Virtually Reality

about a more organic, squishy form of virtual reality. What happens when the human or animal brain takes some creative license or when your own hand rebels against you. To discover this and more as we answer the angel question, if you call a fish four eyes, is that science are just bullying. So the brain, human or otherwise, is one of the most intricately complex structures on the planet.

The human brain has about eighty billion neurons. For perspective, that's almost as much as Jeff bezos is net worth. These neurons work together in complex patterns of activation that results in thought, movement, speech, and are conscious experience of the world. That means when something unusual happens to the brain, say a stroke, injury or a lesion, your perception of

the world can become warped in unexpected ways. There's an incredibly rare neurological disorder called Anton Babinski syndrome that results from damage to the accipital lobe, a part of the brain near the back of your head that processes visual information. The damage to the occipital lobe branders the patient corticually blind, meaning that their blindness is a result of brain damage

rather than eye problems. But rather than experiencing being blind, people with Anton Babinski syndrome do not experience nor accept that they are blind, despite being unable to identify visual cues or even navigate a room. When confronted about their blindness, people with this neurologic COO condition deny being blind, and when asked to describe what they see, they will confabulate a response. So confabulation is a term that means fabrication,

but it's not a lie. The person confabulating really believes what they're saying. Their brain is filling in missing information to the best of their ability. While people with Anton Babinski syndrome do experience the delusion of being cited. It's not quite what you may think. It's likely not that

they're just in denial or refuse to accept reality. Rather, the leading hypothesis is that the damage to their accipital lobe means that while they still receive visual signals from their eyes, their brain is unable to pass this information along to the speech language in motor processing areas of the brain. Basically, they can still see their eyes are sending messages to their accipital lobes, but they're unable to

do anything with that information. So they may consciously understand that they're really seeing things, but their brain can't communicate the informa asian. So in order to fill in this gap, their brains do some improv Though Anton Bobinski syndrome is rare, this habit of the brain filling in information is something shared by every human and possibly most animals on the planet, as we'll soon discuss. Joining me today's comedian comic artist author of bad comics by Onna, which actually I think

are pretty good and too can fan on A Selinus. I. It's so good to be here. Yeah, thank you for joining me today. I'm excited. I really like your comics, especially like how you sort of visualize thoughts and the brain and just by these sort of shape, little shapy blobs who have these yeah blobs, but they have discussions with you. And I love that way of visualizing how our brains work. Thank you. I mean it kind of started mostly when I moved in to my own apartment.

I live with roommates. Now I went backwards, but I lived alone, and I was talking to myself and I started drawing, ing like I guess the voices in my head, and then you know, they just all have different personalities, like depression would be a sassy bunch, you know, anxiety would be like a really panicky, short little blob. So thank you so much. I feel like you've been doing inside out before inside out was a thing. Oh my god, thank you. They took it really from you got scooped now.

I love that. I do sometimes imagine my obsessive compulsive disorder as almost like a cute little watch jaw dog, or like a chihuahua that's super not it's not quite a real chihuahua, but just this little blobby creature that is super anxious and always alert for things and it's just no. You can calm down. I'm sure the kitchen isn't on fire. We don't need to go check. I love that. I Oh my gosh, I want to. I don't have O C D. And I would feel disingenuous if I drew the old person. But I have to

find do it? Do it? Please? You gotta find a way to do it. I want to because I could you do a custom one for me and I'll just describe it like what it is like to me, and then you could do a little thing. Oh my god. Up. So yeah, I think this is a great episode to have you on because I'm talking about all the interesting things our brains do and how it really in some way we feel like we're one contiguous person with one personality, one conscious experience, but sometimes that it's not so clear

that that's the way it is. So first to demonstrate this, I want people to realize, like, as we're talking on the show about these rare neurological phenomenons, that people that have these are not weird or crazy. This is something that basically, like we all have the capacity to fill in missing information with our brains, and in fact, we do it all the time constantly. Right now, you're doing it because everyone on Earth has a blind spot in their eyeballs, So I got to explain how our eyes

work really quickly. So the eye has a bunch of light sensing proteins in the back, the rods and cones that make up the retina. That's that sort of red stuff at the back of your eye. But in order for that information to get to the brain, the occipital lobe at the back of your brain, you have to basically run a cable from your eyeballs to the back of your brain. And in order for the cable to connect to your eye, it actually is right in the

middle of your retina. So there's an area, a little diameter of area in your eye that doesn't have retina, so it doesn't have the rods and cones. So you actually have a little blind spot right there, but you don't see it. You don't see a blank spot as you're looking around. And often it's because the other eye. You do have two eyes, generally, so you can make up for that missing information with your eye, but not always.

Sometimes your blind spot is going to line up with the other eye and your brain is going to fill in the details, so it's like a content aware filler that interpretates what should be there. And it's really so there's this test you can do. I'm sure if you google it. I'll probably also include it in the show notes.

Where you there's a dot and a cross or two shapes and a background that's either white or some color, and you close one eye and you look at the opposite the dot opposite to your eye, and then you kind of move back and forth and tell the the other dot across from your eye disappears. Actually have it up here so that you can do it. So if you're looking at it, what should happen is that the background color just kind of fills in where and it's

it's interesting because it's not just a white spot. If you're looking at the background that's green, it's going to fill in green. And if you're looking at the background that's yellow, it's going to fill in yellow where that cross or that dot is supposed to be. So it just looks like a big yellow square, even though there's a black dot in the middle of it. And that's because you're brain is yea, yeah, you see it. Yeah, it's really it's really interesting and it's kind of fun

to do. There's all sorts of these tests online that you can do and see. Uh, And it's not just filling in color. It can actually fill in complex patterns. Sometimes. If you see, if there's a line that's broken in the area where the break is, is it right in your blind spot? Your brain will actually fill in the line so it looks like a contiguous line even though there's in reality nothing there, because your brain is just guessing, like, oh well, it seems like a big line. So that's

so interesting. I feel like that probably is true on a broader scale of how our mind's work of like, oh, this is probably what I was doing two weeks ago around noon. Yes, absolutely, building me kind of false memories

a little bit. Absolutely. In fact, I talked about confabulation before, and that is also a term to describe gaps in memory where we built like it can rain from severe disorders like dementia, but also just too normal brain functioning where you miss a memory and you you're basically fabricating what should be in that memory, but you don't think

it's a fabrication. I think it's real. So you can also with the blind spot, what your brain is doing is it's making a statistical determination based on the surrounding visual information. So say if you focus on like a yellow doughnut and you get your blind spot right in the center of that donut, your brain is going to fill in the rest. It's gonna look like a yellow circle. There won't be any whole because your brain is going like, okay, everything around it is yellow, so this has to be

yellow too. And you can even It even works on moving patterns like TV snow. So there's a test where you do the whole blind spot thing, but instead it's like you know, you know that, like fuzzy black and white TV snow, and people will fill in the static into their line spot and then if you quickly look away to a white wall, you'll see a little square of of TV static on the wall because your brain is so basically, your brain has so actively tried to

plug in the snow and put it in. Once you suddenly remove it, it's still kind of going for a little while. I feel like that is kind of a familiar feeling too, that some something like that just sort of projects onto it. Yeah, it can happen. Say you're staring at a bold color for a while and then you suddenly look at the wall. You can see an afterimage because you're basically your eyes and your brain are confused by the sudden lack of I never thought of

it that way, like like the wheels are just still running. Yes, yeah, And so I was curious about how whether animals have blind spots, and in fact they must. Yeah, they do. And as I was researching this, I found some really interesting things about animal visions. So let's start with rats.

They do have a blind spot. Their eyes are very similar to ours, except that they have double vision, and they can move their eyes independent of each other, like, yeah, exactly, like Pennywise from it, Yeah exactly, So like if there's a predator coming, they could feel like this is here exactly. And so actually, did you know that the actor who plays Pennywise, uh, the more recent one, Bill Scars Guard,

he can do that. That's that's really yeah. Yeah, there's an interview with him where he does the weird smile and he does the have has one of his eyes kind of go to the side, and it's it's really that is he doesn't he like almost doesn't need the makeup. You can do it all with a facial expression. The perfect, I know, I know. So researchers at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics in m to Bingjin, it's a

good job Germany on doing this research. So they attached teeny tiny high speed camera hats to ats and looked at their eye gays. They found that their eye gays indicates that they prioritize keeping a view of the sky over just looking ahead, so they have a good view of their immediate surroundings, but they're always at least keeping one eye or both eyes trained on the sky and have to have the sky in their field of vision, which is assumed to be to avoid predatory birds, which

is one of their main predators. And they determined by tracing their eye movement that their field of vision in either eye differs too much from the other in order to be fused into one image, so they have to have binocular vision basically two distinct orbs, yeah, views that they somehow process in their ACCEPTITALB. That's so they're constantly living in VR exactly. That sounds nauseating, So it's terrible.

I you know, I get terrible motion sickness when I have to do the VR rides where you know universal and I guess Disney is doing that now to get on the ride and it's sort of like it's a track, right, so you're actually moving, but then instead of having puppets or animatronics, it's VR or three D and I didn't want tom so sick. They yeah, because you're they If VR if truly of the future of media and video games, I don't know what we're gonna do about that. I'm

just gonna be too, just gonna be constantly high on drama. Me. Yeah, yeah, it's you're just in a boat. You're like it a submarine, just rocking around. I did a VR what's it called Silent No No, No, No, Resident Evil, and it really scared me. It was really funny because I kept yelling at people, like get out of my area. Oh totally,

because it's it feels so real. I went to the arcade here two Bit Circus, I think, and did their VR game, and like it's terrifying because you look behind you and all of a sudden, something attacking and you're you have to like move your hands to I caldn't defeat, couldn't write, and I couldn't convince myself it wasn't real. That's terrifying. I would be a very bad animal, I think because I hate video games that are like I like video games that are like you just exist in

the world, like sim style. But I hate being chased. I hate having to like shoot at something or run from something. I just could not handle predators. Well, you would hate to be and I don't mean this as an insult, but you would hate to be the brown brown snout spook spits the brown snout spook fish. Yeah, I would hate it. Why would I hate it? Well, so the brown snout spooks fish, well, that is a mouthful. Oh my god. They can see up and down at

the same time. So they are not to be confused with the ghost shark, which we've talked about on the show before. But the brown snout spook fish is a species of barrel eye fish that lives all over the world in tropical and temperate regions. It's not too big, it's pretty slender. It's about um seven inches long, has a completely transparent body. There in the family Opus though Procididae, which in Greek means behind an us, whoa a whole family,

But they're in the family of butt butts. But but so, one of its larger close relatives is the Pacific barrel eye fish. And there's a video that went viral a while ago of this fish that had a basically a transparent dome like head and these weird eyes. Let me show you that. Whoa, this feels like a fake fish. It's not. It's completely real. I know. It looks like a science fiction fish, right, Yeah, it looks like they put oh my gosh, it looks like they put a

lightbulb inside of some jello, some clear jello. Honestly, this is like a Pixar movie because inside this fish are like the little snemones or like the little bacteria that are the star of this animated movie, riding in their inside out Yeah, like inside out style. They're a fish bus. Yeah, it is. It is. It also does remind me of those gelatin desserts from the fifties where you just put a whole fruit right in there. I think that, Yeah, yeah, where you put in grapes or yes, or like olives

and eggs. Yes. Just it's crazy that was ever a preferred food, right, Why do you want savory inside of jello? Don't know unless you've been watching videos of this fish a lot, all right, this fish does look pretty delicious. So this is the spook fish. So this is no. So this is the barrel the Pacific barrel eye fish, which is a relative of the brown snout spookfish. And I'll show you a picture of that one too. So

the Pacific barrel eye fish. Uh, it has a transparent dome like head and tubular eyes, and the things at the front of its head that kind of look like eyes are actually basically it's nose, whereas the eyes are inside that dome and are these two round, rounded cylinders that look like they're just two telescopes pointing up or

a pair of binoculars pointing up. And that's in fact exactly what they are, because their their eyes pointed straight up to look for silhouettes of food above them, and then once they've zoomed in on some food, then they can actually swivel those eyes in front of them. They are submarines, their submarines, exact, fish are floating, their little submarines. I love that. Now this doesn't happen, but because their heads are transparent, it does look like they should be

sort of a transportation vest. So for some like tiny, tiny sea people. Yeah, and they're like inside they're steering the binoculars. There happened, I say something on the port side. It was just a fart. That's exactly what the little sea creatures inside of this fish. Right. Submariners saying, so it's cousin the brown snout spookfish takes this vision a step further. So, now here is a picture of this little guy. Okay, he's completely transparent, as you can see.

This also looks incredibly big, it doesn't. It looks something about the clear bodies with this neon glow inside just feels like an art department got really creative. Yeah, it looks like one of the fake animals in life aquatic yea that they had especially fake exactly. Yeah, they're like stop motion that was put into the live film or something like that. Yes, it looks exactly like that. And it is the only vertebrate that is known to, in addition to an eye lens, employ a mirror in order

to see. So this is something that is used by other animals, just not vertebrates. So scalops use the mirror technique in order and to see out of their horrible little eyes. We have a bunch of eyes too. They have so many eyes. They can have up to like a hundred eyes, these little blue eyes, I know. And so the mirror in the eye is thought to be made of guantine crystal. Seguanning is protein. It's found in DNA uh, and it can also be formed into this

crystalline mass basically. And it's so in addition to the normal eye that looks upwards and just functions like a regular mammalian or other vertebrate eye words using the lens uh, the other eyes like kind of jammed onto the side of the eye of this little eyeball, and and it has a mirror that can look downwards and reflect it onto the retina. So let me show you this diagram. It's a little confusing otherwise. So there's just this one eye.

Basically a normal eye like gets focused through the lens and hits the retina. And then this weird little annex just like built onto the side of the eye where the light enters and bounces off of the mirror and then hits the retina. So what is the purpose of this eye? It's like a last minute I like they someone was designing this fish in an art department because I'm still not convinced to. I was just like, I

just throw this on and make it look creepier. I mean, if you think about it, when you're in the ocean, you not only have to worry about what's in front of you or what's behind you. You have to worry about what's above you and what's below you. So being able to see above, below, and around you is really important. So it's actually interesting to me that there aren't more fish than do this. That's true because yet at least if you're on land, the ground is safe unless trimmers happens.

But it's true essentially, it is usually And also I guess things can like burrow up from the ground, but usually that's the one part we're not looking at, which is interesting because I feel like this is a problem I have and maybe a lot of people. I look down when I walk along. I'm afraid of stepping in poop, so I do too. Yeah yeah, or like if I'm running or something, I feel like I looked down and I remember this book, the last of the really great

Whang Doodles to read that whang Doodles Win Doodles. It's this children's chapter book about whang doodles this dragon, but wang doodles the dragon. Yes, and they One of the lessons is that you should be looking up more because as people, we tend to look down. And so there's this guy who has like a rain book umbrella to encourage children to look up. I see. So there's something about looking up that is like maybe more free or something.

But then you step and dog dog. That's the thing, like I've tried that where I'm just like gallivanting head eyes on the sky and then but right in the right in the poop or on the sidewalk here, because one time this guy was jogging past me and he stomped on a unintentional mistake, stepped on a catchup packet splattered all over me, and he looked at me and he was completely stunned, and then he just kept running. He kept running. Well, yeah, I think he just didn't

know how to react. He was horrified, right, because it looked like I had just exploded in blood. But that's true. Still not still probably should have checked on me. But you should have checked exactly. But you know, if he was a brown snout spookfish, then he could of seeing that catch exactly. So that's why they did it so they can see poop and catch up. It's important for all five. Our brains do a huge amount of heavy

lifting when it comes to our vision. There was a rather famous mirror flipping experiment, though you may have heard the incorrect version. So in this experiment, people wore glasses that used mirrors to flip the world upside down. Though the popular understanding of the study was that the participants

brains flipped the world right side up, this never really happened. Instead, they rapidly adapted to the upside down world and regained the ability to walk around without falling over, and though they were spectacularly good at adapting, they never consciously flipped

the world to the upright position. However, there have been studies where the participants wore goggles that distorted the world, such as weird magnifications or distorting how close things seemed like a rear view mirror, and the wearers were able to quickly adapt their new fun house mirror world. Their brains had to overcompensate so much to make things appear normal while wearing the glasses that when they were removed

they experienced temporary distortions. With the naked eye. When we return, we'll talk about what happens when one side of your brain goes rogue. I like food, and I like home cooked meals, but what I don't like is going to the grocery store. I have to change out of my sweatpants, and that's just that's just not fair. With Hello Fresh, America's number one meal kit, you can get easy, seasonal recipes and pre measured ingredients delivered right to your door.

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hands starts to have a mind of its own. It moves around, reaches for things, fiddles with your shirt, all without your conscious input or permission. You'd probably be forgiven for thinking that you've been possessed by an alien parasite or are in some sort of Doctor Strangelove situation. In fact, this is a real thing called Alien Hands syndrome or Doctor Strangelove syndrome after the movie. People with this rare neurological disorder few a loss of control over one of

their hands. Those with alien hand syndrome may feel like their hand has a mind of its own, and they may actually be right. Most patients with this condition had a corpus colostomy, a medical procedure also called split brain procedure. It's a neurosurgical procedure wherein the corpus colosum, the neural tissue connecting the two hemispheres of the brain is severed. It's rarely used anymore and is mostly a last resort

to treat dangerous and otherwise untreatable epilepsy. It interrupts the feedback loop between the two hemispheres of the brain, which helps stop seizures, but it can also result in uncomfortable side effects, including alien hand syndrome. By severing the corpus colosum, the communication between the two hemispheres of the brain is greatly inhibited, which may result in people having two separate

conscious experiences at once alien hand. Therefore, maybe one side of the brain taking control of the hand while the other side of the brain expresses discomfort with the situation. It's hard to know exactly what it means to have two half brains in one person, whether consciousness resides in each hemisphere and has a separate experience, what it feels like to be in conflict with the side of your

brain that can control speech or vice versa. Maybe it makes sense that one of your hands would lash out at the frustrating experience. So this is really it's one of the most existentially terrifying things to me in neurology.

This idea that especially if you have split brain procedure, which is very rarely done, especially now, but it's Could you have two consciousness is in one body, and because each hemisphere of your brain controls different things, like controls the different side of your body, speech is located in

one hemisphere of the brain. Would you have basically two people inside you and strug link to communicate together, and one of the people can talk, one of the people can maybe draw, and it's it's you know, I wonder, and I wonder if people with multiple personality disorders have ever experienced some version of this. Yeah, I think so there's actually multiple personality disorder is not really what it's

called anymore. It's called dissociative identity disorder. And it is interesting because I do think that I think that people, even neurotypical people, people don't who don't have a neurological condition. Will we even though we have the illusion of having a unified consciousness, that may not actually be the case.

That may just be an illusion of one contiguous consciousness, and that we may have sort of different conscious experiences and maybe some that can't maybe communicate with our speech center of the brain, but still are somehow consciously aware. Like so here's an example. One thing I you you know, I do the sort of thing of you step into a room, gosh darn it, I don't remember what I came in here for. And then you you know you

you don't know, you forgot what you're there for. Basically, if I just relax and kind of go into a meditative state and let my body like walk over to where it wants to go, it's usually towards the thing I came in for. In it like I'll open a drawer and not really thinking him like, I have no idea what I'm doing here, and then it's like, oh, right, a napkin. So there is something in your body, be right,

that is kind of similar. And also there are these studies that were done for people who had the corpus colossum severed and had the split brain condition. And so as I kind of talked about, you have the right side. So one thing to know about vision and your body is that you have the two hemispheres of the brain.

But the right hemisphere of the brain is responsible for processing the left field of vision and the left side of the body, where's the left side of the brain processes the right field of vision and the right side of the body. So they're flipped, which can make it a little confusing. But basically, when you present someone uh pictures like you know how we did the thing with a blind spot earlier, and you had one thing in your right field of vision and one in your left,

and you present them with two pictures. And these are people who had the split brain procedure done. Okay, So if they see something with their right field of vision, it's gonna go be processed in the left side of the brain, and the left side of the brain control speech, and so they'll be able to say what that thing is.

But then if they're asked to draw it, they will draw the thing that's in their left field of vision that makes sense, that makes sense, and not realize really because exactly, and they won't say they see that that's really crazy, right exactly. I mean it's I think it's kind of it's a little spooky, but I think it's spooky.

Or when you think about how I think we're maybe more similar to people who have the split brain syndrome, then we may think in that we're probably perceiving things and conscious of things that we don't communicate verbally nor maybe even think about consciously, especially because so much of

our conscious thought is sort of framed in language. So if we're not processing it through language, you know, maybe there's part of our conscious experience that we're kind of not aware of because we have that internal monologue exactly exactly, always run in its mouth. Yeah, yeah, writing its internal mouth. That's why I love your comics because I mean I almost feel like when you kind of have warring parts

of your brain. Yeah, I mean it's almost like you do have two people that you're talking to, negotiating with, you know. That's I mean, it makes sense. We have like eighty billion neurons. It would make sense were more complex than just like one little person, a little person. We're a billion little people exactly. Wow, So this is terrifying to you. It's one of the more I wouldn't

say it's terrifying. I think it's and it's more of an existential crisis because when I think about who I am as a person, I feel like, you know, hey, it's me Katie. But then when you think about it, you know, maybe I'm sharing my body with another consciousness in my brain that doesn't communicate directly to the world and doesn't communicate directly to what I perceive as my conscious experience. Because so much of me as I think about it is probably based in that kind of language

processing center. Yeah. So have you ever had an out of body experience? Yeah? Actually so. I took a medication for my o CD once and one of the side effects was dissociation. So it felt like I was floating above my body. I really did not enjoy that. That was not It's terrifying. That is terrifying. Yes, it was

not fun. And it's also weird that that can be boiled down to a side effect like that is because I would think it's so complex, that feeling, and it's somewhat existential, but that it literally I mean, it's something that people, I'm sure people who meditate to get that feeling go through a much more thoughtful process and it's probably a lot more. It's probably not as weird as it is when it's just a medication side effect, because for that it's just like your suddenly like whoa, yeah,

not inside my body right now. That's kind of weird. Yeah, it has that anxiety still, right exactly. Yeah, Yeah, it's very strange. I wonder those to me feel somewhat connected in that it's like and I have to look, maybe I shouldn't say this on a podcast, but it happened to be on drugs dar Boys God, where there are all these cops but you don't un mushrooms or something

like that. I just happened more than once. But in that it is this feeling of like, oh, I'm I don't and maybe this is even a little different than what you experienced, but it feels like I don't know this person right now. Interesting. There's like a like an unconscious familiarity. And I think that has a lot to do with language that you feel in your body when you are not thinking about your existence or whatever. And I feel in those moments that I was like accessing

something else interesting, some other experience. I mean, I've I've heard that a lot with people who have either um felt that through recreational drugs or from prescribed drugs, And for me it was a little different. I think it mostly just felt like I was watching myself act and it was It wasn't scary. It was just unpleasant because it's like I just felt like I is maybe two feet away watching myself. It's like that's scary. It's it's just it was uncomfortable. It wasn't scary. It was just

just kind of uncomfortable. It was like, I'd rather be catch up. I kind of want to catch up to myself there. Yeah, So speaking of this kind of experience, I want to talk about a somatic nosia, which is a rare neurological disorder wherein you don't feel like you own one of your limbs. And so this could mean you either can't feel, sense, recognize, or be conscious of a body part. It's usually caused by damage to the brain,

either by traumatic injury, illness, or a stroke. Typically the damage is in the right side of the brain, which causes patients to lose recognition of their left arm. Like specifically, that pattern is the most common, and sometimes the arm is also paralyzed, which would contribute to the illusion. But it's not typical. It's not like a typical thing that happens to people with paralysis, nor is paralysis necessary to

be part of a somato noosea disorder. So somato paraphrenia is a form of a somatic noosea wherein the patient believes their appendage belongs to someone else. So here's an example. In one case study, a woman thought her left arm was her dead husband's arm. Here's a quote she said. Quote. He left them. He didn't want them. He just left them like he and she's talking about her arm in hand. He left them like he left his clothes. Up until the other day, they used to fall in my chest.

I said, I got to get rid of them. Put them in the garbage, yes, two days ago. Still in the garbage, a black hand with a plastic cover. You'll find them. Be careful though. The nails are very long and very sharp, which sounds I mean, she m no, no, um. This is confabulation. This is uh. She is interpreting information that her brain is missing, and it's you know, she's not. I don't want people to come away from this thing like, oh man, she's she's crazy like she is. This is

a very specific delusion to her smitta paraphrenia. So basically, she has an inexplicable sensation, which is that the arm attached to her isn't her own. So in order to understand it, her brain confabulates a response. It's fabricating a situation in which this makes sense, and then she's connecting it to a traumatic experience of the loss of her husband. So in a way, it's rational because you're dealing with an irrational situation where you are not getting and it's

not just like that your arm is numb. You're literally because like even your arm being numb or paralyzed, you're getting information. You're getting like null information, uh that you can't feel it or that you can't move it. It's when you're not getting information at all, which does that it's almost hard to understand what that would feel like. Yeah, it is hard to understand what that feel like, what that feels like, because numbness is itself a feeling exactly exactly. Yeah, yeah,

this is so interesting. I'm watching the show Legion on f FX and they literally talk about and I think the second episode, Yeah, of course in that case, as they're describing this condition, the guy does cut it's his leg, And yeah, I do know that can be there is there are cases of people who feel the need to remove Yeah, I don't know as much about that. I

think it may be connected or a similar sometimes feels conceivable. Yeah, like in the same way that if I have like dust on me or dirt, it's like I want to get this off right, Like if you suddenly just sprouted an extra arm, that like you didn't have control over it would feel like a parasite. Yeah, exactly, like God or I mean, this is such a lame example, but like when you get a pimple that's really bad and it's like I just want to get this, you want to get it rid rid of it. It's like it's

invading your body. Yeah, no, I totally understand that. One of the theories for how this happens is that when you have so this is specifically for like you feel like your left arm doesn't belong to you right if you have a right brain lesion or damage resulting in airs, processing information from again, it's flips, so you're processing information from your left side of the body goes into your

right brain. So basically, you have a lesion in the right side of your brain, which causes a loss of information coming from the left side of your body, and so the verbal hemisphere of your brain, which is on the left isn't receiving the right isn't receiving information from the right side of the brain about what's going on. So it's like your left side of the brain is undamaged, but the right side is damaged. In your right side is unable to send that that information about your left

arm to your left brain. This is I know this is confusing. Let me, I think I can kind of yeah, let me put it. Let me like remove the the left right side from it, because I think that can be kind of confusing. Uh, you're in your right the brain. Information from your left hand is not going to your um your verbal processing motor processing area of the brain.

So it's similar to what we talked about with the cortical blindness, the disorder where you you're blind, you're functionally blind, but you're experiencing you think you can see because you're you actually may be receiving visual information. It is just

not going anywhere useful in your brain. So it's it's a similar thing where you but in this case, you're just not receiving any information from your left hand and your your left side and so you're your brain is like, well, there's nothing there is you could be touching for and it wouldn't know. And it's different from paralysis or numbness because your brain it's just not getting it's getting zero information. It's not that it's oh it's numb or I'm not

feeling it. It's like that there's an absence of that even recognizing that as being part of your body, because the part of your brain that even recognizes that you have this limb is has been damaged. That's staggering because now I'm thinking of the times I've been numbed for like surgery or something like that, and you still feel this like lump. You can, yeah, you can fathom what

is going on. Yeah, but it's also interesting when you do get numbed up and you feel something, it feels like there's something stuck on your face, like it doesn't right, So there is a little bit of a thing where you're like, oh, that's weird. It just doesn't feel like it's part of me. But like that, but my brain knows. Your brain can, yeah, you can, but the if it

can kind of get the idea across that. Okay, you still have the part of your brain that logs that in as part of your face, but if that part of your brain was like just gone or damaged, then you suddenly lose even the ability to conceive of that as being part of your body. We're hanging by a thread. As humans, we are hanging by a thread. Yeah, it's I mean, it is crazy. But we're not. We're not the only one, so we're not alone in the world.

So phantom limb and these limb processing disorders are also found in animals, So there's evidence that animals can get phantom limb syndrome, which is a similar disorder, although kind

of inversed from what I was just talking about. So phantom limb is where you are you're missing you are actually in reality missing a limb, either you have had an amputation or even a congenital condition where you don't have that limb, but your brain still as the the area of the brain that is saying like, hey, I got a left arm is still there and it's still perfectly functional, so you sense that the limb is still there.

Sometimes it gets stuck in weird positions, like it can feel like it's clenched or raised or you know, doing a phantom gesture um, and it can be really distressing for people because it can actually cause real pain. It's not and I think this is something that's important to get across. Pain is experienced inside of the brain. You may have nerves on your body where pain sensory input is received, but it travels into your brain and the

experience of pain happens in your brain. So if someone is feeling pain from a phantom limb, that is exactly the same experience as if they're getting stabbed in a real limb. So famed neurologist the s Rama Chandron is the inventor of mirror therapy, and it specializes in I mean, he's are it's almost weird to say he specializes in anything, because he's like a genius who knows everything, but he's

studied phantom limb. And basically, you place your existing limb in front of the mirror and your phantom limb on

the other side. So you've got your your hand that still exists, and then you imagine placing your your other hand on the other side, but you're the the amputated area or the missing limb is not in view, and so then you just do cemetric symmetrical actions like clapping or raising both hands, and you imagine doing it, and you look and it looks because of the symmetry of the mirror, it looks like you your two hands are doing it. And that can help you because you're getting

that visual feedback. Your brain is seeing like okay, I'm stretching out my arm. And so if it felt like your left hand was clenched in this uncomfortable position and you see it stretching out, it actually kind of um convinces your brain that your arm is stretching out, and it real accident and it can fascinate and it can help with treatment of pain. Rama. Schendre believes that this is caused by reorganization in the semanti sensory cortex, or the part of the brain that handles sensory and puts

from your body. So it's this idea is actually leads into our next question, which is can animals get phantom limb? And in fact, the hypothesis that phantom limb syndrome is caused by reorganization of neurons in the semanti sensory cortex, the part of your brain that controls your arms and it controls the feelings of your arms and your arms and space has some neural plasticity, has to rearrange and compensate for the fact that you no longer have that limb.

There has been a study done on macaux which so that's a type of monkey, where there semanti sensory cortex was found that to have undergone restructuring after losing sensory information from one of their limbs. So there was a neural just that made use of a pretty infamous and crappy situation. So this is sort of a set. It begins with a sad story. So the about a decade before they did this study, there was another study on the infamous Silver Spring monkeys who had their nerves to

one of their arms cut in an experiment. And it was so this person who was like undercover Peeda like, was in the lab and reported it to the police because it was not it was like the experiments itself was like unnecessarily cruel. The living conditions were poor, So yeah, it was really I mean, you know, the idea of using animals and experiments is there's some complexity to it, but in this case, it was like very clearly unnecessarily cruel.

Veterinarians looked at these monkeys and they tried to rehabilitate them, but they determined that they were just suffering, and so euthanizing them was the most um merciful thing to do, I know. But so an are alogist, I was like, well, okay, if we're we have to euthanize them, maybe we can learn something from their brains at least. So the researchers found that there's somatosensory cortex is so the cortex that control like processes information from your your limbs and your

body changed significantly compared to control monkeys. So that indicated the neural plasticity the brain changing in response to their limb being essentially like the nerves had all been severed from the rest of their bodies. So so they have it too. So they had, yeah, phantom limb probably, and brain scans of people with amputations showed the same kind

of brain reorganization as these macaques. So the yeah, basically, as far as we can tell, we can obviously never understand how the monkeys felt, but very likely that they had phantom limia. You can actually just observe phantom limb and animals. So there's a video of a cat with an amputated limb who tries to dig in his litter box, and this is equal parts cute and sad, so of

course I got to show you. I mean, that is a cute cat though, So you can see real fluffy little guy and she's trying to you can see her moving her shoulder muscles as she's trying to scratch at the litter box. Now, I know it feels like a really sad video, but she's probably perfectly had. I mean, look at her, she's chubby, perfectly happy. She's just kind of doesn't necessarily recognize that her her forelum is miss she's adapting to it. She exactly getting in that litter

box exactly. It's just a saddered visual. I think that's of animals with like a limb missing they are capable of. Yeah, I mean I think that. I think sometimes our pity is a little bit misplaced there. I mean, obviously, I think it's good to feel sympathy and empathy for an animal that is suffering, but I think it's there's almost a little bit of condest engine sometimes where it's like, oh, this animal can't be happy, and I'm sure that's kind

of aggravating to people also with disability. That's what I think it pity that maybe over conversat people with disabilities because I feel it and I feel a little dirty about it when helping someone with the door when it's like I think you can always I mean, I'm not it's hard for me to speak to this because I

don't have a physical disability. But I think it's fine to ask if someone needs help with something, as long as you're doing it in a respectful way and not assuming that they can't do it, but just like trying to be a nice person, like I mean, you know, I hold doors for people all the time, like, and I think just recognizing that it doesn't you know, they're

not They're not less capable as a person. They're just they you know, they have a different experience and with life, and they may have some extra physical challenges, but that doesn't make them like that doesn't mean they're unhappy or or infantilized or in any way. Yeah, so this all this talk of phantom limb makes me think about this is just kind of a thought experiment because as far as I know that, the research isn't there yet. But there's a behavior known as a taught to me. So

it's like a lizard abandoning its tail. Sometimes crabs will pull off their own forelimbs to kind of as a way to when they feel they're losing a fight with a predator, they'll do that so the predator has a nice claw to chew on while the rest of the crab escapes, and eventually the crab can regrow it. And I wonder if they feel phantom limb, and if so, what that experience is like as the new limb grows back in, because that's something we can as humans, we

can basically never know. We don't have that, right, but we do know that prosthetics can help with phantom limb, especially if you can move the prosthetics. So, yeah, I just it's so interesting thing to me, this idea that like in between growing back the limb, like, could a crab or a lizard feel phantom limb in the meantime when it just has a little baby and then exactly and then what what that experience is like as the new limb is growing back in. Yeah, I don't, I

mean they must feel phantom limb. Yeah, right, Everything kind of adds up to if you are a lizard who loses its tail, you feel you have to yeah, and then what is Obviously lizards and crabs are a great deal less complicated than humans, so it's hard to know what that is like. You know, crabs are basically like glorified insects of the seas and lizards are a little more complex, but they're still pretty pretty simple. But what you know, I still think they are in a way conscious.

I just don't know what that any like, what that would be like. And but I'm sure they probably get phantom sensation. I bet that happens. They must, and they do feel pain lizards and crabs when they lose these limbs, even though they're regenerative. I believe so. I mean, I think that there are nerves, right, so I'm not sure how their brain interprets that pain. It's hard to not enough that they don't do it right. Yeah, that is interesting. I wonder if there's some way to compensate for the

pain of popping off. I guess we have that to a degree where it's like, in order to get out of this situation, I'm going to need to It's like getting waxed. Yeah, that is exactly what it's like. So lizards and crabs just have that pain relationship where they can get a bikini wax right by rapping, yanking off their whole tail. That's that is actually I'm like, and throwing it at their predator. I tweez eyebrows. Yeah, I tweets by eyebrows. That's I know the pain is coming, Yeah,

but you do it anyways. I mean, I think that's going to be my new strategy for predators is like just wax a big, big chunk of air and then throw it at them and then run away, smooth, aerodynamic legs exactly. Man, yeah, my legs. There would be a lot, a lot to take. As we've previously discussed, phantom limb syndrome can be treated by mirror therapy. There's some new research on this form of treatment. Neuroimaging has shown that

mirror therapy indeed helps reshape the brain sematosensory cortex. Patients with phantom limb syndrome had their brain scanned before treatment and showed hyperactivity in the somatosensory cortex when shown pictures of limbs corresponding to what they've had amputated as compared

to controls. After treatment, this excess brain activity decreased, indicating that, in addition to the patient's self reported decrease in pain in their phantom limb, their somata sensory cortex was restructuring itself to have a calmer response to the amputated limb. Mirror therapy has pretty incredible results for humans, but could it work for animals. It depends on whether animals can

understand mirrors. Unlike humans, animals don't necessarily have the same meta awareness or sense of self that we do, though there's some evidence to suggest that some primates, dolphins, and elephants may be closer to this self awareness than previously thought.

Chimpanzees and orangutans, elephants, killer whales, and dolphins have all shown a capacity for recognizing their image in a mirror by moving their hands, trunks, or bodies around to inspect marks on their faces, showing and understanding that this image is of themselves. Maybe a new mirror test could be done for the benefit of animals in the future, seeing if animals with amputations respond to mirror therapy in the

same way that humans do. Because I swear to God, if I have to see another sad video of a kid each trying to scoop litter with her phantom limb, I'm gonna start crying. So scientists, you better get on this. When we return, we'll talk about facial recognition, like, could you guys still recognize me after I ugly cry over kitties? And litter boxes. Sometimes I want to research the show and go to the gym at the same time. That's why I love Audible. Right now I'm listening to David

Attenborough's Life on Earth. I get to listen to his wonderful voice narrating his own book while learning about the animals of the world. You can give yourself the gift of an Audible membership. Now is the best time to do it, with a special offer of off your first three months access an unbeatable selection of audio books, including best sellers, motivation mysteries, thrillers, memoirs. You can even get

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half off the regular price. Choose one audiobook and two Audible originals absolutely free. Visit audible dot com, slash creature or text creature to five zero zero, five zero zero. That's audible dot com slash creature or text creature to five zero zero, five zero zero. Typically humans are great at recognizing faces. We even have a whole area of the brain that specializes in faces, the fusiform gyrus. But if something unusual happens to the fusiform gyrus, the results

are pretty trippy. A patient with epilepsy worked with a Stanford neurologist not just to treat his epilepsy, but to do a little experiment. The neural just decided that to treat his patient's epilepsy, he could locate the specific part of the brain responsible for the epilepsy and surgically removed just that little chunk. In order to locate it, he used electrodes to stimulate the brain to trigger the seizure in a safe clinical environment, and to locate the culprit area.

But heck, while they were in there poking around, the neurologist and his completely conscious patient decided to see what happens if, say, you poke the fusiform gyrus with an electrode. When they did this, the patient told his neurologists, quote, you just turned into somebody else. Your whole face just sort of metamorphized. In fact, if the fusiform gyrus is damaged, this can result in a condition known as prosopagnosia, or

face blindness. Those with prosopagnosia are unable to recognize familiar faces, sometimes even including their own. But are humans the only ones with such a fine tuned ability to recognize faces? Heck no, I mean on bron feature feature. You know, this is tripping me out really hard because the idea that you have a face in front of you that you don't recognize, Like even those disassociative moments or those sadd of body experiences, I at least had a sense

of who that face was. But to not recognize the face in front of you is crazy. Have you ever stared at in a mirror for like a really long time and you start to feel weird that you don't see yourself anymore? Yeah, where you start like moving around your face in weird ways and just like stare in your life. Oh yeah, this is weird, this is this

is just a skin mass. Yeah, here's a fun experiment. Uh, if you go into a bathroom, preferably in the middle of the night and with low lights, so you want it pretty dark, but you can just see a little bit and look in the mirror. You will start to more if your features will get weird. Uh, you may even feel like, oh man, my face is turning into

a ghost or a demon. Because you're getting such little information from your face, you're interpretating the rest of the information, so you see all sorts of weird changes changes your face. In fact, that's like one of the my feeling of like what the bloody Mary thing is where you look in the mirror and say bloody marry three times. It's usually the middle of the night where you're not getting a lot of light, so that you're basically that's why you see the demon in the mirror. That makes a

lot of sense. Yeah, that's why I like young girls do it because your face exactly, because it's it's yeah, it's it's a good time. You get scared and pee yourself. Maryone laughs at you. Fun fun slumber party things. We we used to do it. I was so tempting to

believe in magic too. Yeah, like I still do enough, but yeah, I I when I was a kid, I would really try to summon bloody Mary and then I would also really try to like go through the mirror to you, Alice in Wonderland that, yeah, it's I spent a lot of time like staring in the mirror, like going like if I stare hard enough, and then that's how I discovered that if you stare too long, then you start to lose your sense of identity and get a little freaked out. Exactly, well, too bad, I'm not

a horse. That's a segue into this. So horses will judge you based on your facial expression, which is pretty astounding because I don't know if you've noticed, but horses and humans don't share a lot in terms of facial not at all. Yeah, so horses will judge you, good news, huh. So they will judge you as in if you're if you're like an angry face, they will judge you for it. So researchers showed horses pictures of angry or happy faces

of humans. Then they introduced the real humans to the horses, and the humans were the people were told to have a neutral expression in front of the horse, which seems really hard for me because if I'm like faced with a horse that I don't know what their impression of me was because like the participants, part of the way the experiment works, so they wouldn't be biased towards the horses. They didn't know whether the horses had seen their happy picture.

They're angry picture, so they have to go face the horse but the neutral expression, Oh my god, and like I don't know how they did it. I would just be so nervous, like, I hope you saw the nice picture of me, Mr, Horse, And then I would think a horse can pick up on that. I know, probably, But so the horses ended up responding more positively to the people where they had seen a happy face, and more negatively to the angry faced humans that they had

been primed before seeing the neutral person. So you know, they see the person, they look totally neutral, but they remember that picture and they had the stink eyes, and so they're like, you had you looked angry that because I would have thought, because I know that horses can pick up on your emotions, because they say that you know, when you're like learning to horseback, right or whatever, that you have to be like calm with the horse and

they pick up on whatever you're feeling. But I always assumed that that was just like your heart rate and like just your general demeanor, but that is literally your face. Yes, yes, how well, I don't know if they've gone into how they're able to do it, but I would assume it's got to be learned because it has to be angry. Human doesn't really look anything like an angry horse, you know, so I think they have to make an association with an angry face. Yes, and that would be right. I

don't know. I mean, it could be something that after you know, hundreds of thousands of the years of domestication, that has become ingrained in the kind of like dogs exactly. Dogs can see faces, they can see a moms and they focus on the side of our faces that are more expressive. So it could be that they've learned, you know, sort of through you know, selection for the more compatible

dogs and the compatible horses. Yeah, or it could be completely learned, It's hard to know, or combination of the two, which is often often the case. So the way the researchers could tell the horses weren't jazzed about meeting the humans that they had seen angry pictures are they have certain behaviors that indicate anxieties. So like scratching and chewing behaviors, which indicates their stressed out. But also they wanted a more non subjective measures so they can see how the

horses feel about something by gaze bias. So basically, here's another this is going to be another confusing thing where it's like left right side of the brain. But basically, so horses process threatening stimuli and the right hemisphere of the brains, So guests where they would look which region their gaze they would look to process that left yes, exactly, so if I leave your learning anything, it's that side

of yours apple sauce. So if they are trying to process something threatening, they'll look with their left gaze and if it's something um or pro social, something positive, they have a right gaze bias. And then they measured the eye gaze and they indeed found that they had a left gaze bias. That means they're looking for stink face towards the people where they had been primed with the

angry face versus right gays. So basically they knew they're like, okay, this person, I remember they had a stink face, they had an angry face, So I'm I'm checking, I'm alert I'm worried they're going to try something. Wow, I'm even amazed that they can remember a human face. Yeah that easily. Yeah, well, I mean a lot of animals can We know that birds can do that. Corvid's crows can remember human faces. Uh yeah, it's pretty interesting. And also animals can make

faces specifically for humans. So dogs have facial expressions. I know what they have made for humans. I feel crazy, but you're not crazy. When my mom's dog, who's so cute, is trying to get like your sympathy because she's just pete inside, she got a face that she does well, science is confirming that you are correct. So dogs will

make expressions specifically when you're watching them. They're more likely to raise their eyebrows and stick out their tongues when someone is watching them, and they're also more likely to show just a larger range of facial expressions in general when human eye gazs. I know, and I this is confirmed what I've long believed about my dog, which is she when she sees me looking at her, she pulls a really cute face so that I come over and

pet her. I think she's learned, she's learned what faces work. The best to get me to go scratch her tommy, And she knows what noises are cute, so she she's just playing me like a fiddle. She's playing you like a fiddle. And dogs are so socially smart. They're a little manipulators. They Yeah, I mean, I guess it comes from the territory. If you are raised to just be cuddled and pad and like coud at. Yeah, that would

feel good. I would court it too. But even really simple creatures like wasps can recognize each other's faces, so yeah, it's I mean, I don't think there's any evidence they can recognize human faces, but they can recognize each other's faces and change their responses to each other based on whether they recognize someone or don't recognize someone. So yeah, it's really interesting. It's not even like like I would think with wasps it would be a smell or something right,

like a pheromone signal, But they can. They have some pretty complex visual processing for such a tiny rain. Whenever I learn how smart and social animals are, I'm just like hit with a wave of sadness about how much we're're hurting, Yes, just as a society, and the sort of guilt of like, oh, yeah, they they're pretty yeah, pretty smart. Yeah, no, I feel that too, And no offense to anyone who eats meat. But I always come back to like, oh, pigs are like dogs, those poor pigs. Yeah, yeah, no,

I mean I'm full disclosure. I'm not a vegetarian, but pork is the one thing that I really can't. It's like I I really struggle with because of how smart pigs are social. Yeah, and I sort of I've tried, even though I'm not vegetarian. I've massively cut down on my meat for you know, environmental and ethical purposes. Right. Obviously I'm biased because it's what I'm doing, but I think it's like fine to do whatever you can do. But yeah, I I ate a lot of fish because

I'm not just don't. I love fish and I am actually keeping a query and I love fish. But I'm also like, they know, they don't know what well, they don't feel pain. I don't know, but they if you at least kill them humanely, they don't won't know what hit them. Not that fishing that something does hit them. Yeah. Gone fishing with my grandma and she took the stone

when she smacked. That's That's how I moralize it with myself because I don't eat meat, but I eat fish because I used to go fishing with my grandma and Sweden, and you know, we'd have to kill the fish. She it just felt so barbaric. She would take the stone that she used specific fish killing stuff, killing fish, and it would be bloody, dried with blood, and she'd smash it and it would be there wiggling, and I was like,

if I can face this, I can eat it. I learned that the best way to do it, the least cruel way, is to hit it on the head, stun it, and then you immediately cut its main arm. Yeah, so that it you're you don't want to just throw it on a pile of ice and let it slowly die. That's like the worst thing to do. You want to make it quick. Um. But yeah, that's what she did. Yeah, it's crazy that you did it that way. No, No,

that is. It feels barbaric. But if you're gonna eat a fish, you've gotta have you gotta have the you know, courage to actually kill it quickly, otherwise you're just letting it exactly. So, para idolia is a sort of brain thing that happens. It's the habit of misinterpreting information, like seeing shapes and clouds or hearing hidden messages and music, or like when you see faces and random patterns like pattern textures or tree leaves or like on the carpet

or clouds. Yeah, and you see like a face and it's like, whoa, that looks exactly like a face. That's para idolia. So that's just because we're so highly attuned to recognizing facial patterns. Sometimes our brains are too sensitive and we just pick up on a face when it's not really a face, but it's hitting all the proportions of like of like, okay, this is where the noses. That's where the eyes learned, so it registers as a face. But poi anion. Mimicry is when nature does this on purpose.

So flowers will sometimes mimic the female of an insect species so that the insect tries mating with it, pollinating it unwittingly. And this is a really sneaky trick. It's often done by orchids, and this is a way for the flower to not have to invest in nectar. So one way that a lot of flowers get pollinators interested. Is nectar fragrances, things like that. But if you can seduce it, then you don't actually have to invest in nectar because that's a lot of sugars involved the nectar,

and that's a high cost um. So here's the hammer orchid that it's maybe not as clear as a human sometimes to see these, but that little black spot is supposed to be a specific species of wasp that is black and fuzzy. Yeah, and so the males will be fooled and we'll try to mate with it. And actually what's interesting is you don't see flowers are sleece bags. It's called consent. Flowers try to get it. It's like lying on their tinder profile. Yeah, like yeah, I'm a wasp,

Yeah sure, I'm not. There an orchid on their tin drill profile. Plant plant job. Here's a here's a bee orchid where you can see that really clearly because you can see the antenna looks like a bee. Yeah, and this is not an example of the I wonder how bugs, i should say, insects feel when they do this, like they've just yeah, they've just made it with a flower. Is it like a little disappointing or do they get their yahyas out. I have no idea. I hope it's

for them too, I hope. So yeah, maybe it's like a sex doll or something. Yeah, they're like, whoa, we're bo getting something out of this. So this is actually not an example of of the sexual mimicry. But this is just super cool. This is called a monkey orchid. And I don't know why. It looks exactly like a monkey face, but it looks exactly like a monkey face

that is a monkey. It looks exactly like a monkey, and it's I don't know why it looks like and probably there's no reason for it to look this way. It's just coincidence. That feels crazy. That feels so nail on the head. Yeah, though, doesn't it look I'm looking at the lion king. Yeah, that is that exact. Yeah, it's probably just coincidence in a little mix of the pair idylia where we're looking for the face. But it's uncanny.

I don't I don't know that. Sometimes when I see things like that, I'm like, we're living in a simulation and some of that lazy and copied some CODEA this the same code that made certain monkey faces made back flower they copy tasted. Yeah. So the habit of these orchids to lure in the insects and that that fake

sex is called pseudocopulation. And there is an Australian orchid called crypto Stylus which uh, and there's a study to found that there is actually a pretty bad cost for the insects that get tricked because they waste large amounts of sperm by um, you know, ejaculating onto the flower not to get nasty. But I have like a certain amount in them. I wonder, I wonder if it's I

don't care a little one then you die. Yeah. I do think that there is a certain limit to how much they have or can produce, and it's certainly does come at a cost for them because that is a lot of proteins. They're perfect, that is their purpose. Yeah, they don't want to waste it. And so here's a picture to it feels good for you. So here's a picture of it, and you can. They definitely look like wasps to me. Are is there a wasp in there? No,

there's no wasp. Yeah, this is just the little thing. Yes, okay, yeah, it looks like bugs. It looks like bugs. I'm probably bastardizing looks like bugs. Um. And then so there's also the inverse of this, which is when insects imitate plants, which happens often in crypsis like you have leaf imitating insects. You've seen stick bugs or the stick insects. Uh see, now you've got me saying bugs. Bugs is just such

a cute word. It is a cute word. And one of the coolest things that I've seen are the predators that imitate flowers. So here's a crab spider imitating a flower, and it's beautiful. It's the shiny white with little some little detail and it looks like a pretty flower. It is beautiful. So that's the color they are. They're that glowy white all the time and beautier. They are beautiful. And then here, this is one of the most spectacular examples,

is the orchid mantis and it is absolutely gorgeous. Whoa, it's pink and white with it looks exactly like an orchid because it has pink just like dust. It like an orchid would just kind of like it's watercolors. It's really it's real. It's beautiful and it has it looks like petals. It has sort of the the yellow and green towards the base of its abdomen that looks like you know when you look inside an orchid and it has that kind of ombre from pink to yellow and green.

The attention to detail, it's are incredible. Crazy. That's what I should call this show. Yes, yes, it is really the bottom line of each lesson I have learned on this show with you. That's crazy nature. Whoa slow down? Slow? Could you just calm down for one's nature? Just just calm down, just chill, just chill. First, so I gotta ask these orchids, spiders and mantis, yes, and mantis they look like or kids, is like, how do you trick

an orchid? No, they're not tricking an orchid. They're tricking potential trick predators because these are predators, right, So the prey maybe approaches them because they think they're flower, or they just at least don't suspect them. And so it's just imagine you're you're kind of walking through the forest and you see a beautiful flower and you go down to smell it, and then it just starts to eat you. You know, Oh, there are uglier things to be eaten by.

That is true. Yeah, I can't really argue with that. It's a beautiful spider. I am slightly terrified of spiders. I mean, of of all the creatures, probably roaches the most. You know what, I actually agree with you on roaches. I disagree on spiders. I'm not really that grossed out or scared of spiders. But roaches I have I think a negative association with because they are it's that they're so greasy. They're literally fatty in terms of like and

I'm not saying like in terms of way. It's like they have these fatty excretions all over their body, which is like, is gross, and they feel like, I'm sorry, buttery. But at least a spider, I'm like, I know, we eat. Spiders are the good guys. It's like Charlotte's web spider

was sweet little lady. But roaches, I'm like, or what all they're going to do is outlive of So when nuclear apocalypse comes an importantly ecological niation, they are you know, they eat organic material, but they I do a great spare. My problem is that I've here's I can trace back my dislike approaches to a specific experience, which was stepping on one in bare feet and getting the geu on my foot. No wonder you call them buttery there. It was such a crunchy buttery experience. I didn't like it.

I have not scared away your listeners by really leaning into this issue of approaches. I like to. So there are some really I might do an episode or explore roaches or something, because there are some really cool one like the Madagow's characters and cock roach that is pretty cool. But yeah, just I'm I'm very tolerant towards of animals and insects and bacteria and everything except for roaches. I

think silverfish are kind of nasty. And the mosquitoes just because of all the people they can Yeah, that is the one, right and please and please say torture my dog and I hate it. Well, thanks so much for joining me today. Thank you. Um is there? Can you just tell people about things that they can look online? Absolutely that will bring them into your world? Which is my complicated way of saying, do you have anything to plug? I do? Um? Yeah, check out my web comic. It

is at bad Comics with an X by Anna. But if you just type in bad comics, it'll pop up. Um. I do comics pretty much every week about depression, anxiety, dairy. Um, they're all interlinked. To be honest, they truly in my world they are. You can also catch me on Twitter at bad Comics by Anna and uh, you know, let us know your thoughts on these animals, Like I really I love when people comment on Twitter about episodes. Yes,

it's so fun. Could you guys do me a favor and send on some dick Dick pick picks somewhat dictic pick picks. So dictics are a little tiny, dear like animals and they're very cute. It'll be fine, I promise. Okay it dude, sound like you're saying send on a dick pics And I was like, no, no, no, I don't know why you think that it's picks engagement. Hey,

I'm expecting just cute, little cuddly animals. Cute animals, yes, uh yeah, And you can find us on the internet Creature feature Pod dot com, Creature feature Pot on Instagram. It's mostly pictures of my dog. Creature feet Pot on Twitter. That's f e a T, not f e e T. That one is something of front. Definitely a wicked feet. Yeah, or maybe it's just dog pots. We knows, and thank

you how much for listening. If you're like in the show, you know, there's buttons, there's stars, there's subscription buttons you can press and all that actually really does help me out like tremendously, so please please do that. Thanks to the Space Classics for their super spectacular song Exo Alumina. Creature features a production of My Heart Radios How Stuff Works. For more podcasts from My Heart Radio, visit that I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to

your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.