The Missing Lynx

of a police lineup? Yeah? Joining me today is comedian Cat Lover and the Jeff part of Tom and Jeff Watch Batman. Jeff May welcome. Hey, well it's me, It's Jeff May. It's It's watched Batman. I'm so excited to be here. I also studied evolutionary biology when I was in college. Really, that's awesome. I did. I was a bio minor even though I was a history and education major, and my advisor got mad at me for wasting my money.

We have very similar back stories then, because I did psychology as my major and evolutionary biology I gotta study Tartar grades and I got to study the human brain at the same time smart, Like, what are you going to do with those two things? My whole college plan was just like I like people and animals and I want to learn everything about them. And you know, surprisingly that's maybe not the best career choice, just to be

genuinely curious about the world. But they didn't know about podcasts back then either, So here we are it was it was not on our radar. Boy, did we accidentally tumble into an existence that somehow became mildly lucrative. Yes, science education, it's the way to uh, to just keep learning yourself. That's my dirty little secret is that this podcast is a secretly away for me to continue learning about things. And one thing that I love learning about

I I love kiddies. I gotta admit it. I do have a dog, but I grew up with cats, and I just I just love cats. I love every single cat on the planet. Their attitude, their whole deal, I'm all about it. I love them. They're they're very bold existence. They they see because they have that like too good for it vibe, but then they're also very needy at the same time, and that to me, like you get to see the microcosm of life in that with a cat.

Cats just like I can do this on my own and then but also you need to open that can for me or and I love that. I love that about them. They're strong but vulnerable, and I yeah, I love that about them. Today we're going to talk about just that juxtaposition of the strength and the whole our ability of cats and the the The one I want to start with is this wonderful story of the Iberian Lynx. So I don't know, do I mean, I guess in l A you probably do see some bobcats right occasionally.

I know, like according to next door, there's a mountain lion. Mostly coyotes, but there's uh, there's a like mountain lions are like our big our main export export is that it we're just shipping them off the Seattle, the exporting mountain lions. Yeah, no, I mean the San Gabriel Mountains near near l A does have mountain lions. And there's I forgot his name, like it might be P twenty four. He's that mountain lion. He's our neighborhood mountain lion. Yeah.

I live in the shallow valley. Yeah, and everybody's like I found him he's like a celebrity out here. It's like it would be like seeing like, oh I I saw you know Becca do Mornay. I saw her at the Vaughans. Everyone's just like, oh, it's a it's a I saw twenty four, who was walking behind the Vons. Yeah. Well when I lived in l A, I did see Patton Oswald. Um. I it's a hard call though, between seeing p twenty four and seeing Patton Oswald. Like, I love them both, but you know, god, I wish I

could have seen two. The Lion doesn't have a Grammy. That's I mean rude first of all to make this a competition Grammy competition, But yeah, I mean the Lion does deserve a Grammy. A little background on on this Mountain Lion. He is this scrappy individual who is basically

because humans have split up the uh natural habitat with freeways. Uh, this this guy has kind of like he's in this like little island surrounded by freeways, and he is a an amazing intrepid survival story in terms of just like how he's managed to keep going when he's sort of like isolated in this way. Yeah, he's it's the mountain lion version of that book Hatchet, you know, any one of those, like the Call of the Wild, he should be it should be the Call of the civilized. Or yeah,

he's he's a he's a good dude. And uh. And he does venture up to the burbank North Hollywood area quite often because that is sort of where he is trapped. Yes, I do like that he is respected, like a respected member of the community, because it's it's worse when like you have a wildcat who is a budding civilization and you're like, oh man, this this this cat is scary and I don't want it near me. And it's like, well, yeah, but you know what, maybe he's he's a little gentleman

that you should welcome. Maybe not with he's by you, but you know, yeah, no, you give him a wide berth. He's Angeline. That's who he's the He's like that, like that l a celebrity whose existence is just because they exist, they are that celebrity. And I love that for him. I like and I like a cat. I like a good cat, you know. And uh, and we have good access because California, you know, because you're like California, you guys got this kind of we we have all the animals,

every animal. It's I mean for being such a like California's thought of you know, you think of like l A and these very dense urban environments, but uh, there are. It is an incredibly bio diverse state. It's wonderful. Yeah. Yeah, we have uh, a Ralph's and a vans. Which one does do the mountain lions prefer? H Yeah? I think I think I mentioned the vons, So I'm gonna have to maintain comedic consistency in that one. But yeah, no,

I mean California is huge. I was. I performed in Eureka not too long ago, and it was it was just you forget that the state is so big that it has literally everything. Yeah, and I'll have family back on the East coast or like, do you make it up to San Francisco a lot? I'm like, do you drive down to Baltimore all the time. They're like, no, that's way far away. I was like, yeah, that's exactly the distance. It's huge. Yeah, it's because it's like one state.

We think of it as being small, but having it's such a huge territory, of course you're going to have this like massive range which makes it difficult both for humans and animals to traverse all those freeways. Yeah, one of my favorite places to go. I'm really excited about what you're bringing here because one of my favorite places in l A to go is the Librea tar pits Um, which is weird because it seems like a one and done kind of a trip, but I go there all

the time. I like the smell, which is weird. It's a objectively bad smell, but I like it. It's like gasoline. There's something very tempting about that smells. Me just want to touch the guitar, Like, Yeah, how would I do with your targets? Oh? Not so good? Not so good? But new TikTok challenge is going to be like thetbrea

tar pits Can you get out? I don't challenge. Well, that's a very yes, that's a very apprescient thing to talk about, because we are going to talk about um, some big cats that have gone extinct that we're around the Librea area. But first let's talk about a cat that is actually a different, very different region in southwestern Europe. Um. It is similar to cats you'll find in California and in the rest of the United States. The bobcat. Now

you're probably familiar with the bobcat. Those are those cute cats. They're wildcats, but they're not huge. They're bigger than a house cat. They're about the size of like a dog. They have that adorable little stubby tail. They're kind of spotty, those pointy ears of the little ear toughs and those mutton chops. Yeah, they look like Wolverine. Yes, not the animal, but the guy, the fake the fictional character Wolverine. Yeah, he's like he's kind of compact, but he's strong. Yeah,

he's strong but mighty. So you know. The Iberian lynx is similar in appearance to the bobcat, but different. So uh, it's found in southwestern Europe. It is related to the Eurasian lynx, the Canada lynx, and the bobcats. So these

are the species of lynxes in the world. And it's thought that the Iberian lynx shared a common ancestor with the Eurasian lynx, and that the Eurasian lynx actually used the bearing Land Bridge to cross over into North America and basically became both the bobcats and the Canada lynxes. So yes, eised, yeah, but can't see your hand there needs to be like a sound for your hand raising in a podcast like who oh I did it specifically because it makes no sound, but I didn't want to interrupt. Well,

I've solved that problem for you, which we have. We have exacerbated the problem, how fault Like when we say common ancestor, I mean, isn't it like how far back do you have to go? Because wouldn't they all technically have a common ancestor it's a cat, because it would have to be. There has to be some sort of evolutionary spot where you're like, well, this is where you start measuring where ancestry is common, because then we're always just like, yeah, aren't we all that fish that walked

out of the water. It's actually yes. I mean like both the fish that we started out as and a primate that we started out those would both be common ancestors. It just it's basically every time you step back you will find another common ancestors. So you zoom in enough, the smaller the time scale, usually like you'll have a smaller group of species all sharing a common ancestor, So like the lynxes all share a common ancestor that other big cats do not share. They might share common ancestor

with Wolverine. I mean that's what I tell myself when I want a little bit of an ego boost, Like, hey, you know what, me and Wolverine we share a common ancestor. So you know what, me and Lebron James are like evolutionarily basically the same person, essentially the same. So like when I put like forks between my fingers, it's not you know, it's not a pathetic cosplay. It's actually, you know, me sharing a common ancestry with It's correct, is what

it is. Well, speaking of Wolverine, the mutton chops, we have to talk about them because the Iberian lynx, even though it's similar to the bobcat, it is the differences are very clear when you look at it. It is a stunning looking animals. So bobcats are really cute. They're kind of they've got these round, fluffy faces with these cool side burns. But I Buring lynxes are much more sharp looking, the more europe angular. Yeah, they yeah, they have sort of this. Their mutton chops are longer and

more pointed. They look like, uh yeah, they just look a little more debonair. I don't know, how else to describe it. They are sleeker, even though they have the same pointed ears and sort of spotted coats. They're leaner,

they're taller, uh, and they're longer than the bobcats. So they're kind of like the bobcat's cool European cousin, which it's like if you put a Bobcat and a pencil sharpener, which we don't recommend on this podcast, but we don't try because the standard North American bobcat that we think of, like, it's a very pettible looking cat, whereas this one looks like a knife, but like a very cool yeah, like like it wouldn't surprise me to see this cat having

bottle service at a club. Yes, you know, it kind of reminds me. It's like the difference between Move Fossa and Scar. I always thought Scar was very cool looking. I didn't approve of, you know, the whole like brother murdering thing, but you know, he was a cool looking cat. Sorry about your high horse caves. Some of us are fine with fraud side. Okay, actually, I think including Bob cats so h because if I remember correctly, I believe sometimes the offspring do fight each other to the death.

But anyways, the Iberian links uh It is I think a stunningly beautiful cat um, but it almost went extinct starting in the twenty century with the usual suspects over hunting, habitat loss, but even more deviously, uh It's main prey, rabbits had their population decimated by disease. And you might be thinking, like, finally something that is not humans faults. Well, I'm sorry to say, uh still our faults. So what

happened is um with rabbits. There is a disease, a virus called mixomatosis, and it was actually released by humans to coll the rabbit populations in the nineteen fifties in both France and in Australia. Now in Australia they have a little bit of a better excuse. Rabbits are invasive, but in France, rabbits are a natural part of the environment. It's just that they were considered pasts and so they let this disease run rapit decimate the population, which is

a problem for like a few reasons. One is, you probably shouldn't just release a virus into the wild and let it run its course. What movie are you making here where they're just like you know we should do, is we should make a virus that will absolutely mutate and wipe us out exact. I mean that's like I think that's how Resident Evil happens. Yeah, where we tried to I mean, yeah, we we introduced a virus I

think to primates in that movie. But yes, so it could become a zoonotic disease and kill us all um. But you know, the most likely thing to happen is it just decimates this rabbit population, which innovent itself is bad. First of all, rabbits are an important part of the ecosystem. They're cute and adorable, uh, and they are have a massive impact on the other species of animals that live with them, namely, uh, they're predators, like the Iberian lynx.

We think of things like a predator and prey as being at odds with each other because they are, you know, trying to kill each other or only only one person believes that only one only one half of that of that interaction believes the at odds aspect. The other one thinks great, I think it's just great. Well, yeah, so we think they have this adverse serial relationship, which is true,

but they also rely on each other. So like if you, uh, if you don't have the rabbit population, obviously the Iberian lynx is population is going to suffer tremendously. But on the other hand, predator species are also important for prey species because they do actually help keep their populations at a sort of a maintenance level naturally without just introducing a huge disease. And actually by having predator interactions with prey, as long as everything is in balance, it can keep

that prey from succumbing to something like disease. Um. So in this case, the fact that humans decided to you know, just like introduce a disease to these rabbits, miant that we decimated the Iberian lynx population. And so the Iberian Lynx dwindled to under a hundred individuals. Uh, so they were very close to extinction. Wow. Yeah, that's a that's a what some would say if you're ever talking about

a population and that's the number you're going for. That's like an old mining town population ten years after the gold like went out, which I can actually imagine like an old mining town population of bob cats, like you know, wearing hats. Yeah, yeah, hello, dear, Yeah, the one too. Yeah, oh, Bob's great, That's that's where we got that from folks true story. So, uh, but this is not where the story ends. So they did not go extinct like some

other cats we're going to talk about later. The Iberian Lynxes are not quitters. Uh. They are making a comeback now with the help of conservationists, of course, but they are also incredibly intrepid, wonderful creatures. Oh, there have been conservation efforts breeding the lynx in captivity, but ultimately it is the Iberian lynx is refusal to die that has paid off and meant that this reintroduction has been a success.

So after the captively bred lynxes were released, they have shown incredible resilience living amongst humans and rebituating to their habitats. So an example of how these lynxes are able to like survive in in their limited habitat and like really managed to kind of sneak their way around humans is there have been these recorded examples. One was a lynx hit her newborn cubs in a house while the owners

were throwing a house party. I mean that's pretty amazing. Yeah, i mean it's like that's so that's like you just crashed a house party. Yeah, and had your babies, put your little babies in there. Yeah, they're like playing beer pong over or they don't even notice you are giving birth to a bunch of endangered lynx. Is probably wine pong. Oh that's right, it is Europe. Yeah, it's probably a bunch of wine pong. And then whenever you score, they go hold instead of ha ha ha. They all do

the French. Does anyone smell some Iberian lynx after birth? It's like, no, that is my stinky cheese. That You're all cartoons. They are all cartoons. I'm sorry for you got webbits. I'm sorry all of France. You all literally sound like that. I will not apologize to France. And they know what they did. They know what they did, and I mean they're probably honestly more offended by the idea that their cheese smells like lynx after birth. That is what I'm going to get the hatmail about, not

the offensive accent. So another linx named Milvius, which I mean, great name, first of all, good job conservationists. But Milvis repeatedly robbed a rabbit research facility. He jumped over the chain link fence and started just snatching these rabbits. Uh, and just like used this research facility as his own personal rabbit grocery store. I mean, that's that's a good move. It's good work if you can get it. Honest, there's

there's his praise. That is the that's the dominoes of of sort of that experien where he said it's gonna have to work. It's just basically getting delivered for him. Yeah. Yeah, no, make the humans work for them, which I think is fair. You know, we like we have a miacopa, right, we have an our bad with the whole disease, all the rabbits and see if that works out. Okay, And now the links is like you know what, hey, look, I'm

just gonna take some of your rabbits. You having your research facility, and what are you going to do about it? You know? Yeah, they all have makeup on Uh. Yeah, No, I think this may have been a less well actually, I don't know if it was one of the cause. I don't think it was a cosmetic research facility, but if it was even doubler, props to these lynxes. Yeah, right, like you're you know, you're really sticking it to Loreale.

That's French, right, this is the perfect solution. Let's get rid of of, you know, cosmetic testing on rabbits because we don't need it. But those linkses do need those bunnies, uh, and so you know, turn them into links grocery stores for the for you know, win win it's it's literally a win win situation. I mean even for the even for the rabbits, because I can guarantee becoming a Lynx's dinner is probably better faith than being in a cosmetic

research lab. Actually probably definitely. H there's zero percent chance that that's not the case. So conservationists have also tried to make freeways safer for the lynx Is by installing under passes, which are tunnels for the lynx Is to walk through, and the links Is immediately picked up on what these conservationists were laying down and learned to use

them good links, job links, secret links, tunnels. They love it and they I love I love that aspect about where they're like, yeah, well they're like working with it, like you see a links with a hard hat on being like, yeah, we're gonna need it a little bit wider here. Sometimes my party babies need to come through here with me, and they do a wide walk. Yeah, it's got one of those those levels, you know, with the little bubbles and then just like sort of shakily

holding out up with his pausing. I don't know if this is structurally sound. Have you checked? Yeah? Yeah? Are we going to do this? What's our what is what's our sediment here? What's our sediment level? Here's gonna settle properly? Are Yeah? Yeah, I mean there are so there are a lot of animals that we try to sort of have conservation with who are very fussy, um through no fault of their own, they just like have very specific

evolutionary niche. They are very difficult to reintroduce to the wild. But these Iberian lynxes are on it. They are so they are so ready. They look crafty. Yeah, they're like put me in coach, Yeah, yeah, they're they're ready to go. It's a utility cat, yes, yeah. Yeah. And in fact, so they have gone from less than a hundred individuals, like under ninety individuals to over a thousand in the wild US A lot of parties to crash. Yeah, and I I have a lot of hope for them. I

am really hopeful about this story. And I'm I'm just so happy that these guys are out there robbing labs. It's wonderful. Good job, sharp kitty. Yeah, they really are like Wolverine when he started that movie about stealing the bread. Oh yeah, bread stealing Wolverine. Yeah. Alright, So we just talked about the Iberian lynx that is clawing its way back from near extinction, and now we're going to talk about some big, bad cats that we're not so lucky. Um. So,

you know, we're talking about the LaBrea tart pits. And one of the things that I think is sometimes surprising to people is like that, you know, you had these incredible, huge animals like mammoths, you know, just hanging out in l A. Yeah, they're really big guys. I love them so much. Also, in l A you would get things like saber tooth tigers. I'm so excited about it. So we have this particular perception of sabre tooth tigers as being you know, like these huge lion like animals that

had these two huge saber teeth. You know, the more we learn about them, the more interesting the picture gets. Because we have these fossil records of these these big cats that look like saber tooth tigers. And then as we examine them, and there there are many different species of animals that could be considered saber tooth tigers. Um, we get a clear picture of what they were, what the different species were, and what was going on. And some of them, it turns out, aren't even cats. Um.

So right, it's so it's really fast. Yes. So uh first, uh, not all sabretooth tigers just lit their things hang out. So let's talk about only the cool ones letting it all hang out. Yeah, the cool the cool bad boy of the saber tooth tiger kingdom. Yeah. Actually, you know, the Homothereum is a genus of lion size saber tooth tigers that it went extinct about twelve thousand years ago, and they were found all over the world from the America's to Africa, and they did indeed, they were imperialists.

I don't know if that's what that means. Let's call them cosmopolitan that that that that is fair, That that works. Also, I would like to add before we continue that for the people that are listening that are wondering why we're not making wolverine saber tooth jokes, I want you to know that we recognize that saber tooth is Wolverine's arch enemy. We're just gonna keep moving. Yes, we both recognize that. We both knew that for sure. Yeah, that's all we

talked about before recording exactly. I was the lore of Marvel comics, Wolverine. I will stay I know the lore of Marvel comics deeply, and I'm not just saying this so I won't get emails. It's absolutely true and I don't need to learn anything else about it. So that let's move on. Let's prevent that from the from the inbox there, let's pull that out. So yeah, so the Ethereum saber tooth tigers was specific species of saber tooth tigers,

and they had those giant things. And originally we thought that these things just kind of like stuck out um. But a new research they may have actually politely tucked in their fings into lower lip pouches. So researchers observed the ways that lions yawned and that their fings would fit into their lower lips. Uh, and they made calculations based on the homothereums the specific species. Actually, there are multiple species of Homothereum, but this specific species homothereum Lattidin's.

They had this like mouth structure that researchers were able to examine, and they realized that there's actually room and these lip pouches for them to fit their things. So, uh, how polite a polite little teeth purse. Yeah, there's also it's interesting it seems like they also had these cute little bob tails, so they kind of looked like big bobcats instead of like big toothy lines. Could they be the missing links? I'm so sorry. Now that's a good one.

I kind of walked right into that, just like a lot of these saber tooth tigers walked right in the little bread tarpets. Oh roasted boot Oh no, those are so good. They make me want to smile lad on nice. Speaking of the smile add on, the smile add On is a genus of saber tooth tigers where their teeth actually did stick out all goofy like like a big old smile. I legitimately thought that the smile add on was named that because of the way the teeth was

ye like this big old smile d on. The largest saber tooth did have teeth truly so big that they couldn't fit them in their lip folds, and they kind of stuck out like these big silly daggers. And this is where it gets really interesting, because you look at this little bob tailed homothereums and you look at the smile ad On and you think, Okay, the smile Don has these huge things, these huge just like these big daggers.

It's got to be taking down the bigger prey, the tougher prey, because it has this much more fearsome looking mouth and the polite smaller homothereum. They must have been a little more you know, taking down smaller prey, a little more coy about it. Yeah. Yeah, But in fact the opposite is probably true. So the smile Adon, despite having larger teeth in size, it didn't go after the toughest prey. It probably preferred to prey on things like

deer or tape ears rather than chase down large bison. Uh. And it had a weaker bite force than modern cats. That makes sense actually, right. Yeah, The technique used was just using those big old things that it had as daggers, and so you know, it only needed so much bite force. Basically stab an animal in the neck with its dagger teeth and take it down. But it wouldn't be very good for taking down something really big and tough like

a mammoth or a bison. Yeah, it's like getting stabbed one time versus thirty times with like the smaller teeth. It's gonna be like, yeah, that's probably gonna do a lot more damage in the in the long run. Well, so this is what brings us to the home ethereum, which didn't have those. It had larger things than like a modern day lion, but they weren't sticking out and

they were smaller. They look, you know, they had that little bob tailed me a little cuter, but they would take down larger prey than the smilodon uh, such as young mammoths and mastodons and bison, and its jaws were perfect for grabbing, holding and tearing through tough flesh, so it could grab onto something, you know. Those those big things did help it like get a hold on it and then it would tear big chunks off. So yeah,

we've who's we've all been there. When you sit down with your mammoth, I always say, you know, cheer your mammoth or else you're gonna choke on it. Yeah, cheer your mammoth in massive chunks. Yeah. Yeah, it's called a mass to dawn because you've gotta masticate a lot because it is Yeah, like that, that was very good. This is a cave caveman dad humor. You know, it's it's dad humor. Has been around since we were caveman. So I mean, I'm in, I'm in. That's why I go

down to my man cave. So we have this clearer picture, right, So we have different kinds of saber tooth tigers. We had the smile it On that was like sort of the archetypical saber tooth and it's big teeth sticking out, but it actually went after smaller prey than the ones that didn't have those teeth sticking out. Um. But there is another thing that seems like a saber tooth tiger but is not at all a saber tooth tiger, and that is the bi Lacos Smillests. That is a honker

of a name. Thi Lacco Smelless was once thought to be a genus of big Cat. Indeed, they looked like a saber tooth tiger. They lived in South America and went extinct around three million years ago. Yikes, So it probably did not overlap with a smile on or the homothereum. Uh. In fact, it wasn't even a cat, despite looking very cat like, so was in fact a landfish is what we call them, which actually, you know, when you think about it, aren't all mammals just land fish don't, isn't it? Like?

I always think about the evolution of whales as being the weirdest form of that biological evolution because they were like wolves basically. Yeah. So first they were least tiny, like deer like animals, the whales, and then they turned into like a weird alligator otter. H it's like semi aquatic, horrifying looking cross between a crocodile and an otter. And then it turned into sort of a weird, almost hippo like thing, and then it started to turn into the whale.

So it went from the sea to the land back to the sea. Yeah, it's a crazy glow up. So, but Dilaco Smillis was not a cat. Despite seeming like a cat, it sadly never had a glow up either. It just remained funky until it went extinct. It had these large saber like canines, and not only that, but a bone structure on their lower jaw that supported the canines, which looked like long scabbard shaped curved double chin, so

it looked like jay Leno's chin. But take that cleft and probably have like basically just two chins coming out that heard about this my two chins that holds my big, my big saber teeth. Yeah. Yeah, So basically these chin scabbards, they didn't completely sheathe the teeth. It partially protected them from damage. But it's thought that like one side probably did stick out, and it had a cat like tail, it had claws, and it was about the size of

a jaguar. But researchers realized that this was not a cat at all, but actually a close relative to the marsupials. It was a sparacodont. Okay, I'm right, see what we got going on here? Science. I always love that. One of my favorite jokes is the Jim Gaffrigan seahorse joke where the scientists where he's like, yeah, that's the female seahorse.

He's like it's having babies, and he's like that's the male and he's like having babies like the male has the babies just making stuff up when they're like that that's a that's a fish. Now that was that was a fish. Yeah, I will admit it does seem like pile just are just kind of making things up as they go. But really they're just discovering new things as they go. There are rules. Although this this thing, the dilacto smellss uh. It feels like it's made up. It's

breaking every rule. I mean, Jeff, just just look at a picture of it. I I also recommend everyone else look at a picture of it because you really just you have to look at this thing's face and really question everything about life and existence. Yeah, I mean I'm not mad about it. We're gonnat. I'm a fan. Like that's what I want out of my animals, is I want them to look stupid. Yeah. So it's got this like really long like double chin that just like is

supporting this long tooth. And we know it has this because it's like it's bone. It's made out of bones, so it survives in fossil evidence. Uh, And it has such a bizarre anatomy and paleo illustrators have just gone wild with different interpretations of this, Like some look like basically a lion, just with a huge pointy jay leno chin. Uh. Some looks like kind of like a bonkers Tasmanian devil. Again, like all of these have the weird chin, Like the one of them, it just looks like nuts. It just

looks like nuts. There's no way to get past it. Can google it. You're gonna come across the pictures. You're gonna be like that is nuts. One has interpreted the chin as being a little like more separated, like the cleft being a little more wild forked, yeah, more forked. Or there's one that kind of looks like a nightmare otter with a long tongue, and there's some speculation like maybe this had a long tongue for slurping organs. So uh, just trying to like they're just trying to be like

it was a vampire. They're trying so hard to just be like it was Morbius. It was like it was it was, it was it was Morbous. Let's let's scare it here. This is Morbous. Ah, So Morbous is not a cat we know like that, so just so that people know Morbous not a no, yeah, I mean more bus was a failure, I think more quickly than these ridiculous things were a failure. But this thing is is

an evolutionary prank. It feels like it doesn't it sosa trus despite having these big things, You think like, okay, so maybe they have a similar strategy to like the smell it on that like stabs things to death. It was, but they think, no, it didn't stab things, it didn't grab and tear things. It was potentially a scavenger. Who I mean, first of all, I forgot to mention it has a pouch, so that's another thing. It just carries its babies in a pouch. Um, yeah, why not? Yeah?

Why not? Why why not have some animals? And then I had a pinwheel on its head and then could like flick it and go pl you know yeah yeah, Poka dots, yeah, bright yellow PoCA dots yeah yeah. And and and police sirens. Uh. And when you booped its nose, it played all stars. Somebody once told me my chin was gonna roll me. But yeah, so yeah, it's ridiculous.

And they thought that maybe it used its huge things like surgical instruments to hair open carcasses and then scooped up organs and then used a long tongue to slurp the innerds. That's one theory. I like how. One of the theories is maybe it was lazy, like maybe it didn't want to hunt. Maybe it just wanted to find food. Maybe it was a weird freak that cut up corpses and slurped out the organ juice. Yeah, now they're just

being like bullying teenage girls. Maybe it's dad's weird. I mean on this in this specific scenario, I kind of am on the side of the bowling teenage girls because like, look at it. Come on, his animals should be bullied. Yeah, he is very different, and that's the message of today. You should bullying animals that are different from you. So you're voting for that for prom queen. So other researchers speculate that the tongue was less of a slurping tool and more like a big cats uh of today, where

they have this popilla covered tongue. So, you know, like a big cat, their tongue is like sand paper. They can actually shave flesh off of bones. You know how your little kiddies, your little house cat's tongue is so scratchy. Well, a big lion's tongue is super scratchy and can literally rip flesh off of a bone by licking it. And so that's one speculation is that this man had like a sand paper tongue like with you know, like slice open a carcass with its big weird teeth and then

just like lick the flesh off of bones. But it seems like all researchers agree. Despite there being many different theories, the one thing they all agree on was this thing. It was a freak. It was weird, very strange scientific analysis, freaking weirdo. And that's fine. I love when you see microscopic looks at what the popula look like and like, oh, meat hair, yeah, meat, little meat hairs. We'll meat meat meat hooks. So when you're when your cats licking you

that sand papery field, that's sharp meat hair. I mean, I feel I wonder, I don't know the answer answer to this, but I wonder how long it would take for a cat to lick like the same spot on your skin before your skin starts coming off, because I feel like maybe like hours, days, maybe I don't know that. I feel like that would be like trying to be like I wonder how long it would take for me to punch a rock until it broke. Like it might be one of those things where it's like this is

this is not going to work. The word I mean licks to get to the center of a meat meat pop. You know, I don't know. Well, only one way to find out. I gotta I gotta die and have a cat. Yeah. Yeah, but we're going to take a quick break, but when we get back, we are going to talk a little bit more about our domesticated cats. Uh and you know if we should let them literally lick us to death, because maybe so, I want to talk about our domesticated cats.

Our house cats are wonderful kiddies. They I think they love us, but they're not going to look a gift horse in the mouth and not eat us if they die. You know what I mean? What's our last gift to our cats? You know? I mean it's like unless you leave like a massive amount of money in your wheel and this will go to Mrs Muffins and uh, you know this whole investment portfolio and all my bitcoins, all my apes go to my cat. Doage coin go to

my dog? Obvious? Yeah, that's that's obvious. That seems discriminatory that there's like doge coin, but there's no cadge coin. I guarantee you there's cat coins. That's probably right, you know, I should be arguing for fewer crypto coin, not more. Um, unless all crypto coin is is just like a little like token that's you give to a cat and then the cat receives scratches for the token that I would endorse. Yeah, that's that would be great. That would be like a

very fungible token for pets. So, cats I think are really interesting because we kind of think of them as being less personable than dogs. You know, they're they're not They're not as friendly, they're more independent. You know. The idea is like, oh, you know, maybe this cat is just using me for food. Uh, and it doesn't like

form friendships. But there is some research that is digging into that question of like our cats truly sort of like the solitary creature, or you know, can they have friends? I mean, I like to think I'm a friend of cats. Is this a one sided friendship? Though? Are you always texting these cats and they're like, oh, sorry, I can't do it tonight. Maybe later. Yeah, they're just like sorry, just just read this, just got this text. Yeah, and you know that you saw it was seen like days ago.

It's like, sorry I missed this. You have your your read receipts are on. Sorry. Yes, Actually feel like cat would just be like no, yeah, no, that is I think that's more of a cat's vibe. Is just like or leaving you on read actually is the cat's vibe. That's the ultimate cat move, just leaving you on read. Uh. But you know, we're looking into whether whether cats would go stoot or if maybe they have just a small

sliver of compassion in their kitty hearts. And they looked into other cats actually form social bonds with other cats, and they wanted to see, like can of cat learned something like another cat's name, And so they looked at they had to find cats that had like social connection, so cats that lived with other cats. But they wanted to compare cats that had these close bonds with other cats and cats that had more casual acquaintances with other cats.

And the way they did this is they compared groups of cats in cat cafes and house cats that lived in homes. Yeah. So in cat cafes usually the setup is like you have a bunch of cats, but unlike a cat colony or multiple cats in a home. You know, like these cats maybe you know there are so many of them, they're less likely to form these interpersonal relationship. There's sort of interactions with each other is more limited. But have you been I have not been to a

cat cafe. I kind of want, but I tried to get in and they were like, oh, we are booked. Did you not make a reservation? And I was like that's fair. And then I was like, I don't know if I want like a beverage in a place with that many cats, because that's kind of like a cat cafe is a kind of place that like the the government should get involved to like get these cats into a shelter. But then it just goes to the cat cafe.

But the toxoplasmosis you probably get at the cat cafe just feeds their bottom line because toxoplasmos is gandha I, at least in rats, has been shown to make rats attracted to cats. We don't know if that happens in humans, but if it does, then there you go. It's like, you know, yet they should probably make the first taste of the cat cafe free then, so you get addicted

to cats by huff and their toxoplasmos is GANDHIA. Yeah, I mean I probably have it because while I'm not like attract dead two cats, I sure do like cats. It's good you, I sure do think I sure do think they're great. But yeah, so the most important difference between the cat cafe and like house cats who lived together with other cats is that in cat cafes, people

don't really use the cat's names that much. They don't like call them by their names because it's like you're having a chance encounter with a cat at a cat cafe. You you like, you know, pet the cat, you interact with cat, but they're not using their names constantly and

consistently like the house cats. So they had the study set up where they would take these cats from these two different groups and show them basically, like uh, an image of a cat and then have like an audio recording of a cat's name, and sometimes it would be like the name of one of their companion cats and then an image of that companion cat, so you know, totally expected, or it would be the name of a companion cat and then an image of a completely unrelated cat.

And what they found is that for the cat cafe cats, they didn't really seem uh to care that much. They didn't seem to gaze more at the incongruo uh name versus picture, whereas with the house cats by a few seconds, they stared a little longer at the images where it was like the name of one of their companions, but it was a picture of a stranger cat. So the idea being that maybe these cats are going like, wait, what that's not frank, Yeah, who excuse me? What's going

on there? Yeah, And it is funny because cat cafe has more party vibes, yes, whereas cats in a home have more like in the home vibes, you know, yeah, homie vibes. But like, yeah, with a cat cafe, it's just like you're at a rave. It's probably a carave because I'm sure they're passing around a lot of cat nep. You know, honestly, got to talk to your cat about these these kind of party situations, Like I'm not saying, don't know how great they are. Yeah, yeah, but you know,

like catnip responsibly, you know what I mean? Oh yeah, nip nip nip nippet in the bud cat nip responsibly. That would totally be an anti drug campaign for cats. Side question for you, Ye, favorite cat names that you've had for your cats? Go? I mean, I've only had two cats, and it was Mittens and Binkie. Okay, those are good. That's Mitten's solid cat name. Yeah. I mean. The thing is, it's hard for me to pick a favorite name because I loved them both and so associate

their names with them. What I did like was that the names inadvertently kind of suited their personality. So Mittens was this very posh, very prim and proper cat. Binky was stupid and um, you know, I love an idiot cat. It's very dumb, very dumb, very like almost like Quasi Ferrell. It felt like their names were kind of meant to be Mittens that's sort of a civilized names, whereas Binky had a frenetic energy the name did, and Pinky was

cross eyed. Nobody would be surprised he wasn't. But he would sometimes poop in his litter box and get really scared. I think of what was happening with the poop, and then run out of the litter box, scattering poop everywhere. Oh pinky bank bank. Oh he was a sweet He was dumb, but very very sweet. We had my my X and I rescued some cats, um like, not rescued from a thing, but literally off the street. And uh we had burning building from an unabandoned building. We had

Cat Jeff and she was like the smart bully. And then we had Pants and Pants was a sweet idiot. Pants didn't have a tail. Pants was tail less. And that's why her name was pants. Pants does sound like a sweet idiot name, doesn't it right? It's it was like the names hit so perfectly. She was very sweet, and then Cat Jeff was just this mean bully. Uh, and you know it was it was funny way because we had you know, when we broke up, I was like, you know, you can change the name of the cat.

I know you probably don't want to keep saying my name in this situation. And she's like, her name is cat Jeff. Yeah, that's not changing, And I was like, okay, that's a good name for a girl. Cat to cat Jeff cat Jeff, Yeah no, no, it's it's a rolls right off the tongue. Makes me think of that famous Internet cat, George, Uh, you know George and Gene George, Yeah, Gen and George and George. Gina is the smart cat, and then George's is, you know, unsurprisingly, kind of the

dumb one. We love George. We love George. Though he can't open doors, he's on Twitter, he can't really open doors. But he's you know, pro unionization, So there you go. Yeah, he's progressive. It's progressive, a progressive cat. So before we go, I well, actually two things. One I want to there's a quick news story that I had to share with you. A cougar accidentally went into a school and was safely

rescued from having to learn English in Pescadero, California. So a juvenile mountain lion accidentally wandered into a high school, went into a mostly empty campus, went into an English classroom, and the the custodian that was there like saw this like mountain lion like in the English classroom and was just like okay and closed the door. And custodians are just so badass, and they're they're they're so like that needs to be a way higher on the respect level

piece of employment. It deserves so much more respect. I mean, they just even when you're not dealing with mountain lions, there's so much that comes with the responsibility of a custodian. You were literally behind the scenes making sure that school is running and functioning. H But yeah, so this this, uh they called uh you know, yees animal Control who came and rescued the cougar from having to learn in English.

So I'd say that's a win. Good job, cougar. Uh. So the last last last thing before we go is our mystery animal sound game Guess who's squawking? Every week I play a mry animal sound and you, the listener, gifts who is making that sound? So last week's hint was it's a bird from the book Around the World in Eadie Birds by Mike Unwin, who was my guests that week, and Mike kindly did a bird call and

made me guests. So here's his bird call again. Um, and then here is the bird's actual call that sounds kind of like a like a car alarm, doesn't I It sounded like at first two people, like someone smacking blocks of wood together. Um. My favorite thing about hearing these calls is that everyone we hear is just something trying to have sex. That that is so funny to me that we're like, check out this beautiful call and then you're like that it's trying to mate. Yep, pretty much,

and now we're putting it out. It would be like it would be like if aliens had videos of of like drunk people at bars trying to hook up, and they're like, here's the call of the North American man. You up, you up? You up? Yeah? Just just just writing beautiful on Instagram photos the hallway gorgeous, gorgeous, beautiful queen, gorgeous. Yes, so U congratulations to Jared, m ariy L and Robert S who all correctly guess that this is the purple

crested Torocco. So this is an amazing bird. It is vibrant, purple, green and red. It's a frugivore. It eats fruits and it is the national bird of Swatini because it eats fruits and it throws up the seeds which helps spread the seeds for germination. So very important. Beautiful bird. What a what a weird existence for a bird. And I appreciate it because like I picture like a small bird swallowing like whole pears and then just like immediately regretting

it and having to vomit out the seeds. This is just like a whole cause and effect system. It's actually not that small of a bird. It's sort of a medium to large size bird. It's like not it's like I think it's it's nine ft tall. It's about chicken sized. I would say maybe not nine ft mm hmm um. So onto this week's mystery animals sound. The hint is why the long face panda? Wait a minute, you're not a panda, So, Jeff, you got any guesses? Uh? Yes, is it a panda holding a balloon and pulling in

the air out of the mouth. I do have a I have a guess, but it sounds is it a red panda? Or is that too easy? I mean, I can't answer that because fair enough, you won't know until next Wednesday when I answer this week's I Guess Who's squawking, which by that point will be last week's guess Who's squawking? But you know, very very good guess, valiant, valiant guess, you'll have to wait a whole week, just like everyone else. I definitely won't just tell you after we're done recording.

But hey, Jeff, thank you so much for coming on today and for talking to me about kitty cats and sometimes not kitty cat. I love it, honestly, Like, here's the thing is, I love animals. I adore Katie Golden. Anytime I can mix those two things together is a great experience. And I'm glad. I got to say. I haven't seen you since you you moved, so technically I'm seeing you, and I hope it's good, and I hope there are so many wonderful Italian animals that you are

are getting acclimated to. There are common swifts right now, which are these wonderful birds who scream constantly. So yes, I love that and they're like a pretty much pretty much the No, it was a blast coming on. I really do love it. And uh, you know, podcasting is is fun. It is fun. We talk because we talk about stuff and then you guys listen and we just like sit and your ears and we whisper secrets to you. And that's how it works. So many secrets, so many secrets,

sometimes about Batman, sometimes about birds. Yeah, well, just speaking of Batman, where can people find you? Well, if you want to find me on Instagram and Twitter at hey, there Jeff Row if you want to listen to some of my stuff I got I do. Of course, Tom and Jeff watch Batman on the game Fully Unemployed Network with uh, you know Tom Ryman, who I'm I'm sure you're all very familiar with. You can check me out on Popular Opinion and you Don't Even Like Sports both

on the un Popps Network with Adam Todd Brown. Uh, you Don't Even Like Sports is a sports podcast for people that hate sports, um, which is my entire fan base, and uh, it's very nerdy. And then I have my own show called Jeff Has Cool Friends, which is a long form interview podcast and you can just google that or if you want to go to patreon dot com. Slash Jeff made for early access to uncensored episodes with

bonus content. Head on over there. Um, I got a lot of cool stuff coming and um, if you want to I was on an Flix game show that was pretty neat. That's cool. So if you you want to see me on Bulli on Netflix. Uh, they edited it to make it look like I didn't win, but I actually so that's pretty fun. Those fiends. I knew it. I knew it the whole time. Well, you guys, it's fun. It's fun. Well, if you think you know the answer to this week's guess who squawking are you? I just

want to reach out and ask some questions. You can email me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com, also on Twitter at Creature Feat Pod. That's f E A T, not f E two. It's something very different. Uh and hey, thank you too, Thank you so much for listening. If you're enjoying the pod and you leave a rating, I really really appreciate that. And if you leave a review, I will read it, and again I

will really appreciate them. I I print them all out and then just like sort of create a human being out of them, like a paper mache person, and then hug it. That's what I sharing. Sharing and reviewing is so important, folks. Please, it is very important for the algorithm and also for the paper mache man I'm building, like I said, making a paper trainche man out of the reviews that I'm printing out so I can hug him.

But he's missing a whole arms, So you know, if you yeah, So if you want to be part of the paper machine man I'm building out of reviews, do leave a review and I will read it and love it. Thank you, I really appreciate it. And hey, thanks to the Space Classics for their super awesome song. Excel Alumina Creature features of production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one You Just Heard, visit the I Heard Radio app Apple podcast or Hey guess what Marby

A listen to your parents shows, not your mom. I'm not gonna tell you what to do. Whatever you want, look, go wild, go nuts. See you next Wednesday. By