Why The Long Face

Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host of Mini Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and today on the show Why the Long Face, animals whose faces defy typical proportions, snouts, jaws, and eyeballs that look like they're about to break the graphics engine on the Planet Earth video game. Discover this and more as we answer the age old question what's in Echidnas Deal?

Hey, what's up, Katie. It's fun to be back on the show. I can't wait to talk about snouts.

I'm so excited. It's these are all these animals. What they have in common is they got long faces in some kind of direction for some kind of reason. And yeah, I just love it when an animal is like, oh, this is your typical face that that someone might have. No, I'm going to go in a different direction with this body part.

Yeah. And then they've also accidentally, you know, provided you know the joke, the why the Long Face jokes? Humanity exactly incredible, What a gift on top of being weird looking and and and also yeah, they just also gave a great joke to everybody.

This is how I feel about horses is they just keep giving to us, right, Like they give us something to ride. They're fun and sweet, they had they Yes, they sometimes kick us, but let's be honest, we deserve it. But they give us horse jokes.

Yeah, not enough in my opinion, right should be kicking more people.

Yeah no, strong agree, horses should be kicking more people. So yeah, So today we are going to talk not about horses but animal other animals who have long faces. So first we're going to talk about the sling jaw rass. Now that is a strange name for a thing. The sling jaw rass is a fish. At first, it's a relatively normal looking fish. Females are brown or bright yellow, and males have white faces and yellow orange and green bodies,

I'm looking at it right now. It's like a kind of like a you know those step stools, like you know that your grandmother has, like those ones where you can pull out the ones that have stairs, Like it's like a stool, but then has that little staircase that's inside. It's kind of like that reminds me of like it's like the fish looks like a normal fish, and then you pull out this like reverse staircase. That's just it's

I guess exactly. This is like an accessible fish. It's gotta step down so you can walk.

Up to the Yeah, it drops down a step.

Yeah, yeah, it's but it's like it's sort of like a tube, which is interesting.

It even won't work. Yeah, it won't work as a step.

I mean you could kind of climb up it.

But don't let don't let grandma trying get in the van using a sling jaw rass.

I mean, has it ever been tried? Do we know it wouldn't work well?

And that's not sure. You have to get a big sling jar. I don't know what size these fish are about.

Yeah, this so they're only about twenty inches long, so it'd have to be like a small grandma.

A little Yeah it's very small, Yeah yeah, grandma. So also it looks like one of those like it's like it looks like a regular fish. Looks kind of like a piranha to me. And then it like and then it also has like you could also describe what falls out of its when its jaw descends. It looks kind of like one of those shoots that comes out of an airplane, an emergency choote.

Yeah, yeah, it does look like that it's like it goes, it goes from sort of fish to an ant eater snout on a fish. But it's like it like, just is it this extendable thing that pops out.

Of Oh, it does extend. I was thinking it drops. It really just extends. But it has this sort of has this sort of like ledge on it. I don't know, it's it's a very It looks like a dust buster.

Yeah, like a dustbuster, I.

Mean, but at first it looks like a piranha.

Yeah, it looks like a dustbuster, and it kind of acts like a dust buster. So when it is hunting, because this is carnivorous, it eats a small, small other fish or invertebrates, it can shoot its jaw forward like an extendable tube, and then it vacuums up its prey. Uh. And when the jaw is extended, it is around half as long as its entire body, so it is ridiculously long compared to its body length. And yeah, so it will try to suck up this these little, poor little

It's terrible, It's absolutely terrible. It's not right at all, this this thing, I mean, what kind of evolution is this?

What?

What one are you going to tell me? Here's this is Katie. You can fill me in on this a little bit. So you're gonna tell me that some fish that just accidentally had a loose jaw like some you know what I mean, like, and then all of a sudden that fish started getting more food than the other fish, so then everyone had a loose jaw like. I don't just certain parts of evolution I just sound fishy to me.

No part you think there's like a fish god trying to make I don't know, yeah, I know, I mean, it's it seems very strange, right. One thing to remember is this is happening over a ridiculous timescale of millions and millions of years.

So there were lots of vacuum fish that had a short vacuum that didn't work very well. Yeah, like a million years Yeah, and they were just trying to vacuum up the reef. But they all this, this sucks. I was this is longer, and the fit crabs were all happy. Million years later the crabs were like, oh Frank, these things got oh man, these things are long and they work now.

Yeah, and you know it's using mechanisms right that are part would be somewhat part of a fish without this adaptation, so like the way that a jaw that can kind of move forward when you look at a normal fish. I don't know how much you watch fish. I used to own an aquarium before I moved, and I would

I never thought of that.

I never thought of it because like, you can't if you just bite down right, like it could push that it could push the food away because it's in the world. So you have to use a little bit of section. And so when they're doing it, they kind of they do protrude their lips a little bit and then like kind of suck it up. And so that's a typical behavior of most fish. And so this is just an extreme exaggeration that this fish has. So you can imagine

Yeah, I mean, uh, that makes sense. And then imagine if a giraffe came down started messing around coral coral reef, you could get stuff out of the very bottom of this just like I mean, obviously the draft will be attacked by these these whatever they.

Are, these fish. Well, if you gave a giraffe, if you gave a giraffe like a really really long snorkel, right, it has to be it had to be a super long snorkel, then yeah they could they could wreak some havoc out of corn.

Yeah, yeah, I'd like to see that. I'm supprised they don't have a TV you show where they do.

That TV show where they give land animals snorkels.

And just like improper it's called like improper ecosystem, right, right.

Let's get a giraffe. Wet is the name of the.

More Exciting, More Exciting Ecosystem, hosted by Joe Rogan's.

Joe Rogan would do that? That is that is that totally would Yeah, just like he'd put a shark on land and be like, hey, we gave this shark a helmet full of water. Let's see how this shark does on the plane.

You're right, You're right, yeah.

And a lion underwater.

Joe Rogan would try and fight, he'd.

Try to fight. He well, he put a shark in a wrestling ring, right, yes, and then try to fight it. But it'd be unfair to this shark.

Yeah, it's no good. I think maybe it should be like we got to get I'm sorry I mentioned Joe Rogan because he was trying to fight the animals.

I do always need an apology for anyone who ever mentions Joe Rogan.

Yeah. I don't like to mention it either. It ruined my morning already. But but you know, like maybe just giraffe. Introducing a giraffe is the name of the show or something like that. Just a giraffe, the new giraffes in ecosystems where they don't belong.

Right, just like see where you can put a giraffe.

It's just see what happens.

It's obviously exploitative of the giraffe. But you know a lot of reality TV is exploitation.

Gosh, oh my goodness, you think anybody have a problem putting a giraffe in. It's a weird situation for TV rating, No way, not.

These days, not in today's, not days back in the day, a day.

Like when people are diving horses off.

Of plan I feel like it's like, yeah, I feel like it's the opposite. We were more likely to have giraffe TV back in the day where you made it like probably people would make like a giraffe fight a chimp or something.

Yeah. No, and the giraft can't even see the chimp. It's just looking at sky. Yeah, the draft like clouds and stuff.

Yeah, exactly, Yeah, yeah, you got it on the Johnny Carson Show.

This giraffe and the draft, Like the draft doesn't see the Johnny Carson Show. It just sees like the.

Light trust right, it gets it keeps hitting the boom, trying to meete with the boom, and the boom operator confused.

You forget that drafts don't see stuff a ground level.

Yeah, but yeah, this sling jaw rass can shoot out its john just a fraction of a second. You can't normally see it almost doing it because it's so fast. But there have been slowed down videos so you can see it in all its wonderful weirdness, shooting its jaw out and sucking up.

I wonder who like saw that first. I mean, it's gotta be you got to catch it in the act because it looks like a normal fish. It looks like a normal fish until like someone scuba diving had to like kept a pretty cool s eye on that thing. Thank God for people who take these take the time to look at these animals.

Absolutely no, I mean it takes so much patience to find to do like sort of observational research where you're looking at these But yeah, I mean a lot of the ocean animals. We know the most about our animals that inhabit coral reefs because we can reach them, right, We can relatively easy go there and watch them. You

Because they'll kick your a.

Blue whale just like flexing and smack, they'll.

Kick your acts. You're not going to see our secrets nowt.

I love that. I love that.

I twifounds, I will kick your as.

I remember that Joe Rogan thing where Joe Rogan tried to wrestle a blue whale and he just.

He was yeah, totally yeah, and he was trying.

To like, yeah, yeah, trying to do this. You ever heard of Joe Rogan half Nelson. Yeah, that's why Joe Rogan is no longer alive. So another fun fact about these fish is actually that and this is the case for a lot of species of fish, so they are not unique in this, but females can turn into males if the conditions are right, and will change into the

That's pretty pretty uh telling as far as you know what's going on politically. Just this idea that everything's I mean either or it's not. It's not true.

I mean I often so the thing is like, in terms of human gender expression, right, like animal we don't we shouldn't need like oh this, you know, animals have these these behaviors because it's a human thing, right, it's a cultural human thing. We don't need. It's sort of like saying like, well, we should be able to have marriage because birds sometimes are monogamous, right, Like, well now we should be No, No, I know that's not what you mean. But I'm saying like we don't need to

No. The argument they make is, yes, that the fucking Matt Walsh's of the world, that there's like this strict you know, you know, of course, in their view, you know that it came from God, that God made these very specific types of things, you know, and that's just not true. God did a lot of very out there and vague and interesting stuff. And then and it's the idea that things are rigid is just this religious made up thing.

Yeah, people will claim like, well, it's just a biological fact that you see in every animal, and it's just like, well that is categorically false. It's not true at all.

That's incredible. Yeah, it's just it's just a yeah, it's just an argument about like if they're going to argue that God made things, then you know they're just not being honest about.

Then we should then we should like dislocate our.

Jaws right exactly, and you know that, you know, there might be somebody doing somewhere we just can't see because they won't let us get close enough.

All right, that's a good segway. Next. Yeah, so we are going to take a quick break, but when we get back, we are going to look at another animal with a very long face. So we are going to talk about the long beaked echidna. So the long beaked echidna are a species of monotorum found in New Guinea. So have you ever seen an echidna before, Chris, I think so, but.

I didn't necessarily, I don't think I knew. No, I mean, I guess I have, but I didn't know they had long, long noses.

Yeah, yeah, so some of them do. So there are a few species of echidna, and the long beaked echidna have these enormously long snouts. So it has a stout body, body covered in thick hairs and spines. It looks a little bit like a hedgehog with thicker, more stump like legs and just this a really long tube like snout and tiny head, which its head is so small it's kind of laughable, like it just it looks more like just this little peanut head and then this really long snout,

Wow. Yeah, but yeah, that's interesting.

Puts his name on it, just like he cooked. I think he goes around and just points to animals and he's like, that's mine. That's also mine, that one's mine. But you know, in his in his in his British accent.

Yeah yeah, he's a monster now.

Noted conservationist, beloved, beloved conservationist, naturalist, animal lover. Uh who like he's basically like the Gandolf of evolutionary biology. Everyone loves him. He's sweet. He's a monster.

Though, I mean yeah, it's like Jacques Cousto didn't like name the reef like a reef, like he didn't name Jack.

He didn't name it a Jacques. Yeah, yeah, okay, Jacques Cousta's yeah, he didn't discover. To be fair, David Attenborough didn't name this echidna after himself. It was the researchers named this echidna after David Attenborough. So he's not good. Listen, David, Well, we named kidna after you. How about it?

They want to go to parties as house do?

I mean? He does throw a wild party? Is David Attenborough? You know it?

So this is David Attenborough's a kidnap. That's one kind. It doesn't have a long nose that they have.

It has a long nose as well, So there are three species of long beak to kidna, and Sir David's long beak to kidna is one of them. The other ones have the sort of less exciting names of Eastern long beak to kidna and Western long beak to kidnap because one is found in the eastern region and the other is found in the western region of.

I'll tell you one thing, I bet you man, when old David saw this his first echidna, he must add quite a shock because he came around. If that thing came around a corner and you'd never seen one before, you would definitely freak out. Oh good heavens, especially if you're stoned.

Yeah, I mean we all we all know that David Attenborough's probably.

Oh yeah, that was He deserves it.

He's worked hard.

So what do you what if you're looking at that many animals? I mean, come on, come on, So the guy spent his whole life looking at animals. The guy's stone.

I mean, we're not saying definitively for legal reasons, but he own monster.

He's a monster and he stone.

We're getting sued by David Attinborough. No, So I when you think of an echidna, I mean if you do think of a kidness, which I hope you do, you might be thinking of a smaller animal like a platypus. Like I think people's perspectives of what a pat like how big a platypus is, at least for me, I always thought of a platypus as being kind of bigger. But they're actually quite small. They're like they sort of just like fit in maybe two hands. But yeah, no,

Which Jesus yep, David's David spike.

David spike, Sir David's spike, please put some honor on his name.

Sorry, sorry, sorry.

Yeah, So the echidna, I've always thought of a kidness as being pretty small, but echidnas, some species of kidneys, can be quite big. So uh, they range in size, but the western long beaked echidna is the largest and grows to be around thirty five pounds or over sixteen kilograms. So like it's a it's like a it's a huge yeah, it's like a large pug almost. It's it's too much.

That's too much kidnap for me.

You can take about half that amount of a kidnap.

I don't want that much a kid in the coming at me, not with a snout like that. This thing looks like a It looks like an elephant, but it's like the elephant got like covered in prickers and like got its nose hardened. I mean, it's a it's an interesting animal. But I mean, like, all right, so I want to know, Katie, Well, go ahead, you keep going. I just want to know why it's noses.

Yeah. So they live in forests and they eat insects, and they use their extremely long snouts to root up and slurp up earthworms like spaghetti through like a long vacuum attachment. Yeah. Their beak also has electro receptors, which are speculated to allow them to detect the faint electrical signals that come from the muscle movements of earthworms, so they can locate them and just hoover them up. Like it's like a vacuum and a metal detector all in one, except it's detecting earthworms.

Wow, that's crazy. Yeah, And it can insane.

Yeah, it's it's nuts. It's like it has a probe that it can use to find earthworms and then slurp them up. It's functional and stylish.

That's you know like that. Yeah, I mean it's just I kind of think of animals like I always think of everything like the politics or so in my head, and I always think about like people just like just freaking out humans just being so broken in this way where they they can't stop worrying and trying to dominate each other, and meanwhile there's somebody just slurping up earthworms and having the time of their lives.

I mean this, I this is a lesson I think. Yes, like when the world really gets to when you're getting stressed out, when you feel like, oh we're all we're all so much at each other's throats, just remember there's this little weird, prickly guy in the forest slurping up earthworms that it's really long tube snout.

Yeah, having the time of his God.

Just enjoying it, enjoying life.

Yeah. And we always say like, oh, they don't know, you know, humans are always like, oh they don't they don't have fun, they don't know that it's fun. But you don't know.

I don't know. I think they have fun. I mean, like, I mean, obviously to us, maybe worms are a little bit gross. But imagine if spaghetti, right, or lasagna, you could just found that find spaghetti on the ground and go around slurving up spaghetti on the ground.

I haven't had I haven't had breakfast yet. Sound pretty good, like.

I mean, it's I if only I had no dignity, I and I'm close, I'm close to having no dignity. I would definitely enjoy just dropping a plate a nice spaghetti on the ground and slurping it up. That would be fun.

Yeah, humans are too uptight to do any of the fun stuff.

I know, I know. Just the fact that our culture doesn't allow us to have floor spaghetti, it really gets me. Yeah. So again, it's like.

Call David. They call it David spaghetti.

Third day it spaghetti. Excuse you?

I like you trying to cover cover yourself because you're afraid of the losses.

He's very litigious. He will get you.

He will love I love that man.

I do too.

He's no, I don't know, I don't have an opinion about him, but I'm sure he's nice, he's very I mean, if he's discovering animals, he's way. He's part of the good.

Yeah, he's a conservationist. He's a good got a good voice, a lot of good things. And maybe maybe he's like I'm not saying if he does or doesn't slurp up spaghetti on the ground, I won't I won't come on either side of that.

Oh no, I'm not gonna think of that.

I'm not gonna say he does or doesn't do it.

I'm what if he does get crazy?

Well, I don't know, That's what I'm saying.

What's next. You know, he's got his head in a reef and he's trying to suck stuff.

If he does, he's allowed to do that because because he's got Sir David's Sir David's a kid now, I think, not a provingly his assistants.

Like, hang him upside down. Probably David wants to slurp the reef.

Get the harnessed, Sir David wat, Oh my god, already get in position. Maybe it's important for conservation for him to understand what it's like to slurp a reef. I'm gonna I wish he's a hero.

He's a hero.

What other what other night of the Queen's Order would slurp a reef for conservation? David Attenborough would because he's.

Not your McCartney.

No, no, he wouldn't. He wouldn't want to ruin his hair by going underwater. I don't know much about.

You're right about that, No, no, you're right, Okay, exactly right.

So echidnas, like other monotremes such as platypuses, lay eggs, so the females have a pouch where they incubate the eggs, and the eggs hatch and the young are called, which is adorable.

Uh.

These puggles will lick up milk that oozes from their mother's underside without the help of nipples. So monotremes typically don't have nipples. Instead, the milk just kind of seeps out through pores, and they're young just kind of lap it up. Uh, because they don't have any dignity, which I think is very free.

That's interesting, that's weird.

It's it.

No, I wonder why they concentrated so much on the nose and forgot the nipples.

They forgot, they just forgot.

You know.

It's a lot it's a lot to think about. Uh. The males do have spurs on the back of their legs like platypuses, but in achidnas they are not venomous. They have lost their venoms. So echidnas, despite looking maybe a little more menacing that a platypus, is I think less scary because they're not gonna jab you with that venomous spike. They also have kloacas, which I like to call the hole that does it all, just like birds

Wow, what's it called cloaca?

Wow? Birds have it?

I bet I bet you anything. There's a death metal band called whatever that is.

Let's see, I want to find out.

There must be cloaca. Yeah, like that's a good name if you're starting, like a thrash metal or grind.

Core band, right, Cloaca core because.

They like to explain it on stage what it is like. They probably go like welcome work and in case you didn't know what it was.

So there's a kloaca group in London.

Yep, and there's a taken Cool.

Formed in two thousand and five in the UK. It's atmospheric sludge metal. Yeah, that's my favorite kind of metal. Atmospheric sludge.

That's one of the best kinds.

So uh. Fun fact about a kidnas A kid does have four headed penises.

So oh my god.

Yeah, it looks like a little high five. So they don't urinate out of their penis. That is actually what the kloaca is for. They use the penis exclusively for mating, and they store the penis in the kloaca and like have it kind of like flop out whenever they're ready for mating. Store it. Yeah, you know, it goes in there.

Goodness. Wow.

Interesting like socks in your sock.

Drawer storing your penis.

Sure. Uh, some animals would think it's weird that we don't do that.

Where do you keep your penis?

Yeah, just leave it out hanging out there really all the time. Wow. So they Yeah, it looks like a weird little like I don't know, it looks like a weird little hand timmy.

Uh.

And it's yeah, it's not the prettiest looking thing to look at, but you know.

It's horrifying looking I'm you're I feel like you're under playing what a nightmare thing is. This looks like absolutely, I mean, I can't even it looks extremely gross. I mean it looks like Okay, well, I mean, you know, I'm sure not to them. I mean, I'm sure it looks awesome to them. I think, you know, obviously, but it looks like a you know, I'm not going to say what it looks like, but it's a very meaty and raw looking thing.

Yeah, it looks a little bit like some kind of weird role Deli meats.

But that's what it looks like. You're right. It looks like three four rolls of Deli meat.

Yeah, it does. So. They can only use two heads of the penis at the same time when they were mating, and it's thought that having multiple heads allow them to mate more frequently without break time. Uh but yeah, that is the wonderful echidnap with its a worm detecting snout. It's sleaky, milky belly laid eggs as a foreheaded penis, and it's crazy the size of like a hefty pug.

Do they does any Well, I'm just I guess you couldn't keep that as a pet. I mean people probably try and keep everything you probably wish you you're not supposed to do it anyway.

But yeah, I don't think it'd be great. I mean, you've seen it's wiener.

Like, that's what I'm saying. You don't want to start your day looking at that foreheaded, foreheaded deli Deli.

Meat thing exactly. They've got they've got a natural anti poaching method, which is just like, have you seen my wiener? It's really weird. You probably don't want to deal with it.

Yeah, they are kind of cute, though.

They are cute. They're very cute. I love them. I wouldn't want one as a pet, but I do love them, and I would like to hug it. Well, I mean at a zoo. I've seen them, but no, I have not personally had the honor of hugging and a kidnaped.

I just realized that's that the head of an echidna with that nose is what those plague masks.

It does kind of look like I don't know if they were meant to look like an echidna, but they do definitely look like them a lot. Like Yeah, yeah, absolutely the cutest, the cutest little plague doctors out there.

Yeah, they're very cute. I mean, like imagine they had no they don't know that they have so much going on either. They're just like, I'm minding my business. Stop looking at my talking about where my milk comes from.

Yeah, yeah, just minding their own business. Snorful.

It's not my fault. I don't have any nipples. I don't know about that.

Yeah, exactly, I'm trying to.

Get some worms. I'm trying to eat some worms. Stop photographing me.

Just trying to live their life, stay in their lane and snorrefl up ground spaghetti, and we keep talking about their lack of nipples.

It's right.

I hate this Instagram culture where we're like talking about like who does or doesn't have nipples and just you know, it's yes.

And like they're yeah, and they're looking at us like, you know, you think you're normal looking buddy.

Yeah, it's a matter of perspective. It's a matter of yeah.

Your penis only has one head. Loser.

We're gonna take a quick break and when we get back, we're gonna talk about the last animal of today's show that has a long face in another direction. So far, we've been talking about long faces that shoot forward? What about long faces that go side to side or I guess that would be a would that be a wide face or a long face. I guess that'd be a wide face, like a horizontal face.

I'm trying to find whatever this is. Oh, here it is. Yeah, okay, this is like oh wow, that's a okay, yeah, that's like a yeah, that's like a long wide looks like a barbell, looks like as a bud on its teeth, like a huge or a double headed match, like a double headed match.

Mouth, yeah, like a baton or something. Yeah. Yeah. This is the Telopsis dalmani fly or Malaysian stock eyed fly. It has a ridiculously wide set face with long eye stalks that jut out perpendicular to the fly's head. Uh. And they like to hang out around streams any rotting vegetation,

Wow, these that's not fair though. What about the other ones that have short eyestalks? What are they? What are they supposed to do? Plants? Suck on plants all by themselves.

I just go suck on planet all by yourself, all by your lunesome sucks.

I know, I know, I think those short I think it's okay if your eyes aren't four feet from your head, their eyes are like seriously like they're like, there's like, okay, Yeah. It's like if you had two your eyes were like two like two sticks coming out of the size of your head, and your eyes are on the ends of the sticks. So you're looking at not you're looking like it way you're looking at You're not seeing what's right

It's like if you had, yeah, two selfie sticks attached to your face permanently with eyeb on the end. That's probably what's you know, Brave New Future everybody with selfie sticks. Are people still using selfie sticks? I actually don't know.

We don't hear about them as much. I'll tell you that there's too much in the news. There's too much in the news cycle these days for selfie sticks to get a spot.

Yeah, our twenty four hour news cycle really pushed selfie sticks out of there. But yeah, these are like selfie sticks on the sides of their heads, so they these istalks are so long they can be longer than the fly's body length itself, which is a little absurd, a little bit interesting to invest that much of your body into your eyestalks. So females do also have the exaggerated eye stocks, so it's not a trait that has only

Yeah, do they know? Why does anybody know why they have? Why are those helpful for it to see? Or is it more like predators don't want something that looks like you know, that's carrying like a.

Wand I mean it's still it's still somewhat of a debate why this is the case. But the main thing seems to be sexual selection, where they are selecting mates that have this trait. Now, maybe originally that's so interest maybe you're i know, like maybe originally having those eye stocks probably did help with their vision, right, like give

Like a bodybuilder. Yeah, if a person was a bodybuilder and they got their muscles so big that they couldn't.

Even use them basically, yeah, I mean that, yeah.

But that would get them. Yeah, somebody would find that attractive. Definitely. I mean there's definitely people who like really outlandish muscles, but they don't really serve a purpose because then you can't move.

Yeah, no exactly. I mean I think about how like we have fake eyelashes, right, that's not really practical anymore. Our eyelashes are meant to kind of help shield our eyes from things like dirt and stuff. And then and then you start putting a fake eyelash on there that's really big, really exaggerated, and it is you know, it's this attractive thing, but it's it's not it's something that we have. You know, well, everyone has their own taste about it.

But I just thought about it. I just thought of Attenborough's eyelash. I'm still.

Sir Sir David's eyelash, how many times?

Uh, I'm trying to provoke him. Is he alive? Yes?

Yeah, of course he's alive.

I just provoked him.

He's like five hundred years old, but he's alive.

I'm looking at an animal right now.

That's so much his brand.

I've never been so alive. I'm looking at something that can.

He's he's it's all that. It's all that slurp, but on coral reefs. It's really good for your longevity. So many antioxidants down there.

He does it every morning.

Yeah morning, it's very refreshing. So the stock eye, so the stock eyed fruit fly found in China has ridiculously long eye stalks as well. The males will compete for females by lining up their eye stocks together to see who's as bigger. So wow, yeah, it's just this like competition for who's got the longest eye stalks. It's really interesting.

Crazy, you're crazy, because you think you think of these bugs looking at at a person, looking at a bug looking at another bug, and like judging the eyestocks like I mean, I guess, you know, we would be we would be led to believe by scientists that they just do it instinctively, so they're not in there, they're not actually being like I like those eyestocks better, but I mean they still have to have some I mean, that's

We don't even know, you know, we don't have But I'm not saying we need to get eye stocks, but maybe they're onto something.

I mean, who knows. If I'm not on ey stocks right now, walk down the avenue.

You'd be you'd be the bill of the ball. You'd be the talk of the town. I mean over It's true, you wouldn't want to go to a china shop and knocking over to people go to an antique store. Uh yeah, But I mean it is interesting because yes, I mean I think that in general, like a lot of the things that we have that make us feel human, like

Yeah, and their perception of time might be different so people, Yeah, they live such a short time but they for them, it might be eons, you know, they might have like a very full life in like one day.

Yeah. We actually on the show we've talked about before this uh flicker fusion rate where it's uh the oh basically brain processing time. So some it's speculated that things like flies have this, uh it's a very slowed down flicker fusion, so that they are able to basically like if you're if you're trying to swat a fly, they see things potentially in this very very slow motion, very

I'm looking at it right now, and I just reminded me of the bottom left photo. Looks like Daniel Johnston's. You know, Daniel Johnston, the musician. No, oh, he's a he's he's considered an outsider artist. But he he painted, and he painted like Antenna's with eyes on the end, just like that.

Oh, interesting, very.

Very that was his he I made I wonder if he was aware of these animals, these bugs. I mean he often drew these these creatures with with like long hoselike things coming out of their head with eyes on the end.

Daniel Johnston painting drugs.

See yeah, bugs, he does like uh.

Yeah, yeah, oh yeah that little frog thing, yeah right, yeah, no, I see it.

Yeah, that's just reminded me very much of the bottom left hand corner of that.

Yeah no, I totally see that. That's really interesting and.

I didn't notice it until you see the color. That's just like his thing. Yeah, I wonder they're very beautiful. I like the before the growing into the eyestalks is a very fun looking experience, Like it's kind of fun when they're droopy and stuff.

Yeah, yeah, it's all squiggly.

They are, as opposed to when they get like stiff, then they just look hot.

Well, on that note, before we go, I'm gonna play a little game called the Mystery Animal Sound Game Guess Who's squawking? Every week I play a mystery animal sound and you the listener, and you the guest, try to guess who is making that sound. Uh. Last week's mister animal sound was a tough one. The hint was this this Madagascar native is named after the following alarm call. All right, you hear that little like, yeah, yeah, yeah, What is that?

I don't know. I don't know what that is. Sounds like a bird. Is that a bird?

It is not a bird. It does sound a little bit like a bird. I might have guessed bird if I didn't know what this was. A no. This is a type of lemur found in Madagascar called the she fuck. Congratulations to Anti B, Marion D and Emily M for guessing correctly. So there are nine species of she fuck. They have white fur on their backs, brown fur on their bellies, and black skin on their faces, hands and feet,

That sounds nice.

It is fun. When I was little, I took ballet and we learned how to sachet, and so I would just do that through the house because it's actually a pretty easy way to get around, is more fun than walking.

Yeah, we limit our we limit ourselves.

Skipping is fun in an interview efficient, if we didn't have so many hang ups about skipping, I think it'd be a fun way to get around.

Yep. So eating spaghetti, eating spaghetti, eating spaghetti off the ground, Sasha in around the.

Things I would do from out from under society's crushing expectations exactly. So. They are such good climbers that they are able to climb limestone spires to look for vegetation that grows on these perilous natural flowers, and their cushioned toepads allow them to navigate sharp thorns without injuries. So they are tough little guys. They're adorable and they are tough. And that sounds you just heard was a she fuck calling out to its friends to help locate each other.

So it's a cute sound.

It's very cute. It's like a little chuck. Yeah, So onto this, So onto this week's mystery animal sound. The hint is this, don't be too bitter if you can't guess this one.

Hm m hm hm.

So Chris and he guesses as to who is squawking.

No, I mean, I mean no, No, that's crazy sound. That sounds like a that sounds like the sounds like a car going by with a lot of bass.

Yeah, it sounds like to me, it sounds like someone's blowing on top of a bottle, you know, doing that cool?

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, that's I have No, I mean bitter, bitter, don't get bitter the toad? Is it a toad?

It's a good guess, but you'll find out if you're correct on next week's episode of Creature Feature. If you out there, think you know who is making that sound? Right to me at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com. Chris, thank you so much for joining me for talking about animals with a long face. I hope you don't have a long face after listening to this. Where can people find you?

Oh? Thank you so much, Katie. It's always fun and I find out stuff I'd never ever would know. And you can find me on at the Crofton Show on Twitter and Instagram, and I created a TikTok account, but I haven't put anything up on it right, And you can go get my book, The Advice King Anthology, which came out. I'm Vander Billet University Press last year, and you can listen to my awesome podcast Coldbrew got Me Standard.

He's a real deal. He's drinking coldbrew right now if you like. If you think it's just like a marketing strategy, no, Katie said she saw it.

We're on zoom, you know, because yes, I just and she was like, it is that iced tea? I kind of almost like iced tea? Almost got angry screened.

Are you kidding through it against the camera.

I'm a I'm an old time doc worker. I took black coffee.

Ahead, check those things out. Be forewarned that cold brew or bus It's never iced tea, always cold brew.

I got. You know, it's like I just switched. You know. I used to drink a lot of alcohol, and now I don't drink any alcohol. So I screw and it's so much better, I gotta say. But it does interrupt your sleep, so you gotta be careful people. No matter how long your ey stocks are. You might feel like you've got some long eye stocks and you can handle it, but but it'll interrupt your sleep.

Yeah, you gotta brew the cold but built with the cold brew. You great, Yeah, that's it. Well, thank you, guys so much for listening. If you're enjoying the show and you leave a rating and review, I that means so much to me. I read every single one of your reviews and it really helps me out. Uh and thank you so much to these space Cossics for their super awesome song XO. Lumina Creature features a production of iHeartRadio.