The Dark Tetrad

used by psychologists. General attempts to categorize evil has resulted in the creation of the dark tetrad, a term used for poor personality traits associated with bad behavior, narcissism, sadism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism. These are traits that are often attributes of people with maladaptive, dangerous personalities. So what does it mean

to be in the dark tetrad? We all know generally the concept of narcissism, sadism, psychopathy, and mockavillianism, but what does that actually look like in humans and even animals. Let's take a look at narcissism. For example, the d s MS definition for clinical levels of narcissism is someone who has quote a grandiose sense of self importance and

shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes. I mean, you've almost certainly encountered at least a subclinical narcissist, and no doubt you could name a few celebrities and politicians who fit the bill. But could you find narcissism and animals. Many animals seem like narcissists, But even if you point the finger at a totally self obsessed animals, say a house cat, you could also argue they lack the sense of self

to be narcissists. Certainly, all Mintance seems to care about as herself, but she may not fully comprehend that she is a herself. So can you really be a narcissist? This is the problem with trying to assign human traits to animals. We can't get inside the animal's head and know what it's thinking. An act that seems sadistic or manipulative may be simply an instinct that allows the animal to pass on its genes. It's impossible to know what

they're really feeling. But hey, this podcast is all about the impossible, So we're going to look at the animals that best symbolize each of the remaining characteristics of the Dark tet tread sadism, psychopathy, and machiavellianism. We'll compare these masters of evil with their human counterparts, exploring what it means to be a member of the Dark tet Tread and whether we can use modern scientific imaging to actually

quantify what it means to be a psychopath. Joining me today on our journey into the dark is Ben Bolen and Noel Brown, hosts of the podcast Ridiculous History. Welcome to guys. Thanks for having us. Katie, Yeah, for sure, so much. I'm already kind of terrified, Um, but I'm excited. It's it's a weird feeling. I, for one, m and thrilled, darkly thrilled. One of you were you were mentioning you have a cat, would you describe your cat as a narcissist? Oh? Sure,

I mean he I don't know, it's weird. He's sort of like flits between narcissism and outright psychopathy. Like I was saying, he kind of leaves me little treats on the front porch where it'll be like almost like splayed out like some kind of satanic ritual. What will be like the head of a squirrel and the body of a rat, and then you know, kind of surrounded by like viscera and like the shaping pentagram. Sometimes it's really pretty scary. But then he snuggles up, you know, like

a good little guy. So I don't know what to make of him. I do not know what to make of him. I hope, I'm hoping I can learn from this podcast today and kind of get inside his head a little bit more and understand what makes him tick. Yeah. And I mean, even dogs, to me are pretty narcissistic because they, like my own dog, you associate them with being selfless and loving towards humans. But she's a black

whole of neediness and desiring affection. So no matter how much I pet her, like I feel like if I was dying on the floor, her number one priority would be to get another belly robe before I pass out. Yeah. And then, as we all know too, if we if we died alone in our apartments with just our cats are our dogs, they would probably instantly start eating us. But that's any animal would eventually begin eating you if it were a pain. No, So is the love real, Ben,

that's my question. The love is real? But now we're talking about the nature of the body versus the mind or the soul, which I don't think is quite where we're going with today's Well, you did say what is evil is evil real, So I'm intrigued. Please let's let's dive right in. There's a lot of curiosity around whether animals can be statistic. A catterer dolphin who plays with their heft dead prist seems statistic, but there's actually practicality

behind their cruelty. So take this example. Dolphins beat up octopi before eating them, even after they're dead. This may seem overkill, as if the dolphins simply can't stop their murderous frenzy because they're having too much fun, but there's actually a really good reason to play rugby with a dead octopus. Octopi don't have centralized nervous systems, so after

they're dead, their tentacles can still move around. If an overeager dolphin gobbles up an octopus who's dead but still wriggling, those tentacles can crawl up its esophagus and choke the dolphin too death. This is something that's actually been documented before. So the dolphins beat the octopi to a pulp before chowing down, preventing the octopi from getting its refine from beyond its watery grave. So asking whether animals are statistic

is a tricky question. I'd wager I guess that yes, more intelligent animals like dolphins are primates, may have fun reeking doom and destruction, even if there's a good evolutionary reason for it. But instead, I want to look at how evolution itself can create a sadistic monster or void of any emotion at all. To do that, we'll have to take a look at tarantula's and in this case, the tarantulas are the innocent victims of a much more

terrifying creature. So you, guys, imagine being captured by a criminal sadist, being paralyzed by him, stuck inside like kill shed totally at his mercy, completely paralyzed, Katie, I think about that all the time. It's like, you know those bad dreams where you you're like trying to run away from a bad guy and you can't move your stupid body. Sure, it's like this is really common recurring dream for me.

I'm like trying to run, but it just feels like you're stuck in mud and then you you can't move at all, and you try to scream, but you can't scream. It's like that part of Nightmare on Elm Street where where the where she's running up the stairs and she starts sinking the stairs turning into marshmallows and she just like sinks into it. Oh, I hate that, or like

or like the bed sinks under you. The fear of moving slowly in dreams, of trying to run but being unable to is I think slightly more common than the other spooky one, which is the fear of your teeth falling out in your dreams. Yeah. Yeah, that's a common one to the body horror, either teeth, skin, or hair just falling out. I get those ones too. I hate it, like big chunks of skin falling off. It's the worst.

I have one question when when we talk about this, this attack of paralysis, right, do the animal victims of this sort of attack do they experience fear as we would understand it, you know, I'm not sure. I mean, so we're talking about tarantula's being the victims, so they're terrorized by this thing called tarantula hawk. It's a sort of wasp and I imagine if the tarantula is capable of feeling anything at all, this is going to be

the scariest thing that ever happens to it. I feel like tarantulas are probably just a little more advanced than like a roomba in terms of their ability to like sense things. But I feel like there's got to be some kind of very primitive wiring that is able to at least, you know, gets like some dim awareness of

being afraid of something so that they can survive. Probably no other real cognition beyond that, but other than like, uh yeah, probably just like an impending death kind of moment, you know, where it's like funk, it's over, like oh oh no, oh no. But the the tarantula hawk is it Is it actually a hawk? No? No, it's so it's a type of wasp. And if you look into evolutionary biology, you'll find that of asshole behavior is by wasps.

Uh So, what these tarantula hawks do is they wait outside of tarantula's burrow and they pluck at the tarantula's webbing to lure the spider out. Because the trantulas create this this little sort of dormat of webbing, so that when an insect crawls across it, they know to pop

out and capture the prey. But instead of a juicy little worm, it's the trantula hawk waiting for them, and it stings the tarantula with a paralyzing venom, and so the tarantula is frozen but still completely alive, and the wasp drags the tarantula back to its burrow, where it places the trantula snugly inside and then lays a single

egg on top of it. And I feel like, if you're the tarantula, with whatever tarantula consciousness that you have, if you can't move and you see someone laying egg on top of you, this is the point where you're going like, well, this is not going to be cool. Indeed, it's not cool for the tarantula. So the hawk the wasp buries the tarantula alive and tamps down the earth. So it's stuck in there, still alive, buried alive, with

this little baby hatching on top of it. So the wasp larva will feed on the live flesh of the tarantula for up to a month. That's like the buffalo bill of the animal kingdom right there, and this is this is terrifying. Why is it? Why? Why is this so adapted to do this bizarre thing like that? It seems like such a stretch, like how, I mean, how, how how did this creature come up with this idea?

I mean, that's a stilly way of asking it. We'll think about it this way, like when you you know, animals, especially like wasps, they don't have refrigerators, so they can't keep food fresh for their young as it hatches and develops. So by burying their larva, they're keeping it safe from predators. But you know, if you bury it with some dead prey, it can feed off of it for a while, but eventually that's going to go bad and it can't eat it anymore. But by feeding on something that's alive, it

will stay fresh. So actually, some species of the tarantula hawks will feed on non vital organs first, so that the tarantula remains alive longer and that gives it more opportunities to feed. Makes sense, makes sense. I have a quick question here, Katie. So you know how serial killers are often known for their specific m O, either in the way that they commit murder or in the types of victims they choose are different species of tarantula hawk

Do they operate in a similar way. Do they only prey on specific types of tarantulas or is it any hairy arachnet out there is fair game? Yeah? No, they they are often very specific in terms of the way that they kill, in which species of tarantula that they go after, because it's such a specified strategy because you need a tarantula that is a burrowing type of tarantula um and so that's not going to be every every

spider it's there. Very specific strategy isn't gonna work. So it's picked these cute little I mean to me, they're cute, the tarantulas that like hiding their little holes and then as soon as a little prey comes by, they're like, oh, got you, But this time they're the ones who are got So Also, it actually gets more specific because female tarantulas are the ones that are the killers. Males just

hang around flowers and try to get laid. So the mother actually will select the gender of the larva based on how big their victim is. If they have a big tarantula that they've buried alive, then the mother will fertilize the egg, which creates a female because the females are the big, tough serial killers and the males are

these little, smaller flower drinking dudes. And so if the tarantula is small, you know, it's like the male doesn't require as much nutrition to develop, so the wasp believe the egg unfertilized and then that creates a male baby. And adults are actually non carnivorous, so it's just the babies that eat the meat. The adults just like to drink flower nectar and then abducted murdered tarantula's well, yeah that too. It's sort of like have you guys seen

what is it? Um? What's that movie? It's not called? Is it Split? The one with James McAvoy, Yes, yes, he has multiple personalities? Yeah yeah, and the one like he has like the mother personality or he's like I've made you a sandwich and like he's stroking her hair and stuff. It makes me think of that, these like wasp that like, oh, I like to drink flour nectar anyways, enjoy being paralyzed while my baby eat you? Yeahike? So how long does it take to kill the tarantela? Like?

How long does this horrible torture porn go on. It can be up to a month, which is crazy to me because like, that's such a long time to be slowly eaten. It's like being in a sarlac pit. It's just do they even do they even do them the kindness of reinjecting them with the paralyzing venom, or does that eventually just wear off once they're buried and they don't even care anymore. I think it will eventually wear off, but I think they'll most likely die before it does.

And also the they're packed in so tight inside the dirt they can't move anyways. It's every nightmare combined into one, like being paralyzed, being eaten alive, being married alive, and having a baby eating you as the baby part is extra creepy. That's to me, that's the kicker. I don't know why. Something about the baby eating you from the top down is just really really awful, because even human murderers don't do that. That's one of the big differences,

very special kind of evil. There aren't typically baby murderers, although there are children who can be murders, but I don't think infants have yet done a murder. It's a different show. So good news you guys. Tarantula hawks are found all over the world, including Australia, which duck because Australia is just home to every monster. They're also in Africa, Southeast Asia, India, and also America. They're even in San Diego, California,

which is my hometown. That's astonishing. Yeah, we're you able to find any video of this process going down. I would love slash. Yeah, I could totally send you guys something like that. It's I have seen it. It's pretty gnarly because you see this wasp attached itself to the tarantula and then there's a scuffle and then the tarantula slowly starts to go very still, and that's when the dread sets in. Yeah, it was. It was as as

you were walking us through this process. I was watching a video of a child who is watching this intense deathmatch and kidnapping, abduction, burial of a tarantula, and even the kid seems to I think this is this is a little brutal. You can see the tarantula attempt to escape as the paralytic agent is kicking in. But I was surprised by the size because at least in what we're seeing here, the tarantula hawk looks significantly smaller than

the creature it's attacking. Yeah, and that's why it's having the ability to paralyze the tarantula is so important because it's using it's Smart's not really because wasps are done, but in evolutionary terms, like this intelligent strategy over the

brawn of the tarantula. That sting is extremely powerful. So there's this entomologist Dr Justin Schmidt from the Southwestern Biological Institute, and he created a sting pain index, and ah, he says the Transla hawks sting is quote unsurpassed and intensity by any other stinging insect and that a sting feels like a lightning bolt struck the spot. The pain is beyond imagination. And you want to know why he knows this?

Did he sting himself up? This crazy bastard like just created the sting pain Inda by finding a bunch of insects that sting and then having them sting himself and then rating it like, oh yeah, that's yep, that's a tim How is that guy? Is he still alive? I don't want to I don't want to sound insensitive, Okay, yeah, I don't think he's killed himself with insects things, just

subjected himself to quote unimaginable pain. Now from if if what I remember is correct, wasps are notorious for they're just attacking human beings who happen to be around their general vicinity. Are tarantula hawks that way too? Or do they have to be you know, provoked or prodded? They have to be provoked. So the silver lining is they're actually pretty non aggressive towards anything except for obviously tarantulas.

But I mean, if you get one caught like in your sweater, it'll probably sting you out of a fear response. But yeah, they don't go around trying to attack people, which think I because that would be terrible. But if you're a tarantula, you know not not such good luck? Wow? And they're so widespread. Yeah, so I guess then one of the big questions keep I keep going back to

is is this evil? Because it sounds like this is while it's horrific for the tarantula, the victim, the incubator, it seems like it's the only way for these uh, these creatures to reproduce. Is that correct? Like there's no alternative, right, and so this is like, this is the key question is now, I don't think a wasp is capable of being evil in the sense that we kind of define

it because they're so simple. They're basically like robots. So it's like you wouldn't necessarily describe a virus as being evil because it's so simple, and even the wasps are a great deal more complex than virus. I don't think they can have like the intent or the awareness to be evil. But when you look at it, like you kind of take a step back and look at it from like an evolutionary perspective, where it's sort of more of this emergent intelligence from millions of years of evolution,

I mean, maybe you can define that as evil. You know, I'm not talking about like intelligent design or like some god controlling evolution, talking about like, you know, you have this sort of like guiding force of evolution that is its own sort of like I mean, it is it is a form of intelligence where it's like you have to really zoom out to see it, where it's just millions and millions of years of these small changes resulting in something that's so so messed up, and maybe that's

like a natural form of evil. I don't know. I guess that's a very philosophical question. Well, I think it is. But it's also interesting because so much of psychopathy is almost like reptilian type behavior, or like non feeling, non empathetic type behavior, which is the kind of things that an insect like this would do. Like there's no feeling about it. It's just, you know, I must feed, I must feed my baby, and this is how I'm going

to go about doing it. It's very callous, for lack of a better term, you know, but you're right, there's no cognition involved. It's just the thing that makes sense and that it's adapted perfectly to do. But I think we ascribe those kind of things to psychopaths as well, right, because I think with a human we're like, you should be capable of empathy. But then it it's a really uncomfortable question because it's a little more clear when you're looking at a wasp that okay, of course it doesn't

understand what it's doing. But you could also make that argument for humans who can't feel empathy, like they may

truly not understand the gravity of what they're doing. And then is that sort of like the up where you can't really blame them, or is there something else going on with people where it's like, well you should be smart enough to figure out, like does there even need to be like an intentionality behind evil, because like if it's defined as something where it's like you're incapable of feeling mercy or empathy, then maybe just like evil doesn't need to be like intentionally evil. It's just a force

that doesn't have empathy and then causes harm. So then we would be defining evil as not the addition of something nefarious or insidious, but the absence of an alternative, long term evolutionary strategy, because that's what empathy ultimately functions as, right, right, right, Yeah, that's really interesting. It's like we have because there are some animals who have evolved a survival strategy that could be seen as like good. So like bees are so

social and help each other. So you know a lot of these youth social animals, so like these and ants and even naked mole rats, they all seem to team up and pitch in and help each other and care about each other um as much as like a bee can. But it does seem like a kinder sort of animal in general than a wasp, even though if you take a bee and a wasp individually, they don't really I

don't think they can feel kindness. But you look at the whole the group of them, like a bee colony does seem to have empathy, for it's like each other in a weird way. So what would a tarantula hawk be in terms of the dark triad or dark tetrat? Would they would they qualify as a sadist? Yeah, that's what I'm thinking, Like these very sadistic because like to keep something alive for up to a month and then

slowly feed on it. It's just so it seems so unnecessarily cruel, even though, as we've talked about it, there is a reason for it. Yeah, I think that checks out. As we've just discussed in the Animal Kingdom, some of the most terrifying examples of sadism are due to reproductive needs in humans. Some of the most dangerous people are those who somehow link sexuality to sadism. This is called a paraphilia. It's a form of sexuality that is atypical

or pathological. Now a huge disclaimer here, I'm not talking about the b D s M community. People who engage in b D s M are very different from those with sexual sadism disorder, the key thing being consent and healthy communication. For media SIM practitioners, consent is extremely important. They may find sadistic acts or masochistic acts to be sexually arousing, but not unless their partner is equal interested. That's why safe words, setting, clear boundaries, and a lot

of discussion is often present in these communities. And it's also why psychologists don't consider b D s M to be a disorder. They aren't causing harm to themselves or others well, I mean psychologically speaking, but sexual sadism disorder is different. People with this disorder are aroused by the suffering of others, and the disorder is either harmful to the individual who might find it disturbing or upsetting, or to others in the case of sex offenders who seek

out non consent and victims. What I find interesting is the difference between people with sexual stadium disorder who choose not to act on it and those who do, meaning that there are some who either have empathy or at least a fear of consequences while still feeling these sadistic urges. I had a clinical psychology professor who put it this way. The explosive combination is having both a sadistic paraphilia and a clinical lack of empathy. Those are the ingredients to

make most types of serial killers. So after a quick break, that will bring us to our next member of the dark tetrad, this psychopath. So how do you spot a psychopath by the cold look of cruel and difference in their glassy eyes, the pile of bodies in their basements? Well, what about with technology? Psychologists have attempted to quantify psychopathy using brain imaging, which leads us to one of the

most interesting stories in brain research. James Fallon is a neuroscientist who is interested in looking at the anatomical characteristics found in the brains of serial killers. He found a pattern of abnormalities and the PET scans of these killers showing structural aberrations in the orbital cortex, the prefrontal cortex, the ventral anterior singulate, and the omega LA. As he was shuffling through piles of brain scans on his desk, he was looking through a file on his family's brain

scans taken for another study on Alzheimer's. One of the scans had the clear structural abnormalities consistent with psychopathy. Curious as to who and his family was a psychopath, he looked up the name and was surprised to find it was his own brain scan. Obviously, he wasn't a violent killer, so first he wondered if all his research about the psychopathic brain was just wrong. But when he took genetic tests, he found that he also had a reels associated with

people high at risk for exhibiting violent behavior. He did some introspection and decided, instead of it being a fluke, he may very well have a psychopathic brain. But due to his loving upbringing with parents and siblings who were devoted to him, he suspects he was able to avoid the more frightening violent traits of the psychopath. But when nature is left to her own devices, what kind of deadly killers does she concoct? The deadliest serial killers are

often harmless looking. They blend right in, allowing them to continue their killing while raising no alarms. As we'll find out, this is true both in human society and the animal kingdom. So speaking of psychopaths, let's talk about cats. Uh So, guys, which wildcat would you guess is the most prolific serial

killers of them all? Uh, wildcats specifically, Let's see, it's probably it's probably smaller than one would imagine because naturally people would think something large, like a tiger or maybe a lion. But I'm going to go with something smaller, maybe a bobcat or a wildcat. That's a really intelligent gift, yeah, because like you have these huge predator cats, so like

lions seem really formidable. I mean, they have a thousand ps i of force for their jaw strength, so just for comparison, we only have about two p s i, so they're so powerful. And you know, there's also like the more sleek ones like cheetahs who can run up to seventy five miles an hour and jaguars who are super like buff and can carry cadavers up a tree. But you're right that even those guys are really terrifying, they're not the most prolific serial killers, and we do

have to get smaller. In fact, our most prolific serial killer kitty, is one of the smallest species of cats in the world, and that includes domestic cats, so they're smaller than your household kitty. It's this really adorable cat.

It's called the black footed cat. They're about three times smaller than your pet house cat, and they weigh in about two to four pounds, so females are around two pounds, males can get up to around four pounds, and they have a sixty per kill success raid, which if you've ever seen a nature documentary and you see how many times a lioness will have a goof up and not be able to catch its prey is incredible. So they actually look a lot like a house cat, but just

like kind of shrunken down. They have big eyes and their tan with dark brown spots and striations. And they're called black footed because their little feets are black. And uh they're also called ant hill tigers because when they're cornered, they'll like, they'll mess you up, they'll cut you. They're very aggressive. You know, I'm looking at I'm looking at a picture of one right now, and I gotta say,

these cats are adorable. They look even better than my two cats, and my two cats are just you know, cat models. Basically, they have that like baby schema. The because they have the big eyes and the big foreheads and they're they're really tiny and just soup. We're super cute. You would not think these are a big threat. So

what kind of what kind of stuff do they hunt? Well, their prey can be pretty small, so rodents, birds, pretty much anything that moves and they can fit in their mouths though, so they'll do insects, lizards, birds, and small rodents are their favorite. They're mostly nocturnal. They'll walk twenty miles a night, So that's the furthest that any small

wildcat will walk. And I did a little math and if you scale that up to um human size, that's like walking a thousand miles at night, which I know, it's like it's like the Proclaimer's song, like I will walk five hundred miles. So that does that mean these little sweet babies hunt for sport, just like for kicks? Like why why is such a high kill rate versus lions who to me seem like they hunt more practically

and functionally to you know, feed? No, they I mean they just have a rapid metabolism and they for the food that they can't eat on the spot, they store in their burrows. So it's not for fun, it's definitely for nutrition. And these smaller animals will actually have a pretty large nutritional demand because they can't bulk up a lot of calories and then just like sleep it off. They have to be constantly eating. And to be clear, we're talking about the most prolific successful serial killers, not

just the most attempts, is that correct. I mean they actually rack up a pretty high kill count, so I would say they are of the big cats. They kill the most per day. So they can take down around fifteen prey items a night, which is a lot, and that includes like birds. So if you there's a really cool video I can show you guys, and I'll put that up on our Twitter where it just like jumps up and catches a bird midair and it's got it like jammed in its mouth and it looks very pleased

with itself. Um, but yeah, that's like about a kill an hour, So that's I mean, these are small prey items, but you know you scale that down to the size of the cow, which is like two pounds of like pure murderous rage, and that's like, you know, it's like taking if a lion could take down a small gazelle like every hour, So they also do. It's so cute.

They do the little but wiggle, you know that thing like when your cat is getting ready to pounce, and it's like there's a little sweety swooty with its butt like Simba and the Lion King sometimes too. Yeah, yeah, they do that. They do the little little but wiggle, and so that's actually not just to look cute. It helps a line their feet under them so they can

pounce with maximum precision and power like a spring. And sometimes they do take down bigger prey though, so they rarely but sometimes kill cape hairs, which way more than them. There these relatively larger rabbits. So it's just kind of funny because they they're just like so amped up on being murderous they don't even think that, oh maybe this rabbit I can't even carry it because it weighs like twice of me. So is this where the is this

where the psychopathy aspect comes in? Yeah, because it's like I feel like they're desire to kill these bigger prey items. Is it's like, clearly you're not going to eat that, it's too big. I mean, maybe you know, they do save it for later, but it's kind of funny. I don't even know if they could fit a cape hair in their din. So it's just killing stuff because they're driven to kill. I mean, we've all been there. But that's what my housecat does. That is what my indoor, outdoor,

sweet snuggly housecat does. He's not hungry, he doesn't bet he doesn't have a six kill rate though, No, absolutely not. But it's like he is clearly toying with these creatures and you know, just like leaving them in the most twisted arrays I've ever seen in my life. Like it's it's like this, it haunts my my dreams. It's it's bizarre that I guess that's why I was asking earlier, like does this creature hunt kind of for sport? So

I guess some of that does enter into it. If it's not, it's not even thinking about the fact that it can't actually carry it, you know, the kill away. It just needs to feed the urge, right right, And well, I mean it's really interesting because with housecats, obviously they don't need to kill anything at all because they're getting

fed their little kilbls and bits. But I think they have a desire to hunt, so they're driven to hunt by this, and it is a survival instinct to hunt, because you can imagine if a cat didn't have that and just waited around for kibble, if it lived in the wild, it would be done an evolutionary dead end. But yeah, I mean it's we can't talk to a cat and say like, hey, do you really enjoy doing this? But my guess would be that they do get satisfaction

from it. And even though it is an evolutionary strategy, and even playing with their prey has practical reasons like making sure it's dead and also honing their skills, I mean, they seem to love doing it, and that is kind of psychopathic, isn't it. Yeah, that's a good point, especially when we consider not just cats, but a lot of similar mammals. Their juvenile phase is spent playing, and playing is really just a less fatal version of the hunting

that they will instinctively practice later in life. And I can absolutely see from a neurological perspective, I can absolutely see an animal as evolved as a cat or my cats enjoying that kind of thing. It's it's scratching an itch. Your body and your brain will tell you it's a pleasurable and correct thing to do right, right. I mean, like, we do have video games where we like to kill stuff.

So it makes me wonder if we might have something like that deep inside us, where we kind of, you know, maybe have that killing instinct that's just been over many, many hundreds of thousands of the years of cultural and societal evolution has been sort of put inside a little box and um locked away, except in the cases of serial killers. Right well, in the defense of my cats, Dr Vankman and Mr Jackpott have to shout him out here. Yeah,

and it's the real names. In defense of my cats, they have at the very least never paralyzed someway and buried them alive and put a kitten inside of their bodies to cute, Like would a kitten bursting out of a tarantula be cute or horrible? I can't know. I'm on the fence. I'm honestly on the fence because if that was backwards, like a trantula bursting out of a kitten, that would obviously be horrible. But when you do it

in verse, it's kind of cute. I mean, I still feel bad for the tarantula, but you know, hey, it's a kitten, sure, So it's pretty crazy. You mentioned fallon the neuroscientist. He's actually in the show that I'm working on called Happy Face. It's like a true crime show about the happy Voice killer, and it's about this guy's daughter and in the show, she goes and gets analyzed by this guy to try to figure out whether she

herself has inherited her father's psychopathic tendencies. And it's really interesting because it's like there's a lot of discussion around it, whether it's like is it all nature, is it all nurture? Is it a combination of the two. Can you really figure out just from someone's brain scan whether or not this is true. It seems like a very kind of like surfacing way of of of figuring that stuff out

because it's a combination of a lot of factors. But he actually talks a lot about psychopathy in the animal kingdom too, and how it's actually can be a positive trait, like, um, you know, animals that are psychopaths will kind of they'll go places that other animals won't and they will actually breed more successfully and things like that. Um, it's I'm not explaining it super well, but it's yeah, because like psychopaths. One of their characteristics is risk taking and not having

a fear of the consequences. So in some cases that could obviously be very bad, but for some animals that will bring you a reward. If you are bolder and take a risk and try something novel, that lack of fear will actually give you a leg up over your competition. That is exactly what he was talking about. You know, so long as they survive to reproduce, that's that's that's the Vegas Odds part. Yeah, that's that's really interesting. I've

actually listened to some of that podcast. It's so I think that is it's such a personal perspective on the nature versus nurture because she's I mean, from my perspective, she's obviously a very empathetic person to be so worried about that part of her nature. But I can totally imagine how that would be. That you're wondering, like, well, any any behavior you feel where it's like maybe you know you have sean Freud a sometime, or you feel angry, you wonder like, well, is that me? Or is that

like these genes inside me puppeting me? Yeah, And you might not have made it far enough in the series. I don't want to spoil anything, but it does come into play, like the way she's dealt with relationships and kind of her emotional kind of closed awfulness, and that's a big part of it, and wondering if she can actually feel things the way quote unquote normal people can. So it's something that really haunts her and bothers her.

And at the end of the series she kind of figures out, you know, at least as far as this guy is concerned, what she is. Yeah, the story of the most prolific serial killer in human history is one that's more tragic than gruesome. Harold Friederich Shipman was a bespectacled, bearded man, very ordinary and meek looking. He was a doctor,

married and had four children. Not someone whom you would peg as a cold blooded killer, but he killed two hundred and eighteen people, committing crimes undetected for twenty three years. Shipman was a GP who had his own practice near Manchester, England. He targeted the most vulnerable people as his victims, his own geriatric patients. Most of victims were the elderly women in his care to whom he gave lethal doses of morphine.

He had a typical pattern. He would give his victims a lethal dose of diamorphine, signed their death certificates, and then alter their medical records to falsely indicate that their health had been in decline. Shipman was an outlier even amongst serial killers, as there was no clear motive for the crime, except in one case, he altered his victim's will to make himself the beneficiary of three hundred and eighty six thousand pounds, something the victim's daughter found to

be awfully suspicious. So why did he kill It's hard to know for certain. As a teenager, he witnessed his mother received morphine for terminal cancer until she died of the disease. Some of the psychiatrists who have looked at his case speculate that he had a deep seated need to control other people, something influenced but certainly not caused

in total by his mother's death. Another possibility psychiatrists have proposed is that he felt a sense of relief from stress or pressure by killing his patients, as he considered them a nuisance. This is the heart of what a psychopath is. Coldly, flippantly cruel. We need a minute to clean our brains with images of cute cats. Wait is that a blackfooted cat? And is that a baby bird

in its mouth? Oh no, We'll be right back. Machiavellianism through the scope of psychology is defined as a duplicitous manipulation with a disregard for morality, putting personal gain before any feelings of empathy. Think Little Finger from Game of Thrones, someone behind the scenes manipulating and pulling strings, causing destruction for others or their own gain. But fortunately Machiavellians can only manipulate, not mind control. They're victims. However, the natural

world is not so merciful. Work wanted to discuss a macki villion animal that is literally pulling the strings using real life mind control. So mind control and hypnosis is often explored in popular culture. From the Manchurion candidate to Jessica Jones were fascinated by the idea of thought control. So, you know, the Purple Man and Jessica Jones, it's such a creepy villain. Doctor who David Tennant, Yeah, he's so

lovable and doctor Who. But then his and he's just I think, so he's got he's got a good range. I didn't trust him. You don't trust him his doctor? Who was it? After watching Jessica Jones? Do you stop trusting him doctor? No? No, I just don't. I don't trust his mouth. Is it because he has a bunch

of hearts? He's got like ten hearts or something? But yeah, the the Purple Man for background for Jessica Jones amidst pheromones that forced people to obey his suggestions, right right, Yeah, it's like he issues a command and then the person has to do it because it's some kind of medic

clorians or whatever. I haven't watched the whole show, so I'm not sure, but yeah, that's it's so creepy to me because like like one of the worst possible sci fi horse scenarios where uh, serial killer mind controls you into digging your own grave or just following him into his like kill basement. But I have bad news for spiders again, this is a very spider unfriendly podcast. Or weaver spiders are spend these really neat precise webs. They're

they're actually very beautiful the webs the spiders are. I mean, I think they're cool, but people have hang ups about spiders for some reason. Um, so now wasps again come into the picture and just are so mean and are such as holes. So female parasitic wasps lay an egg onto the orb weaver's abdomen, and if you've been listening, you know, and once a wasp lays an egg on you,

you're in for a bad time. So the orb weaver is still alive, and the spider becomes mind controlled by the wasp larva, and instead of spinning its beautiful lace like web, it dismantles its web and creates a cocoon for the parasitic larva to live in. And then, because wasps again there are such huge assholes, the larva will

suck on the spider's juices until the spider dies. And then the larva just checks its carcass away like a soda can, and it makes itself nice and cozy in the cocoon that the spider had woven for it against its will. It's so crazy to me that you can have such a precise method of mind control that the larva not only gets to eat its victim but makes it spin a little cradle for for it as it develops and so it can stay safe. It's just so creepy. So it's slave labor at that point too, right, a

slave that you eat later. Yeah. Yeah, So we are these wasps as common as the tarantula hawk um, they aren't as widely distributed, So the ones that we're going to be talking about are found in Japan. So researchers in Japan wanted to look into this behavior because it's so crazy how precise that mind control is. And they found that the cocoon that the zombie spider weaves for its parasite is very similar to the molten stage web that the spider, a healthy spider, will weave for itself.

It's a protective cocoon designed to keep the spider safe while it molts it's exoskeleton, and it's actually made out of this special ultra violet spider silk so that birds and flying insects will avoid crashing into it. So like normally when a spider builds its web, it wants insects to run into it so that you can eat them. But if you're in all naked and exposed and don't want something to kill you, you wrap yourself up in like this neon light of like warning naked spider in here.

So researchers found that there was higher levels of this substance that's called twenty h ectosoone, and it's the same hormone that controls molting. So in the zombified spiders, they are being mind controlled into thinking that they're going through their molting stage. It's unknown how the wasp is actually manipulating this hormone. But it's not just mind controlling into

thinking it's molting. It's actually a step above that because it's somehow commanding it to go into this like super molting mode where it's building an extra strong cocoon, more reinforced, with greater tensile strength than the spider's normal molten cocoon. So it's like it's beyond just like thinking it's molting. It's creating a mega safety bunker for the parasite that's planning on murdering it. So way wait, so the downside is that you are being mind controlled and then you're

going to die. But the upside is that you get super strength. I guess the the equivalent of spider superpowers. Well, your your webbing does, so your care creating um spider silk that has is extra reinforced because the molting spider silk like a in a healthy orb weaver that's creating a cocoon for itself to molten side that that webbing will be reinforced and stronger to protect it. But for the parasite, it's like it's bringing out the good stuff.

It's bringing out the big guns, the big webbing guns, and creating really really strong webbing to protect the parasite. So, I mean, I would think it's not necessarily clear in the research yet, but I would think that somehow it's just being flooded with these hormones and make like this extra strong signal for it to produce the molting webbing in a way that's like it's over signaling so that the parasite benefits from the super strong cocoon. So this

is what's called an ectoparasitoid. It's a parasite who will live externally on its host and eventually kill it. But some parasitic wasps will lay their eggs directly inside the spider and then the larva eat their way out of the spider like an alien chest burster. It's really disgusting. And just for a safety check here, there are no wasps that do this to people, right, No, they're none big enough to do it yet, not yet, not that

we know can. But think of whenever, whenever I think about this paras parasitic stuff doing things to animals to make them act against their own self interest, I always think of that parasitic fungus like erupts out of ants heads before, right, Yeah, before it does that, doesn't it also do some kind of crazy mind control that makes them do something that like benefits the fungus itself. But yeah, crawls up a stock like a plant stock, and then

it's final. The ant's final act is to cling onto the stock with its mandibles, so it it's brain is being so manipulated by the fungus that it's like clinging onto the stock with its mandibles. And then that's really good for the fungus, says, It grows out of its head and then produces spores because it's got a solid anchor down onto the onto the plant or the branch. You know. One that while we're speaking of parasites, one

that worries me as a cat owner is Toxoplasma gandhi. Yeah, we all probably have that, Like that's why we're nice to cats I don't know, sing, So, yeah, you probably if you clean up the cats litter box and you don't obsessively wash your hands every single time, you might have it. And I mean there's actually pretty good chance, like if you've owned cats over a long period of time. It's generally not a problem for humans unless you're pregnant, in which it can cause birth defects or miscare age.

And the other thing it's been linked to is potentially triggering schizophrenia. That's a very very rare almost just like it's not going to happen to you, but it is a documented effect, so they can a cat can literally cause schizophrenia in a person via the t Gandhi. I So, I think we need to talk more about how spiders

are terribly mistreated in nature. Uh So, there's another mind controlling machiavellian manipulator called the spider fly, and it's a fly that injects itself into the spider's abdomen, lodging itself near the lung. And here's the crazy thing. It can remain there for years while it completes its development. So once it's finally ready to molt and emerge from the spider, it control as the spider into spinning a protective cocoon, just like we were talking about with the orb weavers.

Then it eats the spider from the inside out, which is just the worst, but at least these ones are kind of cute and fuzzy, so unlike the wasps the spider fly, they're sort of like these little bumbling cutis uh entomologous. F R Cold describes them as having a floating sort of flight, rather undulating and uncertain. It has the habit of buzzing around and circles when it falls over on its back on a smooth surface, often doing this for some time before it can regain its feet.

Most of the time it is making a high, thin humming sound, so it's just like it's this dopey, kind of like dorky little fly. But then it's really horrifying and living inside a spider for years before killing it. And this isn't like a a more supial situation, you know how like a joey can enter an exit the pouch of the parent. It's more like a chest burster,

like I can't fly back in and out. It's a chest burster situation, but with like a cute little like elm esque muppet character, like if An Aliens, just like the chest Burster birth stance, like it's it's all low. I'm kind of sold. It reminds me of this terrifying toy my girlfriend got my daughter for a birthday the other day. It's like a tiny puppy that lives inside a croissant and you turn the croissant inside out and

then the tiny puppy emerges. But it's really unclear, like the scale of it, Like is it is it meant to be a tiny puppy or a giant croissant. They really don't make that clear. But um, yeah, that's not very science at all. But that's what I'm picturing this whole time. I'm sorry. I don't know why toys have

gotten weird. I really have, they really have. You might be comforting yourself with the knowledge that you're not a spider and you're in no danger of a fly hiding out in your lungs, But I want to tell you the story of the human version of a spider fly, a secret hideaway killer that will have you checking your cross spaces tonight. The Dinverse spider Man doesn't really deserve his name. His real name was Theodore Edward Coney's. He was a drifter who in nine decided he'd settled down,

but there was a little problem. The home he chose was already occupied. Coney has found a trapdoor in a closet that led to a tiny attic houbbyhole. He went undiscovered for five weeks, leaving his heidihold to occasionally steal food out of the fridge. One day, the homeowner, seventy three year old Philip Peter's, discovered Coney's as he was foraging for food. Philip whacked Cony's with his cane, and Coney has responded by brutally murdering Philip, bludgeoning him to

death with an iron stove. Stoker. Police investigated the murder, but they found no signs of a break in, and though they found the door to the attic, they didn't explore it they thought it was too small for any human person to fit through. After the murder, the victim's wife and the housekeeper reported hearing strange noises in the night, and they believed the house was haunted, so they moved

out and Coney's presence remained unknown. He stayed in the vacant house until ninety two when police came to make a routine check and they heard noises coming from the second floor. They followed the noise and saw a pair of legs vanishing into the trap door. They grabbed them before he could disappear. He was tried and convicted for Philip's murder and spent his life in imprisonment. Although really

was that a punishment. His cell probably felt like a sprawling estate compared to the tiny knot he hit away in. So do you have any crawl spaces in your No reason, just curious. Alright, So, thank you guys for coming on. This is really fun. Do you guys have anything to plug? Yeah, thank you so much for having a skatie. Yeah, you can catch Schmoll and myself on our show Ridiculous History

WI come out twice a week. You can find us on Instagram, Facebook, all the podcast places Mainland, Right, what's the show? We kind of just go into some of the weirder, little off the beaten path kind of history nuggets, a very kind of snack double show. Episodes are like thirty to forty minutes, very bingeable. It's a lot of

fun to do. And um, we also do another show called Stuff they Don't want you to know, where we take a an open minded approach to conspiracy theories, and I would say we take a critical thinking approach to conspiracy much better and more accurate. So you can you can find us on those shows. You can find us all over the regular internet places and wherever you find your favorite shows. You can also when you find us on the social media stuff, just hit us up directly.

We're we're pretty approachable. Unlike some of the animals that we met in today's episode. We don't bite you, guys, aren't or or or yeah, or inject you with paralyzing venom. Well that's polite of you, guys. You know, we try to be affable. That's sort of like urba that that's our adaptation is it's like the super affability. Yeah. My producers are always like ben, stop injecting people with paralytic agents.

That was before my time. So you can find me at Katie Golden or at pro bird Writes where it's revealed I'm actually a bird. And you can check out the podcast every Wednesday on iTunes or the I Heart Radio app or wherever you get your podcasts, and just hit us up. On Facebook, Twitter, and our website is creature feature pod dot com. And thanks to the space Cosas for letting us use their wonderful song Exo Lumina. Mm hm