>> Speaker A: Because they're, like, weird. They, like sweat milk, and their baby's like it, and, uh, it's just strange. And if you think that's the most disturbing thing I'm gonna say, a baby animal does this week, you're wrong. Back to privy. Privy is a podcast about bathrooms, recorded from my home bathroom. I'm your host, hunter hoover, and I love bathrooms. Uh, happy belated
groundhogs day, everybody. I hope you guys, um, had the opportunity to observe however you choose, um, to do know. It's interesting, because little plumps of every year, every year, the little bloke just gets yanked right out of his hole. And here's the thing. I can't tell you what plumpsatami saw, because the way that I have structured and ordered my life, the release of this episode is too close to the actual yoinking, um, of plumps atomi himself.
So I'm sorry if that's a disappointment, but plumps atomi, at the point of this recording, is still sound asleep in islumber, uh, and is totally unbothered by the nice blokes in the funny hats. Um, but I hope that, uh, I know that right now, me recording, I am looking forward to my groundhogs day celebrations. I'll be celebrating privately and publicly. Um, and I hope that you were able to enjoy your celebrations as well. Uh, and, um, that you were able to
observe plumps atomy's big day. But here at privy, we have somewhat of a tradition, um, when it comes to the groundhog day season, uh, every year we take another look at one of God's great and unique creatures. There's all sorts of these little guys. And the interesting thing is animals poop, and they do weird things with their poop oftentimes. And so, uh, often these animals distinguish themselves from the strange bathroom habits and the things it does in the privacy of its own burrow hole or
otherwise. In past years, we've discussed prairie dogs and the act of prairie dogging. It. Um, we've also discussed the glory that is the wombat and the terror that is their backsides. You get that wombat, and he's just over here, like. Just, like, butt smacking. Just butt smacking the predators. And so, here in privy, every year, we want to take a look at one of these beautiful creatures and just see what we can learn from these animals. Uh,
so that's where we're going at the top of the show here. I think I need to do a little bathroom check in. So it's been kind of a weird front and I was having kind of a slump. Um, for those who have been listening for some time, I record all of my bathrooming in the poop map app. You can join us there. Follow the privies, join our group. Um, but I have
recorded every poop in the poop map app. And one of the things that happened recently, I don't know what happened here, but on average, I would say I poop three to five times a day. Now, I understand that that number is astronomical compared to some. Um, I'm watching these TikToks, and this one guy is like, yeah, I've pooped once in the month of January so far, and I'm going, sweet Jesus, that's not enough. That's troubling to me. I am
troubled. I think my concern is I went from pooping between three to five times a week or a day. My bad. Um, a day. A week would be probably normal to, like, once or twice. And it was, like, four or five days in a row to the point where I noticed it. I was like, man, I really feel like, um, this also coincided with the installation of a new bathroom fixture that will be featured prominently on the show before too long, it may be the reason that I am testing
video. Uh, and there was a few days where I just was having this stuff happen, but then I got the great american unclogger, uh, and that is protein. So I had texted my wife. I said, hey, um, Anna, can you make me a protein shake? Now, we had purchased this protein shake. It is made from, like, pea protein, um, or something. I don't know. Um. I do know it smells like the bottom of a wet dumpster. It's awful smelling. It's absolutely heinous smelling. The taste is
not terrible. It's mostly just a texture thing. Um, but, man, this protein is real rough. I get it. But I was not prepared for the bathroom situation that this protein shake produced, because I drank this protein shake around 06:00 p.m. And I kid you not, by 930, I had the stankiest beefers, and I had to poop so bad. I never have to go to poop that time. My bathrooming is focused between five and 10:00 a.m. And then, like, once or twice in
the afternoon. So for me to have to go take a pre bedtime shaz is just not normal. It's unheard of. And it struck me, but that's enough. Ah, that's just enough. You're over it. Everybody's like, yeah, thanks, hunter, but we really want to hear about this year's Groundhogs Day episode. So, um, this year, we're going to the land down under. Welcome to Australia. M. I can't do an Australian Australia mite. Uh,
I can't do it. Um, the land down under, it would seem, is host to just the really freak of the bunch animals on this great planet. Um, last year, we talked about the wombat and his wonderful, butt smacking glory, and he's cute and he's cuddly. Ah. And he always got square poopies, and so that's kind of cool. But the thing that is so just down the road from the wombat, just down the road from our local neighborhood, wombat is the cute and cuddly. Uh, you just want to give
them a big old hug. You just want to give them just a big Old Hug, is the koala. We have to travel to the eucalyptus forests of southeastern and eastern Australia. Koalas, according to National Geographic, ah, uh, are both a MAmmal and a marSupial. Now, you're going to hear that, and you're going to go, hunter's just special. He doesn't know how to read. He doesn't get it. He has goofed this thing. Now, here's the facts. Here's straight facts about it. I do, in fact, know how to read.
Um, the problem is, I took a screenshot of this in case people didn't believe me. But the National Geographic website has it twisted, because on one portion they list it as a marSupial, and on the next portion, they list it as a MAmMal. Either that, or I'm blowing this fat out of proportion, and I don't understand what either of those things is. But in my education, which, again, science was, I was told science isn't real.
Uh, uh. I was under the understanding that there is a difference between a mammal and a marsupial, that a mammal feeds its young off the teeth. And I know a little bit more about how marsupials feed their young, but it has something to do with that pouch. Do you know what I'm saying? Um, but according to Nat Geo and their website, koalas are both mammals and marsupials. So search me. Um, you know what? Maybe Nat Geo's got it more figured out than I do. You know what? I'm going
to defer to them. I think it's an error, but I digress. The koala, for our purposes today, is, in fact, a marsupial. Other noted marsupials are the opossum, the kangaroo, and that's all that I know because I'm limited in my knowledge. I think that a platypus is like trying to be a marsupial but can't figure out how. Um, because they're like weird. They like sweat milk and their baby is like.
It's just strange. And if you think that that's the most disturbing thing I'm going to say a baby Animal does this week, you're wrong. Uh, the Koala is in fact a marsupial. And much like me from grade seven to eleven, it's got a pocket in the front, uh, because I would wear those weird hoodies. Do you know the hoodies with the edgy teen pocket where they stuff their hands in it and they're. Huh, huh. Was. Anyway, the Koala is often mislabeled a bear as Koala Bear. It is not
a bear. He is not a bear. That is Ursa. Ursa is Bear and Koala, this is the scientific name. And here comes a butcher of the week. It's fascolarkdos scenarios now. It's gibberish Latin nonsense. Um, ain't it usually. But a common misnomer is that these Koalas, as I noted, are so soft and cuddly and they're fuzzy. But what's actually really frustrating is that they're not like, they're not, koalas are not fuzzy. They're like coarse. They have coarse hair which is just awful.
When you see a cuddly little Bear Animal. He's not a bear, but he is kind of a bear. Um, you want him to be fuzzy, you don't want them to be coarse. That's bad though. They are a marsupial. They have opposing thumbs on their feet. They're those weird like rant, rant, rant feet. Um, and they're used for climbing and they have fused toes and the toes they use to actually comb their hair. It's weird. Um, okay. As was noted, koalas live in the eucalyptus forests of Australia.
But they not only live in the eucalyptus forests, they consume the eucalyptus. It's their treat of choice. Like little Dougie koala gets home and he's itching for a snack. He's like, mom, I need a snack. And he's of age because if he's not of age that snack's going to be troubling. And just slinging eucalyptus at little. Here's take your eucalyptus bites. Get these going. They consume eucalyptus. Oh. Rip it and grip it, baby. It's satisfactory. Ginger lime,
satisfactory. It's perfectly serviceable. But they are one of the few if not only animals on our earth that consumes eucalyptus as part of its diet, mostly because usually to do so, to eat eucalyptus in this Way would be toxic. It's usually toxic. More on that in a moment. They eat more than a pound of eucalyptus a day and the koala sleeps so much it's almost a joke. It's kind of funny. They sleep about 18 to 22 hours a day and I'm just going to go out and say it. That's all day. That's
all day. There's 24 HOurs and it's Dark for six to ten of them. And so if they're sleeping 1820, that's all Day. Uh, you hear that, Teens? Hey, Teens. This is PSA for the Teens. I don't know if I doubt Teens listen to this, MOSTLy because I think Teens think podcasts are for old people who drink Coffee too mucH, which I mean, kind oF. But it's not just that. It's much more than that. Okay, Teens, but Teens, uh, I'm going to just say this to you.
If you sleep for more than 12 HOuRs of a DAY, I am going to go ahead and say you slept all Day. If you sleep for more than 12 hours of any 24 hours day, I'm going to go ahead and say that you have slept all day. So the koala is sleeping 18 to 22. There's hope for you yet, teens. Um, or you can view that as challenge issued and really go for the gusto on it. I would suggest not going for the gusto on it. That's just my
perspective. Uh, I would be remiss if me, um, noted Pokemon enthusiast, I would be remiss if I didn't note one of the. It is the only koala Pokemon. But right now, who knows Pokemon company. They're all time putting out these strange creatures. Uh, but I would be remiss if I didn't mention Kamala. Uh, he is Pokemon's Koala Pokemon. Um, and he's based on this trope that the Koala sleeps too much. Like he is asleep. Like half the time. He's got this big log and he uses bonk people, other
characters on the head. It's pretty great. It's a top notch design. Like, koala is a great pokemon, great design, gets good screen time in the cartoon, uh, it's all around just a good guy. Koalas have a really weird call that they make and it's kind of creepy. It is kind of creepy. I don't know. And what's really weird is much like my friend Austin in college Koalas don't really like. They don't really drink much water. They don't drink water.
They get most of their moisture from the eucalyptus leaves that they eat. Uh, some koalas will store their eucalyptus in their cheek pouches for later. So they'll like chipmunk a big pile of eucalyptus leaves and stuff and they're like. And they'll get the big chuff over here to store the eucalyptus for later, whatever. Now for this next section we need to discuss a little bit of history
of specifically Australia. In 1788, the British began to send its criminals to the land down under, thus colonizing the area shortly after its colonization. People did what people so often do. They started to settle and cut down stuff and m move into new territory and actually settle in the Land. In the 18 hundreds and 19 hundreds, koalas were readily hunted and harvested for their furs, boots with the furs. What started as threats to hunting turned into threats via loss of
habitat. So at first they're hunted for their furs and then they begin to encroach on the eucalyptus forests, thus causing more trouble for the koalas. Save the KOALAS. One KOALA. To give you some perspective here, one koala, one small. He's not small, he's about 3ft tall. AH, 2ft tall. One koala needs about 100 trees to just itself to maintain its diet and have sufficient territory to itself.
So as the eucalyptus forests shrink, the koala population does in turn as more and more are pushed together. Today koalas are listed as a vulnerable species. But in our modern times a new challenger has approached the koala. A new threat has posed itself to the koala population. And for this portion of the program, I'm going to take you to what I like to call health two and the STD unit of sex ed class. Chlamydia is a common and notably treatable Std. The CDC notes, you may have chlamydia
and not even know it. What a TERRIFYING THOUGHT. I think you would, um, I digress, but could you imagine you just go in for a cold or like, you go in because you need to get an x ray and they're like, oh, by the way, friend, you have this. Uh, okay. But chlamydia has lasting health concerns. Symptoms of chlamydia in humans include a burning sensation when you pee. Not good, very bad. Um, there should be no burning sensation
on anywhere below the waist, in my opinion. Like, I'll go out on a limb and say it. The only place that have should burning sensation is your mouth when you eat a spicy pepper, or in my case, my eyes from the month of, like, April through October. But you may also experience strange stuff coming out of the peehole. Sweet. Uh, what are we doing? Like, strange quote, strange stuff coming out of the peehole. Good lord. Pain and swelling in the zone of truth.
Like, golly, some people experience unusual soreness. I'll bet. Rectal pain. How'd it get back there? Bleeding very bad from anywhere down there. Stench from the privates and burning when peeing. No thanks in general there, like, no, thanks in general to all those. Just, I'm going to go ahead and say no thanks to any of them. But that's in humans. Like, when a human being gets the chlamydia. That's what they got going on. But what
does any of this have to do with koalas? Like, hunter, you wished us a happy groundhog day. You told us a strange story about your bathrooming. You've introduced Koalas to us, and they seem like a strange creature. Why are you telling us about this Std? Well, that's because it is kind of like one of the more growing and more widely known facts. Now, unfortunately, that koalas have or carry chlamydia. It's an embarrassing and troubling thing to just have as a fun fact about you.
Gosh, you're just an animal trying to do his best. And when somebody hops on the interwebs and punches in you as an animal, they're met with the description of the chlamydia that you carry. It's a SAD DAY. In 2008, only about 10% of all koalas had chlamydia. Those are good NUMBERS. Worse than HUMANS, but good NUMBERS. Uh, I guess. I think the GOAL is ZERO. I'm going to go out on a limb and say the goal for a percentage of people and koalas that have chlamydia is 0%. That's the GOAL.
It's not NONE, THOUGH. 10% is. I'd wager that's more than the people who have it, right? Right. There has to be more koalas that have it. Yeah, it's not worth THINKING about. NOWADAYS, those NUMBERS are just ASTRONOMICAL. In about ten years, we are up to 80% to 90% of koalas have chlamydia. That's almost all of THEM. And while some of the side effects of chlamydia and koalas are similar to those in humans, sores in the PP zone, that can lead to infertility in koalas it can also cause blindness.
So the chlamydia is a danger to the koalas. But like we said, the CDC told us that this is treatable. So then just like do what you do to treat it. KOALAS in HUMANS, that is US. CHLAMYDIA is. I'd like to quit talking about chlamydia, by the way. I want to stop saying it. I feel like I've said the word chlamydia too much this episode and I'm sorry, but how else do we move forward? Take it up with the KOALAS. They're the ones who have it, not me. JEEPERS. But in CHLAMYDIA, NO, SCRATCH
that. In humans chlamydia is treatable with antibiotics that kill the harmful bacteria that is causing the concerning std. Hooray. Antibiotics will solve this. Now treatment is the same for koalas, but koalas cannot take those antibiotics and it is not that they are unable or that they cannot swallow the medication or that it is allergic to them. The problem is it works too well and it actually kills the bacteria in their stomachs.
Koalas have a gut biome that has specifically adjusted and has specific amounts and types of bacteria that help break down eucalyptus leaves and help deal with the toxins of eucalyptus leaves. They are special, their tum tums are very special and they have very special bacteria in their tummies that help what they
eat. But the problem is if you give them antibiotics to cure the std, that somehow is in their eyes as well, that will kill the yummy bacteria that helps eat the good green eucalyptus bushes. So if you give a koala those antibiotics, their natural gut biome is going to get all sorts of whack. And then it's kind of like me after eating like a pound of nachos or uh, that protein shake, you know what
I'm saying? But if you kill all the good eucalyptus, breaking down bacteria in the koala to get rid of the StD, then they aren't going to be able to eat their eucalyptus leaves anymore. Their diet is gone, they will be unable to digest it. And in my experience, in my experience, you're going to want to digest it like you want to digest your. Digesting your food is a very good thing. That's a problem. And so you'd think that well then they must be born with that
biome in their tummy. Like they have this very good microbiome. They must be born with it. Well, we haven't gotten to the worst of koalas yet. Maybe they're born with it. Or maybe they suck it out of their mom's butt. Every day we stray farther from God. Now, if you hear that, if you hear the sentence that I said earlier and you think to yourself, well, my goodness, that's crass. Well, that's not my problem. That's what's what we're dealing with.
It's just the TrUth. That's what koalas are doing. Okay, as we discussed, koalas are marsupials and mammals. I get it, NAt Geo, that one's for you. We get it. But koalas are marsupials and when a marsupial is born, the baby, also known as the joey, resides in the pouch of the mother, where its mother feeds the joey. Here's the DEAL. The koala's mother's milk is great. They feed through this, like, weird. It's kind of like LAcTAtion, but it happens inside the Pouch.
I don't know another word I'd like to not say again is lactation. It doesn't necessarily model the diet of eucalyptus. Like, the mother's milk in the pouch and the babies are one day going to quit being babies and they're going to have to leave the pouch and go eat stuff outside the pouch. And so the koala Joeies aren't born with the very good bacteria to break down the eucalyptus. That's a problem because as we've already seen, the
koalas need that. That's important. That's why the STD curing antibiotics will not function well. And so, uh, they're not born with that bacteria. But to get it, koala Joeys have to commit or perform something that I'd like to call the deed. When the baby koala reaches an age where it can crawl from the pouch, it commits the deed in the goal of gaining the ability to one day be able to consume eucalyptus. The joey koala has to consume something that has that bacteria inside it.
And so it crawls from its mom's pouch down to its mom's butthole and eats a runny poop slurry called pap. The weird part is the sentence, and I'm quoting now from Internet sources that are scientific in nature and highly researched by me, it says, quote, the koala nuzzles the butt until the slurry comes out. So that's COOL. Uh, that's why we just called it the deed. Like anytime you're nuzzling a butthole until something comes out of it, you have strayed far from the course.
The deed produces a sloppy wet pile called pap, which is a transition nutrient between the mother's milk and the eucalyptus leaves. The koala will eat the rest of its life. This pap contains the kickstarting bacteria for the microbiome that the koala needs to eat the yummy eucalyptus. And honestly, the pap is great. It has the nutrients, it prepares the joey koalas. But, like, why does it have to come out of the butthole? Why would they have to eat it from the butt area?
Why can't the mom just, like, dookie pile and the baby, then go over and visit that? Or why can't the mom just regurgitate something that contains the pap? God, in all of your infinite wisdom, why was this the arrangement? Why is Joey koala supping pap from the mom's butthole? I don't understand it. Koalas have to eat their mom's poop as a means for survival. It's troubling. It's just troubling.
But as we said, these blokes are struggling between sucking their mom's beef for poopy gut health to just kind of being guaranteed to have chlamydia at this point. Like, they're having a rough go. But perhaps the future is bright. As stated, to treat chlamydia and koalas would kill their microbiome needed for eucalyptus consumption. But what if, after the koala was treated for the clam, they underwent a fecal transplant, but this time as an
adult? And with this proposal, the lifespan, or the life pattern of a koala would be you're born, you perform the deed on your mom, then as an adult, you contract chlamydia. It's the DREAM. That's the top three. You're given antibiotics, your tummy hurts and you need to eat or have poop injected into you so you can continue eating those very good leaves again and likely get chlamydia all over again one day? And I think, with that in mind, I think the goal
is to get the chlamydia under control. Can we all agree we need to get the chlamydia sQuare? That's where we're at. KOALAS are WEIRD. UM, they're a very strange BEING. They have hopefully helped you celebrate groundhogs day as you've taken in another one of these amazing creatures. I hope you had a fantastic groundhogs day. This brings us to the end of another episode of privy. Thank you so much for joining us. As always, we would love for you to visit us on social
media. Follow us. There we are at Privycast on all social media. We got discord working on all sorts of things. Just go follow us there. Uh, links in the ding dong doodly boober below has all the social links in that in the drum IO. Privycast. Send us an email privycast@gmail.com. You can send us episode suggestions, comments, concerns, questions, if you want to be on the show. If you want to tell me about somebody else who wants to be on the show, email us. We'd love to hear
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spread this nonsense far and wide. We'd like to thank Kevin McLeod and Pottington Bear for the use of their music this week. Thank you, Kevin and Pottington. This has been another episode of Privy. Thank you so much for joining us. Don't forget to wash your butthole. Keep pooping in the free world. And now, as always, don't forget to flush. Hm.