Tooth & Claw: True Stories of Animal Attacks - How Animals Perceive the World ft. Kendall Long

Episode Date: June 12, 2023

The guys are joined by Kendall Long of the podcast Little Curiosities to discuss the ways in which animals perceive the world differently than humans. After that, Kendall is put on the hot seat and answers a batch of hard-hitting animal questions, including what the biggest animal she thinks she could take in a fight is and which of the three T&C hosts she would pick in a Bachelorette competition. ~~ To advertise on the show, contact us! ~~ Tooth & Claw is brought to you by QCODE. Support the show and get access to an extensive library of exclusive episodes like this by supporting the show on Patreon or joining the Grizzly Club on Apple Podcasts. For the latest updates on the show and all things wildlife, follow us at toothandclawpod.com and social:  Instagram: @ToothandClawPodcast Twitter: @ToothandClawPod Wes: @GrizKid Jeff: @jefe_larson Mike: @mikey3ds         Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey, tooth and claw listeners, it's Wes. We really hope you guys like this episode with Kendall Long, who's the host of Little Curiosities, which is a brand new podcast on QCode, the network that we're part of. We had a really fun time talking with Kendall, and in the first half of this episode, we're going to talk a bit about animal senses, a little bit about anthropomorphism,

and then in the second half, we grill Kendall with some really hard-hitting questions that Jeff cooked up. Anyway, we're doing our best to provide additional episodes each month, and that's what these interview episodes will be, and we're thinking of other ways that we can, can create more content outside of this interview format. That being said, if you're just here for our bread and butter attack story episodes, you've got nothing to worry about.

These new formats won't be replacing any of our normal episodes just adding to them. So you'll still get your regularly scheduled animal attack stories twice a month, and you subscribers will still be getting two additional subscriber episodes twice a month as well. Okay, hopefully that's all clear, and now we can get to this episode. Tooth and Claw Podcasts. This is Jeff Larson here. We got Wes Larson, our wildlife biologist. That's me.

The best turtle catcher, I know. We got Mike Smith, our producer, who, have you ever caught a turtle, a wild one? Yeah, I actually have once. He's caught one turtle. And then we got Jeff, me, who's caught a few turtles, but not as me as Wes. And we have a really special guest, the very intelligent. very charming Kendall Long has joined us today. Hello.

From the podcast Little Curiositys. Yes. Which I really like your podcast. It's kind of like tooth and claw but way more efficient. It'd be like if Wes was solo, just like giving out helpful information. But yeah, your podcast is great. And thank you for joining us today, Kendall. Oh, thank you for having me.

I am a huge fan of tooth and claw. So I'm so psyched to be here. And yeah, I'm excited about our topic today. Yeah. We really appreciate it. I also agree. I want to echo what Jeff says. I think your podcast is much more succinct than ours.

There's far less about transformers and all sorts of other kind of weird tangent. We should make a pact right now that if either of our podcast becomes the biggest podcast in the world, we'll take the other one with us. I agree because I feel like your guys' podcast is pretty big. So, you know, I'm down. Perfect. I don't know much about Transformers, unfortunately. Oh, yeah. Well, we can help you with that.

Thanks. Do you want to really quickly say kind of what Little Curiosity is about just so people know a little bit about it? Yeah. So Little Curiosity is basically an accumulation of things that I'm curious about, things that I come across in my daily life, usually about nature, sometimes about plants, animals, different. weird human things and I really do a deep dive into things that spark my curiosity. So yeah, it's basically just all the inner workings of my brain personified into a podcast. All right. No, I love that concept. There's a lot of directions you can know. It's true. Jeff has a lot of stuff bouncing around in his brain. It sounds like maybe he is.

Like right now, I'm like, how are we talking to you when you're in Germany? And the explanation I have is satellites, but it's like, so we send it to outer space and we can still talk to you in Germany right away. And it just, the satellite translates me speaking in German to English somehow. It's incredible. Yeah, incredible tech. Technology is great. Sheff says self-described koala brains, so really he's just thinking about eucalyptus and take in

20-hour naps. Listeners may also know Kendall from The Bachelor, right? You were on The Bachelor, the Bachelor, the Bachelor in Paradise. Yes. Twice. I was. Yeah, I was on a quest for love. And now I'm on a different kind of quest.

The Bachelor is like a crazy show. I don't really watch it, but I think it's one of the most intense reality TV shows because it's like pretty much Survivor. But instead of getting a million dollars at the end, you have to get married to someone who's been dating like a bunch of other people the last 20 days. I wish he got a million dollars at the end. That'd be awesome. Yeah, right?

Yeah, that's a lot better. Yeah. I'll play Survivor. Thank you very much. So Wes and Kendall both have, I don't know if you've told us or not, but if you have, I don't know, but you both have something you're talking about that, well, I'll let you take it over, Wes, because I don't even know, like, how to introduce what you're talking about. All right. So, yeah, me and Kendall, we've chatted a bit about this. We wanted to do something fun together.

Kendall is very curious about the world, curious about how animals and plants and all these different things fit into the natural world. I am too. And so Kendall came up with the idea, which I thought was an amazing idea of how talking a little bit about how animals perceive the world and how naturally anthropomorphism kind of falls into that too, because we as humans can really only conceptualize how we perceive the world. It's really hard for us to think about how animals do it. So Kendall came up with that idea and we decided to run with it. And I think I'll start us off. And I'm going to talk a little bit about some animals that are really near and dear to my heart. And kind of a little introduction into animal senses, and then I'm going to pass it over to Kendall,

and I know Kendall has some really cool stuff ready for us as well. So I kind of, like this is maybe a little bit out of left field, but we both ended up using a book that I just absolutely love. That book is called An Emense World, How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us, and that's by Ed Yong. And Kendall, I know you really like this book too, right? Oh, I absolutely love the book. I'm about halfway through right now, and it's insane to see how animals view the world so much differently. And it really does bring to light. It's like I feel like I am a bug looking through the eyes of a bug when he's talking about certain stories.

And yeah, it's a different perspective on like different realities that aren't human. Totally. And so I like tried really hard to come up with a better way to like kind of do a thought experiment for how animals just view the world and perceive the world. but I couldn't come up with something better than what Ed Yong puts in the very beginning of this book. So I actually wanted to read an excerpt from this book that I think is really going to help people conceptualize what we're talking about, and then I'll launch into my little section that I wanted to get into. So if I may, I'm just going to read this. If for whatever reason it's too long, we can just get rid of it later.

But I do think it's really cool. All right. So this is straight from the book. And again, I really recommend this book if you're interested in this sort of thing. Imagine an elephant in a room. This elephant is not the proverbial weighty issue, but an actual weighty mammal. Imagine the room is spacious enough to accommodate it, make it a school gym. Now imagine a mouse has scurried in two. A robin hops in alongside it, an owl perches on an overhead beam, a bat hangs upside down from the ceiling, a rattlesnake slithers along the floor, a spider has spun a web in the corner, a mosquito buzzes through the air. A bumblebee sits upon a potted sunflower. Finally, in the midst of this increasingly crowsingly,

out of a human. Let's call her Rebecca. She's sighted, curious, and fond of animals. Don't worry about how she got herself into this mess. Never mind what all these animals are doing in a gym. Consider instead how Rebecca and the rest of this imaginary menagerie might perceive one another. It sounds kind of like our cage match, but like a battle royale. Everyone against everyone else.

It's about to go down. Yeah. This is a senses match instead. We're going to see how they're scared for the elephant once the mouse walked in. The mouse. All right. So the elephant raises its trunk like a periscope. The rattlesnake flicks out its tongue, and the mosquito cuts through the air with its antenna.

All three are smelling the space around them, taking in the floating scents. The elephant sniffs nothing of note. The rattlesnake detects the trail of the mouse and coils its body in ambush. The mosquito smells the alluring carbon dioxide in Rebecca's breath and the aroma of her skin. It lands on her arm ready for a meal, but before it can bite, she swats it away, and her slap disturbs the mouse. it squeaks an alarm at a pitch that is audible to the bat, but too high for the elephant. The elephant, meanwhile, unleashes a deep, thunderous rumble too low pitch for the mouse's ears, or the bats, but felt by the vibration-sensitive belly of the rattlesnake.

Rebecca, who is oblivious to both the ultrasonic mouse and the infrasonic elephant, listens to the Robin, which is singing at frequencies better suited to her ears. The robin's chest looks red to Rebecca, but not to the elephant, whose eyes are limited to shades of blue and yellow. The bumblebee can't see red, but it is sensitive to the ultraviolet hues that lie beyond the opposite end of the rainbow. The sunflower it sits on has a center and an ultraviolet bullseye, which grabs the attention of both the bird and the bee. The bullseye is invisible to Rebecca who thinks the flower is only yellow. Her eyes are the sharpest in the room, and she can spot the small spider sitting upon its web.

Plunged into darkness, Rebecca walks slowly forward, arms outstretched, hoping to feel obstacles. The mouse does the same, with its whiskers, which sweep back and forth several times the same. second to map its surroundings. As it skitters between Rebecca's feet, its footsteps are too faint for her to hear, but easily audible to the owl perched overhead. The disc of stiff feathers on the owl's face funnel sounds towards its sensitive ears, one of which is slightly higher than the other. Thanks to the asymmetry, the owl can pinpoint the source of the mouse skittering in both the vertical and horizontal planes. It swoops in just as the mouse blunders into the range of the wading rattlesnake. Using two pits on its snout, the snake can sense the infrared radiation that emanates for more

objects, it effectively sees in heat, and the mouse's body blazes like a beacon. It sounds like one of those math questions from my fifth grade math book. You know, it's like, yeah, I got how many apples? Yeah. Who's Rebecca? It goes on and on. It's really interesting because then he goes into like the spider and how the spider is really only feeling the vibrations of the web and how the robin is like feeling the magnetic

pole of the earth. And that's what it's going to use to then migrate south for the winter. and it's this whole thought experiment to you kind of see how all these animals are packed into this room. And as humans, we assume that it's like, oh, it's dark in here. All these animals are going to be bumping into each other. But every single one of those animals is perceiving and communicating and navigating and different ways. And it's almost impossible for us to really understand how that happens, which is amazing. It's so cool that there's animals kind of navigating around in completely different ways than we can even conceptualize.

So, I'm going to stop reading that because it does go on a little too long. But I wanted to talk about a couple terms that we should just go over really quick. So first of all, a sense is something that can be kind of hard to understand. So stimuli are the physical cues that are detected by our senses. So stimuli can be like wavelengths, radiation, heat. They can be molecules. They can be a lot of different things. And animals, like humans, we use those stimuli to turn them into information.

So we have cells that are receptors in our bodies that pick up those stimuli and convert them into signals that then travel to the brain. And the brain will kind of analyze them and pull apart the necessary information. So that's just kind of a basic. That's how senses work. Oh, so six cents is a bad name for that movie. Yeah, because isn't a sense. There's not, yeah. Well, there's stimuli.

I think humans do have a sixth sense. Do we? What do you think it is? It's knowing where our body is in space. Like spatial awareness. Yeah. So if you close your eyes, I can touch my mic because I know where my body is relative to where my mic is. They should make a movie out of you.

I don't see dead people. I know where microphones are. I know where the coffee cup is that's on the table when I close my eyes. That's going to be the big reveal at the end of it. The coffee cup was all along. It is a really interesting thing to me, though. doing research for this is I kind of always wondered, okay, how come then there isn't this super animal that has like the best sight, the best hearing, the best sense of smell, the best sense of

taste, like it just has everything. And it's because- Endo-Raptor. Yeah, kind of like the whatever. I don't know what that is. What's the Endo Raptor? Isn't that what they're making Jurassic World? Oh, okay.

That just has like all of the dinosaurs in the future. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, Indo-Raptor. Yeah, yeah. The Frankenstein dinosaurs. They're making so many dinosaurs over there in those parks. Who knows what they're cooking up? This is like bulletproof. Yeah.

Pretty much, though, like, the idea there is when you have a really finely tuned sense, it's kind of always on the ready. So, like, if you're really good at smelling, your nose is constantly right there ready to smell things. And that's energetically pretty costly for your body. It kind of creates this almost like stressful kind of experience for your nose, where it's just constantly has to be on point. And if all of your senses were that way,

it would be way too much for your body to handle. And then you'd also just be flooded by way too much information that your brain wouldn't be able to pick apart. Overly stimulated, definitely. Yeah, exactly. Which is how we all feel when we go to like a fast and furious movie. Yeah. Just over stimulated.

I've heard stories. I don't know how scientific this is. Maybe one of you will know better than I, but how when someone loses. their sight, all of a sudden they start growing more relying on, like, smell or hearing or something like that. I was going to bring up Electra in the Daredevil. That would have been way better.

Where she's like blindfolded for like two years so that all of her senses are heightened. Is that, yeah, is that a thing? Just cut what I was saying before and we'll go with what you have. That's not. It's the same concept. Right. It's our fourth movie reference in like five minutes.

You're great at protecting your data, but lots of places could still expose you to identity theft. I thought it was safe. If that happens, LifeLock gives you a U.S.-based restoration agent who will stick by your side from start to finish. Phone calls, filing documentation, preparing insurance claims, your agent handles it all. In fact, we're so confident restoration is guaranteed. Pour your money back. Isn't it nice to have someone like that on your side? Save up to 40% your first year at LifeLock.com slash spot.

I would say, yeah, Mike, that's totally true. And like, I remember once watching this documentary on this person who had lost their site at a really early age. And they actually learned how to teach themselves sonar where they would send out clicks just like a bat. And they could map the environment around them. And that's a human being that figured out how to do that just because they lost our key sense for navigating the world. Didn't he ride a bike too? I think I saw that same thing. Yeah.

He was riding a bike. Yeah, he can ride a bike. Like on the street. I'm like, how? It's brave. I would think it's a prank. I'd be like, that guy's not blind. That's like, no, he definitely was.

You couldn't tell he was blind. Yeah, 100%. Oh, okay. Yeah, and then people that lose their sight tend to get better hearing and smell, and their other sites do become a bit more fine-tuned. The body diverts the energy toward those other senses. But as humans, we are kind of, we are on the upper end of sight.

Like, we have pretty good sight compared to a lot of, of other animals. And the author of this book would kind of get mad at me for saying that because he makes it very clear that we shouldn't be like comparing how good animals are because there's really not a framework for comparison there. But I'm still going to say it. We're good at, we're good at seeing stuff. We're better than other animals. That one quote, it's like if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it's going to live its whole entire life thinking it's stupid. Oh yeah. Yeah, exactly. Because it wasn't built to climb trees, you know? So yeah. So, Yeah, I think, but also it's difficult for humans to describe animals in those ways with their senses because we are our language.

I think this is something the book also mentions. Our language is so, like, sight is ingrained in the words that we use, you know. And so even when we try to explain how animals see the world, you know what I mean? Like we even say that. Oh, animals see the world this way. But what we mean is how they experience the world. But we use see because that's how we, it's like our eyes right in front of our face. That's our.

That's our predominant, even method of ingesting. Yeah, that's cool. Exactly. When you see, like, a documentary about rattlesnakes or the predator, they do, when you hear a documentary about. You see the, you see the, like, heat vision map that the snake is seeing, you know, where they see the hot spots and stuff. And that, again, is like a human lens looking at how we think that probably looks to the

rattlesnake, but it could be completely different. Like, we have no idea how to. to like quantify how a rattlesnake experience. It probably is completely different. It probably is. But what do we call that, Kendall, when we're taking a human lens to look at things that animals do?

Anthropomorphizing. Oh, nailed it. It's right. Yeah. Yeah, I practiced pronouncing that word. It's a hard one. It's great. My mom practiced it, too.

So did my mom. It's a tricky concept, and I know it's one that you're going to get into in some better detail. So I'm going to leave that up to you mostly, but before we kind of switch gears into that, I wanted to talk about a really incredible sense of smell. And the reason I wanted to do that is because when I was working with Dr. Tom Smith, we got into trying to do an experiment on bear olfaction.

So olfaction means sense of smell. And what we were trying to look at was there's all these kind of anecdotal things of like how well bears can smell, but it had never really been measured. And we were trying to come up with an experiment that would measure how well a polar bear can actually smell. And there's the story of this village of indigenous people on the coast of the Arctic that pulled out a bowhead whale that they were harvesting.

And there was a bear like 90 kilometers offshore that immediately made a beeline toward that whale. And it was collared. And so the collar data showed that as soon as that whale was pulled out, that bear took a turn toward it. And the thought is that that bear picked up on the smell of that beached whale, that dead whale, from 90 kilometers away, which is insane when you think about it. Yeah. And so, what, that's like, that's like 55 miles, right?

Yeah, somewhere in there. Yeah, it's around there. Kendall's in Germany. She knows kilometers. Yeah, I'm learning. That's really difficult. Yeah, that's hard. I, like, ruined a couple baking recipes because I've gotten the conversion wrong.

So. Oh, yeah. Yeah, the metric system doesn't make any sense. No, but it's better. I've heard it's better once you can master it. Yeah, it is for sure. It makes way more sense. Anyway, though, this kind of idea that maybe a bear can pick up a scent from that far away was really interesting to us.

So I started looking into it. And then I also think that bear olfaction is really important to a lot of our stories that we tell. So that's why I wanted to talk about olfaction. But I'm actually not going to talk about bears. I want to talk about one of our other favorite animals that's really good at snobes. It's like a famous, a famous sniffer, which is docks. Oh, yes. I thought ant eaters, but they don't even know to sniff, right?

They mostly use that. I wanted to ask you one question about the polar bear thing. Yeah. Does it help them to be able to smell further that there's like less sense out in the Arctic? Because like it's just kind of like snow and ice, right? Totally. So there's not like plants and stuff interfering with that smell. Yeah, if you stuck.

Like a grizzly bear isn't going to be able to pick up a scent of something from 90 kilometers away because it's totally inundated by thousands of other scents, you know, in that distance. But a polar bear in like a very barren environment that's also windy where scents can travel very long is like going to be able to pick them up further away. But it's still an incredible distance for it. That might be the world record for scent smelt distance-wise. Well, don't they say sharks can smell like a molecule of blood from like half the way? global way.

They say a mile away. Do you think it's cheating? If it's in the water, it's kind of cheating because it can hold things. Oh. Yeah. It's a different category. I was going to say the same thing. I do think if you were to compare again, which we're not really supposed to, I think

you'd have to have your own categories for like terrestrial and marine just because it's a different medium and stuff does travel better. So yeah. I'm officially giving the world record to this polar. All right. It's been given. All right. All right, so we're going to switch to dogs, though.

So if you've spent a lot of time around dogs, you know that they're always exploring around their environments with their noses. And we all know that dogs have okay vision. They're missing some colors, and it's a bit blurrier than ours. And they have really good hearing, but scent is really the way that they navigate the world. It's their most finely tuned scents. And, you know, when we smell something, so I want to go through kind of what happens when you smell something,

and I'm going to set up an experiment or kind of a something to imagine. Imagine your home and your roommate comes in and he has some lasagna that his parents made that just smells delicious and you just immediately want some of that lasagna. I just need this is one of Jeff and Mike's biggest fights. I would hope they would offer it to me. I've heard about the lasagna story. So there's these little odorant molecules on that lasagna that lasagna that are going to waft through the air. And what happens when you breathe in, those molecules pass by what's called an olfactory epithelium. And that's just this kind of lattice work of bone and this sticky substance that's covered in receptor neurons.

And those are plugged into a part of the brain that's called the olfactory bulb. So essentially those odorants come in, your receptor neurons grab them, and then they get sent to this olfactory bulb. And that olfactory bulb pretty much tells you like what you're smelling and whether or not it's important. And if it's not important, you're not really even going to register it. If it is important, your brain's going to be like, oh, that's lasagna. That smells delicious. We should go ask if we can have some. Very important.

Yeah. So that's kind of what happens. That's a really interesting. Sorry, I don't mean to DRLS again. But I'm always struck when I travel to a different country outside of the United States. All the sudden, it just smells very different than where you're from. It's just like because you're not, you're not used to all of those local scents happening, you know. Totally. And a crazy thing about scent is that with like taste, we have like a biological

predilection toward certain tastes and like to avoid certain tastes because those can kill us, you know, so we naturally avoid things that are really bitter or toxic tasting. Scent is in that way. Those are all cultural cues that we've learned. Like we have to learn that poop like smells bad. Like those are things that aren't necessarily like biologically picked up. How long did that take? for you to learn, Jeff. Some of us are slower learners.

Still learning. Still on that journey. Anyways, dogs have the same system. They have pretty much the same workings, but theirs is way better in a few key ways. They have a much bigger olfactory epithelium. They have a much bigger olfactory bulb and way more receptors. But there's some other really cool differences. And I truly can't look at my dog the same way after learning all this just because it's,

It's so amazing to think about, like, what's happening. They haven't learned that poop smells bad. They haven't. Oh, my dog puts his nose right up in poop every single time. It's so bad. It's embarrassing. Just learn it already. It smells bad.

No, has your dog ever eaten poop? Oh, yeah. She eats it all the time. It's like a territorial thing. I don't know. They're like, no, this is my land. There's no evidence of you here. Get rid of this.

Yeah. All right. So as we breathe in, we're taking an air to breathe as well as in. air to like get those odorants so all of that air is going down the same tube and as we're breathing in then and breathing out we're like breathing in those odorants and then expelling those odorsance so as humans we get this kind of strobe like sensation as we're breathing you're like smelling something and then you kind of lose it as you breathe out and then you smell it again as you breathe in and then you lose it as you breathe out again it's it's this kind of on and off kind of thing

dogs have a really interesting system they have structures in their nose that split the air into two different streams. So there's a bigger stream for respiration and then a much smaller stream for olfaction. So the bigger stream like just goes straight into their lungs, but the air in the smaller split goes straight to their olfaction system. And they have those really good neurons there in that huge olfactory bulb. And because they aren't expelling that air with the outgoing breath, it just kind of gets to simmer in there. And then it actually gets replenished with each other breath. So it gets like strengthened deeper. So for them, their sense of smell is much more constant and consistent.

They're not kind of going on and off, on and off. It's actually like as they take more breasts, it's just getting stronger and stronger, which is really cool to me. Another really interesting difference is that they, dogs and lots of other mammals, have these really specially shaped nostrils that create these little swirls of air that are constantly bringing scent into their nose.

So as they exhale out of their nose, these little nostril slits create these little vortexes that bring sense in. So they're actually still inhaling while they're exhaling, which is also really amazing to me. Interesting. So when you look at dogs, you'll see they're like their nostrils kind of taper into these like smaller slits. And that's to create these little vortexes around their nose to make it so

they're like constantly having air blowing back into their nose, which again is amazing. Yeah. Okay. Because they are so good at this, then we've trained them to like detect landmines, to figure out when polar bears are pregnant, to find tumors, and then of course to find drugs. And then bears have even more receptors and even bigger developed olfactory bulb. If you look at a bear skull, you look in their nasal cavity,

you see this kind of lattice work of all these little thin, tiny bones. And that's that olfactory epithelium where they just have all of those neurons. So bears are sometimes considered to be the best terrestrial sniffers on the planet, with maybe the only exception being an elephant could definitely be better than that big trunk. Or one of those like uppity Somalias, they probably think they're the best. Well, elephants got ears, too, the huge ears.

Can't they hear really well, too? I'm sure they can. They're probably your example you're talking about of an animal with like all the senses dialed all the way up. They can see pretty good. Elephants are number one. Right. Yeah.

They might not be very good at being able to find their microphone, though. That's the sense they're missing out. They can feel. With their eyes gliss. They're pretty good at feeling vibrations too, right? Through their feet and communicating that way. They got all of it. Elephants.

They're the master species. We figured it out. So I got one more thing to talk about dogs smelling, and then I'm going to turn over to Kendall. But one other really cool thing about the sense of smell. And I think why in a really interesting way, it's a more refined sense than sight, is that sight is very much present.

Like, we see things as they are currently happening. It's not like we could walk into a room, and if there was someone there 10 minutes ago, you'd see this slide outline of where they were. We see things as they are. But scent kind of has this time travel effect to it, and especially in animals like dogs, where a dog can walk into a room

and it knows, like, oh, half an hour ago, there was another dog here. This is the path that walked. This is what it did. And then sometimes they can even kind of tell the future because these odorants sometimes travel faster than the source of the odorants. So sometimes a dog will smell something before the thing actually shows up. That's such a cool way to picture it.

I've never even thought about that before. Yeah. It's a different dimension to scent. And it's something that we don't really get with sight. And then another cool thing about it is it can penetrate things that we can't see through. So like a dog, if I, you know, if I'm with my dog and I have a rotissory chicken in my pocket backpack, if I'm realizing that as I say that, I, my dog knows, oh, there's a chicken in that backpack, but any person walking by that maybe can't pick up that scent has no idea. So it is

cool that it can see through things too. Relax and let Ralph's delivery handle your grocery shopping this week. We start with only the freshest items. Then review your your list and carefully choose each one. Then we pack it all up and deliver it in as little as 30 minutes so you can feel confident it's what you ordered. Fresh groceries, your way with Ralph's delivery and pickup. Get free delivery during online deal days plus $30 off your first online order. Ralph's, fresh for everyone. So scent is amazing. I'm really glad we did this because I have a whole new appreciation for it. And Kendall, I'm going to turn it over to you for your part. Yeah. So I focused a lot on how we anthropomorphize animals and we give them human-like attributes. And when I was researching,

I found that the earliest documented case of how humans anthropomorphize animals is this book. It's like an encyclopedia of animals. It's called the medieval beastry. Have you ever heard of this? I have heard of that. Yeah. It's amazing. And so it's pretty. epic. It's kind of like an animal encyclopedia. And it's a mixture of, like there's monsters in there. Like they have half tiger, half snake, different kinds of animals. And they also have animals that were really familiar with. And so I thought it was really interesting. I did pull up a couple of how they describe animals. And I want you to hear like the very human-like characteristics that they gave these animals. And this was really popular in the Middle Ages.

and I read that it was second next to the Bible. So this book was really popular back in the day. And in honor of tooth and claw, I did pull up the description of bears. So I thought you guys had to find this interesting. Awesome. So this is what it says about bears. Bears give birth in the winter.

The bear cub is born as a shapeless and eyeless lump of flesh, which the mother bear shapes into its proper form by licking it, the origin of the expression to look into shape. The cup is born head first, making its head weak and its arms and legs strong, allowing bears to stand upright. Bears do not mate like other animals. Like humans, they embrace each other when they copulate. Their desire is aroused in winter.

The males do not touch the pregnant female, and even when they share the same layer, at the time of birth, they lie separated by a trench. When in their 14th day period of hibernation, bears are so soundly asleep that not even, Even wounds can wake them. Bears eat honey, but can only safely eat the apples of the mandrake if they also eat ants. Bears fight bulls by holding their horns and attacking their sensitive noses.

If injured, a bear can heal itself by touching the herb mulean. The fierce bears are found in Namibia. So that was interesting how they were trying to compare how bears made love with each other like humans. So there's some anthropomorphizing. It sounded like there's even like some morality that they put in there, whereas like bears in their den, they make sure there's a trench between them, you know. Yeah, they can't handle them being with, you know, around their pregnant, their pregnant baby mama. Can't even touch them. No, that is interesting.

Wes hasn't taught us any of it. Yeah. Yeah, that's our next bear episode. Yeah. There's so many interesting ones. Yeah, I have a couple in here. There's one of the beaver. This one's short, and I thought this one was really.

funny. Oh yeah, we got to do beaver. Yeah, I love beavers. They're so cool. So this is the beaver. The beaver is hunted for its testicles, which are valued for making medicine. When the beaver sees that it cannot escape from the hunter, it bites off its testicles and throws them to the hunter, who then stops pursuing the beaver. If another hunter chases the beaver, it shows the hunter that has already lost his testicles, and so is spared. That's a real, what would Mike and Jeff do answer to how to get away from something. We should write a book, Mike. Exactly.

Did you know beavers and their dams have a room to dry often, like a mud room, and they'd get all dry and then they go into their nicer room? See, that is kind of like anthropomorphizing, right? Because it's like, oh, they want to be all nice and cozy. But it does make sense. Yeah. Yeah. Who doesn't want to be nice and cozy?

Beaver have a, I think they have really thick fur. Or is that otters? The babies have really thick fur. No, beavers do too. Both of them. Yeah. Yeah. So I wanted to start off with that because I thought it was interesting how way far back in the middle ages we were starting to anthropomorphize animals.

And from there we've gone to movies, TV shows, like giving them very human-like characteristics. And so one of the stories that was inspired by the book that Wes and I both read is wind farming, like birds and wind farming. So we know that it's a problem with birds running into wind. turbines. According to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, around 140,000 to 500,000 birds die in the U.S. loan after colliding with wind turbines. And I think what was really interesting about how humans have tried to solve it is I think that humans have approached this problem in a very human way. And one of the solutions was something called Project Birdwind. And it was a five-year project where they painted one blade of the wind turbine black.

because there's something called motion smear. So when the wind turbine is turning, they think that it's invisible to the birds because just like how we're looking at a hummingbird and its wings are beating super fast and it's like a blur, they think that birds see the wind turbines in this way. And it blurs it so they can't see it

and so they run into it. And so there was an experiment done in this project Birdwind where they, when they painted one of them, they did experience like a drop in birds running into it around like a 70% drop, which is huge. It's like a really big, successful experiment, but they only tested around four of 68 of these wind turbines. And it was a small study,

and they think that it didn't necessarily work for all species of birds. And I'll get into that a little bit later. But another issue is birds running into large buildings. I mean, can you remember, like, as a kid, you hear like this smash of a bird running into your window. and it's like the saddest thing. Yeah, for sure. Do you ever have like a bird funeral?

Did you ever bury a bird? I don't think I ever had one. No? But that sounds very cute. I had a bird funeral once. Was it from a bird running into a window? Wait, I'm confusing it with a goldfish funeral. Those are just as special.

I had a bird that ran into a window, but I raised it back to health. Oh. Whoa, really? Wow. You did better than the... It was like the coolest bird for like one day because it just... just sat on my shoulder. Oh.

And then like the next day, remembered it as a wild bird or something and was just going crazy in my little dorm room. It had like a slight little concussion. So it thought you were maybe like another bird. Yeah. It forgot. It's like, wait a minute. You're an enemy.

Exactly. But, yeah, I used to have funerals for birds that would run into my windows all the time. And so that's definitely one of those things I remember as a child, like my introduction to death. But, so they did find that bird collisions increased 19% for every 10% increase in the glass surface area. So it definitely appears to be like a visual thing for the birds. And they also think that's a reflection of the sky that makes the bird think, hey, I can go through this thing. So in that way, there's like another kind of like a human-based visual solution was to put a pattern on the glass. So birds can be like, hey, this isn't like a portal to the sky.

It's, you know, enacted a building. But wait, do you have people come to your bird funerals? Um, like, do you have like, I have, yeah, my sister would join me. My sister is also a huge animal lover and my parent, my mom would be a part of it. My mom was like a huge reason why I love nature and would you like say something for the bird when you buried it? I definitely dress appropriately. Oh yeah.

Oh yeah. The veil, yeah. Yeah. Jeff's interested by this because his introduction to death was that we made him hunt a man out in the forest. An actual, like a human man? Yeah, it's just like, just how, you know, how we had to teach it to him. Give you a 10 minute head start and you kind of like trekked after him in the woods. Yeah, I've never hunted anything.

But I always told myself if I started eating meat again, which I have since moving to Germany, because everything is pork, that I would, I would hunt. Vienna sausages, right? No, there's so many sausages. You got to laying all over the ground probably, falling out of the sky. Well, the funny thing is I went to a pig museum. And after the pig museum where it teaches you about pigs, there's a beer garden and they serve sausages. It's like, hey, you learned about this animal and now you must eat it. So I was like, okay, I guess.

I think you hunt, you have more of an understanding about where meat comes from. And I think that's important if you eat meat to have a good respect for the animal. And it's not unnatural for humans to eat meat. So, you know, straight to the source, right? Not like a faceless package you find at a grocery store. So let's see. Okay, so these solutions are great with, you know, painting the wind turbine and then also having a pattern on the glass. But it doesn't work for all bird species.

And I think that's the main issue when it comes to tackling the issue of birds running into objects because we're not really thinking like birds. Right. So, so some birds when they're cruising in flight mode, when they're migrating long distances, they have like this huge blind spot in front. of them. And it's because evolutionarily speaking, like, why would a bird have to see in front of itself? Because when it's flying really long distances, maybe through these open spaces, there's not like a tree that's going to like spurt out randomly or forest. So, and also probably a tree not as high as most of the skyscrapers that we have. So why would they have to see that? And it's only been in the past hundred years through evolution. That evolution has come across,

like huge, large structures like skyscrapers and wind turbines. So yeah, there's really no reason for birds to look ahead. And it's very human for us to think of solutions with our eyes because humans have eyes in front of their heads, not on the sides like most migratory birds do. Some birds like the owl do have like forward-facing eyes, but for most birds, it's kind of like their vision is just like nothing close to how humans visualize the world. Which is a common thing for predator animals often have forward-facing eyes that, you know, so you can focus on the animal that you're hunting and then prey often have eyes on the sides of

their head because they kind of have this they need this peripheral view to look for predators. That makes sense. Like evolution's kind of given each of them this weapon to help them. Yeah. No, exactly. Well, something interesting that I was researching was that eagles have a blind spot when they're flying because they have like 25 vision or something like that, like very sharp. vision. And this way they can see, but I think they're mainly looking at the ground because

they can see a fish from like hundreds of feet up. But because of how their eyes are, they can't see in front of them. So those things don't work. So what I thought was a really cool project that they started, as humans have started doing, is something called an acoustic lighthouse. And I think this is cool because it's a project that makes it. So we're starting to visualize like figuring this out a way the bird can visualize things. Right. Not a human way. Yeah, not in a human way. There was a study published in the integrative and comparative biology,

and they used zebra finches for this. And what they did is that they put a loud sound one meter away from a net, and they realized that the zebra finches slowed down about 20%. And not only that, but they also altered their body position. So instead of running into the net head on, like most birds do, when they run into these objects, they kind of ran into it when they were up.

Interesting. So it wasn't more so like a neck breaking collision. Like they probably got a little bit injured but there was not as much damage done. So with this sound, they also did it allowed, sorry, a flashing light. And this sound has to be more of a unique sound

that you can't hear when you're in the city. Like not like a car horn or like a dog barking or something like that has to be something that makes the bird think, huh, what is that sound and want to be more investigative? And so, yeah, so I thought that was really interesting

and it has to be loud enough because with birds ears, they're like moving. So if you try to put your head outside of a window, you can't really hear as well as you can when you're in a regular space, just like talking face to face like this. Like if we are trying to have a conversation with our heads out the window, we'd probably have to speak a lot louder. Yeah, that wouldn't be a good podcast. Yeah, it wouldn't work the best.

I mean, it'd be a really cool podcast, maybe a cool video podcast, but. So yeah, I just thought that was a really cool way to try to solve the problem from a perspective if that wasn't so human, like initially we were trying to solve it. Yeah, it is really interesting that when we have these problems, like wind turbines or whatever, that I feel like it always takes us a couple steps to remember that we don't see the world the same way as everything else. So it's like always the first kind of thing that people want to test is something that seems very kind of low-hanging fruit to humans because that's how we navigate the world. but it always takes like a few iterations before someone's like, wait, we need to think about this, like a bird would think about this.

And then you start coming up with much more innovative fixes for these kind of issues. Yeah. I like when we try to do that and they make like a cell phone tower that's disguised as a tree, but it's like so obviously not real. Right. So fun to see those. Yeah. Don't look at this mysterious tree. Yeah.

But yeah, I did want to talk a little bit about how social media affects animals, like anthropomorphizing animals through social media. And I'll kind of run through it really quick. I think the most recent case is, have you heard of Freya, the Walrus? Yeah. Oh, yeah. We've talked about Freya. Did you talk about Freya?

Yeah. A little bit, yeah. Well, you probably are familiar with some of the stories I also have for Walriss is killing people. But, yeah, so the thing about... I don't know who we are. Really? No, maybe not. Yeah, we'll have to talk about that later.

I was going to say in honor of tooth and claw. But, yeah. So Freya was this walrus that got really popular from TikTok because she would go up on these boats. She'd sunbathe and she'd sink these boats. And because she got popular, this took place. She's in Norway, right? Yeah, in Norway.

Yeah. She got a lot of people wanting to visit, take pictures of her, which is a problem because Freya is 1,300 pounds. She's really big. and despite warnings of authorities telling... No judgment. No judgment, no judgment. But, you know, I mean, she can sink a boat.

So understandably, she can sink a boat. And people wouldn't stay away. I was looking at a video where literally she was crowded by dozens of people. And they were all trying to coax her, like say, oh, come close to me and to get a picture and stuff like that. So she was euthanized because of this because she was deemed as a public safety risk. So because of that, RIP for a yeah. Yeah. And I think a lot of people got upset because they're like, oh, can walruses kill people?

And it turns out that they can. So, yeah, walruses can kill people. They can capsize boats and they also have those big teeth. And they can also kill people by playing with them to death. I think a lot of animals, their version of play is very different than humans' version of play because a lot of times animals are a lot stronger than humans, right? So I think a lot of humans can die in that way. Yeah, we're soft.

Yeah, we are mushy biology. Soft and pink. Yeah. Got great eyesight, though. Yeah, great eyesight. We can see the walrus coming. Yeah. Wishing you could be there live for the big game,

soaking up the atmosphere in the crowd. But too often, life gets busy. Or the price holds you back. Price Line is here to help you make it happen. With millions of deals on flights, hotels, and rental cars, you can go see the game live. Don't just dream about the trip.

Book it with Priceline. Download the Priceline app or visit Priceline.com. Actual prices may vary, limited time offer. You said this place was steps from the water. We just haven't found the steps yet. How much did we save? Enough. Enough to get lost.

Or you could book a stay with Hilton. Welcome to your oceanfront room. Just steps from the water. Hilton sale is on now. Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton for this day. So there was actually a man in China who is killed by a 1.5 ton walrus after he was trying to take a selfie with it. And the walrus was trying to be playful and he dragged the man into the water drowning him. And so Onlooker said that the walrus grabbed the man for behind.

and dragged him in the pool, submerging him and swinging him around. And the sad thing is that a zookeeper also tried to save the man, and he too drowned because the walrus grabbed on to both of them and was like more toys. So, yeah, so that's just kind of an example of how us trying to anthropomorphizing animals and being like, oh, they're not that dangerous. They're really cute. Yeah. And sharing that in social media can give people a misunderstanding of that.

I think with Freya, a big part of the problem was just that anthropomorphizing was taking this, it was making Freya a celebrity. Right. Because everyone thought she was so cute and she like was doing all these like funny things. But then also like Freya was destroying a ton of property. And it gives it gives the people that have to manage that wildlife a really tricky decision. Because on one hand, you have this animal that typically is doing behavior where you just have to, you have a decision that's just set for you or it's like we got to get rid of this walrus. destroying hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of property. But when it's like a celebrity and everyone thinks it's cute and stuff it,

then you all of a sudden have all these different kind of levels of complication that come into it. So it is really, it is dangerous to treat them as though they're humans and make them these celebrities online. Exactly. And also the illegal pet trade on social media because people have like bush babies or slow loruses where they dress them up and they feed them.

Like today, my sister, ironically, sent me a very, video of a bush baby with like a little hat on eating fish eggs with a little bib. And I was like, you know that like sharing this and liking this is just encouraging like illegal pet trading. Totally. And a lot of those animals like have really sad lives. So anyway, just wanted to bring that to light a little bit because I think we share videos of animals on social media without even thinking that it gives these animals like a really bad life. Well, I saw, I saw a video of a bush baby or maybe it was a slow lorice. I think it was a bush baby that like a really famous photographer had taken this video and it was like up on its legs, its eyes were super wide and it was hissing and

kind of doing this thing. And everyone in the comments was like, oh, it's so cute. It's so interesting looking. And from like a biologist's perspective, it was like, oh, it's stressed out. That bush baby is in full predator defense mode, super stressed out. You could see it like hyperventilating because it was so stressed out. And I think it's really easy, again, as humans, when we anthropomorphize, to say like, oh, you know, it's making funny faces or something. And it's like, no, it's not. It's trying to tell us how stressed out it is.

Exactly. And so I do, like, I agree with you totally that we just need to be really careful to recognize that animals feel things very differently than we do. And we need to make sure we respect them when it comes to interacting with them. Yeah. Yeah. And things that we see as cute, like the slow loruses that I'll put their arm up, you know, have you seen that video? Like trying to tickle the slowlores.

They're one of the only venomous primates out there. And when they do that, they're like preparing to lick glands on their arms so they can bite you with venom. Like that's what they're doing. And I used to watch that video all the time and be like, oh my gosh, like it loves being tickled. But no, it's kind of like, hey, I'm stressed out. I'm about to like bite you with my venomous saliva. Like I'm going to try to, yeah. Yeah, I'm going to try to really cause some damage to you.

So, so yeah. Which I wish I had that option when I'm being tickled against my will too. You could have any superpower. Would you have the slow Loras venom bite superpower? It's a good one. It's not a bad choice. Yeah. But when we show them how many likes their posts on social media get, they'll probably be okay with it, right?

Yeah, they're like, all right, I will keep doing this. 20 likes? Just give them grapes. They love grapes. No. But yeah. And there are so many, like, so many people are liking it without even thinking that it's causing these animal stress. So anyway, sorry to bum everyone out.

I had to bring that up. Yeah, quit tickling your slow loruses out there, everyone. T-shirt, stop tickling slow loruses. It's not a euphemism. All right. Well, did you have anything more about anthropomorphism or should we move on to our questions? I can talk about it all day, but no, I think I'm down to move on. Yeah.

All right. Well, you know, we can always do this again. I want to play the other end of it and say, like, go ahead and take selfies next to wildlife, because that just gives us more content for tooth and cloth. You know, yeah. We don't want to run out of stories. So, no, I'm just kidding, obviously. All right.

Well, should we get into our little question section then? Yep. Let's do it. So I have some questions for Ken. The gloves are coming off. Yeah. The armpits are coming up. Yeah, we're getting to be real stressed out here.

Glans are out. Glans are out. Glanz are out. That's a bumper sticker. First question is, what is your favorite animal and why? I have a really soft place in my heart for pigeons. Nice. I love pigeons.

Just because they are a huge part of our history. And they were basically like the equivalent of, of feathery text message senders back in the day, back to like World War I and World War II. So if you wanted to send a message to your buddy, it would like be sent by pigeon. And I think that's so cool. You think anyone it's like sexted with them? I hope so. Mike Tyson probably has, right?

Mike Tyson probably. Oh, I love Mike Tyson's pigeons. The reason why Mike Tyson got into fighting is because someone killed his pet pigeon in front of him. No way. I've heard that. Yeah, and he's like, how dare you? And that he used to, like, not want to fight at all. And it was, like, almost afraid of fighting.

And he got so mad that someone killed his pigeon that he, like, beat him up. And then he was just like, oh, I really like this. He's like, really good. Original John Wick, like, when they killed his dog and he just went on a tear. That was Mike Tyson. We need to remake that movie with pigeons. Yeah. Yeah, we do.

Yeah. I agree with you, though. I think when I look at, like, a pigeon, just like a common rock picture. pigeon in a city, they're like beautiful iridescence and just they are a weirdly beautiful bird and I think we just take them for granted. So I think that's a great pick. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I listened to your pigeon episode and it's, I thought it was very true that the animals that tend to be closer to us in cities and stuff are the ones we end up not liking as much a lot of the time. Yeah. We don't want to share our space. Right. Unless it's like a pet, like we choose for them to share our spaces. don't want animals to be a part of our spaces, which is unfortunate for the pigeon and rats and

squirrels. Squirrels, yeah. To a degree. I love squirrels. Coyotes. Coyotes. Oh yeah. Coyotes. Well, coyotes are a lot of pets, so, you know. Yeah. Well, on that note, what is your least favorite animal? So I think, okay, this might be a little controversial, controversial. Perfect. We love it. But I love all animals. But I think one of the ones. But I think one of of my least favorite animals has to be panda bears. Wow. That is controversial. Only because I think they hog the game.

You know, they hog all of the TLC when it comes to endangered species and taking care of like a lot of species in our world. And I think people go through extremely great efforts to take care of panda bears. But like what about the blobfish, you know? What about the blobfish? That is such a good question. That is an interesting take. It's actually our, it's our last question for you.

So, you know, I think we're done. Yeah. This interview is over. Sorry. I'm sorry. It's a really good explanation, but you're wrong. Yeah, look, I do love panda bears. I would hug a panda bear hands down, which I know you probably shouldn't hug a panda bear, but I... Yeah, but...

They're adorable. Like, there's nothing to hate about panda bears. I just feel like, you know, I'm like, give other animals a chance. They're taking the spotlight of animals you like. Yeah. They got to share that spotlight. I just learned with blobfish that they're like... totally normal looking fish and it's when they like come up to the surface that the pressure like

totally deforms how they look yeah and that's like it's like your it's like your driver's license photo job oh no it's so bad and it's so weird that it's like the corpse of the blobfish that everybody's putting on t-shirts making like toys out of they're like save this animal but actually this is like it dead it's like yeah but it's cute when it's dead you know with the with the panda argument Thank you. I think sometimes, and this is like a cool little conservation lesson, I can push in here real quick. A cool thing about pandas getting all the love, though, is then when you do protect panda habitat, you're protecting all the little shit that no one really cares about. You know, like you're protecting this little lizard that, you know, isn't necessarily on anyone's radar.

But because you're protecting pandas, it also gets protected. So that's why, that's why I want you to like pandas more. I love, I do love pandas. I do love panda. Wes is hurt. All right. We're just going to send you like panda DMs for the next. Cute memes of pandas.

Panda propaganda. How dare you know. What is the most impressive animal you think you could take in a fight? Like initially I'd want to say some kind of bird, but because I feel like, you know, they're smaller. They have delicate bones. A goose. A goose. Ooh, goose's geese are extremely intense.

Also, like after watching Alfred Hitchcock, birds. you know, if they're like in mass, if there's like multiple different birds, then maybe that would be a little bit more difficult. That. We're talking one animal. One animal. Yeah, what?

Maybe like, it's not that impressive. I also think maybe like a, something like a, it depends where, what the terrain is as well. Like is it going to be on land terrain? Cage match. Cage match. You're in a cage.

It's UV that animal. Yeah, because if it's dry land, you could probably be like a great white shark. You just have to avoid it until it dies. Right. It's just kind of like stand far away. Because they can't breathe if they're not moving through the water. Maybe like a river otter.

Have you ever seen how intense a river otter looks when it's eating a fish? Yeah. I think you could take one. I'm going to go ahead and say, I don't know if any of us could take a river otter. But I, that's a good, it's a good pick. I like it. How big are they? They just start biting.

I'll take a river otter. I guess you could probably do it, but you would get bit up quite a bit. I'll bite it up. No. Do they have venomous bites? They don't, but if you lick your glands. So in honor of the Bachelor, I have a question I themed off of it for you here. No, we had to do it.

Oh, yes. So we're doing a bachelorette rose ceremony of your favorite tooth and claw animals. So this is just like a group of animals that I've made. And first you're going to give out 10 roses, then six, then three, then you're number one. So we got grizzly bear, polar bear, blue, Black Bear, hippo chimpanzee wearing suspenders. Important detail. Western lowland gorilla.

Tiger, lion, great white shark, saltwater crocodile, bison, cobra, gray wolf, rattlesnake orca. Oh, I like orcas. Tiger shark, vampire bats, python, comodo dragons, and dinkos. So first you got to eliminate half of those. Okay, that's a diverse variety. of animals. Yeah.

Do you have the list in front of you? I do actually. I have the, yeah, I was going to say, I'm really bad at memorizing big lists of things. So I do have the list in front of me, thankfully. Our bachelors are nervously awaiting your decision. It's kind of like that gym room with all the different animals perceiving the rose in a different ways. You know, some people are smelling the roses. Others are.

Okay, so 10 first, right? I love bats. I think bats are really cool. one of the only flying mammal groups, so I'd have to choose bats. Gorillas are just definitely gorillas, polar bears, just because I heard a cool fact about polar bears. Like if you eat their liver, there's so much. That they can smell.

They can smell really well. I was going to say, like, your fact is from this episode. But also that added to the polar bear being really cool. But yeah, if you eat a polar bear's liver, you'll die because there's so much. Whoa. I think vitamin D inside the polar bear's liver. I thought you were going to say, you're going to say, you're going to be. gain its powers.

Yeah, and then you turn into a polar bear yourself and then you, and you can smell a seal from like miles away. And let's see. That's three. Tigers are like tigers and lions. Orca, 100% because they're just extremely intelligent. You know, I like that. I like that in an animal.

You know, I like the intelligence. Yeah. That and a good sense of humor. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. Let's chip with suspenders as well because how can you say no to a chimpanzeeers? I feel like he has a really good personality. You need to have like a piece of people clothes to get him in there.

Exactly. A guy who knows how to dress. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. He's the only one that dressed up for the occasion. So you have to give him points for that. Hippo, because I've seen amazing. Of course, it's like the videos of the cute little pygmy hippos, but I love hippos.

And they can eat a watermelon in like one bite. It's just so cool. Grizzly bears, because they're just intense. And gray wolves. because they're closely related to dogs and I think wolf packs are really cool. I want to be a part of a wolf pack. Family is important to me, so, you know. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I love the hippo explanation because that's what I was said, too. They can eat a watermelon at one bite. Yeah. Exactly. You just have to feed them a watermelon.

They're content. Let's skip the six and let's go three and then one. Ooh, okay. So now you got to narrow the 10 down to three. Okay. Curveball. Okay. I'm going to do orca just because orcas, I love or.

You like those smart. You're like smart guys. Yeah. Vampire bat, just because, again, I'm just like, I really like bats. Fruit bats, like if it was a fruit bat, it would be hands down, but like vampire bat I'll take. And then Polar Bears, because I think polar bears are really cool. All right. Those are great picks.

It's like good top three. Yeah, that's hard. You know, they're all very different. Vampire bats were like, I don't know, that episode was really interesting. We did, because there's just so many facts about bats that like, yeah, just kind of Just kind of crazy. I think I listened to that episode of years, yeah. I should go listen to it.

So now, who's your bachelor's winner of tooth and claw animals? Yeah, I think I knew this from the beginning, you know? It's going to have to be a orca. Yeah. Wow. Okay. It's a good thing. Yeah.

I think they're really cool. That's our overall cage match winner. I kind of appreciate, too, they're unbeatable. They don't kill people in the wild, but like, you know what, if you're going to put me in a little tank my whole life, I'm going to start killing people. Yeah, right? When they have their fin all to like, you know, lopsided to the side. Yeah. They're out there sinking boats like crazy right now, which we're going to talk about in our news episode. Oh, I have seen. Are you talking about the video where that one orca rams

into the boat like the video? Yeah, there's a whole group of them in kind of like just, yeah, outside of Spain and Portugal and Morocco that are doing it. Like the uprising is beginning. For sure. You know? Yeah. rise. It's beginning the orcas. They're going to start taking it. We thought it was going to be chimps and gorillas, but in reality, it was the orca the whole time.

It's why they're number one. They're on our radar. You heard it here, folks. Girls like apex predators. Yeah. What's something interesting you've learned making little curiosities? Yeah, I feel like making little curiosities. I learn things every day.

I learn things all the time, which is really cool. It's why I love creating the podcast. I think an episode that I was working on recently is about synesthesia, which is a mixing of the senses. So there's certain people who can see colors or smell shapes. And yeah, it's just so cool to be able to experience that. And so, yeah, diving into the world of synesthesia has been awesome. Like a lot of musical artists experienced synesthesia. Anyway, really cool.

Cool. Yeah. Do you know what's crazy that I learned? I was listening to your episode on. Cottle autotomy, how like starfish or sea stars. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They can regrow, even if it's just a leg with like a little chunk of the center. Yeah.

They can clone themselves, basically. They can regrow and basically become two organisms. It's like if a pizza was sentient and can like regrow itself or something. It's like you cut it up. That's exactly what I was thinking. Pizza. But yeah, they're, they're insane. I think fishermen used to try to like chop them up and cut them in half and throw them back

and it would just like repopulate, like, a huge population boom because they'd, like, grow back again. Doubled it. Yeah, that's so. That's like a hydrant. Yeah, exactly. All right. Is cake and ice cream one dessert or two desserts?

If I can get away with calling cake and ice cream one dessert, I will. Yeah. And also there's ice cream cake. So I feel like with ice cream cake, why are you saying specifically ice cream? Yeah. We're talking cake and ice cream. We're saying like a warm cake with some cold ice cream on top. That's one, because if I say it's two, then I feel.

extra guilty, so it has to be one. Yeah, I think I agree. A good way to think about it. Now context. Now we're doing context. So say a friend or a sibling of yours says, hey, if you could only have one dessert for the rest of your life, what would you pick? Is cake and ice cream one dessert or two desserts?

Well, I can't help but think it could be cheating. Because if I had to choose one of the two, I would say ice cream because ice cream makes cake better. I don't know if cake makes ice cream. better. Whoa. You know? Words of wisdom.

A good way to look at it. Yeah. All right. Well, that's a very dimmatic answer, but we're going to mark that up to a very gray neutral. Yeah. I cheated all through like middle school, high school and college. I'm fine cheating on this question, too. All right.

Fair enough. All right. Kendall, did you get a cool animal fact for us? Ooh. Yes. I do have a cool animal fact. Okay. Of course.

I have so many. in my brain. Perfect. One of my favorite animal facts is that wasps can mind control cockroaches by stinging their brains. And not just stinging their brains. Yeah, there's like a certain part in the brain that the wasp will sting and search for with its stinger.

Like it's so sensitive that it can figure out. And if that part is missing in the cockroach's brain, the wasp will know it and keep looking and be like, wait, where is that tiny little part in the, the brain that I have to sting. Yeah, that's so cool. Yeah, that's close my mind. That's really cool. All right, so I'm just going to ask a couple more.

Let's do, for all of us, what's the craziest moment in reality TV history? Yeah, there's a lot of, I mean, reality TV is just insane in general. But I would say, the thing that shocked me the most was when Snooky got punched in the face. From Jersey Shore. Yeah, I've heard about that. Do you remember that, though, yeah. I used to watch Jersey Shore with my parents back in the day. And yeah, that was just the most insane.

Like, just like the fact that she got decked. Yeah. That's an amazing proposition to watch Jersey Shore with your parents. I know. That's like, I would avoid that like the point. It was fun. What are they talking about smushing so much? Yeah.

Is that a big hug? I don't know. I don't even know if I like really processed those, what that was. Yeah. All right. I got one. Me and Jeff are both big fans of the show The Challenge, which is like the MTV. It started out at MTV Road Rules Real World Challenge, and then it just kind of took on a mind of its own.

But there's a season where, spoiler warning, Johnny Bananas has this partner that they work together the whole season. And at the very end, they give him the option to share the money with her or take it. And he takes it. And it was like they had formed this friendship. But they agreed they wouldn't take it the whole time. They used to be enemies. and they agreed they would work together, and it was like $500,000. And we didn't know that was going to be an option, really.

And then at the very end it was, and he took it all. Wow. And I loved it. That's my moment. If they both said take it, none of them would have anything? No. Only one of them got the choice. The one that did the best and the challenges leading up to that got to choose.

That's brutal. That's so brutal. Yeah. Was she just like, they completely just like, shocked? She fell to her knees. Yeah, it's just man. And he's like, you still would. It was great TV.

Do you think they're friends? Do you think they're friends still? No, they're on record for not being friends. Yeah. So that's my pick. Yeah. Yeah, that was probably going to be mine. But I'll go with Richard in the first survivor ever, where you just like used his arm to

have a shark bite him and then you like killed the shark. But like it was before like they kind of had. survivor figured out is the first season. So, like, they were, like, starving, too. And, like, they needed to eat this shark to keep surviving out there. And it was crazy. He, like, fought a shark? No.

What was a little nurse shark or something? Yeah. Yeah, it was a little bottom feeder shark, but it, I mean, it still bit of him. Like, he got a good, like. It was crazy. Wow. Yeah. And he's just like, I have dinner, just holding his arm up for everybody.

Yeah. Pretty much. Driving it on the beach? Wow. That's pretty gnarly. Mike, do you watch any reality TV? No. I was going to go with the naked guy from season one.

That's like the only point. We'll skip you for this. Well, no. How about is the great British baking show? Does that count? Oh my gosh. I love great. When in the last season when that one German guy or was he Polish,

Yenush, I couldn't believe he got eliminated. He was like the best, you know? I love that guy. I thought you're going to say, I thought you're going to say when Paul Hollywood gave someone a handshake. That's your craziest reality TV month. Yeah, and then he regretted it. Kendall, were you invited on like shows after doing The Bachelor, like other shows?

Yeah, there were certain other shows, but I don't know. I think after you do like a couple reality shows, you're like, eh, you know, you kind of. Yeah, you got to get out. Wes was invited on naked and afraid, right? Yeah, I turned him down. You turn them down? Yeah, it would be difficult. Yeah, twice they've invited me.

Really? Yeah. It's also like a three-week commitment and they hardly pay you anything and it was kind of like I don't I think most of the people that do that show like really want to prove that they can do that and I don't Could you survive naked? I don't know I think I'd have a hard time. Yeah, it depends on where I am. If it were like in my yard, I think I could do it So I'm throwing like sandwiches or crackers up the window. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. If it was a really.

wet, cold environment, that would be miserable. I don't know if I can do that. The bugs, I think bugs are the worst ones. I wouldn't do that, unfortunately. I would, I'd want to do Survivor. Like, I think Survivor's great. Yeah, me too, me too. But she will suffer in Survivor. Like, there is suffering. They do. Yeah. Would West Jeff or might go the furthest on the Bachelorette. Okay. Hypothetically, Wes doesn't have a girlfriend. Um, he does. in real life, obviously. Okay, I have a question, though, for all of you. What would be a way to grab the Bachelorette's attention on night one when you come out

the limo? I'm proposing day one. Oh, wow. Commitment right away. Yeah. Shows over. Either win or lose day one. Okay.

I don't really know how the Bachelor works, but I'm just going to show up. Do I have, am I the one that has a rose? I'm just going to have like a giant rose. That's just a massive paper mache rose. Okay. A little wagon behind me. I like that. I like that.

You're like, I brought my own rose and it's better than all your roses. I'm wearing a big bear skin rug. Like with the head and everything, it's over my head. It's tied around me. You're going to get full wild man.

Yeah, full wild man, full bear biologist. Oh, that's awesome. See, I would, you know, I feel like I would be biased towards, like, having the big bear on because I think taxidomy is so cool. And so, yeah, I'd probably, West.

Wes goes the family. That makes a sense. He's like the only one who's ever had a girlfriend out of all three years. You know, I'm the orca. I'm the orca of the three of us. Whatever. Are orcas just swimming panda bears? That's my question.

Do I like panda bears more than I thought? That's a good point. Yeah, you might. Pretty similar markets. I remember, I don't really watch The Bachelor, but I remember watching the intros once. And Jeff with 1F, you remember that guy? he like skateboarded behind the car he was supposed to be in

and then just threw the skateboard in the bushes and was like, what's up? That's sick. That was a cool intro. I pick him. Yeah. She did. She did.

She did. She's like after that. That's why night one is so important. Make a big impression. My night one, I like played a ukulele song and it was so lame. Oh, really? Yeah. But they got his attention.

Yeah. I'm not a great singer. So I was like, you know, feel sorry for me. Give me a rose. You're not even a good singer and you played a ukulele song? I'm like a, I can sing at a campfire. I'm not like a singing on stage kind of person. You know,

got you. Even at a campfire, you're like, okay, we'll join in to make her feel better. All right. Let's do one more question. Are horses overrated? You know, I do like horses. I've ridd-ridden, ridden horses like a few times. Ritted it is right.

I have ridded horses. You had it right the first time. But I do. I do think that they're kind of like, you know, there's like the horse racing, which isn't really cool. People will do like those shows where like they jump over obstacles with the horses. And yeah, I think they're probably a little bit over. I mean, it is really cool to like be able to ride an animal. Like that's pretty awesome.

But, um, it sounds like you're saying people are already. They're not like my top 10 animals, you know. Yeah. Yeah. All right. I'll take that. Okay. Yeah.

All right. Well, that's all I'm going to do for questions. Does you guys have anything else you want to ask or Mike or West? No, I think that's good. Okay. That was an impressive round. Thanks so much, Kendall. Yeah.

It's really fun. A plus. Yeah, those are fun questions, yeah. It's fun having someone on that, like, knows as much as West to, like, you know. I can't say that I know as much. I feel like I'm a broad but shallow pool when it comes to knowledge of things, you know? That's a good way to be, though. You know, you're fun at parties.

Yeah, exactly. I just bring up, like, some random facts. and people are like, cool. Oh, yeah. In your pigeon episode, I liked how you were like, you can use this if you go on a first date. I was like, perfect. That's what I've been waiting for this whole time.

Now I can like start going on dates. That's how I got engaged. Like that first I just brought up a pigeon effect. And he's like, you're the one. You know, yeah. Perfect. I'm in. Thanks, Kendall, for coming on.

Thank you so much for suggesting the topic because I think it is one that we often talk about how animals use their senses to kind of get into these encounters with people. And so I think learning more about how they actually navigate the world in a deeper context has been really fun. And I think it'll be really a fun thing for our listeners to hear. And then also the anthropomorphism stuff, we love talking about anthropomorphism. So it was a great topic.

So thank you so much for proposing those and thanks for coming on and talking about all the other bullshit that we made you talk about. No, thank you. It was really fun. I really, I learned a lot in this, in this episode as well. So it had a lot of fun talking about it. Do you want to tell everyone where they can find your podcast? Yeah. You can find little curiosities on anywhere you get your podcast, Spotify, Apple. And I ask questions about the podcast and try to get people involved on my Instagram at It's Kendall Long. So if you want to kind of be a part of the conversation and contribute to the episodes, that's I post things in my stories all the time to get people involved. So I'm following. You should too. Yeah. How many people are you following? And if Mike's following you, Mike's special.

46. See, you're one of 46 people of Mike follows. Nice. I'm honored. I'm honored. You should follow him back. He doesn't ever post anything, though. I think I am. But we're trying to get him verified.

I just keep forgetting. So, like, the more, like, important people that follow him, we can help get verified with zero post ever. No. I think there's, like, a way you could. Oh, yeah. Well, that ruins it. I know. Now I don't even want him to get it.

Yeah. Now if you're not verified, it's a cool thing. All right. Cool. Okay, we'll see you later. Thanks so much again. Yeah. Yeah, thank you.

Thank you so much, Candle. Bye.