Secretly Incredibly Fascinating - family leave week: "Creature Feature: Think Outside The Butt"

Episode Date: March 23, 2026

Please enjoy this treat from Alex and Katie! It's a past episode of Katie's animal science podcast, featuring Alex as the guest and butts as the topic. Hear all the episodes of Creature Feature here: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/creature-feature/id1409480698

Hey, folks, this is Alex. I'm with Katie. And we are taping this prior to having our babies. Yeah. Hello. Yep. It hasn't happened yet, but it will. Yeah. It will. And we want to celebrate a little parental leave for both of us to grow families and so on. And for these couple of weeks, we have special feed drops and other releases for you. And this one is a truly, truly joyful and surprisingly baby-centric creature feet. shirt. Whoa. Well, I think baby centric is... Whoa. I mean, it's butt centric, which is related very much to babies. There is a little bit of talk of fetal development on it, but I feel like really the main connection to babies is just that, you know, butts and babies have butts and they use them a lot. As I'm sure, like as you're listening, to this. Alex and I are discovering how much babies use their butts to be productive and, you know, getting

used to that. Yeah, they're grinds at about butt activity. They really keep at it. So we're probably going to like, we'll have to sort of like have a I don't know, a competition between the Schmidt household and the golden household about like diaper production.

Oh. I think we should like, I think we should turn it into a fun. Oh, you know, like there's so many gambling apps right now, right? I don't even want to, I don't want to name them, but like the question is, will the, will the Schmidt, will the Schmidt's baby or the golden's baby be the most prolific of the, um, of the poopers and, you know, putting a lot of money on that. So this is the first time of ever wanted to use one of the scurrilous terrible apps that's a played on society. It sounds

pretty good. Yeah. Which baby is going to poop more? And I feel like it's going to be, like we're going to be trying to game the system. But that's the whole point of it. It's a big scam. But yeah, so this creature feature episode that Alex is on, we talk about animals. You know, I mean, it sounds very puerile, right?

Like but, ha ha, you know, 12 years old. But no, it's science. It's actual science. It's about the survival tactics of animals. vis-a-vis, you know, the lower regions, there's like a beetle that is like an amazing butt houdini. There is a fish that, you know, uses a sea cucumber in a really unique way. Talk a little bit about, yeah, the fetal development.

We all start out basically as like just butts and then we grow around the butt. And if any, not to cut you off, but like if anybody doesn't know, Katie makes this tremendous podcast called Creature Feature. It's so good. And it is so much science and humor and joy all at once. The times I've gotten a guest on it are so wonderful all around. This one was like truly worth resurfacing of all of them to like show you guys. But if you also somehow I've never checked out Creature Feature Feature, please pounce on this opportunity.

It's right here in front of you. You're about to hear it. Yeah, check it out. I mean, I am taking a hiatus from it because of, You know, my own, my own baby. And it's, it's, your own creature. My own creature that I have, I've spawned. But, you know, there's, there's a ton of episodes.

Yeah, it's a tremendous catalog. I made the mistake of never numbering them. So I couldn't tell you. I think it's hundreds. Pretty sure it's, it's hundreds of episodes. But yeah, so you can check them out. There's a lot to get through. If you start early enough, maybe by the time you get through it,

I'll be done with maternity leave and start making new ones. Yeah, yeah. It's all there for you and please enjoy this one, which I misstated as being about babies to have a little fun. It's specifically about butts and it's great. It's, it's, it's, uh, yeah, it's, it's baby adjacent. It's a buttcast. It's a buttcast.

Welcome to Creature Feature Production of IHeart Radio. I'm your host of Mini Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and I like to get creative. Do you like to get creative? Well, I think it's time to think outside the butt. That's right, we're talking about the biggest daredevils when it comes to dare years, the pop stars of posteriors, the analysts of, well, you know, how do you survive a trip through a frog?

What are some unconventional uses for a sea cucumber? And do you really need a butt? Discover this more as we answer to the age old question. Are comb jellies the best at improv? Joining me today to talk about animal heinies is friend with a pod, host of Secretly Incredibly Fascinating, and probably too polite of a person for this topic, Alex Schmidt. Katie, it's great to be here. I'm not too polite at all.

I'm very excited to talk about what we all have. Everybody grow up. We all have butts. Let's just get into them. Or do we? Oh, no. I have spoken too soon. the edible kingdom's amazing.

Well, we will talk about that later, but for now, let's talk about some butt daredevils, I think. Great. I'm hoping that at some point on your secretly incredibly fascinating show, which is an amazing show, I've been a guest on it before, that you will talk about, you know, butts. That's, you know, that's a good idea. It is many, many of the topics for the episodes are things that maybe people don't think about all the time. And perhaps humans thinking about each other's butts is common enough that I can't. But I'll think about it.

It might be workable. No, no pressure there. I do remember that when we were talking about, we were talking about cows and cattle on your podcast. And we did talk about cow farts. So I think in any topic, basically, in the world, you do have to talk about some stuff regarding the bottom, you know? Yeah. It's almost a kind of thing where people are like, oh, I'm in mixed company or among children or whatever. I can't talk about butts.

And then we skip over all this stuff that I assume we'll get into in this show. That's amazing about butts. It's in, look, it's funny. Butts are funny. I will be the first to admit it. It's funny. It's okay to laugh during this episode. But I think it's also because it's seen as like, ooh, that's potty humor or, you know, that's kind of inappropriate.

There's a lot of stuff that doesn't get taught to kids in school regarding butts, especially when it comes to evolutionary biology. And I think that there's a lot that you miss out on in terms of how fascinating it is. So, yes, I am excited to go on this journey of checking out little animal butts and what happens with those. The first derrier adventure that I want to go on is what it's like to. escape a frog. So I want to talk about a, imagine you're inside a frog. It's not, it's not the most ideal of circumstances, right? You want to get out of it. Yeah. I don't know about you, but you know, you're in a frog. You want to get out of the frog. Yeah, not ideal circumstances. That's probably in the bottom 20% of days I've had being stuck inside a frog. Maybe bottom 15%. Yeah, I'm going to be that bold.

Yeah, I mean a bold statement, but I'll take it. And there's basically, you have two choices, right? There's two ends of the frog, two openings that you can take. And some insects will try to take the mouth. But one plucky little beetle has been discovered to take the rear exit. Now, this is called the Regambarsha attenuata, also known. as the water scavenger beetle. It is a tiny black, iridescent, aquatic beetle. It's very small. It can fit on the tip of your pinky. And they are found in Japan in marsh areas and paddy fields.

And they are often eaten by frogs. So one of their predators is the dark spotted frog, which they're also pretty small frogs. They're about two inches or about 70 millimeters. They're like these little green brown frogs. But when one of these frogs eats these beetles, that's not game over for the beetle. He's just getting started. So after being ingested by the frog, the beetle manages to escape out of the back hatch. That's right, the butt. So is, is this like the Beatles' main defense against this predator?

is just, just, I won't, I can't run away from it. It'll definitely eat me. And then I will depart instead of getting digested. Like that's the move. I think number one is try not to get eaten in the first place and try to avoid it. But if they do get eaten, they have plan B, which stands for a plan but, which means go out the butt. So lucky, lucky for all humanity, this phenomenon has. been captured on video, which I will

include in the show notes, and I have sent to you, Alex, for you to view. Basically, you see a frog and it eats a beetle. And then you're like, all right, well, that's a common enough story. And then just about, like,

a few minutes later, and the time is sped up in the video, you see the beetle just come out, fully intact, out of the butt, and walk away. Yeah, I'm trying to remember how that inside the human body magic school bus episode went, like if they went out the butt at the end.

This is basically that. This bug is Miss Frizzle. This is great. Exactly. The bug is the magic school bus. And it's full of tiny microscopicized children, apparently. Right. They never did this at my old insect that I lived in.

So the beetle can escape the. dark spotted frog's digestive tract in as little as six minutes, which is much shorter than the sometimes days it takes for a frog to fully digest and poop out food. So it's not just kind of riding the lazy river down the frog's digestive tract. It is taking a fast track exit right out as quickly as it can. That's amazing. Yes. And they can repeat this Houdini butt routine with other frog species as well, but depending on the frog, it can take them up to six hours, like depending on how big the frog is,

but still they typically survive the ordeal. And researchers wanted to see how they do this, and in order to discover what they are actually doing inside of the frog, they do what

researchers often do, which is be incredibly mean to bugs. Since they suspected that the water scavenger beetles used their legs to crawl out of the frog. They did an experiment where they immobilized the beetle's legs

with wax and voila, the beetles that had their little legs immobilized with wax did get digested by the frog. So it turns out they are actually physically crawling through the frog to get out. And it's also funny because I think

like this is probably how the beetle mob operates like they put your little beetle legs in wax or in cement and then just toss you in the frog. Right, the frog is that weird part of the Hudson River or New Jersey. Sure, yeah, yeah. So the theory is that they climb their way through the digestive tract and then tickle the sphincter until it opens. So if you don't know, the sphincter is this sort of like scrunchy-like muscle that resides right at the butt,

and that is how you sort of control the butt opening or closing. Which, you know. Yeah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. It's, you know, it's the, for this beetle, it's the little revolving door of butts. Well, not revolving. I don't think it goes back in, actually.

So never mind about that. It's like, you know those like action movie doors in a facility where you have to put somebody's hand on a thingy and then it reads the hand? it's like that but for tickling. Like there's a pad next to the door, and if you tickle it right, you can exit the facility. There's a little keypad, and a little eyeball scanner has to go through to exit the frog. Exactly.

I love a keypad where the code is tickling, because then you have to know the code is like, coochie, coochy, cooce, or whatever tickle noise is your choice as the facility. Right. Code accepted. Ha ha ha ha. He he, tee. Yes.

I think that the reason it probably works is that probably that triggers the frog's pooping reflex. Like, oh, I got a poop. But no, the poop is a beetle escaping. And then it tumbles out. And I imagine does a very tiny. Tadda! It goes along its way. I'm just because I'm so thrilled to learn that this is an active.

decision and maneuver by the bug. Because this just let it poop you back out could totally be a passive, lazy maneuver by an insect, right? But this is that like six minutes just sprinting out of that. Like the frog must immediately know the mistake it's made, right? Like if my food started sprinting inside of me, I'd be pretty sure something's wrong fast. That beetle is not sitting well. In fact, I don't believe it is sitting at all.

Right. Yeah. Yeah, and I mean, my first thought about this is like, wait, why don't all Beatles do this? Because it seems like a cheat code to get out of a frog. You just sprint out of the frog. Yeah, yeah. And while there's more research that's needed on this topic, it seems that the main thing, the main reason most beetles don't do this is that frog guts have very strong digestive acids

so that they can digest through hard exoskeletes. skeletons that bugs have. So normally you just get acidified and dissolved pretty quickly, so you're not going to be able to survive inside of a frog. But these beetles, the water scavenger beetles that we've been talking about, seem to have some extra resistance to the powerful digestive acids in the frog's guts that allow them to keep moving unscathed. And so why or how they're able to do this, I believe is still being re-esacted.

But I just love that how many avenues of research is opened up by like one observation of, oh, oh, this beetle just escaped out of the frogs butt because when researchers, they were curious because it seemed like a lot of these beetles lived around the same areas that frogs were. And so they figured they must have some kind of defensive technique when faced with the frogs. they were just completely surprised to find out exactly what that was. Yeah, I also, I got to say, just because of the topic, the few times you said digestive acids, I really heard it as digestive asses. I really heard that the frogs have powerful digestive asses, and I believed it, but apparently not powerful enough to defeat these bugs. Well, you know, we're going to talk about a couple of animals later on who do say,

sometimes eat with their butts occasionally. Okay. So not, not. This is just such a fundamental flipping of what I understand nature to be. Right. Like there's that super basic drawing you see when you're learning what the food chain is where a smaller fish gets eaten by a bigger fish, by a bigger fish, by a bigger fish. Like, like, once something eats you, that's supposed to be game over, that's supposed to be, like, the clock has run out. The score is on the board.

done. But no, they're just getting out of the butt or using the butt to start the process. Amazing. This is great. I mean, much like the digestive tract itself, I believe that this episode has a lot of twists and turns when it comes to how one would imagine a butt is how it can or should be used. So yes, oh boy, do I have stories to tell you. Not all beetles use the back door for escaping a frog. Some of the more dignified insects in the world like to use the grand front entrance. The Bombadier beetle doesn't really like being a guest inside Shea Frog, so if eaten by Mr. Kermit,

the Bombadier beetle will force the frog to throw him back up by releasing a stream of toxic boiling chemicals. And where does the Bombadier beetle shoot its shot from? It's butt, of course. It always comes back to the butt. When we return, we're going to talk about the most interesting uses for a sea cucumber. Did you know that sea cucumbers are brainless? I'm not insulting them.

They literally have no brain. Instead, they have a bundle of nerves near its mouth and nerves that run down through its digestive system. It also has a variety of nerve endings on its skin that seem to help it respond to touch and light. But as we'll soon find out, the low. lack of a real brain may be a merciful stroke of luck for the sea cucumber. So, Alex, you ready to talk about sea cucumbers and what a tragic life they sometimes lead? Katie, I am as ready as I think I will ever be. I have a general phobia of the animals that are like creepy, crawly and on the sea bottom, like anemones and stuff. And then also jellyfish get lumped into it even though they float. But yeah, these really spook me. I'm totally ready to

to talk about them, but I feel their brainlessness and their whole deal is another reason people should find them freaky. Don't like it. A little friend who's Lovejoy's daughter but is secretly evil, right? It's like that kind of thing. It's great. I love that this is how we are describing the Pearlfish as Reverend Lovejoy's daughter who's secretly evil. Yeah. It's true. It really is true. Right. And Bart is not being harmed necessarily, but he's not benefiting. He's getting accused of stealing from the collection plate and everything.

Well, we're going to talk about whether the sea cucumbers fare okay with this relationship. Oh, okay. That's he. So pearlfish will see the sea cucumbers anus and go right in there. They will wriggle their way into the sea cucumbers butt, both taking refuge inside their intestinal tract and also they will eat the cucumber's gonads. So when in Rome, I guess eat Rome's reproductive organs is the pearlfish's philosophy. So the fact that they do nibble on the gonads does make the pearlfish a parasite of the sea cucumber because they are doing doing a harm to the sea cucumber by eating those gonads.

that's a no-no. That's a bit of a no-no. This is a slight digression, but I just put out a secretly incredibly fascinating all about concrete. So I've been reading about the actual main drain for the water system in ancient Rome, and it was called the cloaca maxima. I believe that's where we get the word cloaca. Anyway, go on. I love it. Cloaca, by the way, I think means like one hole. And that's why in birds and reptiles, the cloaca because it is the one hole that does it all.

They poop out of it, they pee out of it, and they reproduce out of it. So, yeah, that would make sense. But it does make me think like when in Rome, have a giant bird's butthole handle your public infrastructure. Yeah. So it is puzzling why pearlfish would do this because the inside of the sea cucumber is actually quite toxic, which is a way for them to ward off predators and uninvited butt guests. But the pearlfish copes with this toxic environment with an extra thick layer of mucus on their

skin that protects them. So they're just these little wriggly mucus-colored eels that like to live in a butt. Really attractive creature. A lot to speak highly of them. I mean, it's always that thing. Nature is just going to do what it does, and we find it gross, and we find it reprehensible that they're being Reverend Lovejoy's daughter. But it's just the way it is. And I don't know, maybe where I live, they're like, ew, a bunch of drywall and concrete gross. Ew, where's their body's not gross. They're so not covered in snot.

That's gross. Yeah, I mean, who are we to judge a creature that is covered in snot and lives inside of a butt? Can we really say, like, who's the real snot-covered eel-like fish living inside of a butt? The pearlfish or us? So, usually there's only one pearlfish per sea cucumber, but occasionally groups as large as 15 will be found in one unfortunate sea cucumber. It may be due to some kind of threat, forcing them all to shelter in place inside of a sea cucumber. It had better be. It had better be a threat.

If I'm a sea cucumber and all 15 of you are in here, there would better be a house on fire. You know what I mean? That's the old. Maybe that's okay. Another theory is that they are congregating to mate. So a little bit rude. I think that's a little rude, you know? Coming in on invited and then also having like a swinger party, it seems rude to me.

And then you're like, you're like put your keys in the bowl and please help yourself to sea cucumber gonads. So the poor sea cucumber is left with little defense against the pearlfish. They can't actually like shut their butts, like close the door on these pearlfish because they actually breathe through their anus. So it's, you know, they've got to let the pearl fish come in at some point. You know, fortunately, again, sea cucumbers don't really have a brain. So I would say it probably doesn't have much of a experience of like, oh, no, there's a fish in my butt. True, true. Yeah, it's basically an Airbnb that people have figured out they can do this stuff with, you know?

The B and B and Airbnb in Airbnb takes a lot. takes on a whole new movie. Like all the reviews on the page have like really subtle euphemisms for an orgy and then other people looking at it, just figure it out. It's one of these, I guess. I would imagine. I haven't done that.

Oh, man, it's just, it's so, nature is so creatively perverse. It's like, hey, not only are we going to have these fish live inside of sea cucumber butts and happily feast upon their gonads. But then, hey, why not have a fish orgy in here? Look, like, we've already passed the moral Rubicon when it comes to, like, being inside of a butt. I feel it's almost, it'd be weirder to me if the fish were just not doing anything interesting inside of it. Just like knitting, doing some, like, cross-stitching inside, you know, reading little home on the prairie inside of your.

your C cucumber butt. That would be, that would almost be creepier. That would be more disconcerting. Right. Like, they use the butt to listen to public radio. Okay, well, that's weird. Now I'm creeped out. We have a caller from a C cucumber's butt

who'd like to complain about the cursing. Yeah. Caller, what's your name? Well, Carl, Emily, we got Rob. Who else is here? Aaron. Aaron's here. It's like a clown car. It really is like a clown car.

And it's funny. The reason that we know so many pearlfish can fit inside a cucumber is someone caught a sea cucumber and a bunch of pearlfish came out of it, which has to be shocking. I mean, I feel like if you're handling and dealing with sea cucumbers, you're used to at least a little bit of weird. But to have that much weird, like, I feel like if it was one fish coming in. out of the C cucumber, normal day. You're like, all right, sure. 15? That would make me question my reality.

Right. It's like those YouTube videos where they teach you to pull scarves out of your mouth, like a magician. It's one of the, like, who is doing a bit? Right. And then they go back in the C cucumber as the finale. and the sea cucumber turns into a rabbit. Or a sea hair.

God, the joke was right there, and I missed it. Sea hair, which is actually a type of sea slug that has little, they have these rhinoforms, which are, they look like bunny ears, but they are not their sensory organs. We talked about it on the show earlier. There's a, on other episodes, but yeah, sea hair. There you go. And see bunny.

Those are cute. If you want to have a good day, if you want to have a good day, here's my advice. Google C. Bunny. It's very cute. It's the little. Okay. They are tiny nudibrinks who have, they look like they have a little bunny tail and little bunny ears. And their ears are actually like sensory organs and their tails are their branching lungs.

And it's really cute. Wow. Okay. Adorable. This is a new cartoon that can be made, like C-Bugs Bunny. Great. Into it. Sea Bugs Bunny.

Yeah. Yeah. saying what's up doc and then getting eaten by a shark. Elmer Fudd with a spear gun, but it blows up in his own face somehow. I don't know how a spear would blow up, but he'd find a way. If the pearlfish looks nothing like a pearl, can you guess why they're called pearlfish? It's likely because the person who discovered them found them in an oyster or other bivalve and thought, hey, who does this fish think it is? A pearl?

When we return, we're going to get back to the important business of talking about butts, namely, how many of them should you have? Having a butt is one of the most important parts of our development. When we start out as blastocysts and then embryos, we develop butt first. We're deuterostomes. As we develop from a cluster of cells, the first opening called the blastopore becomes the anus. This is a fun fact we share with all other chordates. which are animals with a nerve cord, as well as with the kinoderms, which include starfish,

sea urchins, etc., and a handful of little worm-like animals. The opposite is true of protostomes, whose blastophor, that first opening, becomes the mouth first. This is the case for arthropods and mollusks, for example, bugs and snails, and is also true for worms, nematodes, tardigrades, flatworms, and a whole bunch of other small, strange, squirmy creatures. But hey, what happens when you don't have a butt at all? So, Alex, on average, how many butts do you think most animals have? I really came into this thinking one. Just one.

Yeah, no, no, you're right. No, it's not a trick question. That is, yes. I also, off of what you were just saying, I am finding myself surprised that, like, you know, when you're told evolution is real? and it's like, but some people don't want to be descended from monkeys. And I'm like, ah, I'm so wise to be cool with that. I'm really cool with being descended from monkeys. Somehow I'm much less cool with mainly growing from my own butt.

I want to be grown from like my brain or like a cool finger or something. Something elevated. What's your coolest finger? What's your favorite one? I mean, classic pointer right hand. That's probably the go to. That's the leader. Yeah.

That's the Red Ranger. You know what I mean? Which finger I like the head of the team. It's the middle one. The middle one. Dude. Anyways. Yeah.

No, it is humbling to realize that we grow butt first, isn't it? It's like, oh, okay, yeah, we start out as basically we look like a little, like a tiny little sock with one opening. And that one opening is the butt. and then we will form the mouth part later. Okay. Yeah, like a really gross Klein bottle. Do people know what that is? Never bite.

No. I have no idea what you're talking about. It's a mathematical solid that is all one thing, but it has an opening at the top. Anyway, that's probably the least relatable thing I've ever said. Where math and butts converge. So, you know, most animals do have a butt because it serves a very good purpose, which is, you know, to get the waste out. You put food in one end and it comes out the other end, or even if you're a sea cucumber, like you put food in the mouth end or the butt end and it comes out the butt end. So, you know, it's good to have at least two holes.

But sometimes you don't. And there is an animal that has zero butts, and you're actually much more well acquainted with this animal than you probably think you would be. So the Demodex folliculorum, which sounds like an alien creature, but you probably have them in your circle of friends right now. In fact, there's probably quite a few living on you right now.

Demodex folliculorum, is a microscopic mite that lives in your eyelashes and hair follicles on your face. Yay. You got friends everywhere you go. You got friends wherever you go. You just hear a really loud tremor sound as I start removing all of my hair in a panic. It's like really close to the mic. No, no, not do that.

Well, they are teeny tiny and they can't be seen with a naked eye. When you look at them under a microscope, they look like weird stubby worms with arms. I'm sorry to say they're not the happiest-looking microscopic animal. I'm sorry. But, you know, they are mostly harmless despite their somewhat alarming look and the probably unwelcome knowledge that they are on your face, most likely. They feed on Sebum, which is an oily substance produced in your pores, as well as dead skin cells.

So they're mostly harmless. They're not like, you know, they're not like sucking your blood or anything. They're just kind of munching on your sebum. And typically, if you have an uninhibited immune system, they will cause no problems and their numbers are kept in check. But very rarely, if you have an immune issue or skin irritation issues, they could cause some skin issues like a rash or skin irritation.

So, you know, but in most cases, and like the vast, vast majority of cases, you won't even know that they're on you and they really cause no problems. They better keep it that way. Perhaps it's like maybe knowledge in this particular instance is not power because knowing they're on your face is, you know, it's like it takes a little getting used to. I'm sorry to, you know, you know. Make this known. But, hey, if I have this supper, you do too. So, they spin. And this is good because I want to put all my parasites on notice.

Like, if we're recording this, we're broadcasting it. You're all, you're all taking a warning right now. I'm watching. Yeah. I just learned one of your names. I can probably learn the other ones. I won't remember them, but I'll write them down in like a little file. Write out a teeny tiny eviction notice and like staple it to your face.

they yeah I mean it's like it's a question are they parasites or are they commensalistic because they I think that they do technically qualify as parasites because they can occasionally cause skin issues but I think in most people it might be considered commensalistic because they don't really hurt us so but they don't benefit us either so they actually spend their whole lives on your face and their life cycle is quite short. They live about two weeks. And if you're thinking in all of this, like, wait a minute, I don't want a bunch of little guys on my face and all my eyelashes pooping on me.

Well, you don't have to worry because they don't poop, because they can't, because they do not have a butt. Man, two weeks, I don't want to retape my threat every two weeks. This is a real pain. Oh, man, forget it. But so no but if they have no butt, they just die of not being able to poop. Is that kind of thing? I guess you need a butt if you want to live more than like a second, huh?

Yes. They only live about two weeks, so their lifespan is so short that, yeah, they don't really need the butt. And I'm not sure whether it's the not having the butt that eventually kills them or if it's just like old age. I'm sure not having the butt certainly doesn't help with their longevity. but they are able to mate before they die, and so that's all that matters to nature, is if you can pass on your weird buttless genes to your offspring. Nature has no standards, no standards.

Their standard is whether you can do it. And that's it. Can you do it? Hey, we'll let you not have a butt if you can do it, if you can manage. So there's another message I may broadcast to nature, I started as a butt, okay? I'm very on top of checking that box. You don't need to keep having me re-up my license or whatever.

I started from the bottom. Yeah, nice. That's it. It's a rags to riches story. We all started from the bottom. Worked out. Yeah. But not these little fellows. So, yeah, their lifespan is basically they are born on your face.

They eat, they reproduce, lay eggs, and then die. Without the need to poop. And unfortunately, that doesn't mean we don't get their waste matter on our faces, because when they die, the poop has nowhere to go but our face. So, you know, I mean, maybe it's some comfort that they're not like pooping out of their butts. Is that comforting? Or is just like little beanbags full of poop that eventually just like explode poop on your face worse? If you mites keep pooping on my face, I'm going to throw you in a frog as the mob does.

Okay, that's the threat. We're broadcasting the threat right now. Don't like it. If you're weirded out by this or like kind of freaking out that there's a bunch of things crawling all over your face, first of all, I apologize. Second of all, they're so tiny. They literally are small, like they fit inside of like, like, the caverns of your, your follicles, your hair follicles.

So they, they, like, a few of them can be on a single hair follicle, and that you, there's, you can't see them. You can't see them. They're the little John Cinas of your face.

There's no seeing them without a microscope. And so you really don't have to worry, like, you don't have to worry, like if you're trying to, someone's trying to kiss you, and they're like, oh my God, what's that on your face? It's a bunch, you know,

they're just, they're tiny. I mean, we're, We're covered in various organisms like bacteria and so on that that are all inside and outside of us. And it just so happens that these are little tiny animals that live on us. Is that I feel like I'm being less and less helpful actually. No, and I love how you always start the show with being host of many parasites because it's just normalizing this thing that we should all be fine with. I've been joking before about the threats. It's whatever.

They can do what they're going to do. I can't stop it. And it's probably helping me somehow in the long run. Live and let live, even if it's a buttless two-week lifespan. But I will be back in two weeks to threaten them again. But market that. Thank you. The new generation, yes.

Well, if you're not a fan of the no-butt lifestyle, maybe I can interest you in a lot of butts. Like a plentiful butts, a bounty of butts. Just imagine that pitch on QVC or whatever late at night. Like, I mean, I'm sleepy. I guess I'll hear this out. For the working person who doesn't have time for only one butt. The Omnibut. Four easy payments.

That sounds fine. Yeah. One payment per bud. Okay, sure. I don't know how many butts is. Of $9.99 for $9.99 butts. Well, so this story is complicated because when I do my research for the show, I try really hard to find, like, original OG papers to back up what I'm saying so that I am not contributing to fake but news. This is one I have not been able to track down the original paper.

So please take this with a caveat that I am still kind of looking into this. So, you know, just a little grain of salt, a grain of butt salt. But I have seen some rumors that there is a species of marine flatworm called the gold speckled flatworm. Or thysanazanazone nigropalpapilosum. Well, we'll go with gold speckled flatworm. and they're quite beautiful. They are a marine flatworm. They look like a flat velvety black pancake with gold speckles and a white fringe.

They're really beautiful. Yeah. It's very stylish. It's sort of like if a clownfish had an alternate jersey. It's great. Right, right. They look, yeah, they look like a piece of underwater fashion, just a floating. You know how in Dr. Strange's cape is like sentient and flies around and, you

helps them out. This looks like a sentient magical cape. Yeah, so they're very, they're very mysterious and beautiful. It's like, it's like, oh, the starry sky, a starry night on, on a sentient cape. But they're only about three inches big, so about eight centimeters long, so little guys. So according to a few articles I've read, and again, I couldn't find like the original studies are the original descriptions in like a journal. So I'm worried that this isn't true. But I mean, I haven't seen anyone like debunk this either. So, and I think I saw it in like the BBC.

So it's not like I didn't read this in like the New York Post or like world news. The Amazing Bat Boy and butts, butt, butts. So some reputable news sources. But again, it's like sometimes, you know, I just like. to double check, make sure. I do. I wish it was the New York post, like, the gossip section specifically, like gold speckled flatworm coming out of one oak, you know, with a new person on its arm.

What's going on there? Caught with multiple butts at once. They apparently have multiple anuses or some sort of multiple anal openings on their backs, which is impressive given that actually some species of flatworms, don't even have a single anus. They just, like, they have a mouth. So they eat through their mouth, and then they poop through their mouth. So it's, you know, just like one whole does it all.

But, yeah, so I, the fact that, like, I'm trying to research, like, why do they have multiple butts and how and what's going on? Like, I'm still struggling to find research on this. So this is my call to any flatworm specialist who may have. have knowledge of multiple butts and how this could possibly happen to get in touch with me. So that maybe we could together solve the mystery of the many butts as a science community solve this mystery, please. You should put up the weirdest and least understandable bat signal in the sky. Like, what is that picture?

Oh, my God. Flatworm and a bunch of butts. You're just waiting on a roof And a trench coat Like commissioner Gordon Like somebody's gonna come I put it up Just doing it deep throat style

Where I'm like in a parking garage Sliding a briefcase And it's like Just a picture of a butt And a question mark But yeah I will Look I'll keep you up to date

If I find anything More about the story About the story of the mini butts The mystery Nancy Drew And the mystery of the mini butts I mean, look, I don't think this will be a thing I need to consider. But of all the things we've discussed, I would consider the multi-but situation.

I don't know. Maybe it makes poopin easier and stuff. Yeah, right? I'm open to it. Maybe that's like the advantage, right? Like you can process more waste or something. I really, why this is so interesting to me is as far as I know, there aren't really there aren't cases of multiple butts because it just doesn't offer that many benefits.

You just have one system, you push it out that system, and hey, you're done. And so, like, if this is actually true, it would be really interesting from, you know, an evolutionary perspective, which is why, like, part of me is, like, scared that it's not true, because this would be, like, the unicorn of butts, and I need to know. I need some verification. But there is one that I was able to verify that it's still super interesting when it comes to butts. And that is the comb jelly. The comb jelly has the best of both worlds.

They only sprout a butt when they need it. So Alex, I remember, I think we were talking earlier and you were mentioning that you have a slight a slight aversion to like jellyfish and so on. But I think comb jellies you might like, because they are just like little light up balloons. They are a phylum of colorful, translucent balloon-like marine animals. They are not actually related to jellyfish that closely, even though they look sort of jellyfish-like. They don't really have tentacles like jellyfish do. They have these like iridescent strobe effects on their sides. and sometimes they're bioluminescent even

because as their cilia which are these little tiny mobile hairs on their sides move and allows them to move through the water that causes light to refract so it looks like they have these like this light show going off their back of lights just kind of shining

and going in sort of a wave effect all around their sides so it's really beautiful and in addition to being pretty when they've got a poop, they just open up a brand new butthole every time. Oh. So it's just like, I could use a butthole here open. Right.

That's pretty exciting. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. It's like, you know, new day, new butt. If that T-1000 in the Terminator movies was also just kind of casually doing bodily functions as it remorffed and stuff. Great. Right, exactly. No, precisely.

Basically, their digestive organ will fill up, and then when the waste accrues, it is expelled through a new anal pore that just pops open. So this is... Yeah, that's the life. Yeah, that is the life, you know? No need to worry about, like, hygiene and stuff. Just new butt. Just get a new butt every time. Just like these...

I'm imagining these jellies is like a couple at dinner, and it's like, we haven't done a new butt in a long time. Do you want to do a new butt this weekend? Yeah, yeah, let's do a new butt. I feel like we're in a rut of the same butt. Right. And a butt rut. Yeah, butt rut. We need a new butt.

So this is the first transient anus ever discovered, which, you know. Hey, congratulations, scientists. It's an auspicious discovery. Because so much of science, it's like, oh, I have plumbed the depths of the sea or the wonders of the stars. And this one is you get to write the phrase transient anus over and over again in a journal that rules. I have discovered a new kind of bear. Like that was back with science like, you know, a hundred years ago when we still hadn't like discovered all the species and or killed them all. And now like we're down to like, well, I've found a type of transient butthole.

It's a phantom butthole. It must have been like legitimately hard to discover her spot because it comes and goes, right? That's amazing. That's cool. They found one of these guys and they like created a butthole and then they realized the butthole was gone and they're like, wait a minute. Nancy Drew and the mystery of the missing butthole. Or maybe I should use Encyclopedia Brown.

I don't know. Either way, the town police, like, do step in on that case. Like, no, you are too, Yag. I'm sorry. We, we are, we'll have the real police look for it. Right, right. You don't have a degree in butt biology. I don't think so, little missy.

We'll take it from here. And then the FBI steps in the federal butt inspectors. And they're like, no, we'll take it from here. Every member of the federal butt inspectors bought one of the t-shirts at the beach and did not know it was a legally binding contract to work for them. And then the CIA steps in, the colon investigation agency, and they're like, no, we'll take it from here and so on until you run out of butt puns with acronyms. So yeah, I mean, I think it's, it appears that the rules to having a butt are much more flexible than one would think. Yeah, that's like you just think of a butt as being so fixed. And like, especially this, this flatworm that has many, many butts.

There's got, that means so much plumbing. Right? Allegedly. Allegedly. I'm going to say allegedly. Has not been proven in a court of law how many butts the flatworm has. They have many butts and even more lawyers. We got to be careful.

We got to look out. You thought you knew butts, but you didn't know butts. But now you do. Now you know a little more about the wonderful world of butts. And thank you so much for coming with me. on this journey to discover more about butts. The science and butts, you know. Yeah.

I think, you know, I think it's educational. I really, no, Katie, it's always a treat. And this was like really fundamentally amazing. I really mean that. Like, I just didn't think it was that much for, right? Like, I thought it would be funny-looking butts or something. There was, but there was so much, like, fundamental systems of nature end of existing as an animal that can be different.

Really exciting. Yeah. No, exactly. There's a lot to be discovered if you let go of your hang-up of not talking about butts. So tell the people where they can find you. And hopefully not inside a sea cucumber butt. No, it's booked this weekend. They got it.

So I'll be here. Now, you can hear my show secretly incredibly fast. It's siffpod. fun is the Patreon or linktree slash siftpod for all the links to hear it on various stuff. It's a free show and then bonus stuff for supporters. And it is about the history and the science and the lore of things that we think are ordinary that are actually amazing. And it has many amazing guests, including the great Katie Golden on an episode about cattle and a whole other episode about Musk Oxen. And I think you will especially love those if you like this show. and I would recommend that you listen to this amazing show.

You already do. Good job. I think the whole series is fascinating. One might even say incredibly fascinating. Hey. Hey. So check that out. Did you tell the people your socials?

Oh, at Alec Schmidty on Twitter and alecshmitty.com. See those for mostly peanuts related, like Snoopy-related content. And you can find me on the internet at CreaturefeeturePod on Instagram, at Creaturefeet pod on Twitter. That's Fee A-T, not F-E-E-T. That is something very different. And, hey, if you have a question, even if it's not about butts, you can email me, Creaturefeeturepod at gmail.com.

And thank you so much for listening. I hope you had fun learning about butts. And if you're enjoying the show, please leave a rating or review. really appreciate it. I read them all. They always make my day. Thank you so much. And thanks to the space cossacks for their super awesome song, Exaulimina. Preacher features a production of IHeartRadio. For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts. Or hey, guess what? Where have you listened to your old? Look, I'm not going to judge you. Where have you listened to your shows? Do it. Go and, you're doing it

right now. You're listening right now, so I'm sure you've figured it out. See you next Wednesday. Thank you.