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is shove Marble's way up his nose. But there are dark sides to motherhood that go beyond the typical challenges. We're going to take a look at some of the freakiest filial phenomenons in the animal kingdom and the truth behind some of the horror movie tropes about motherhood. With me today to discuss some of these wild mothers. As co host of The Daily zeygeis Miles Gray. It's up, my Oh Hi, I was in suspended animation. I'm not used to a good podcast. Yes, hi, thank you for

having me just hypnotized by my radio voice. Yeah. No, it was amazing. So U do you know there's this creature in folklore called the change Link. Have you ever heard of the Angelina Jolie movie. Well, I mean that's from science. That's well, it's from folklore and mythology. See I'm not I'm my folklore and mythology game is not on point, as some would say. Well, you're in for a world wide because so the change link is this thing where a fairy steals a human baby and then

it replaces it with a disguised fairy baby. So that's the changeling, and then the parent raises the fairy child. Yes, exactly. So the changeling looks like a human child, but its behavior is kind of weird, you know, it's just like off somehow, and it's not because it's not a human. It's a fairy. And then like one of the parts of the myth is one day it's going to leave

the human world and return to its fairy family. Meanwhile, so the human baby that was stolen is like put to work in the fairy court, is like a servant, or in some cases of the myth, like the fairies raise it because they're like, oh, it's it's cool to have a human child. But so the fairies rely on human slave labor. Yeah, that's a stolen human slaver. That is a very uh sober take on it. But um yes,

we'll go with that. But what do the and then the parents, they think, what is a weird thing a changeling can do that a human parent might go, that's that's not like what a human baby would do. Well, this is where it gets a little bit more dark. Um So, anthropologists and people who study folklore think that this was an explanation for children who were born with

developmental to stabilities, mental illness, or like physical deformities. Yeah, so it's like, oh, this child is different, and it's like, oh, so you know it must be a fairy just because they're like maybe on the spectrum or have some kind of cognitive difference right, or just neurally a typical or something right, or even neurologically or even just like physically a little different. So that sounds like a scam artist pediatrician who doesn't know anything. It just goes, do not

think a fairy doing guy? And then like a doctor, I need answers. Well, that's sort of that's funny because that that it does remind me of like, uh, you know how like there are a lot of anti vaxers who are like, you know, like my child just suddenly changed into a completely different personality overnight with autism or

is that something that those parents say? Yeah, because one of the characteristics of autism is you have normal child development and then at a certain point, at a very young age, like around toddlerhood, like you regress, so that the child regresses, starts developing a lot slower. So they're the perception of the parent is that they had a normally developing child that's suddenly just became like started regressing and that's just a normal part of the development of

autism or Asperger's. So it's like they're using that timing to rationalize. They're like, well, it must have been the vaccine, right, because you get a vax that's around the age where

you get a lot of inoculations. So from their perspective, and I can actually really sympathize with that because from their perspective, they get the shot, then suddenly the child regresses, and so they're like, well, this must have been I mean, it's essentially like the changelingk thing, Like now we don't have a cultural belief in fairies, but you know, maybe skepticism about vaccinations has replaced that sort of or check check your ring camera on your front door and see

of a fair payment and the night and took off with your child, and that's why all of a sudden, your kid knows every capital city in the United States, or I don't know. I mean that's maybe over the Redark description, but anyway, yes, I understand. Well, but what if there really was a supernatural explanation, Like what if your child really was taken? So I want to go on an imagination journey. First, you got to imagine that you have a baby. It's already very dark, a grim future.

You've just come home from a long day of podcasting. You I'm sorry. I like the idea where I'm like, that's the equivalent of like real hard craft, Like yeah, and I got you know how many ads I had to re record today. I just got back from the podcast.

Mind been sitting all day. Ah. You go to the nursery to check on your kid, and you look in the crib and you just feel like, I mean, your baby looks like your baby, but there's something just a little off, Like she seems like she's grow in a little bit and she starts crying and you're like, okay, she needs something, like she needs to be changed or held, and you try these things and she keeps crying and she cries louder and louder, and it's just like this

ear splitting cries and you just feel like, oh, I have to feed her, right, and the ticket, right, that's the ticket, Like a warm bottle milk, apple juice I don't have. I don't know i have apple juice for a young baby. I'm not a parent either, I don't know how to do how to handle a baby. I'm like, maybe we cook up some hot pockets, we throw corn at it. I'm not really sure. So we try to feed it. Trying to feed it, the cries just keep getting louder, and it just feels like you have to

keep feeding it. And you're feeding her and feeding her, You're going like you're working around the clock, like pumping breast milk, mixing formula, going to the store to get graham crackers, freezing the breast milk, you're frosting the breast milk, but nothing is ever enough. But you're just like, because if you've ever heard like a baby cry or like one of the reasons it's so irritating isn't just because it's noisy, but we have this instinctive desire to like, oh,

this is a problem. So it's like really distressing. So like when you're on a plane and a baby is crying, it's worse than like someone sneezing or coughing, because it's like you feel this like stress. Have you been on a plane where someone sneezes open mouth right next to you. Yeah, I've actually been on a plane where someone I was like in the third seat and there were two seats, and she was there with her husband, and since she didn't want to sneeze on her husband, she turned to

me and direct all her sneezes at me. I know, wait, hold on, that has to be illegal or something that let's put you at risk. It also doesn't make sense because like, if there's anyone you should be able to sneeze on, it's your husband, right right, Well, I've got bad news for bird smiles. It is a real thing. So there actual changelings in the bird world, and you may have heard of them. They're called cuckoos, and they're not just the clocks. They're also a real bird and

one flew over at some point. Well, this is the thing. There aren't There aren't cuckoo nests, So your reality has been Okay, what does it cuckoo look like? Well there's not actually one look and we'll get into that. But so cuckoos are actually parasites. And I know normally when you think of parasites you think of like an insect that gets into your eyes and makes you go blind, or but it can be any animal as long as

it's a non mutual relationship. So the parasite is living off of the host to the detriment of the host. And one of the differences between like parasites and predators is a predator eats the thing like kill. It eats it, and a parasite slowly feeds off of it over time. And this is the relationship of a cuckoo from child to parents. No, no, from the cuckoo and the host family, so birds that it infiltrates. So what it does is because it doesn't want to waste time making a nest

like that, that's bullshit. It doesn't want to make a nest and fuss with that? Or what am I taking? Parents take care of a kid boring, so it finds a bird that's a good parent, is like, oh, you'll do, and lays their egg in their nest and just leaves it for this other bird to take care of and raises its own child like a like a changeling, right, or like my uncle who just drop my cousin off and then I was like, why is this full here snacks, So it's just foisting their young on another bird family

essentially exactly if they've been foisted. It's not just the cuckoo. There are different types of parasitic birds. The cuckoo is the most famous. There's also the cuckoo, finch, the honey guide, and the cowbird. The cowbird just like just a bird with some utters, slashing around, not aerodynamics, can't fly. So there's a problem for the cuckoo, which is that birds don't want to raise your child, right, They don't want to, So they have to find a way to sneak the

egg into the nest. So some species like the cowbird, just waits for the nest to be unoccupied then they lay their egg in there. But there are more complex strategies that are developed. So there's intimidation as a strategy so this is where we get into the different looks

of these birds. So they all in the end game is all the same, which is you're about to raise my kids, yes exactly, okay, But then they have different avenues of getting to right okay, So we've gone over one, which is like sneaking in there while the parents are gone. The second one is they develop an apparent similar to a predator. So old world cuckoos have developed an underbelly that is meant to mimic that of raptors. So raptors are not just the gold bloom eating variety the dinosaur.

Not the dinosaur right the Toronto basketball, It's a bird of prey. So they fly over and then they have this these stripe marks on their underbelly in a curved beak. And so when the when the host bird is looking up and seeing this, they're thinking, oh, this is going to eat me, So they fly off. And then when they've run off and terror like the cuckoo, who is not a predator, just goes in, lays their egg and leaves.

You studied evolutionary biology, how does a bird right, I understand like through natural selection or whatever that certain traits make it and that's how evolution occurs. But like to develop a trait in which the bottom mimics the appearance of another animal, is that just by chance? And then because of that that trait moves up? Or can can a birds be like yo, I need monet to look like a predatory bird. No, it really is just by

by random chance over millions of years. So you have, like you have all of these things that like tiny changes in your DNA can have a pretty dramatic effect on your phenotype. So you're I know what that means, Yeah, your physical your your physical characteristics. So you know, like how Darwin's finches their beaks. He observed evolutionary changes in their beaks over like short periods of time based on like which seeds were in season and like the availability

of nuts versus seeds versus like what shell type. Um, So you can imagine like having a curved beak is a fairly like I don't want to say simple thing, but like you know, having stripes or having these kind of like changes, subtle changes in appearance parents could conceivably come from just a few mutations, and if that is effective, then it's going to get passed on because they're like they scared off the host family, their eggs get successfully

raised by the host. Okay, thank you for and just over just imagine that, but over like such a long period of time. Right then everybody looks like, why don't we look like that? We should? Well pretty soon, I mean, I'm I'm curious in what that next stage of human evolution looks like. Birds. You think we'll be birds? Yeah, oh great, well then we've settled it. End of argument.

So that's one. And then there's another strategy. So the cuckoo finch does the equivalent of wearing like a fake nose and mustache, and they're like, I'm a normal normal that's okay, don't worry. Um. So they've evolved to mimic um the southern red bishop birds, which are harmless species of non parasitic birds, just like friendly neighbor bird. That way, they're like, hey, I'm I'm just your friendly neighbor. I'm

a bishop, I'm I'm a good person. And then they go in and the egg and the host species are like, what I thought you were my friend? In that sense, is that that the potential host bird because they identify they're seeing the red bishop, they're like oh, that's fine, if you lay your egg in my nest? Is that sort of They just don't expect that to happen. They don't they haven't been they haven't been trained, they don't

necessarily catch. Now here's here's the thing. If they catch them laying their eggs in their nest a lot, the problem is they'll start to associate that behavior with the look of the Southern red bishop birds. Because you know, you can imagine the relationship between the cuckoos and the host they have like this arms race or wings right ye birds anyways, and so the hosts are really trying hard to sess that, like who's going to do this to me? And then the parasites are like trying to

trick them. So actually, what's happened is that now the hosts are suspicious of Southern red bishop birds, and they, like the innocent people are getting caught up in this mess right exactly, and they're like, what I did? There's just so many, like such insidious strategies that the cuckoos have developed. So so how does it look like that's just a trait that the cuckoo just looks like a red bishops? That's the deal. Okay, so I was hoping.

I don't know why I thought this was even feasible that there were some kind of disguise so that they wore. Some wore like a little like some leaves around, like where's my kid grub some berries on their rings? Yeah, no, I'm sorry. Yeah that I'm showing how scientifically it literally

I am, but interesting that you'd say that. So, like they do disguise their eggs sometimes to look like the host eggs, so in color and shape and roughly size, although they will be bigger because cuckoos are much bigger than our hosts generally. And then the there's one strategy where like some cuckoos just have showed the whole, like tricking the birds into accepting them, and they develop cuckoo mafia that like if the host species tries to push

their eggs out of the neck, they attack them. So it's just like no, you will baby sit my baby'd be a shame if somebody up real good, Okay, I like bird mafia. Yeah, it's like always guy. And then the babies themselves are pretty bad too, because like when they hatch, cuckoo babies have developed like these strong backbone like shoulders to push out the eggs of the host species because it's not enough that they are just raised

amongst other like have you know adopted siblings. They want all the food, they want all the parental attention that is best for them, especially because they're so big and they have terrible abandonment issues. Yeah, and and they that's where like remember how he's talking about, like your your imaginary baby that would cry so loud, you kept feeding it as much as you can. Yeah, that's what they do.

So researchers have looked at their vocal patterns and they are akin to like several of the host species birds. So like the babies will will make this little chirp, this little cry so that the parents feed them. It's a signal the parents instinctively, like they hear the cry and feed them. But the cuckoo, who is just so big and fat, if it doesn't get more nutrition than like one bird would get, then it would not get enough.

So it's christ sounds like several other babies. So the host birds are like, oh, I gotta keep feeding these seven babies, which are it seemed to be like big babies, right, And they also have markings on the inside of their mouth that mimics the markings on the inside of the mouths of the host babies because that mark is sort of like a bull's eye for like the parents, like stick Warman. Yeah yeah, and they still do that, right, Yeah,

they do, they do. They they have it. And then they have a special little pouch in their neck their throat that they regurgitate the food into. Fantastic yeah I know. Wait, so then on top of it, you need a bird who the belly looks like of raptor with a curve beef and you have hit the trifecta of having the mouth that looks like another big yeah. Uh. But there's a strategy to defeat the mimic babies, and so there's this is a great name, but the superb fairy wren,

which just sounds so fancy. Of course, the super fairy wren, they will tweet out a password to their eggs, their embryonic chicks, and the chicks will hatch and when they come back with their nice regurgitation food to give their babies, if the babies don't tweet that password at them, they abandon the nest. Because embryonic fairy wrens can encode this tweeted password and then tweet it what sirp it once

they're born. But the imposts any kind of parasitic baby will not be able to do this, doesn't have the code right right, So then the farrier and is like, well, you know, I'll just abandon this nest and try to start again. You know what's really sad again, I completely forgot that tweet meant bird talk, and I thought you were working around like, yeah, they teat a password, and then yeah, they've they've checked their mentions to wow, okay,

so that's encoded. And then if the wild cuckoos in there trying to get a free meal, it's like saying the complete wrong password to get in the nightclub. And then these are fakes. Um, so are you scared that someone is going to be a grew or change? Absolutely? That's why I always ask for a DNA test. When someone says these are your kids, say not so fast, thank you, Mari Povich, the super wren of our time.

I just feel bad, you know, for the host, like any parent right who's like I've been raising someone else's whole damn time. Yeah, what do you you know? Is the and I don't know if we're getting to this, but is the way this plays out is that or is the true victims the other offspring of the host bird or does the parent parental bird also get basically worn down to the point that they expire. Well, the parents don't die, but it is very bad for them because they want their genes to pass on, so they

want their uh, their chicks to survive. So it's um still draining them of resources that would otherwise go towards promoting their chicks and their genetic progeny. Right, and meanwhile this fake baby's shoulder shrugging their kids off the Yeah, so is there like a real life human changeling? This is a rhetorical question because I'm about to tell you, um so in a boy named Nicholas Barclay went missing.

His family was devastated, so when French authorities said they found Nicholas, they were really excited to be reunited with him. But there are a few things that were kind of off about him. So his eyes were dark. When Nicholas's eyes were lighter. Um, he wore a hat and a scarf around his face. His accent was vaguely French, and he explained these differences by saying he had been in this like human slave trade, and like he he had been abused and like so his accent changed and they

used some chemical on his eyes. And even if they were a little suspicious, he knew all these intimate details about the family, like names, stories about their childhood. He even had like the same tattoo on his finger that Nicholas had. Wait, so how old was he when he disappeared? I think it was he was like in his like preteens, and he had a hand tattoo, a little like cross tattoo on his hand. Okay, I don't know why I hung up. I'm like, why does that child of a tattoo?

I don't know, aren't you cool man? Yeah, he's edgy and getting lost in Europe? So okay, it's what the kids do these days. Well, in the nineties, his face tattoos look so passing, so surprised. He wasn't Nicholas Barclay and he wasn't even a kid. He was a twenty three year old Frenchman named Frederic Bordon. Right. Wasn't there a documentary about Yes? Yes, yeah, now I remember when it was like it was a it was a man the whole time. Huh, an adult man. And it wasn't

just this one time. He was a serial impostor who repeatedly pretended to be a young boy so he could attend school and live in youth shelters and doing anything else except just to get by just for shelter or was he It was complicated because he was saying that it wasn't just for like any kind of like security or financial gain. It was because he liked the attention. He wanted to love from his peers and families and

like teachers sympathy. Right yeah. But in the case of like Nicholas Barklay, he was actually trying to get out of potentially going to jail because they're like, ah, you are not who you say you are, so like he wanted to go to America to escape these charges. Double down. I'm actually this American kid, right right. I know I sound French, but you know how it is, like you know how it is. You know you go to you go semester abroad way Yeah oh wow that you speak French?

Uh yeah yeah, Okay, See we're a multi lingual podcast. I mean, like today though it's hard to imagine like teenagers falling for this, Like maybe it was different in the nineties. Like I feel like if a man was like like a fully grown man was like, Oh I like to play those Fork Nights. Yeah, Hey, fellow kids, like, yeah, I like to watch The Poopy Dies. Oh yeah, I love Lebron Wayne the best and see what wit So how did that guy know all those stories? Well he did.

He was actually really talented because he would like go like as soon as he was really nervous once he like went to their home, but he was like going through everything, like going through photo albums, like reading stuff and diaries and stuff. So that genuinely talented guy who just put all of his like I know, intelligence towards something so bad. He could have been an improviser. Everyone

an impro off is just like a smidge away from impersonating. Yeah, I mean, and you know we need that kind of talent. So hey, fellow kids, we're going to take it totally tubular, quick break, skateboards, fidget spins. We'll be right back, my dudes. So you know Rosemary's baby, Yeah, I mean Rosemary grow I went to high school with her. She I think she had the baby after we graduated. Not quite the one I was talking about. Okay, what are you talking about?

The movie where she's having Satan's baby. Oh, you know what, I've never seen that movie, but I'm familiar with the concept. And it's funny because all the priests at my high school told role was married the same thing. She's having Satan's child. Oh weren't we all? But so other movies have kind of gone into this because I think we have like this, there's this fear of like something's growing inside of you that's like evil or going to hurt you. Um,

I'm sorry, I'm don't we all let's stop later. I'm curious with the darkness. You're the most cheery person, but I'm sure, yes, there's some kind of demon within you. The demon within but like you know, like an alien, the alien in the movie Alien. Like you know, it's like it's not like the chest burster is scarier to

me than even just like the Big Mother alien. Because like there's like John Hurd, He's just like sitting around eating his space salad and like all of a sudden he feels sick and then this thing sorry spoilers, but it like bursts out of his chest. Is that what happens. Yeah, oh my god, and it's just like what the movie was capturing was this like feeling. I'm sorry, it bursts from his chest. You might want to view the movie, I've I don't want to spoil. Yeah, I have a

problem lying about seeing movies. I haven't seen it, but that sounds often. Well, he died, but like but like you have this thing. It's like the subversion of the joy of like parenthood. And I guess, yeah, that's a very intense way to think of it, right, So I

want to talk about some very real nightmare fuel though. Yeah, I think just to go off of that, right, I think any time I see a movie where something is crawling around on someone's inside unbeknownst to them or maybe they did know, Like even in the Matrix, when the agent puts that weird like digital shrimp on, there's something I think. I know what you mean. You feel like especially vulnerable because this isn't an an external threat. No, it's coming from inside the body. The call is coming

from inside the house, so to speak. Okay, I'm sorry, I'm just I think most of us can sympathize with the fear of being pregnant and not knowing it. Um, just like like a million voices were just like, yes, but what if it took you sixty years to find out you've been carrying a fetus the whole time I think I was talking about. I guess you can guess. Is it that woman in Thailand? Maybe be more specific?

Does she have a fossilized embryo? Yes? Yes, But all I know is I remember that like a woman gave birth to a rock or no, she had she had a pain, right and then okay, I'm sorry, I don't this is my show. No, but you're you're on the right track. Because it's called a lithe opedion, which translates to stone baby. It's it's an extremely rare form of miscarriages. So typically I don't want to laugh. I was left. For the record, I left at stone He was laughing

at stone baby. Everybody just leaving get off his bat off mention. Um. So, typically when you have when something goes wrong, the fetus gets reabsorbed back into the womb. But in really rare cases, like if it's too big or it doesn't reabsorb um and it isn't ejected from the body, what happens is it starts to calcify and falsilize like you're saying, because what's actually happening is the mother's body is reacting to a foreign object and it's

shielding itself from the dead tissue. You know. It's it's kind of like so when oysters create um so like you know, like when oysters create pearls, like people say it's from a grain of sand, but it's usually from like a parasite. So what they do is they produce this substance called nacre and coated over a long period of time, and it results in this beautiful pearl. But I mean, in the case of lithopedions, it's a nightmare pearl. Horror pearl is a stone baby for an oyster basically,

but it's that's so beautiful pretty much. So it's like it's not covering their own fetiss like a parasite or yeah, yeah, because is like that parasite or foreign body could cause problems for the oyster, like infection or maker is the like. So the strategy is just saran wrapped the ship out of this thing so it doesn't mess us up. That's exactly right. Yeah, Okay, I'm trying to put in Layman's wrapped the ship out of it with naker and then

you get a pearl and you turn into a necklace. Yeah, and then you turn into a thing that old ladies wear. Are pearls back in? Are they ever left? I'm the wrong person to ask, as I my pearl jewelry. So, like you're saying, in the case of the one lady, she carried the stone baby for sixty years. It weighed four and a half pounds, and actually you said like

like she gave birth to it. No, it's just it remained inside her because the doctors determined she was too old for surgery, so it was safer just to leave it there, which just is awful. Oh no, I know. Wait, so it never is never removed? Wow? How common is this? It's pretty rare, very rare. Yeah, because I feel like it was just one of those headlines like years ago on the internet, woman has fossilized baby. It's extremely rare, and even more rare for it to be so long unnoticed.

So this basically will don't worry, this will not happen to you. Do you think for science this is when we's still alive? Do you know? I'm not sure I want. I mean, just for science's sake, you would think you would want to extract that just to kind of Look, I know they do have samples of they do have like specimens of stone babies that would be a flex for jewelry, just a big necklace like chain or dangli. I'm sorry, Look, I'm just thinking outside the box. You've

got me thinking about pearls. What's with the you know, my new light of line of jewelry an alien race who like has necklaces made out of humans. See that's again. Now we're writing a sci fi script I can get behind, like Marge Simpson seventy five from the Batel Juice Simpson with Emperor President Clinton. So they're actual, like horrific chest burster like alien babies in nature. First, I want to talk about Cecilians, not Sicilians from Princess Bride, whom you

never want to engage in bets with, I believe. But so Cilians look like worms, but they're not. They can be as small as worms, they can be up to four feet and legs, but they're actually legless amphibians. You're making a face. Yeah, just the idea that just knowing that the route we're taking and we're starting off like it could be this small, it could be four ft long. You know, who knows how it could be as tall as a building. I don't know. Okay. Sicilians Sicilians, and

they're they're amphibians. They don't have any legs and they squantch around. Does that mean squant is a scientific term? You know, it's it's you know, it's like how the sound I imagine they make is that because they do the thing like a like a worm or they like bunch their butt up and yeah, squatching and then snakes do slithering. Yeah, okay, yeah, exactly. So the baby Sicilians have special teeth that resemble grappling hooks that they use

to peel and eat their mother's skin for nourishment. What we're getting a picture of this here. They look like little worms and they got you know, it looks so disgusting, you know, like the Starlac pit and Star Wars. It's like that. Yeah, that looks like a butt hole with teeth. Yeah, butth hole with teeth that you know what. This is actually the second time on this podcast we've talked about butts with teeth. It's a whole genre, it's a whole look,

it's coming back. So the mother will lose about of her body weight, but she's totally cool with this. She allow was her offspring to eat or skin offspring is within the mother or so sometimes so some live bearing species of cicilians, they're actually eating inside of the mother, so they eat the fatty secretions from the reproductive organs.

But other times they're already born and they're like or the eggs are laid and like they pop out and then they start eating like mom jerky, just like mom jerk, it's nutritious and delicious. Please make that a mom tested, Mom approved, Mom, it's in fact, mom My kids love my skin, love it and eat it and they just bite like so it would, I mean mimics sort of like mammalian feeding, where like a bunch of little kids are just like kind of nipping away, but there's no

nipples or utters. Basically, it's kind of a weird evolutionary step towards like drinking milk. Because like so some of the very early versions of mammals, like monotream, so like a platypus kidnas, they don't have nipples. They just kind of uze milk. Um, I think out of their stomach pores. Okay, so it's not just like a messy sweating milk. Yeah, they're like your baby or milk sweating and then the

babies just kind of lick it up. So but it's not I don't want to make a claim that this is the direct link between that, but you can kind of see. This is a weird step because the mother is actually growing the skin, especially for the kids, so it's like nutritious, delicious skin, mom skin. And they actually survived this, so it's it doesn't kill them, but sometimes for not All moms who let their children eat them are so lucky. Um. So there's this creature called the pseudoscorpion.

It's not a scorpion. It's a type of aracnut. I knew that. Yeah, yeah, so again we are already that's I think too. You get two stars. So it looks like a lot like a scorpion, as you would imagine. That's why they named it. Well what is it an? Actually? Oh want to be exactly. So the moms will offer herself up to her babies to eat, and the babies will suck out those sweet mom juices through her joints

and then discard her carcass. Okay, you have to slow down. Okay, So this fake asked scorpion has kids, and then the kids just what they feed off her joints when they suck no, no no, no. Imagine like you have a straw, a bendy straw, and you stick it in soda and you drink out of it. They're drinking her juices out of her joints like they're straws that they've stuck into, like, but through her joints, like that's the entry point. And

then from there they just suck. Mom. For lack of a or words, and the mom like, wow, when you look at it from a very specific perspective, this is heartwarming because researchers think this has given rise to these pro social behaviors in pseudo scorpions. So the young hunt together and parents like help protect the young. Um. So like since the mother is encouraging the young, like when they don't have enough to eat and they're like, oh well you can eat me, your mom. They don't need

each other and they don't compete with each other. So they think that this allowed for more fraternally social pseudo scorpions to have survived and evolved. So yeah, So like, if you want your kids to get along, let them meet you. Pipe down in there, stop fighting. You can both have some mom. Soe get your straw and put in my kneecap, have a few SIPs of that each other alone. There's a similar case with black lace weaver spiders where they will eat their own mom and then

they'll dance together. So black lace weaver spiders will have over a hundred young. So first step is they lay trophic eggs. Trophic eggs are unfertilized eggs that are just there for eating eating. And so once the babies eat all of these eggs, then the spider will actually guide them under her and kind of press down on them to kind of encourage them to eat her, which yeah, and so they do. And then once they've eaten some good mom, they go onto the web and start the internet.

Um no, it's a physical web, I thought. Okay, I'm you see how modern technology it's ruined nature. The mother ea their mother dead? Yeah, yeah, they kill her, they eat her, and she's all right with it. And how much are we talking of the body is gone just enough that it's mortally wounded basically, well, no, probably like they eat most of the fluids, like the which is sort of like it's probably not gonna eat the outer

the exo skeleton because that's tough and not patricious. But the bits, they'll eat all of that arrow if you the mom marrow. And then so they eat the mom and then they go onto the spiders webs, yes, and then they dance. So they have the synchronized thing where they're all contracting their bodies like together and sync and it makes the web vibrate. And the thought is that this is now that they're suddenly orphaned by strange chance.

They have to protect themselves. So if they if they moved together, um and like dance together, they're vibrating the web as if a much larger spider is on there, so like it wards off predators. So they think like, oh, there's a someone's home. Yeah, someone's home, like at home alone where Kevin has a little Michael Jordan's on the train, or the latable clowns, Uncle's in the shower, or weaken to Bernie's or two men try and pretend a dead

bodies life. See I'm thank you. I'm having to put it in scientific terms for me to understand, thank you, the science of home alone. And again, like the pseudoscorpion, they actually form social groups and they hunt together. So that's a heartwarming thought of like these little mother eating babies just all in one group, hunting together, dancing, right, there's something so yeah, is there a video of this dancing?

Do they call dancing the science? Just? Yeah? I mean some of them do they it's not technically a dance, but like it. They're not going to start lasting or doing the Millie rock lets. You think they're so smart. It's like you guysn't even know why you're doing it. It's been millions of years and you're just figuring out now. Okay, So I know there's a question that's burning in everyone's mind. Do babies ever eat each other? You want to answer

that because I know the answer. Yeah they do. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm joking. Uh wait, do babies eat each other like of their own like their own kin? Or do they just are babies wild and out and they go like, yeo, let's go eat some other babies like their own kin. I mean, nature so fucked up. The answer has to be yes. You're learning. This is a learning podcast. And I know, I know phenotypes. Have you heard of, Like there's this medical urban legend where like you have twins

and then one twin eats the other twins. Yes, like Dwight shrewd and he said the exact same thing, yes, and that's why he doesn't not only has the strength of a man, but a man and a little twin. Yeah. Um. So, like the legend goes like, you get an ultrasound, there's like twins, yeah, and then you get another ultras dound and there's suspiciously only one twin remaining. So like the conclusion drawn is like, oh my twin eight the other twins so that they can grow into a strong shoot

double by double by child the double boy. So this math is actually false. Mostly I like that idea, though this is an actual medical issue called vanishing twin syndrome. It's a miscarriage in which one of the fetuses. See every time, I'm like, oh, I like that, and then

it ends up being some form of a miscarriage. Okay, so I'm sorry that it's a syndrome in which, okay, there's you start off with two, right, So, like miscarriages happened pretty often and naturally so like one of the fetuses will die and then, like we were talking about earlier, what happens is it gets reabsorbed back into the wombs. Right, the other twin is innocent. It didn't eat the twin. It just is like just hanging out. Tell that to the same doctor. It was like a fairy took your kid.

Also that kid the twin, so you may want to ask him some questions. Those fairies levey babies. Anyways, here's twenty more leeches and we're gonna bleed you. So, but there is this really rare condition in which again we're going back to sort of the stone baby horror, but like the dead fetus becomes mummified, and it's called fetis

pepraceus fetis pepracius, which translates to paper fetus um. Because what happens is like the live twin kind of smooshes the dead fetus and then it gets wedged between the uterine wall and the live fetus and it becomes like, you know, like flower pressing but horrible, you know, like flower pressing but fetus, but a fetus and it's terrible. So and that's paper fetus mummified. Yes, So basically fetal cannibalism in humans is a myth, but like you guessed,

it's not a myth for non humans. So let's go inside a shark womb. Miles. Of course I don't trust sharks. Well you shouldn't, because shark wombs are like an embryonic thunder dome. Yes, go on, which is a great band name. Don't take it, actually take it, take it, take it. It sounds like a really dark like metal We will eat you in the world. Nice. The pregnant san shark can be carrying several baby sharks at once, but typically only one will emerge victorious. The biggest and strongest fetus

will eat its unborn wound mates. So why would it do this? Does it just like hated siblings? Is it? Is it really hungry? Insecure? Insecure? So marine biologists are really interested in this, and they've done research and have found that female San tiger sharks can carry babies from multiple fathers at once. So when and an embryonic shark eats its fellow embryos, it's both cutting down on sibling competition, but also because they have different fathers, it's making sure

it's paternal. DNA is triumphant over its half siblings. So it's toxic masculinity played out in the womb and you're murking your half. The shark rearchy, shark rearchy thing. Yeah, toxic shark city. You know, it's just a problem in our sark city. Yes, okay, Like can you imagine, like like you're in a car trip and the kids in back are like filing eye. He's on my side like loud, and like suddenly gets like really quiet, and you look back and there's just like one really fat Yeah, just

like now we're good back here, We're fine. Everything worked out. Wow. The idea of the paternal DNA having to be dominant or at the very least have that genetic line go on. That is so wild to me that it can play out in the womb. Yes, yes, that, like their reproductive system is wild. Yeah. Have you ever seen like a So some sharks are live bearing, and then some sharks have like these like egg pods and like you hold it up to a light and you can see a

little shark embryo like inside moving around. It's like it's external, Yeah, but it's carried on the mother. No, No, this is a difference. So there's some live bearing sharks, and some of them like lay these like these pods that got you like an alien? Yeah, exactly, like an alien or those shark pods called I forgot hide pods. Nice. God, that's great. So we're going to leave some wound for a quick method, get it because because of sharks eating each other in the room right, and room yes and

room yes. So there's another horror trope that I think reflects a deep primal fear, which is the evil mother, like the Bible thumping mother and carry the spider mom and coraline mother goffl and tangled h my mom um. But seriously, oh no, does she suck the life horse out of your hair? Basically? I mean I'm bald in a way, yes, And I blame her, So go on, I like this section. Now, Now everyone who has baldness

knows who to like blame my mother. Yeah, your mother says specifically, she's been sucking all of the hair force. She one time said, she goes, it looks like your hair is dying. Mother, You know what I mean. I looked at her, I said, I'm your kids, just so you technically, technically hair is already dead. It's the hair follicle thank you, Katie, that's welcome. You know what, can I take a second to call my mother and well, guess what jokes on you? My hair was been dead.

Stick that in your mom's pipe and have her smoke it. So one of my favorite evil mothers is spoilers for the show Sharp Objects. So if you haven't seen spoiler alert, spoiler alert, yank out your headphones, throw your phone and the toilet, run away and watch the show. Binge it and I'll see you back. And then you realize it's the little sister the whole time. And those teeth were actually people's teeth on the floor anyway in the door at this point. If they didn't turn away, that's on them.

Oh my god, I'm saying you gave ample spoiler alert warning right aggressively to the end of the all complaints to God. I blame the bird man. I'm sorry, going on right. So, the protagonist mother is very disturbing her favoritism coldness towards Um, the main character, and again spoilers, spoilers, spoilers, spoilers go away. The mother feeds her own children rat

poison so she can like take care of them. She has like this bottle of quote unquote medicine that's full of poison that she like lovingly makes and she feeds it to them. She's like, oh, sweetie, you know, just stay in bed, and she takes care of them and pulls the sheets over and like all this stuff and um. As the show points out, this is a condition called

Munchhausen by proxy, and this is a real disorder. So Munchhausen is when you pretend to be sick yourself and it's not for any financial gain or getting out of work. That's just called lingering and you're just an asshole. Uh, munch Housen is you want the attention. It's kind of like that guy who was pretending to be a kid. He wanted to love an attention. So like with Munchausen, you're pretending to be sick so you can get attention onto yourself. But if it's lingering, what's the way. What's

the lingering? Is you want financial gain or right? Okay, it's not for attention, it's just for pure utter. It's just I don't want to go to school. I don't want to go to what we also call that, right, Like if you're on a murder trial and you're trying to act like you're insane and you're faking it. They call them lingering to yeah, yeah, yeah, it's it's true crime. Lingle it's to try, it's to get an actual tangible reward. Munchausen.

By proxy is when you use a child you're typically it's a mother using her own child and poisoning them or pretending they're sick in order for you as the parent, to get attention, because like, like we often are kind to the parents of sick children because they're going through a lot of trouble, and that's a good thing. But in this case, it's this perversion of other people's kindness where it's like you are making your child sick so that you get this attention in this like feeling like

this good hair takes by proxy. First when you use biproxy, yes you're the child, and they're like, that is exactly. I feel like Sharper objects used that as inspiration because that yet that is really dark. So that so what Miles is talking about is there was this woman, Dee de Blanchard, who she forced her child to live as if she was disabled and um like in a wheelchair, shaving her head, um, wearing these big glasses and like she didn't allow her to sort of speak as if

she were like normally. She made her act like she was kind of mentally disabled as well. She also like tricked doctors into having her undergo all these unnecessary medical procedures, so like they even removed her salivary glands because she would put like this numbing like origel or some other like gum numbing things, so she would drool during her doctor's visits, so they removed the glance to what I know, it's so upsetting because it's like it's just like making

her go through all of this. It's it's abuse. It's child abuse. Yeah, it's like physical and emotional abuse. And in this case and in that documentary, um, the daughter actually plots and successfully plots to have the mother killed, which I mean, it's just the whole thing is awful. But when you look at it from the perspective of she's been abused all this time, it's completely like of course she's gonna snap. And she was like meant to forego years of her child pretend to be someone she wasn't.

Wasn't she like even pretending to be like a few years younger than because she was actually she was still being forced to play this role into her early twenties, and like her mother was both forcing her to pretend like she's younger and then also like act as if she's mentally behind really young. So I feel like this is like it's so similar to like the story and

Sharp Objects. What I thought was interesting in Sharp Objects was like they had all this stuff where there's a lot of this like imagery of the mother like eating her daughter, because like remember when she was talking about Camie and me like, oh, she's like a ripe cherry, and his sister was talking about like oh, I could

just eat you up, um. And there's like drinking the milk which is like poisoned, and just like this is kind of a theme in mythology and storytelling, this idea of like parents, especially mothers eating children, like the Witch and Hansel and Gretel. And there's that great painting by Goya where it's Saturn eating his son great as in horrifying, where it's like the guy with a beard and he's like hunched over this like this adult man and like

it is eating the arms off of it. Um. Well, we'll put that up on the website, so you guys can have more nightmare fuel, just share the nightmares. So, in nature, this is called phil real cannibalism, meaning like you're eating your own children, and it's a lot more common than you might think. Cats, rodents, insects, other animals will occasionally nibble on their children. Cats sometimes, I mean,

are you really that surprised at those assholes? No, because I know like people like sometimes elderly people die with a bunch of cats will eat their face off. Yeah that's true, right, yeah, okay, good, sometimes eat you too. This has come up on our podcast before. This is a and then they're like, yeah, with the dogs, I feel like it's more in this than the dogs trying to like wake you up. And then they're like, oh, you're actually kind of tasty. And so fish are a

big offender in terms of eating children. So parents will often eat their own babies and they're called fries, which maybe explains why really, yeah, they're called baby fish are called fries? Really, huh okay, so something so that maybe you know, like the parents are confusing, like I guess I eat fries. I don't know. To try and just have one, just one, try to have one baby you can't have, you can't start, you get going pretty soon

the whole carton's handfuls of babies. UM. So that seems kind of counterintuitive because like you would think like the genes for parents that eat their own babies would die out because there's no more babies. But it's it's more complicated than that. So eating your own fish babies can actually increase your reproductive success in some cases. So, like what researchers have found is that they eat the ones

that are slower to develop. And what that does is in fish where they have parental care, like they're trying to make sure they're their fries don't get eaten by other fish. If they if they don't eat my fries, okay, if they eat the small, weak, soggy fries, I like soggy fries to be honest, Well they do eat them, I would fit in the fish. I mean they're all

soggy fries because their fish. UM. So when they eat the slow to develop ones, what they're doing is they make it so that the ones that are most likely to survive. They're putting all of their parental care into the most fit, the fastest developing, most likely to reach adulthood babies and then they they're sort of like getting rid of some of the babies that would maybe take away their attention from the the winner babies. And then

they also get a free snack, so some nutritional advantage. Yeah, they're just you know, they only want the cream of the crop, right, Yeah, separating the curds in the way. So it's like then they have more time to get back to spawning. Right, So it's just merely it's like a time saving things like, look, I got too many kids slow ones because they might not become NBA and

it would take care of me. So I need to keep going so I could have more kids that might be the next broun fish, right right, like B plus, I guess you you survived this time. But if it's a B minus, yeah, that sounds like a great way to raise your children. Just threatened to eat them. I was nearly raised like that. I mean, you know, I

gotta achieve, gotta achieve, you know what I mean. Yeah, it was never under the fear of being consumed, right right, it would just be like I wouldn't get electricity or yeah no, but it's cool. You can do a lot with candle light. Yeah yeah, yeah, plotting your revenge, yeah, just on your on your scroll with your So what about eating like your whole family, the whole family meal

of fries. Get it. So we're moving on to land the long tailed skink, which is it's just a type of lizard, right, Yeah, I think I've don't people have skinks like in the terrariums. I think I had a roommate who had one. Yeah, I had a crust did geck once. Yeah. So when the long tailed skink encounters intruding eggs eating snakes, they reach this point of exasperation where they're just like, fine, I'll eat my eggs like you want to eat my eggs, I'll eat them like that.

So they are risking losing their eggs to this predator, and if it's really persistent, like it keeps coming back, like they're like they're like screw it, Like I'll eat them, get that nutrition and then try again with a new clutch of eggs. Um And like pregnant skinks do this the most because they're like I can just give birth in like a week. I got more in the chamber, right, I got more cooking, So like I'll eat these and

they're just doing it because they don't want there. Like, if anybody's eating my eggs, it's gonna be gonna it's mate. It's like when you're like as a kid and like your siblings trying to eat your candy, and you're just like, I'll eat it all. I'll get really sick, like probably throw up chocolate everywhere, but by god, it's my candy and I'll eat it. I'm glad evolution has awarded that baseline. Yes, but you know you can't always judge a mom cannibal

by its cover. So there's a tropical fish called the big mouth hap which is really rude of science to call it that, Like it's just trying to speak its mine, and you're calling it a big mouth? Is it? What is the mouth in fact big? Yes? It is the mouth is in fact big. What would you what's a more sensitive way to name the fish since you're so insensed by this anatomically large mouth? Tap? Okay. So it

has a parenting style where it's a caretaker. So it has a whole mess of fish babies, um, and it's constantly like wrangling them trying to prevent them from getting eaten, or like finding me mode and like like when you watch a video of it, sometimes she seems to just like lose her cool and she opens up her mouth and sucks all her babies in. But don't panic, she's just keeping them safe inside her mouth. When she sends as a predator is nearby, whoa, that is wild. It

looks like it's eating the children. I'm watching a video of this. Thank you to the BBC. Yeah, we'll put all this stuff up on our website, Creature feature pod dot com. You can see all the cool cool stuff on there. Yeah, don't just take my groans in it just it vacuums them up. It's really cool. And that's

to be like that's like the panic room. So yeah, yeah children, Yeah, there's like the uvula just like lights up like a like one of those red lights and go like it haven't we proved I'm no nothing about sets. Somebody you're thinking, they're actually tweeting their kids and they're doing internet dances. Okay, so don't do that. So they like hang out in mom's cool fun mouth for a little while and then she spits them back out when

it's safe. We've come up with that Mom's cool fun mouth sounds like a bar opening an echo parks cool fun mouth. Have you been a mom's school fun mouth? Get your get your mom poppers? They have like an O G Mortal Kombat mixture in there. It's cool anyway, I think embryonic thunderdomes playing. So there's an even crazier example of this childcare strategy, and it's called the gastric brooding frog, which it sounds like a frog that's like

got irritable balance, like nobody understands me everything. Uh So, Actually it is called this because it keeps its eggs and its stomach. They develop and she gives birth out of her mouth like regurgitates, yes, yes, throws up a live baby. That's the scientific term. Yes, correct, Okay, I'm making sure I'm saying everything according to the standards of

the world. Cold stars all around. So it's a way to keep her eggs safe and like this kind of like olutionary scenic root towards live bearing because it's like it has eggs, it swallows the eggs, eggs hatch in her stomach and then she throws up babies. And those are like the little tadpoles basically just they're fully developed little frogs, So they've passed tadpole phase. That isn't a frog starts a tadpool? Yes, okay, I'm just again. Now

you're correct. So all those periods of gestation happened inside the stomach, and so you might ask why don't they get digested? Um, the eggs are covered in this substance called prostaglandin. So it's a chemical that signals to the

mom's stomach to stop producing gastric acid. And I should probably put all of this in past tense because unfortunately the gastric brooding frogs are extinct, which I know it really that's a low bloke, right, bringing up opening up what it really sucks, because like for people like me with like sensitive stomachs, it would be cool if they could research like this prostagland and and like how it stomach somehow making this tragic extinction about your about me,

how quickly the world over everything. I want to swallow some frogs and have it here in my stomach. It sounds like they're just covered in like toms, like it's just neutralizing, or it's not that it's neutralizing, it's sending a signal to the body that's saying no more acid produced less acid. Also, I mean they are just like really cool. Like there's this great picture of the one of the gastric brooding frogs. It's a little tiny baby

frog right in its mouth. See little little baby frog looks like a Russian nesting at all where it's like, oh inside, it's another little frog. How far do the frog It's frogs all the way down right, So I don't want to end the podcast on such a sad note. Wait, so how long ago did they go extinct? Just like a few decades ago? Okay, well, then our grandparents are the only ones who are like, hey, hey, show some respect, show respect for brooding frog frog elders. But here's some hope.

So scientists are hoping that they can clone the frogs to bring them back from extinction. Thank fucking god. I know, park up in here, Jurassic Park us up some baby vomiting frogs at the very least, just for your sensitive something. I want to eat baby frogs and be cured. I know. But I'm pretty sure your doctor told you that was sort of the cause of your stomach, and she's ready to say you're just eating fro frog babies and it's also the cause of the extinction of the frogs. I

was eating all their babies. Yeah, I believe I've seen your photo up at the l A Zoo. It's like, don't let this fucking maniac game, especially near the frog She'll break in and eat all of your frogs, like like they have that little corkboard of like frequent offenders. Oh my god, that's like a frog leg sticking out of my mouth. And you're like, have because I'm freend Wow. Way to kick the French other down, true American patriot. Well,

if they're going to pretend to be children, they deserve it. Yeah, hey, why not so much? Have you got anything to plug? Oh? Man, what don't I you know, I'm doing a benefit for gastric brooding frogs this week at the Embryonic thunder Dome right next to Mom's fun mouth. No you don't. Come listen in on the Daily Zeitgeist that I hope you've heard of it. Yeah, with Jacques O'Brien, who you may or may not know. I think Jacques uh and uh yeah, come see us over there. We talk every day. Yeah,

you know you've been on the show. We had a great time and you we talk news and politics and culture and it's just an easy way to like stay to digest. Yeah, keep up with the times without getting fully you know, have your hair on fire and feel down about the world because we're trying to us about Yeah, and then you know, you can follow me on Twitter and Instagram at Miles of Gray. So that's it. I'm I'm a humble man, simple man. I don't have much

else to quote. And you can follow me on Twitter at Katie Golden gu l B I am uh and also at proverb Rides, which is that that's the that's where you get the good stuff. You can check us out on our website feature feature pod dot com and our Twitter, Instagram and Facebook and come back next week. Yeah please come back, No come back. You get you get your preaking butts, set your butts down from