Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: Arctic Fox

Episode Date: January 26, 2022

The Arctic Fox is one of the cutest critters on the planet. It also has an amazing ability to survive the coldest temps on Earth. Dive into the snow and listen today! Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh and there's Chuck.

We're just a couple of foxes, silver foxes, with our pal Jerry, the silver fox of all. My hair's got a little gray to it now. Yeah, your beard's super gray. Now it's been gray for a while, but now the gray is creeping into the old upstairs. I've been plucking mine. No. Sure. What? You don't care, do you? Mine sometimes comes in a little wiry and I'm like, I don't really like that look on my super straight hair. So I do pull them out when they come in like that, sure. Head pubes. Kind of, a little bit. More look like a roadie for Tesla. Oh, you mean Jimmy Head Pube Barrington? Yeah.

The guitar tech? That's right. He was a great one, but his hair was messed up. I'll hit him with some smoke. That's right. Man, that guy. Old inside joke from our Detroit show. Some of you know it, some of you don't, but we're here to talk about the Arctic Fox, one of the cuter little critters on planet Earth. Right. So the Arctic Fox is adorable and it's in the same family as dogs, which makes it automatically lovable. But the fact that they can survive in some of the most inhospitable environments on the planet makes them admirable. So they're adorable. Okay. Yeah, I got it. Nice. Okay.

Portmanteau. Thank you. Yeah. So the Arctic Fox, just go ahead if you're in a place where you're not driving and look up a little picture of these little fellas. Or you're not crossing the street right now, on foot. That's right. But they are, I keep saying little because they are small, like foxes are small, the Arctic Fox is even smaller. They can be as small as a little Chihuahua. And by the way, big thanks to our old pals at How Stuff Works for this one. Yeah. Or they can get huge, like the size of a Jack Russell. All right. They can get up to eight pounds. That's right. So when I said though that they can survive in some really inhospitable environments, like the areas where they live,

the circumpolar areas, Alaska, Canada, Greenland, Iceland, Northern Europe, Russia, Canada, basically in the Arctic, they have to put up with temperatures that drop at like negative 50 degrees Celsius. Yeah. That's cold. Negative 58 degrees Fahrenheit, which reminded me, Chuck, of, I can't remember what episode it was, but remember Seymour Haia, the white death? Yeah. And we talked about how he was basically sniping Russian soldiers when it was like negative 40 degrees Fahrenheit. And 50 people wrote in and said negative 40 is the same in Fahrenheit and Celsius. I will never forget that. And I just wanted to say it again, that I still remember after all these years. So thanks. I love that. I remember that. The white

death. So what's astounding about the Arctic Fox is that it can survive in those kind of temperatures and it can do so for a lot of reasons. There are a lot of really pretty spectacular evolutionary adaptations that allow this to happen. And one of those is just that little size, the fact that they're small, they're compact. They have little legs, little short muzzles, and they have little small ears. So they don't have a lot of surface area to begin with, exposed to that cold, right? Right. So that's one big thing. They also have the warmest coat of any Arctic animal. It has multiple layers. And probably any animal, wouldn't you think? I would guess so. Yeah. I know that you mentioned it. They can trap a layer of air,

which is heated by their body heat, which in turn keeps them warm. So it like protects them from the outside colder air. It's pretty amazing. And then the coup de gras, the death blow about their pelt is the fluffy tail on the end that they actually use to cover their head and face with when they curl up to sleep. Adorable. That is awfully adorable. It's true. They also have hair. They're the only canid that has hair over their foot baths. So not only does that just add even more insulation, but it helps them walk on the snow. And then they have countercurrent blood circulation. And this is what's going to happen. They're going to reduce the blood flow to their feet to make sure those little paws don't get frostbitten. And then when it gets really,

really cold, their actual metabolism shifts by about 25% slower than it is during the summer to, you know, to basically warm them up, to keep them from having to eat as much when there's not as much food. So their body undergoes a metabolic change to survive those winters. Yeah. Kind of like a walking quasi-hybernation so that they use up as fat stores that they build up in the fall. Totally. Pretty cool. And one thing I didn't realize about the Arctic Fox, in addition to just about everything we've just said, that they come in two colors. There's a blue variety of an Arctic Fox, which is awesome. Did you see those? I think it's like that white that's so white. It looks blue. Well, it's sort of a gray too. It certainly doesn't look blue-blue.

So if you get excited to go see a blue animal or a blue mammal, don't get your hopes up too much. Right. But it's, you know, I have a problem. I'm not colorblind or anything, but Emily always sees colors more deeply, I guess, than I do. So she might see one and call it blue, but I didn't think so. I mean, I see one in the Google image results and it's pretty blue. I see the gray you're talking about as well, but it's, you know, people do all sorts of cookie things with, you know, post-production with photographs now. So who knows what they did with that? Send me that blue fox, will you? Sure. In a box. Sure. I'm going to go get them. And you could go get them. Some people do keep them as pets from

time to time, but those are people who live up in Arctic areas. You wouldn't want to get one and bring them down to Georgia because they would be extremely uncomfortable and that would be cruel. But also, Chuck, they apparently make really terrible pets as well, right? Yeah. I think they're known as super, super stinky. I think they have a urine that's, it's sort of like skunk-like. So they're smelly. They're very, very hard to train, although they say you can train them, but it's probably not a great idea for a pet. I mean, if you're living up in the Arctic, you don't have a lot of choices, go ahead and get an Arctic fox and see what you can do, but don't live in Miami Beach and think you're going to be cool and have some exotic

pet because it's illegal A and just unethical B. Right. There you go. It covers both boxes. Should we take a break? I think we should. We'll come back with more about the Arctic fox. the road. Okay. I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help this. I promise you. Oh God. Seriously. I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep. We know that Michael and a different hot sexy teen crush boy band are each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids relationships life in general can get

messy. You may be thinking this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to frosted tips with Lance Bass on the I heart radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikala. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life in India. It's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get second hand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars. If you're willing to look for it. So I rounded

up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, major league baseball teams, canceled marriages, kpop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good. There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology. It changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. So what do these little boogers eat? So apparently, since they're canids, they should be carnivores, even hyper carnivores I've seen. But they're technically omnivores because food supplies

can get so scarce that arctic foxes have been known to eat basically whatever will sustain them, including seaweed and berries. But typically they prefer meat. Sure. They will load up and increasing their weight by up to 50% as that hard, hard winter sets in, store up that body fat. And if you see a polar bear in the arctic hunting, you will probably find at least one or more arctic foxes trailing not too far behind because they will follow those polar bears around and get whatever little scraps that polar bear can't get to. That's right. One of the great things about arctic foxes is they can hunt year round because of their little ears. Their ears are super wide. They're short, but they're wide. And they can actually hear stuff like some of their prey

moving under the snow. And so if you've ever seen a video of an arctic fox pounce, it's adorable, but they will go up and then straight down to break through the snow and land on top of their prey and catch their prey. And I will one up you. The arctic fox pouncing is adorable. Momo does that to lizards and it makes an arctic fox look like garbage. It's so cute, man. You see the videos in the snow. This arctic fox will literally leap up in the air and then half of it will disappear beneath the snow. And all you will see sticking up is a butt and rear legs and that big old fluffy tail. And then there might be a mouse two feet down into that snow that they smelled from many, many feet away. So I highly recommend,

I doubt if Josh is going to post pictures or videos of Momo doing this on YouTube, but you can find plenty of arctic foxes doing it. I'll try to find a, I'll try to get a video of it actually. To do it in slow mo if you can. Yeah. Yeah. It's not adorable for the mice, but it is to everybody else. Yeah, but you know, it's part of the food chain. It is. It's true. So if you are a male arctic fox, they call you a dog. Sure. Sometimes with a A W instead of an O depending on how good a friend you are with the person calling you that. If you're a female, where do you call it Chuck? You're vixen. It's awesome. Which I love. And just like other foxes, I think other foxes are kits, little babies if I'm not mistaken. Yeah. And you know, they made

about once a year. They have about 20, they're born dark usually at first, about 20 little dark kits and they are adorable. They give birth in the blazing summer months of like sort of spring to summer, April through June. And usually we in about 45 days and sometimes their siblings will help raise them, which is also pretty cute. Yeah. And then by the time they hit nine to 10 months of age, actually within six months, they're off on their own. And then in nine to 10 months, they're sexually mature. And they have a really compressed initial, you know, adolescence and initial maturation period because they don't live that long actually. I think in like if you have an Arctic fox as a pet, they've been known to live 10 to 12 years, kind of similar to a dog,

although small dogs often live longer than that by several years. But I guess the longest anyone's ever documented an Arctic fox living is 16 years. Yeah. And in the grand scheme of the thing, I think in the wild, you're probably looking at more like eight years. Yeah. I mean, it's a lot harder life in the wild, I would guess, than hanging out and some dudes lean to in Northern Canada, you know? Since we're talking about the Arctic, every time I think about the Arctic now, I think about the show The Terror. Have you seen that show? The Terror. I don't think so. It was an AMC show. It's available on Hulu. There were two seasons. It's an anthology series. So each season is its own entirely different story. The second season I recommend like the first half

of, the first season from start to finish, the first second to the last second, it is worth every bit of your interest. Oh, wait a minute. I know this is the one you recommended to the Grabster on email, right? Yes. It's so good, man. Just check it out. It's such, it's one of the best made television shows I've ever seen. I can't imagine how much it costs to make it and you can tell. And all the actors are like, just the, like every one of them is like the best actor working today. But you, you know, you've seen them, you recognize them here, there, but you don't really know their names, like that kind of stuff. It's just a really great, great show. Well, the Atlantic says the terror is more than a chilling monster show. Yeah. Well, the reason

they call it the terror is one of the, one of the ships, the terror of the, the faded, lost, polar expedition. That's, that's what it's about is that and it just kind of, it's all speculative fiction basically. And since we're on TV Corner here for the last minute, we just finished the first season of Leftovers last night. Oh yeah. Season one wrapped up and so we're speeding right into season two, loving the show. It started to drag a little bit, but then the last two episodes of season one got really interesting. And I wanted to also further explain, I think I might have turned some people off with station 11 saying it was a post pandemic flu pandemic world. It is, it is one of the best shows I've ever seen. And it's not, it's not terrifying. It's like

there are no infected or no zombies or anything out there waiting to kill you. Like all the infected died. So it's, it's really just about repopulating and the story of these people who survived. And it's very uplifting, good, good stuff. I see. So it's soft core. Yeah. It's soft core. It's a cinematic show. That's it. How did we get here? God bless the Arctic Fox is what we're saying. Thanks Arctic Foxes. We love you guys. And of course, everybody, that means that short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts, My Heart Radio, visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.