Please Scream With Your Butt

them in blood? Joining me today is friend of the Pod, co host of George Center and lour After Hours, Will pull A k A Christie. I'm a good gi Maine. Welcome. Thank you for having me again, Katie. I think this is my third time on here. I'm a three peter. I'm super excited. That's right. You would be receiving in the mail of fruit basket. Oh good, yeah? Good? Now what kind of fruit? Uh should I expect? Well? You know they're exiting like a Towe pineapple. Okay, I just

had an apple, regular apple. It's actually about one apple in it. Is there an actual basket or are you just mailing me a single apple with a stamp on it. It's it's an apple wrapped in a napkin. Okay. And then once you get to five yeah, once you get to five episodes, it'll be an apple tied to a banana, okay, tied to okay? All right. I was curious how you were going to fasten it. That seems difficult, and I don't think that's going to survive the postage, but I

appreciate your effort. And ten episodes in, I'll thrown throwing a handful of grapes. So get excited, cannot I cannot wait for for the rotten fruit to show up in my mailbox. So excited for this? So did you know that animals screwam sometimes? So the when I think of animals screaming. We used to have a pet, pop belly pig, and when I would try to get his name was Spud. And whenever I would try to get Spud to cooperate with me, whenever I'd have to pick him up. That

little dude. It's the wildest, most blood curdling scream have ever heard. I don't know if your listeners are familiar with with the sound like a pig makesure just how loud they can get um, but it's it's incredible and the first time it happened, it startled me so so much like it, uh, it completely catches you off guard. I feel like pig screams to our uncannily humanoid in a way that's really it's you can distinguish it from a human scream, but there's a definitely a humanoid aspect

to it that's very unsettling. I agree, I agree. Similar to those goats. The compilations, yeah that scream. Uh. Some of my favorite videos are when people take like metal songs or or heavy heavy music and then they put the goat screams as the tracks. It's so good. There's one um that the let the Bodies hit the floor, Let the bodies hit the floor with animals sounds, uh, and they've got like a screaming cockatoo a goat in there, Couca Bura. It's really good. I love it. It's one

of my favorite videos. Fantastic I've heard. I think the one that comes to mind as I think there's a system of a down mash up with like the song Chop Suey and yeah, the screaming goats. That's really good. Yeah. No, that's that's incredible. I love that. Uh So, yeah, I mean, like, there are a lot of animals. We know that they can make loud sounds, sometimes they can scream. But I think something that is it's potentially surprising to people is that in sex can also scream. In fact, bees can

scream for help, which is cute and terrifying. Is it is? And I imagine these screams are inaudible to the human ear. That's not necessarily true. So remember the Asian murder hornets that we were freaking out about, I think kind of the beginning of the pandemic. So we got a little bit sidetrack there, but absolutely the the man, what a pleasant thought like that that the murder hornets were back

before the world completely had gone Yeah. That that that's a that's a that's almost like a nice thing to reminisce on. Now, Yeah, we're like, oh, we gotta worry about these giant bees and then oops, no, that wasn't it. Uh But yeah, so so there was some uh some worry and still some worry about them because they were found in North America, and our North American bees are woefully unprepared for the presence of these giant hornets because they're very adept at murdering and ripping a bee colony

to shreds, to literal shreds. They dismember the bodies of these poor little honey bees. And but of course these are invasive species, and when you go to their native territory in Asian countries, Asian honey bees have actually evolved a number of coping strategies for dealing with these giant murder hornets. So one of these strategies is a honey

curdling scream. So obviously you may have an image of like B movie Jerry Seinfeld screaming into the camera with his weird little c g I be teeth, which I hate so much. What's with all these murder lords? You worry my whole my whole family. What's the dow that you're digesting my body parts? Okay, you do a much better Jerry sign felt impression than I do, and bye bye better. I mean it's terrible. Yeah, it's bad. Good,

it's bad. Don't worry. It's gonna be bad. What makes it so good, That's what makes it good, So don't worry. Though bees do not scream with their mouths, They actually scream with their butts. What's somehow I knew it was going to be the butt, and it still surprised me when you say, yeah, it's always the butt, isn't it. It is it with insects. Yes, everything happens with the butt, everything, everything,

all the time. You know that sign in that Japanese amusement park that went viral like a couple of years ago where it was like, please scream inside your heart because it was at the beginning of the pandemic and it was like they didn't want people to scream and release a bunch of saliva everywhere, so it was please scream inside of your heart to write while writing this

roller coaster. I I missed that somehow, But that's such a beautiful and poetic like I feel like a lot of people are screaming inside of their heart at all times these days. Yeah, absolutely, evergreen sign. Yes for the bees, it's actually please scream with your butt. So they point their posteriors in the air and beat their wings against their abdomen and while running, so it's like if you were terrified, you like pointed your butt in the air

and started slapping your thighs and then screaming as you ran. Damn. Okay, so I was picturing an ace venture, a moment um where the bee is bent over like spreading the butt uh and and talking out of its butts. Not not an ace venture, no, no more. More like you're running with your butt in the air while you're slapping it, and your slaps are so loud they sound like a scream. So yeah, So this causes a high pitched shrieking sound.

You know. It's similar to how strigulation and other insects like crickets will strigulate by rubbing things against their abdomen. For the bees, it's the beating of the wings against their abdomen that creates this percussive sound that is that such a high frequency it sounds like a scream and uh. It alerts other Asian honey bees to the presence of

a giant hornet. It's also used to warn its comrades of other types of hornets, like the Vespa sorora hornet, which is another large hornet who is very similar to the giant hornet, also hunts and packs and attacks bee hives. So they've got a few hornet species to worry about. These poor honey bees. But the most unsettling thing about this scream is how eerily humanlike it sounds. So researcher Dr Heather Matela said to The New York Times quote, I would get chills and start to worry about them.

Even though the recordings are from years ago and the bees are long dead. There's something very human and recognizable in the sounds. So that's yeah. Unfortunately, looked. I tried to find audio of the be screams. I couldn't find it. I'll keep looking and if I find it, I will definitely share with you guys. But it is Yeah. I wonder if h did you did you happen to to learn whether the screams were distinct depending on the type of hornet attacking the colony. That's a really good question.

I don't know if there are individual screams for the species of hornet, but there's definitely an alarm call. I think that means hornet intruder um. But that's a I mean, that's a really good question. I wouldn't be too shocked if they had different kinds of sounds for different types of threats, but as far as I know, there's sort of one general Hey, there's a hornet. It's going to

decapitate us. This is bad sort of but drumming and do these honey bees um I've seen video before where bees will swarm a hornet um and and overheat the hornet basically like using their wings to to increase the their body temperature to the point where he can't survive. That is absolutely correct. This is the other tactic that these Asian honey bees will use. It's a remarkable behavior because they will cover the hornet and just like they just like you said, they will actually boil it alive.

And they do that by vibe rating their abdomens, which generates this friction in a high enough temperature to cook the hornet in the middle of their tactical mosh pit. And they also by forming that ball, I think they increase CEO two levels, which also basically, if the boiling doesn't kill them, they suffocate it. And it's it is incredible. They actually have one more fun anti hornet tactic, and that is collecting animal dung and spreading it onto the

entrance of their hive to ward off hornets. And it's kind of gross, but it's remarkable because bees are very fastidious they're very clean. They even poop outside of their own hives because they want to keep things as clean and tidy as possible. They want to protect their delicate larva from pathogens. So the fact that they were bringing poop to their hive was really confusing to researchers. It's

seemed very counterintuitive. But by placing the animal dung at the entrance, it actually wards off these hornets with a foul smell, and it's called fecal spotting. And they'll just take basically little bits of dung from all sorts of different animals and like put it sort of like a just kind of like paint with it, very artistically, like Bob Ross, Like now we want to we want to put the I want to put the bare diarrhea right here.

That's some nice bare diarrhea that'll really ward off those wasps. And oh and here's some here's some bobcat dung. We're gonna put the bobcat dung, and it's gonna make this really nice kind of fresco, happy happy little logs, happy happy little happy little turds. Okay, So I'm just I'm just saying I've never thought about this as like a security tactic. But if I went and collected the dog poop in my backyard and smeared it all over the front door of my house, I would not have to

worry about anybody showing up on my front porch. That would absolutely that would not not no one's visiting me. I'm not getting any packages also, so that would you know, that'd be unfortunate. But also home intruders. Nobody is going to break into my house if they start to come in or try to pry in the front door. You don't need security systems. You don't need these ring doorbells or or you know, weapons for to protect your home. Just smear poop all over your front door and the

entrance way, by the way, brilliant. This podcast is sponsored by poop Safe, a cheap, alternative and eco friendly solution to protecting your home. It's absolutely recycled. That poop get out there. Uh, you know, collected from your neighbors. Will love you if you're collecting their dog poop for your protection. Um, it's a win for everybody, will they? I sure love my neighbor who smears my dog's poop on their door.

I I mean, if you know what like once it leaves my yard, I don't care what happens to it necessarily um. And also I don't have to visit them, you know, I don't have to to you know, uh, you know, be neighborly or anything. I still think it's I think it's a net positive or a net positive overall. Should I say yes? A good way to clear out guests to just start like, you know, laying down poop on the floor, and it's like, oh, this is what I do it, uh midnight, so you might wanna mose on.

This may seem drastic right for the bees to smear poop all over their beautiful hive entrance, but if you had to face these hornets down, these hornets that are more than three times your size, you would probably scream with your butt and smear animal long around too. So

just a quick quick overview of these hornets. The giant hornets or otherwise known as the Asian murder hornets, as well as the vesper sura hornets are very formidable foes and they can decimate a honey bee colony, just decapitate a bunch of bees in you know, their rapid berserkers of bees. They will often attack in packs and chop up their victims into bite sized pieces that they carry back to their hornet hive where they feed the body parts to their larva like they're feeding it into a

wood chipper. So the adult such a brutal discretion. This is horrifying. I feel like like that scientists, uh said, she feels horrible. She like can can feel the connection listening to those recordings, I'm uh empathizing with these bees right now. Yeah, just based on the horror that they

go through. Yeah. The reason they have this like using the baby as the wood chipper technique is that adult hornets cannot eat solid food, you know those that those our glass figures that they have to keep with that very thin waste. Food cannot pass through that that is any any thicker than a liquid. So the adults chew up the body parts and then spit this paste into the larva's mouths, and then the larva digest it and create this kind of like protein syrup, a protein shake, uh,

and then regurgitate that for the adults to eat. So you know what a cute family. Yes, seriously, I want a sequel to be movie, but I want it. I want it done like a a like in a dramatic like a drama, just like a horror like drama style completely serious is um where we actually get to see the horrors of what it's like to be a bee and and and end your family off from these wasps. I want a remake of Game of Thrones, but it's bees.

And if you've listened to this podcast before, you know that bees and wasps really do lend themselves to Game of Thrones style dramatization. I mean, these hornets not only attack honey bees, but they even attack other hornets species. They even attack their own species, like if there's another hive of their own species, sometimes they'll go in and do red wedding style kill everyone, but then also eat them. So yeah, they're they're hunting for their dinner. I guess, hey,

you know sustainable. Yeah, so we did just talk about bees screaming with their butts and horror before getting murdered in terrible fashion. So I thought i'd light in the mood with some singing lemurs sing like okay, so we're talking like Madagascar saw Yeah exactly. Prince Julian, is that that character when he think I like to move it, move it. That whole thing. Yeah, the early two thousands called they want there, sort of dated c g I

movie back timely reference. I love it though, because you're absolutely right that lemurs are from Madagascar. So that movie where you see you know, you have these mini species of lemurs altogether. They may not do a whole dance number and singing number together, but indeed Madagascar is where you will find all of the world species of lemurs.

And there are many cool, awesome species of uh. And one of them possibly one of the lesser known ones, but a incredible species that should be more famous is the injury or bob a codo. So the Injury is one of the largest lemurs in the world, like all lemurs, lives exclusively in Madagascar, and they are critically endangered, which

is a shame because they are absolutely amazing. So these Injury way up to about twenty pounds or nine point five ms and grow up to about twenty eight inches or seventy two centimeters long, so you know, bigger than a cat, maybe a medium sized dog. Uh. They are adorable. They look like teddy bears. They have black and white fur and yellow eyes. Their faces have this black fluffy fur with these tufted black ears that look like an extra fluffy teddy bear, and they have these short, stubby tails,

which is very rare. In fact, they're the only lemurs that have lost their tails to this extent. So they look, Oh, that's unfortunate, that's cute, bum Yeah, I guess so. But if I was, if I'm a lemur, I want to tail the swing from like that's one of the coolest things about you know, living in a tree. But they don't, as all discussed it, or they don't really need it. They do live in trees, but they don't need their tail,

and there's an interesting explanation for that. Actually, they are so big that one of the main purposes of these tails for lemurs actually isn't to hang from trees. Uh. It is for stabilization. And this is true of a lot of primate species. It helps them stabilize. It's true they can uh. Primates that have preinstiled tables sorry preinsiled tails can wrap them around branches to hold onto things or even use them to like grip things like leaves.

They typically use it to balance their their leaps and their jumps and movement. And that's the same thing for lemurs. So lemurs like to leap from branch to branch, and they will use these tails as sort of almost like mid air rudders to help balance them as they glide. But the thing is, the bigger you get, the less a tail is going to do actually in terms of balance. And because the injury is so big, the one of the biggest lemurs it is um these tails sort of

become less useful. And there was some research done looking at how like tail mass basically no longer if they had a tail, it just wouldn't really help them stabilize their leaping. So instead they have this cute little stubby tail that I think, how do you spell that again? Injury injury I in d r I or baba koto. There we go. Okay, oh my god, he is so cute. Okay,

I was looking at the wrong kind. Uh wow, you were not kidding about the Teddy Bear thing, Like the big he's almost got like a Mickey Mouse shaped outline of a face and ears. That's absurd. Lemurs are so absolutely adorable, like a cartoon Teddy Bear, extra fluffy cartoon Teddy Bear. Do these things blink? It doesn't look like they can blink. I'm sure they can, but like it's

the most high on meth amphetamines. Looking the animal in the Animal Kingdom, it does look like they would win a staring contest with you easily, or like you would get one of these as a teddy bear and you'd sit it at the foot of your bed and wake up in the middle of the night and it'd be staring at you. It looks like an animatronic, Like that's you know, the unblinking eyes of like a you know, showbiz pizza or chucky cheese or something gives off that vibe when I look at one. Yeah, I I see that.

I think it's a creepy cute thing. Though it's like it's I think it's because of the the yellow eyes and little pupils. They look very alert. So despite maybe looking like a creepy animatronic sometimes or a cute animatronic, whatever your your opinion, uh, they are. Their behavior is very cute. So they have little family units. They are monogamous and they stay in family groups, and they are very playful and like to wrestle for fun, especially females.

Another win for feminism. So they are extremely difficult to keep in captivity. They actually typically only last like a year in captivity, despite the fact that they can live up to eighteen years in the wild. And this is likely due to their extremely specialized diet that is very difficult to replicate. So they only seem to eat certain foods at certain times of days, and it's a variety

of foods, so leaves, seeds, flowers, fruit, and bark. But they have this specialized diet where they eat a certain thing at a certain time of day and it helps them digest it better, which you just cannot replicate in captivity. Sure, too stressed out the follow their regimen probably, Yeah, you know, being handled by people, are being in an enclosed environment, and that's what I mean. That's I'm I'm glad that they have realized that are these so they these aren't

really kept. You can't see these anywhere but in the wild, basically, yeah, exactly. So, yeah, and they are one of the They are actually the only lemur that communicates through singing, and they are very musically talented, so their calls sort of sound like airhorn blasts. Not only are these calls loud, but they also follow

musical patterns. So there was a study done at the University of Turin, Italy that found that their calls were used for a number of types of communication, to locate family, to establish territory, and to do sing offs with neighbors. And it can be either to establish a connection between neighbors, to communicate about mating or environmental conditions, territory boundaries, or warnings of predators. And it is actually interesting in that

they seem to follow a musical pattern. So I'm gonna have you listened to a sample of some of these injuries singing. So this is actually a female singing with her mate and her son, so a little family, the von Trapp family singing group. So was that was that was one uh, like continuous song there or or samples from from many Yeah, that's one continuous song. Cool, okay, okay,

you were not kidding about the the airhorn. Oh yeah, it sounds like Jamaican airhorns, like yeah, some reggaetone or something. Oh my god. That's and it also has like kind of a like a hompback whale quality to some of the Yeah, yeah I can hear that. Yeah. And so yeah, I mean it's it's adorable because it's family singing together. Mother, father, and son, and they often sing in duets and I don't know if you noticed, but they were harmonizing there.

They would have one singing one tone to the other in a slightly different tone, and singing together in these duets. And they have very flexible mounds and lips that can change the tone of these notes, so they, you know, do this like little what uh, and so they can angle the tone. I'm not a musician, so I can't. Yeah, it's it's kind of like the the Doppler effect, like you can stretch and and and contract the size of the wave the vibration coming out of your mouth right exactly.

And so researchers have studied these calls and found that they like to do them in a specific rhythm, a one to two ratio of beat patterns, which is actually the same type of beat pattern as found in Queens. We Will Rock You, so that don't done, done done, which is kind of interestingly musical. They also drag out the final notes of their calls, which is similar to in music when you have the retardando at the very end, where you kind of like slow down a piece of

music dramatically. It seems like they do that and have this kind of flourish at the end, which is unusual for animals who use song to communicate. Typically, an animal either sticks to a pattern or they don't. They don't often like add little flourishes at the end of their song, which is is very interesting, especially because I was just gonna say, have they decoded why they do that? I don't think so. No, It's it's not necessarily known why they have that slow down at the end of songs.

They know that they use these songs for a variety of community cation from anywhere to saying like hey, I'm an available mate, to hey this is our territory, or even like you know, communication like I'm over here. So there could be a purpose to that. I'm not sure that it's known yet. I'm just going to pretend that it's it's just just artist's choice, like they're making they're making a decision there. Uh and and that's that's their signature,

um uh style. You know the way I I write a song and I have a certain style to it. That's just there. That's their artistic interpretation, their their expression coming out. I mean, we got our appreciation from music from somewhere in our evolutionary history. Now, while we we did not evolve from lemurs, they are a primate. They are a cousin of ours, a distant cousin, a very distant one. But at some point, uh, you know, primates had an appreciation for you know, rhythm and sound that

became our human appreciation for music. So I do find that really interesting that we see another primate species, no matter how distantly related they are from us. They did branch off at a very early point in our revolution, but they have this appreciation for some kind of I mean to me, it is at the very least a predecessor to music, if not if you couldn't classify it as music. Yeah, I mean, I'm a big fan of just musical air horn blasts. It's very festive. I kind

of imagine them watching some some European football together. Uh oh man, yeah, just uh breaking that out, like I'm I imagine, uh they they make that sound like they've eatn eaten some fermented leaves or something there. They've gotten a little tipsy around the holiday party and then the air Yeah yeah, no, I love it. Yeah, but like I mentioned earlier, they are critically endangered, and conservation of

the species is really really important. They can't be kept in captivity, so if their natural habitat goes, there is no way of preserving them or bringing their population back. And their habitat is threatened by deforestation and illegal mining of sapphires, which is a big problem in Madagascar. But before you get like mad at, like these individual miners are something that humans in Madagascar are suffering as well.

They're being exploited. So these miners are often driven to do these extremely low paying, high intensity labor mining because you know, they're they're not getting enough food, they're not getting enough money, they can't feed their families, and even the local mind bosses aren't really paid that much compared to the money being aid off of this illegal sapphire mining. Most of the money goes to the gym dealers and

the retailers. So I think I'm bringing this up because I think it's often important to point out how exploitation of animals often goes hand in hand with exploitation of humans. So you know, you see that this beautiful species is being threatened by something like illegal mining, and I think sometimes people may react in this way of like, oh, you know, being angry at these miners like, don't they understand they're ignorant, and it's like, well no, they're also

being exploited by this system. So it's really a systemic problem. It's not these poor people in Madagascar just trying to make a living who are the problem. It's this this system that is causing this problem. So you know, it's important to have as much, if not more compassion for people as it is for when we're upset about animal being threatened. Direct direct the anger towards the people that are are causing the most of it. It's like I recycle, I you know, I try not to use one use

plastics and stuff. But then you know, it's it's the thing you see all the time, like look at the top one most polluting corporations in the world, and it's like, there's not there's no amount of getting on the same page as a human population that can that can prevent the amount of CEO two release as these corporations do. Exactly, So direct your ire at the appropriate people responsible, exactly.

Follow the money. Follow it, always follow the money. So we talked about poo safe earlier, right, the very environmentally friendly uh personal sort of homes security system that rivals these other these other silly home security systems. It who safe keeps protect your home with the presence of foul smelling dung that you spread on your door. But I actually do have another home security system called ox pecker Alert.

It is an incredible, incredible technology of the red billed ox peckers who can alert you to the presence of poachers many many meters away. Ox Pecker is a very misleading name for something. I will say that much. I was I was not sure if this is going to be a bird or I did not know what kind of Okay, alright, all right, well it is a bird. Before you finish that thought, the red billed ox picker is a bird. It's a actually quite a pretty bird. Excellent.

How would you describe this bird? Oh yeah, that's a that's a gorgeous bird. Yeah, yeah, it's like a It's like a small tan and black bird with a yellow and red bill in these red eyes. Quite quite beautiful. And they like to hang out with some big friends zebras, hippo's, drafts, cattle and other large mammals of the savannah in Africa. So they even sit atop the fearsome rhino and nibble

at ticks, bought fly larvae and other pests. Love a love a good relationship there, Yeah, and it's a complicated relationship. It's really interesting because, uh, they do help their large companions by eating parasites, but they do occasionally peck little wounds into their host skin and sip on their host's blood,

which actually would make the birds themselves parasites. But there's kind of debate, right like, because you know, even though that itself is parasitic, they are also helping their hosts by getting rid of parasites. So it's like, well, do they do more harm than good or do they help more? And some of the a point in favor of the ox pecker not being a parasite but being in a mutualistic, symbiotic relationship is the fact that they seem to protect

black rhinos from poachers. So black rhinos are big, tough, endangered animals with great smell and hearing, but very bad eyesight, and they are unfortunately often the victims of human poaching, and they are critically endangered. So rhino researcher Dr. Rohn Plots noticed that rhinos that were close enough for them to observe had no ox peckers on their backs. They always seem to not have their little bird friends, and that made him wonder, that's that's an interesting coincidence. Maybe

it's not a coincidence. So they did some observational studies that found that the ox peckers helped alert the rhinos of a humans presence. So when the ox peckers spot a human, they issue an alarm call, which is a hissing shriek, and the rhinos listen to this alarm call and we'll move away from uh the area. So these studies found that rhinos with ox peckers are better at moving away from humans than rhinos without ox peckers. And what's really interesting is the more ox peckers they have,

the better they are at being alerted. So one ox pecker is okay, but you got a whole the whole group of five ox checkers all shrieking at You're like, ah, jeez, what's going on? Yeah, Like one uh one alarm on your front door is nice. But if you have all the windows uh hooked up and then your back door hooked up to, you're gonna you're gonna be even more safe exactly. Not, I mean, the more alarms, the better car alarms, air horns, everything bells. It's the home alone

version of home security. Yeah yeah, seriously. I I love examples of species talking to each other. Um, I I absolutely loved. I heard a story of a long time ago. I think it was on like an episode of Radio Lab or something where this this researcher tells the story of um basically UH learning the distinct calls of monkeys and like eagles, and I believe like South America where uh they made distinct calls whenever a leopard was spotted.

And he is walking through the jungle and it's starting to get you know, dusk out, and suddenly overhead he hears the distinct call. And as he's walking through the jungle, he you know, from from area to area they're making the call. He was basically being stalked by a leopard through he only he only knew about it because these other animals were making their call specific to the leopard.

They made a specific call just for the leopard. When there was when the monkeys were threatened by birds of prey like an eagle or something, then they would make a different different exactly. So that's how he knew that there was a leopard following him, because it matters whether

where the thread is coming from. If it's a bad from the sky, if it's a leopard, it's coming from the ground, and knowing where and and the nature of that threat is very important both for animals and human eavesdroppers. That's an incredible story. I love that. I mean, and that's it. It's so interesting about that story is the way that human use that those other animal alarm calls is exactly the way the rhino is using the bird's alarm call. Because there's no evidence that the birds are

intentionally warning the rhino of this threat. It's not like the birds are like, hey, rhino, get out of the way. They're warning each other. This is what they've evolved to have this alert system with each other to warn themselves of a threat. But the rhino has learned that this call means humans and will use that knowledge to move away, so exactly in the same way that that human researchers like, I've learned this call means a leopard, I'm in danger, um and uh. And so it's the same thing with

the rhino, but even more terrifying than a leopard. The human and and also like that there's a bit of self preservation there, I imagine from the bird in that. Uh, if my little floating raft of food, my buffet, my my tank of a buffet on the savannah gets killed by these poachers, then I'm out of a food source. It can't hurt. Yeah, it couldn't hurt for them to warn the rhino. It's again, it's it's hard to know whether that's just a happy coincidence or if there's any like,

any sort of intention that. I mean, I think it's to say there's probably not much of an intention for the bird to warn the rhino. I don't know if they could logic that out, but I mean, maybe a smarter bird. Uh. There are some birds that I would not necessarily be surprised that they In fact, they may

sometimes use alarm calls. There. No, there are actually birds that use alarm calls to scare other animals away from some kind of food source so that they can get to it, so they can There are definitely bird species.

I take it back, there are bird species that know what they're doing, and they can use their alarm calls to manipulate other There's so it's possible that these birds are somehow they do know that if they alert that the rhino will move away, which is much better for them than having to like, you know, fly away and find another another rhino to sit on. Um, but there's no there's no evidence of that yet, so either way,

this is a lovely little system. The rhino gets warned, the ox pecker gets to keep its perch, and humans get to be thwarted by a dynamic duo. Beautiful. I love it. So before we go, we've got to play a game of mstery animal sounds a k and guess who's squawking. Every week on the show, we play a mystery animal sound and you try to guess who is squawking. First. The hint from last week is this bald beauty is found in the forests north of the Amazon On River.

It's named for its friar like appearance. But don't confuse them with another monk like animal, because this mystery squawker is not monkeying around. So very interesting call. What do you think there's so based on the clues, I don't know. Um, you said not monkeying around, which makes me want to guess it's a monkey of some sort. Um is it

a howler. Nope, nope. I'm just gonna make you go through every animal in the animal kingdom until you get it in the Amazon, in the Amazon Rainforest, every every animal ten percent of the world's biodiversity, and um, let's see. Uh. I know you're joking, but I uh, I don't even know what's a guess. I have no idea. I'm overwhelmed with like I feel like I'm at a Blockbuster in trying to pick a movie right now. That's how it is,

trying to identify animals in the Amazon. I think the blockbusters of the world's ecosystems also endangered, so you know, also under threat like the like the noble Blockbuster. But we must do more to save the Amazon rainforest than we did to save the Blockbuster, much more, much more, much more important. Well, this squawker is actually the capuchin bird, So congratulations Robert S. And congratulations to Emily M. Wow.

I did have some listeners. Guess the capuchin monkey. That was my trap that I laid for you, because the capuchin monkey not monkeying around them, I know, But but was that a trick though? So it was it, But I had no idea there were multiple capuchin animals. Yes, yeah, so, um, you know, honorable mention for people who guess capuchin um. The capuchin monkey is also found in South America and is also named so because the monkey's black fur on top of their heads and backs looks like a friar's rope.

So very similar animal, very similarly named. But no, it's the capuchin bird. So these beautiful birds have blue, bald heads and big fluffy, rusty orange brown feather coats. The fluffiness of their feathers combined with the bald tops of their heads, I think is it's both kind of funny but also beautiful. And it definitely looks like they're wearing a big fluffy coat with a hood, which I guess to people look like a capuchin monk. I'm not sure

about that. To me, they look more of a Cruella de Ville, kind of like I'm wearing a fur coat pepe of deal, but absolutely gorgeous. Did you get a chance to look at one of these guys? Oh, I will look it up now. I'm I'm I enjoy your descriptions and so I'm just imagining them in my head and I forget that I can literally this is a median bird. I'm I'm just I'm just enjoying the discription. Oh wow, that is whoa that is okay, I love all animals. That is a creepy looking bird. I think

I distinct looking. Okay, all right, distinguished. That's that's how we'll go, just because you're right. It is like when I think of like a somebody describing like a bald bird, my mind just immediately goes like the bald eagle, which obviously isn't actually bald. Uh No, that that is like it does look like it's just wearing. It looks like you wearing the neck brace pillow thing. Now, that's okay.

I think this is important for everyone to know. I have a little bit of a sworneck, so I was wearing instead of being normal and getting an actual neck brace, I just used an airline pillow because I thought like, hey, I got I got this laying around and it it helps a little bit. Does the trick? Does the trick? That's exactly what it looks like, it's wearing, wearing a fluffy airline pillow but all over the rest of or

or comically oversized sweater. Yeah. Yeah, that's man, that is a very cool looking bird look like a little bald little man wearing a huge, fluffy mohair sweater. Okay, I've I've come around. I've come around on it. I like it now. I am no longer creeped out despite having those bald, sort of vulture like heads. They actually don't eat carrion. They eat insects and fruit. Some people have said this this song sounds like a cow mowing. I don't. I disagree. I think it sounds like maybe a possessed

cow mowing um, something possessed by Satan. But the capuchin bird sings in lex which are display areas that males gather to sing and impress females with their beautiful, chunky mo hair coats. So onto this week's mystery animal sound. Here is the hint. This happy little corn eating animal may sound cute, but it's a little stuck up that is so weird sounding. So okay, I have a guest for that. I know I'm not supposed to know. Can I guess? Is it a fox? No? One more free hint?

It's not a fox? Okay, all right, I've seen videos where like foxes are like playing with people on camera and like in a very playful way, and they make the wildest human sounding like baby noises. Yeah, it's a very good guess. You're right. Foxes make very interesting sounds, and they can make like almost sounding like a human crying or something. It's kind of creepy. Yeah, exactly. But this is not a fox. It is something else. And the answer to this will be revealed and next week's

Creature Feature. If you think you know the answer, you can email me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com. I'm also on Twitter Creature Feet pod. That's e E T. That's something very different, and on Instagram at Creature Feature Pod. So will a k A Christie. I'm a gucca me. Thank you so much for joining me. Tell tell the people where they can't find you. Oh, thank you so much for having me again. It was a delight as usual.

You can find me on Twitter at Wapple House w A P P L E h O U s E UM and that's pretty much where I I live most of the time. Uh not in real life. UM, you can find me on there. I don't even know what my Instagram handle is, to be honest with you, it's uh, it's long. There's underscores involved, so whenever I am stupidly make a handle with underscores, I always forget where they're at,

so uh yeah, just find me on there. Um you can listen to George Center pod or or George Center um but at George Center pod on Twitter, um and hour after hours. If you're a fan of the Damn Lebatar Heart Show, um and uh enough of a fan that you would make a podcast about being a fan of the Damn Labator show, you can find me there and thank you so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show, please leave writing and review. I read all

the reviews. I love them so much. I really appreciate them, all, cherished them, print them out, put them underneath my pillow, and kiss them before I go to bed at night. Man, thank you so much to the Space Classics where they're super awesome song ex Alumina creat Your feature is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcast, or Hey Guess what? Where have you listen to your favorite shows? See you next Wednesday.