Welcome to Creature future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we're talking about Weird Little Guys, animals that are a wee bit freaky and also a bit we We're going to get progressively littler and weirder as we go on, from a cryptid that is essentially a tiny sandworm from Dune to an even smaller animal
that likes to get ahead of home security. These animals have disvised some odd evolutionary strategies, and of course, our last weird Little Guy is one of the tiniest, most maniacal mass murderers on the planet. Discover this and more as we answer the age old question why do so many snails get turned into murder raves against their will? Joining me today as host of the podcast Weird Little Guys. Mother to my two favorite we influencers, Internet's Belunker Molly.
Kunger, Welcome, Hey Katie, thanks for having me.
I'm so excited to have you because I have been following you and your two little weenies Bucan Auto for a long time and it's very cool to talk to you. Uh and I I do hope that maybe the boys will come and give a statement about snacks they have they have been exiled.
They really want to podcast, But the producer complains the producer, I see, yeah, no, I'm I'm super excited to be on IM was telling you the other day, like I have been the secret third guest on every episode of this show for six years. You guys just can't hear me.
Uh so that's what that that whispering was in my head. Good to know. I'm I'm fine and I'm normal. Yeah, no, but I'm I'm really excited. So your podcast is sadly, it's not about cool animals. It's about not very cool people, right wing extremists who are weird little guys. And so you know, in a way though, like examining a person is similar to looking at evolutionary biology because you have to dig in to human behaviors that are kind of strange and sometimes destructive.
Yeah, you know it's your show is about weird little guys too, Except for you it's like a cool bug, and for me it's like a guy who has a framed picture of Hitler on his bedside table.
Yeah, you're like, yeah, same set.
Of terminology, very different application.
Right exactly Like I I it does seem like there are fewer Hitler adjacent animals. So yeah, we're going to talk about these guys, and the criteria is they have to be small and they have to be super weird. And we're going to go from big and not well I guess not big, but like the big guest one and also in my opinion, the least weird one to
the smallest and the incredibly most weird one. And so our first one is the marsupial moles, which I mean they are I think, very strange but also adorable in a way.
Okay, I'm looking at this guy and at first look the first picture, it kind of looks like he's got a little hamster maybe in his hands. But then you see his face. Then you see his face and that it's not a hamster.
No, it doesn't mean it's like the face is very strange because it doesn't quite it's hard to tell its face from its butt. First of all, Like you look at my face, well, the one where he's you see the little claws and it's looking at you, that is definitely the face. Yes, where it's in the guy's hands. And then you see something that kind of looks like a nose. That's actually the butt. Oh that's the tail. Yeah. No, see, I first that it is like that looks like a
little face, but that is actually the butt. And then sometimes when you look at the face, you think that that might be the butt because you can't see any eyes. And the reason you can't see any eyes is because there aren't really any eyes. All right. These guys are despite being called marsupial moles, they are not moles. They're not true moles. They're found in desert regions of Australia, and they do look like gold colored moles, but they're not.
And they're also not to be confused with the species the golden mole, which is also not a mole and is found in Africa, not Australia. So there's moles which are just moles. Then there's the golden mole, which is not a mole, but it's found in Africa, and then there's the marsupial mole, which is found in Australia, which is not a mole, but it is a marsupial.
You know, usually if I'm not sure if something is a mole. I'll try to see a dermatologist, but.
This is.
You either have to see a dermatologist or an evolutionary biologist. And it's very important to figure out which. I can't get over the fact of the butt and the face. It's very it's very hard to determine the butt in the face from each other.
Because I guess, so that's the anus, but those look like nostrils to me.
I don't know which picture the first. Okay, so the first image of the of the guy with his hands out is holding a little guy, uh, and it has like part of it that has like a little fleshy nub. That is the butt. Everything else everything else is the face.
Oh that is the face. Okay, yes, okay, So those are nostrils.
Those are nostrils. And I look.
To be fair to him. Beautiful golden color. This sort of like strawberry blonde, sun kissed likes to my hairstylist.
Yeah, this is the color that like I want for my hair. And yet his face is just so off putting, so like they live all of their lives underground, and so they don't really need eyes anymore, so their eyes are entirely covered by skin. And only this like vestigial lens remains under the skin, and their ears are basically just these two little pinholes. And so sometimes when you look at it, I think it looks like you might be able to see like its eyes, and those are
probably actually the ears. So like you see a couple of little like weird dots, it's like, oh, are those eyeballs, It's like that might just be ear holes.
And so their vestigial eyes still sense like light and dark or just nothing.
It doesn't seem like they really do much of anything. Also, we don't know a lot about them because we rarely, if ever get to like study them and look at them, because they are incredible. They are like very cryptic, very very difficult to spot because the shy they're very shy. So there's actually two species of marsupial mole, the southern marsupial mole called the it's jarret jari and the northern marsupial mole called the kekara tool. I pronounce that like
I have potatoes in my mouth. But they are they are marsupials and they're found only in Australia. Yeah, but they are one of the most difficult to photograph and to document marsupials. They are incredibly reclusive, and so they also don't create their own burrows. They use the burrows or sorry, they don't create their own burrows. They actually swim under the earth, so they don't create like a
permanent burrow. They dig in this like sandy soil and then like behind them, the soil just like closes in after them. So that's another reason they're really hard to document is that there's not like a burrow you can find, like, hey, this is a Mars supial mole burrow, we know to hang out here to see one pop out. They just leave no trace, and they swim through the sand, you know, like those guys from Dune.
How do they breathe?
So they are specifically designed such that they can essentially have enough space to like they create like a little pocket in front of them. And they're because they're loose, yeah, exactly, with their with their little claws, they can create like a little pocket in front of them, or they can breathe. Also, it's very very sandy, so air basically can disseminate through the sand. And they are also like that's why their
eyes are covered in skin. Otherwise they just be getting sand in their eyes all the time, and they don't really need their eyes in the situation. They probably use their sense of smell and sense of feel to identify and locate prey and to move around. And they their ears again like also, because their ears are so flat, just these tiny pinholes, they can they probably use their ears as the sensory organs, but they are small enough
such that sand doesn't get in them. Also, I mentioned they are marsupials, and so they do have a pouch. But the pouch, you know how like the pouch of a kangaroo. It's sort of like facing up like a little pocket. Oh, they gotta put their bases, they do exactly. It's backwards because if they move forward, like imagine if you have like a kangaroo pocket and you're moving through the sand, you're just collecting sand in your pocket, and that's not gonna be good for your tiny little babies
in there. So there's this backwards and so which works out great for the little tiny Joey's that will crawl up into the pocket. And they have two teets in there, so they can support two little Joey's inside of this pouch at once.
It's god, how big are they? They got to be like the size of like my pinky nail.
They're like they're probably the size of rice when they come out. I don't you know, they are tiny. They've got to be tiny, gotta be teeny teeny town.
That's a tiny guy.
Yeah, it's a tiny guy. They got there probably just look like little pitty bitty maggots. Like honestly, it's imagining a mammal being that small. Yeah. Right, It's like it's weird.
That's bug size.
Bugs are that big. Yeah. But it's like it's in a way you can think about these things. It's like almost kind of like weird mobile fetuses because like they've finished their development inside the pouch, so they it's a say, it's a similar situation with say, like any other marsupial. Right, you have this underdeveloped baby that comes out and it's tiny, very very very tiny, can't really do much. The only thing it can do is it has this instinct to crawl until it reaches a teat and it makes this
incredible journey from the vagina to the pouch. And but it's just like this little tiny flesh jelly bean that like that's all I can do, yees, I mean, and it's like like with little tiny limbs, and then it will like inside the pouch, that's where it develops and gets bigger. It actually develops like features that are recognizable as something other than this, like weird little flesh bean.
And I guess it's you know, it's day to day. Doesn't really change after that, it's just blind and digging'.
Just yeah exactly. I mean. The thing is this is that these marsupial malls life is just like digging. And at first it's digging and looking for a teat, and then it's digging and looking for bugs, uh and lizards and things. And yeah, they I mean they appear to be pretty like adept predators. Like in the very few photographs of them, we have seen them being able to chow down on lizards, on centipedes, so it probably is
a good hunter. It seems again like these are very understudied because of how difficult they are to document.
Yeah, this picture of him chowing down on a lizard, like if you just showed me that one without the one where he looks like a little hamster, and then yeah, the one where it looks a little bit more like a If I just saw this picture, I don't think I could fathom what I'm looking at because it's he's sort of hunched over, folded in half, and you see his non face, and the lizard is halfway inside of him, and he's gripping the back half of the lizard with what look like crab claws.
Right, this almost looks like sort of a like some kind of weird ocean creature, right, like, right, a fuzzy crab, which there are furry crabs, by the way, so I wouldn't judge you for thinking this is a furry crab. But yeah, it has these two claws, right, these two large claws. It has other fingers, but the two ones that you can see are the large ones that it
uses for digging. And that its nose is kind of weird because its nose is reinforced with this leathery thick skin on the top of its head, so kind of.
Like you have armadilla in the nose.
Yeah, it's kind of like a cling on situation, in armadillo situation. And then again, no visible eyes. The eyes are covered in skin, and the ears there's no external ears like humans, you know, we have an external ear. Birds don't have that external ear, so they just have the ear holes, and so it's the same thing with these. They don't have any external ears, they just have the ear hole.
Yeah, this looks like if you if like the sort of sentient AI that makes those like weird Jesus pictures on Facebook, if it were to create like a marmaset hermit crab.
Yeah, yeah, just like this does seem like if you gave the AI the prompt, like you know, crab hamster, and then also it was like click, like if this image means something to you.
It's that lizard's birthday and no one, no one wished him happy birthday.
Mm hmmm. And yeah, and I mean it fits right. The hands are weird. It's got weird hands, not enough fingers. Yeah, well, I love it. I am. I feel like I need to do It's kind of hard in podcast form because it's so visual, but I need to do something about like all of the weird AI generated animals where it's like, look at this real animal and then it's like a bird with like feet and or yeah it's like, well
no that's not that's not what that is. But I feel like it's gonna get harder and harder, right because there are there are indeed like there, I think that there are animals out there that are so weird. It's still something that is weirder than what AI could come up with.
Right, Like, there's so many weird animals out there. You don't need to make up fake ones. There's real ones. There's real ones that you're not going to believe.
But how am I going to trick your aunt into reposting my my thing on Facebook?
Like and share if you want to like it your birthday?
Look at this army person coming home from the war, like in Share, and it's just a marsupial mole dress and fatigues.
You know, I think he would look good in camo.
He would. He's naturally camouflage because of that golden color of dirt. Yeah, with the red sand, it's like this sort of reddish sand. So there's already a bit of camouflage there.
But you know, people say redheads shouldn't wear green. I think that's nonsense. I think he would be great in olive.
I so I am a somewhat redhead and I wear green all the time, So I don't I don't agree with that.
And I don't subscribe to that, right, I don't.
I don't, That's not my religion. But like, yeah, me and him are gonna definitely be fashion tip sharing because I think our coloring is quite similar. And also you know the fact that I don't have external ears and my eyes are covered in skin.
Yeah, those headphones are just attached to nothing.
They're just going right in the holes, straight into the holes. So uh yeah, So these guys are are very weird and they all so we can't like, yes, they are very difficult to document in the wild, So some people might wonder, well, why don't we just like catch a couple of them and then like breed them so that we can observe them in captivity or maybe have them as cool pets, because look at how the cute they are.
They are. They have some very specific like survival requirements, and so they have never been successfully kept in captivity for more than a month before they die, and so they do not they don't work in captivity, which I think it's both sad but also adds to their allure, like they will choose death over being captured. It's not
really them choosing death. What it is is probably their diet and their temperature needs and stuff are probably extremely narrow, Like they probably have a very very specific ecological niche, and so trying to recreate that in an artificial environment is just really really difficult, and we've never been able to do it.
But don't really know exactly what it is, the missing ingredient is exactly.
We're not exactly sure. I would assume that they have probably like because they're small, this would be my guess from that, I'm sighting my butt. My butt is the citation here. But because they're quite small, I imagine their
metabolism is pretty demanding. You know. Also with all that digging through the sand, you know, they probably have quite a rapid metabolism, and they probably have to eat a lot, and they probably have to eat a lot of various prey items with like a very specific nutrition profile and so.
And also because these are desert animals, they probably have a very specific temperature kind of like regulatory systems in terms of like you know, they they stay in the sand, and you know, these desert environments, like they probably have like these the specific temperature range that they can tolerate inside of the sand in this desert and so if you take them out of that environment, and also you aren't providing them with the exact like mixture of you know, arthropods, lizards,
whatever else they're eating, who knows. Yeah, I can see why they wouldn't survive that.
I think he just wants to be left alone.
Yeah, you know what. They just want to swim around in dirt and eat lizards. And I get it.
He's free.
He's free and also kind of looks like Millhouse. I think there's this one photo of them, like it's the last one where he's eating the centipede and it's just got kind of a little bit of a Millhouse face. You can see his mouth just full on on the cynipede. Really gross.
Yeah, god, yeah, Again, if I didn't know what I was looking at, I would not It's hard. I would not be in the right like branch of the tree of creatures.
Well, it doesn't. The problem is that, again, it doesn't really have a face, so you don't even know what's a mouth until you see something going inside of it.
And because he's got those like long I mean, I guess, I guess they're fingers, but they really look like claws.
They are claws. So they are the like keratin part of the Yeah, so that's like a claw they have like more like they don't just have two digits in the front, but that is those are the two that are like long claws. It's like sort of a you know, like two toed sloths, they like have those really long claws in the front. Yeah, it's it's it's like that, except in a tiny eldric torror beyond our comprehension.
Like, of course Australia has a faceless, hairy hermit crab that eats lizards holes. Of course they do.
Yeah, yeah, I mean, you know, one of their least scary animals. I guess. All right, well we are gonna take a quick break, and then when we get back, we are going to talk about a very very specialized I'm going to say, we go from no face to a face that has like a very important job be scary.
All right, so we're back. We're going to talk about ants, now, which you know we're used to our little ants, usually Argentina ants that invade our kitchens and eat our cereals, but there is a lot of different species of ants all over the world. Ants live pretty much everywhere and we're going to talk about a type of ant. Noticed I didn't say species, but a type of ant called a doorhead ant. And these are ants that have heads
that are doors. You're nodding. You're nodding, but you look concerned.
I mean there's carpenter ants right right right, makes sense that they're be other sorts of carpentry adjacent ants. These ones are door right right.
Remember like Game of Thrones, I only watched some of that show, but there was the one guy and it turned out so his name was Ho Door. And it turned out that that was him saying hold the door because a little kid brain featured him and so then like he but his brain got two zapped from the past future. So then all he could say is ho door.
Yeah, so his travel element is still a little lost on me. We're watching it again right now, so maybe I'm gonna figure it out this time.
He's a special boy with mind time powers, and so he turns this guy into his Like God, I don't know, it's seems like I don't know how to say this. It's like all he can do is like it's a man who's an entire purpose is to hold a door. So that this boy wizard survives and that's the plot of Game of Thrones, Folks, that's actually the whole show. I think that's the whole show. Yes, there might be some lizards in it. I don't remember, but that's these ants.
These ants entire purpose in life is door. So there is a scientific term for this. It's called phragmosis. It is an animal using itself its body as a protective barrier. And I think that certain species of ants are some of the most wild examples of this because they have evolved a head shape that acts as a door. So I showed you some pictures of the shape of this ant's head. It's like flat and kind of wedge shaped and it fits really good in holes.
Yeah, this picture of him sort of backed into a hole, it looks like so it looks like he's plugging this hole. In a close up picture of a tree, like the tree bark, and there's a hole in the tree bark, and perfectly filling the hole is the top of this guy's head. It looks like someone's driven a nail into.
The tree exactly. And I don't mean to like gender police bozands, but technically this is a female. The males I don't think gets a cool job. They mostly hang around and they might do some work, but usually they are there mostly for breeding.
So the boys don't have the cool head.
I don't think. I don't. There could be a species where the boys get a cool head, but I don't know of one. I think all of these examples are the females get the cool doorheads and the fellas. You know, the fellas don't get the doorhead, which seems like sexism. But you know, but.
How many doors need to be? Like does everybody in the have this or is it a special job.
It's a special job. And it's weird because this happens in many different species of ants. Some of the species are related and some of the species are less related. Uh so, uh, basically, this door this doorhead happens in some species of ants, and sometimes it pops up like basically different times in evolution, like a you know, parallel evolution or convergent evolution.
Okay, so this is not like you said, this is not a species of ant. It's a kind of ant.
So it's like right, exactly, so it's a certain job. It's an ant job, so like you're born for this job, exactly, so it's like sold you have soldier ants, you have worker ants, you have the queen ants, and you have door ants.
My job is door.
My job is door. I do door really good. I was born to be door really literally born to be door. And so let's uh, this occurs like in a lot of species. So I'll high like one species just as an example. So in the New World, the Cephalotes genus is a genus of ants that in which this occurs. And then in the Old World, the Caribera genus also has many species of ants that have this trait. I looked into the name Caribera genus. I thought maybe they were named after care bears, but I couldn't find any
confirmation of that. So let me if you named those ants, let me know, like, did you name them after care bears?
I mean, it's certainly not the same vibe, but I guess it's well, I mean she is she is caring for her family, that is true.
Also, name care bears have different jobs like one bear, like on their tummies, whereas like right, my job is heart, my job is hugs, and my job is rainbow. And so for these it's like they would just have like a door on their tummies and it's like my job is door, except that it's their heads that are shaped like a tray, Like you know, it's like that robot in Star Wars, Star Wars, Star Wars, the one where it's the robot whose head is like it's like flat,
and it's like, I'm I'm a tray. And then there's one that's like trash can shaped and it's like I'm trash can. Maybe I'm not.
I only know the two I'm a Star Wars guy. There's like there's the little trash can one, and then there's the tall golden one.
Is the other right, well, there's the dome. There's like the ballard shape one, the dome one which is R two D two, and then there's the tall like golden one. Yeah, that's c P three British one three either C three PO or c P three. Oh I forgot he's the British. He's he's English. And then the little guy's beep from
Beep area or something. He beeps and but I thought there was a scene in one of the movies where they go to like robot it was like a robot black to Tin Sight or something where they're like tormenting robots, and I thought they like, I think they turned the little guy into tray, Like they put a tray on his head. Torment your tray now, and we're.
Gonna get We're gonna get torn apart, Katie. We're gonna get torn apart by the starboys.
You know what, starboys come at me. I'm not the one who's like making all these so many other Star Wars shows that make you, guys all angry, even though they're giving you more Star Wars, which just makes you angrier and angrier. You're in a you're in a hell of your own design. They they sent themselves to the robot Torture Facility exactly. It's a robot black site of your mind. We are talking about ants, though not robots, and their heads are shaped like doors, and so so
the Cephalotes genus. There's a species called Cephalotes rowaryu, also known as turtle ants, who live in the Sonoran Desert. They live in the trunks and limbs of trees that have been bored into buy beetles. So the ants co opt these holes in tunnels for their own colony, and some of the ants develop into a specialized class of soldiers with flat disc like heads that are able to block up the holes. And these are the door headed ant, and this ant species lives its entire life in the tree.
They eat pollen, and they've actually developed the ability to glide like a controlled glide. They splay out their little legs, it's really cute, and then sort of guide their way back to the tree so that if they fall off of a limb, they don't have to fall all the way to the ground, which would be fine, they wouldn't die, it's just they have to walk all the way back
and that sucks. So they glide back to the tree so that hopefully they don't have to walk all the way up from the ground back to the tree.
So the flying squirrel situation cooking here exactly.
They've got the doorheads and the flying squirrel and so yeah, you just have this whole basically cast of ants who are there to serve as doors in case of attacks and to protect the colony. But in some species it's the queen herself who is door which I admire. In a leader in bliffer A Data conops of Brazil, the queen has a thick, disc like doorhead that she can use to block the brood chamber from threats. Yeah, it is.
It's just like she has big flat doorhead and she when she senses a threat to block the entrance, and then her workers can gain entrance into the brood chamber by knocking on her doorhead like knock, not queen, it's me.
There's like a special like a secret handshake kind of knock I it.
Perhaps, you know, that's a really interesting idea. I don't know exactly how whether it's pheromones or if it's a pattern of knocking that she recognizes. It might be combination of the two. But that's a very good question. And but I do really like, look, if I'm going to live in a monarchy, I want it where my queen is also my door and I can knock on my like like she's.
Putting her body on the line here for exact exactly right like door. Conversely, it could be that she's, you know, such a malicious ruler that she knows that she can't trust anyone, that only she can truly protect the brood chamber.
She can't even trust a door, so like she has to be her own door. Yeah, that's the that's the true sort of boss babe like that. That's like the peak of boss babe is like you have to be your own door.
Like I'm not just the monarch here, like I am the facility I am, right, I am everything.
I am the actual building.
Right like I'm I'm i am brooding in here, but I am also the brood chamber.
Right exactly. She she can do it all, but yeah, I mean she is really having it all. She's leaning in ladies. Uh, you two can have a family of like five hundred members, be a queen, a CEO, and a door.
How does she do it?
How does she do it? Yeah? I do really love this, I mean with aunts. I think what's important to remember is that the whole purpose like of a colony in a hierarchy is that they are It just means that these genes get pushed forward to the next generation. Right, So, like the queen is going to act like a door if it means that she's more likely to have her genes pass on to the next generation you're gonna.
Have if door is working.
If door is working for them, they're gonna go door and you know, like, yeah, it is, it is. It is wild though, how specialized, like you know, ant species have becommon how you have these? Because it is it's when we think about evolution rate and natural selection, we think, well, like makes a lot of sense for an individual to want to reproduce on its own, because otherwise, how does
it work? Right? Because like, if you're self sacrificing, then your genes don't necessarily get passed on, because then if you're just spending all your time being door and not breeding.
How does that work?
The very good question that doorhead girl is not breeding right except for the queen version who the other ones? And it plays into the larger question of how do colonies work in the first place? So the way that I mean first of all, how our rules assigned. Usually that's some kind of pheromone signal, so like hey we need more soldiers. There's like a pheromone that goes out
where it's like, hey, we need more soldiers. Usually it can even be something where it's like if a queen has died or there's no queen, the queen uses like a basically queen suppressing pheromone, so new queens aren't born. But if that queen is gone, new queens are then born.
If you have an imbalance of soldiers to workers. The that pheromone imbalance, that those pheromone signals actually can inhibit certain stages in the fetal development of these these offspring in the egg and so at the last stage of development, that's when they can like turn into like a worker
or a door. And so in these colonies, like I think the way that they determine like who is door is basically just like again like this this gradient, this concentration of pheromones that determines like well, who needs to be a soldier, who needs to be a worker, and do we need more doors? And so like that that's how it happens on sort of a mechanical level. You look like you have a question.
Oh now I'm just thinking, like how did so many different species of ants independently arrive at doorhead? Like who is the first first cool aunt to be? Like you know, I bet my head would fit in that hole and it would be so helpful to everyone if I just stood here like that, right.
I mean, you know, it's interesting because I think part of it it's like probably sold first, it's soldiers, right, because they would have bigger heads guarding it. They have bigger heads because that would accommodate larger mandibles and allow them to attack better. Uh, and then you probably have soldiers who are like, I'm going to be at the entrance because that is where the threat is coming from.
So I have like essentially they're tiny computers, right, So they're like they are being guided by pheromones, by smells, and so they are like, Okay, there is a threat at the entrance, and so I'm going to go there.
And so maybe some of them their heads were so big for combat, they actually when they were just there in the door, the ones with the heads that were just a little bit of a better fit for the door of the colony, like, we're really effective and so that like and now we get into like okay, but then how do they pass on their jeans? Right, because these door ants aren't necessarily reproducing. Well, it has to do with how ants are very unique in terms of
having haploid diploid. Actually, I shouldn't say ants are unique. A lot of use social organisms like ants, bees, termites, they have a genetic system haploid diploid, which sounds really confusing, but essentially what it means is that these the genes of this colony, these sisters are basically like more related to each other and to like the offspring into like the queen and her genes than they are to their
own offspring. So, like, what that means is that essentially, even if you have the queen being the only one reproducing, maybe one queen, maybe multiple queens, but you know, just the ones that are reproducing, then those the components of the queen. The queen's genetics are reflected in the workers. So if you have a worker who has an interesting mutation that benefits the colony, those are very similar to the genes that the queen is already passing down to
the new generation. So if that, if those are positive genes that are helping the colony survive, those are reflected in the queen's genetic makeup because they're almost like clones of each other. They're not quite clones, but they're very very genetically similar. But so, like, how does selection work.
It's like, you know, if these some of these ants have the mutation, they're all coming from the queen, so she's producing offspring with that mutation sometimes but not other times. What is the selection pressure if that, like the ones with the genes are not more likely to reproduce because they're not the ones reproducing. I guess they're more likely to survive.
They're more likely to keep the queen reproducing, and so the queen's genes, the queen's genes are being reflected in these ants. This is what's wild, right, It's like her if essentially you have these ants that are keeping the queen safe and so she keeps reproducing. And even though the ants aren't necessarily surviving, they are so similar to what the queen set of genes are, right, Like like for female offspring, she's essentially just like pushing out her
own genes. They do actually get some genes from the father, but the male offspring only get genes from the mother.
Oh interesting, And so.
Essentially, I there's a whole charts that you can work out that shows how this works.
But essentially there's so much going on inside the ant hill.
Yeah, there's a lot going on. So essentially, if these female ants reproduced with like a male ant, they would be like less related to their offspring than they would be related to the brothers that they're their queen is pushing out. That Also, their reproduction is forcibly suppressed by the queen's pheromones or even by like violence. So it's not just that they don't ever have any instinct. They do sometimes have instinct to try to reproduce, but then
that is suppressed by pheromones. It's also suppressed by like there's no just monarchies, there's really no just monarchies. But but yeah, but the way that the way that that selection works, and this is like this is something that has been like hotly debated a lot, right like like this is a very good question and committed so confusing. Yeah, and the ant forms are just going crazy right now.
But essentially it is that you have you have a library of genes and normally, well not normally, but in a lot of organisms like like mammals like humans non non use social organism, meaning organisms where we reproduce on our own and we don't have like a reproducing queen or group of reproducers. If we have a good library of genes that has some just like either stability or good mutations or something like, we're passing that library down.
In this use social situation, you have your library of genes that you would potentially pass down to an offspring. Is so similar to what your queen is passing down to her offspring, and it's like it's so related to that that the chances are that if you had some kind of mutation that gave you a doorhead and protected your colony from invaders, the queen already has that gene
in her library that she's already passing down. And so the fact that colony is kind of evolutions working through the queen alone, but her offspring are in her workers, which who are all related to her. All her offspring are helping her pass down her genes, which are also reflected in them. So if her workers are having these positive mutations, that makes the colonies chance of survival better. She's already like passing down those kinds of jeens, right, So.
It's not like if there's a one random mutation, she's gonna make a lot of those guys because she's making all of them. That makes sense.
Yeah, She's like and like, you could have a queen who has a random mutation which is like ants, I don't know, being really stupid, let's say, like just not being very good at their job, being terrible doors Like they're like some wasp knocks on the door and they're like all right, come on in.
The Golden lap of guard dogs.
Yeah right, exactly, like oh did you come? Yeah, just like super happy for any visitor. Then you know that might that colony might not survive, and so the queen herself is not going to pass on the like bad door jeans. Right, So then you have evolutioning working in
that way. And we're actually gonna in the next section we're going to talk about this in a really weird way where we're getting even tinier and even weirder, and we're talking about this kind of like group activity that gets even creepier.
Oh god, we have one more question about the door sorry fig out, Okay, okay. In both of these pictures where the doorhead is being the doorman the door girl, she's blocking the old door girl boss, the shape of the head is a perfect flush fit with the hole. Is there some sort of carpentry involved where they're like nibbling it out to be exactly right or these just beautiful coincidences.
That's a really good question. There are some invertebrates where they practice this type of like door carpentry, like trapdoor spiders, where they actually do sculpt the entrance so that it is it matches their body, and they even do things like add like stuff to their body, like trapdoor spiders, they will like add stuff and then like they create this very flush and also camouflage door. And these photographs, I think that it's just this is actually probably more
of a human photography bias. I would say that the even took the pictures that look the coolest, took the coolest picture. That would be my guess, because if you look at the one of the earlier pictures, you see that there is a gap in the door. It's not a perfect flush fit with that opening. There's a little bit of a gap. Still really effective, right, like if it's a large thing, try to get down, no, but
you know, still it is an effective door. But yeah, the one that like literally looks like a nail in like a piece of wood, I would say that is probably because a photographer saw that and it's like that is a really cool example of it. So this is another I mean, it's a very good question because like sometimes biology, like our perception of biology is also framed through our own biases and our own desire for really cool examples. But yeah, I mean, but your your question
of like do they do carpentry. It's there's so many species of ants in so many cases of this like door headed business. And it's also a relatively recent, like within the past few decades, like relatively recent discovery about these ants that like, uh like for a lot of ants like species. They thought that these doorheaded ants were entirely different species of ants because they looked so different, and then they discovered like, no, these are actually the
same species of ants. This is just like a class of the the within this colony. And so I think it's completely feasible that there could be a species of ant that tries like in the one that I talked about, the one that lives in the snoor and desert. They use pre existing holes, so I don't know that they
actually you know, modified the hole so much. Yeah, right, But I think it's it's it's definitely within the realm of possibility because you do see that kind of behavior, and like other arthropods, you even see that behavior in like, uh in two cans or yeah, in two cans, who are two cans are hornbills? I think it's two cans and two cans.
All those big big tropical birds look the same, do you, huh?
I'm a I'm a bird bird, bigot.
I thought you were a bird's rights activist.
I you know what you got me? I'm uh, I am only a keyboard bird right to activists when you get me in real life? Am I really there standing in line with the birds? Yeah, it is two cans, so they will like go nest in like tree hollows. Horn bills are completely different environment. I don't know what I was thinking. Okay, with two cans, they will nest in these tree hollows, and then they use their own feces and also like mud and other like fibers and stuff to like narrow the whole.
I liked.
And then the mother too can will use her body as a way to keep snakes out of like her her nest. So that and then basically it's so small even she can't get out of the hole, so she completely relies on the male to go around and feed
her and her chicks once they hatch. So there are it is beautiful, right, you know, covered in their own feces, being kept, creating a door frame out of feces, and then putting your own body on the line and then having your husband get you groceries it's like that is that's the American traditionalism that I want.
Right, Like, let's return to door.
Return to door, women's women's places as the door. All right, so we are going to take a quick break and when we get back, we are going to talk about the teensiest and also weird ziest animal on our list today.
This looks gross.
It's very great. Wait what are you I don't know what you're looking at.
Oh this last picture? Oh is that just that's the.
That's just another ant Oh that's that's the queen aunt here. Let me get you a picture actually of this guy.
Okay, because this looks nutst.
Now we've already talked about anasts. We're about to get even nastier. But it's kind of hard. We're on it's a nasty on such a small scale. It's kind of hard to depict the nastiness on the tiny scale. I'll give it a shot, though, all Right, So we are going to talk about one of the tiniest and weirdest animals out there. And guess what it is? A parasite, Because I at you know what parasites are some of the coolest animals. Like I really got into evolutionary biology,
at least in college. Like I got addicted to it because of a class I took on parasites, and it's like, no, this is this is too cool because there they are such sophisticated strategists. When it comes to reproduction, it is really messed up and dare I say a little bit perverted. I'm not king shaming, but it is a little bit.
I mean, the number of the number of parasites that rely on us getting our own poop in our mouths is incredible. They've been so successful we are disgusting.
Yeah, you know, it's using our own potty grossness against us, which seems unfair, but you know, they they're they have they have no rule book really in terms of ethics, which will become very clear with these ones. So we are talking about haplorc haplorcus uh pumelio parasite. So uh a Star Wars villain, Yeah, Star Wars batto batto parasito Uh so yeah Haplorcus pumilio.
Uh.
These are microscopic flatworms that infect snails and then fish, birds, and mammals, usually in that order.
Oh, they're working their way up.
They are working They're working their way up. They're girl busting their way up. They are found in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. So yeah, let's start with the life cycle of these little flatworms. They first lay their eggs and their eggs are ingested accidentally by a snail. They develop inside the snail and then starts to clone itself. They will then be ingested by a fish, which is another intermediate host, where they can continue to develop into
a juvenile form. And then finally they are ingested by a bird or a mammal where they develop into adults and reproduce sexually. They lay eggs which are then pooped out by the bird or mammal and the cycle can continue. So they go through a cloning stage and then like just basically growing up in various animals until they reach adulthood and then they have a big horny orgy inside a bird or a mammal and then they lay their eggs.
It's like the inverse of that the Children's song where you swallow the bird to catch the spider to eat the fly.
You know what I'm talking about, Yeah, it is, it's kind of backwards. Yeah, that was a creepy thing to me though, the lady eating all those animals, presumably still alive. And then I guess, like's like, why did you swallow a whole cat just because you eat a spider? Right?
And then like she and then she dies and I can only eat I only assume she dies in like a huge meat explosion, because like she's like she swallows a horse or something and then she dies, and it's like, yeah, if you try to swallow a horse, you just explode.
I mean maybe she had a parasite. This sounds like parasite behavior.
I think she had some kind of brain parasite that turned her into a horrible abomination. But anyways, it's great the things we teach her children.
So like a person can get this though, like if.
Yes, actually a person can be infected with this, it's uh, you know, like you you know, I don't know. I don't think it actually is too dangerous. I think it might make you sick, but I don't think it'll kill you, and I don't think it'll like mind control you, and you certainly won't like explode. You might get is that the worm talking kitty? Which one? Which worm? You might get diarrhea though, which is never a good time. So uh but but yeah, let's let's back up before you
judge these adorable little babies. Uh, let's back up.
I feel like I'm being set up.
No, you're not. And your water is safe to drink, don't worry about it. So, like the first host that the H. Pumilio in fact is this snail, So inside of the snail, it clones itself, and many of these clones are exact copies, so they go through both asexual reproduction where they're cloning themselves and sexual reproduction later once they are mature, they will sexually reproduce with other members of their species and lay eggs. So during this cloning period,
something really strange happens. Because so far this is like kind of standard ish parasite behavior, like you have a bunch of like intermediate hosts and you go through both asexual and sexual reproduction yahn boring snoozefest. But in this species, they actually create a very specialized clone that is sterile, so this clone can't reproduce. It has a tiny, tiny
body about five percent size of a normal clone. They are super duper aggressive and they have giant mouths, so essentially they are a clone where it's just like an aggressive mouth, like if you cloned yourself but it turned out like a chihuahua version of you. So it's not making clones of itself. It's making minions. It is making minions.
It's making both. Actually it's making clones and the clones are making clones and and it's like but then the it's also making minion clones that, yeah, are like I guess minions are like the despicable mean minions are those just like grous Janette.
I think that there's so much minion low. I do not mean to take us into million lore. I don't know anything. There's like so much going to do they are?
Do they have like an anus? Like what is like a is it?
There's no way minions have genitals.
No, well not genitals, but they think you know, I'm just saying they definitely don't. They probab have chloaca, right, Like they may produce a sexually, but then they probably have like some kind of like how do they reproduce?
I think they eat, so they definitely have a hole.
Right, They've got to have an anus, so but then they also like do they reproduce by like like asexually sort of like do they like I.
Just kind of assumed they didn't.
You mean, like God created it, like the fixed amount of minions.
Like there's some sort of spawn point for them, and these I don't know, is it like maybe it's like an it's an ant colony thing. There is there's one queen.
Like so grew is they reproducing queen and he like births these minions. Uh, I don't know.
Anyway, I need to look more into this. I need to look more into But okay, so this guy, so they're making he's making real clones, clones of himself that look like him. Yeah, but then also he's creating from his own genetic library these tiny monsters.
Exactly, You've got it. So these clones have a very specific job. It is to kill any other parasite that it comes across that is not its own clone colony.
So so what you're saying is this is medicine.
It's medicine that tries to ruin any competition for other medicine and taking over your body.
So like, if you have a lot of parasites, you should just try to get this one.
It's just like that Simpsons joke where if you have enough diseases, they all cancel each other out through they can't pink.
I think about that scene so often, considering I probably saw that episode one time in elementary school.
It just makes so much sense in terms of biology. I think that I've even seen that like cited in certain papers about like viral interference and stuff. It's really funny, but like it's uh so yeah, they they uh within this snow. This is like snails have such a rough life, like salt is bad for them. Uh, people eat some of them and like other people hate them because they're gross when you step on those. Yeah, I really feel for snails, Like their name is literally like uh you know,
like snail mail, Like it's slow. I don't know. I feel a lot of sympathy for them because they get so many parasites. And then it's just like so within the snail, there's gonna be other parasites with other species of parasitic flatworms or maybe even like the same members of like the same species inside but like different like individuals, different kind of clones.
Right, So they're they're fighting it out with their their fellow worm.
They're fighting it out with their fellow worm. It's warm against worm, but not it's not clone against clone. It's like clone against the same clone. It is clone against.
Making their little army.
Right, it's clone war where it's all clones, oops, all clones. So much Star Wars considered. I've really never I'm not a big Star Wars person either. I just know that the cultural sort of key points.
He's in the milliu right, imagine, Okay, so he's making he's making a little army, and he's fighting all the other.
Parasites exactly and so well the specifically it's these weird tiny like mini me minions that are like mostly mouth and very aggressive. So they'll like their entire job is to latch onto these other little flatworms and suck out their inside. So they latch on and suck out their insides and that's it, job completed.
So they just so the little evil Chihuahua clones, they latch onto like a competing worm and just slurp its juice out.
That's right, you got it? Tight?
Yeah, cool, cool cool, And this is just happening inside the snake and.
That's like in the in like the clones, whole job is to that this, like the minion clones, whole job is just to do that, like to slurp about the inside, and it doesn't like really benefit it in any way because I mean, this is just its instinct to do it. But this this minion does not reproduce, you know, it'll just kind of like die off eventually. It doesn't. It
never reaches the stage of it doesn't clone itself. It doesn't like reproduce, it's not really propagating, so it just kind of like it's sort.
Of an independent living creature. Yes, it's it's doomed to live and die only as a rabid worm slurping clone exactly.
Yeah, it's eleven. So yeah, essentially they turn this like snail into a clone clone factory battleground.
How's the snail feeling?
Not great?
Is the snail good? So yeah, first it's.
Great because the snail the presence of these these parasites actually triggers the snail to have a stronger shell and bigger body, which is like, hey, this is pretty good for the snail survival. But eventually, like that's like the only reason that the parasite is having that happen for the snail is that it wants the snail to survive long enough for it to breed these more clones, right, so that once the snail is inevitably eaten by like a fish or something, and a lot of these parasites
like that. I didn't read anything necessarily about how the H. Pumilio makes the snail a better target for fish, but in a lot of species, like Leucochloridium is an example of one that like it infects snails and then like makes the snail's etocks. Basically it creates these brood sacks that are inside the snail's eyestalks and then they like undulate and like they look.
Like these like rapes like a homing exactly.
Like a homing again, that make them more attractive to birds. And so I imagine there could be something going on here where even though the snail at first might be benefited by these parasites because it makes them tougher, clone factories like it might actually make them more vulnerable to predation in the end, So it's not so much the parasites are not benefiting the snail in any real sense at least or at least in the long run. But yeah,
it is. It's I just love that you've got this thing that it's like, well, I'm going to create of my own flesh, just like a little weapon, and its entire purpose is just second guts out of my enemies.
And so once the snail gets eaten, do they start this process over again in the new host.
No, so they begin to develop, they develop into juveniles in like the fish, and then once the fish is eaten by like a bird or mammal, then that is when they develop into adults and so like, uh.
Really have to get eaten several times.
So this is one of the reasons that it's so important to develop so many clones is that you know, any kind of like waste that the animals create, or if like want a fish like eats part of like if a fish gets eaten by another fish, or like fish eats part of a snail and another fish eats
another little part of the snail or something. You want as many clones as you can, because it is like a relay RaSE to get into eventually get into a bird or a mammal so that you can like reproduce with other of these h pumelias and layer eggs and so yeah, just like strengthen numbers because that raises the statistical probability that you're eventually going to reach the end goal of the final animal.
What a powerful like commitment to evolution, right, just the likelihood of going like the seafloor to the stomach of a bird and you have to go to get there.
They gotta, they gotta get there. I mean, it's it's just you know, it has worked out enough times that it sticks around.
I mean, I guess the snail is a popular seaside snack.
Look, they're crunchy and they've got a creamy sinner.
I don't so it has to go. It has to go snail, fish, bird or can What if? What if the bird eats the snail?
I think that's too soon. I think that it has too soon. Yeah, like it, I think it's got to go into the fish first to.
Have sort of a fish adolescence, right, And these.
I mean, the the helpful thing is that these snails I think are semi aquatic. They hang around the water a lot. So it's like like that the snails that they infect are very likely to be eaten by a fish. And then yeah, so like they have they have chosen a pretty likely.
Path that like, yeah, I mean it's working for them, it's working.
They're making it work. This strategy does seem to be working, and it's horrible, but hey, sure is effective.
That's a disgusting creature. Yeah, I respect him.
Yeah, you gotta respect it. At least it's not a Nazi though.
But he's definitely a weird little guy. Like that's the weirdest littless guy.
He's the littlest guy, and he's very very weird.
He's up to some like weird sexual stuff. If he's harming his neighbors, like, that's that's a weird little guy.
For it's a bunch of weird little perverts. And then they clone more perverts and they throw a big pervert party inside of a snail.
And they have yeah, a like small violent asexual minions.
Yeah.
Yeah, that guy could be on my show.
Yeah no, I mean it's it does kind of sound like some weird cults.
But he's just violent in cell minions.
Yeah exactly. There you go, there you go. Uh So next time you can call someone an h Pumelio specialized clone and they won't even know they're being insulted and you might get a wedgie. So I'm not liable for that, all right, So before we go, we do got to play a little game called the Mystery Animal Sound Game. Every week I play a mystery animal sound, and you the listener, and you the guests, try to guess who is making up sound, also known as gets who's squawking?
Which is I never win, never win, you know, it's hard.
I probably wouldn't win a lot of these because I get to do it backwards, which is fun for me because I get to accurately like smug and smart and like, oh, really, you didn't guess the animal sound that I looked up.
I knew that was a kind of frog that no one's ever heard of exactly.
So last week's Mystery animal sound hint was this. These sounds were pitch shifted down to sound like a certain movie star animals. They are, in fact in the clade you're probably thinking of, but maybe not quite how you're imagining them.
Mm hmm.
Cute.
Those were dinosaurs. Yeah, I'm gonna say that you have a recording of dinosaurs.
You know what, Molly, You are actually absolutely correct.
Uh.
And you are correct because this is a audio recording that has been pit shifted down of the only living dinosaurs around today, which are birds, and this is the original audio. So as you say fighting, they are fighting, You are correct. So two for two. You say you've never won this game, you have won this game. So yes, these are these are two birds who are fighting. Birds are dinosaurs. They are the only living dinosaurs that have survived.
And so when you slow down their audio, it is a glimpse into maybe speculatively, what dinosaurs may have sounded like, right, because they are so closely related and so like the dinosaurs that we're thinking about, like t rex, right like maybe they like or you know, take any any dinosaur that you can think of, right like, they're they're they're these like large reptiles that are related to birds, and birds are are technically dinosaurs, and so potentially this could
be what they sounded like. So bonus round. Can you guess the species? Like? There are two different species of birds fighting here? Can you guess one or two of who whom is fighting? Oh?
My god? What even kinds of birds are there?
Chickens? I don't know.
That sounds like a big bird with that like big sort of honking sound that it had going. That's like a big guy. H what kinds of birds exist? For some reason? I want to say like an ibis because just because they have those like big faces that I feel like they would make a big honking sound. But I don't know who he would be fighting?
You are, You're really close, You're like circling it. Do you want me to just tell you.
Do Flamingos sound like that? No, Domingo be fighting. They look peaceable.
Well, Flamingos could definitely work it out. I only ever see them just chilling get rough. No, you are you are correct that Flamingos could be could be fighting. But no, So this is a Canada goose and what looks to me but yours your ibis GISs was close because it looks to me like a juvenile Great Blue heron. So you've got these two aquatic, semi aquatic birds. You've got the Canada goose, You've got the Great Blue heron, and
they are duking it out in the water. Great blue herons in Canada geese will sometimes come into conflict over territory or proximity to nesting sites, so they are just like wrestling in the water. I'll include a link to this video as well as the slowed down audio, which
was done by Dane Pavitt on Twitter. So yeah, it is just really really cool to kind of recontextualize birds, like because we're so used to birds, we don't really think about them as dinosaurs because when we think about dinosaurs, we think about t rex, Brnosaurus, Ankylosaurus. I don't know, I've run out of dinosaurs.
I'm obviously just very nervous about my first like real appearance on you know, the Mystery Animal sound game because obviously if a bird is doing violence, it's a goose.
It's gotta be goose.
That should have been my first guest.
Yeah, goose. I mean the thing is kind of goose. They are very violent, but they're violent because they love their babies. They're very protective of their babies. There's a lot of aloparenting where there's like a goose who just sees some other goose babies and they're like, well, you're my babies, now I protect you. So Canada. Geese are assholes that have a purpose which is protecting babies. Swans will come for you, Yeah, they will come for you.
Swans are a holes who sometimes like just are terrible, Like like male swans will sometimes kill like their own offspring. Like it's like that if the biggest a hole bird I think, at least in terms of aquatic birds, the biggest a holes I think are are swans. They are beautiful, lovely. They have certain reasons for being a holes, Like.
It's because they're monarchists. They all belong to the queens.
That's right, that's right. I don't know. I think they just as soon like attack the Queen's like body at her funeral than than bow down. They are. They are unrulable, these swans. But yeah, Canada goose. They are aggressive, and yet they are aggressive because they love their family.
Yes, you have to respect. So if you've ever been to Mount Trashmore, I'm from Virginia Beach, Yeah, so it's Virginia Beach if you're not familiar with, is perfectly flat. The highest point of elevation in Virginia Beach is a park called Mount Trashmore because it used to be a landfill and they covered it up and turned it into a park for children. And the geese there. Listeners who've been to Mount Trashmore will back me up. The geese there are. I mean, it's like a gang. They'll come
for you. You have to run.
Oh no, are you do you think it's like safe to talk about this on the podcast, like you've already said that you live near there, Like, well, that's so.
That's where I'm from. I don't live there anywhere they can't get me.
So okay, well don't. Let's not. Let's not docs Molly so that the geese don't find her. Yeah.
I can't go home until the keys forget about this.
So it's the geese. They got a long memory. It's they're not They're not so easily going to forget your transgression. All right, let's get onto this week's an mister animals sound. The hint is this is someone's faucet leaking or is someone horny? Yeah, so ignore. I'm gonna to be fair. I'm gonna say, like, ignore the sound of crickets because it's not about the crickets.
It's romantic and beyond.
It's romantic ambiance. Exactly do you hear those little like things that sound like a little plucking.
Getting sort of like getting sort of a rainforest on Beyonce.
Let me play another clip so that this one my isolate this sound a little better. I want to be as fair as possible. Okay, ignore that. That's that's an owl, but that's not what we're talking about. That's what we're talking about.
That sound, okay, and you said it was somebody who's horny.
Yeah.
I guess most animal sounds are. They're either saying They're either saying I want to fight you or I would like to get to know you right.
Like like let's have sex, or I'm gonna kill you. I was like, animal too too. Yeah, but it's that like I can't quite do it.
Is it some kind of small frog?
That is a very interesting guess, Mollie. But we will know this.
The owl. The owl threw me off in the second clip. The first clip sounded a little rain rain.
Yeah.
I was visited a rainforest for the first time recently. We were done in Puerto Rico. We were in El Yunke rainforest and they have these little tiny frogs. They are called cokey. That's all night long.
It's a cute name for a frog because.
That's what they sound like. They go coqui and all night, all night, the frogs go cook. There's just millions of frogs in the rainforest. I'm horny, Hey, I'm horny.
Yeah, or they're trying to sell you coke.
So I'm just thinking about this the strange sort of like almost birdlike, like clicky sounds that some frogs.
Make a little droplets.
But I'm not I'm not getting a positive reaction, so I'm thinking not a frog.
Plus you let me say it. Well, uh, you know what, Actually, Molly, you are on the right track. I'm not gonna say anymore.
Though, because because everyone gets to.
Play, everyone getting everyone out there gets to play, including the geese that you've pissed off or are uh don't trying to hold them, don't tell them, key trying to tap this, trying to get it, get a read on this. But yeah, we will reveal the answer in next week's or the next podcast, whenever that may happen, probably next week. Mollie, thank you so much for coming on the show. Where Can People Find You?
Thank you so much for having me. This was everything I hoped it would be. In more as a longtime listener, you can listen to my new show, Weird Little Guys. It's not as fun as this. It's much more upsetting.
It's fascinating. It's really really interesting. If you're interested in the kind of like extremism pipeline, if you're interested in like I mean, like yeah, it's maybe more depressing in some ways, but it's like it is really interesting, especially in the current like kind of scary global political climate. Sorry for you.
Positive review, positive review. I mean, I try to keep it fun. There's some jokes in there, but it's not four children. I saw someone was saying that they were upset that they were playing it in the car while dropping their kid off at school, and I would say, don't yeah, you know, but yeah, you can listen to
Weirdle Guys anywhere you find a podcast. You can follow me on Twitter at Socialist dog Mom, where I do a lot of local politics, talk about the show, and post pictures of my two little Wiener dogs.
I like her political coverage is really good, but I gotta say like the Wiener dog content is premium buck and auto, especially like we get we get live video of dogs getting snacks and like just so much good dog content. Highly recommend Love a Crunchy Snack They it is like the internet's most fine repository of dogs eating crunchy snacks. Huge recommend. Also recommend the podcast guys. Thank
you so much for listening. If you're enjoying this show and you leave a writing and review it tangibly helps me. I appreciate it. I read every single review. I print them all out. I make like a big paper mache human being. I pretend that human being is you, and like I hang out with it, we go out on the town. I put it in like a little radio flyer wagon. I'm like, come on, listener, let's go get groceries. Anyways. Thanks also to the Space Classics for their super awesome
song XO Lumina. Creature Feature is a production of iHeartRadio. Oh I did forget to say that. If you think you know the answer of this week's mystery animal sound, you can write to me at Creature Featurepod at gmail dot com. You can also write to me questions. I will occasionally do listener Questions episodes where I answer your questions. I also try to answer some of them just through email. And you can also send me pictures of your animals, like if you have pictures of animal snack time, I'm
not going to say no to that. Where was I? Yeah? You know, podcasts, blah blah. iHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts or hey guess what where have you listened to your favorite shows. I'm not your mother. I can't tell you what to do, and I didn't like clone a bunch of minions out there just to do my bidding, because I'm not weird normal. See you next Wednesday.