The Birds & The Parasites

Discover this more as we answer the age old question how many nematodes can you fit inside an ant's key star Joining me today is author of the John Dyes at the End and the Zoe Ash series and fan of parasites, Jason Pargeon. Welcome. So my goal today is not to instill a sense of existential dread and horror and your listeners. I know this is not that kind

of a show. So if I start if in the course of you describing these things, if I when I start talking about the implications of it, if I start going down too dark of the path, there needs to be some kind of a signal or a safe word, something you can say this like, no, Jason, I know that you are a master of modern horror, is what I personally, Katie. I'm calling you, Jason about I need you to to dial it I need YouTube dial it back. Well, I do quack out naughty words on this show, but

I don't really quack out existential dreads. So I think it will be okay. And if the listeners don't need that right now, like let's nobody like nobody, surely nobody is listening to spend the rest of the day because I'm gonna just people who are unfamiliar for me and me and Katie used to work together, like, for example, just people unfamiliar with me. I personally, it's my understanding that the only reason one of my previous horror novels did not win the Pulitzer Prize was because it was

just too too scary. That's because I in twelve. You may have heard like there was no Pulitzer awarded in fiction that year, and I think it's because my novel that year. This book is full of spiders. I think because I I was people don't believe me. But I was texting with the guy that gives out the Pulitzers and I was like, bro, like, yeah, Rodney, we call him pork Chop is his nickname. I was like, yo, it's am I winning the Pulitzer or not? And he he text me bags like, bro, it's like low key, bro,

it's too like, I'm too scared reading this thing. The number one rule is you cannot make the Pulitzer Prize awarders pee their pants because then you know they won't give you an award because they pe their pants. Yeah, and they're like, that's no, you made it. You made it too, you made it too scary, so and kind and that sucks because like the Pulzer comes, it's there's like a fifty dollar gift card to Taco Bell like

the like it's it's a really cool prized one. But the point I'm making is is that sometimes I can go to a place that's so terrifying that you can just be terrified into a coma. So if you hear in the course of recording this where it seems like there's gaps in the audio, that's where it's they've had to cut out some things that was too disturbing by law, Like it's legally and you can't put it into a podcast. Yeah, I mean, I've got my lawyer right here kind of

letting me know when I got to cut it out. Wait, what's that she's she's saying, cut all of this, but you know, well, we'll see if we can keep that in. But yeah, so we are talking about some pretty horrifying things today on the podcast, and one of my favorite parasites actually we're going to talk about and a parasite that I actually recently learned about that is now my

new favorite parasite. So, Jason, when I asked you what you wanted to talk about, you mentioned the Lucochloridium paradox um, which is that parasitic brood sex that infects the eye stalks of snails and turns their eye stalks into this incredible undulating show of like these colorful lines and they kind of look like caterpillars or like some kind of techno caterpillar rave attached to this snail's head. I really

I can't emphasize enough. And here's where if you are able to access a photo of this thing, and I know that there's no way listening to this, you're gonna know how to google what was the name of the parasite, Lucochloridium paradox um. This is the whole thing right here, because this thing it infects that she says, the stalks of of a snail and makes them look like caterpillar.

But why would it want to do that, Katie. Well, in the strictest sense, it doesn't want anything, because it is a tiny flat worm with barely two brain cells to kind of rubbed together. But natural selection has created this completely bananas mating process for this thing. So a little bit of info about it. It lives in temperate forests of North American Europe. We actually did cover this on the episode Evolutionary Horror Stories, but that was a while back, and I think it's always fun to do

a recap of this thing because it is amazing. So, yeah, this tiny flat worm found in the temperate forests of North American Europe. So here is its lifestyle in a nutshell, or maybe I should say in a snail shell. So first, a snail will accidentally eat the eggs of the luca clurity of flatworm. While the snail is eating lee was contaminated by bird poop, and we're going to find out why this bird poop is important later. So the eggs hatch inside the snail's body, and so they are these

really teeny tiny larvae of this flat worm. There, these tiny mouthless worms and they travel through the snail's body into its eye stalks, and once it's in the ice stalks, these first stage larvae actually transform into brood sacks. So it's not just that these larvae are growing inside these snail. The larvae are actually generating new larvae through a sexual reproduction, so they are multiplying until these brood sacks contains hundreds

of new larvae. And these brood sacks caused the snail's eyes to swell, and that is what you're actually seeing when you're seeing this weird techno rave of these caterpillar like protrusions. They undulate inside the eye stocks, creating a hypnotic strobe effect of red, green, white, and yellow bands and spots, which looks like those two writing caterpillars, because the caterpillars are food for the type of bird is

trying to attract. Now you're going to correct me, and you're gonna say, Jason, you you idiot, You you master of horror. Yet somehow, idiot, No one involved in this process wants anything. No one involved in this process knows what it's doing. That right there is my entire point.

Because we've only you're only halfway through this process. That you're going to describe a process that is so complicated and so hyper specific and so strategic that it is impossible to understand how it could exist without an intelligence strategizing it out. It would be like if a flock of a flock of beavers, what's what's a group of beavers called? Oh, you know what? I'm not really sure. Um,

I'm going to say the Parliament of Beavers. A herd of beavers accidentally carried out the Oceans thirteen heist, not because they had a Danny Ocean strategizing it, just because they mindlessly, following instinct, accidentally did every step of breaking into the vault and on all of that stuff. This is every bit as complicated as that, only it was all done through blind, dumb natural selection. No one involved knows what they're doing, and that to me is incredible

because it kind of cast doubt on what intelligence is. Yeah, it does feel very much like this was written by a serial killer. Like you you gave a serial killers some kind of animal creation powers and they're like, well, I'm going to create a parasite that grows inside a snail and then a sexually reproduces until it creates these eggs acts inside the snails. Ey stalks that undulate and throb like two caterpillars, and then that gets eaten by

a bird. Yeah, it's it's completely nuts and psychotics. So, like you were saying, just as these just as these flatworms have quote unquote planned all along, the birds will find that caterpillar mimicry display really appetizing and eat the snails i stalks or even the whole snail. Often just pick up the ice stalks themselves and leave this poor, blind,

mutilated snail to die. And the local claridium quote unquote wants to be eaten by that bird to fulfill its sick and twisted lifestyle, so it will reproduce inside of the bird sexually and just basically having this orgy, and so it's eggs will get pooped out again. The horrifying life cycle will start again once a snail accidentally eats a leaf contaminated by that poop, and even more deviously, it actually changes the behavior of the snail to make

it more likely to be eaten by a bird. So typically these snails will stay in the dense foliage of the forest where it's shady and there's not a lot of light in there, and it's harder for a bird to see them, but these local chloridium will cause the snail to actually go towards sunlight, where it's much more likely that these birds will be able to find and

pick them off. So, like you said, it is my blowing that such a parasite could exist and would have such a detailed life plan that yeah, does really rival some kind of heist, except the bank is like a bird's intestinal tract. So to pull pull back the curtain a little bit, because the question people constantly ask me is, Jason, how is it even possible to write a horror novel? Like, surely only a genius could do it. Here's here's the

reality any any monster horror story you've ever seen. It's the only premise is what if humans were subject to the same stuff that animals and insects are subject to all time? Yeah, Like like on this show, like previous guests have referenced aliens or something like that, It's like, well, yeah, but aliens, that meeting process and aliens is something that you would see in the insect were old, only much

much worse. So here to try to put this into human terms is something that no no horror writer, no matter how depraved would come up with. The human equivalent would be if you ate a salad and there was some sort of parasite in the leaves of the salad. This parasite then traveled to let's say, your arm, and formed an egg sac that looks and smells exactly like a cheeseburger. Then it mind controlled you into you thinking you're doing this for your own purposes. You don't know

you're you're being controlled. In mind controlled you into crawling under someone's picnic and sticking your cheeseburger egg sact arm under their paper plate so that they would eat it, so that they would now have the egg from this eggsact inside of them. So then they the next time they are out and about and they poop on someone else's salad, it would start the cycle all over again. Right, yeah, exactly.

I mean at first I wasn't scared because the idea that I would willingly eat a salad is just preposterous. But then you started talking about the cheeseburger arms and pooping on someone's salad, both things that I do enjoy. But yeah, no, that is exactly what is happening here. What is so interesting to me is that this isn't something where it's like, oh, man, well, I guess in a world full of possibilities, we're going to get one parasite that does such a devious thing just due to

the law of large numbers probability. But no, this is not the only parasite that has such a complicated lifestyle and such a devious plan. There is actually another parasite that does almost, if not more, of a devious kind of um does does a version of this that is just as devious. So Mermaconema neotropic come is a parasite that doesn't make its victim look like a caterpillar but a fruit. This is actually the only instance of fruit mimicry known in the animal kingdom, let alone unwilling mimicry

caused by a parasite. So this is this is really creepy. And so this uh m neotropic come is a parasitic Nema toad, which is a tiny round worm that parasitizes a species of South American ants. So so far, pretty normal ants get all sorts of horrifying parasites all the time, And like the luco Floridium, the m. Neotropicum does have a dastardly convoluted plan to carry out its life cycle. Just like the lucochloridium, it starts with a bird uh, and its eggs are pooped out of a bird. Uh.

And so how did it get inside that bird? Well, it's a funny story. So uh. These eggs will be picked up by an ant of the sea, a trada species. And these ants are actually really interesting in their own right. Their jet black, shiny ants with this kind of odd,

blocky shovel shaped head. They're also known as gliding ants because they can use their legs in their butt to steer while falling, which is really useful because they live up in the trees of the Peruvian rainforest, and if they fall, being able to steer back to the tree trunk to easily return to their colony is much more preferable than getting lost or eaten by predators on the forest floor. However, m neotropicome, our little parasitic nematode, has

other plans for these poor ants. So when the ant picks up the eggs in the bird dukie, it doesn't just eat them directly. It's even more convoluted than the snail story. They actually carry these eggs back to their colony because they think this is a source of food that they can feed their young. Then they feed it to their own aunt larva, unwittingly dooming them, and these poor larva will have their life completely altered by the

parasite sick game. So as the aunt larva matures into a fully grown ant, the c neotropicome nematode is also developing inside the ant, reproducing inside the ants gaster. So that's the round caboose part of the ant. We could

call it a butt. It's not technically a butt, but you know, I mean, I'm going to call it but anyways, So that means that male and female nematodes inside the ant that were hatched from these eggs that were fed to it by the ant's own caretakers are now having sex inside of the ants but and making more of these horrible little nematodes. So after the nematodes mate, the

males die while the female stick around carrying their eggs. Again, this is all still happening inside of the ant gaster, and when we zoom back out to the ant, we see something even more nefarious happening. So the nematodes, who are sick little perverts, will complete its life cycle inside birds. And so to get there, it's got to do something horrible to this ant. Because the birds are actually uninterested in eating these ants. They have a bad tasting chemical defense,

these hard pointing exteriors. Birds are not interested in eating the ants, so the ant has to be changed to suit the nematodes needs. So as the nematode eggs are developing inside the ants gaster, they're causing it to swell, become bright red instead of black, and look just like a delicious ripe berry that are commonly found in the trees where the ants live. And the birds will see this and think, hey a berry, eat it, and oh no, now they are unwittingly carriers of an ant torture mechanism.

And Jason, I've shared with you a photo of one of these ants, both before it's horrible transformation and after, and also one of these ants nestled among some of these red berries that are commonly found in these trees, and it looks exactly like a berry. It's this is again where if you are in a place or on a device where you can see the vision will aids there in the show notes or whatever. It it doesn't

just inflame. It's the it's aunt. But to be read, it's because you know, like it's like, well, humans, something gets inflamed in red. No, no, no, this is not how that's not how ants work. They don't have red blood. It looks like the exact shading and shape and everything

is exactly like one of these berries. And again, specifically, as part of this incredibly complicated strategy, and again even in your course of explaining that, you used phrasing like, well, the ant thinks it's carrying food back, and anyone wanting to be pedantic will say, well, ants can't think. But again, I can't even give you the human equivalent of this. Well, it's like, well, it gets inside your body and it

turns your butt into a beautiful fruit basket. And then and then you you take it to the office, and somebody thinks of fruit basket has been delivered to the office, and that tricks the because this is actually so convoluted that I can't explain it in those terms without becoming confusing. Because you've got at every stage you're gonna ask yourself, well, how does this parasite know that? And I guess the

first question we haven't really addressed. It is like, well, why do they want to be eaten by birds in the first place. And you have to understand there's a strategy among this type of creature that the parents want their children to be as far away from them as possible.

They so their goal is to broadcast themselves, like, to get far away, and that's just part of their Now, I don't actually I am not smart enough to know why, but getting into a bird to be pooped out somewhere miles away is a key part of all sorts of living things strategies, including fruit. That's how seeds. Seeds work. They make beautiful fruit that the birds want to come eat, but the seeds are made to pass safely through their digestion they get pooped out miles way on a new

tree grows. It is not totally clear to me why these larvae or these parasites don't want to just breed near where they are, because it seems like those distances would seem like a long way away to a parasite. But their strategy clearly there's a benefit to getting inside of a bird and then starting the whole process, not just starting over, starting over miles away. Yeah, and you

were right. That dispersal seems to be the main motivating factor for having this elaborate system, and a reason both for things like plants or animals why they want dispersal is so that their offspring don't have to compete for as many resources. So if you have, you know, like with plants, like a tree, it's very easy to see if you have a cluster of tree, all of the young saplings who are under this tree aren't going to get any sunlight, They're not going to get as many

nutrients from this soil. It's bad to have this dense population and that are all competing for the same resources, especially if it's your own genetic progeny, because you're going to outcompete your own offspring, and that's not a tenable strategy for genes being reproduced generation over generation. So in general,

animals have also developed this technique of dispersal. We've actually talked about this on the podcast before from sort of a more I guess understandable from a human perspective, where you you'll have something like an elephant troop or a lion pride where the males will go off and and join their own pride or go mate somewhere else, so the males will disperse and move off. And this is kind of a more if you can think of it this way, it's more of a conscious thing that these

males are doing, although also driven by instinct. But when you get down to you the parasite level, there's not too much thinking going on. It's just the ones that reproduced in a way that dispersed their offspring had a better chance of these offspring having enough resources to survive and then reproduce themselves. And that's also kind of when

we think about really convoluted evolutionary stories. It it blows my mind always that you can get such complexity from just the very simplest of principles is that genes that survive survive, and that's it, Like that is the only concept you really need to know in order to explain this, which is it's hard. It's even knowing that it's still

hard to really visualize it. So you can think of it as every time there's some kind of accident or mutation that happens with this parasite that results in it getting sort of a step closer to this system that works so well for it that offspring will survive so you can imagine like with these uh, with these nematodes accidentally getting eaten by a bird, like before they've developed this reproductive strategy, and these are called um, this is a called actually my asses, which my my, my, I

my ass. And it is h when something unwittingly or let me see if I can phrase it, when something becomes a parasite even though it has not evolved to become a parasite. Like if you eat something like some kind of um, some kind of nematode, and it it is not actually a parasitic nemic toade, but now it's living in you because it has to because you ate it. So something like that could happen to this thing, but then it may start to evolve these strategies that actually

make good use of this accidental ingestion. So like maybe these nematodes kept getting eaten by birds or kept getting eaten by ants, but then the ones that caused these changes maybe made the ant a little more swollen and

noticeable when it was inside it. Those ended up surviving and passing on these genes that kept getting driven further and further into this direction, until we've got ants with berry butts well, and I think, you know, obviously with this show, we always are trying to put things into human terms, like imagine this happen, or you'll be i know, previous guests like they'll put it in terms of like what this was the Pixar movie, because Pixar, it's always

the animals, but they're acting exactly like people. They're having parasitic nematode. Pixar movie, by the way. So for example, when you talked earlier about why offspring disperse, you know, and and so they you know, it's so the young don't have to compete for resources, and some listening are like, well, my my dad did that. You know, he just one day, he just left and he moved to Ohio and started a different family. Like that's probably what he was doing. Sure,

but the problem with putting this into human terms. Obviously humans made it to the top of the food chain because of our big brains and our opposable thumbs, and we became tool users. That's why, you know, we have cars and stuff to get around on. We use our our technology, we can build things. So we can really only think in terms of intentionality, like like if if a human bought if a human built a house. We don't think, oh, that person had an instinct to build

a house. We think, oh, they sat down, drew up the plans, bought a piece of land, and everything we do we think of as being the result of our conscious mind having the thoughts. But there is a viral tweet that went around where someone asked a question I think every school child was asked. There's like, when a beaver is building a dam, does it know it's building

a dam? Or does it, as the tweet said, does it just see some flowing water and think absolutely not and and just start grabbing stuff to putting its way, like doesn't know what it's doing. I think every kid, every kindergarten kid must seem like a bird building a nest has asked, well, how did the bird learn how to build the nest? Who taught it? Didn't watch its mother build the nest? I mean, it's a this is

such a huge question in evolutionary biology to the beaver thing. Actually, I can answer that tweet, which is it's the sound of flowing water and the beaver going absolutely not. You can actually play the sound of flowing water from a speaker and the beaver will come over to it an agitation and like shove twigs and mud at it because it has this instinct too when it can hear are flowing water and it's near this damn. The damn construction

is actually fascinating because they have like a foundation. It's not just the beaver throwing sticks at a situation. They have a whole construction process. But once they've built this damn, they can hear leaks, and when they hear a leak, they are driven to go and angrily shove sticks and mud into it. And with the with the bird thing, it's a really interesting thing to bring up birds because birds are guided by so much instinct. But then they

also have this capacity to learn. So you can take a bird away from its parents and it may still learn how to build a nest, but it may not learn how to sing because it requires the presence of other birds hearing their bird song in order to be

able to learn how to sing that bird song. And you actually get bird song changing over time because if the parents of the bird start singing a slightly different version of it, then the offspring will sing a slightly different version of it, until the song actually starts to drift into something new and with humans as we're getting more complicated. Humans are really interesting because our babies are

born prematurely compared to other animals. You know, we've got the soft, squishy heads, our skulls aren't entirely fused together. We're kind of useless. You look at all the other animals and the animal kingdom, so many of them aren't as useless. They can walk around and run uh hours

after birth, but not babies. And the reason for this seems to be that we selected for these huge brains, and so the only way we could give birth to a baby with such a huge brain as if we gave birth to them prematurely, otherwise it would kill the mother.

And because we give birth to them so prematurely, their brains are highly pliable and they go through a lot of development, and then that had the added benefit of the baby being born maybe with less pre programmed at pre programmed behavior, but more of a capacity to learn behavior. So are does that mean we have no instincts? No? I think we definitely have still have a lot of instincts that are sort of pre written in our brain,

these sort of pre programmed templates in our brain. But because we go through so much development as young children. There is certainly so much that is shaped and sculpted by our an environment. And then it's a question of like, okay, so maybe we didn't come out of the wound pre programmed, but how much of our behavior was programmed sometime when

we were babies absorbing all this information. And then you get into and not to steer us too far off the subject, but you get into things like parallel evolution where you have multip human cultures who all they all developed the same idea totally separately, Like they all have music, they all have certain things that are they all have dance, like there are things that clearly are coming from inside us.

Like we find this satisfying and we're eventually going to come up with it, whether someone teaches it to us or not. Like if we were if you had a baby, you know, a group of babies raised on a desert island as part of some sort of uh, you know, cruel experiment and or reality show. Some calls like they may not come up exactly with the Fast and Furious franchise in their civilization, that they would have storytelling even if no one like like, there's certain things that to

make for our brains to get where they are. You know, there's certain behaviors, there's certain things like humor, jokes, stories, there are certain things that are clearly come from the structure in the brain somehow that's not purely Oh I saw someone else do this, and so I'm doing it.

It's so in terms of where that line is drawn, in terms of what we're doing automatically versus because it's not that you're born knowing certain things, is that you're born with a propensity to get leisure from certain things, and so you seek those things out, like you you know, you don't like sleeping in the rain, and so you come up with what, I need to put something over me,

and so now you've invented the house again. Like it's that I'm fascinated by that because again, we we really don't like to think about anything we do as being the result of instinct revolution because it makes it sound like animals and it's too easy to humanize people, and I don't it doesn't have to be that. It's not trying to take away like the really like that. There's a certain personality type on the Internet of the guy who's so smart that heat that he doesn't enjoy anything.

So it's like, well, you know, technically, are't as just a manifestation of our mating rituals blah blah blah or you know, or love doesn't exist. It's just a hormonal chemical and it's that's a silly way to look at it. Something can be natural and inborn and still be beautiful or precious or whatever. It's just it's not until you study how animals work that you realize how human they are in the sense that they've learned all sorts of things,

you know, like deception. I mean, what we're describing here is this is a straight up scam, like they've this, this is an n f T bit coin scam. Here, They've they've convinced that they've convinced another animal that that there's a delicious food here, and then you know, the bird eats it and realizes that's eating a disgust dean aunt and then it logs in it's like, oh, somebody took my somebody took my ape ape photos, and now

my n f T s or worthless. I do I do think that there is a really fertile market there to like market parasites to the crypto n f T brows because I think they might buy it, Like, hey, this is a really rare n f T. You actually eat this roundworm and it lives in you, and you have the only copy of that roundworm inside of you, And it would be so much more ethical than what they're doing now. Yeah, I mean, it'd be great for

the environment. I have no idea if the parent company of this pod guess it isn't the n f T market. I'm not trying to I'm not trying to subvert. I mean I am. I was just gonna say very very briefly, and the ants, we we didn't necessarily touch on the fact that on top of making their butts look I could bury it once again, May them go walk among the berries and brain controls them into sticking their butt up into the air so that it will even poke out more like a berry. Again. Then does know what's

doing it? The parasites don't know they're making the ant do it, but it's it is another example of mind control, which, by the way, mind control extremely common in in the parasite world. Yeah, and the creepy thing is we don't really know how they do that. This is somewhat of a newly discovered parasite like in the past decade or so. And how they get the ants to do this like bottoms up defensive posture because usually when ants do that

stick their posteriors in the air. It's a defensive posture. But somehow this parasite has convinced them to do this um all the time. And it also it also actually makes their butt ripe for the picking. Like literally, the the posterior the gaster becomes easier to detach from the rest of the ant's body, so the bird can just pick it off. It's it's complete. I mean, it leaves

me kind of speechless. Uh. They also the reason um that they are able to turn the gaster red is because they can't While they can't change the pigment of the ant, uh, they can cause the cuticle. So that's the ants exoskeletal skin to turn translucent. And then the growth of hundreds of these parasitic eggs actually have a red coloration because of these nematode embryos, and that red coloration shows up through the translucent ant cuticles so uh.

And then it also makes the ant sluggish, so it moves slower and makes it even easier for the bird to pick off. So it feels like evolution has thought of every thing in this case and planned this down to the last detail. But it's not. It's not really planning.

You can think of it as improvisation over many generations, so many generations that your brain can't process it because as complicated as we've described described the process, if you could see under a microscope what's going on inside that ants, but it's even more complicated than that. And again all of those things she just described with the pigment and

all of that. The end result is it looks so much like a berry that if you a human, were out in the woods picking berries to survive because you got lost or something, you would eat this ant because you thought it was a berry, like it would be enough to fool you with your giant human brain. And I think the way, if I'm not mistaken, I think the scientists who discovered this, I think they said it would be the equivalent of if this parasite made your butt look like a fruit basket and then made you

start chworking so hard that your but fell off. Yeah, I mean the researchers actually thought this was another species of ant. It looks so different from what it's supposed to look like. They thought it was a separate species of red budded ant until they realized, no, this is actually a parasite turning it into a delicious berry. And honestly, if I saw one of these things, even if I recognized it was an ant, I might still eat it. It looks so good. So we've talked about the incredible

ways that some parasites reproduce and have sex. And however, some animals just don't want to have to deal with having all that sex. They decided it's not for them, and they reproduce a sexually. Of course, you know, I'm being facetious when I am saying they've decided this, But I do like the idea of these animals just going You know, I am sick of exchanging these gam meets. This is tedious and uncouth, and I'm just gonna reproduce

a sexually from now on. By the way, every person listening to this, I assume you can remember the day you found out how human reproduction works. I don't know if these days, if it's your parents tell you, or if you just run into it in a movie or on the internet. But when when I was a youth, like your parents had to tell you, um, and we all think about how silly we were when we were toddlers and we thought that, you know, in the cartoons,

like a stork brings the baby. I don't know if anybody ever thought that, but it was or that like, well, one day, the you know, the mom, mom and dad they kiss and then the mom poops a baby from her. But and and you look back, it's like, oh, my gosh, I was so silly for thinking that. But please understand, there is nothing intuitive or logical about how the humans do it, and the fact that you're surprised to hear that's how it works is completely fine, because it's insane.

There's the idea that this is the one way that reproduction would happen, or that it would require sex, or that even every animal has sex as an act that they do versus you know, having one of them lays eggs and the other one just comes into just does some stuff on the eggs. It's there is an infinite number of ways this happens, and most of them do not involve the boy and a girl having sex with

each other. That's so yeah, you toddler's out there. Don't don't feel ashamed for the fact that you were shocked to hear that's how we do it. It's yeah. I mean I remember thinking that humans were oviparous as a kid, and that means when fertilization happens outside of the body.

So like that's what happens with salmon. They'll lay some eggs and then a male come by and uh deposit his sperm on those eggs, I thought, because I had heard like, well, you know, the female has eggs, And when I heard this as a young kid before sex said, I thought the woman had a special like egg, and then the man had a seed like a chicken egg and a plant seed, and then they somehow put them together, and then the woman like ate that and then had

the baby in her stomach. That's how I thought it worked, because when you hear these vague references to like an egg and a seed or something, then you come up with some weird system and then it's delightful as an adult to find out Wait, no, like these kinds of weird things do happen, Like there are animals that will quote unquote eat their offspring, like the gastric brooding frog,

which is unfortunately extinct. But you know, there are other ways you can get creative with how you reproduce, and some of the most creative animals are ones who actually have kind of got off on their own evolutionary limb and reproduce a sexually. So it's hard to get across how weird this is in one sentence, because with a sexual reproduction you have this it seems like it would be a great strategy, right, because you reproduce a person

of your genes. When you're reproducing sexually, only fifty of your genes are passed on. So if your genes want to get passed on, right, quote unquote one like, uh, it seems like okay, if you have a clone of yourself, that's all of your genes. That's great, and you survived, so shouldn't a clone of yourself also survive. So the reason that not all animals do a sexual reproduction is

that there is a struggle with genetic diversity. If you limit the gene pool too much, your species won't have that genetic library to be able to pull out some tricks for unexpected road bumps, like adapting to new weather conditions, or predators or diseases. So if you have this very limited genetic library, you don't have as many possible recombinations or mutations that could save your species from, say a

devastating disease. So some species will bypass this by reproducing a sexually for a few generations and then sexually every so often to introduce a little bit of diversity into their genome. Like a FIDS, they'll go through an a sexual breeding a few a sexual breeding seasons, and then they'll reproduce sexually for a season and then go back

to reproducing a sexually. And again you want to try to put it into human terms and say, well, that one generation that comes along and it's the first one in memory that suddenly wants to do sex, are they regarded as perverts? And then the answer is that it doesn't. It doesn't work that way in the animal kingdom, Like there's some instinct that it's like, oh, we're going to do it this way now. And I know that in explaining why that's an advantage, you're getting into some very

science e things about genetic diversity. I think the easiest way to understand it is it imagine that you had a superhero team where you need, like if you think of like the Avengers, you need them to each have different abilities because you don't know what kind of threat you're going to be fa seen. So like you may face a threat that needs a Hulk who is all powerful and immortal and invincible, or you may be facing a threat that just needs to be shot with a

bow and arrow. But you need both because I see there's some pro Hawkeye propaganda going on here that he's useful, and I'm sorry, but like, if you've got a magic man like Doctor Strange, you can, like I guess, shoot magic bolts. In what situation do you just need an arrow? Okay, but you're undermining the metaphor you need a team of diversity.

Everyone has their place because and if you've seen these movies, inevitably the halk will wind up fighting like a demigod, and then Hawkeye will have to shoot a person with a bow and arrow like the Hulk wouldn't Necessarily it would be weird if the Hulk just went in pul rise that person. Just from from an outside point of view, it's better if you just do the merciful thing instead of having the Hulk just squished him like a graper,

having four all these people who literally cannot die. And then also on their team is Natasha Romanov, who is just a woman who can absolutely die at any moment, and they're just fighting together in the same battle, and it's like, yes, let's all charge into Asia, me who is totally immortal, and you a woman with a pistol. We will all, we will all try to take on this literal god. Anyways, idea, it is a very good metaphor.

I actually do really love that metaphor you have. Like having a superhero team where everyone turns invisible, you could never like beat up the bad guy. You would just the bad guy would just be like, well, I can't find you. But I'm just gonna keep doing the stuff I'm doing because you can't stop me. But I also like the idea of the cloning is extremely and again

I'm gonna keep coming back to this. Every horror sci fi story, like scary, the type monster story you've read is really just something that happens in the animal kingdom all the time. So like the idea of running into your clone, Like let's say Katie, let's say you came home from work, Uh, tomorrow from the podcast studio and you came home and you found another you there. That's

like the most weirdest, horrifying thing. Many movies have been made about something like that, when it's like, oh, they've made another me, which one is the real me? Because the idea of having another exact you, it just breaks your brain because you're an individual. You know, you want to think of yourself as as one of a kind. But that's a distinctably human thing. Based on human psychology.

In the animal kingdom, the idea of something that's breathing by just making an exact copy of itself is very common. They would not find that alarming, if they could find anything alarming. But that's something where again we instinctively think of that as like a horror scenario, like how could there be if somebody said, hey, there's another exact you, and uh, toronto, it turns out exactly you down to the molecule, that would be like the weirdest thing that's

ever happened to you. Um, But here it's just something. The only the only downside is, yeah, if they're all multiple clones and they all have the same weakness, so in theory, the same disease, the same weather event could wipe them all out, right, Yeah, exactly, it is. It is a strange thing too. It almost feels like cheating for an animal just to be able to clone themselves, because it's like, well, don't you You can't just do that. You can't just like make a new you, like a

little version of you and pop it out. But that's exactly what animals do sometimes. And it is weird when animals do this and don't seem to need that genetic diversity. And it's one of these things that is actually an act of mystery an evolutionary biology, and I don't think that biologists really have the answer to it right now. And this is the case for a couple of really, really weird species that have one of the most bizarre and inexplicable mating strategies I've ever heard, which is the

amazon molly fish and mole salamanders. So these are both species who are all female and don't have any time to trifle with males. They just reproduce a sexually, but they will still steal the sperm of males from other closely related species. And you might think, okay, yeah, so maybe they do a strategy like the a fits were. Occasionally they'll involve a little bit of the genome from the sperm, you know, but it seems like they actually just use that sperm. Uh, not for their genetic contribution

because their offspring are still exact clones. They just use the sperm to kick start their reproduction. The presence of the sperm actually um triggers there they're reproductive process. So let's start with the Amazon molly fish. Uh. It is a hybrid of two species of Molly's, the sail fin Molly's in Atlantic Molly's. I don't know, Jason, if you've ever owned an aquarium, but this is a very The molly is a very sort of staple beginner aquarist fish.

So they're these little, like thumb sized pretty fish. The Amazon molly is sort of this pearly colouration. Uh. They're they're cute and pretty and kind of um, you know, just normal little aquarium fish looking things. Yes, and we're me and the other listeners are sitting here waiting to find out how this thing gets the sperm from other species. Yeah, so it will actually pickpocket sperm for itself. It will literally but in between mating pairs of its related species,

either the SailFin Molly's or the Atlantic Molly's. Uh, and just kind of like take the sperm for itself. So, um, is there video of this occurring? And I don't mean that's in allurid way. I mean, is there song I'm here, I'm it's the fish and it just rings the doorbell and SCEs I'm here with pizza, and then it goes

and just like robs the entire house of sperm. Okay, what you described is less stupid than the reality because you're saying that there are two other fish mating and this fish will get in between them and intercept the

sperms somehow. And to put this into human terms, I cannot Because if someone wrote a horror movie where this is a monster that does this where it goes and finds couples having intercourse and then it slides in between them and intercepts the sperm to then use in its own breathing process, that movie would be banned, Yeah, from theaters. That would be too. Like your family would have an intervention if you wrote something like that. Yeah, yeah, I

mean nature does kind of need an intervention. It seems like it's got a problem based on its track record. But yeah, it is very much like some kind of weird humanoid who's related to humans but not not the same species. Sort of like an two humans are trying to you know, a mommy and a daddy love each other very much, and they're trying to make a baby baby, and then this humanoid, this pale, weird humanoid, just kind of slides between them and goes, you know, I'll be

taking that thank you, and then leaves. You know, it is, it's weird, it's intrusive. It seems like some kind of crime that this Amazon Molly is committing. Oh, and I should mention before I go any further. It's called the Amazon Molly, not because it's anywhere near the Amazon. It's actually uh lives in fresh water in northeastern Mexico and

southern Texas. It's just called Amazon because it's named after the Greek myth of the Amazonians that all female warrior kind of people, except I guess in this case, they sometimes raid the rest of civilization, just as steel uh sperm, which you know is uh, it's it's it's certainly a choice that these these uh, this evolutionary path for these fish and so again it just and I am kind of buffuddled by this because it seems like the sperm just kind of like goes in the fishes in reproductive tract,

bounces off the egg and then that like kick, starts the egg too reproduce a sexually. This is called gino genesis, which is a sexual reproduction that uses sperm to start the reproductive process but does not actually use the sperms D N A and uh, it's actually unclear why why they do that, why they need that, And it is an actual mystery that I can't answer because I don't think it has been answered, or it again to fall into the same fallacy we've we keep using all time.

What what was the fish thinking when saw two other fish of a similar species meeting and thought, I'm just gonna squeeze in there. I'm just gonna squeeze in there, and uh, I'm gonna and then you know, and then if if they if they other fish know this is happening.

And again I realized, there's a listener saying, Jason, they don't know anything, but this is this is the whole reason this is fun for me, because you can't imagine living and without knowing things, even though, if you go back far enough in human evolution, you do find that humans that didn't have language didn't have the ability to have internal monologues with themselves or think verbal thoughts, because

how would they didn't have language. But they were still building societies and they were still cooperating, they were still hunting in teams and communicating that they didn't have conscious thought. So that's weird to think that you can live a human life and do things without like and interior your mental life or whatever. Um, But it can't be that weird because everything on Earth lives that way except us.

Uh So in terms of these two fish getting it on and this third fish comes along, are they just like, hey, yeah, it's you're a freaquent. Yeah, it's you climb on, climb on in here, it's uh, it's it's it's a really interesting question. I think the difference that the kind of like difference between a human that has uh, sort of that meta cognition where we have language and we have that internal monologue, which not all people actually say they

have an internal monologue. Some people kind of just thinking like pictures or feelings, and some people cannot think in pictures. The population that cannot visualize, they have a fantasia. They can't think in pictures, and so, you know, the human experience is very varied in terms of what is actually going on in our brain. And then we try to think about an animal, what is what is actually going on?

I think that a fish something like uh, these little molly's, they I think are conscious in the strictest sense of they probably experience something. Now what that is, I don't know what is their experience when some interloper comes between them just to steal the sperm happening it, I would feel like maybe there is some very primitive, primitive fishy frustration going on. And but an interesting thing is whether

or not they're aware of it. Sometimes the molly's of the related species that this amazon molly is stealing from well actually seem to use it to their advantage. So males will like pretend to go over to the Amazon molly and mate with them, even though typically the molly will seem to understand that this Amazon molly is not

the same species. And then when a male kind of comes and follows them and notices it trying to mate with this amazon, it'll like chase it off to try to mate with the amazon itself, and then that molly will go back over to mate with its own species. So it's kind of like it's almost like tricking these bigger males saying like, oh, look, I found this great female over here, and then the bigger male will go, okay,

well that'll be my female. Then chase off the other one, and the other one may have a better chance than with mating with its own species. So it's just every time you look into these animal behaviors you'll find some new surprising detail where it really boggles the mind how such a simple little creature like a molly can have

these crazy strategies. Yeah, and in fact, there will be people listening to this who will say, well, actually, you guys, in the course of the way you've described a lot of these things, like you know Katie earlier describing these parasites as perverts or depraved or whatever, that your judgments you're making are also based in evolution, That that human culture has developed taboos around whatever you know, burn Burglary, Yeah,

that's yeah, something found on in many human cities. Um, but that these are things that are we find them repulsive for evolutionary reasons because we are trying to prevent, you know, the genetic defects that come from inbreeding things like that, and that what we the end result is us on this podcast expressing like visceral disgusted by various things, and it's like, well, yeah, but even that Visceral discussed, it's something that is instinctive to you, um that you're

making these judgments because you're applying human rules of morality on these to these animals, these freaky animals, that your rules of morality are just as much a part of your instincts for reproduction as these This fish is weird, weird secret threesome heist. Yeah, I mean no fish court would find the smally guilty of sperm heist. Uh. And you can't try a fish in human court, so we're out of options. And uh, there's actually I mean, this is such a bizarre mating strategy. And it's not the

only one though. There is another completely unrelated species. It's not even a fish, it's a salamander. The unisexual mole salamander uses this same technique. So the unisexual mole salamander is found in the Great Lakes region of North America.

It is a tiny population of a mole salamander, and mole salamanders are this small kind of grayish dappled salamander um and this little population are all female, and they do something similar to the Amazon molly, where they steal sperm packets from males, which they use to trigger their reproduction without using any of the male's DNA again making

a clone. And then even weirder is it seems like once in a while these females will use a tiny amount of the males DNA some of the genome, and it's unclear why they do this or if it's even beneficial, and it's just this total mystery of these these salamanders just kind of breaking the rules of reproduction, doing something that whether an you find, you know, ethical is sort

of not uh, not a priority. It's whether, well, how does this even work from a natural selection perspective, because they're creating this population with less genetic diversity, and then they seemingly have these random rules of when they use part of the male's genome. So, yeah, if we could solve this problem of what is going on with these all female mole salamanders, we might actually learn a lot

more about reproduction in general. This is an aside, But there's a thing that we used to do and maybe they still do it. In not to get all political, but sometimes in political media, when they're complaining about like what government money is being spent on, they will call out like these specific line items and grants. It's like, well, they spent five thousand dollars to study the mating habit of the Amazonian nematode, as if the only reason to study it is like if you're a weirdo, or why

would anyone want to know this? Scientists are perverts. Surely that people listening to this as much as we joke about this being a voyeuristic perversion thing. Knowing how animals reproduce, if you're trying to keep them from going extinct, you need to know exactly how they reproduce. Like ideally, like all of this stuff where we've discovered exactly how you know, this weird cycle happens with this ant that looks like

a berry or whatever. If there's a minor, minor change in the environment that for some reason means that this parasite doesn't breed in this exact way anymore, and the ants don't get eaten, and then suddenly something different happens with the ant population, and then that causes a certain plant to disappear, and then the animals that eat that plant now starve those tiny When you see how complex these processes are, you also understand how easy it is

to disrupt them. It's a Jenga tower of and you pull out one weird salamander and you don't know when that's going to cause that whole Jenga tower of animals to collapse. Yes, and so this is something that is crucial because if you see that there's a population of animals suddenly is disappearing, or insects, this suddenly is like

they've dropped off. When you look into it, you if you didn't know any better, you would say, oh, well, it's just because probably some chemicals in the environment that's killing them, or there's you know, their predators have increased, or their their habitats have been overrun by human housing development.

But knowing how fragile and how hypersp specific these strategies are, you realize that teeny tiny changes where it's just one link in the chain that gets broken that has existed for millions of years probably, but it's humans come along and then suddenly a certain stream doesn't exist anymore or whatever, but you've broken a link in a chain. That's why it's important to know this stuff because if you're looking at preserving a species, reproduction is everything that's you know,

that's the whole ballgame. And understanding how these unisexual moles or unisexual mole salamanders, and how these amazon molly's are actually able to continue their existence, continue these populations of clones without dying off because of this lack of genetic diversity could help us revived species that are on the brink of extinction, because that's one of the huge issues

with reviving a species that is going extinct. Even if you say catch it and are trying a breeding program, you get a genetic bottleneck where it's hard to introduce more diversity into these uh the gene pool of this animal that you're revitalizing, because like say you have a population of only ten left, how do you bring that back from the brink while still keeping their genetic library sort of vital enough and diverse enough for them to survive.

And so if we could understand how these things are surviving, how they can get by without too much of uh, you know, how they can get by basically cloning themselves, but also using genetic information from other species that could be a breakthrough and understanding how we could bring species back or endangered or even almost extinct. Yes, and I think this is something where ott of people don't understand that.

For example, if some fish population and a certain body of water that humans depend on, when we talk about over over fishing, you think, oh, so you're afraid that we will fish until every single one of those fish is gone, like it will have gone extinct when we finally have caught the final fish. That's not how it works. There's a threshold of a certain number of breeding pairs of several thousand or however many, where you don't have enough genetic diversity left, and then one parasite or one

disease can wipe out the rest. So what happens is you get to a certain threshold that's low enough that the rest of the population collapses. For the same reason we just discussed, you don't have enough enough of them breeding in enough varieties to be to withstand the natural stuff that's always going to come along in the environment that they can't handle the next winter or the next whatever.

That what happens. It's not that we kill every single last one of these bears or these lizards or whatever. It is that the population gets low enough that they go ahead and just go extinct on their own. Yeah, exactly.

I mean that's called once they've reached that point of no return and we can't do a captive breeding program, it's called being functionally extinct, where there's still technically some out there in this population, but it's only a matter of time before they go extinct because you know, we we can't bring them back from this threshold, and they cannot recover from this threshold, which is what's feared to

be happening with some species. The one that breaks my heart the most is the Kido, which is this teeny tiny dolphin that lives off the coast of Mexico, and I think it's thought to be basically functionally extinct at this point, even though there's like maybe twenty individuals left. It's pretty it's looking pretty grim, which is just it's so sad, heartbreaking, And I know that no one in

the listenership here is saying this. The questions like, well, yeah, but how does that benefit humans to keep these around or to know how to to to clone you know, creatures or whatever. The Remember, if someday you want humans to be able to build a clone army of super soldiers, we have to examine other species that have successfully done this.

Yeah no, I mean that's my that that was my intention in my island experiment of clone babies that I left alone to fit for themselves, which I guess I had to shut down because you said it was like illegal or an ethical or something, and my lawyer is like shaking your head and saying, no, stop talking about this. But yeah, no, I mean I think that is the most important lesson from this show. It's that we must study animals to create clone armies that can turn our

enemies into berries. Yes, And the only way to get the funding through this is to buy one of the limited edition jpeg n f T s that have been released through this show that again can only be purchased with the specific cryptocurrency of this show, creature coin, creature coin. Yes, yeah, yeah, And I send you a packet of your very own parasitic nematodes that you just swallow with a glass of water and there you there, you have your very own n f T, your nematode freely swimming in your tummy.

So if you're asking how does that, like, how is that going to make me rich? All I can say is you're ignorant. You don't understand. You understand the future, research, blockchain, just research and you'll understand. Yeah, because because you know what, when the computer was invented, they said that was stupid too, They said that was a scam. So if you if you're against this, you're literally just against progress exactly. It's the and it's not a parasite controlling my brain and

making me say that to propagated species. That's ridiculous. So before we go, we do actually have to attend to some extremely important business, and that's the guests who's squawking game. It's the mystery animal of the week. So first I have to extend my deepest apologies. I have made a horrible mistake. A couple of weeks ago. I did something unforgivable. I forgot to announce the winners who correctly gives the sound of the baby carockle uh. So I'm gonna do

that now. The fastest three guessers were Anti b, Hannah w and Remy h. You guys, thank you so much for your guesses on that amazingly, I'm so proud of you for guessing. I'm so sorry, are you I forgot to to declare those Uh please, if you can find it in your heart to forgive me at some point, I would. I would appreciate that. But you know it's a Now we got to move on to last week's mystery sound. So every week we play a mystery animal sound and you, the listeners, try to guess who is squawking,

who is making that sound. And the hint for last week was, this is a baby aquatic mammal with big teeth. Adorable, but you'd better pray mama is not around. H m h m. There's surely no way. Baby otters sound like that, Like, this thing sounds big. It sounds sounds like Walrus, like more Walrus e something in the Walrus category of of product. Yeah, and in the in sort of the Walrous section of Walgreens. Yes. So this that is a very good guess because this is a baby hippo. It is a an aquatic mammal

that's got those big two teeth. And congratulations to the three fastest guessers, Anti B, who is our Champion Animal sound Guesser, as well as Saga E and Emily M. And an honorable mention to Joey P who not only guessed correctly that it's a baby hippo, but also specifically guessed it's Fiona of the Cincinnati Zoo, which is correct. I don't know how you guessed not only the species but the specific individual. Um so yeah, congratulations. Hippos are

very vocally communicative. They will grunt at each other. Mothers will sometimes grunt out a special call to their babies, and babies will runt toilet their mother or in this case human caretakers know that they are there. Uh. Their calls each have a distinctive sound, and other hippos can recognize the individual by the literal calling card of their

wheezing honks. And again, as always every week, all three winners will win a brand new Accord uh worth worth forty seven thousand dollars retail that that will be please sending your information. The car will be delivered to your to your home. Yes, send your information to Jason Pargeon. He handles um all of the the car gifting on the show. So yeah. And if he doesn't respond, to keep tweeting at him. He likes that, so legally, I guess we have to say there is you win nothing

for this other than pride. It's not pleased, not legally binding, just a sense of self satisfaction that you're a smarty pants yes so so, no cars, just the good feeling of being smart. I feel like in the old radio days, you would win like a lifetime supply of some sort of soap, soap powder or something. You need a sponsor that you can you win. You win something, A year supply of something seems a year supply of parasitic nematodes. It's just they breed on their own and it's just

one packet they Basically, it's basically a lifetime supply. You ever wanted that perfect berry shaped But well, you don't have to work out for hours at the gym anymore. So Onto this week's mystery animal sound. The hint is that this is what happens when you get a little too nosy with this group. Jason, can you guess who's squawking? I'm afraid to say because I think I know exactly what it is and I don't want to ruin it.

I'll just bleep you out if you're right, that sounds exactly like a like a donkey, right, like a like a cartoon donkey. That that's it's it does? Doesn't it a brain donkey? Yeah? Brain? Yeah? I mean I guess that's another hint because it's not a brain donkey. It is something else. Okay, I was I was afraid to say because I think that's just straight up but I'm sure this it does sound like a donkey. That doesn't it a joke that previous guests have made on your show.

But I love that some of these recordings, you know, they've got people in the recording because they're in captivity or whatever. But I would love one where the next the hint is just a person just shouting like what is this creature? That that is from the Prime Primeate family? Is just hey, what are you doing? Hey? What's that thing? What do you what do you record me for? Do you know what this creature is? One of these weeks, One of these weeks, I'll do that, But this week

a hint. It is not a human, nor is it a donkey. It's somewhere between a human and a donkey. So, uh, if you think you know the answer to who is squawking on this week's Mr. Animal Sound Game. Send me an email at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com. Jason, thank you so much for joining me today and talking about everything from Barry but parasites to fish and and salamanders deciding they don't want to put up with normal mating. Where can people find you? I write novels for a

living us. I may have mentioned on this show. The next one that I have up for preorder is called If the Book Exists, You're in the Wrong Universe. Um. As she mentioned. This is a in a series of books. First one was called John Dies at the end that one got made into a movie. The movie is on HBO Max if you want to watch it and get a sense of what type of thing I write, and then you can go enjoy the books the movie was

based on. They are for adults. Please do not complain at me if they are these are These are adult books for grown ups who even then maybe too to adult for many of you. Otherwise, my name is Jason Pargeon. Type that name into Google. You will find me on every possible social media platform except TikTok. I'm not doing TikTok ever, I'm not. That's where I draw the line. I have in Instagram, on on Twitter, I have three Facebook pages. I'm on all of them. I'm on good Reads,

i have a YouTube channel. I have a substant Jason Parson dot substanct dotcom. I'm not doing TikTok. I'm not. I'm sorry. Are you wordling a word? I had to mute the word myrtle wordle from Twitter. I'm not mad at the wordld people. It's just that I don't it's not doing anything for me to just show me those green blocks every day. I'm not playing, so it doesn't. That doesn't communicate anything to me. That's fine. I'm not mad at you for playing it. I'm glad you're all

having fun. I just had to mute it. Well it's a loss. It's a loss for word all to have lost you from from the from the wordle verse. But ah yeah, thank you guys so much for listening. You can find the podcast on the internet at Creature feature Pot on Instagram, at Creature feet Pot on Twitter. That's not et that is something very different, and thank you

so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you feel like it, I can't tell you what to do, but if you want to leave a review or a rating, like, I'm not going to stop you. I may even like it. I might even read your review, and it might make me feel all warm inside. And thanks to the Space Classics for their super awesome song Exo Alumina. Creature features

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