tank and put like a one goldfish

in there and see how big I can get them. Well, you know, I feel less bad that mine just uped and died, you know, with when it because it was a small tank that we bought. So yeah, yeah, I feel a lot better about it. I still I want to know more about this pet. I want to know more about this journey to get a gold dish and how that happens. But I don't want to distract from the content of this podcast. You know. That's that's more

for for our podcast. To find out more about Maggie's journey to get a goldfish, check out the podcast I'll show you my goldfish if you show me your girlish. Well, so, in ideal circumstances, their lifespan is a lot longer than you might guess. They can live over ten years, and one goldfish reached a record of living to forty three years old, and that's you know, longer than Jesus, sorry to say, long enough to buy a motorcycle and make

some different choices. You know, get that, get that midlife crisis, get a tramp stamp, you know, get a new goldfish wife like yeah, or hook up with a beta on the side. Now we're imagining that, so onto the here's the real the real meat of the issue, the goldfish meat is how big these guys can get. So it's hard to say what their actual maximum sizes, but what we have on record is a nineteen inch goldfish or cimeters so blathers they can grow over a foot in

length a m hmm. And if you guys check out, I do have a photo in the notes of a an eighteen inch goldfish, just so you get an idea of how big big, what a big boy that is? Oh my god, I thought that looks like a totally different kind of fish, right, either a very tiny woman or a very large goldfish. It looks like a red snapper. And I only think that because of animal crossing, But that's that's what it looks like. Well, what's interesting is goldfish are actually a type of carp and carp, as

you may know, can get quite large. And speaking of carp, actually, let's listen to another Blathers fact about carp. So here we go getting into character as Blathers, Oh the corp. Have you ever seen their teeth? For your sake, I hope you have not. Carp have teeth in their throats, strong enough to crunch on hard things like shes and fingers. A good rule of thumb when dealing with other species

is to keep your fingers out of their mouths. Although having neither thumbs nor fingers, I'm quite safe from this little fellow. I appreciate all the bows you're doing at the end too. I think you, Katy, You and Blathers are very similar in the spirit essence. I do feel like, yeah, it is true, I need like more argyle sweaters. I had one in college, kind of grew out of. But yeah, I need a sweater vest to really fully embrace who

I am. So let's let's look at this claim, this outrageous claim that Blathers is making that carp have teeth in their throat. Doesn't seem like that would be real, But let's go on a learning journey. They're like a slack pit. Is that what you're telling me? Well, so first, what are carp Obviously, goldfish are a species of carp as our koi fish. Carp are a large family of freshwater fish known as cyprin and a, and indeed, fish that are in the carp family, including goldfish, do have

throat teeth. Just picture that for a minute. Let's let's sink in. So do all fishes, including my family, our throat tease. We all get them removed at age two. Yes, sort of like getting your wisdom teeth out. It's the throat teeth. Oh yeah, you kind of just choke it down. And so scientifically speaking, these throat teeth are pharyngeal teeth, and they are teeth that grow out of the pharyngeal bone in the throat. So if you guys check out the document, there is a picture of these throat teeth,

which is cool to look at. Oh I was thinking like little spines or something. No, just teeth. That's a whole set of jaws or something, but in the throat. So it's not just carp that have throat teeth. There are some species of fish who also have pharyngeal teeth, like clown loaches, and they actually can make clicking noises with the teeth, which is great. I don't know, I love that that sounds just totally not creepy to hear clicking and you look over and there's a clown loach

and it's clacking its throat teeth together. I feel like that fish was doomed to be creepy. When it was it's like, well, you know, it's it's fade sealed. It's got that big clown energy, the creepy clown my throat and then just laughter forever. So you might wonder why fish have throat teeth? Why do you guys think fish have throat teeth? I'm gonna go ahead and let the point leader, uh, start off with this, start off answering this one. Well, I know why we have throat teeth.

I'm gonna go ahead and let the point leader tell us why that fact too. Well. I mean, like you know, I birds, you know, have rocks in their in their throats gizzards up food a gizzard, So uh is it a is it a similar similar fashion? Is it? Like? Is it like a cow's stomach where there's like just phases of chewing. You are absolutely correct. The throat teeth help them grind food as it passes through their throat.

And it's interesting you mentioned bird gizzards. We might actually cover that later in the podcast, so look forward to that. So I want to talk about one more fish, the bitterling, which is a fish you can catch and give to blothers in animal crossing. So here's Blathers on the bitterlings. Bitterlings hide their eggs inside large bivalves like clams, where

the young can stay safe untail grown. The bitterling isn't sneaky, No, they're young help keep the bivalve healthy by eating invading parasites. It's a wonderful bit of evolutionary deal making, don't you think, each one keeping the other safe? Though eating parasites does not sound like a happy childhood. Is that why the fish is so bitter? Dad? Again, Blothers is essentially me. Uh, there's a lot of puns and animal crossing. Yeah, yeah, this is why. God I need to get my hands,

my my grubby little hands on the switch. It's it's like sold out everywhere though, So I am having some trouble, but I will I will get it somehow, in some way. You can't open a present or or collect a bug without the game insisting on a pun like forcing forcing upon down your God, I can only get so jealous. Oh yeah, Katie, you should just like keep your eye out for any balloons that kind of just are floating by your house or whatever, just window. You never know.

So unfortunately, I do have to take my my dear friend Blathers to task here because he is a little off on this fact, although there are some really interesting things about the bitterlings that he is correct about. So first of all, bitterlings, again, we're talking carp on this show. God, this is a real carpy show. So bitterlings are a genus of fish in the car up family. They are a small leaf shaped fish who only grow about four inches or eleven centimeters. They do, indeed, lay their eggs

inside freshwater mollusks such as muscles. So it's a really kind of twisted way of doing child rearing, sort of outsourcing child rearing forcibly. So it's like alien it's like alien rules. Yeah, yeah, Alien invaders exactly. Yeah. John Hurt is a mollusk in this situation and maybe in the movie too, may be true and a moss just just so people know, like a mousque includes things like muscles clams,

those are bivalves. So the female will stick an ovipositor, which is basically a long tube that you pump eggs out of. Think of like a boba straw, but in reverse.

Don't think about that actually, but the they will kind of get their ovipositor into the muscle or another freshwater bivalve and deposit a couple of eggs into the muscle's gills, and then a male will mosey on over and shoot their sperm into the intake siphon of the muscle, which then comes in fertilizes the eggs that are forced into the gills of the muscle, and then those eggs will develop into baby fish, which is cute. Like the CD

motel of the Animal Kingdom. Yeah, yep, if all sex was conducted through air events, Yeah, that's like, which is really how you have to do it in the age of the quarantine anyway. Yeah, this is actually really good social disc seeing mating advice, like just using a muscle as a proxy my friends, O nore, Oh that didn't do it for you. Meg's well to me, I'm like picturing something, you know, like procreating in your ear and

then suddenly fall out. Momusk does remind you of a mouth, by the way, it's like it's basically a tongue with a shell on it. So it didn't he didn't take like a clamshell and use it as a little puppet, be like, hey, buddy, you're feeling crabby today, Well I'll clam up. Yeck yeck chack yack jack. This is my soft pitch to write for animal crossing. By the way, I think I think you are instantly signed on. I think, yeah, you would do amazing. That DLC is gonna be all yours.

So the baby fish also called fry also called larva, which is decidedly a less cute name, so I'll keep calling it a baby fish. They live inside the host and leave when they've grown large enough. So I'm not sure if Blathers is actually correct that bitterlings are in a mutualistic relationship with the muscles. So mutualism is when both species are in a symbiotic relationship in which they both benefit. In this case, I'm pretty sure the bitter

lings are actually parasites. So a study published in two thousand six in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology by right yard at all found that the bitter ling is a parasite to the muscle. The bitterling imposes costs on the muscle and does not reciprocate any benefits to the muscle. So it used to be thought that the muscle larva would actually infect bitterling fish, so there was sort of this trade off, like I'll infect you with my babies,

you infect me with your babies. But actually it was found that the baby bitterlings are especially good at avoiding getting infected by muscle larva. So it will cost the bivalve precious oxygen and food because the baby fish are inside the muscle sucking up all their oxygen, eating up all their food, and it feeds on basically any bits of organic matter that enters the bivalve. There's no evidence that they exclusively feed on parasites. It's just whatever they

want to eat in there they eat. So yeah, they they're just kind of freeloaders. Great, awesome do it? I mean whatever, Like the system is against them, so you know, whatever they have to do to make it work for the Wait wait, wait are we are we taking the side of the bitterlings, like they're like they're progressive protesters. I mean, I don't know, I don't know, I don't know, So Occupy, Occupy Muscle, Wall Street, Occupy Muscle. I'm I'm

a fish. You know, I'm biased. So her name is Maggie May fish not not for like, it's not just a surname. She's a fish, don't. You guys can't. This is an audio medium, so you can't see. But she is actually a fish. Yeah, I got I got babies cooking in a cooking in my scallops in the freezer. Oh grass, I read a very weird mood today, you guys.

So this is great. This is also wonderful. The good news in this story is that the bitterling babies are safe from predators while they are inside of the muscle, and they actually have to develop some interesting adaptations to survive inside of a bi valve. So first they have developed ways to anchor down amidst the flow of water through the bi valve. Because like a bi valve has an intakes siphon and an outtakes siphon where they pull in water and they push out water. So there's a

current inside of the bi valve. So the baby bitterling has to kind of anchor itself down and and they have like sometimes they have like spikes or like these quote Mickey Mouse ears, these like protrusions on the side of their heads that really helped them just like wedge into the gills in the muscles, and it also they just really sinister. They have like Mickey Mouse ear as well.

They I don't think it's too strong a word to say, force themselves into an unwilling muscles mouth and in the of their it's not like in the it would be like the equivalent of like a humans lungs. It's like in their gills. So it's like, I'm just gonna live in your guilt, right, only you know it doesn't cutely summon magic brooms to like do its tasks. And I just I just formally retract my endorsement of these, uh

these fish. I was trying to tell you. I was like, bro, I don't think this is the side you want to live these nester Mickey mouse fish. Well, let's let's try to take the side of the mollusks. Now, so muscles are mollusks, but another mollusk is actually the squid. So let's hear a blathers fact about squids. Many molluscs, like snails and clams, have shells, but the squid's body is almost completely soft. The exception is a long narrow bit of hard material going through its main body, the last

remnant of its shell. Of course, having a shell inside is not the best practice. Perhaps they lost the owner's manure. Keep expecting KG to just float away with an umbrella help some other achieve their dreams. So Blathers is correct that squid are mollusks and they are almost completely soft, and squidh sheet. So let's talk about this whole thing with squids and shells and what is what the heck is going on? Why are clams a mollusk and squid a mollusk but they are so different? How come come

I'm not this hypothetical question. I'm setting I'm setting myself up to drop some some dank squid facts. Don't you worry? I was gonna say it was like, that's far beyond my pay grade as about blaster dang minds with squid facts. Sorry, kidney, So squid do, indeed like blatherers, to just have a remnant of a shell inside them. It's called a pin and it is actually a leaf shaped structure made of kiton that serves as a sort of backbone for the squid.

And I want to also talk about a relative of the squid, the octopus us, because octopuses do not have any internal shell. They are hard percent squishy, just they can squeeze in and out of any tiny opening because they don't got no bones, no shell, nothing, just a hundred percent squish. That's how I like them. That's how I like my tentacled creatures from the sea. I mean, they're their beaks are tough like that's the only hard

part of them is their beaks. And they're resolved. They do have a hard resolve, but their beaks and their resolve, Yeah, they are resolved, that's true. You can see and you can see an army of octopus is doing some real damage down there. They have got together, yeah, if they ever, they ever colluded. So we've actually talked about this on the show before, on the episode on a Date with Nature.

But there is only one octopus that actually has a shell, and it is the female argonaut octopus who has a thin shell which is actually in a case, it looks like a non the list shell and she floats around in it and it helps protect her eggs and it is quite spectacular looking. I forgot to put in image of that, guys, but if you just google it, it's really cool. Look at argonau octopus shell, it's very pretty. Other than the argonaut octopus, octopuses do not have shells

and they have no internal shells. I want to talk about why squid and octopuses and other cephalopods decided to ditch the shell like is it as Blathers suggested that they lost the owner's manual. Well, it's actually a little more complex than that, sorry Blathers. When you look at the evolutionary history of squid, octopuses, and cephalopods, there were a lot of early iterations of the octopus and the squid. They did have shells, but it was a trade off

between mobility and armor. So a shell gives you nice armor, but it makes you a lot slower and less agile, and it seemed that mobility one out in the evolutionary race. Being able to move around quickly and nimbly allowed the cephalopods to evade predators while still being able to catch prey. Extinct cephalopods with shells died out because according to University of Bristol paleo biologist Jacob Vinther quote, they couldn't keep up with the new shell ass kids on the block.

I love it when biologists try to like use hip lingo and they always quote something that style. It's it's twenty nineteen or whereenever this article was written, and it's like the new shellless kids on the block. It again, brow these new, these new dank cephalopods are are straight up naked yo. Mm hmmm. So there is writ those manuals too. I think letter writing, letter writing gigs coming

out of this one for KG. So the nautilus is actually the only living suffle pod that has a true full shell, and it is it basically has remained unchanged for hundreds of millions of years. So if you kind of want an idea of how these early squid and octopus relatives may have looked, you can look to the nautilus. Some octopus is actually kind of split the difference between

being able to remain mobile and having armor. So the coconut octopus will find discarded bivalve shells such as a clamshell, and they'll carry it around and then close it around itself to form a shelter when threatened. And they're called coconut octopus because they also do the same thing with coconut shells. So if you guys click on that link I have highlighted here, you can take a look at

this in action. It is very cute. These things are like Batman, like a utility belt of clamshells, and like they get these new versions of shells that are slightly more flexible but give more armor like Batman does every movie. Right, they don't have superpowers, they just have the gear. They have the gadgets. Is there anything in video games or like, I guess like pop culture that is similar to that, like something that carries around a shell and then hides

in it and pops out of it. Because I feel like there is something, but it's on the tip of my tongue. I can't think of what it is. What's her face? From Pokemon Topeka? What's her name? Well, all the Pokemon essentially are carried around in balls. Well that's true enough. Also, like shamus Uh from what Metroid? No Metroid? No? Wait, what metroid? Sammus from Shamus Shamush the Irish metroid got got to deal with these gosh Day metroids. Oh those

and they are get me the marth ball. Why don't we so often gravitate towards video games where progress can be made. In Animal Crossing you build a village, and other games you gain levels or powers, or armor or in game currency. Is it escapism? Research data has indicated it's not just a desire to escape reality, but to fulfill certain psychological needs such as competency, autonomy, and into relatedness.

We like to feel accomplished at a task, and video games makes it easy to press through a skill in a very clear and quantitative way. We also like the feeling of being in control of ourselves. I know that when I'm gaming, I often find myself just jumping around, jumping to things, just to see that I can, even though it has nothing to do with the actual goal of the game. I think it might just be my

mind feeling satisfaction and having control over my avatar. And we also like to feel as if we have an impact on our community. That's why there are so many online games. One of the most popular features of Animal Crossing is the online community elements. Getting these needs fulfilled your games isn't necessarily negative. As long as you're also trying to get them through other things in your life as well. That is to say, take potty breaks your nerds.

When we return, we'll talk about one of Blathers favorite subjects, bugs in animal crossing Blothers is let's say, I'm not a huge fan of bugs. I'm not sure why, given that he's an owl and Alice generally love to eat bugs. But why are so many people afraid of these creepy crawley's. While any insects are, in my opinion, beautiful and harmless, even helpful, certain bug like creatures can in fact be dangerous.

A few spiders who aren't really bugs, but arachnets can be venomous, and many other insects can sting, bite, or, as we'll find out, launch their horrible butt hair at you and give you a nasty rash. I don't think this is a reason to hate our many legged friends, but to admire their ingenuity, especially in the butt hair department, which will now discuss the bug kingdom gets real varied

in what they accept in animal crossing. I believe snails those are a mollusk, gastropod, terrestrial gastrocod stupid, They also called like a hermit crab a bug, and I don't think that's quite right, but you know whatever, bloss This is where I got a little I got a little sass for Blathers on this. No, no no, no, I mean I have sass for Blathers too, because he blothers is

very anti anti bug any time, very anti bug. Yeah, every time you present him a bug, he freaks out, has like panics, expresses his disdain for bugs while simultaneously assuring you that he will give the bug a good home. But he spends most of his time calling them horrid creatures. So I don't know, Blathers, are you going to give them a good home? Yeah? Also, like he eats bugs, so like sweetie, that's an eating disorder, Like that's nothing to joke about, right, Well, he guys, okay, he is

an owl, so he would be eating small vertebrates. You think that that we're an animal crossing logic, my friend? People, all right, but have you ever seen a mouse? Villager? Isn't there isn't there a rat that there's there's mice or something. Yeah, there's like I don't know if lately did they ever go missing? I have not seen that So I want to go over some of blathers facts about what he calls bugs. They're not always bugs. So, for instance, we're gonna talk about tarantulas, which are arachnids.

So he when he's delivering this, he is terrified because he is very scared of them. But let's let's take a listen to what Blathers has to say about tarantula's. It is a fact tarantulas have barbed belly hair. These awful erecteds loose their spiky, itchy hairs to protect them from predators. But seeing how tarantulas prey on frogs, mice, and even birds, one must ask who needs protecting from whom? Who? Who?

Indeed who? So Blathers is suggesting that tarantula have spiky, itchy hair that they can shoot at predators to protect themselves, which sounds totally made up, But this is very very true. These spiky, itchy, barbed hairs are actually called rdicating hairs, and they are found on tarantula's, some species of caterpillars, and also even some species of plants. So rdicating hairs grow on the tarantula's abdomen and it's usually like a patch of distinct hair like you know, tarantulas are fuzzy

all over. Not all of those hairs are these rdicating hairs. There's usually just like a little patch near the back of their abdomen kind of looks like it's on their butt. It's not their butt, but if it was a butt, I guess that's where it would be. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I'm fine saying that they're shooting their sharp hairs like a blow dart out of theirs. I'm okay, I'm okay

saying that. Yeah, it's not like it's it's like if you had like a hairy but like on the actual cheeks, not like from the sorry to get crude, everybody, but not from the behole, but like on top of the butt, and you have harry Harry butt, and then you shoot those hairs off in your enemy's face. Yeah, that that is. That is what That is. A dart that you could shoot out of the side of your butt cheek right

exactly like that. So the way they shoot these hairs is they actually use their hind legs to kick off the hairs, like as if like if you have a stack of money and you're doing doing the flip thing where you're just like you're just spreading the money out with your hand, except instead of money, it's sharp hairs that hurt and burn when they touch you. What a nightmare creature. And if you guys take a look at figure five. I didn't actually label these, but you know

it's on the document, you can see a trantula. It's a conspicuous bald spot on its rear end. And that is a bald patch that is a result of it kicking off all of its urdicating hairs, which will only regraw after it molts. So how many times does it get to shoot it's prayer whatever with those dart hairs a good number of times because it doesn't go I don't think it goes bald like the first on the

first shot. You've gotta keep shooting it until you really wear away that patch, and then when it molts, it'll grow a new patch. So it's it's got a good supply of butt hairs. So it's like a it's like a paintball clip or something pretty much. Yeah, yeah, that is the sound that tarantula's make when they are dusting

off their butt hairs at your face. Another things that Blathers asserts is that tarantula's don't need protecting from anything, and Blathers that's just anti tarantula bias, because tarantulas have a lot to be afraid of, and it's something that Blathers should know about, which is wasps. So actually Blathers does have a lot to say about wasps. Have you

guys gotten stung by wasps? Much? I I intentionally got stung by one just to keep my aesthetic of the conqueror alive when I went to Maggie's Island the first time. Oh you did you do that intentionally? I just figured that I was having a bad time. Yeah, having a bad time. It's fine either way. It added to the conqueror asthetic, did it not? Now I caught I caught five wasps in a row the other day. So you're talking to uh, you're talking to a wasp a wasp

expert over here. You really are. I'm gonna tell you what. The trancelors don't have to fear, and that's me with a net because I cannot catch one of them no matter what I do. They're they're having a party in a parade when they see me coming. So in the game, if you are unlucky or lucky. I guess if you're at um, if you try to chop down a tree, sometimes you accidentally run into a wasp us and the wasps will attack you and your face gets all beat

up and it's a whole thing. This is what Blathers has to say if you turn a wasp into his museum. Wasps are sometimes called meat bees because they eat meat, meat of almost any sort. And then Blathers gets really nervous starts sweating aggressive predators with venomous stings. Wasps not only hunt and eat other insects, they paralyze their prey. Didn't drag their victims home alive, leaving them for their larva to feed upon. So this again seems beyond belief,

and again Blathers is totally correct. So wasps do eat meat, and they are I would say, maybe one of the most insidious insects out there. They are. They're pretty creepy. They're they're like the serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's of the insect world. Yeah, yeah, something about them, the kind of their jib, just something about it. So, wasps are a group of insects within the Hymenoptera order, which includes bees, ants, and soft flies. There are both solitary wasps and social

wasps who form group nests. So in animal crossing, because you get into a swarm of wasps that I'll attack you, those would be the social wasps. Whereas if you come across like one solitary wasp with its own little din, that is, you know, going to be a solitary wasp. Some species of wasps do indeed paralyze their prey, drag them into their dens for their larva to slowly consume, sometimes over many weeks. So just when they paralyze their prey, when are they dead? At what point is the prey

actually dead? I mean that's a hard question to answer because they get eaten up over a long period of time. I mean, like, how would you like if you have leftovers at one point? Are the leftovers dead? Uh, they're dead at the point in which I cooked them. But but but like, is this like Starlac again? Is this Starlac rules where it's like they're slowly subjected to pain and torture over a thousand years? Is it like that? Basically? But usually only up to around a month? Only a month,

but in bug time, that's a millennia. You know what I mean, that's true. That is true. It's like a billion years in bug time. So the spider wasp and tarantula hawk wasp are pros at this. So Blathers was just saying that tarantulas have nothing to fear, but he knows about wasps and wasps. Wasps can subject tarantulas to the most horrific fate imaginable, imaginable for any creature. So wasps who lay their larva on or in a victim to be slowly eaten are called parasitoid wasps because their

larva live as parasites on their victims. Some species of parasitoid wasp larva saved the spider's vital organs for the very last so their food lives and stays fresher longer. Maggie, you've sounded weirdly interested in that. Yeah, I mean, that's that's what I do with my lucky charms. I leave all the marshmallows to the end, and I just feel like I get it. Just imagine the luxy charms are

actual lives. Then you realize how maniacal that is. In this case, the lucky charms are the tarantula's lungs, another vital organs. Yeah. Whatever, however, you can empathize with these wasps, I guess. So. Some harrisitoid wasps even control their praise brains. They will lay their larva on or in orb weaver spiders. So orb weavers are a group of spiders that we

have these beautiful, elaborate webs. But when the wasp lays her eggs in the orb spider, either like inside them or on top of them, the wasp larva actually starts to interfere with the spider's brain functioning, and it makes them weave these little cocoons that keep the larva safe, and then as thanks, I guess for weaving it a little crib, the larva feed on the poor spider and then eventually just kind of like chucks its dead body out of the crib. Truly truly dark, dark dark in

a profound way. I feel like I'm just making Blathers case more for why he hates he hates bugs. But I think it's I think it's cool they kill their babysitters. I'll say that on the record. Put me down in the pro column on that issue. Next, I want to talk about mantis is because Blathers has a lot to say about mantis is So if you turn a mantis into Blathers, this is what he has to say. And though mantises tend to eat bugs and spiders, mantises have

been known to dine on small animals too. And those eerie eyes, Oh my, did you know it has five of them? Two big ones and three small. I shall faint if I think of it further. So again Blathers is correct about this. So mantises are adept killers, and larger species are able to feed on small vertebrates like frogs, lizards, snake, mice and even hummingbirds. It's one of those shocking things to see this insect just grab a hummingbird out of

midair and start snacking on it. Yeah, I've never seen that? Is this? Am I just missing? Am I watching the wrong planet? Earth? Is there like a dark one planet? Is it like Planet Earth Nights or something like? Just like a dark planet Earth? Vice after dark? David Attenborough just really let's loose. He's like, he's like got a giant bong. He's like, check out these montases. Three fists the jack to start, but I was ready to go.

I think they have a real intimidating aura, real cursed oura going on, because they have those long, scythe like arms, they are really quick when they strike, and they have these big, creepy eyes that seem to follow you everywhere. So they're are multiple species of mantis is who can feed on hummingbirds. And these are females that can grow around two to three inches long. And these females were observed mating and snatching hummingbirds out of midair like a

real boss martch like doing them simultaneously. Yeah. Yeah, it sounds like that episode of Seinfeld where George like combines all of his passions into one strange super passion. That's exactly that is that. Yep, they are the George Seinfeld's wait, his name is not George Steinfeld, the George will Stands of the natural world. Yeah, it's like a real Caligula

opulation operation over there in Mantisville. So, like Blathers said, mantises do indeed have five eyes, even though if you've ever seen a mantis, it looks like they only have two. So the two eyes you've probably noticed are their large compound eyes. But in addition, they have three tiny eyes on the top of their heads used for detecting light and dark, while those big compound eyes are able to see depth and movement, which allows them to snatch hummingbirds

out of the freaking air. And so it's it's it's just kind of one of those things where I've when I think of a mantis, I think, yeah, two eyed mantis. Then they just have a bunch of secret extra eyes that apparently a dedicated to grabbing hummingbirds. They're like bilbill trying to get the ring back right, hummingbirds out of the air. I just love I love a secret eye. Like you thought I only had two eyes. I got

a secret eye. Where is it? So many eyes? It's like under my under my hairline, part my hair, and there's an eyeball right next to the throat toeth there's some there, got secret teeth. I got secret eyes. What else do I have a secret thing of? That's really That's really it. It's I kind of want all these things. I just want all these parts added, you know, I want to get a souped up package. I got a secret finger somewhere. Yeah. The mantis is compound eyes are

actually really interesting too. When you've if you've seen a mantis. It looks like they have pupils, right. Have you guys noticed that just right in the center. Yeah, yeah, always kind of following you around. Yeah yeah, I feel well. So these are actually pseudo pupils. So light is absorbed into the compound eye due to the angle of you know, like what a compound is eye is you have like this bunch of facets all over this eye, and so when light goes in, it's entering it at this angle

and it absorbs the light in. So there's a dark spot that is actually kind of an optical illusion that looks like a pupil, but really it's where the is getting absorbed by the compound I So there's a lack of light there. It's kind of like you know how a shiny ball will have that highlight on it that seems to follow you around when you move the ball. It's like that, except instead of reflecting the light back at you, it's absorbing all the lightning like a black hole.

It's stealing the light from the world, is what's what you're telling me? Yes, this is true. Their eyes are drinking light. So what a what a cool creature sucking the light out of the world. The magnificent mantis a noble creature. How do compound eyes work? Arthur pods, insects and crustaceans have compound eyes, and I made of a bunch of tiny light sensing units. Each facet of a compound eye consists of a cornia lens and photoreceptor cells.

These facets are called ama titia. There can be as few as five alma titia to up to thirty thousand, depending on the animal. Mantises have about ten thousand amatidia. Each of these photoreceptive units send a little piece of a visual puzzle to the brain, which the brain assembles into a whole image. The resulting image will have bad resolution, but the benefit is that it gives the insect a huge view angle, allowing them to detect danger or prey all around them. Think of how hard it is to

sneak up on a fly and swatt it. They have an imax panoramic view around them, and they can see you trying to be slick with your swater. When we return, I promise you'll understand this stupid joke. What's a fly's favorite fossil? A cobra lighte. This paleontology humor everyone's favorite kind will be right back. How are fossils formed? There are actually a few ways that organic matter can be

preserved into a fossil. There's cast fossils, where a specimen gets trapped in sediment and their bodies dissolve, leaving an impression in the rock that forms around them, or the inverse, where a sediment gets trapped in a skull shell or other hollow part of an organism and forms an internal mold. There's also per mineralization, when an organism gets varied in sediment before it decays, groundwater can fill their empty body cavities. This groundwater is full of minerals, which then fills the

empty space, forming a fossil. Pair mineralization can be so precise it can preserve the cellular structure of plants. Pair mineralization is one of the processes that results in petrification, the transformation of organic material into minerals. Sometimes surprising types of organic material can be turned into stone. And that's why I've got you round trip ticket to defecation station

to all aboard the excrement Express. You guys find many fossils in animal crossing at least four a day, sometimes five is there a fifth one. Sometimes I thought it was always four. I don't know. I think I find five, but maybe I'm wrong, or maybe in a better island, I knew your island conquer I gotta conquer it, your fossil rich island. I see, I see why Adams trying to conquer your island. Now, as soon as I get a switch, Katie's coming for your fossils, especially your copper lights.

So I'm going to talk a little bit about copper lights. So when you bring a copper light to Blathers, this is what he says. Copper lights are, in fact, bits of fossilized feces. Who you The copper light from certain plant eating dinosaurs has been found to contain small pebble. This tells us that these dinosaurs, like many modern birds, ate rocks to help grind their greens in their bellies. Who knew? Who? Who? Who? Indeed, you're really taken, You

really taken to the character. I think. Thank you. This is also my audition audition tape for Animal Crossing, the live action motion capture film movie. If you think that you're you're mistaken, it's happening. Just trust me. Directed by Tom Hooper. Oh yeah, oh, it's a musical. I just hope it's like human faces on animals is my dream. Yeah, it's it's it's very cats the musical. But I actually

I still hope that they talk in animal crossing. That's sort of like weird weird speech that probably yeah, speak faces. I want my my human face on an owl. And I'm just going like that's a that's a movie. It's like it's like it's like Koyana Scottsie. So, copper lights are indeed fossilized poop. Don't be too afraid to touch copper lights. Like most fossils, most of the poop has been replaced by minerals over hundreds of millions of years, but they do hilariously keep their poop shape like good

fossils really look just like, you know, a turd. I got a couple of pictures of those in the notes if you want to check them out. Yeah, I saw that. Thank you to help me visualize it. Yeah, if you want to know what ancient poop looks like, there it is. You know, I'm gonna include links to these ancient poops in the show notes. You know it. I did know that, Yeah, I knew it instinctively, so they had some fiber in their diet. These these dinosaurs, they did, and they also

had rocks in their diet. And I want to talk a little bit, actually, Maggie, I think you talked about this earlier about how birds have little rocks in and this. Yeah, we're gonna talk about bird digestion. Bird digestion, Bird digestion. It's bird digestion coca. It's my new my new segment in the show called Bird Digestion Corner, which I'm sure I'll do every week probably maybe. So birds do indeed

eat rocks to help them digest food. So birds hate to break it to you guys, they don't really have teeth, and their beaks are good for pecking, ripping and cracking, and sometimes they have spines in their beaks that help them catch fish. But they don't have teeth and they can't really grind food up, so they will pick small, sharp rocks or really gritty sand and swallow it up.

And then once a rock has been swallowed by an animal for digestion purposes, it is then known as a gastro lith So these sand or rocks will go into a specialized muscular part of the stomach called the gizzard, and birds who eat food that requires grinding, like grain, seeds and vegetation, the tiny rocks and the gizzard grinds

up this food. In fact, when I had parakeets, I had to give them this special It was like this kind of sandy little tiny grains of rock and just a little tray of that so they could swallow it, so they could eat the seeds that they ate. Oh and what happens when they're finished, when they've smoothed out those stones. I mean I think that it just kind of gets expelled like once. It's a once. It's sort of a fine enough powder to go through their digestive system.

It just like passes through them, you know, like when you eat rocks picked up by smaller creatures. Yeah. Usually when I passed them, I then use them to skip across a lake because they're all now. It just kind of aim aimed towards the lake. See see how much velocity you can get on that thing. Yet you gotta get a good spin on it too. Yeah, you'll get four or five skips, Maggie if you got so what's interesting and a fact that blather is kind of glosses over.

Maybe because it's too personal. Is he doesn't talk about owl digestion suspiciously suspiciously, which is interesting because again I'm wondering, like you guys keep in good track of those rodent villagers. You haven't noticed any missing mice or anything, because owls poop out pellets. Yeah yeah, yeah, well they don't poop them out, They actually hork them out. They thrown't They regurgitate.

That's it. That's it. If they if they ever let you build a p I center or a cop a cop station of your crossing island, we'll get to the bottom, promise. I mean, it would make forensics. It would make root forensics really easy, because you know, Blothers is at the police station going, I don't know anything about the missing Mr Mousey, and then he just like regurgitates a little mouse skeleton and like his little hat and the shirt he was wearing. Yeah, and he also gives you the

cute nickname that only the mouse would have given you. Yeah, I don't know what you think about it. Squeaker huh oh, I didn't know that Squeakers was murdered. Nobody said anything about Squeak as being murdered. So in birds of prey like owls, the gizzard serves a different function, so it is actually a filter for all the inedible parts of their prey, like bones and fur. So owls swallow their prey hole or ripped them up into edible chunks, real

cute blathers. But they don't chew, so those saw fleshy bits of the prey get ground up by the muscular contractions in the gizzard, while the hard, indigestible parts get compacted into pellets, which the owl later just kind of barfs. Back up, I'm sorry, the cheet says, horks back up. In my notes, I did write horks. They do hork it back up. I insists on that word being they hork it back up. That is the scientific term for it.

Love that sometimes when I'm writing these notes, I get a little creative, just to make, you know, to make a little fun for me, just sometimes just one for Katie. And it's a little one for Katie, a little bit of you know, because like you can only write regurgitate so many times, for which I do, I write it a lot of times for the show. So cork it up, toss your cookies, you know, So another fossil that you

can turn in two blothers is the dunk Elostius. And actually on these gameplay videos, I see a lot of people call it the dunkle Saurus, which I understand the urge to call it that because most like ancient animals do end in some kind of sourus. But this is actually the duncle Osteus. So this is what Blathers has to say when you turn in a dunk Elstius fossil. The duck Colostius flourished long before the dinosaurs, and it was so sort of armored fish. Curiously, only fossils for

the head and shoulders have been found. We must simply imagine the rest. While its face was rather frightening, I like to picture a cute little tail and perhaps some fluffy paws on its fins. Such speculation is not scientific, of course, and essentially amounts to paleontological fan fiction. I own that what so Bathers run a real island dr

he's writing. He did just confess that he's writing paleontological face, So I can only imagine like it's like the dunk Loostius and like Snape getting into some romantic snaphew mine just called t sex. You can imagine where it goes from there. So, unfortunately for Blathers and whatever weird fan base he has for his dunk Lostius fan fiction, the Dunkelstius probably did not have fluffy paws on its fins.

But it is an interesting point he brings up because a lot of reimagining fossils is based on guesswork and creative license in terms of reconstructing something when like, so, if you only have the fossilized remains of the head and like kind of neck area, then how do you know what the rest of it looks like? So let's talk a little bit about the dunk Losties. So it was a huge fish with a frightening looking head that kind of looked like an evil digimon. There's an image

there you guys should look at. Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, like an evil digimon. Right, I'm gonna say yes to that. But you've exposed my my bare tarantula ass. In terms of knowledge about Pokemon and Poke Bond are two very different I P s. I. Lawyers will be contacting you shortly. There's another image in the documentcy of what artists have imagined its whole body looks like, so it looks like a big, gray, frightening shark like creature. It did in

fact grow up to what paleontologists think. It grew up to about twenty nine feet in length, which would be about nine meters, and weighed about a metric ton. It had a tough plated armor exterior, at least on the head, and instead of teeth, it had sharp, bony beak like plates that it used to eviscerate its victims. It went extinct about three d fifty eight million years ago, and there's no fossils of the rest of its body, so reconstruction is based on other extinct fish of its class, Placodermy,

who have more extensive fossil records. But one of the problems with reconstructing fossils into animals, as you probably kind of know from the whole thing with like, we didn't used to think dinosaurs had feathers, but now we think a lot of them did. They were big, old, fluffy,

chicken like creatures. So I wonder, I mean part of me wonders if the dunkle Ostius, instead of looking like a terrifying zombie, sharp arc with this evil digimon face, could actually have been really colorful with like a long flowing tail and bright vibrant colors to attract females. I mean, I don't. I have no evidence of that either, but it's fun to think about. Yeah, just like two really shiny antenna you know, like a Birds of Paradise style

mating swim. Why not just random dongles coming off of it? Yeah? Yeah. And then like when it squishes its body together the right way, it makes a different kind of face, right right, It's got or like it's got sort of a accordion, like an accordion body that makes fun noises as it swims along. Now we're sort of an alice in Wonderland territory. But I'm not as if Blathers can write fan fiction about this, this ancient fish. I want to write fan fiction about it. And I say, it was a colorful

accordion boy, And I'm not here to dispute it. I'm just here to uh to cop you write it and sell it to someone. So next, I want to talk about the megaseraps. So when you turn in a megaseraps fossil to Blathers, he says, this large fellow was a bit like our modern rhinoceros but with two horns on its nose. Sadly, their small teeth restricted them to a diet of rather soft plants, and eventually they died out. I feel there is a valuable lesson to be had

there about learning to enjoy a variety of foods. You know what, Okay blathers, it's a real real SMARMI easy hindsight is twenty twenty, is what I'm saying here. You are not extinct, probably eating all the mice, going like, oh, have a very diet. Right, also like right right, are you gonna lecture history? You should be better past than you were. All right? So the megaseraps, also known as the thunder beast, is indeed an extinct hinoceros like ungulates.

So ungulate are hooved animals. Uh So, while they do look a lot like rhinos, they aren't super closely related to rhinos. Actually diverged from the species that evolved into rhinos earlier in the evolutionary tree, so they're actually more closely related to horses, and they're kind of goofy looking. If you guys, take check out that picture I sent you. There's a reconstruction of mega serops next to a guy like it's photoshop next to a guy that's just like

casually leaning against it, which I find interesting. It's insane to me that you're that this creature is not more closely related to the rhinoceros, because it looks, according to this rendering, identical except for except for instead of having one point horn, it has the back of a hammer

for a nose, you know, a slingshot nose. H yeah, yeah, I mean, to be fair, I think that this rendering probably is making it perhaps more rhinoceros like than it may have been, just because it's like maybe the description was like, I don't know, it's a rhinoceros with a slingshot notes like do it, and then the artist went with that, but it's hard to know, like what they're fleshy body parts actually looked like maybe a little less rhinoceros like, but still it is convergent evolution does happen

where you have animals independently evolving extremely similar characteristics, So it's possible it looked very rhinoceros like, even though the rhinoceros didn't directly descend from it. The megasar Ops was about eight feet or two point five meters tall. It was sixteen ft or five ms long and waited about three metric tons, so you know, sizeable heft, a good amount. It's it's a lot, it's a it's a lot of seraps.

I would say it looks like a rhinoceros if it was made for Lord of the Rings or something, right, right, exactly, like how they sort of instead of elephants, they're only fants. Yeah, they're extra big with like a separate test. I mean, Jared Tulkien was a very creative guy, but I do like how you just kind of like, I don't know, only fancy, Like who cares, man, it's a book, you'll be bigger. Yeah. So yeah, their horn kind of isn't in a y shape instead of like that conical shape,

so it's like a big yse. And why does this thing exist? And the answer is that it is theorized by paleontologists that this face fork was used by males as a battering ram in rivalries based on fossil records of broken ribs. Although you know, like my theory is they strung up like a rubber band on there and used it as a big old slingshot like in the flintstone. It also would make a great It would make a great like a gun sight. So if you're shot bullets

rhinoceross mouth, boy, would you be accurate doing that? Natural snipers? Exactly? Nature snipers. Now I want like a sort of want some sort of like historical fiction. Of these are still alive in this cyberpunk dinosaur dinosaurs cyberpunk, and you're using one of these as like your sniper buddy, and you guys are partners, and you're you're assassinating like dinosaur Hitler or something. You're here in Luck. That almost identical game exists and it's called Rock Dinosaur. Un It pretty close.

I love to rock every idea I have. Let's talk about our last fossil and last topic of today, which is the diplodocus. So if you turn in a diplodocus fossil, two blathers, this is what he has to say. Did you know that it's center of gravity was such that sitting up on its hind legs with probably easy What's more, paired with its long neck disability, greatly increased its reach for eating plants. Best of all, Diplodocus probably grew its entire life having no adult size. Wouldn't that we were

all so gifted. So the Diplodocus was a very interesting dinosaur with very interesting proportions. It was a sorrow pod, which is a clade of dinosaurs with long necks and long tails. Think about like the long necks in Land before time. Yeah, every day, or you know a good old brontosaurus, same same clade, and it's interesting. So, like when he said Diplodocus probably grew its entire life, we talked about that earlier, where it's an indeterminate grower, not

under indeterminate shower. So this is like the prehistoric goldfish, well only in that way. But sure I need to under I can only understand one animal with a different animal as a comparison point. Diplodocus went extinct about a hundred and fifty two million years ago. It is one of the longest dinosaurs, growing around eighty feet long, which is twenty four meters, and they weighed around fourteen metric tons. So that's big, that's perfect. How big is that? How

many football fields? How many buses? It is like a medium length passed from from a quarterback. Does that help you? Yeah, that's very hopeful for me. Someone who is good at visualizing sports. So Diplodocus had a teeny tiny head compared to its body size. It's like it's got this really long, meaty neck that kind of in in this like little head. It's actually kind of funny. But if you guys just google Diplodocus, I'm actually familiar with with Mr. Diplodocus or

mrs so are you. I read about seven dinosaur books when I was a kid, and I retained three names of dinosaurs and this, yeah, yeah, just briefly, wasn't the Bronosaurus. Doesn't that no longer exist? Am I wrong? I mean that classification It wasn't that. It wasn't the Bronosaurus a thing that was actually in a Patosaurus and they had the wrong head of the body. Well, but then it wasn't so there actually is now the change it back. Yeah, I think they changed it back that there is Bronosaurus

and Apodosaurus and Diplodocus. So they're all they're all they're they're all party, they're all the sauropods. But that is that is one of the hard, hard parts of being a paleontologist or a paleo biologist. It's like you just kind of have to symble dinosaurs you get it's like in a key a thing, but it's a bunch of bones, and you're just no instructions, nothing, not even the crappy I kea instructions and it's like, is this a new dinosaur or did I just get the bones mixed up

with another time? It's not even an ellen key. That screws it all together either. You get nothing nothing. Because its neck was so long and heavy, it probably couldn't lift its head much higher than being parallel with the ground, So consequently it probably ate a lot of vegetation that was close to the ground, or just pushed over trees when it wanted to eat the leaves on the trees.

But it is true that its center of mass was so far back on account of this really long tail, that it could probably sit up on its hind legs like a tripod, using that huge tail as a third leg, and then kind of giving it a little bit of extra heights so it could reach up into a tree. That's really not how I've ever envisioned one of these. You do think of it as just being able to like kind of nimbly lift its head up because it's such a it's a and it was a flexible neck.

It just was very heavy, so the muscles required to really lift it high up would be be very difficult to lift that much weight up. So it's more likely it just kind of like tipped over like a see saw to like get it get some elevation. So you're telling me Jurassic Park is a lie. That's what you're telling me the Bracio source. But Braccio source may have been able to lift its head, I'm not I'm not sure, Like it's some of these animals could have lifted their heads.

But this guy just a real, real thickle median neck there. And it also had a ridiculously long tail, even by sorrow Pod standards, just like and it gets really it's like it starts off really thick and gets thinner and thinner, and it it looks made up how long it is. In fact, the tail was so big and long the vertebra and the tail had to have quote double beams. So you know how vertebra have those little like protrusions that come out of the back of it or and

on the sides, do you know what I'm talking about? Yeah, yeah, So those are called spine us process and they are the bony protrusions. But in addition to those spinus process that like come out on sort of the top of the spine, they had another bony protrusion on the bottom of the vertebrae. So it was like this like support extra support beam that prevented the veins in their tails from getting crushed from the weight of this massive tail.

Paleontologists speculate that this long tail with over eighty vertebrae made have had a defensive function, being used to create a loud sound by cracking it like a whip. Now I think that this is actually a Blathers fact in a New Leaf. Yeah, I think it is where Blathers talks about how Diplodocus uses its tail as a whip.

Computer models of sorrow pod tails show that Diplodocus and their relative Apodosaurus may have been able to crack their tails at supersonic velocities, creating a mini sonic boom like a bowl whip, which could have been as a defensive thing. Or two. I don't know who the ladies with your weird whiptail, or just to like have a great weekend just getting out there whipping your tails around. That sounds red,

just cracking your tails, getting funking with it. Yeah, cracking open a diagonal beer and just whipping each other like the boys do. Yeah, these SA pods like the party were like Sara Party part damnit. SA party was better than the joke for me. Like, they can't, they can't all be winners. You know, I'm not. I'm not a blather as. I can't just pump out these great jokes with every with every dinosaur fact. But you you, you do a pretty good job. You're doing a pretty good blathers.

Thank you. I'm like a discount blathers, dime store blathers. You're more than a discount thank you. Daughter. Oh I forgot that was happening this whole time. Oh yeah, yeah that I'm I'm Maggie. We did establish that is Cannon. We've established in previous episode where I had Maggie on and I did adopt her for me to be her dad because of the dad jokes and we were discussing Star Wars very you know, it was. It was a whole dad Yeah, the whole dad thing. You would you

wouldn't like, you wouldn't get I wouldn't get it. I wouldn't understand that at all. Which connection to it? Well, thank you guys so much for joining me today. Now I usually ask do you have anything to plug? But I know for a fact you do, so get on with it. Plug that, plug that thing. Thank you for having us, uh Max, plug it up, Thank you so

much for having us. Yeah, So, Adam and I have a new podcast called I'll Show you Mine If you show me Years on the small Beans Network And yeah, Adam and I answer a very deep philosophical question with a favorite with a movie, U, a an album or a book and then uh maybe a book favor book. But anyways, we see what our favorite pieces of media says about us on a on a deeper level. So yeah, it's uh pop culture or check if you will. Now,

where can folks find you? They can find that podcast on the small Beans Network, which is available on any place that podcasts are available. They can find me on Twitter at the Real Games and the same on Twitch if you're into video game streaming. UM and I have a couple of the podcasts you can also find on small beans. If you are really into video games or into films, have two more podcasts there, Meg's Well. You

can find me on Twitter at Maggie may Fish dot com. Uh, and you can also find my video film essays um a YouTube channel Maggie may Fix just my name and yeah, you can also follow me on Instagram also my name, so come find me here and I you can find us also on the internet. We are on Instagram at Creature Feature Pod. We are on Twitter at Creature Feet Pod. That's F eight T, not fet that's something very different. If you want to hear my Katie thoughts, can find

me at Katie Golden. And as always, I am also pro bird rights, where I am fighting for the rights of birds to dominate us that. We also have shirts. I've already talked about the shirts before, but just a reminder we do got shirts. I'll include a link to that in the show notes pretty sure if I can remember to do that. Yeah, thank you guys so much for listening. If you are enjoying The Katie Facts, the Cather's Cather's Flatter, Kathy blathers, Yeah no, no, now I'm

not doing I'm not going with that one. But if you're you're enjoying my My the Katie Facts, uh, please do leave a review or rating, or subscribe or download those things. Actually really really help me. It does something with the algorithms and aiyes in the podcasts, and it helps us keep this show going. Every time you do a rating or review, I feel it in my owns and it makes me so happy. So thank you so much for listening, and thanks to the Space Cossacks for

their super awesome song. Ex Alumina Creature features a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the I heart Radio website, I heart Radio app or Apple podcast or hey, wherever you get your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.