Sibling Rivalries

own sibling dynamic. From baby sharks to millipedes, congo lines, and parasite thunderdomes. We're gonna finally answer the angel question. Mom, he's on my side. Can you tell him to stop? Joining today is brother of the podcast and myself, my brother, Aaron Golden. Hey, how's it going. I am doing well. How are you good? Good? Good? It's been a while since we talked. I think we talked like two hours ago. It was a wild guy. It's it's been rough. It's

been rough two hours, but been rough. Yeah. How would you describe our dynamic in front of a nationwide audience? Oh? Yeah, not on the spot at all. I mean, you know, it's a I feel very lucky to have a sister like you, not to not to get to cornball, but cornball is my default. Did I tell you we're live in front of like five billion people right now, Yeah, like of the world's population. Yeah. I think we are very lucky. We didn't really fight that much growing up.

All of our fights were pretty minor, you know, tickle fights, me attacking you with a badminton bat, so, you know, not really anything too serious. I do think it's interesting because both for humans and in the natural world, you know, sibling relationships, they can be very different. They can range from being really kind and nice and getting along together too,

you know, straight up sibilicide, right. Yeah. I mean, I don't want you to take this the wrong way, but I do have a whole section on siblicide uh animals that I can I can handle it. I think control my imagination here, and that's good. I'm we surprise set up. I am the younger sister, you are the older brother. We are separated by two years of blessed silence that you had before I entered the scene and started making

her cousin a ruckus. Apparently you were the loud baby like I I was, in fact quiet, yes, quiet and calm. I understood that in order to assert myself, I had to cry a lot, in order to remind everyone that I exist. I too need resources. That's set up my whole career, right, Like, this is me on the podcast, is just me demanding people recognize I exist. Like, hey, you can hear my voice, right, give me resources and

tell tell me you love me. Sure? Yeah, I mean nothing ever really changes, right, yeah, yeah, it really doesn't. Um And yeah, I'm I'm really excited to have you on the podcast to talk about animal siblings. I feel like this will this will lead to some fun story, like we'll be talking about sharks, and then we'll talk about like, hey, remember that time, you know that time that those other two siblings we had aid each other and oh yeah that's right, I don't remember, isn't young?

But yeah, that's when Yeah there was a feeding frenzy. Well, speaking of siblings destroying each other, killing each other, devouring each other while inside the womb, all you know, great topics. We're going to talk about intra uterine cannibalism. That's cannibalism coming to a womb near you. So that is when babies inside the womb eat each other. Now, there is a myth that human babies do this sometimes that you will eat your siblings this or like a twin, like

oh I ate my twin. Um. That doesn't actually happen in humans. Usually what happens is like if you have twins and one of the embryos dies, it just gets reabsorbed into the uterus. It's not like one twin doesn't eat the other. It doesn't seem like embryos or you know, early development humans have a mouth or digestic capable of that. Right, I'm not exactly sure how the mechanics of that would play out, Right, how do you even believe that myth?

Like when you think about it, I mean, I guess I can imagine just a little fetus with those little teeny tiny hands grabbing on and then just sort of you know, slowly corn cob. But that is that doesn't really happen. But it does. It does happen with other animals, including the baby sand tiger sharks. So sand tiger sharks as adults are quite big. They can grow to be over ten feet long, which is three meters. They have sharp teeth, pointy snouts. They range from grayish brown to

gray in coloration, and they're very fierce looking. Despite being so frightening looking, they're actually pretty non aggressive, especially towards humans. There have been no cases of human fatalities with these sharks, so yeah, pretty pretty shy, not murdery sharks, not to say that they aren't cold blooded murderers when it comes

to their own flesh and blood. So, these are sharks that give live birth, and inside of the female sharks uterus there is something of a baby shark thunder dome, so she will have multiple embryos, but typically only gives birth to one or two out of like a dozen embryos. And that is because the victors eat all of their siblings. And I've shared with you a photo of one of these embryos, and you were mentioning earlier like, oh, well, baby humans, like they don't really have much of a mouth.

They don't have like teeth, Like, how would they eat each other? Well, looking at these this photo is that is a very very mouthy uh just right there. Yes, it has teeth and quite a large mouth, all all for eating its brothers and sisters all up and so that way it can get big and strong, and it's just like it is so bizarre, you know, if you imagine, like you get an ultrasound and you have like twelve embryos in there, and then a week later there's tin

and then a week later there's five. But two of them are getting bigger and stronger looking all the time. It's like, oh, I wonder, oh, now there are only three, and now they're only two. My question then about this is are the eggs all fertilized at the same time, Like, is there a first mover advantage right and in in the womb as I imagine, you know, if they're all growing at the same at exactly the same time, then it is truly like a survival of the of the

murderous I suppose, but I don't actually know. That's a very good question, and it's actually very interesting because the female santiger shark will mate with multiple males, so siblings may not even have the same father. And that's a big explanation for why there's so much siblicide, because they're they're only half related and they are competing with each other. Basically, it is a way for sharks to have sort of

a selective pressure before the shark is even born. So the female shark actually doesn't have even though she has like can have twelve embryos developing in her uterous, she doesn't actually have that much yoke and nutrition to feed that many embryos. So it's necessary for them to eat each other. So it's like, yeah, there, it's truly brutal

because yes, they have to do it. And what this does is it not only means that she doesn't have to give a bunch of resources to like twelve embryos, some of whom may come out and not be fit and be killed off by another animal that has none of her genes, So like, why why give that nutrition to some strange animal that has nothing to do with

your genetic lineage? Uh? It is it creates like basically, okay, already at this point, the point before you're even born, we are having evolutionary pressure for only the fittest to emerge from the womb. And it's just brutally efficient, yes, And that way the female shark can mate with multiple male sharks. And basically it's similar to sperm competition at the level of you know, the strongest sperm will fertilize

the egg. In this case, it's just a step up where it's the strongest embryos will emerge, and that's gonna be more effective because it actually has at least some correlation to the baby sharks ability to survive. I mean, yes, yes, it's some cold logic, cold nature logic right there. Right. Can you imagine that if our parents had just been given us like a pair of swords and sent us into like this little colicy, like all right, fight it

out every once, gets dinner again. But then again, it's just imagining human babies, these little clumsy, little fat, little balls of physical ineptitude. Is yeah, is comical. I don't want to you give them a little helm and sword shield you kind of falling over. I don't want to keep bringing this up because it's been almost like like almost thirty years. But you did drop a can of soup on my head. It's true. I did drop a can of soup on your head. I admit it. I

think I was four. You were too. I think that. Okay, that makes sense. You were juggling some cans of soup as as you do, because you're like, you know, I were cartoonishly Dickensie and children juggling cans of Yeah. You know, we we didn't have anything fancy like balls, so it was the hands of beans that we had. We had to play with cans of beans. Yeah, I remember all Canabeans soccer called Garbonza Garba the doll Cannabians. Yeah, we

had a very Cannabians based we didn't. I feel like I have to say I thought, okay, alright, that we had a wonderful childhood other than other than you dropping soup on my head accidentally, quote allegedly, quote unquote acidentally. It was indeed an accident. I did not mean to drop the can on your head. In fact, in fact, as dumb as I was as a four year old,

I was just juggling the can. And if and if I recall, which I probably don't because I was four, you crawled up underneath me that I was juggling, So you know I wasn't. This wasn't a case of reckless endangerment here. I was minded my own can juggling business. Yeah I was. I was stunting a little bit. I was trying to do a little bit of a stunt, you know, like like while you're juggling, I'll do the worm underneath some cool flips and stunts, and then you

did drop. You did drop. This would have been a great hit me. It would have been great that soup did hit me. Um our mom did freak out and we rushed to the hospital. Yeah. I did get stitches. You were terrified because when they said that I had to get stitches, you thought it meant they had to stitch my eyes closed. Oh yeah, I had some I had some horrific like hell rasor level like imagery of you're going to come out of this, yeah, with like without a face, Yeah, just like horror show giant like

twine right, stitching your entire eyes. Yeah, I was just like and then you'd wake up in the middle of the night with me like at the foot of your bed going you did this as a kid. Well, fortunately we're not baby eagles, which is my seg away into the next section, because baby baby raptors, like bald eagles, will often try to kill each other by the age

old tactic of definestration. Oh yeah, So what's interesting is that with the baby sharks, it's basically like food competition, right, There's like not enough food to go around, they have to enter into the womb thunderdome twelve ter, only one or two come out. For baby eagles and other raptors. It's not necessarily in response to food shortage, but due

to population density and the favorability of competitive chicks. And this is called kane ism, cane enable, that'll, that'll fun folk tale, and it's so often what happens with bald eagle babies is there will be two eggs and two chicks, and mysteriously only one chick ends up making it to adulthood. And there was this was actually caught on camera once. There was a popular webcam that was like set up

to show like baby bald eagle chicks. It's like, oh, look, how cute there, because when you look they are adorable. They're like these little fluffy poofballs. I should have a picture of that for you to look at. They just look, I'm looking at these little mischievous little balls. One of them's most likely one of them is going to murder the other. So yeah, you can if you look deep into their eyes, I think you can kind of see, Yeah,

which one's gonna which one's the murder. The quote from this Live Science article about this bald eagle chick webcam is that quote although three chicks hatched, regular viewers noticed one day that a chick was missing and never returned. The article is titled quote eagle chicks allegedly kill siblings on webcamp, which I like, I'm glad that they're presuming in a sence in that case. That's just like journalistic

integrity right there. In raptors and and also in other animals, there's actually two types of kanism the killing of siblings. So there is obligate kanism, meaning that one sibling almost inevitably kills the other. And what's interesting about this is this is usually in larger, longer living species like bald eagles, uh, they will lay only two eggs uh And basically one of the eggs is just insurance against infertility in one

egg or the early death of one sibling. And the problem with how trying to raise two of these two adulthood, first of all, is competition as adults. You know, you can't really ensure that they will be able to be competitive as adults with um the amount of resources they need as these huge birds. So the better gamble is actually to only raise one offspring give it all of your resources and have that one grew up to be big and strong and the uh just like this absolute

unit of a baby eagle growing to adulthood. Because if you try to strain your resources and have to grow to adulthood, and they're also going to be competing for resources into adulthood, the chance that both will fail is more than they will both succeed, and is less than if you had just like invested everything into one chick. So they will both Basically, both chicks are going to

try to oust the other. And this is kind of interesting though, because it does show a little bit of how evolution can be somewhat absurd, right, which is why not just have one chick at a time? Well, again,

that's it's thought that having two chicks is insurance. Like if one of you spend all these resources mating and laying eggs, finding a partner, and then you lay your eggs, if the one egg you lay is not fertile and you have to invest again into mating and laying more eggs, you're basically ensuring first of all, that at least one of the eggs will hatch, and then if they both hatch, if one of them dies early on, then you have

a backup. So true, So it would be interesting, like what the statistics on the odds of dying before the chicks are guests? I guess like programmed to murder the other words? Right, So yeah, that's actually really interesting and I wonder I wonder too, like if if that strategy is generally successful among I would assume birds may be

higher up on the food chain. Well, so well. I guess the question though, is do the parents of the birds, like the mothers, murder their own babies to accomplish the same thing, or is it just the siblings that murder each other. It's in bald eagles, I think generally it

is the siblings that murder each other. There are certainly cases in animals where the parents will kill their offspring basically to give them so resources, uh, and to ensure that they're not spreading all their resources too thin, and so they are ensuring the best survival for both themselves

and the offspring that are stronger. And there's a lot of cases where it's just basically a free for all, like they give birth to a bunch of offspring and then and then murder right exactly because they have so many. Like this happens in frogs a lot. They just have so many. You can have a few as a snack.

It's okay for for bald eagles. It's interesting because I think the reason that the the parents don't generally facilitate the the fratricide the siblic side is that it also is a similar concept as with the with the sharks, where you are making sure that the by having the siblings fight it out, the stronger one will emerge victorious. Interesting or even if it isn't strang it dependent because a sneaky little nudge may not necessarily intelligence strength or

like to pass it on. So that's actually that's actually interesting because it could simply be that when it's the sibling that does it mm hmm, by its own nature, that sibling is that does the murder is more likely to then pass it on. Right, that's true. I mean that is sort of the the essence of of evolution, where genes don't have an overall plan, it's just either they get passed on. That's really interesting. I hadn't ever

really thought about that. That's there's also a facultative kanism, so that's when fighting occurs between siblings that sometimes results in murder, but not by necessity. So this happens in a lot of This happens in a lot of birds, even in raptor species. Generally these are shorter lived birds

with larger clutches, so more eggs laid. And then basically it's they can fight, sometimes they even kill each other, but they don't have to, and that it's it's interesting because like with the larger uh smaller populations of birds, it's kind of more of a risky investment thing because you're investing a lot of your resources into one offspring to really succeed, and so the fact that you're the best gambles for them to like, Okay, i gotta shove this sibling out so I'm the only one getting all

the resources and then I'm gonna live along and prosperous life hopefully, because I'm gigantic and basically, you know, I'm a living dinosaur. I'm here to rick ruin your lives. But with smaller birds, it's like, okay, we're diversifying our investment because we're smaller. We're you know, once like once you reach adult hood, you're not really necessarily an apex predator like a bald eagle is. So if you're an apex predator, if you're once you reach adulthood, you're basically

good as long as you can find food. Uh. And so again it's like by having this canism, you're eliminating competition. You're investing all of that into getting that chick to adulthood. And by having not, by only having one offspring, you're limiting the population. So there's not as much competition for resources because you're so huge, and you need lots of lots of things, lots of little tiny mammals to get in your mouth, and lizards and fish and all sorts

of things. There's this video of a bald eagle who caught a fish and it's just like trying to pull it out of the water, but it's slopping swim with this fish and it looks very embarrassed to have been caught, so undignified. Right now, so he's filming me at this moment, Mint of all moments. The other day I had the

greatest kill. No no photographers. Then right, well, one more story about sibili side and move on at this I'm not this is not I don't want you to feel like this is like a subliminal messaging or anything, or or indicative of any problem, Like, oh, you know, we're just just a podcast episode that feel, and we're gonna really take deep. Hello, brother, would you like to join me on my podcast about sibili side? I have only

the bestest of intentions, dear brother. Yeah, I feel like, yeah, you could ham it up and get get real dark. So what we do on the podcast get real dark? So um oh yeah, cannibal morph babies. That sounds like a cool, like a fun like TV show, you know, like teenage mutant ninja turtles, like salamander cannibal morph babies. Well, let's think of a salamander cannibal morph babies here to eat their bros. Yeah, there you go, I think. Yeah, So salamanders and newts and also acts ladles all have

a amphibious larval stage. And what's interesting, so quick thing, Acts ladles are just like salamander and newt young, except they just never grow out of it. They are always in that aquatic juvenile stage. They never reached their terrestrial stage. That's a whole interesting topic. I think we've covered before. But yeah, just a quick reminder, Acts ladles, permanent peter Pan versions of salamander and nut. Yeah, the Silicon Valley, uh animal just yeah, the the Zuckerberg's of the salamander

and newt world. This thing I'm going to talk about, the cannibal morph babies happens in baby newts, baby salamanders, and young axelttles as well, and they all have this. I mean, if you've seen an axe a lottle, you know what a young salamander or newt looks like in their aquatic stage. It's sort of similar to how frogs have tadpoles and those are their aquatic stage. Salamanders and newts have a aquatic larval stage where they have these like weird branching lungs that kind of look like that

come out of their gill slits. There these feathery gills and they swim around in the water and they are very cute. But a little less cute is the fact that there will be there's like a screaming kid out there. Can you guys hear that? It'll be flavor. It'll be like NPR esque flavor or it's like you know, sound effects of like and the children eat each other. Anyways, what was I saying. Oh, but the insidious thing about these little cute stitch like aquatic creatures is that they

have a cannibal morph, a cannibal babies. So cannibal morphs are a version of these babies that have in large teeth, wide heads and mouths, slender bodies, and they will eat their brethren and sister and sister and is not a word, but you know they eat They eat their siblings, They eat other babies, salamanders, other baby newts. I mean it would be like if human babies, Like you have your normal squishy, little human baby, but then a baby born

with just a giant mouth and sharp teeth eats other babies. Well, so do they develop into that though it's not like just some of them. Do they all go through the stage or do you know? Not? Only some of them do.

And it's due to environmental triggers. So when there is starvation or crowded environments, there seems to be some like environmental stress hormone that triggers this growth in certain salamanders, uh, certain of certain juvenile salamanders new snacks, lattels, um and but there's a more recent study that found that there being maybe more environmental factors at play, because some populations

ended up having all cannibals. It's a little bit mysterious, like what exactly what is happening in the water that turns all the babies into cannibals. Interesting. It's like there's some evil axilotles that are planning the purge andpending on

what they want. You know, it's like this year, this year, it's all it's gonna be oops, all cannibals, And when one cannibal more happens, more are likely to follow, which makes a lot of sense because like once one of you decides to be accountable, it's like, Okay, well I guess I better start eating other people too, otherwise I'm gonna be you know, if it's gonna be that way, they're gonna play it like that then yeah, it's just like we're all gonna be pac Man. Now, that'd be

crazy game. Everyone's pac Man. You know, it's gotta it's gotta be out there, it's gotta be there's gotta be a pac Man melee. Yeah, all the it seems like the games that are generating all the memes these days is among us and fall guys. Yeah, oh yeah, I've heard of among us. Yeah, fall guys. I tried fall guys. I do like the evolutionary biology angle of fall guys, where it's just absolute chaos every all these little floppy

things struggling to get you. You're a little spermatozoa trying to make its way to the exactly it's it's really just a fertilization simulator. It's always comes back to that, doesn't it. Yeah, really, that's what it is. You're just trying to make your way to the right at the end of the tunnel there, and there's always these giant swinging hammers that try to stop you. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. Yeah, that's anatomically correct. The big scrotch dude. Well, it's not

true that human fetuses eat each other in vitro. That doesn't mean there isn't at times pretty unusual situations when it comes to twins. Identical twins monozygotic twins occur when of fertilized eggs splits in two and each half develops a fetus. That's an unusual occurrence itself, but sometimes the egg does not fully split. A partial duplication of the zygote can result in a pair of citic twin and

underdeveloped twin that lives off the fully developed twin. The parasitic twin usually does not have a brain or many functional organs. They can range from being nearly a massive cells, two entire legs, torsos, and in very rare cases, parts of a human head attached and fully dependent on the

dominant twin. This is truly a one in a million occurrence and can also mean a very risky medical procedure to save the life of the dominant twin, especially as it's so rare that insight into best surgical techniques is limited. We're gonna take a quick break and return on a happier note. Siblings getting along with congolines and old factory family fund. Aaron and I get along pretty well, but it's not like we didn't have our arguments as kids,

and this is fairly common amongst siblings. According to a University of Toronto study, siblings that around two to four years old have a fight every ten minutes. So maybe to teach your kids to get along, they'll need to

learn a lesson from well frogs. So, now that we've gotten the sticky topic of siblicide out of the way, you know, we've got it's it's always good to kind of like get get out that like oh you know, like I want to murder you, blah blah blah, that stuff that's always just beneath the surface of siblings, buried, buried and bottled up. Yeah, very skin deep. Yeah. Now

I want to talk about siblings that get along. I think it's interesting because I mean, there are obviously lots of animals where siblings get along, like in Orca's siblings form these bonds and they hunt together, and Cheetah's whole bands of brothers will go out into the world and hunt together, and and lions sisters stay together basically their

whole lives, and uh form these prides. And it's so you know, I think although there's obviously times when siblings compete, sometimes they work together, but I think we sometimes think about like, oh, it's these it's sort of these more intelligent, like emotional animals that would ever develop a bond with a sibling, right, because you think about like even with lines,

like you know, they like like to nuzzle each other. Sure, their bloodthirsty, but they they have emotions, right, they can feel affection for each other when you look at a frog, You're like, this frog doesn't have anything going on. It's not gonna like recognize a brother or a sister and get along and like, you know, have little like froggy tea parties sitting on toadstools and catching up and sipping tea out of like acorn cups. But you'd be wrong

to think that, because it's not true. Well they don't. They don't have little tea parties, but not that you know of, not that you know of. You're just not invited to them. I'm sorry to say. But cascade frogs are these normal looking frogs with brown skin. They're found

in the Pacific Northwest. They're they're just like your typical little frog, little froggy, and they have been studied and found to recognize siblings and show a preference for spending time with their siblings, regardless of which tadpoles they've been raised with. So they have some kind of sibling sonar where they can sniff out their blood relatives, and when they meet up with their blood relatives, they like to they show a preference for them. They like to hang

out in a non competitive way. Fascinating. Yeah, which because like it's interesting I don't know if they've found like what they're smelling, like what that sibling signifier is. But it is really interesting that they do have some kind of way to detect so they actually don't know how they detect it yet. It's it's no un We've just

observed it. That's that's interesting. Yeah, Um, which like makes me wonder because sometimes you hear about these stories of twins and like, uh, they've been separated at birth and then they get back together and they find they have all this stuff in common, Like they're very similar, their habits are very similar. Uh, it's really uh. And then like there's also stuff about like twins having like very

eerily similar emotional reactions to things. So it is it is interesting that in nature there seems to be some kind of innate recognition for some animals where they can just like, Okay, that's that's my that's my brother, that's my sister. I can chill out around them. Do we have any like do we have anything that we share? I've heard that we laugh similarly. Yeah, I mean it's hard.

It's hard from when you're on the inside to yeah, people say we all sorts of things that I mean, people tell me, Oh, it's it's really obvious that Katie's your sister. But yeah, it's hard for me to tell because it feels, you know, I feel like a different person. But yeah, we we have similar laughs. I guess we look the same. I don't know, we don't look anything. Are you kidding? You have a beard right, that the

beard is different? That's no. But like we have similar expressions, which I think is interesting because we like, there's some photos of us where apparently we're like reacting to the same things. We have the same look of either horror or finding something funny or discussed or whatever. It's like the same expression, which I think is interesting because it's it makes me wonder, like how much of that is just like because we're genetically very similar, how much is

of that is just like being raised together? It's you know, they're I mean, there's so much argument in psychology and evolutionary biology about the nature versus nurture thing, right, But yeah, I mean, who knows what the what the breakdown is there? I mean, I know, I know in a lot of ways, like I pick up say, like verbal things from you. I'm pretty sure I just picked them up. I think we picked things up from people we talked to a lot.

I know, I was always picking up picking up your legos, talking about picking stuff up from which you're leaving your legos all around. Yeah, I got you. I did that, that's true, But I don't remember you picking up after me so well your legos though, But yeah, yeah, so I mean the frogs. I mean, maybe that's just proof that all frogs are like psychic and they're all like psychic frogs. I'm not surprised. Yeah, that's that. I think

that's the scientific conclusion. There's right, right, they have I have hurt like people do say, like, oh, I can feel like they say they have like a psychic bond with their twin. I don't necessarily, well, I don't want to be like a stick in the mud, but I do think one thing that we will. I think it's hogwash,

but I think it is. I do wonder, though, like with twins, if you're that similar and you're raised together, so you're you're similar in so many ways that if you are presented with a similar environmental factor, that you can maybe predict like how the other person is going to feel or react with very good accuracy. Because even like with you, I feel like I can predict, like how you're going to react to something, um extremely accurately and like down to like exactly what you're gonna say. Yeah,

that's it makes sense. That makes sense. See I knew what you're gonna very good, well done, well done. I'll edit that in post to make it or make your's just a little before mine, and then that's a little before years bing bang boom, bing bang boom. So I do want you to click on a video I've provided for you. It is, it says UM, an interesting Russian video of a giant caterpillar. What am I looking at? What? What was? I don't okay, I gotta watch the aga

I don't even know. Like so it's like a big one in the front and they're they're all like what are they? Is? They like munching on each other's tails. It's like a train of frogs. You don't look like frogs. So what you're actually looking at is a shrewd congo line. You are called frogs. I don't know h the I don't know why that, but it's a Russian video. Probably I just assumed because you just assumed it was frogs.

I was trying to trick into thinking it was a giant caterpillar because it kind of looks like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. But it's crazy because it looks like there's like a big I guess mama shrew in the front. And then it's like they've each clamped chomped onto the one in front tail and they're all just running in a line. Yeah, and it looks it looks like when you're looking at it from a distance, it just looks

like one animal, like a giant caterpillar movie. Yeah, it looks like, yeah, some kind of odd yeah snake with legs. So I will explain what's going on first. I kind of want to talk about what shrews are because some people I don't necessarily know. Um, that's not a condescending I'm gonna retake us. I going to talk about what shrews are. No, I'll leave it in be condescended to

nobody knows shrews better than me. For those of you who don't know what a shrew is, Shrews are a family of little mouse like mammals found all over the world. They are actually not rodents and not really closely related to mice, even though they look like mice. They are more closely related to moles and hedgehogs, and they do

not have mouse like teeth. Their teeth are little needle like a shrew bite is very unpleasant, especially because some shrews are venomous and they have venom glands that can distribute the talk some down grooves in their sharp little teeth.

So one of the few mammals who are venomous, and in fact, the American short tailed true species have enough venom in their glands to kill two hundred mice, which is an oddly specific fact I read on Wikipedia, and I don't know how they know that or why it is specifically two hundred mice, because that's how many that

it could kill. It's two. Did they like divvy it up and feed it to like I'm assuming what they did was they put it in a dropper and then just murdered and they were at like one, It's like up, we got we can use some more. And then they got to two hundreds like all right, and then two one not enough mouse, aretty. Sure that's how scientists do with Yeah, they do it. They measure venom and mouse units poisoning wise. Yeah, this ld fifty nonsense. It's it's

how many mice? How many four thousand mice. It's it's called d m Q the dead mouse quotient. Yeah, d m mL dead mice permil leader. Um, yeah, that sounds pretty good. Dead. But however, while adult shrews are quite apt to defend themselves, baby shrews are just little defenseless beans who are born blind, squishy, and you know, probably pretty snack able. So if the mother must abandon her nest due to disruption or danger or needing to find more resources, if she just like leads them away, they

will soon get lost because they're blind and clueless. So instead, she assembles her offspring into a train. So the mother leads and each baby instinctively bites down on the tail of the shrew in front of it, forming shrew train. Check a check a check chuck chuck a check a check out, shrew train. It's a shrew train. Shrew train. It's my new show called shrew Train, where we all hop aboard the shrew train. It would that be in the in the shrew crime category? Nice? Yes, welcome to

shrew Crime. An entire train of shrews murdered. So what I find really interesting about the shrew train is that they move with surprising ease. It's like, you look at it, there's something about the simple little pro graham in each of these shrews that is like bite down on tail and follow immediately in front that makes them very efficient. There's a second video you can look at that shows and you know, just like how agile they are. They can like turn on a pin and like move around

like a snake. It's pretty incredible that you have so many individuals coming together. Oh wow, and it's it's crazy. It's that's that's gotta be. And it looks like their legs are almost in sync, but they may just all kind of run with the same cadence. But that that is incredible looking. Yeah, it looks like it looks like

a single organism. Well what's so okay? So there's something really unsettling about it, which is that most things that we at least that I've typically seen in nature that kind of are in that snake or caterpillar format or whatever or like smooth or shiny, you know, but it's fuzzy. It's weird. It's weird to look at. It's like it's like, is it imagine if snake's head for it's it's unsettling and strange. I have some bad news for you about

some caterpillars. That's true. It's caterpillars. Are they are fuzzy, that's true. Yeah, they're also giant caterpillar congo lines as well, which we've covered in another episode. And that's all. That's basically safety in numbers. They go butt to head, butt to head to travel to other locations in order to remain safe and more intimidating because they have this these urticating hairs on their backs. Like the fuzz is actually

a defense mechanism. So if they're form this giant line of caterpillars like where they're they're squishy heads and squishy butts are protected by the person in front and or sorry person caterpillar in front and behind. Those caterpillars are people too. But yeah, the conga line a very efficient survival technique used by multiple animals. I don't think humans have a really good analog for children, although we do have like leashes. I guess for toddlers. Mom put you

on a leash when you were a toddler. She did. She never told you that, I'm sure No, it's not lies she did, because it's not. It's not a literal leash. It's like a little body harness with like a little sprawny bongee. And she didn't once just to like because it wasn't. It was to give you a little more

freedom of exploration while still keeping tabs on you. And you're like, to, I don't remember this because I don't even think I was born yet, But she said, you went to some store and immediately like went around one of those like like so glasses. You know that's like rotating, it's coming back. I mean, I was too young to

actually remember this, but now I remember. It wasn't just so Just so the listeners know, um our mom did not just keep this from me and secretly Katie about this, I should also say, we don't keep Aaron in a basement like the Bart twin from the Simpsons. Um O, god, no, that's our other secret sibling that we don't talk about it. We didn't talk about that one. We don't talk about that. I'll edit that out, but no, you you immediately wrapped yourself around a display rack and my mom was like, well,

that probably isn't gonna work. Yeah, I just I can just imagine just you know, you know, my imagine she is kind of like one of the fall guys, little jelly bean men, just kind of stumbling around and chaos flopping around. Researchers are fascinated by twins due to how they're as close as we can currently get to studying human clones, and looking at how twins behave is one way to study nature versus nurture, to see how your

genes and your environment interact to create well you. Psychologist Thomas Bouchard to just study in comparing twins who had been separated at birth, raised by different families, and then were reunited later. In some cases, they had startling similarities, like a pair of twins who had the same hobbies both married and divorced women named Linda and remarried women named Betty. Aside from this eerily coincidental case, most twins

in his study had much more significant differences. Something Bouchard concluded was evidence that twins are not carbon copies and become unique individuals throughout their lives, which is probably not news solve the twins out there listening to this now, but hey, at least you got science on your side when we return, We're going to talk about siblings who joined forces to destroct It's not unusual for siblings to team up to achieve greatness. There's the Right Brothers, the

Bronte Sisters, Venus and Serena Williams, and the Kardashians. Anyways, when siblings join forces in nature, sometimes the result is mind blowing, impressive and abjectly horrifying, you know, like the Kardashians. So we've talked about siblings who do not get along. We've talked about siblings who do get along. Now I want to talk about siblings who team up to destroy the world around them. I feel like it's inspirational, you know, just just siblings forming an army that eats and fights

its way through the world. Uh, it's I mean, like a lot of the things like we think of as like hives, um and colonies, like aunt colonies, b hives, termite colonies, those are all siblings. Those are most of the ones you will see will be sisters, because all of the workers are sisters. They're highly related to each other. Um. Their brothers are just being lazy and staying inside all day and eating like you know, just like our dynamic exactly. Um, but I do want to talk about other groups of

siblings that team up to form a giant army to dominate. Uh. And first I want to talk about millipede balls. That sounded wrong, but I mean, I mean big clusters of millipedes. So many species of millipedes have very close sibling bonds. Again, we think about sibling bonds that are loving to be exclusive to, like uh, fuzzy charismatic mammals, like even truths like those are cute. They're like they look like, you know, cut, Like, yeah, they could nuzzle each other. They you know, chew on

each other's butts to stay safe. That's pretty cute. Insects can team up to in insects, arthropods, they can form sibling bonds as well. And millipedes, which are you know, those mini legged, very creepy, crawley little arthur pods have very close sibling bonds and they will form as young millipedes, they will form huge clusters of riving millipedes who roll around in search of food. If you click on that link right here under millipedes ball, you can see of it.

You of that, Oh wow, that's a that's a lot. They look tiny though they are because they're little babies. The big ball baby millipedes that is it looks you know, they're kind of pink and mhmm, blesh. It's it's it is h. Yeah, that's pretty neat, big old ball baby bouncing baby millipedes. Yeah, that's pretty cool. Actually. Yeah. And they formed this cluster that's so dense even like a single ant can't work its way through it. And so they out of many they become one sort of mega

cluster of millipedes that is safe from predators. And they will so millipedes feed on organic matter found in soil, so in order to find patches of nutrient rich soil, they will travel in this giant ball of millipedes and and just kind of cluster around patch of soil and get their food and moved on. And if you like force them to disperse, like try to stomp on the ball and they all have to scatter, they'll all run into one direction and then reform the ball relatively click quickly.

It's very like very sci fi to me. It does it looks like some kind of yeah sci fi cluster, like a nanite cluster that it looks like a lot of the yeah, pretty popular, Like like there's kind of that that slithery snake clusters like in the Matrix series. Right, I wonderful, I wonder how many people have seen this stuff?

Is this? It's pretty cool looking. It is cool looking, and it's also heartwarming because these are all these are all siblings coming together to exactly another heartwarming story of Arthur pods who come together are black lace weaver spiders are a spider found in Europe, North America, and New Zealand, although they are invasive species in New Zealand. They're about sixteen millimeters long's about point six inches. They're they're pretty neaty.

They're like a spider that you'd see and go like, oh yeah, that's a there's a spider right there. You know, you know, you know you don't want that thing in your eyeball. That's how I measure spiders by, like how bad it would be for it to be in well, but then you get once you get past a certain size though, then they can't. It's true, then they can't

get in the eyeball. No, that's true. That's true. Like, well but that doesn't maybe I actually like the bigger spider right exactly because they are more you know, they're more cuddly. I can fit a big enough spider and a baby Bjorn and carry it around. So um, the baby spiders will eat their own mother and then dance together in synchrony. And this sounds horrible, but it's actually heartwarming and sweet. So the black lace weaver female will have over a hundred young and the mother will lay

trophic eggs, which are unfertilized eggs, for her babies to eat. Uh. And so she is giving as much of her resources as she can because she is not going to survive to mate again. And once they have eaten the trophic eggs, she wants to provide them with one last meal, and she will guide her babies under her body and offer herself as food. So she'll actually lay on top of them and just like stay still for them to eat her.

Because like, she has created a huge amount of offspring and her best bet for having them pass on her jeans is to give them the best start in life, and that means cannibals. So the babies will eat her. Um. There's actually a lovely video if you want to see that. It's just it's actually not that gruesome. It doesn't look like much, but I just know that they are sucking out all her juices. I'm clicking on a video now here. Yeah, it's just like it's a bunch of little, tiny, cute,

little tiny spiders crawling all over, all over mom. But they are sucking out all all of her juices. But that's how she likes it. She's like, I'll be your juice box babies, but a good but a good mother. I mean, you know, spiders are pretty metal when you think about it. It's pretty metal. And I think it's a female, the males, and I know that the babies the females, but I mean, I shouldn't be surprised considering, well, it's yeah, and it's not just that the babies eat

the females. The mothers actively encourage the babies to eat her. Just a ritual sacrifice, right, you know, on the on the blood altar of that's very metal. I like that they really they really got like their mother's eyes and their mother's legs, and their mothers are And what's interesting is this sacrifice on part of the mother sets them up not only in terms of giving them a lot of nutrition, but it also encourages them to work together

as siblings. Because they have all of this nutrition from the get go, they're less likely to need to compete with each other. So they will form social groups that hunt together for about four weeks before finally dis ersing to go off and mate. So they will it's like, hey, thanks mom for letting us use you as a juice box. Like we're all pretty well fed, so we can hunt

together and like work together. You know, they're not suffering such scarcity that they need to fight each other or try to eat each other like the other siblings we've talked about earlier in the episode. And that whole ritual dance that they do together where they seem to do this techno dance all in unison. That is a way for them to collectively ward off predators by making this larger vibration by all of them like dancing all together, that they seem like a much bigger animal by creating

this like large vibration. Right, this is this is neat. They're tiny, they're a little yeah, they're a little little, right. Cute, They are pretty cute. So the last animal I want to talk about, and I'll issue a warning now, this is maybe the grossest story today. So if you're eating something like, you know, especially something like a spring roll or burrito or you know, you might want to just hold off on a because So I'm going to talk

about copa do Soma floridanum wasps. So these are teeny tiny, unassuming wasps that look like a tiny house fly, but they are not flies. They are wasps. They're found all over the world. They are so tiny they're about the size of the ball in a ballpoint pen. And the um female wasps ah man wasps are like the weirdest freaks in nature. They're always pulling such like bizarre crap on other animals, especially when it comes to their offspring.

Like Parasitoid wasps are a trip And we've talked about them before, but I don't think we've talked about this one yet. So the female will lay a couple of eggs inside of a caterpillar egg. Okay, so far pretty standard parasite things like not that much worse than a cuckoo bird or something. When the caterpillar hatches, the wasp eggs begin to multiply into a cluster of eggs inside of the caterpillar. Each egg contains two thousand wasps embryos,

which are about a fifth of an inch long. So, according to Dr Mike Strand of the University of Georgia, quote, the caterpillar is about two to three inches long, so you can stuff a lot of wasps in there. I did, I'm cheating. I'm looking ahead. I've looked at the photo. No, no, you're not cheating. That's that's appropriate. You can look it. It is um. It has a kind of a sausage like vibe. But you know, it looks to me kind of like a spring roll with a bunch of like

rice in it. Yeah, you know, kind of more writhing though. But also each of those like grains of rice is like an egg. But each of those eggs contains like thousands of embryos. So yeah, I guess I'm not I'm not up on you know, how biology works, but I'm surprised to hear that what we would consider individual eggs can have multiple embryos in them. That, well, it's an egg, I guess more accurately, you would call it an egg sac. So these are each so it is a cluster of

eggs sacs. Yes, gotcha, Okay, And so it's already we're getting into sort of body horror territory. Oh, it's it's yeah, I mean this is brutal. This is like this thing that looks like a sauce of transparent sausage casing filled with rice. Again, I'm so sorry if you're eating this is a caterpillars, possibly still alive. I'm not sure at this stage of the pure they're looking at. It's like it's as if there's just this thin sausage casing around salt.

It's just packed with I can't imagine that there is enough internal or like like this one. This one might could be, but there are exactly how long parasites can get in there and how many can be in with the poor hosts. Still, it was insane. No, but it couldn't. I'm what I'm saying is like often it takes a while, like there's still enough organs and juices for them to

survive this god amount of parasites inside them. There are other types of parasites that will parasitize caterpillars and emerge from the live caterpillar, but so many of them come out. But in this case, they do generally consume the whole caterpillar until it finally mercifully dies. Um. But here's the thing. One catapar like like uh dr Mike Strand says, you can fit a whole lot of wasps inside this caterpillar because I remember, these are tiny wasps about the size

of a ballpoint pen, and these are the larva. So multiple wasp mothers, unrelated wasps will lay their eggs in a single caterpillar. So this becomes a living nursery for many different wasps. But wasps don't ness there. These are not really social animals. They are not necessarily going to work together with unreal lated wasps. There's no evolutionary advantage to that for them, So they will battle it out inside the caterpillar. Again, we have a parasite thunderdome. But

do the but do the siblings team up? Is it? Is it like a team fight? Ah? This is very interesting because so you have different morphs of larva. And this is where it gets confusing and complicating and fascinating. So most of the larva are blood suckers. They will suck up the caterpillar's blood until they pupate into adults. Simple, you get it. Some of them are not blood suckers. They're soldiers. They do not consume the caterpillar. All they

do is attack other wasp larva. They have slender bodies and scraping jaws that are designed purely as weapons, not for feeding, and they never reach maturity. The whole reason that they develop is to protect their siblings, and they will attack unrelated siblings and they won't attack their own siblings. They will not attack their own siblings. Simically, again, like we talked about with the frogs, they may it, maybe

smell it, maybe some kind of kill some own thing. Yeah, the assumption is it's a it's a pheromone or chemical that they're detecting. I don't think they've identified what that is, but it's a pretty safe bet. Thats or psychic got psychic, psychic frog, psychic wasps. You know what's really interesting is that these soldiers are female always, and they will never attack their sisters. And they are like be colonies and aunt colonies. Like we've talked about before, they're very very

like their genetically identical hole to their female siblings. They're like twins essentially, they are not genetically identical to their male siblings, so they will actually attack their male siblings. But they will not attack their sisters. The female soldiers will die. They do not go on to reproduce. They

basically go down with the ship. The ship in this case is the caterpillar that eventually gets all of its juices sucked away, and then the sisters that they've died defending from unrelated uh larva will grow on go on to grow up and pupate into adults and leave the caterpillars,

whereas the soldiers just die off. Do the male siblings have a warrior morph, No, they just kind of you know it, well, yeah, I mean, if you think about it, uh, one male can probably fertilize a bunch of females, but females have to invest a lot into creating eggs, so you don't need as many males. Really, I'm not I'm not, you know, making any political message here, but I'm just simply saying you don't need as many males. Um and

again they kind of this. The whole way that they're more related to their sisters than they are to their brothers is the whole haploid diploid thing that happens with insects such as ants and bees, where you um have unfertilized haploid eggs producing males and fertilized diploid eggs producing females. So you know a little bit of genetic shenanigans there. And remember when I said earlier, she lays a couple of eggs and they start to uh multiply, that is

clonal multiplication. So these sisters are literally clone of each other. Um. And so that is why it makes sense for some of the clones. And I'm assuming that the soldier morphs is more or less random. You're basically defending your own clone and the genes that will again in the future. It's like you're passing on your genes essentially by defending your clone, and your clone will have jeanes where their

offspring also have a random chance. Some of them become soldiers, some of them become you know, the blood suckers that will go on to reproduce. So you're it's basically you know, uh, war of the War of the clone clone wasps right, Yeah, that's that's crazy. Yeah, I didn't realize that life, and I guess that makes sense. I don't know why I wouldn't have thought that that was something that happened, but that like full full on eggs or egg sacts even because it looks like is it the the whole egg

sac splits or do individual eggs within this sack split? Wait? Yeah, I don't know. Then I think it's I think it's uh, it's basically within the egg sacs, the individual eggs or and then and then they hatch into larva, and then those larva go on to royal around and the caterpillar

and fight each other. Actually know this picture of the caterpillar that looks like it's like a rice dumpling, those might be larva rather than yeah that that might make God, it really does look sort of like food but snack like yeah, yeah, like you know you get those like the rice snacks. It's like or like sesame seeds sticks. Yeah, yeah, it wasn't for that caterpillar, right, and like the the sort of constant roiling motion. I'm imagining the larva fighting

each other. But uh, you know, if we were wasp larva, I would still defend you, even though you're my brother. That's good to know. Yeah, glad to hear it. And I wouldn't be able to defend you because I'm just I'm a sitting duck. Yeah, essentially, unfortunately, those are the cards nature game. Yeah. Yeah, you know, I feel like insects really understand feminism. We'd go K sixty nine comments on the on the podcast, like I like this podcast

until the host got all political. Well listen, that's that's all the sibyl ing animals I have to talk about today. I hope that this has helped strengthen our sibling bond to talk about, you know, all the mayhem and distructions from sibli side to ritualized sibling collaboration to destroy caterpillars from the inside out. You know, yeah, it really it really makes you think. It really makes you think. Well it does. Like you know, aliens looking at human sibling

right relationship, they're probably thinking, that's that's very strange. Why would he drop a can of beans on her head? Surely this is a form of sibling competition. He tries to gather resources by using his sister's head as a can opener. The primary food source for humans appears to be what is called cans of beans. They are made out of beans. We must study these beans and they're cans. Normally. This is um where I would ask you to plug

stuff but you're you're just my brother. You're doing I don't like engineering at Stanford or something stupid, but like, ah, so instead of asking you to plug anything, Um, do you have any grievances to air publicly public grievance airing? No, I don't think so. I mean I like that. I like that as your nickname though, like public grievance airing eron. Ah, Yes, I need to I need to start an online presence and yeah, any conflicts to resolve from our childhood as

your chance Yeah, you know. Um, I feel like I probably was the cause of more trouble than you were

when we were kids. There's one thing I always felt a little bad about, uh, which was this one time we were pretty young, and I thought it would be real funny to uh sneak into your bed, yes and wait, lie under the covers just perfectly still until you, you know, haplessly stumble into your room, at which point I erupt, erupt from the sheets and say boo, which I thought was pretty funny at the time, but I may have given you a traumatized I felt bad. I I that's

that's when you know. One of the things you know you do when you're like five or six or however old, and you just are are you know, three whatever? No, I've told this story. I think I told this story on the podcast about that this too, Like you were and like you're not giving yourself enough credit for the ingenuity of the prank because you were lying and you got under the covers and you like slowly rose up like a zombie and was and like you either said

boo or you like whoo. Well, I thought, I mean, I could be remembering it differently, but I thought that I, yeah, I just said boo, Like I wasn't really going for like maybe time slowed down for me because I was so scared. I suspect because I thought, you know, at the time, I thought it was better natured than it was, right until I started to scream, damon, damn, I got roasted. I guess my, I guess the opposite of a grievance.

What's the opposite of a grievance? I guess, like um contrition is I think that you would you would get in trouble more than me for things that were sort of equally are doing, Like we would have be equal participants in a Shenanigan. But I would emerge, uh, innocent eyed, clear eyed, and you would have The thing is, I think you didn't know how to hide your guilt as much just me, because I would. I mean, I think like it wasn't so much that I was hiding my guilt.

It was more that I was very openly contrite, like, yes, I think I did a bad thing, and you would like look at the ground and shovel You're full, I know. I think part of yeah, I think your your response was, you know, to show that you were sorry, blah blah, And I was like, what what's wrong? What's wrong with the what it did? It was pretty cool? Right, Like

that was fun. We're having fun here. And I think that that having a being just constitutionally unable to recognize why what you're doing is annoying, Uh, well, annoy a parent, I think understandably. So that may have been Yeah, do you think if we were eagles, which one of us would be defenustrated and which one would be the definis strate?

T interesting? I would say that just the diplomatic answer is that I would definistrate you because I'm older, so statistically speaking, I'd be more likely to get to the who it's time to definistrate first. Now, if we're going on personality, though, probably you, I think you'd you'd offer me. I'm pretty sure. I I think it's the I think it's the sneakiness. I think I'm sneakier than you. I think i'd be like, I think I would be able to sort of redirect your attention more easily. Thank you

would I'd be like, what's that over there? I don't know what what would baby eagles be interested in? Is that a is that a fish? Or that a dead squirrel? I really don't know what baby eagles. Um. Is that some mom vomit? Oh? Was mom vomiting something up for you? Yeah? It would be your your bomb's neck. Yeah, look it's some mom bomb over there. Check out the mom bomb over there and the night Felia over the edge there. I'm a gonner global Yeah, my poor global herd sell. Yeah,

well luck, we were humans. Yeah, thank you, thank you for coming on. This was fun. Yeah, thanks thanks for having me on. It was it was last It's it's a little surreal having listened to the show as a observer, not entertainer, not comedian, member of the of the public. Yeah, but you're part of the podcast family because we are a family here and and that we do have the capacity to sniff at each other's pheromones, So there is that's true. I wouldn't call it pharomones, though I would

get a gross gross. All right, well, thank you guys so much for listening and for uh for humoring me and us as we are out our sibling grievances publicly for the first time. If you're enjoying the show, first of all, tell your siblings about it. Be like, hey, there's this great episode about sibili side. No, I don't mean it that way. Why are you looking at me that way? And also like, if you leave a rating and review, that actually really helps us out, not only

with the algorithm, it makes me feel good. I My ego is insatiable. I am like a gaping void that requires more adulation constantly. It never ceases. My hunger for praise is unending. Thanks to the Space Classics for those super awesome song Excelumina Creature feature is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the heart radio app Apple Podcasts, or Hey guess what just between you and me? Any old

place Shell, listen to your podcast, doesn't matter. I don't judge. See you next Wednesday. Yeah,