No Such Thing As A Fish - No Such Thing As An Award-Winning Gecko

Episode Date: May 11, 2023

Dan, James, Andrew and Sally Phillips discuss mythical beasts, hungry caterpillars, false geckos, and Super Furry Animals. Visit nosuchthingasafish.com for news about live shows, merchandise and more episodes. Join Club Fish for ad-free episodes and exclusive bonus content at apple.co/nosuchthingasafish or nosuchthingasafish.com/patreon

Hi everyone, welcome to this week's episode of No Such Thing as a Fish. Before we get going, I have some news, and that is that we are going to do some live shows. Now, this news will not be news to those of you who are members of Club Fish, because you have already had your priority booking time. But to everyone else, the tickets will be available on Friday the 12th of May at 2pm UK time. That is today, if you're listening to the show, the day it goes out, or it's a Friday in the past if you're not. So the tickets are very likely to be available right now

and the way you get those is to go to no-suchthinkersof-fish.com forward slash Soho. The shows will be at the Soho Theatre in London. They take place from the 17th of July to the 21st of August. It's going to be a whole lot of fun, loads of facts, loads of dorkiness, loads of special, special guests. And as I said, if you want tickets for that, you can go to no-sit-singersof-fish.com forward slash So-ho. If you're thinking it's in London I can't get to there

I live all the way in Belgium then fear not because we also will be doing one show in Belgium at the Nerdland Festival that will be with our old friend Levenskaya and that will take place

Zondag the 28th of May which luckily I mean my I assume that's Flemish is not that good but luckily my diary tells me it will be on Sunday

the 28th of May and tickets for that are available at nerdlandfestival.b.e. So I hope to see lots of you at some of those gigs. But as far as today's podcast is concerned, it is a live show. And it was one that we did at the British Library with the incredible comedy actor and genius. That is Sally Phillips. We did this show for the Fantastic Beasts Exhibition at the British Library. They wanted us to do a show all about animals.

and I'll be honest, we stretched that a fair bit from time to time, but we had so much fun. I really hope you enjoy the show. I'm sure you will. And I guess what else is there to say, apart from On With a Podcast. Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast this week coming to you live from the British Library. My name is Dan Shriver. I am sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter Murray, and Sally.

Philip, and once again, we... Yes, and once again, we have gathered round the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days, and in no particular order, here we go. Starting with fact number one, and that is my fact. My fact this week is that the British Library's Fantastic Beast Collection

originally included accounts of a nine-foot dragon terrorizing Essex and an army of horses that teleported to rural whales. And it was donated by the founder of the British Museum, Sir Hans Sloan. Wow.

So he was a nutcase. So here's the thing, right? Hans Sloan, if you don't know who he is, he was one of the founders of the British Museum, an incredible guy. He was a doctor. And at the top of being a doctor, he was obsessed with collecting. He collected everything.

And that's what became the basis of the British Museum's collection. He was a hoarder. He was a hoarder. Yeah. I mean, he was a serious hoarder. He had like a separate apartment to hoarder. because it got too much in his own. Yeah, and he...

And how did he die? Did it all collapse on him? Yes, exactly. A museum pillar took him out. No, he was quite old, I think, when he died. I think he was in his 90s. He was in 93. Is this the bringer of chocolate? The man I know is the bringer of the hot chocolate to the United Kingdom. Controversial.

Controversial. Is he? He was. And I think it's been claimed that that was something he nicked. It was ready in place. Yeah, I think he was in Jamaica, maybe. Okay. Yeah.

Okay. And then it was a practice there, you sort of grated cocoa with milk and cinnamon and stuff. But I think he probably... Sorry to shit on him in his own home, but... Well, the teleporting horse is better anyway. It's way better, isn't it?

Yeah. So this is what I was about to say was, is all the collections that got handed over after he passed away in his will to be the basis of the British Museum's collection eventually became the British Library's collection as well. And there was lots of papers, there was lots of physical objects,

and a part of it was a collection of things called Strange News. He was obsessed with strange news. Stories that would come out from France and Scotland and Wales of odd things that, you know, like... Well, like dragons. Like dragons, yeah.

Appearing hosses in the middle of Wales. It was the artefact version of no such thing as a fish. Exactly. Well, he's the... Yeah, he's the old me, I guess. You have fewer links to the slave trade. We should say, Dan. Fewer.

Thank you. Yes. So this big dragon that arrived in Essex, it was in a place called Henham, which is just north of Stansted. It's about two miles north of Stansted. And so what I like to imagine is actually there was like a time travel portal that came in,

and it was actually an easy jet flight. Maybe, I don't know. But there's loads of other things that he claimed. And the thing is, he went out to collect things from around the world, but the reason he did that is because he thought it would help people to better understand God's design of the world. And so when he was finding this strange news, a lot of the things he didn't believe in,

but there were some things that he did. So he found a story from France where fist-sized hailstones came down and kind of battered everything and hurt a lot of people and killed a lot of crops. But the only thing that was saved was a Protestant church. And he thought that this was proof that God was saving them. Yeah, this one's amazing. There was a story this is from Scotland. There was a guy who died and he was in his home.

They laid him to in state. Is it in state? What is it? When you lay someone? Sure. Yeah. So he's laid in the house. He's in a coffin for people to come and see.

Like an open coffin. Like a wake. Yeah. Estate is pretty fancy. It's pretty queenish, isn't it? Yeah. You just said this guy. Was this the king of Scotland?

No, no. How long was the Q is what? It was just a guy. It was a town of Dumfries. Okay. So apparently, people went to visit him. And then it came the time where, okay, let's bury him now.

And they tried to lift him. and no one could lift him. He was really heavy. They tried everything. So they brought cattle in and they tied ropes around him and tried to pull him and he didn't move.

And then the house burnt down and he remained as the only thing that was still there. He's like Arthur's Sword in the Stone. The guy in the house. Yeah, the corpse in the house. Sorry, so he collected this story but he didn't collect the guy.

No. You can't collect the guy as the point of the story. So he had strict... Were these kept in diary form or like what kind of evidence? These were like weird pamphlets that used to get produced and so people would go and buy them on the street and it would just say, strange news from Scotland. So he's 1660s, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. We should say that, I know we don't need to say it, none of the stuff is true that we're described, as in we keep saying, apparently, and then describing things that should almost... Some people thought it was true. Yeah, that's true. I'm just saying if in like 400 years they're discussing,

a copy of the Daily Star and saying, apparently, there was a... There is an infinitely heavy man. I think I remember that headline. Yeah. I did... Actually, weirdly, I found a star headline

in the course of... Because I was researching animals which are not proven to exist. And there was a headline in the Daily Star in 2008. Loch Ness Monster dies aged three million. That's a shame. I know.

Global warming. Very sad. Yeah. It's interesting the whole thing of fictional, fictional creatures, isn't it? Cryptids. I did Italian. Dante, there were a lot of fictional creatures. The phoenixes in Dante.

Oh, yeah. At only incense and cardamom pods in heaven. Cardamom pods. What's that? It's that bit of a curry that you see and you're like, oh, they've left it in. Oh, wow. No, it's the thing in the jazz version of a cinnamon bun. Right.

Yeah, there were three types of phoenixes, three types of Yeti. Yeah, you found a Yeti that I've never heard of Which is, what was it called? Yeah, there's three types. The Nialmo, which is black, has black fur and is the largest and the fittest, which is 15 foot tall. The Chuti, which is 8 feet tall and lives 8,000 to 10,000 feet above sea level. And the orangshimbombo, which is only three to five feet tall. And I think must have been just mistaken it as an orangutan or some kind of baboon.

Yeah. Well, the first one sounds like a gorilla. Rangshim bongo. It does a bit. Yeah, yeah. The first one you're describing. The black fur, like quite tall. Yeah.

It's interesting. The abominable snowman, I mean, they had some fur, didn't they? They kept, various times over history, they would analyze the DNA of. Yeah. And occasionally find it to be a horse or a... Yeah, or a... But they now think it is a kind of bear hybrid thing, don't they? Really?

How do they? I think so. That's interesting. Also, I've studied this a lot, actually, Sally. I'm trying to find the thing you haven't studied a lot. That's everything else. I can't believe we've hit on the one thing I've studied. This is a dream come true.

But Brian Blessed, who is a very... Yeti. That's what he would say. He would go for the Yeti, looking for the Yeti, and then the locals that he would mean, the Himalayas, would say, oh, it's a Yeti! And he realized that... All the stories are him. It's him.

I read about quite recently in Nepal, they had like these, I think they were models or badges or some kind of publicity of the Yeti. And they sent them out and then all the locals were like, well, the Yeti looks nothing like that. What are you doing?

Because he didn't have any fur on. And the guy who did it said, well, no one knows what it looks like anyway, so that's one thing. And number two, fur is actually really difficult to draw. So King Kong, for example, not a cryptid, I know a fictional... Character?

Character. Yeah. A crowbar is what you're attempting. No. We're talking about large hairy fellas. And King Kong is all of these three things. But King Kong was originally based on a lizard. Was it? Yeah.

Oh, well, Godzilla. No. I think Godzilla's a bit later. King Kong was based on the Komodo Dragon. Really? Yeah. So the filmmaker behind King Kong was Mary and C. Cooper. And he was friends with an explorer called William Burden,

who had got permission to collect some Komodo Dragon. from the Dutch East Indies, as they were then, now in Tunisia. And until 1910, nobody from the West had seen a Komodo dragon. So they were cryptids. They weren't believed in. They had not been sighted, spotted, hunted, hunted, brought back. There were no specimens. And one was brought back by William Burden to the USA.

And in the course of the expedition, his wife was nearly... eaten by a Komodo dragon. What? Really? And, yeah, she'd finished sort of setting a, you know, a photography, you know, like a photo trap up or something for it and was going back and came face to face with one and, you know, had a lucky escape. Wow. And so that image of this kind of glamorous

woman faced with a terrifying beast, when William Burton brought back the sample that he got of a Komodo dragon, Mary and C. Cooper saw it and thought, what if it was a monkey? And that, I mean, because gorillas were also new in the USA at the time. How old was his wife?

Oh, I don't know. Because there is a thing when you sort of hit menopause, your maternal instinct goes really into overdrive, and you start wanting to mother, beautiful, primates, and yeah, lots of women get into trouble that way. Animals and show business is a marriage made in hell. We had an animal agent who came on to smack the pony quite a lot. Jackie, she had quite a lot of represented a lot of animals

that was occasionally weird need, and she had a Vietnamese pop-bellied pig on her business card, and I went, oh, he's so cute. You know, perimenopause starting so cute. And do you still have him? She went, no, he weren't bringing in any work, so we ate him. Wow. I hope she said that in earshot of all the other animals.

You better do your job. Yeah, it's terrible. Apparently the hardest animals to train are owls. They just don't get it, apparently. It's really interesting, isn't it? You'd think that an owl would be smart. No, dumb. Cannot repeat.

Ravens are the dogs of the sky. penguins are aggressive, a bit of a nightmare. And they have explosive poo. Do you know this? Pooh, rain. Penguins. Pooh explodes. So very difficult to pick up.

No, no. No, do you mean the poo shoots out? It doesn't, they don't lay it, and then it just explodes. Imagine if dogs did that. Yeah. Every time you'd be walking through the parker, it'd be like walking through World War I, wouldn't it? Be like the end of blackadder.

Don't take your foot off it. Yeah. They have lots of animals, obviously, playing each part. The kestrel in Kez was played. Do you know this? You're Prudy. He played by three different kestrels called Freeman Hardy and Willis after the shoe shop. That's amazing.

Yeah. I presented the Palm Dog Award for Best K. The Palm Dog. There is, you know, in Cannes Film Festival. Yeah, yeah. Some British journalists, 22 years ago now set up the Palm Dog. rather than the palm door for the best canine performance. And I was lucky enough to present the award with Ronnie Ancona

to Quentin Tarantino on behalf of the dog in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood. Oh, so it's played by three, three dogs, two male dogs and one female dog. Yeah, yeah. So the dogs don't get to come to the ceremony or? Well, they didn't, the dog didn't come to them. No, they found a similar breed. and they brought that dog in. Dog didn't know what was happening.

Oh, God. They ate the first dog, didn't they? Quentin urinated on the carpet. It was fine. But, yeah, yeah. So, so you have several. And they used different animals. So he was saying,

my Quentin. Quentin. Quint. Tarr. My brother tried to license his image to put on lunchboxes. I don't know why. But anyway, they...

Well, hang on, we need to... But he said they had three different dogs, one girl and two boys. And on the day, he thought the two male dogs were better. But then turned out the female dog was actually, when he got into the edit, he realised she was a much better actress. Sorry, your brother tried to license Quentin Tarantino's image, famously a man who makes 18 certificate films for lunchboxes. For children's lunchboxes.

What was he thinking, the market? I didn't ask. It was only like a long time after he told me that that I realized. that that was mad. Tarantino's up there. He's accepting an award as a dog. You know, that image of him, like the Che Guevara Tarantino picture.

I think they were putting that on stuff. Oh, okay. Is that a famous picture? The Che Guevara Tarantino? Do you know the one I mean, though? No. I don't you? Okay. So I feel like there's a very sort of known...

I don't know if you remember, Dan knows everything about Yeti. There's nothing about anything else. Do you know, just going back to mythological creatures a second, the, speaking of penguins exploding poo out of their buns, There's a mythological creature called... Smooth, by the way, smooth.

Thank you. There's a thing called the Bonicon. Have you heard of the Bonicon? Bonican's like a... It's like this beast, which is like a half horse. It's got curved horns. And the way that it would... If it was being hunted by humans,

the way that it would deter the humans, is to fire poisonous shit out of its bum, right? But it can make a distance. And this is what's most impressive about this thing that doesn't exist. Thank you. Is it can shoot at three acres. That's a unit of area, not distance, yeah.

So does he cover the entire like one and a half football pitch? I think it does cover three. I've also read about the Bonacom. Interestingly, Brian Blessed told me, he could do that, can he can do that? When he was on Everest, he said, four acres. Yeah, he said when you, he said he had a bout of diarrhea on Everest and the poo shot out and it, he said, his thing he often says is don't camp under the French, because the fuckers will shit on you.

That's his like, that's like a t-shirt quote from him. But again, who's buying these obscene t-shirts and lunchboxes? Yeah, I need to meet your brother, actually. So anyway, the bonneton. The bonniquin is a terrifying creature with three-acre poisonous poo shoots. And everyone that's depicted trying to hunt it all faces the other way, basically facing as ready to run because they want to escape the firing line. Poisonousy.

I was like fighting Medusa. Have you come across, I'm sure you have, the fictitious creatures of lumberjack culture? No. That sounds amazing. No, guys, settle in. There are a number of books called things like fearsome critters about fictional creatures in lumberjack law.

And they're things like, well, my favorite one, let me look at my favorite one. There's a splinter cat. It's a regular cat, but with no logic. who's an indiscriminate destroyer of hollow trees, which was their explanation for lightning strikes. But there is a... It was one that was the lumberjack hunter

that hides behind trees so you can't see it, but can only be deterred by loads of alcohol. The lumberjacks must be drunk to keep safe. That's good. That's good logic. We're going to have to move on. We've run way over. Oh, no. I was reading some stuff by Alien,

the Roman writer and orator. What? Alien. Alien. Alien. I'm going to call him Alien. Aeelian. Alien.

And he's got loads of amazing creatures. He has the Buprestis, which he believed existed, which is a creature which, if swallowed by a cow, causes the cow to swell and burst. He had a smooth lobster, where if you saw it on the beach,

And then you marked where it was and you drove it to anywhere in the world. When you got back to where it was, it would be back there. Whoa. You sure it wasn't teleporting. And he said also that if a snake is eating something that's a little bit too big for it to swallow and it kind of gets it into the mouth and can't go any further, it will stand straight on its tail and jiggle itself. So the food will go down into his stomach.

Amazing. Have you seen these videos of people hunting anacondas? No. No. They put a leather trouser on. Oh yeah, yeah. And stick their entire leg into the snake's hole. Yeah, they get swallowed.

Why would you do that? And then they have a low... To catch a snake to, I guess... You're the worm for fishing in the... I don't like this. And then they haul you out and then kill the snake. And the weather thing is so that the snake doesn't digest... So all the juices doesn't digest the human body.

And maybe the teeth can't go through it or something. Yeah, I think that as well. It's just awful. Did you see the guy? I think this is right. He was attempting to be swallowed by a snake as well. And it was going to be like a world record. I think I'm right in saying this.

Guinness don't even accept, you know, heaviest cat anymore. I think unfortunately... Didn't they? No. They found an infinitely heavy one in Dumfries, didn't they? But this guy who, this was big. It was set up. It was like with a Nat Geo kind of thing.

The snake started swallowing on the wrong end. So he went head first. And he wasn't ready for it. And so they had to pull him out and cancel. Did he not have his big leather hat? They do. I mean, they catch fish like that sometimes. In America, don't they?

It's catfish. And they'll get the cat to grab hold of their fist. And then when it's bitten, they pull it out. It's called catfisting. Is it? Yes, yeah. I'd rather be catfished, if anything. It is time for fact number two.

That is James. Okay, my fact this week is that in real life, the very hungry caterpillar would have gone around headbutting his mates. So these days, you know, all of these children's books are getting rewritten, aren't they? Like Charlie of the Chocolate Factory and whatever. And I'm calling for the very hungry caterpillar to be rewritten to be more factually accurate. Because according to the people at Florida Atlantic University,

whenever caterpillars get really, really hungry and they don't have enough food, they'll go around looking for other caterpillars and then they'll attack them, knock them off where they're eating and then they'll go in and eat their leaf. No way. Yeah. And so that's what Eric Carl really should have been writing about.

It's a tough one. They don't eat ice cream. They don't eat lollipops. They don't eat salami. They tend to only eat one kind of leaf. Whatever caterpillar you get. This is going to sell big, Jets. On Monday, you got him one fight

and he ate one of the same kind of leaf that he's going to eat for the rest of the week. They do occasionally, they occasionally get a species which will eat fruit. So you might get one that would eat an apple, but it would only eat apple, and it would only eat the same apple,

and it would live inside the apple it was eating until it was ready to play. I actually would really enjoy that book. My partner Ian pointed out on the way here that Eric Carl was conscripted into, yeah, he fought on the Siegfried line. I think it was. So, yeah, he was an American.

born with a German mom. At age 15 he was conscripted and he had to dig the trenches in my head that's a bit like a caterpillar to caterpillars dig that's what gave him the idea. He was born in Germany the family moved to America really soon or

his early years were in America certainly then the family moved back to Germany in 1935 when he was about six years old so at the end of the war he was conscripted to dig trenches and he was fired at and he was 15 15 years old and then and then

And then, after the war, obviously, had a horrible time. His father was in a prison camp and had an awful time. Then the family moved, he certainly moved back to America. And then he was conscripted a second time to go to, to join the US Army and to go back to Germany again, where he was involved in filling in the halls that he dug. I actually feel quite bad that I'm shitting on his buck now. No, no, no, no, no.

Well, I mean, is it any wonder that the follow-up book was called The Very Grumpy Lady Bird? And there's another called Polar Bear, what do you hear, I think? He wrote a lot. What do you see? What do you hear? Yeah, because, yes.

It's a great artist. Also, an amazing scheme off the back of this book because there was an Eric Carl Museum that you can go to in America and in the museum, everything has a hole in it. Oh, sorry. Well, no, not everything's edible.

That would be amazing, yeah. So, like, if you go to the canteen, you buy a cookie and the cookie has a massive hole in it. Brilliant. So this guy is saving so much money in his... Like there was... I remember reading that the New York Times

when they removed the dot at the end of New York Times that little on the headline, they were saving $600 a year. That little bit of ink cost them so much. Imagine how much that bit of cookie that's missing is... What do they do with those little bits of cookie though? Do they give... They sell smaller cookies.

But imagine how you could ruin that museum by having Eric Carl's experience of warfare. Like a room. Yeah, that's not. As you go in. Trench digging. Trench room. Yeah.

So I went on to his website because there is another problem in this book. That is that towards the end, the caterpillar goes into a cocoon. It becomes a butterfly. But butterflies don't go into cocoons. Butterflies go into chrysalises. Well, caterpillars?

Butterflies don't go into anything. No, they come from crystals. No, sorry, yeah, yeah, yeah. And so some kids have written into him and said, well, why have you got a cocoon in your book? And he replied saying, well, there is a rare genus that lives in Siberia, North Korea, and the northern islands of Japan,

called Parnassian, which does pupate in a cocoon. So he was hugely relieved when he found out. What's the difference, sorry? What's the difference, Gina Chrysler's like a cocoon? So a cocoon is made out of silk, and a chrysalis isn't. Chryslist is made out of nylon. But you get quite a lot of... moths that make cocoons.

Okay. And other insects, but butterflies don't. But he did then say, actually, you know, caterpillars don't eat lollipops either. This was just a, this was, it's a special caterpillar. It's allowed to do what it wants. All right. It's a children's book, grow up.

And then another kid wrote in saying, Caterpillars don't have noses. Oh, get stuffed. Just, I mean, just, you know. And he said, I know it has a nose on its face, but this feature grew out of my own. imagination. I don't have shoes either, caterpillars.

I read an anecdote about him, which I'm only bringing it up because I didn't understand it, so I'm hoping that maybe you guys will. So he said that his he wrote all these books, as you were saying, where it was sort of like the next kind of, so the very busy spider, the very quiet

cricket. And in an interview, he says that he found himself in the changing rooms after swimming, and a satirical young fan suggested a book entitled The Very Slow Penis to the author's Great Amusement and I can't work out what's funny about that.

What's a slow penis? Ask your wife. Does it also have a hole going through it this book? I just can't work out what a slow penis is. Yeah. Anyway. There's a slow Loras. Well, you've dumped us all down.

Thank you. At no such thing on Twitter if you want to let us know. He got their hairs right. Anyway, butterflies and moths I discovered have nearly 10 billion hairs on them. 10 billion because these scientists have spent over a decade studying the surface area of animals. Counting. No, the surface area of animals. I mean, that's such a funny thing, I think.

So a cat's surface area is actually like a ping pong table. When you cover your ping pong table in, Cat, the ball doesn't bounce nearly as well. Sea Otter has the surface area of a professional hockey rink. Because they've got, is it, lots of hairs? Yeah, so many hairs. That's brilliant. And a honeybee has the same number of hairs as a squirrel.

Really? What? I know. Yeah, the Georgia Institute of Technology just astonishing. That's amazing. Yeah, they were running calculations to find the true surface area of animals because they were trying to work out ways of keeping things clean.

So dogs obviously shake. Every animal has a different way of keeping clean. Sometimes the fur helps them to stay clean, sometimes it doesn't. It's where you must never shave a dog. I'm sure you haven't, but don't shave a dog, even a really furry one. It's not good for it.

They don't get a number one. My child did have a number one. You shouldn't do that. That's bad. That's what Google said. Were you told the chow chow needs to go and have a number one? Did you go down to the hairdressers and say, short as you can, mate? And watch out for the number twos.

They will explode. On the idea of James, this whole thing that you have about the incorrect facts about children's books. Here's one thing that this feels like a very QI thing. So I'm sure a lot of people already know this. I didn't, though. A lot of kids' books, when there's a whale, let's say a blue whale or any kind of whale that's surfacing, there's always this beautiful spout of water

that's coming out and there's... They don't do that. What? I feel like I've seen that in real life. You have. Oh, what? Go on. Go on.

Ah, the riddler. But his horse was cold Thursday. Yeah, yeah. No, the doctor was his mum. If you see any kind of thing where it's a whale with a huge, like, yeah, the water. Spout of water. Spout of water. That is basically, according to experts, that's what would happen if a whale is drowning.

They don't spout water out of their blowhole. That's their nostril. That's their breathing. They don't put water out through that. So they do breathe. When you see that, the breathing is moist air that's just collected in. inside and that's what's coming out. So if you ever see a whale where there's spouts of water is coming down, it is a drowning.

So what I've seen, I've not seen the drowning whale, I've seen like a water vapor whale. Yeah, exactly. You're seeing water vapor and it gives that misty kind of look. Like a kettle. Like a kettle, exactly. But if you see a fountain, that's, you go save that whale. Wow. Yeah.

So basically what it means is every drawing of a whale in a child's book. It's dying. It's a dying whale. That's, yeah. Very upsetting. It is time for fact number three, and that is Andy. My fact is that the false gecko, which has the Latin name pseudo gecko, is a gecko. There are ten species of false gecko.

They're all geckos. Not one of them is not a gecko. And it's just a name. It's just a really, really bad name. Yeah. Couldn't find why they're called false geckos. I think maybe they were found unassumed to be something different. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. But geckos are wonderful. There are geckos that don't have legs that look like snakes. I would have thought that would have been the false gecko. Oh, cool, yeah, yeah. Yeah, there are six families of geckos with no legs. They're all endemic to Australia and New Guinea. Right.

Brilliant. And they've got vestigial hindlands, apparently, they look a tiny bit like flaps. Yeah, you can see these little bumps that come out. And that, yeah, it means it's a lizard. No eyelids, either. No eyelids? Almost every gecko has no eye. There are 1,500 species of gecko.

and all bar 43 have no eyelids and the Eublaffaridae which literally means good eyelids in ancient Greek they have eyelids but even they also lick their eyes like all the other geckos do to moisten them despite having eyelids. Right. Amazing.

Have you heard of the fuck you lizard? No. This is a lizard which it's not its official name that's not the scientific name but it was a lizard that when Americans were over in Vietnam during the war, they kept noticing that they just kept hearing a little voice going, fuck you!

And they're like, what is going on? And they'd be walking, oh, fuck you! And so they all discovered that it's just this lizard that just makes a noise. And so it became known as, yeah, the fuck you lizard. Why do we not all have one of those? The noises, I was surprised that gecko noises, though, that they bark. Well, they're the only lizard that makes a noise geckos. Are they?

Yeah, that's... Because if you think what noise is a lizard make... You wouldn't have thought it was... But that sort of... It sounds more like a sort of electric buzzer ring, doesn't it? Sally, do you think a gecko could ever win the palm dog? No. No?

Fuck you! But... We covered a few years ago... I think we covered the hero dog of the year and a few years ago it was won by a cat. That's true. Really? I presented Hero Dog of the Year.

No. No. I don't know, it was last year or the year before, not this year, but anyway, quite recently. And this is going to sound a bit mean now. But one of the finalist dogs, okay, this is just my problem. It was finalist dog, and it wasn't a Chihuahua, but it was similar. It was very, very small. And his owner slash mummy, whatever you prefer to call it, said that the dog had saved her partner's life by giving him CPR.

That's, she's got home. And the husband is kissing the dog. That's what happened now. The dog was very, very small. Very small. I don't know why the dog was trained in CPR. But anyway, it's all a bit of a problem for me having to silence the questions in my brain that kept coming.

Well, because there's so many stages. You've got to lay the head back a bit. You've got to... You just want to go, you're shitting me, right? Yeah. Was that the... It was one of the final... Didn't win, didn't win, didn't win, didn't win?

Oh, who the fuck did you know that as a dog? The winners were amazing. There were these water dogs that... Who did open heart surgery. It's a dog with SpaceX in Mission Control. Hey, animals have done some amazing things. Before we move on from geckos, though, did you know that in January last year,

German Hans Kurt Cubas was caught at Christchurch Airport, New Zealand, with 44 geckos concealed in his pants? They were doing a small incision. He's just walking through immigration. He's, who, roof, roo, fuck you. There's a massive market in gecko smugglers. And New Zealand gecko, because they're diurnal. Like most gecko are nocturnal.

Right. New Zealand gecko is diurnal, very, very pretty. And they can go for about $22,000. So there's a massive... Oh, is that the wrong word? No, no, no, it is. They're a wake of the day. You're Diana.

Your Honor. Yeah. Is that the right word? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. Don't question yourself, Sally. Question Dan. I'm sorry.

You'll get used to this. Yeah. My ignorance questions. No. Dan, do you want to know cool? So, diurnal, awake in the day, nocturnal, awake at night. Yeah.

Repuscular. Dusky. Yeah. Dawn and dusk. What happened to the eternal bit of the word? Why did they lose that? I don't know. Latin, hit it.

Speaking of Latin, I was reading about Alien, the Roman writer and artist. He said that if a dead gecko lands in your wine, then it's fine. But if it lands in your olive oil, it will taste terrible, and when you eat it, it will immediately give you lice. Wow. It's great. They've got lots of symbolic, there's lots of superstition around geckos and lizards, aren't there?

If you find a lizard tail in your left shoe, it's very lucky. Do not take it out. Is that real? That's a real one. Just the tail. Just the tail, yeah. Because obviously their tails come off and they can regrow them.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Do you know starfish, though, can regrow, if you take its leg off, it can regrow a whole starfish from the leg. That's nuts. Like, that's crazy, though. What do they have... Do they have...

They store all the nutrients in the leg until they can grow a mouse. Does they have a brain or intelligence or any kind of thing? I don't know. Probably doesn't know it's a starfish, is the truth. No, yeah. But they, you know, they have...

Can I tell you about a guy called Ben Barr? He was looking for a particular gecko called the Copola gecko which was spotted for the first time in 1968 and then once again in 2007 and that was it. No specimen had ever been observed or collected apart from those two occasions.

No one knew if it was still existing or alive or... Or if it was a teleporting horse. Exactly, yeah. And he led three trips to sort of search for it. And basically the process of searching for this Coppola gecko is just to turn over rocks. He spent two years turning over rocks. Leaving no stone unturned. He left no stone unturned. He didn't even know for sure what it looked like.

Because not exactly, not exactly. No scientist had ever held one in their hand. And after two years and three expeditions, he found one. Hey! He said, he was so excited. He said it was very similar to having a baby, the euphoria. and have you bought the movie rights it's just lovely yeah and he found four he found four on the same expedition I imagine under the same rock but still

imagine that determination to keep on it's like your surface area measuring scientists yeah you do admire it I got addicted to watching conservation TV at one point like the presentations of all the scientists because it's all the conservation scientists zoologists I guess they're called

because it was so funny like the Argentinian wolfman had long, long hair and he really appeared to be having an affair with the British cheater lady and there was this really adorable couple I think from Chile, from Chile who had been looking for it

the onion wildcat and we spent to it and they said we have not ever seen that Andean wildcat has spent five years and they showed all these photos of Land Rover in different places where they had looked for the Andean Wildcat and not seen it

and they were so charming and like oh well it's been interesting journey but we think there is wildcat we think this is a wildcat poop or whatever they say stool and then they went off and then this really arrogant tool American thin American guy

came in from the rare wildcat conservation society and he went Wildcat Wildcat and he just had 50 slides of wildcats Oh

that's amazing Wait were you presenting him with an award No, I was just depressed. I was in bed watching them on YouTube. I became very interested in the women who run Sloth sanctuaries. Because they seem to have absolutely no zoological training whatsoever. I know nothing about Sloth. There was this one woman who was Sloth Orphanage in Costa Rica.

She'd gone on a cruise with her husband and a baby Sloth had fallen out of a tree and she'd known right then she needed to abandon her life in the States and started Sloth Orphanage, which she did. And the problem she has to stop them having sex. with each other, because she didn't have room for any more, and people get bringing them, so they were kept strictly segregated. That's a slow penis. That is a slow penis.

There we go. Yes. Very nice. That is a slow penis. But one of the other got manged, and she just shaved it. And she didn't know whether this is the right, and she shaved them. So can you shave? Are you like to shave a sloth?

I'm sure. And there was a PhD student. I ended up watching this, you know, sub-documentary series about them and getting absolutely obsessed. There was a PhD student there. called Becky, who was... Do you remember the word? I think we've mentioned Becky on the podcast.

Have you? Has she been on? Like, no, she hasn't been... We can get her, no, but I mean, you're like... It was really... It was really weird. I feel she was northern. I feel she was northern. She was quite lethargic herself.

Okay. She said, I couldn't decide what to do for my PhD. And I went to see my tutor and I said, I can't decide between Jaguars and Sloths. And he said,

What about sloths? So here I am. And then the cheetah lady went past, well, yeah, that's really good idea! Have you seen the video where a sloth mistakens its own arm

for a tree branch? And then can't do anything about it because it's so slow. It just falls from the tree. They can be quite fast, they can't they? The ones that can swim are quite fast. They swim really fast.

If you put them in a fast current, they're just drugged, don't they? Those leaves that, that's just drugs, isn't it for them? They only eat one. I did think about writing a film about this sloth sanctuary, which is why, and obviously you can get the sloths out of Costa Rica. Their agents will never get back to you.

That's the problem with the sloth. You can't transport them. I was reading about a woman who runs a hospital for Hawaiian monk seals. I read about her. This is amazing, isn't it? Yeah, amazing. Yeah, so she runs this monk seal place. And she was out and she was, you know, getting lunch or something like that.

and she gets a miss call. Or like she gets a call on her phone. She picks it up, no one's there. What's going on? Happens nine times while she's out. And she's called, like, the phone people. She's like, is there like anything wrong with the line? It looks all fine.

Gets back to the hospital and she looks. And on the phone is a little gecko just pressing its finger on the call button and it's calling her. And that was it. She was getting... But it been calling loads of other people as well. Yeah, it called...

It made a biz... The newspaper said a bazillion phone calls me. That was the official number. Yeah, just little gecko feet. Can I do a quick quiz before we move on? Yes, we do need to move on. So this was a weirdly named animal, pseudo gecko. Is it a gecko? Is it not?

I've got some more like this. So the coffin fish. Can the coffin fish cough? Ah. This is a quiz. Or are you tricking us with pronunciation? Does it live... I'd say it does float.

It's coffin fish like a coffin, but can it cough. I'll say no, it can't. I don't think fish can't. Well, you're wrong. Oh. Fish can expel air through their gills if things get stuck in there, and we call that coughing. That's a cough.

Can the swallow tail butterfly swallow its own tail? Yes. No, I'm going to say no. No. Obviously not. But the only fact I know about it is it has an eye on its penis. So it can see where it's going. Crumbs.

Really? That is not true. It is true. The swallow tail? Butterfly. Oh, butterfly. Oh, butterfly. Oh, yeah.

It's fine. It's a butterfly. I was thinking of swallow. the very hungry caterpillar. That's the final scene. And finally, does the bloody nose beetle often have a bloody nose?

I'll say yes. Andy, I've told you insects don't have noses. Do you please listen? Oh, I fell right into it. No, it expels blood from its mouth. And that's why it's called that. Spells blood from its mouth.

We're going to need to move on to our final fact of the show. Can't bear it. The show? Oh, no. Right with you. I just want to see the game. I want to talk about the penguin

and who got a knighthood and I want to talk about the Welsh corgi, he's got a PhD. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is Sally. The band, the super furry animals, do you see what I did there, wore Yeti costumes for a year,

and they said it really changed their personalities. Becoming much hairier changed how they performed. What was the surface area when they were like? So I don't know much about the superfury animals. Well, you know, to be honest, until yesterday, nobody's a bit of it. But they're Welsh. Welsh.

Rockers? No, they're the centrepiece of the Kul-Kumri, you know, Welsh resurgence with Gorky's psychotic minky. I'm going to say that wrong. That's correct, isn't it? You're a superfan there, won't you? I am a superfan.

You're a superfairy fan. And of Garke's zygotic monkey as well. You're wearing a t-shirt. You're wearing a t-shirt right now. Yeah. They are very, very cool. They did loads of like... Yeah, they did loads of crazy stuff.

They had lots of like costumes and all that kind of stuff. Yeah, they bought a tank and drove it into the Nationalist Stedford. Oh, wow. They bought it for 10,000 pounds from a one-eyed arms dealer with a limp. And then they sold it on to Don Henley from the Eagles.

Really? Wow. It's an extraordinary. It was a band... It wasn't the only contact they had with arms dealers either. They... Because they sampled. lots of sounds, didn't they? And they got some

real guns. But what's with the Yeti thing? So why did they do they do setis? Well, they'd experimented on their album before. They had some snow monsters on stage in Glastonbury during the Northern Lights song. They were members of Mogwai. Do you know

all of this? Mogwai, yeah. No, that bit. And unfortunately, Mogwai just dropped an E before putting the very hot suits on. And it became quite dangerous. So they had to have people running around, giving them giving them water, but they were really into different kinds of creatures. And then they

came across a sculptor called Peter Grey, who made loads of sculptures out of hair. And he suggested just making these Yeti costumes for them for a video for the video for Golden Retriever. And they thought it was brilliant. And Peter Gray said, I'll tell you where it needs to be.

You need to shoot this on a glacier in Iceland next to a giant fire, which all the Yetis are worshipping. But they'd recently signed with Sony who said that was an uninsurable concept. So they did it in a studio in North London. It sort of looks like

the Yetis are playing inside a cardboard box which is being sniffed out and then urinated on by a dog. But it's really, really cool. So how did it change their personality? Yeah, change their personalities. They said they're none of them exhibitionists really.

They're quite political and love music, very creative and non-conformist and the rest of it. They released a Welsh, entirely Welsh language, and then only told it in America and Australia. It went into the top 20, yeah. But they said that it was like being transformed.

They said none of them were exhibitionist in reality. It's an actual quote. But we were able to put these costumes on and become 70s rock monsters and it drove the audience nuts. Yeah. So it's kind of interesting. The impact of hairiness or hairlessness has incredible power. I think it's a costume.

So my son's fifth birthday was like, last year, late last year, and I dressed up as Mr. Potato Head. And I honestly felt, I saw that, I saw it. Did you buy that or make it? I bought it from, yeah, I bought it online. I saw it. I saw it. It was, it was, it was, it was, it was. It was good. It was good. It was good. Yeah, we haven't even got it at the But here's the thing, the confidence it gave me, because it was... With that audience of five-year-olds who would have worshipped you anyway? No, I honestly, like... Really?

Yeah, really, I felt like a superhero. It was amazing. That's interesting. And I went up, because it was... School had just started. My son was going to a new school. We knew no one. So I went up to all the parents.

I would never do that. I went up to all of them. Hey, what's up? So you went to school? Not the party. This is a... No, no, this is the party. I'm Mr. Potato-Hibaker.

What I'm just trying to say is, I don't think it's the hair necessary. I think, you must know this as an actor. When you have a different persona that suddenly comes over you, there's a weird confidence that makes you a bit unstoppable in a way. It can go both ways. I'm thinking. Oh, really? Very vivid memories of it going the other way.

Okay. I mean, I suppose one, yes, I do know what you mean. It's weird. When you play a bride in a film, people on set treat you as if you're getting married. Even though they know you're acting. We all know your acting. But you get treated, people open doors,

and they smile at you and go, oh, it's interesting. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is a thing with autistic kids where if you put them in a mask, you can, not all, you can't generalise, but lots of people have found that theatre can really help people who are very introverted

to speak. Well, that's really interesting. Just on topic, so what they were doing there, they were dressing as Yeties, it's not being a furry, but that's, a lot of people dress up as furries, right? I think we should say what a furry is for those.

I mean, yeah, so a furry is someone who feels more comfortable, when they're wearing a costume that has been designed where it's an animal. No, I think a furry is just someone who's a fan of the culture of, you know, anthropomorphic animals and some of them do like to work constantly. Yeah, they're very keen. They feel they get a bad press, and over 60% of furies feel that they are bullied and get negative, people have negative, because it's weird things.

Only around 25% of all furies own a suit. Really? Yeah. So I don't know how you classify yourself as a furry. if you... Well, I guess you go to the cons and you like reading... In your home clothes?

Yeah, yeah. Not in the suit? I thought it was all about the suit. So did I, but we're wrong. Maybe you can't afford it. But on the point of autism, there was one of these cons that had an autism panel

with furries. And there was a lady there who said that it really helps if you're autistic. So she said, for three days, I am not autistic. For three days, I am a giant anthropomorphic version of the Titanic. And she thought,

It helps break the ice. Oh, God. There we go. The first furry convention... The first fairy convention was almost all people in normal clothes or in human clothes. And you can still see videos of it online. It was in Holiday Inn in California.

And there's basically only one person who dresses up in a costume. It was a guy called Robert Hill who came dressed as a giant S&M deer called Hilda the Bambioid. Cricy. I know. But it's amazing.

And they chose that place because it's so close to Disneyland and they thought that everyone who's kind of into anthropomorphic animals would also be into Disneyland. And they went there. And they, you know, if you go online,

you can see like the history of all these conferences that they've had called Conference. And the first time they had a problem with the hotel was in 1994. And the problem was the hotel. All the bathrooms got clogged drains. That was the problem.

That was the only. problem. Yeah, yeah. And the breakfast buffet was no. Apparently, it was too big the hotel, so they couldn't fill it up with just their people. So there was a lot of other people there as well. And, you know, they weren't so understanding,

and there was lots of complaints. And then a maid found a costume in a room by a person who had a costume of Veteran of the Psychotic Wars. And it was a unicorn who carried a big sort of cartoon cherry bomb. So they would have like this big sort of black bomb shape. Like you would have a cartoon. Oh, with like the wick coming out. Yeah, exactly.

What is going on? So they found this. The maid found this costume in the room. Right. And they called the bomb squad because there was a bomb in the room. But a cartoon bomb? A cartoon bomb.

Although what's the best place to hide a bomb? I guess so. Cartoon bob. The bomb squad didn't see it the right way and they find the hotel for making a prank call. So when the bomb squad came and they saw it was just cherry bomb and there was a euticon costume next to us, they're like, you're wasting our time.

And they find them. And they never. were allowed to go back to that hotel again. Okay. I don't think anyone's behaviourism will be there. What? What about this guy's just... He's just got a costume.

It's not his fault. Yeah, I guess. They did amuse me that quote in the article that we've probably both read where they said most furies, it's not an erotic thing, it just gets too hot.

Right, the other astonishing fact was that there's 10,000 people in the UK who live as dogs. Uh... Uh... That's what it said on Google. Living as dogs is a...

Dogs have a very broad spectrum of... Wanting to be referred to or dress up as dogs or have handlers and... That seemed to be a different kind of outfit. 10,000 is a lot. It's a lot. It seems to be a kind of white unitard with little spots.

It feels like you might have read live on the aisle of dogs. I go for a walk every day. Yeah. Oh yeah? Am I one of your 10,000? What's a broad spectrum of dogs, though? Some dogs live in the house, some dogs might live in a kennel,

some dogs are pampered house dogs. There is a BDSM thing of pups, being a pup. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you've got... You say, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I did not know that. I said he had to kind of cross over it, rather than to fully endorse.

But, you know, dogs divide into hound, pooch, and mutt, don't they? Those are the three... Do they? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Those are the three broad categories of dog... So is this the broad category of dog that you can choose to dress up as. No, no, but like, if you see a dog,

normally you'll know within a second whether it's a hound, a pooch, or a mutt, unless it's a Labrador, in which case it's just a dog. The Labrador is the kind of classic dog. Does no one else play hound, pooch, or mutt? Extraordinary. Can you get Andy an introduction to Hero Dog of the Year? I think I could qualify.

I do, I do. Just on dressing up as animals, so a lot, people who have to dress as animals a lot and not sort of relaxation for their work are zookeepers. There's a brilliant photo from 2004. There's a Japanese party of schoolchildren. They're all about, I'd say, four or five years old. And they are being approached by a life-sized rhinoceros,

which is a pantomime rhinoceros with two zookeepers in it, front and back, which are basically charging the schoolchildren. The teachers have to get the children away from the rhino. It looks genuinely terrifying. But how realistic is the costume? It's pretty good. Is it? If I was five, I would be.

very nervous. He would be scared. Well, I don't think so, because I once did a kids show. I mean, a long time ago, did a kid show with Sue Perkins, in fact, and called Lucy and the Dinosaurs, and a friend of ours was playing a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

And Ben Moore, do you know Ben? Yeah, yeah. Ben Moore was Tyrannosaurus Rex. He had a big costume. And Sue Perkins very irresponsibly said to the kids, hey, let's beat up Tyrannosaurus Rex. And the stage was stormed with upwards of, 55 year olds

just kicking the living daylight out of Ben Moore who looks, you know, like a early Mr. Muscle. Mr. Muscle's got mussely recently, have you noticed that? But anyway, Mr. Muscle used to be in the advert, but anyway, and Ben was just in the recovery position, sort of crying and shaking, you get them off. Well, I've been

beaten up in a chicken costume by Alan Davis on QI. You have? Yeah, yeah. Beaten up by who? By Alan Davis. Oh, yeah. Actually beat... And he properly... I think he was taking out a lot of frustration from the previous 10 years.

But yeah, I was in a costume and he decided as a joke, I think. Was this during the show? Are you guys in a hotel room? It was for a Christmas special of QI. And the thing is, because the kind of slot that you look through is quite small and it's a big sort of costume, the one that I had and I assume it was the same.

It very easily goes in the wrong place and suddenly you can't see anything. And it's boiling hot, you're sweating and everything. And all you can do is go fetal. It's like literally the only thing. And you did... On set, that were like, while filming, it was incredibly...

People had to talk you down. I once got asked if I wanted to be an alien in a film. The Roman orator. Yeah. I've got the look. No, it was a... I was playing basically that I would have been playing the beast that sort of landed in a meteorite

and then... That's correct. But the guy, my friend who was casting the film, said, you will just have to lie in a field, in a rubber suit for a week. And I said no, and I regret it now. I bet. I wish I'd done it now. What was the movie?

I don't know. So apparently, just going back to Furries a second, the conventions are a nightmare for exactly the reason that you were saying about... Everyone's too hot. Yeah, everyone's too hot. They can't see anything. So anyone who's in a costume

is just bumping into each other. The article says inevitably going to smack a child in the head because your arms are just, you know, who whapping about. You can't see them at the level. You got a big tail? Sorry?

Got a big tail, maybe? Oh, yeah. Why not? I was just trying to help. I was trying to contribute to the... Was it going that badly? Hey, by the way, we are going to have to wrap up really soon. And we've gone really far over the whole...

Have we? Oh, no. I've only just started. Can I give you some furry vocab and see if you can guess what they mean? Oh, cool, yeah. So what do you think is a furry tan? F-U-R-I-T-A-N. Oh, a Puritan.

It's like a Puritan. It's someone who only wears the costume. It's a furry fan who is not interested in any sexual content. That's pretty good. To scritch. Do you know what to scritch means? Oh, you can't scratch yourself through the fur. Oh, that's good.

So what you do, I don't know. It's not that, but it is to do with scratching. It's to scratch someone gently, often as a friendly gesture or greeting. Just do a little... Don't do that. Can you guess what a fur pile is? Is that when they all... A bundle?

Yeah, a bundle. They all jump on each other. A carpet is like a carpet, you would say it has a shag pile. So is it broadly similar? It's pretty much that. It's a gathering of fully costume participants who roll around on the floor,

screeching each other. Scritching got quite sexy all of a sudden. The other thing is, is that Andy mentioned tales earlier and there could be an idea in the future that maybe we give all old people tales. For balance. For balance. You're good at this game.

Yeah, the idea is you get like these sort of mechanical tails and you put them on old people and they can tell if an old person... With their consent and support. Just stop them falling over, is it? Yeah, so the tail can tell when they're about to fall over

and it can move itself so it'll give them more balance it will stop people from falling over. Turn old. Turn old. I was a doctor octopus. Yeah. It's just completely terrifying.

I think we should give them gecko feet instead. You don't want to come. Ground now, aren't you doing up there? It's one of the reasons there's such a trade in geckos, apparently, is they're being studied for the space program. Did you read that? What?

They're just so... Because their feet can stick to anything except Teflon. Oh. Oh, really? Gecko feet will say, stick to absolutely anything at all except dry Teflon. It's all right if it's wet.

But... Is it a Teflon but we largely use in space, though? Yeah. So it's a problem. No. Yeah. Because the clingability... Great news. We've made you

exactly as good as a gecko. Get up to that space station. Yeah. Sorry. Yeah, well, they did this experiment where they got a load of geckos and they stuck them on stuff and then they euthanized them all.

And then they put them back up and they stayed exactly the same. Stuck, dead, it's alive. Wow. On that note, always good to go out on a big laugh. That is it. That is all of our facts.

Thank you so much for listening. If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast, we can be found on our Twitter accounts. I'm on at Shreiberland. Andy. At Andrew Hunter.

James. At James Harkin. And Sally. I've just given it up. Thanks. I know. Yeah, but you're on Instagram though. I am on Instagram. I think I'm Sally Smack on Instagram.

Sally Smack. Okay. I'm Smack the pony. And yeah, we are also on Twitter as a group as No Such Thing. Or you can email us at podcast. At QI.com. Go to our website, no such thing as a fish.com. All of our previous episodes are up there.

Thank you so much for joining us tonight. Sally. Thank you so much. for being here. It's so much having me. It's been awesome. And we'll see everyone. Okay, all right, yeah.