Katie Goldin talks 'Creature Feature'

a very knowledgeable host. Yeah, Creature Feature is a is a great new show. Katie knows a lot about animals and biology and evolution and psychology and uh, and so we we wanted our listeners to go check out that show. Get into that too. I think it'll be right up your alley. Yeah. She chats with guests about, you know, curious tidbits regarding animal biology, animal behavior, and it publishes

every Wednesday. It was kind of sandwiched in between Stuff to Blow your Mind episodes like that, Right for all those people who are like, where can I get more leeches and bat sex between my two weekly episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind? This is where you go. All right, We're gonna play a trailer before we jump into our interview with Katie, and I also just want to let everybody know if you want to check this out online. The website for Creature Feature is Creature Feature

pod dot com. All right, let's have a listen to that trailer. Humanity has spent a long time distancing ourselves from the animal Kingdom. We wear clothes over our nakedness, use the stock market, and go to the bathroom and specially designated areas. But if you take a closer look at the animal Kingdom, you'll find blood, bands and treachery that make Game of Thrones seem like a dumb show

for babies. I'm Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology at Harvard and I pretend to be a bird on Twitter and my new podcast, Creature Feature brings you tales of love, murder, sex, betrayal, and deception and the lives of both animals and humans. We asked the questions, what is going on in the brains of people who suffer the delusion that they're a living corpse? How does a romantic relationship work out between a man in a car? What do you do when you find out your lover

wants to move in to your body. On Creature Feature, we view nature in man from a new perspective each episode, asking a comedian to get inside the minds of animals so we can explore the startling connections to human psychology. Join us every Wednesday starting on Halloween and subscribe on Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your sick auditory kicks. All right, well, let's go ahead and have a chat with Katie Golden, host of Creature Feature. Welcome to Stuff

to blow your mind. Hey, great to be here. Could you introduce yourself to the audience out there. Yeah, So, I'm Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology at Harvard, and I run the Twitter account pro Bird Rights, where I pretend to be a bird activist, and I host the new show from How Stuff Works called Creature Feature, where we take an animals eye view at human behavior

and a humans eye view looking at animal behavior. So I love this particular angle because, yeah, we can't help but but look at the animal world, and we on one level, we can't help but see them as as little or large versions of ourselves, and then we can freak out a bit when they do something that is totally in human. Yeah, I just think it's it's interesting because there's either the tendency to other over anthropomorphizes or

under anthropy morph us. So, UM, we'll see an animal behavior that we think, oh, they're feeling a certain way, like, um, if an insect is uh is stalking, something like like the bullet spider likes to capture its prey by swinging a piece of of its web with the sticky bullus on the end, which is like this this bulb that uh, you know, it's it's fashioned after it. It's kind of like that weapon, which is like a string with those two heavy weights, and then you swing it and you

capture your prey. And then that's what the bullet spider does. So when you're watching him do that, you're thinking, oh, he's thinking, oh, here we go, gonna try to get this fly and oh, shoot, I missed, and then he looks disappointed. But of course it's a spider, so it's very unlikely it feels things like disappointment. But on the other hand, I feel like more intelligent animals like especially dogs um who have co evalved with us and chimpanzee

is and other primates and uh uh. Sea mammals that are pretty complex do actually feel um emotions and and it is reasonable to attribute human esque feelings to them. And uh so, I think that's really interesting. I think one of the reasons that the whole like human pretending to be an animal on Twitter, one of the reasons that is so interesting is because it tends to tell us more about like humans in the nature of social

media that does about animals. Yeah, I mean so, one thing is I find birds to be innately funny because they seem so self absorbed if you watch them. I used to own a couple of pair of heats. I've been an avid bird watcher since I was a toddler. Really, my mom used to say I would chase birds and get really disappointed because they wouldn't make friends with me.

So I've always had an interest in birds, and they just they they The way they carry themselves is it's with such arrogance and with such self confidence and the little head bob that they do, and the preening and the fluffing up, and I feel like they kind of I think when our relationship with social media is at times really great, it can be used for wonderful things,

but often it's very egotistical, very self indulgent. And so that's why I feel like a bird is a great character to have on Twitter and social media because that like self preening, uh just comes so naturally to birds. And it's really fun to explore the kinds of self centeredness that I think we we all have to a certain extent where everything is about us. We're uncomfortable when we're talking about things that aren't about us, and uh so it's it's just fun to explore that from a

little acute, little bird. Another thing I love about human contemplations of the animal, Uh it comes to into these sort of folk ideas that we have about like, say what certainly what our pets are, but also regarding things

like the squirrel. Uh. This is something that we we talked about on on our show recently about uh getting down into the meat eating habits of the of the squirrel, and also some of the ideas about squirrel predation about not just eating, uh you know, not just scavenging for me, but actively pursuing prey at least in certain certain circumstances. And it really throws our sort of folk mentality for what this animal is out the window and we either have to embrace or run from this this new idea

that the science gives us. Yeah, that's really interesting. Um. When I was in school, I did this study that made me seem really weird amongst my peers because what we had to do is go out there with our clipboards and study the squirrels on campus. Um. And so you're just sitting there watching a squirrel eating nuts for hours. Um. And one thing, they're so highly programmed to get maximum calories.

So if they find a nut that has a hole in it, they're going to eat it immediately because they have figured out uh that that whole means that there's a larva in there for a type of moth that if they just bury it, that larva is going to eat the meat of the nut. Uh. And if they eat it now, they get that extra protein that the meat of the insect uh, in addition to the meat of the acorn. But if they bury it, they don't

get anything. So they've learned to hedge their beds there and eat it immediately, whereas pristine nuts they will bury and say for later. So they're extremely opportunistic. And um, I don't find it surprising that they actively go after meat because they're just so there. They require so many much caloric intake that they will do what they can.

And I think that's kind of an interesting um. I mean, it's this is not they aren't actually the link evolutionarily, but you can kind of see how that sort of shrew like mammal can be a link but from or before an insectivore to uh the omnivorous um mammals that that are like badgers and uh ferrets and so on, that that can evolve from those more harmless seeming mammals. I love how the squirrel carnivory and squirrel predation thing

reveals that there's just like people think. I mean, people in places where squirrels are common think they know everything there is to know about squirrels just by looking out the back window or something, because you see them all the time. And then when you suddenly become aware that

they're they're doing these bloody things. Not all the time, but sometimes they're doing these bloody things that you had no idea about, it sort of makes you realize that there's so much to nature that you are completely blind to, even when you think you're looking at it a lot. Yeah, it's sort of that weird shock moment you get when you see like a heron with a rabbit or a mammal like in its mouth and you're like, whoa that

bird is? Because like we think of when we think of birds of prey, we think of raptors, so hawks, eagles, osprery's the ones with the you know, the menacing looking ones. Herons look beautiful and elegant, like, you know, these these exquisite pretty creatures. But they'll they'll eat a go for for sure. I think we were talking about the example.

It's it's in one of the David Attenborough documentaries of these horrible sites of pelicans just gobbling up baby birds, just cramming them into their beaks and their little wings and feet sticking out all over the place, eating them like popcorns. Yeah. Funny, Yeah, that's uh, they'll yeah, I mean, they got a lot of space in those beaks, might as well fill it up with baby birds. Yeah, I mean a lot of it, A lot of it. Especially these these acts of predation. They do come down to

the the raw economy of of life. I mean you see it, especially in examples of say, cannibalism um. And and also we've talked a bit about this on the show with the coprophagiah the consumption of poop, which which once you boil away, boil down, you take away so many of the human complications associated with the topic. You're like, well that makes sense for an animal. Yeah, You're you're being efficient. You're recycling food, digesting it and then saving it,

so a lot for a lot of animals. It's also like the special poops that aren't really pooped, they're like food poop. Uh, specifically like in guinea pigs and wombats and stuff, they make the little food poops pops. Yeah. Yeah. And also with the cannibalism, I think it can be really counterintuitive. So like filial cannibalism, um seem like, well why would you do that, You're you're gonna be an

evolutionary dead end. But with fish, um, when they practice eating their own babies, um, they're actually picking out the ones that are the least fit, so the slowest to develop, and then that way they can spend all their time investing in the baby fish that are most likely too mature to adulthood. So they're um, they're both benefiting from the extra nutrition from eating their babies, and then also the time um focused on the most likely to succeed.

So it's this very cruel capitalist, uh like economic um cost benefits analysis that these fish do. They don't really have any sentiment for their own offspring, going all in on the best ones exactly. H doesn't help that they're called fries, which sounds delicious. Baby fish are called fries sous. Yesterday I was listening to a couple of recent episodes of your show, which I I must say, I really enjoyed.

I was listening to the ones about animals who are worse at sex, and there was one that we've talked about on the show before that I really thought might come up, but but y'all didn't mention. And it's the male nursery web spider. Do you do you know about this one? Tell me a little more about it. The it's the one that so they bring nuptial gifts that in order to yeah, to woo the female spiders. The males bring like a package that's supposed to be a

food item wrapped in silk. But the way that the bad gift giving comes in is that a lot of them try to pass off a insect husk that they have already drained of all the delicious fluids, or like a little or like a little twig. Yeah, yeah, just like nothing, and they're they're trying to cheat and such dirt bags. It's yeah, So I've actually I have heard of this and I've done a little bit of reading about it, and it's it's so interesting because they'll do

a really elaborate wrapping jobs. So it'says if someone hands you this beautifully wrapped gift with bows and ribbons and spangles, and then uh, it takes you, like it takes you a long time to unwrap it, and as you're unwrapping it, there like making the moves on you, and like by the time you open the gift and it's like a rock, they've already copulated with you. And then you're like, hey, get back here, but then they're they're running off laughing.

I think we did read a study, just off my memory, I think we were a study when we talked about this that found that the ones who brought bad gifts were more likely to be the victims of sexual cannibalism afterwards. That's right, So, like I mean, it makes sense too.

So if you've brought a you're you're taking a big risk there because while you are getting rid of the cost of hunting for a piece of food, Um, once they open it and nothing's there, they're gonna go to prey mode because or pre it or more mode because they don't have a snack. So you know, they're like, oh, hey, well there's a snack over there that was just having

sex with me, so I'll eat that. Do you do you have a favorite example that you wanna tell the stuff to blow your mind crowd about from the Bad Sex episode? Well, I think my favorite is, um the uh the new to branch uh having disposable penises, because um, it's really interesting. So uh they will have, uh, they'll copulate and then after copulation, they'll just shed their penis. Um and oh, by the way, new tole branches are

these really interesting? They look like um, uh they're a marine animal that looks like a sort of beautiful snails or slug with all these colors and there are pretty neat looking um and so uh it'll once it sheds the penis, it grows one back within twenty four hours because it actually has this big coil of um of genital material uh inside of its body, and so it's like a fruit by the foot that just kind of like um keeps coming out. And the reason it does this,

it actually has a really good reason. So it's too basically ensure that when it copulates, it's given like it's all fresh um uh sperm material. So it's all its own sperm material, and it's able to um. It's like decreases the chance that it's going to get uh sperm from a previous copulation with the other new to branch on its penis, and then if it sheds, it puts a new one in. Then it's like guaranteed that that this is gonna be all its own genetic material. And

it's like the lysol wipe method of mating. Yeah, I was thinking when I was listening to that of like those things where you tear a ticket off at the at the deli counter or something number forty two, servicing number forty two. These are beautiful creatures, though I was just looking at images of them. They look kind of like eighties glam rock slugs. They really do um. They and there's so many different kinds. Some of them look

like dragons. Some of them look like a scrunchy from the eighties, like you were saying, they're uh, they're beautiful. Animals are also hermaphrodites, so they they have the capability of having both sexual organs, which is really interesting. All Right, we need to take a quick break, but we will be right back with more of our conversation with Katie. Thank thank Alright, we're back now on Creature Feature. It's it's of course, not only just about animals. It's also

about the guests that you have on to discuss these animals. Uh. So each episode has a particular guest in a particular theme or topic in place. How do you go about putting those two together, Like which comes first, the guests or the topic? Well, so all right, it's usually the topic first, so I'll write my notes, and then I kind of tried to think about guests who might fit

best with that topic. So, for instance, I was really interested in looking at vices in um uh in the animal world, so drug use drinking, birds who get drunk, uh, animals who seek out natural highs um and so the guest I chose. Robert Evans has written a book on the history of advice and he talks a little bit about the evolutionary history of getting drunk and uh so he was perfect for that episode also because he's tried out some really interesting drugs. Yeah, he's He of course

is also the host of Behind the Bastards. That's right, that's right, it's a great podcast. So earlier you mentioned that when you were a child you were not able to actually make friends with birds. And on the show on Creature feature you interview humans. But if you could have one bird on the show as a guest, and you could actually speak to that bird and ask you questions, which bird species would you choose? Oh, that's a really

good question. I think, uh, any species of parasitic birds, so cuckoos or cowbirds or honey guides because they're so sneaky. Um if for those of you who don't know, cuckoos will uh lay their eggs in the nests of host species these uh and trick them into raising their own young. And they use a lot of different strategies, like sometimes the baby chicks have voices that sound like a bunch of baby birds, So then the host species feels compelled to feed it way more food than they would normally

feed a single baby bird. They also push out the babies from the nests. Um. And when we'll kill the host species, real babies. Um. And sometimes the cuckoo parents will disguise themselves as raptors, so have the uh have stripes on their bellies and curved beaks that will look

make them look like predatory birds. Um. And they're so devious that I feel like it would be they would be really interesting to interview, like like interviewing criminal or something where it's just like like why why do you do this? And um, uh like how how could you so like a hard hitting sixty minutes styled Yeah, yeah, like Frost v. Nixon like me versus Birdston, Like why did they always keep going back into the prison to interview Charles Manson again? It's like is he going to

have something good to say this time? Yeah? Like a true bird crime podcast where yeah, like like why do you do these crimes? Birds? Stop it? So I've got

another question along those lines. I assume you have the same kind of uh attitude in general toward animal life that we do, which is like we try not to have negative emotions about animal behaviors and and always just like have a sense of wonder about the natural world and positive feelings about animals, even when they do things that if humans did then we would find them disgusting.

But is there an animal that you find you you can't separate your emotional reaction from, Like there's just some animal that you can't help but feel contempt for even

though you know you shouldn't. Yeah, So I think it's interesting because a lot of animals that normally you would feel discussed for, like spiders or even even things like parasitic wasps that are really disgusting, I'm too interested in to find truly disgusting, So I think, in all honesty, even though I understand that like that cockroaches and then

other pests and and things like parasites. So when my dog gets fleas or a tick, or when she was a puppy she had round worm, as a lot of puppies have the disgust I feel for those kinds of insects is too much for me to overcome, because while I find parasites actually really fascinating, when it's affecting my dog, who I love, you know, it's I just feel so angry.

So when I would capture a tick guy would be like cursing at it and and be like, you know you messed up now, buddy, because I messed with the wrong dog. Um. And it's really the only time that I because like I don't I don't like to kill spiders that are in my house, So like I'll I'll capture them and release them outside and give them like a little snack of tiny sandwich to take with them

because I care about them. But like finding a tick, yeah, finding like fleas, I really get so angry that I have to kill them because it's like, how dare you hurt my dog? What did she ever do to you? Well, they are these are the animals that are still the enemy. I mean it's you can't look at ketos and ticks, mosquitoes ticks and it's like guinea worm. I mean, these these things are still enemies of humanity. If there's anything that truly deserves our hatred and contempt in the animal world,

I think that's probably it. Yeah. I mean, like I can't even though find my way to eating like rats, because I mean I'm afraid of them. I don't want them in my house. But once one got in my heating vent and like lived there for a while, and I kind of halfheartedly put some traps in there because it's like, well, I can't have this rat in here, you know, pooping in my and where the air comes in. But um it in a trap went off, and I felt kind of like, h huh, that's I'm sad. I'm

I'm relieved, but sad. I feel bad that I killed a rat. And then I opened up the vent and there was the trap with like a tuft of hair in it, and the rat was nowhere to be found. And I was like, at that point, I was like, you've deserved it, buddy. He deserved to survive. So I didn't mess with it anymore. Eventually it went away, but it was just like, you know, I just had this rat living in my vent. It's like, oh, there's Mr

Wiggles doing his thing. I find that I have complex emotions regarding like rats and mice and so forth in our urban environments, because on one level, I'm like, you're rat, you're not supposed to be here. But then I have been by I mean, you know, humans, we've done so much to unbalance the environment by building a house here, by having all these uh these these artificial food sources

in the area. Uh, it's really on us that that they're here at all anyway, And so then I end up feeling guilty for for having to put out the traps, even though they're the ones that are breaking into my home. Right, it's not to them, it's not our our homes. It's like this is their natural environment because they've learned to they've learned to survive in human environment. And that's so interesting because for most animals, when humans move in, they

just die off or move out. And for the animals that can actually adapt to human society and thrive, we hate. We hate them for being able to do that. We resent them for invading our bass even though you know, if anything, were the invaders that are encroaching on most animal territory and typically just breaking havoc and wiping them outain. And we have these these scamp few hero animals that are able to live with us, and then we're we

have the goal to hate them for it. Hating hating a rat for getting into your pasta boxes or whatever. It is almost like hating a dog for loving, you know, it's just like what we made them do, right, right, they co evolved with us over thousands and thousands of years dogs and rats and somehow rats are the bad guys. You know. We actually talked about this in a couple of episodes we did UM earlier this year about the idea of urban evolution, ways that animals are adapting to

urban landscapes. And there's a lot of fascinating stuff going on with animals in urban spaces, like the idea that in some cases, uh, that urban spaces might be selecting for personality traits and animals like neophilia, where like a racu raccoon has a better chance of surviving in a city if it's the kind of raccoon with a personality that wants to approach unfamiliar objects rather than regard them

with caution. Yeah. Yeah, that's It's very interesting because you can take an animal that is feral and over you know, just a few generations start to find surprisingly uh tame traits.

So there you know that experiment with UM the silver foxes in Russia where uh they were breeding them for they're testing to see if they could breed in these more tame traits and UM over, I mean it was like a couple of decades, but uh, just a few like several generations of these foxes, they would do the ones that had that neophilia where it's not that they were fearful of humans or aggressive towards humans, but sort

of politely interested in humans. And then they kept selecting those foxes, and then they started having patchy fur, like having spots and patches like dogs do on their coats. And then there the cartilage in their ears became softer, and so they would have ears that would fold down, uh,

like in dogs. So it's really interesting to see how those tame characteristics that we see in dogs have some there must be some shared genetic links where some the genes responsible for a more curious, tame personality can also be linked to something just superficial like ear cartilage. Uh So, I think that's really I wonder if raccoons had enough generations of these tame, more curious raccoons, if they would start to, you know, like look cuter in some way.

Like we actually hypothesized that in the episode. We were like, I wonder if over many generations, city dwelling animals will tend to become cuter. Raccoons kind of have a leg up on the situation because they are already pretty cute. I mean, have you seen the video of the raccoon trying to wash cotton candy? Yes? Always sad, heartbreaking, it's

the human condition. It's a modern day sisyphis because the ra the sorry, the raccoon has this piece of cotton candy, it's given and so because it's a raccoon and they like to wash their food because they're so fastidious that he went into the river and tried to wash it and it dissolved and he's like, what is this? What is this witchcraft? He gets a new piece of cotton candy but does the same thing and he doesn't learn.

I know, poor baby. So Katie, uh we again, we talk a lot about biology on the show, and one of our favorite topics as well is monsters, both in terms of the biological hybridity that is often on display with them and because no matter how bizarre the monster noot, no matter how weird the creature, and a you know, science fiction film happens to be nature usually has it beat for weirdness. So we were wondering, do you have any favorite monsters or film or fiction that invoke real

world biology in some way, shape or form. Mm hmm. Yeah, actually I do. So do you know that video game The Last of Us, So they have the I guess the monsters in the game are the people that have been infected with this zombiesque virus um. But it's not actually sorry, it's not a virus at all. Um. It's a fungus. So it's called courtis Ups in the game.

And it's really cool because I think the game designers were paying attention to actual evolutionary biology because Court of Steps is a type of fungus that does in fact infect the brains of insects. So in the game, this fungus creates spores that you will breathe in and it'll affect infect your brain, causing you to be aggressive. Um. And then some of the later monsters are have this like really creepy overgrowth of fungus, just like sprouting out

of their heads and growing over their bodies. Um. And in fact, like court a scepts in real life, this fungus will uh grow sprout out of the heads of ants and other insects and cause them to kind of

go a little cookie, so they will leave. They'll either be carried off by fellow ants who are like, oh, this is uh, this is a zombie ant, so they'll carry it off, and those ants that actually carry the infected ant will go on a suicide mission because they're like, well, we're going to get infected too, so we don't want to risk the rest of the colony um which is also very kind of like a trope from um zombie movies.

But so the the infected ant, once it's off on its own and it's in the final stages of this infection, it will have this this like instinct to climb up either a plant stalk or up a branch as high as it can and then clean bite down on it. Do this like death grip, a literal death grip, because it dies and then the fungus sprouts out of its head and then it will produce spores that will spread

and hopefully infect another insect. So it's controlled this insect to become like an incubator for more spores, just like the in the Last of Us, which I think it's really one of my favorite I know it's a video game, but it's like, to me, beats a lot of the zombie movies or zombie genre because it's so cool and how carefully they constructed this zombie scenario. I'm not a big gamer, but I've played that game multiple times. I think it's really excellent, and I love the mythology there.

It reminds me a little bit of of a nineteen sixty three Toho movie from Japan called Matango, not in a way where I think there's actually any connective tissue between the films, And I don't think Metango has a lot of science in it. It's got mushroom, has mushroom monsters, and like the mushroom spores turn humans into like into gradually more mushroom e creatures. That's interesting, that's so cool.

One of the things that's so fascinating about stuff like the Court accepts parasite, though, is the specificity of the behaviors that generates, you know, like you can imagine very it feels more natural to say, okay, you could get some kind of parasite that would have a very very broad kind of effect on your behavior, like maybe the way, Oh, what's the toxoplasma one the idea that it that it toxoplasma toxoplasma Gandhi. I think it's called that it uh.

It reduces the fear and caution and inhibitions and mice, so that they're more likely to go out and be eaten by a cat, and it increases their attraction to the what the smell of cat urine or something like that, Right, there's a lesion between the parts of the brain responsible for arousal and fear, and so it it it's like it it actually rewires their brains, so they associate that that fear response from the smell of cat urine with

a arousal Yeah. Yeah, yeah, that's like the the excitation part of anxiety without the being repat old part of anxiety, right right, But but that's easier for me to just internalize and understand because it seems like that's actually a very broad and kind of easy change to make to the brain. In a way, it's fascinating the specificity of the ant behaviors that are created by the parasite in the case of corticeps, yeah, and there's other other um

examples of that. So the parasitoid wasp will infect or weaver spiders um with their larva, So the wasp will attack the or weber spider and then lay it's larva either h inside of the spider or just on top of the spider and it clings to the spider and um it makes it do what seems like this really specific behavior, So instead of weaving its normal pretty web, it will start weaving like this cocoon, an extra strong cocoon that will eventually become sort of this cradle for

the parasites offspring UM so that it can be it can safely develop and kind of in to twist the knife, the the larva will eventually eat the host spider and just discard its carcass uh and so it's it's really interesting because it's hard to imagine how is this larva controlling the brain of this spiders so that it weaves It's in a cocoon that seems so specific, so detailed, And what researchers have found is it there's a hormone, a chemical that the larva produces that is actually associated

with the orb weavers spiders one of its molting stages. So when it's molding, it wants to create a cocoon made out of these especially strong fibers and they're also um. They they have this sort of ultra violet UH light so that other insects won't fly into it. While it's molting, and that protects it when it's vulnerable so high the larva hijacks the orb beaver and makes it think it's molting.

But it's even stronger than um normally, so it's like it's pumping it full of this chemical that it's almost goes into this super molting stage where it creates an extra safe and protective cocoon that eventually the parasite will use, uh at the expense of the poor little spider. That's fascinating. I guess what it really means is that a lot of the behaviors we think of as very specific and very complex are actually just much easier to trigger by

exploiting existing hormones and circuitry and stuff than we would think. Yeah, and I think that's why you find it in insects much because they have while they do have very complex behavior, their brains are a great deal smaller and I think easier to reprogram. And I mean the same thing with rats.

I think that it would be a lot more difficult to say too, reprogram primate to do a very specific behavior, although you could argue that with rabies, the some of the behaviors like aggression and excessive drooling and hydrophobia are all uh beneficial for the rabies virus to spread, so so you know it is it can happen. All right, hold that thought, because we're gonna take a quick break and be right back with more of this interview than Okay,

we're back alright, Katie. One question that we we have frequently asked guests on the show, especially if they have any interest in biology at all, is this, what is your favorite dinosaur or prehistoric creature. Ah, that's a really good question. Uh. I would have to say archaeopterics because

it's the predecessor to birds. It's uh that that first gliding dinosaur that uh, and it's so it's really interesting to see that transition from um, the the kind of raptor esque dinosaurs that had no no interest, no need to fly, and then the archaeopterics what couldn't fly exactly, but it did glide, so it would kind of climb up a tree and then really clumsily glide from one

tree to the other. And I just think that's it's so cool to me how flight has independently evolved, uh in so many different species that you just never spect so uh, you have flying squirrels, which is sort of like the arc the optics of animals because they do the same thing where they kind of have um developed that gliding um ability. And then obviously there's also bats who have developed that more a little more um efficiently.

And uh. In insects, flight evolved from actually like their wings sprouted from their lungs tissue, and so you see like with dragonflies there how wings are very close to where their their gills and lungs are and it's it's just I find it so cool that dinosaurs just you know,

decided to become birds eventually. Uh. Speaking of other versions of evolving gliding, we just recently talked about flying snakes, which which is fascinating the way that they can flat their bodies out into a concave shape to create that kind of wing that they undulate in the air to to help prolong their gliding period. Yeah, and that's so cool because they do have Snakes have these really interesting muscle skeletal structures that allow them to contract their muscles

and expand them in the act of swallowing food. So well, I don't I don't know this for a fact, but I would assume that the that gliding those gliding snakes have kind of they use those same muscles that are so good at swallowing and pushing food down through their very long trachea and bodies to digest, they can use that same those same kinds of structures to be able to flatten themselves and achieve the gliding structure. Do you guys know if that's that's the case. No, I didn't.

I haven't read anything about that, but that's a very good point. I would assume that's probably true. It seems like it is. It's kind of but I know for a fact. Yeah. So, speaking of feather dinosaurs, do you do you also get worked up when you see dinosaur movies and there's not a feather to be found. Yes, yeah, I think that. Here's the thing is, I think this is such a good opportunity now that we know. I'm fine with classics like Jurassic Park that the dinosaurs don't

have feathers because we just didn't know back then. So that's fine. But now we do know, and people I hear people say like, oh, it would look so stupid, and I don't think so. No, exactly, birds don't look stupid. They look amazing. So can you imagine like a a

raptor with fully feathered it would look glorious. Uh. And you know, it's interesting there's this habit of UH artists who recreate animal images from fossils of doing what's called I think it's called shrink wrapping, where you ignore, you don't know, muscle and fat tissoe precisely, so there's a tendency to underestimate how plump something is and how fluffy

it is. So uh and I've seen there's this really cool image online where this artist made examples of it by uh working backwards from like a swan skeleton to create yeah, to create that like swan like animal, as if as if the swan skeleton were a dinosaur fossil, and and what it would look like if it was interpreted in the way that dinosaurs are. And it's horrifying and swans are lovely. So I feel like we should be giving, you know, just giving real dinosaurs have curves,

is what I'm saying. Wow that, Yeah, I've never thought about that, it would even modern skeletons. But I think we're all three totally on the same page. And I think even if you're not going to make them beautiful if you're trying to make them terrifying. Can you imagine? I think that the predators would be more frightening if they were covered in feathers. Isn't imagine being eaten by a giant bird? That makes even less sense than eaten

by a lizard. Oh. I mean, since since I was a kid, I've been I was always intrigued by these paleo art illustrations of terror birds snatching up um I forget the scientific name, but the dawn horses, the miniature prehistoric horses. Just the idea of this already large bird eating small horses, uh just filled me with dread and uh and I would love to see well, like where the terror bird movies. It seems like like this is

an untapped area of riches here. Yeah, I mean I feel like if you try to imagine lying on your stomach and looking up at like a chicken, because if you look at it from that perspective, it's actually kind of scary. They have those dead reptilian eyes, sharp claws,

and just this look of anger. There's a Werner Herzog quote about chickens about how I can't from memory just do the exact quote, but it's something about how chickens are just so innately achingly stupid in me, he says, when you when you look into the eyes of the chicken, the the immensity of the stupidity is breathtaking. Uh. And if you if you make Verner Herzog feel despair, it's you've got something going on, because that man is is

a nihilist two and all nilism. Well, Katie, do you have anything coming out soon on the show that you specifically want people to watch out for and and listen when it when it hits the feed. Yeah. So I'm looking into evil in the animal and human world, and there's this really fascinating concept in criminal psychology called the dark tetrad, and I look at the animals and humans that best exemplify this evil behavior and it's it's really cool.

It's it's actually kind of metal. So I'm excited for it. And can you remind all of our listeners here where they can find Creature feature when it publishes, and where they can find you on social media? Yeah. So it publishes every Wednesday. Uh. And you can find it on the I Heart radio app, Spotify, Apple Podcasts, pretty much anywhere you can get your podcasts um. You can find us on Twitter, Facebook, and our website is Creature Feature Pod.

Our Twitter is Creature Feet Pod. Not feet as in you know, animal feet, but feet as in they have achieved a great feat. All right, well, it has been a delight to talk to you today, Katie. Thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having all right, so there you have it again. The show is Creature Feature. The host is Katie Golden. You can find them at Creature Feature Pod dot com. As for Stuff to Blow your Mind, you can always find us at our mothership

stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. That's where you'll find all the episodes of the podcast. You'll find links out to our various social media accounts. You'll find that cool store button at the top of the page. That's where you can go to our t public page and buy some cool merch with our logo on it, with our cool skug King of the Rats design, or our Cambrian Life logo or of course all hell the Great Basilisk.

These are all fine uh purchases you can made, especially make especially as we get into the holidays here, and it's a great way to support the show. And if you want to support the show in a way that doesn't cost you any money at all, simply rate and review us wherever you have the power to do so. So yeah, thanks again to Katie for joining us today. Big thanks as always to our excellent audio producers Alex Williams and Try Harris. For a way to get in

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