There Is No "I" In "Teamwork" But There Is An "Ewok?!"

animal doesn't feel pain and loves eating poop? Is the answer? Man? No, No, it's not so this may be considered blasphemy, but my favorite part of the Star Wars Original trilogy is when those Ewoks engage in guerrilla warfare tactics to defeat the Empire. Was it a brazen attempt by George Locus to make the movie more marketable towards children? Yes? But was it a cool example of some weird, dog faced monkey like

aliens work together towards a common purpose. Yes it was, and I love how individually each Ewalk looked like a snubbed face a little more on, but together they somehow figured out to defeat the galaxy's most menacing army. Of course, this is fiction, the fevered brainchild of a franchise hungry George Lucas. But are there real examples of adorable animals banding together to save the galaxy. As a matter of fact, there are, and they're often more inventive and more lovable

than those little shag carpeting aliens. So today on the show, I'm joined by comedian, writer and actor Blake Wexler. Hello, thank you so much for having me. I'm so excited to do this. Yeah, what's your opinion on the Walk's not wrong? Answers? Thank god, because I was already second guessing myself. Um, I've always loved them, Like, I don't think they're skilled fighters. I think they were in over their heads. But I mean I saw Star Wars when I was a kid, and I thought they were so

cute and yeah, yeah they were a little teddy bears. Yeah. I think they're sort of like the everyman alien where you know, they don't they aren't very aren't, they aren't very agile, faces are small and weird. But together they made those weird log things that just crushed people in between it. It's pretty great. I love that. I love that so much. And their sling shots. Yeah. Yeah, they were fantastic, like a Rube Goldberg device that just like brought a huge spike down on some kind of guy.

And it is It is funny. I've never thought of them as aliens. I've just thought of them as smart bears. Um, but they would technically be aliens that Yeah, they're alien bears, Barelians, Barellians. Uh yeah. So um, speaking of relating this topic to movies, Uh, that was a great segway. That was phenomenal. All the air just exited my lungs. A gasp, A gasp of such an excellent segue. Remember the Matrix. Hey guys, it's

twenty nineteen. Remember the Matrix. That's all I think about. Um, if you think about it, in that movie, the humans are at the domesticated animals of the robots because you know, we're producing energy for them and they're exploiting our bodies. Um. And so in the movie, you kind of have the decision to happily live in ignorance unless you are offered a choice by Morpheus to live in reality or like keep living in your happy robot world. Um, what would

you personally choose in this situation? Um? I would well, my reality isn't that great, so I guess whatever I mean? Am I? But yeah, I would love just anything. I'm okay with being like completely oblivious and ignorance, so what's going on around me or continuing that? Right? So yeah, I'm cool with that one. Yeah, I'm just I'm just not sure what the benefits are to re establishing human society if like we've already kind of screwed it up, and then you know, the robots are like they're treating

as much better than humans treat livestock. Um, we're enjoying our lives presumably, So I don't know, I'd probably be I probably decided to stay in the matrix because honestly, uh, have you seen it outside the skies all dre But dogs are sort of like Morpheus and Neo, and they decide to break outside of the matrix, the human matrix that see this, this a metaphor is not strained at all. I'm sure that there are humans who own two dogs and their names are Monny, yeah, or do you're like

the Red cable or the Blue cable? Or would you like to lick my butt? Okay it's the butt licking. Yes, I figured that yes, okay, Um, so I've just shown you some viral videos of stray dogs or rescue dogs freeing other dogs viral and that they will give your computer a viruses. They were like news websites which just instantly infect your computer with a bowl. Uh. And it's but yeah, these videos are pretty pretty cool because uh one of them shows a stray dog bringing a dog

tied to a fence. Uh. And then once it on ties it, it drags it by the leash like you're in my pet. Now. We thought this was a selfless act. You were just ascertaining a servant of servant from post. Who's the human now, stocks and bonds, stocks and bonds toilet paper. I am a human, look at my pet dog. Um. And then there was another video of a dog freeing. Uh. He was in a shelter and he freed like everyone else in the kennel. Um. And then they just romped around,

had a good time, urinated all over the floor. It was great. Yeah, they really quickly because in that moment you think that there's some sort of enlightened dog that is smarter than all the other dogs, and it's a selfless act. And then they just a meet we remind you that they're dogs and you start playing around and

barking at one another and peeing on the floor. Yeah. Yeah, although I did I love that that peeing on one of the doors, because that's like, that's such a great rebel move of this is what I think of your stupid door. Yeah. Um. So after watching these I had to kind of ask the question, like, are these dogs actually trying to rescue each other or they just being dogs and not really thinking about it? Um? Are they displaying empathy? Are they trying to work as a team?

You know what? What's their motivation? Because because we can often anthropomorphize animals inappropriately, where we think they're being you know, it appears that they're empathizing with each other and they want to free each other. But uh is this true? Uh? Do we have to fear dog uprising? Uh? So um. To answer this, there's a few questions we have to get through. One is like, can dogs actually recognize other dogs?

Which sounds obvious, but it's not when you think about the diversity of dog breeds and how some of them look like little chipmunks and other ones look like bears. So um. And the next question is do dogs display empathy towards each other. Uh. And then the final question is can they actually work together to solve problems? So, uh, there's research that actually answered all of these questions. Um. So there's a Scientific American article that's titled do Dogs

Know Other Dogs? Or dogs? I feel real smart reading these uh scientific articles. It seems accessible. Yes, um so uh it's uh, like I said, it is an actually important question. So researchers in France trained dogs that they'd be rewarded when approaching a dog's image. So you boop noses with a picture of a dog, and you get a reward um as opposed to another animal like a

cow or something. Um. And then they once the dogs kind of got the rules right, then they trained them to uh uh or they trained them to approach the dog image always, and then they started showing them pictures of lots of different breeds of dogs like shit sues and Golden Retrievers and chihuahuas, and then a bunch of different animals like gerbils and cows and cats and people and children and whatever. Um, and all the dogs passed

the test. Uh. They were able to correctly identify the pictures of dogs, which is kind of incredible because when you think about it, some dogs kind of look like Gerbils. Yeah, Chihuahua and a gerbil are completely actually exactly the same, literally the same, right. I had a couple of guinea pigs and you know, taking them around on walks and people come out like, oh, can I pay your dog? You're small, You're small sausage like dogs. That story. Uh,

you hear these stories every once in a while. Um. Oh, this family was raising a dog and it was a bear, you know what I mean. So even humans can't figure out what's a dog and what is a massive mammal beast. I thought it was a child, but it was just it was a shaved bear. Yeah, it was a shape bear. The whole time, ravenous child kept kept trying to get honey. It was real weird. It's crazy. His friend, his friend was a tiger and a pig baby pig, piglet and kangaroo.

And it turns out I was just on Ellice d at the zoo. But anyways, the whole time, I'm a terrible mother. I apologize. Um. So the next question is do dogs display empathy towards other dogs? Uh? And so there was a study that they had a few dogs just hanging out chilling, and then the researchers played sounds of the dogs issuing distress wines, um, like before the

dog saw the other dogs. So just like a video recording of a dog crying, which is kind of a horrifying experiment if you try to put imagine you're abducted by aliens. And then they just start playing the sounds of someone sobbing uncontrollably. I'm picturing it. Yeah, um. And then they would open the door and allow the dogs to unite. And then the dogs who heard the distress wines were much offered a lot more comfort to the dogs, a lot more licking and jumping in general dogginess towards

their dog friends. And they also showed a preference towards empathy with dogs that they were familiar with, so if they had met the dog before, they were more likely to respond to the distress wines and then respond with more licking and empathy. Cute, It's very cute. Um. And then the final question is, uh, can dogs work together and solve problems and synergize and team? Oh? I wish

I want to I want to have a television show. Oh, boy called Scooby Doo okay, yeah, and he has a little buddy, The titular Scooby has a little buddy named Scrappy. They might be related. This sounds great so far, and it's fantastic, and they solve crimes with children. Now. They both talk in perfect English, right, it is the King's English, and it's um perfect. There's one of them might be a drug addict, I see, yeah, yeah, but but but it's legal now, but I believe at the time it wasn't.

So yeah. And the other one is I don't know if it's younger, like he's more adults somehow kind of pretentious. The small one is yeah, yeah, interesting. One thing I never understood with Scrappy and Scooby was like, Scrappy, what are you talking? That's not ahead? Sorry, sorry, doesn't work when I do there, Wait what we're gonna say. The one thing about that, yeah, Scrappy is like he talks in perfect English, whereas Scooby talks and kind of dog English.

So how did that happen? And Scrappy walks on his hind legs and Scooby walks like a normal dog. Did did Scooby? Did Scooby screw Like, did they did Scooby like have a human dog hybrid? Oh? I like that, crappy is interesting. I was going to say one got a better education than the other, but I like your takenaques. I always go to that. Yeah, if you presented with

two choices, education or the disgusting thing that I'm proposing, Yeah, definitely. Well, because it's walking on its hind legs like a hominid um. It actually has uh, sort of the shoulder and pelvis pelvic bone structure of a hominid more um. And uh, it's irascibly annoying. So the only like it's got to

be some kind of mutant dog. And then they just I guess they call it his nephew to kind of obfuscate the fact that it's this horrifying abomination of human and dog DNA that was never supposed to work out in the gestational phase. Yes, that was I was so I forgot that I was a part of this podcast. Was listening to you right there. But that was fantastic, U TV. This is my new pitch. It's uh, it's it's like a gritty reboot of Scooby Doo. It's amazing to be played on the w B where else? So um,

so yes, dogs can work together? As the original question, um and uh, there's a study that dogs had to trick a human in order to get through a fence to get a treat. So the human had there like two doors and like one sliding door, and so the human could only cover one door at once. Um, so

the dogs would uh would diversify. So if they were in a team, they very quickly figured out that if one was at one door and the other was at one door, the human couldn't keep them both out, and then they were they were able to get past the fence into the food reward. Um and which humans just keeps getting drink. Goddamn the dog got out of I'm sorry, guys, you're gonna lose my goddamn job. Dogs keep tricking me. These just just the sort of like the Marx Brothers

and their victim kind of situation. They I have a story about the I guess the last two questions like can they U are they empathetic to other dogs? And then can they work together? Where I was at my girlfriend's family place and we have a dog who's rescued named Ali, and then he's so cute. And then my sister's brother I'm just called my sisters. By the way, I didn't even get that right. My girlfriend's brother. I almost said my sister's boyfriend, which was been a totally

different person. So my girlfriends So your sister's boyfriend's girlfriends brother brother, right, right, So whatever slip that was going on in my head, I'm not going to acknowledge your sister is your girlfriend. Let's not add labels. I don't label my family. Okay, so my real girlfriend and her brother. Her brother has a real girlfriend, my real human girlfriend, human girlfriend. Um, she think it really sounds yet normal

the way I'm saying that this is normal. Yeah, So we have a dog named Ali, and then my girlfriend's brother has a dog named Albert, and he's a rescue too. And there was another dog there who is this like prissy bijon freeze that was wearing a diaper. It had been like freshly groomed. And was this an elderly dog or just like it was incontinent. It wasn't old, It wasn't like, oh I feel bad for this dog. It's I believe that dog felt that those lesser than him

should clean up his ship. I see. So this dog never gained poop in any designated area. No, absolutely not. It's it's not his problem, you know, it's the people around right. So the two dogs like he was in the typer and like, you know, it's clearly an embarrassing looking thing, and then the two middle class dogs kept peeing on him over and over again. It's just a sign of just horrific disrespect. So yeah, they were working together to put that dog in its place, and they

had no empathy for it. Hey, diaper boy, come over here. I'll show you you're our diaper. Now. Look at him wearing the vestments of humans. I'm going to peel on his head. It's literally the one thing we have because we all have to wear a diaper or pe in a specific spot. I love this idea of dog society cruelly looking down upon any dog who betrays dog kind, like like bone Cruncher, you have forsaken your own kind and warned the trappings of humanity. Feel our wrath in

the form of a golden shower of punishment. Boh new Hi. I longed for the confines of my own home. I was just rude in my eyes. So um, actually, uh, and this is not just a behavior of domesticated dog spotted hyenas, which are actually more closely related to felines. But they're an example. The reason they're so dogli is an example of convergent evolution. So they're morphology and their pack structure is very similar to dogs. Um. But you know,

as I said, they are not. They're actually more more closely related to simba than they are too, you know, airbud. Their front legs are longer than their hind legs correct or or yeah I think so. Yeah, Yeah, it's my favorite animal. Yeah, they're they're they're and they're very uh they're big muscles. Yeah. Their heads shapes are just like when you see their head shapes compared to a dog, it's so clear that they're different species of animal because

their heads are just so swollen. Um, they got these buff ass heads. Yeah they don't. They don't skip head day. No. No, it's like where do you work at high at the live were and I also murder things every day? Um, So they're there. They live in sub Saran Africa. Um. And they have these like we kind of talked about briefly on the show before. They have these a matriarchal

society's hierarchies and they work together. Um. And Uh. When presented with a puzzle where two hyenas have to simultaneously tug on ropes to get this platform to drop for food to fall down, Uh, they learned it so quickly without any training. Uh. And they were way better at it than chimpanzees who were also given the same task. And the chimpanzees really needed a lot of handholding, so the the researchers had to train them how to do this,

and the hyenas just were real quick studies. Um. So that's so interesting because uh, chimpanzees are our cousins, you know, they are social, socially very intelligent animals. But uh, hyenas were still better at specifically this kind of problem solving task, which is so so interesting. That's not to say hyenas are overall more intelligent than chimpanzees, they're just a yeah,

they're better team players. Interesting. Yeah. I wonder if chimpanzee, because they are so related to us, are more inherently selfish and less likely to work together. Interesting. Yeah, I mean it is. It is interesting because I think that um, I mean, humans really rely on social structure. Uh, and they do really rely on kind of these social strategies.

But on the other hand, they're also we have a solitary streak where we can work independently, and I think that's actually big strength, where each unit of the group

is quite intelligent and solitary. But then you can see where like that can cause conflict where we are trying to figure something out on our own, whereas if you're an animal who's uh sort of like it's second nature to you, and you your pack structure is such that you need to very quickly make these decisions as your hunting, then it makes sense that they kind of immediately figured out where's the chimpanzees are probably like goofing around, sticking

the rope up their butt holes or whatever, just overthinking it. All Right, if we do this at this angle, I tie the rope to my genitals. Yeah, so what that's my thing? Um. I've been sort of in a lion king kind of uh bender here because I don't know, it's I'm so frustrated with the movies total inaccuracies that I feel the need to correct the record. Um was starting with the talking Yeah, I UM don't think animals are that talkative also, I mean they would all be

speaking different languages. Duh, like yeah uh um, but you know it is uh so. So I think what's interesting is the mere cat in the movies is solitary, which is very unusual. UM. Mere cats have a very complex society and it's actually kind of interesting. There was like a what was it Lion King one and a half where Poomba and and uh Tamane got their own backstories and they were like exiled from the group. Yes, and that's actually almost accurate that mere cats can be exiled.

So uh, mere cats live in South Africa. UM. They are also matriarchal. UM. There's one dominant female who reserves the breeding rights UM. And dominance rights are not actually napatistic, so it's not like a sort of monarchy type thing. There's this constant struggle for dominance UM where the most aggressive females went out in terms of becoming queen. Uh sort of like high school am I right, exactly like high school? UM. And so there are benefits to the

society they live. They live in a very predator dense area, so like UM, by raising their pups together and having sentinels, you know, the classic mere cat little pose where they're looking around being all cute. Um, that actually really helps the colony survive. Um. And they it's also you know, takes a village of merecats to raise a mere cat pup, because yes, that is the saying, because they all raised the pups together. Um. But and this seems like a beautiful, happy,

well oiled commune. But when you peel back the layers of your cat propaganda, you actually find, uh, these are actually very rife with conflict, and the lords to the apartments that they live in, the conditions are shipped. That's true, that is true. I mean, like the roof keeps leaking, there's no the h a is out of control. So just like you know, they're like, oh you can't, you

can't just have dung in your backyard. It's like, come on, I know, um, I know, I'm renting, but I have some rights right right, the right to collect a bunch of dong in my backyard. Uh. So, females are constantly vying for the dominant role of breeder, as you can imagine, because the way natural selection works, you want your genes

passed down. Um, otherwise you're done. So the fact that there, it makes sense that they're all vying for that dominant role because that selfishness gene of like of like I want to be dominant, now I want to be dominant, that's going to get passed down. So even though there's only a few of the females that end up actually getting to breed, that that gene of wanting to be dominant and struggling to be dominant is very successful. Um So, uh,

this is a weird question. If so the dominant queen and that's I know that's not the right phrase, but it's a dominatrix, the dominatrix of the compound. Um is the are the pups from that dominant queen more likely

to be a dominant queen themselves? Not necessarily Like I said, it's a it's not really nepotistic, it's they are more likely to uh survive because dominant queens will kill off any um any offspring that are sort of unauthorized um and also sometimes the subordinate females will sneakily start killing off the offspring when they get the chance. Um. So there's there are there's a there's like sother fuge and

uh backstabbing and a lot like that. There's a reason that there's this whole I think Animal Planet reality show called merecatman Or where they're just basically like Desperate Housewives

except mercats. Um. There's all sorts of on like soap opera esque intrigue and like backstabbing, And there was one where one of the subordinate females had an affair with one of the males and then the dominant female chased her out of the colony and exiled her, and then she tried to come back in the colony and really was like literally kissing the feet of the dominant female

to get spoilers, this is amazing. It's just like Maria Porquet, this teledevella based in sub Saharan Africa where most of them are yes, South Africa. Yeah, um, and so uh. They'll even excommunicate females that haven't done anything wrong, but they just suspect that they may be competition, Like you're looking pretty uh fertile, You're you're getting tossed out. Um. But she has to be careful because she needs enough females around to take care of her pups and keep

the colony safe with enough sentinels. So it's sort of this, um, you know, this calculation of how many females do I chase off to protect my position as the dominant female, and how many do I keep around to raise my pups? Right? I killed too many of my guards and now I'm vulnerable exactly. I mean, she typically doesn't kill. They usually just like chase them off. And sometimes the females that get excommunicated will actually go on to establish their own colonies.

It's hard, though, it's defically you gotta be really cares about. Yeah, you gotta start from the ground, right, right, Um, what are the men doing at this point? So usually there's just so usually just a UM, I like that you did? What about them? And with the mere cats? Gotcha? No, it's gotcha. No, it's all right, it's a that's a perfectly reasonable question. Um No. But but the males do, uh like they just a few of them are dominant, so they will also be vying for for a ability

to mate with the dominant female. UM. And then they are in a very similar situation as the females, where they constantly vying to be the uh get up the ranks, um and uh if they when they're subordinate, they just help out with the colony and they will act as sentinels. Yes, well yeah, exactly unfortunately capitalism. Am all right, how much time do you have? I mean, this isn't Chapo trap house so um but uh so uh, I want to talk about naked mole rats because they're one of my

favorite animals. They are really interesting as we segway from your cats to uh uh these more use social uh colonies. Um. So, naked mole rats if you've ever seen when they look like, yes, a fire, if John Lovett's and a fire had a baby that was a scrotum, yeah, yeah, that would be that would be the thing. So when a fire have a baby that's right or like or like you know, Mitch McConnell's neck, Oh god, that's but it has eyes and teeth that are on the outside of its lips.

The artist formerly known as the silhouette of McConnell's Adam's Apple is put in color right. And they actually even though they do have eyes, they're completely blind. Um. And they live in underground huge underground networks have tunnels. Um. And they're very similar to be an ant colonies, and that they have one breeding female queen who is disgustingly enlarged when she's pregnant. Uh, I thought you were just this This podcast is so ripe with details and so intelligent.

I thought you're just gonna be like and one queen who's disgusting. I was just going to be the hand. I mean. So, I've got a few pictures to show you. Here's one, and you can see her. I don't even know what I'm looking at. It's a it's a naked morat queen enlarged with pregnant, just like multiple babies, and she's like many times the size of like a regular mole rat. Here's another one who's so pregnant, looks like a giant. But that's true. Um, if only that's how

it worked, if you're twins. They just watched this one. This one looks like it looks like she has this like huge just perfect asked, But it really is just her sides teeming with babies. Don't blow up her spot. Um so uh the the There here's a few quick mole rat facts. Welcome to mole rat facts Corner. They don't sponsored by sprite Researchers believe that they don't feel pain. They can survive almost twenty minutes without oxygen and they're almost immune to cancer. That sounds like my ex wife,

what all three of those things immune to pain? Hold her breath and she's a sort of cancer. That's good. I don't know, it seems to work for her. Um I wish you well. Doesn't sound like she needs luck. She doesn't me so, I mean just it's so I love mother Nature's sense of humor. That like one of the most amazingly resilient animals looks like a nut sack with teeth, which is like the least resilient, the most vulnerable of things in the universe. You are you are

unbreakable and I am Mr Glass. Just the mole rat and a ball sack meeting and it's like, well, what's his name? Bruce Willis met? Whose name? Samuel Jackson? Yes? Yes, um? And that in that movie Unbreakable? Who knew that you would be able to connect this? Thanks those four things? I guess technically yes, five things, two things, one unit to yeah right math anyways, um ballsac math, Welcome to Baal Sac Math Corner Corner sponsored by um SO Division

of Labor among Uh. They're these like casts of nick mule rats, these different uh kind of ranks. So there's the one breeding female queen and then typically up to three breeding males. Uh. The non breeders do work building tunnels, taking care of the pups, foraging for food with their huge outside teeth. And I can't emphasize this enough. Like their teeth are outside of their lips. It's very good looking. Um. They will clean poop out of the nondesignated toilet areas. Uh.

And they do. They actually have little toilet areas and they'll go in do their duty. And it's not it's not just it's not that they find poop growth because they'll roll around in it and we'll talk about more poop things later. But they yes, uh poop tease. UM. So they'll fend off intruders and UH. So there's some evidence that, UM, there are dominant structures within the ranks

of workers. So when they are passing through each by each other and tunnels, if the tunnel is narrow enough, the subordinates will pass under the dominant naked mole routes is one of the theories. UM. And so there's some research that uh kind of suggests that there are three main categories of workers. There's the busy workers, the pep caretakers, and then the large lazy workers the homers if you will.

Um so, uh And what's interesting is this research kind of I think the initial research kind of overlooked the fact that the larger lazier workers actually took a more active role in defending the colonies. So even though they didn't do as much of the grunt work, they did a lot more of the soldier work. So they would they would fend off predators or invaders. Um, they use your their teeth for that. Yeah, yeah, they're they're fun

outside teeth. Yeah. I've never heard the term outside teeth before, and it's perfect and I I don't think this is how it works. But if I saw an angry nutsack just running towards me, gnashing its teeth, that I wouldn't that I would be done. Yeah. No, that's a that's a one eight turnaround situation. Yeah, that's a that's a no. That's a no situation. It's a hard no, that's a hard soft sack. Right. Um. So, male workers are functionally sterile.

Um so their sex hormones are suppressed, likely by dominance behavior by the queen. So the queen one of her behaviors is just shoving literally for us, shoving shoving them around um with her giant writhing mass of pregnancy. UM and so, but they are but all of the females do have the potential to become breeding queens. So when the queen dies, one of the females will take her place, um and usually just by being the most dominant, most

u ready to ready, most boss bay around. Yeah, that's interesting that they have to overcome the fact that they have been so docile for so long. Words, I wonder what triggers that were, like if just the death triggers that I think, because there's no more, they aren't getting bullied as much, so new bully arises. That's so um and uh. Sometimes they will actually escape from the colony and they'll break off to start their own colony UM and that helps. Also that's suggested to help prevent genetic

bottleneck UM. And then finally, let's talk about poop eating, because I know this is was your the best for LASS. So they eat poop to communicate and for their health. So the little pups will beg for poop by chirping and scratching at the workers butts, just like scratching at

their anuses until they're like, fine, here's some poop. So the reason that the babies like to eat the poop is that their gut flora is not developed yet, so by eating the fecal matter, they actually help develop the helpful bacteria in their guts that will help them digest the tubers and all the harsh uh kind of ruffage that they have to eat um. But they're not the only ones who eat poop. The rest of the workers

will eat their poop for nutrition. And there is some developing resource that suggests that the ueens poop contains hormones that may control the behavior of her subordinates, so she gets just more and more devious as we go on. So researchers fed workers the queen's poop and they became

more responsive to the cries of pups. So the idea is that the queen's poop is so rich with these these hormones that when the females eat the poop, then they're like, they're like, oh, kind of overwhelmed with this caretaker hormone, so they're literally mind controlling them with shit. Amazing, the queen's poop sounds like it's being like beta tested, like you know the the West Hollywood Whole Foods right now,

right with with the Dame Judy Den. Yes, of course, um um, would you have for a sample of the Queen's poop? I mean, if it's free like a Black Mirror episode, Yeah, it is like like, oh but good. The queen's poop signifies propaganda, and when you eat the poop, that signifies you eating the propaganda into it. I follow, I think I follow. I think I followed this episode.

I followed the metaphor. I also like the idea that I think it's so involved that they do have designated poop areas and the fact that they know that is so impressive. And then off that the fact that they will still poop in the non designated areas. It's still very human as well. Or it's just like what the fun There's a whole place they taste in like Dennis, is this your poop? It is Dennis, and he does it every goddamn just ship in the designated room, man,

like this is disgusting. Then they pick it up with their mouths and move it to the poop area and maybe eat some of the poop just a little bit on the way just like, well, I guess I'll snack on it as I carry it to the toilet. If you make me you wanted to do it, that's uh that well, you know the wonders of nature. Yeah, I think it will. Rats present an obvious puzzle in terms of natural selection, but altruism in general can be just as perplexing. Altruism is a tricky topic in evolutionary biology.

After all, when you think of survival of the fittest, competition and selfishness seem like clear winners. So if a selfish cheat or prospers, his genes will be passed on. But all sorts of creatures, from humans to other mammals, insects, plants, have developed cooperative, seemingly altruistic strategies. Figuring out how this works from an evolutionary standpoint has been a fascinating and

contentious challenge for biologists. One of the more controversial topics in evolutionary biology is that of kin selection and group selection. Kin Selection is an evolutionary strategy in which an individual will try to optimize the reproductive success of their relatives.

The simplified idea is you share your genes with your relatives, so if you help them succeed, even if it risks costing your own success, they'll pass on genes similar to your own, which will in turnspawn more of your altruistic genes in the future. There's even a mathematical formula called Hamilton's rule that demonstrates how your own genes can increase

in frequency when you help your relative reproduce. So the formula goes like this, As long as your relatedness to your relative, multiplied by how much you're helping them reproduce, is greater than the cost to your own reproduction, then that strategy should help your genes replicate, otherwise known as the Wingman Cockblog paradox. Though kin selection is often used to explain altruistic behavior in animals and even humans, there's

another more controversial theory, group selection. The idea of group selection is that natural selection also acts upon groups. This theory has been refined into something called the multi level selection theory a k a. The Russian nesting doll theory a k a. A bunch of old evolutionary biologists yelling at each other theory. The idea is that natural selection puts evolutionary pressure upon organisms on multiple levels. First upon the genes. This is the innermost layer of the nesting doll.

Then this cells than the entire organism, than the outermost layer is the group. Critics of this theory, of whom there are many, argue that group selection doesn't work in the natural world, which would favor cheaters over cooperators on an individual level, and that pro social behavior requires direct selective pressure, for instance, when mere cats literally exiled those who break the rules. So there you go. There's an overly simplified rundown of one of the biggest debates and

evolutionary biology. And I'm afraid I'm a bit too spineless to come up with my own position on this quarrel. Speaking of spineless, when we get back from a quick break, we're going to look at some animals who may lack a spine, but who have hearts of gold or mandibles of gold. Will be right back. So let's talk about bees, ants, and termites and all of those hive minds. How does natural selection work when there's only one queen who reproduces. Why do members of a colony happily serve their queen

when they could be out there getting laden, laying eggs. Bees, ants and other hive insects are used social you. Sociality describes a society that cooperates for the good of the entire brute rather than the good of the individual. Typically, there is a single breeding queen and different jobs and casts within the society. The whole youth social society may depend on their unique reproduction strategy. Social ants, bees and

termites are a haploid diploid. This means that the females are born from fertilized eggs, having DNA from the mother and father, whereas males are born from unfertilized eggs, having only maternal DNA. This means that sister worker ants who share a father in a colony are actually seventy percent related to each other. There's a mathematical equation that explains it.

As you may know, I'm not very strong on math, but essentially, they all share one hundred percent of their father's DNA and of their mother's DNA, so they are more related to their sisters than potential offspring who would only share fifty percent of their DNA with their mother. This lends itself to the theory that their youth social

behavior is kin selection at work, an evolutionary sisterhood. Of course, ants, bees and termites are more complex than this more simplified picture with sneaky workers sometimes laying eggs and queens mating with multiple fathers. But at its core, that possibility for SEV relatedness to sisters represents the evolutionary pathway towards you sociality. So that was a lot of words. Do you have

any questions? No, I understood it all completely. So ants are more related to their sisters than they would their own kids. Okay, so crazy, yeah, yeah, because of that that halfway yeah, yeah, where the males just are basically they receive a certain amount of DNA from their mothers, no paternal DNA. Fathers are related to their daughters, whereas daughters are fifty percent related to their fathers. And male bees and ants and termites can have grandsons, but they

don't have fathers, right right. This is like, uh, you know in school when they would be teaching you, you know, like the is pointless fucking math problems that were just like if this then this, but this, if but however this, and it's just like this is the dumbest thing. No one would ever try to confuse you like this. But that's literally a real life application of one of those

math Yeah that's what. How like when I took a class in college on this and they gave us this problems that it felt like one of those ridiculous, made up problems like no, this is real, this is uh real, and I have to use math and it was I found it difficult. I can't imagine. We had very different educations. There's a lot more pretending, I think at Emerson College. But it's so it's really interesting. So these uh, these social we can learn a lot I think from from uh.

Aunt's By is another of these youth social colonies because of how they have been evolution has shaped them into the perfect society of cooperation. Uh. And so there's the question how do bees cope with a zombie apocalypse? And can we learn from them? Oh? Interesting because it is

their own kin rising up book? Is that because they have actually how do any of these because all these things have so many relatives, you know, like where for us it's like God, that would be fucked up if you saw your mom coming at you know, I guess zombie. But they have so many family members and sisters, Like God, I had to kill one of my sisters. But also if you only lived with your sisters, wouldn't you just fantasize about killing Yes, yes, I mean I think it's

also because they're they're so relatively selfless compared to human society. Um. So there's a very real example of this. There's a parasite called the scuttle fly, which sounds really cute, but it's not. Um I think the word parasites suggested that it wasn't um. Oh, and there's a there's a cool So if you've ever wondered what the differences between parasite like parasitic and parasitoid. Parasitoid means that it will in once in one stage of its life cycle, kill its host,

whereas parasitic it may or may not kill its host. Um. So, the scuttle fly will infect bees with their maggots uh, and honey bees infected with the parasite will abandon their colonies and fly off aimlessly, zombie like into the night, just like just flying around in circle is not really do it just you know, had the zombie shuffle, like the zombie shuffle but a bee but with but in the air right right, or you know, like they can sometimes crawl on the ground to and just like bonk

into things, you know, the zombie shuffle, but a b yeah, because you're pregnant with another thing. Oh my god, also get it zombie um So you're just high fly yourself. I mean I've sprouted more hands just to give myself more high fives. I mean, why else would you do it? Right? So this the question is, is this an altruistic self sacrifice, like our bees wandering off to protect the rest of the colony, which is the case often with ants infected with um fungus um. Or is this the parasite mind

controlling the bees? Uh? So, Researchers at San Francisco State University are equipping these bees with electronic trackers to discover more about their behavior and to see uh. They want to both see like like do these bees only wander out at night, which would indicate that maybe they're being

mind controlled because they're traveling out during the day. And they also want to track to see if any of this zombification is a factor in colony collapse because this is happening to bees and it's scary and mysterious because we need bees to live. Oh God, as if we're not doing enough, you know, to destroy their race, right. I do love that humans are now teaming up with bees to try to save the bees, Like we're putting trackers on bees and like trying to help solve their

zombie apocalypse. I would really hope that bees would do the same for us. Yeah, yeah, I think it might be too little, too late though, if they I don't know if bees are vindictive, that's true, that whether they they're just like, uh, they're they're clasping their little hands together like revenge would uh so would this scuttle fly is that what you called it? That's right? Would it

want to be if it is doing mind control? Would it want the bee to fly away from the hive because that gives their babies like a better chance of survival, Like would little maggots not survive as well on a high Well, that's kind of the question, is like potentially right, because the hive will attack intruders, so once that maggot hatches, there's no guarantee that those bees aren't just going to kill the maggot. It could also be dispersal, like allowing

the maggots to have some amount of dispersal. Uh, But what's creepy about this is like they don't really know that much about it yet, so they're they're that's that's why they're making these robot zombie bees. God, what if these what if the hive if they send something was a little off, like with that baby, like it had a fever or something, they killed that bah. Interesting. I don't know, Like I don't I'm not sure if they

actually like kill the sick. I think that, yeah, but I do think that the potential theory that they actually self isolated has been shown like that that um, And there is a lot of self sacrifice in these colony situations, um, which is you know, kind of a uh like if in a human apocalypse, like if people would selflessly be like, oh I think I'm infected, I better go to that quarantine, we'd probably be a lot better off. But we know

humans wouldn't do that. No, No, absolutely not. Whenever I'm sick, I just say I have allergies right right, like your jaw it's falling off. Fine, just got surgery summer called I got my wisdom teeth that you're you're forty nine. They just came in so uh and other news about what humans are doing for bees. Lately, Papa Johns made a tiny pizza for bees. Oh that's good the marketing campaign. That's weird because bees are half black and the guy who owns that place as a racist boy, didn't he

get kicked out? Though he did, he did finally after years of fighting it for summer. And see. So so they're okay with the striations on bees now yeah, yeah, now that he now that racist piece of ship has gone, they can now make a piece for bees. Make bees. Here's a fun tip. Bees hate racists. Good proved me wrong. I wouldn't dare. I want you to be right, to

be wrong. Um, so this is great. Just like they made this tiny eat pizza and I think halfway through making this pizza they realized bees don't want to eat pizza, so they put some flowers and stuff on top of the pizza. There you go, it's pizza and a tiny pizza box. In no way is this actually helping bees this pizza. Um, I mean I guess, I guess. Uh. This is a marketing stunt for Papa John's. And also

to quote draw attention to the plight of pollinators. Um, because they're saying, without bees, we don't have tomatoes, so we should we should care about bees because without bees, there's no pizza. I don't I don't understand marketing clearly because, um, but you know, hey, tiny pizzas for bees. Can't really find any fault in that. No. No, no, that's as innocent as it gets. I guess that's right. Um so uh.

Other more helpful humans are looking into how ant colony behavior actually evolved by making ants a bunch of tiny pizzas and pulling them on their opinions. Um, it's like, come, come to our come to our focus group. There's free pizza. Uh. They flocked to it. They fall for it, just like we do. Uh. Oh sorry I forgot to mention. They called these pizzas beazzas. Anyways, back to science. Researchers are studying clonal raider ants, which are ants that are native

to mainland Asia. Uh. This species has no queens. They are anarchists. Um. They reproduced by cloning themselves, laying unfertilized eggs of their exact DNA, so all the ants are workers. Um. The researchers think that because they have this structure, are the link between solitary ants of the past um. Who maybe we're pre uh the ancestors before ants started forming colonies and the hierarchical colonies of today um where that

has the queens and the social structure. Um. So in order to uh find out what these clonal radar ants do, they painted them in fun colors to track their habits. So they're super colorful little ants. UM. Imagine stumbling across that and not knowing experiment was going. I was like, what the fuck is oh LSD, I'm on LSD, What the hell are these colors? All these colors of ants. I kind of want to do that, just like with ants that get in the home, because then it's like, hey,

it's ants, but they look colorful and fun. Yeah, it's not that big of a deal anymore. I don't care. Uh. So, the they actually found that even in groups of six, uh, these ants started to delegate tasks and form tames um. And they would like have a division of labor, like you go out and forage, you do this, and like start managing our our little burrowing area. Um. And the fact that the fact of the matter is that like the larger the ant society, the better and more stable

they were. I don't know, why I was being so argumented of their like like, god, damn it. The bigger the ant society the better, right, right, Yeah, it's like okay, geez, the one's arguing against you. It's fine. I think that's just like a very I think it's because it's part of my core philosophy, like if we all work together and we include everyone and are inclusive, like, we're going to have a better society, not the siloed and societies

the very specific interests, uh special interests. Well done, of course, thank you, thank you. So the fact that they are able to easily form these social groups, and that the bigger the group the better shows the evolutionary pressures on ants to form these big societies. UH, and perhaps showing how a youth social society, which seems kind of counterintuitive, could actually form uh and be in the ant's best interest. Um, and uh ants really are. There's a few cool examples

of how they're really the masters of teamwork. UH. They'll self organized to form bridges to allow other ants to pass gaps. UM. They'll form boats and rats when faced with water, just kind of self organizing. UM. And then they also will this is the grossest but most fun example, they will work together in pairs to get honeydew from aphids.

So a fids will eat plant matter turn it into this sugary substance called honeydew that the ants will want to eat, and they'll actually form aphids and develop this kind of symbiotic relationship with aphids, whereas it's kind of unclear whether the aphids are actually benefiting from it, but they they they're basically domesticating the aphids. Um. But in order to milk an aphid, it requires two ants if they're if the ants are small, um like, if it's a big enough ant, the ant, the ant can just

reach around and do all sorts of things. But well, there will be a YouTube tutorial of smoking after this. What's up, aunt Tuba, I got uh listen. I'm sorry I haven't posted a while. It's been real busy, real rough. One queen has been real pitch anyways, just a five minute preamble. Um, so you just squeeze it, all right, that's it. So, in these pairs of ants that are milking the aphids, one ant will stimulate the dorsal glands while the other ant collects the sugar from the aphids. Butthole.

That's the better job. Really puts the ass into a system. Uh, but that's uh, that's great. Where it's like now you you tickle is tickle them while I get his dorsal what his dorsal glands? Yes, yes, you tickle his glands and going to suck the sugar out of his bee hole. It's like you always get you always get to suck the sugar out of his bee hole. I'm good at it. Thank you the best, thank you. Wait wait a minute,

you're getting all the but sugar. So I think everyone's familiar with the idea that bees and ants and termites are social insects, But did you know how spiders can actually be quite social and for a huge communities, giant, big, large vest. That's terrible news, it's horrific news. So they're not always solitary hunters. There are social spiders which live all over the world. They're a variety of species that do the same behavior. Um and they are just all

called social spiders, which I love. It's like makes me think of like a social media influencer spider, like like a fam It's me Marissa E eight legs. Uh, it doesn't have like applicable life skills. But it's still good on whatever that is. I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do a dead cicada on wrapping. Uh. So, social spiders, like I said, they live all over the world. They prefer tropical and temperate climates. They even live in eastern US. Um. They will work together to weave communal webs that can

sometimes be as large as football fields. Uh. They will completely coat trees and manmade structures. And let me actually show you. I've never heard of social spiders. I have been called a social butterfly before by many people. I would prefer to be called social spider because more legs for hugging. Yes. Yes, So here's a picture of some of their webs. As you can see, they're quite extensive. They can cover he just entire fields, they can cover

groves of trees. Uh. Here you can see they've completely covered this coastline. Um, it's it's such a large web. Your your mind wouldn't identify that as a spiderweb. That looks like a spider web. But that can't be a spiderweb. It looks like some kind of weird fog rolling in until you step in it and you feel spaders curling all over your legs. Um so. Uh. The reason they do this is, uh, they're relatively small spiders. So by working together, uh, they put together a better offense and defense.

Um so defensively speaking, like when a spider web gets knocked into by a larger animal than what they're trying to prey upon and it gets destroyed, that ruin completely ruins their day. They have to rebuild the whole thing. It's really dangerous for them too. You know, they can get they can get injured or like you know. It's so by having by sort of creating this social network of webs uh, sort of like an an interweb. Um, they even if one individual's work is destroyed, like they

can use other webs and vice versa. It's kind of like some it's like social welfare, you guys. It's like it's like healthcare accept actually works. Roasted gotcha. Um So, Uh, they also work together to take larger prey. So these are, like I said, these are relatively small spiders. Um Like

not something you would be like. It's one of the spiders that even people with aracnophobia are like, Okay, yeah, it's just like one of those little ones um, But they can actually take down birds and bats because their webs are so extensive and so many of them work on it. They're they're thick, and so the birds and beasts can get trapped in these webs, kind of like Frodo when he's an idiot and he runs into the sheilab layer and he's just like running around and jiggling

and get more caught um. And then once it's trapped, like it's just swarmed by thousands of spiders. What a fucking way to go, right, Yeah, I mean it's the It's like, there's no it's not. It's never been shown that they can prey on anything larger. But I just wonder what happened if you like fell asleep, if you if you found yourself in a social spider web and then you just felt took a nap. What that nap would feel like? Horrifect? Would you rather be eaten by

all those little spiders or one big slab? I think I think one big sheilab because I think the venom from that would be would knock me out and be quicker. She would be able to And I say she just because I associate spider hunters with the larger. Typically the larger spiders are female. It was pretty big. I mean, yeah, she's swollen, pretty meaty. Yeah. Um, real spiders have curves. Yes, real spiders have thoraxes. Um, but she so yeah, so like it would be real quick, kind of like one

to get paralyzed, get all my juice sucked out. Done with like thousands of tiny spiders, I feel like they'd be a lot less adept so oh they'd be clumsily like fighting without purpose. Yeah. I don't think I would like that. Yeah, and they'd be so eager to because they're not used to something big as we are, right. Uh, they'd just be and just like playing around on your inside, like, hey, look at what I found. It's clean. I know, it's like act like you've been there before. Goddamnit using my

lungs as a bounty castle. No, I'm not into it. Just coughing up thousands of spiders. Wait, that's not normal. Oh my gods, that would have so wait what is the term? How many spiders do you eat while you're I think that's actually kind of like that whole thing is an urban legend that you like. I don't think you actually Spiders, especially spiders that you'll find in your home,

don't generally want anything to do with you. They don't want to they don't want to approach you, especially if you're like kind of breathing in your if you breathe when you sleep and you move around like a normal person. I don't think spiders want want to mess with you now or go in your mouth. It's less like if you eat that many spiders. I've actually never thought about this before. Then what is what are the stats on

all the other things that you're consuming? Because a spider that doesn't want to go anything like anywhere near you, Like, what else are you sucking up? Right? I mean you know you're more you're more likely to be like sucking up uh your own like eyelash mites while you're sleeping, um, which you have? You have mites on your eyelash right now, Get used to it. They're tiny, they look like spiders.

They're very tiny. They live in your eyelashes right now, and it's a good thing because they eat the dead skin around your eyelashes and keep them from getting super gross. So stop blinking like an idiot and enjoy it. Just enjoy the soft kisses of tiny, tiny mites all up in your eyelashes, near those things that you see with So hey, I know what you're gonna ask. What can we learn from ants when it comes to human society?

While researchers at the University of Pennsylvania are painting ants fabulous colors, not so they can go to Coachella, but to learn more about ant society and in turn, to understand human society. Painting the ants different vibrant hues with colorful dots allow researchers to follow the routine of individual ants to see how work is divided among the call

it me the u pen. Researchers also say that ants who have over a hundred million years experience living in a society much longer than humans, can teach us about how to cope with societal issues such as preventing the spread of disease. In fact, there's a whole body of research devoted to using ants as a model for helping improve human society, such as seeing how leave cutter ants deal with waste management, how they manage teamwork, how ants

manage crops. That's right, fungus growing ants maintain crops of fungus or comparing human financial market patterns to how ants decide between food sources. We can even study human pedestrian crowd movement dynamics by comparing it to ant crowd movement. So even though humans are great deal more intelligent than individual ants, as a crowd, we really aren't that different. Maybe that explains that weird thing that happens to me at picnics where people start crawling all over my sandwich.

When we come back, we'll be talking about how different species can work together and whether robots, animals, and humans can just get along. Dogs are a man's best friend, but in the future will it be robot who is man's best friend? Huh really makes you think, doesn't it. Well, Okay, no amount of AI can ever replace the dog shaped crevice in my heart, but heck, let's give it a shot. Human and animal teamwork is being used to shape models

for human and robot teamwork. That's right. If we do this machine learning correctly, maybe we'll have an AI that's not evil but wants belly rubs and choose on its own back door. A paper published in the Journal of Human Robot Interaction argued for using domesticated animals as a model to predict human and robot interaction. They even drew

comparisons between helper animals and currently existing robots. They compared a mule to one of those Boston Dynamics big dog robots, an elephant to an industrial car robot, a service dog to a robotic arm that can assist wheelchair users. And if this sounds like a cold, an uncuddly future, don't worry. They've got you covered. Our emotional needs can be met

by for acute seal androids and friendly humanoid robots. The authors of the paper don't argue that will ever completely replace animals with robots, but that robots are well not really that smart yet and certainly not at the level of AI where we can consider them as human replacements. So we'll need to learn to communicate with the AI like we would communicate with say a dog, Sit, Stay.

Don't destroy all humans? So what's your opinions on robots? Oh? Mine? Um, I I'm not one of the people where I'm like, oh, by the way, I like that. I just was surprised that you asked me. I'm the only person, Um what my opinion? But I'm sorry I thought you met the

small man's behind me, who's been breathing on my neck? Um, I think so I'm not one of the people are like, oh, I think they're gonna kill us all because I think I'll be long dead for not those reads, for like, you know, being an old person and reasons by then. But um, I really loved having a ferbie as a kid, and yeah, yeah I did. Are you challenging me? I definitely did. I've never heard anyone describe their relationship with a ferbious love. It was, Um, it went both ways.

And I loved having a little buddy that I could pet. And uh yeah I didn't have to clean it up. It ship. That was a big part of it, and I chose to. I didn't have to. We had it in Chilla that I confused for a furby. But yeah, um, I don't know. I really like those dogs that they designed for um dogs, Yeah, for like people who are older. You know, I'm trying to think of the right phrase. Uh you know older people that's surfing. Yeah, yeah, this is an animals so um, yeah, I think it's great.

I think it's cute. I don't think it could replace a living dog or a living pet, but yeah, I think there's definitely great uses for them. I think what's interesting is I certainly have this great discomfort with the

idea of creating a robot equivalent to a dog. But if you think about our evolutionary history with dogs, where we've basically programmed dogs to be uh, sort of a not an artificial intelligence, but a natural intelligence that we've uh perfectly shaped to be our companion animals, also aesthetically speaking to by beating them, making their eyeballs pop out of their skulls for cutenessurable um. So, yeah, I mean it is very interesting because their social intelligence is much

greater than um, we've even previously imagined. They're like we talked about earlier, they're really clever and they excel in all of these social tasks um and uh. And that's all due to them co evolving with us over such a long period of time that they can understand human social cues. They even track like our facial movements, like they focus on our faces are kind of asymmetrical, and like one side of our face expresses more emotion, and they'll actually focus on that side of the face more

um and uh. So it's it's like they're just the perfect companion. Uh And in fact, there's a theory that humans and dogs teaming up are how Neanderthals were defeated. That's so great. Um. So, there have been a lot of theories bounced around as to why modern humans went out against Neanderthals, which is our cousin humanoid um, whom we were competing with. And and sometimes sometimes blinking too,

there's still we've still got nean, there's all DNA. But but extinction also means just sort of like having they're gone as a distinct species, even though we still have some of their dna um. But one theory is that dogs just made humans so much better that it beat out the Neanderthal competition. So there's this book by anthropology professor pat Shipman. It's called The Invaders, and the book she argues that dogs and humans drove Neanderthals to extinction.

She proposes that there's evidence that the appearance of the first domesticated wolf dogs coincided with the downfall of Neanderthals, and that the human dog partnership in terms of hunting gave them such a huge advantage that they corned the market on large prey animals during a time when climate change made food of scarcity, so that's sort of like the the Ice Age era where you know you're struggling to both you know, get food. That the dogs presented

such a clear, clear advantage. We could hunt larger prey animals. It's almost like, I don't want to take the cuteness out of this, because that's I mean, it's all I'm interested in. But like, how cute it is that you have. It's good defeat, but it's almost like having to a more advanced tool kit than Neanderthals. You know, like take out the fact that's an adorable dog or you know, a heinous wolf either both of you. It's like, oh no,

I have a better weapon to hunt with. And if you think about it, I mean the dogs also now domesticated dogs outnumber wolf populations, so um, the you have these two predators to social predators, humans and wolves. Uh. And then they're teaming up to form like a super super alliance, a super alliance of evil doom um. And then they both ended up doing a lot better than they're like now in modern modern society. I mean, domesticated

dogs aren't going anywhere. They're incredibly successful compared to um, a lot of the like the wolf populations, which are often really in danger of being pushed out of their habitat um. And so that that's so interesting to me that you have these two, these two incredibly adapt predators just teaming up to uh just read a bunch of

death and destruction, and it's so cute. It's adorable. Adorable, Yeah, because their buddies, their buddies, they're best friends, just killing and murdering things and taking out those idiots with their weird big heads. Those Neanderthals, like they've got like a pet rockings like why don't you help me? Hunt me? Almost help me because I haven't drawn a face on you yet, just like with this rock, like like O

shick them. Oh you're useless, I'm useless. They're rock. Just frowns. Yeah. Um, so when you think of man's best friend, we always think of dogs. But what are your opinions on headline headline? When I was a child, Um, I had a trouble with um. This bully would keep stealing my hat and as far as bully problems go, not that big of a deal. But I wanted my head. I liked it, and my mom gave me this advice that you should tell the bully that you have head lice, and he

did stop stealing my hat. But then I was the lice kid, lice boy. Yeah, I was Lice's boy. Yeah. So I think I just shook that nickname I believe three years ago. Okay, um, but so I don't recognize that boy. Edit out for the love of fucking got it. Don't you do it? Don't you do it? My podcast that stays in. You are now Life's boy. Damn it? All right? Well as Life's boy, um, I uh, you know, not to shake my brand. But yeah, I like on

planes and stuff I used to worry about. You know, I put on a hood or something so I can get lice from the headrest, which I don't believe works. But I think you could still get through porous fabric. It's not typically how it. Uh. I don't think you can get it from a headrest very easily. Yeah. Good, we don't see the planes that I tried. Its teeming with life. Well, take take some solace in this life, boy, Um that's ever been Take solace in this life? Boy? Uh?

So headlights may have originally been a boon for humans. Uh, they may have been a mutualistic symbiote rather than a parasite. Um So. An article published in the journal Parasitology, of which I am subscribed to by Rosa and all argue that I'm sorry I said, and all it's actually at all that's totally fine. Uh so. Uh. They argue that since lice is transmitted mostly through head touching, which is a symbol of affection amongst humans, there may be a

benefit to getting lice. Um So. They argue that getting lice at an early age prompts an immune response effective against both headlights and body lice, and while headlights is kind of a nuisance, body I really presents the more dangerous uh. Symptoms, so body allows born. Lethal diseases include epidemic typhus, trench fever, relapsing fever, and you know classic plagues. Um So. The problem with relapsing fever it just keeps coming. You think it's over, and it's just I'm not I'm

not as into classical play. I'm more into like progressive plague. Right, that's what people say about you. It's good to hear it from your mouth though. Um here's a quote from the paper. Thus, the human touching heads behavior probably acts as an inherent and unconscious vaccination against body lice to reduce the threat exposed by the pathogens they may transmit. So they're proposing that we love rubbing heads, which, honestly, I mean, this is an interesting paper, but I don't

rub heads with people I like, not that much. It's usually a violent right. Yeah, that's not that's not really a pickup thing I've personally tried to employ. Although you know, you never know, No, you don't know how. Yeah, I don't know how I would respond to that personally. UM. But yeah, so you know, I suppose it makes sense though, because you do you press your heads together, I guess, like or touch foreheads. I'm not maybe I'm just not a people person because I don't. You're missing out. It's

it's it's everywhere. But I mean it is true that like you catch lice from your um, you can catch lice from friends and family because of close contact. UM. So the idea is that because we have evolved these social behaviors of like head touching, UM, that then possibly because lice also maybe offer this benefit of UH an immune response to body lice, then that this is a beneficial kind of self vaccinating behavior. Um, yeah, maybe, yeah, could be. I'll take it. That's a positive share positive

spin on your life boy brand. Oh god, speaking of lice, boy, Um, how are you? How are you doing? It was better before that? So uh like it's we have hands in shampoo. But how does how does the noble cappy barra deal with parasites and other insects that trouble it? It's a great it is a cappy bear is a rodent? Correct, Yes, they're the largest rodent, one of the largest. I believe. Yeah,

actually I believe I met a cappy bearers. Um, there's this great animal preserve north of l A called Animal Tracks, and if you haven't been, I think you would maybe love it. But yeah, I believe they had like like a cappy bearer there. Wait, so this is this isn't the l A z or the San Diego Zoo, No neither. It's a an like an independent animal preserve where basically it's all like assholes who try to have I almost said erotic pets and in the eye of the beholder

exotic pets. Uh, they figure out that they can't have them. So this product pets is a different website. Exotic pet erotic pets is something completely there is probably a movie, Yeah exactly, we'll come we'll come to bout back to the cats movie at the end here. But but yeah, you're right, they are the I think they are actually the largest rodent um. They're related to guinea pigs and uh so they're found in South America and they team up with a small cute bird called the cattle tyrant um.

So I'm showing you a picture of a cattle tyrant writing majestically on top of a cappy bara's head. Um. It's it's such a cute. It just like looks like sort of like Denarius on a dragon, except it's a bird on a capybara. Yeah, but other than that, exact exactly the same. So they have a unique friendship where the cappy barra just by be barn around, oh well as they well will rustle up insects in the grass,

which the cattle tyrant bird will swoop in on and eat. Um. So this is a relatively small bird and it's and it's pretty cute. So it's like it's gonna be harder for the bird to just kind of like get a bunch of in like its presence is not enough to scare a bunch of insects being a tyrant, right, But yeah, it's a it's a small it's a small and ineffectual tyrant, as they often are. But on the inside they all

are right. I got a real Napoleon complex these guys. Um. So basically just like rides these cabybaras to victory, which is pretty cute, um, and then the capybaras in return get uh some protection from past. So the cattle tyrant bird will chase and eat horseflies that try to land on the capybara. So it's like having your own personal bodyguard who just likes to eat the things that it's guarding you from. So we like to visit a magical

place called Imagination Station on this podcast. And so for this last example of teamwork, I want you to imagine you're walking deep in the rainforest where there's no sign of civilization, where if you, if any men trend subtly you come across the clearing, a grove of small trees perfectly tended to, with not a single weed in sight. And as you pass through this clearing, you feel a thousand hostile eyes upon you. Do you sense the presence of demons. Do you think this is the work of

the devil, Well, you have just entered a devil's garden. Uh. And so devil's gardens are a very real thing there in the Amazon rainforests. Uh. And they are entirely curated to be made up of a single plant, a tree called du Roya hersuta um. So local legend has it that these are tended to buy evil spirits. Um. And it's it's very mysterious because you know these are there, they look like sort of well tended to groves. But no, no one's taking responsible for it. Yeah. No one's like

going like, oh, yeah, that's me. I like to go out and plant a bunch of trees. Well, when they say it's evil spirits, they're close. It's ants, so lemon ants to be specific. Uh. These ants are they'll actually produce their own herbicide, which is a formic acid um, and they use that to poison all other plants in the area, including weeds and sampling saplings of other trees. So they'll actually inject the acid into these other plants

and it kills them off within twenty four hours. Um. So this is so that their host species of tree will survive. So the de Roya Hersuta offers them shelter in a sabled place for the call need to live, and in return, the ants become the gardeners to these devil's gardens. Interesting, they're the devils. Yes, I love how like people's response to this is like well tended to trees. This is the work of a devil, yea, the work of a saint who's doing this? This is great? They

need to be hired. Um so too in the show. Um, I want to talk about the hats trailer. Just I don't I don't have anything because, like I sometimes I

like to debunk movies and stuff like linking. I don't know how you debunk humans prancing around is tiny humans prancing around as cats like boobs, Like someone there are noticeable boots, Like the boobs are maybe the most disconcerting, right, And someone pointed out on Twitter, like the boobs like don't have nipples, so know their purposeless there's no needs, which yeah, I can't believe I'm even saying this, but like there's the boobs serve no purpose, like in terms

of like there's no need to gender these cats or you know, like just that show up. Well, they clearly don't have genitals because like if the male, because the mail cats are completely naked with their crotches like flinging around, and if we could see their actual crotches, when you would see is a spiky cat penis. Yeah, so you know what's up with that? Thank you? Right? Like with all those with all those hip gyrations, you think that's

not going to jostle loose the spiky cat pena. The fur will move a jar and there will be a view, right, Like I know that cats do have penis sheets, but that's like enough of those, Like you know, grangette is that they're doing that pen's gonna flop out. His name is the rum tum tugger, for christ sakes, it's gonna come out. Oh god, yeah, it's it's uh yeah, I mean you know, why are they so why are they so small and human? Why did you have to do that to us? Why did you do that to us?

I have a theory, Yes, I think who's the guy who's the guy who's directing this? Just I don't know, some sick fun I mean, it's it's you know Andrew Lloyd Webber's Oh it's it's directed by Tom Hooper. I think they've been infected with T. Gandhia um. So what

is that? Toxoplasma gandhia or ganda is a unicellular parasite that infects rats uh and makes them unafraid of cats, screws up with their brain chemistry, causes lesions in the brain that makes them instead of being scared of cats, it confuses them and makes them fall in love with cats and have sometimes sexual attraction to cats. Insane. Yeah, and they'll actually be sexually attracted to cat yourn. So we've talked about this on the show before. It's a

it's a favorite of the show. But I think Tom Hooper handled because he can actually be infected with the toxico. You typically have nothing to worry about unless you're pregnant or you are a movie producer. Apparently, because I think Tom Hooper um. Going on the record, I'm saying he's got toxoplasmosis and he has some kind of unhealthy attraction to cats. It's the only explanation. How else could this have been made? How else do you have a bunch

of human like undulating cats. It would be worse if he didn't want to funk the cats would be like, then what is this choice? Because at least that's an explanation,

right right? Why are they so tiny? Like can Like I was talking about this on Twitter too, But just imagine one of these cats, like like if all the house cats were suddenly replaced with cats movie cats, and just one of them just kind of starts like jount Tilly walking strolling across like very tiny but only comes up to your your shins and just like strolling around jumping, cutting capers and going like now, starts flicking it, starts looking at anus, just doing regular cat behaviors, but it's

very little, horrible tiny cat humans. Yeah, no, thanks, I don't I don't know, I don't know, I don't I don't get it. Yeah, well, luckily that'll be the last movie human. Well, thank you so much for joining me today on this wonderful venture through nature. Uh is there anything you want to plug? Just say oh no, no, no no no, that director has that covered. Um. Just at Blake Wexler on everything, um and then yeah, I love this podcast. It's funny. It's weird to discover a

podcast that you like by being on it yourself. That's how I get all of my list. Okay, good, good, well, I'm glad to join them. Um. Yeah. You can find us on Creature feature Pod dot com, at Instagram at Creature feature Pod, on Twitter at Creature feat Pod. It's not fat as an f e e T, It's f e a T. Feat Pod is a different podcast. Um. And you can find me at Katie Golden and at pro bird Writes, where I am a bird. Sometimes it's just my choice. Uh, thank you so much for listening.

If you're enjoying the podcast and you want to help me out, gently press that subscribe button, maybe leave a rating or review if you'd like, or just whispered to the trees that you are one with nature and that maybe they should check out my cool fund podcast. See you next Wednesday. And thanks to the Space Classics for their awesome song Exo Lumina