Professional Rewards and Career Challenges

Oh hey, it's your mom's friend who's always vaping into his sweatshirt, Allie Ward. And this episode is about putting your dukes up or curling into a ball so that you don't die. Either or sometimes both. Let's talk to an allogist, I've known for years, an LA area animal icon who invited me to the lab down at California State Long Beach, where they're a professor for a visit, a tour, and a chat about armadillos, skunks, pangolins, spikes, sperm So we'll chat in a sec, but first thank you to all the patrons who support the show for as little as a dollar a month at Patreon.com slash ologies. We also have brand new merch about revolutions and protests. It's up at Ologies Merch.com designed by Andy Diaz with proceeds benefiting the National Immigration Law Center. That's brand new again, Ologies Merch.com. And for zero dollars, thank you for helping boost the show by leaving reviews, such as this very recent one from Jordan D. Friend, who wrote five stars. It's great, but and it's a big butt. They write, it's too damn interesting. They say, I listen to the podcast as I fall asleep, and suddenly it's two hours l ater, I'm still awake and I'm like, damn girl, beavers are interesting. Jordan D friend, thank you for that. I hope it's your real name because friend indeed. Also thank you to sponsors of the show who let us donate to a cause of each Oliga's choosing every week Quick question. Do people come to you for answers at work? Maybe you're managing projects, training new hires, or just the one everyone relies on. That's leadership. Through UVA Darden's part-time MBA and Roslyn, we help professionals like you turn real-world experience into recognized leadership credentials without stepping away from your career. Whether you work in healthcare, education, government, or business, this is how you take the next step. Learn more at darden. edu backslash PTMBA. This message is brought to you by Apple Card. For a limited time, when you get a new Apple Card and purchase AirPods Pro 3 at Apple, you can earn back the cost up to two hundred fifty daily cash. New AirPods Pro and up to two hundred fifty bonus daily cash back? Now that's music to my ears. Subject to credit approval. Limitations and spend requirements apply. Apple card is issued by Goldman Sachs Bank USA Salt Lake City Branch. Terms and more at Apple.co slash AirPods. One thing I love about my long-term friends is I'm still learning things about them, especially if we travel. together But maybe you have a buddy that you brought on a weekend trip who you didn't know has to do scream yoga at dawn. Surprise! But verbo, verbo does not surprise you. When you book a verbo vacation rental verbo care and 24-7 live support from real humans are included if something is not as described or isn't working verbo can step in to help make it right i don't know what to tell you about the screen yoga though book today on the Verbo app. If you know your Verbo, terms apply. See Verbo.com/slash trust for details. Okay, this absolute gem studied biological sciences at Cornell, then got a master's and a PhD in animal behavior from Davis and has taught at UMass, Amherst, University of Mississippi, and Harvard, and has been a Darwin postdoc fellow. But above all that, if you know an animal biologist in LA, they know this guy. Everyone loves him. Also, kind enough to help coin a term for this ology since it's so specific. So zooh hoplogy, it is. It combines zoo animal with the Greek root hoplon, which means arms or armor, so animal armor and defense. The visit was also a visual feast as I walked past skunk pelts and tiger cutouts and sat under a whale skeleton This is our new 3D printed whale. What kind of whale is that? It's humpback whale. It's a one-quarter size. Every bone's been individually 3D printed. We just finished it like a month ago. No. Are those leggies or hips? That's the pelvis. Nuts. Yeah. And this was a deer at one point. Like. Yeah. Also, rubber canids. Who's this werewolf? This is Obi-Wan Coyote. Um, this is our coyote robot. This was to harass skunks. We can remote control thermal infrared cameras on the front. Um it worked fine, however, we thought it was gonna get sprayed all the time because it were harassing skunks. Never got sprayed once, so in if we use it in the future, I'll actually use a tax drimming animal and we can uh harass skunks with it. That it's actually fun to drive it around and you can this is a good Halloween prop. Oh, it's a k it scares little kids. Like they are running and hiding behind like some kids love it and want to play with it. Others are truly terrified of this thing. Yeah. It is scary. I also left with swag. I got a t-shirt and this handy fridge magnet with advice on a skunk spray first aid because when you need it, you need it. More on that later. So let's get right into it. The things that keep critters, including yourself, safe, from quills to barbs to plates to rotting flesh smells, to hair dye , to impeccable acting, commendable drama, shrieks, spikes, stinks, and fashion, with animal behaviorist, evolutionary biologist, professor, defense mechanism expert, and thus your favorite zoohoplologist, Dr. Ted Stankowitch. My name is Dr. Ted Stankovich and I'm a he him. Mm-hmm. Stankowitz? Stankowicz. So kind of a W for the V. There's no V in it, just how it's spelled. I always put a V there. Yeah. It used to be Stunkevich uh in in Russian. And then when my grandfather wa was here and and s he was a little boy in school, they mistranslated it into and so it became Stankowitch. Oh yeah. Ooh. There is that the pipe. So let's just pause for a second. It'll stop. How do you know that it's not a whale call coming from the beyond? It's a hunch. A professional opinion, it's not a whale call. How long did it take you to realize that was a pipe and not a ghost? Um well it I guess I heard at the first time like what is that? And that and then stop and like okay I guess we're fine. And it's been I've been doing this for over thirteen years now in this room, so everyone's always surprised by it though. Now before he was a full professor and before he moved the East Coast for a stint at Harvard, Ted was a California boy. He grew up southeast of LA in Hilly Whittier, which has its share of kind of suburban Americana and patches of landscape that are home to native and imported plants and animals from cacti and wildflowers to some scaly and furry or residents. What kind of critters did you see growing up in Whittier? So just squirrels, the occasional opossum in the backyard, occasional a coyote. So normal urban mammals, a raccoon here and there. I wasn't a real outdoorsy kid. You weren't? No, I was I was a nerdy kid who who liked his books and liked to go to the museum and got into biology in high school eventually and then made a career out of it. Yeah. So I was not a a kid who was gonna be spending every waking hour in the forest or i in the field as a kid, yeah. Aaron Ross Powell Were your parents or siblings or aunts, uncles were they outdoorsy at all? Um my mother was an educator, my dad was a high school teacher as well. He did take us when I think I was probably eight and then again when I was ten cross country and back by car. First time we saw national parks. And so that was my big really early intro to seeing national parks all over the country. I've been to 48 of the 50 states. So that time was sort of very formative to see nature and really get that experience. And you sort of fall in love with the experience of that. So if you ever get a chance to drive across the country and and see just national parks and the amazing landscapes that are out there, it's it's really a great experience. Especially you can take your kids. It's just a transformative type of thing that they'll experience. So yeah. Which states haven't you been to? Um Hawaii. Okay. And South Carolina. Ah Yeah. Yeah. I've been to forty eight. No New Mexico. No. And no West Virginia. Okay. If anyone's listening to this, if there are talks in South Carolina or love to come out, yes, absolutely. Where has your work taken you countrywise? I know you mentioned that you had seen a platypus in the wild. So most of my field work with live animals has been in the States. I did spend my sabbatical I spent a month in Australia about five years ago um where I I chased echidnas around for about a month by myself in the bush. It was a really an amazing month, just meeting a truck and running around. They're the easiest animals in the world to capture by hand um when they're walking around. But uh I loved it and I do a lot of museum work where we measure skulls and skins and that kind of stuff. So that's been fun to experience other countries that way. Eventually I'd love to make it to Africa and work on pangolins or or porcupines or I can actually look for excuses to go out and explore. Do you find that different continents or different regions or biomes have animals with a stronger defense systems? Does it matter what kind of predators are around? Do you see then an evolution of different scales or spikes or stinks. You tend to see it more in warmer, more tropical climates where things are just more biodiverse in general. I can speak for mammals in particular, because that's what I know the best, but you see more defended species in areas that are more open, more visuedally expos to predators, and where there are larger predators that can kill you. And not as much sort of alpine or arctic types of areas. It's more based on what aspect of your environment gives you a lot of risk I always think like, okay, if there are big cats around, you're a little screwed. And is that like not the case? Are there smaller predators that you still would need a lot of defense for? Depends how big you are. Okay. So if you're under say a kilogram in size, maybe like small rabbit to squirrel and below, um you can usually hide and be cryptic enough to avoid most predators just by your size alone. If you're above 10 kilograms, large dog and above, then you are too big for the vast majority of predators, especially birds of prey. Okay. If you're in that sweet spot between one and ten, you're big enough to want to eat. It's hard to hide because you're t you're you're you're large enough, and most things can still kill you. So there's like a danger zone of if you live in a sort of exposed area and are are like intermediate in body size, that's w where you're at the greatest amount of risk. Aaron Powell Well, okay. Male deer, bucks, horns, a f you know, eight-point deer has like eight shivs coming out of its face. But uh doe doesn't. But they're still vulnerable to like pumas , let's say. Are the horns used for defense or is that purely just mating? I would be inclined to say just mating, but c d can you ever stab back? Absolutely. So deer have antlers and bovids have horns, so they're two di different structures entirely entirely. Right. So deer ha have antlers uh which are are bony, there's no keratin sheath on top, they are shedding The only species where the female has them are there are reindeer and caribou. And then in bovids, the so your antelope, your goats, your cows, gazelles, that sort of thing. All males have horns and some females, spe e females of some species have horns. But to answer your question, absolutely yes, it's a great weapon to have for when you're fighting over mates, which is what the males primarily use them for. But it's also useful if you have a predator around you're swinging those around and trying to to stab them too. In fact, we did a study in 2009 and we're following it up now where we looked at why do female bovids have horns? Why do some species have them and others don't? So females can battle over territory themselves, which is not that common , or they are found in larger, more exposed species where they are more at risk of being cornered by a predator. So females can definitely use their horns to defend themselves for sure. They're usually smaller, straighter, more dagger-like than compared to the males, but they are definitely useful as a defensive weapon. Stay back. Run me down a menu. Let's say that you are a critter. You need defense and you have a menu of options, scales, spikes, horns, stinks. So the the menu is is interesting. If you're looking evolutionarily in terms of mammals, the options are spines , stinky sprays, stinky glands on your body that you can release, armored plates, claws, teeth, antlers, horns, toxins. Some have toxins and poisonous that they can use. That's what's helpful for defense if you are cornered, if you are attacked, that's what you can use. But most animals are cryptic. They were camouflaged. They want to avoid being seen at the start. That's the first line of defense. Just avoid being seen entirely. So coloration is a really big one. And then rapid speed. So most of the things that live in that sort of intermediate body sized open exposed habitat area, a lot of your armored quilled animals live in that area. The other things that live in that area are other carnivores that can defend themselves with claws and teeth, as well as rabbits and things that hop. So high-speed escape, hopping is a very fast form of escape. And so if you're living in this danger zone as we called it, then having a high speed escape is also a way out as well. Right now my ass is on the highway to the danger zone. When it comes to your Ph D, you showed me that you had huge life-size cutouts of tigers and a cougar. What what did you study when it came to getting your PhD? Could you tell me a little about that? Sure. I I basically scared deer for six years. So part of my PhD was walking towards or running towards deer to look at their escape behavior by with speed, directness of approach, if I was holding a fake rifle or not, and looking at how they chose when to flee and how they chose where to flee. So escape decisions were a big part of it. I was studying black tailed deer up on the northern coast of California, and their only current large cat predator is a mountain lion. But historically, six hundred thousand years ago, they would have seen spotted cats, spotted jaguars. And now jaguars only come as far north as Arizona in New Mexico. You need a big cats episode. I know that. And a few days ago I recorded Megaphelenology with Dr. Imogen Cancellare, but you gotta be patient. My babies, it'll be up in a few weeks, I think. But until then, we have Ted's fieldwork hijinks with kind of like cardboard wooden cutouts, which I'm sorry is very funny. Science is extremely funny. So um we ex posed them to pop-up two-dimensional life-size models of a mountain lion, a spotted cat, a tiger, and a another mule deer um as a control. Essentially I would have a a student drive a car and I would I would hide behind the car , we would drive past a group of deer and I'd duck behind a bush. That student would go drive and away and put a camera up to start the film. Then I'd pop the model up over the bush from about 20 meters away and we'd record the responses. And sometimes they got really, really scared. Other times they just stared at it like it was not there at all. And so we were looking at how the coloration uh affected it. And the essentially what we found w was that um not surprisingly the mountain line evoked the strongest response in terms of snorting, stamping, never running away, because those cats need to be about six to ten meters away before they can it really have a chance of capturing a deer. So they just were saying, I'm here, I see you here, uh don't come around, there's something over there. So apparently the the vertical stripes did not camouflage the big cat shape in that coastal California environment. So they treated the tiger just the same as they did a mountain lion. And the deer they didn't In fact, I had some males try to approach me and with a very interested look on their face and a female deer deer model had to abort those trials pretty quickly. It sounds like a Halloween-haunted house, like pop-up and does a zombie scare you? Does a vampire scare you? Does a guy with the chain's on? I I was at the field station. I was a weird guy laying on the ground with big cat models that everyone else is driving to the marine lab. When did you start to branch out in your studies and in your teaching into scales and spikes? And I understand in an armadillo it's conglob ation where they just go br into a ball. They curl up into a ball. Yeah. Only only one species can actually make it all the way into a ball. Really? Yeah. The three banded armadillo is the only one that actually form a a tight ball. The rest of them can maybe curl a little bit, but most of them just sort of hunker down and try to keep their shell over top of them. Oh I didn't know that. But yeah, I think as you progress in your career, you expand your horizons. So I as a PhD student, I was all about deer and escape behavior and anti-predator recognition. And then I started to get more into evolutionary work with bold coloration. We did a lot of work with uh Tim Carro , who's a well-known uh mammalian coloration biologist. We've published a bunch of papers now together. And then I got interested in skunks. And the great thing was no one works on skunks . It's very uncommon to have anyone work on skunks. And those who do usually are just doing collaring and tracking their movements. They aren't doing behavior. I'm a behaviorist at heart. And so I I really honed in on the idea of looking at predator prey relationships with a defended animal that advertises its defense, the black and white stripes, and their common predator, a coyote. So a lot of what we do is looking at how do skunks perceive fear, how do they respond to predators, and how do predators learn about those types of prey? Aaron Powell Well, you know, that's prevalent too in poisonous insects. Like if you see, you know, a really brightly colored insect or a frog, it's likely that they're e ither poisonous or they're a mimic of one that is, right? Is that something that a predator learns from the first time or is that innate? It's a great question. And a lot of work has been done on that very question. And it varies depending on the type of animal you're talking about. We did a project where we trained coyotes to not attack skunks using skunk models. sort of condition them to eat off of brown furry plates, take their normal food off of a brown furry plate. Then we gave them a skunk model with their food on it, and the vast majority had a really strong hesitation of what is that? Like that is something new, that like that's bold, that's striped, what is that? Some never even ate the food off those plates. Others, those models had a sprayer so we could spray them in the face with skunk oil when they attacked the plates. And some got sprayed one time in the face by skunk oil and never again went back. Yeah. Some got sprayed nine times and kept going back for for food. So there's lots of variation in willingness to attack boldly colored animals. And so I think the answer to your question is it's there's both an innate aspect to it and a learned aspect to it. Mercedes, our lead editor, told me about a dog they had up in Canada that went back and tried to chew on a dead porcup ine numerous times. Numerous times getting just stabbed in the face. And they were like, come on, man. But like, is it similar for spikes? Yes. If you notice spikes uh or spines, if they are strong, dangerous spines, they are tend to be black and white. So porcupine quills tend to be strided black and white. Those are warning signals. You're telling the predator not to do that. And most wild predators will not attack black and white spiky animals because they know. Your dogs are not quite as intelligent as as uh wild predators are. Plus my thought is that dogs are they're artificially selected and different breeds are selected to have what we call hypertrophied aspects of their attacks sequence. So some breeds just love to chase and grab and bite, and that's just what they're bred to do, because that's what we want them to do as part of whatever their job had been. And they get so much pleasure and internal hormonal rewards from doing that, that no spike is ever gonna overcome that initial drive to want to do that thing. So I think that some doctors can learn better than others based on sort of what their background is, but some just can't help themselves, I think is the answer to that question. The people who buy skunk chew toys for their dogs, I don't know why you would do that. I see those in the stores and say, don't do that. Why would you ever buy your training your dog to go after a stump? You know, so yeah, or a hedgehog if you live in in Europe or you know, so just be mindful of what choice you're giving your dog and how you're training them to chew. When I first got here, one of my very first grad students, her name was Holly Schiefelbein, very very first grad student, her project was going to be we made some robotic skunk models. You could drive these little animals around. There was a spraying mechanism in them that could spray, not skunk spray, but citronella spray, which is a versus of just the same. And the goal was to expose them to dogs and see how different breeds of dogs respond to skunks in different ways. And no one would let us work with their dogs, especially the the purebreds. We wanted purebred dogs, we wanted to look at breed differences, and we couldn't find people who would let us use their dogs for it. And we couldn't find a park that would allow us to do that project in it. So um now what we do is we put out static prey models with our trail cameras, our wildlife cameras, and just see how opportunistically we get coyotes in that come and interact with the models or if they contact or if they stay away in varying the coloration or the pattern types or the poses or the the type of animal it is. You can do a lot in that respect. But you work with skunk oil, you have some in a fridge, your last name does have the word stank in it. How often does that come up? In emails, in classes? I mean it's perfect. Very rarely. And I I did not even realize it until I was well into work ing with skunks. In fact, I remember when you when you actually think called me out on your aptonym episode, I think you mentioned me working with with skunks. I I didn't had never even realized up until very late. And so th there was no preconceived idea of it and it's just a coincidence that that 's so good. Yeah. That that I I you know, I don't tend to draw attention to it. I know but it's so good. But uh you know, it happens. It's important to note that I don't I'm not a stinky person, that just what we work on is stinky. Yes. Okay. Not at all. In fact I've said several times and I'm like, I'm so surprised that this room smells so good for as many dead anim als in it. Like this, I've actually noticed that. But yeah, there's a guy in England who is a reclamation hydrologist who is named Andrew Drinkwater. There is a planetary geologist I know named Raquel who goes by Ra whose name was Rocky, like her that was her nickname. And I was like, Do you ever notice that? And she's like, I've never thought about it. Which is I absolutely love that. I feel like that's a total spin-off podcast. So we just discussed this in the Asinology episode with donkey expert Dr. Faith Burden, who yeah, studies beasts of Burden. And she noted that taking on a job that's a pun had there's a name for that. It's nominative determinism. And also if you want to hear Raquel Nuno, aka Rocky, talk about planetary geology, you can see her Selenology episode on the mo on. And also, Dr. Drinkwater, I just emailed his office yet again. I've tried so many times over the years. So cross your fingers. If anyone personally knows Dr. Andrew Drinkwater, a hydrologist, please message me, send a pigeon, whatever it takes. But back to the utterly charming and warm Dr. Stankowicz. When it comes to things like spikes versus scales, is there a different level of efficacy in terms of what is a better predator deterrent or does it totally depend on your environment? So I often get this question of why do some species evolve spikes, others evolve smells, others evolve armor. I don't think we can really assign a rhyme or a reason to it. I think it's just what you have available as your building blocks. So you think of the carnivores that all use stinky sprays or old odors, your your skunks, your pole cats, mastelids, weasels, civets, you know, those types of things. Their ancestors had anal glands. And all carnivores have anal glands that they use for communication purposes. And so they had access to sort of stinky sulfur-based chemicals that they were using communication that they co-opted in different ways and to different degrees to use for defense. So they had something, a building block already there. They were already emitting kind of stinky stuff already in communication. You think about armadillos, there's evidence, fossil evidence that osteoderms, the bony plates that make up an armadillo's carapace, we can find bony osteoderms, individual ones in the skins of fossil giant ground sloths. So the ancestors of the and sloths and armadillos are in the same superorder. That's nuts. I didn't know that. There was probably a building block there that got enhanced in some way. Just a side note, your teeth started out on the outside of your body and there are still so many creatures who are studded with external teeth . But please enjoy the recent paleohistology episode with Dr. Yar Haridi to learn more on that. But osteoderms, that means bone skin, they're yeah, like the scoots on the back of our armadillo friends. But there are more avenues to armor up. For example, quills and spines are just modified hairs. Pangolin scales are it's keratin, it's modified hairs. So they're taking what building block you have and modifying it in a way and and whoever comes up with a good way of using it evolutionarily, it just gets elaborated and exaggerated more and more and more. And I think it's just a it's something that's fortuitous. Now, if you're talking about an animal that is arboreal that lives in trees, you probably don't want a thick coat of armor because it's so heavy. Although pangolins, there are a bunch of tree p pangolins, but they are smaller in size. So trees versus ground, you might not want to be as armored. There are spiny animals that live in trees. It's just a matter of of what you had to begin with. Are the more armored mammals, are they tend to be slower lopers? Do they not have that bunny hop fast getaway, like the fact that a armadillo is related to slots. You don't think of sloths for their two like fast getaways. But do these all tend to be slower little dudes? Most of the ones that have a big defense tend to be s a little bit slower, a little bit more lumbering, because they they don't need to be fast to get away. That's not their main defense. That skunks aren't the smartest animals in the world. You know, I knew that armadillos aren't really the s the smartest animals in the world. So we had a question of well, maybe having to carry around this big coat of armor or evolve this sneaky smell takes extra energy and there might be a trade-off there. So we I thought, well, maybe they have smaller brains. And so we did a study and we we found lo and behold that mammals that have more elaborate defenses, morphological defenses, have a relatively small er brain sizes. So you could say that that those that have really strong defenses don't need to be as smart because they can hang out and not have a care in the world and know they're defended against most other mammals they find. And also there's this this energetic trade-off there. That there's a cost to to growing, developing, and carrying around a giant coat of armor on your back all day long. So they're less brains more kind of brawn in terms of you know, not strength, but at least the strength of their defenses. Yeah. So the more you invest in your defense, the dumber relative y you tend to be. You know, I'm we're sitting in this lab full of penguin scales and armor and spikes and spines, and it occurs to me like how squishy humans are, how absol utely vulnerable. Does that ever strike you that you're walking around with no armor? Like we're wearing just like cotton. Yeah. Yeah, it it's amazing 'cause we took a whole different route, right? Our evolutionary history, we became a little bit more cursorial, a little bit more able to t to run and outpace and women that that's mainly in order to hunt, but we would use trees, escape into trees, but larger brains. That's the way out of it, right? So the bigger the brain, the more able to avoid predators by using those brains that you are. But what strikes me more about humans is what happens when we do put armor on. And so I have lots of questions that I would love to explore someday about how do humans perceive fear, not just in general, but what happens to their perceptions of fear when they are wearing body armor or when they do have a weapon on them and how does that change their thought process and their their decision-making process. Trevor Burrus Like does their cortisol level go up or down? Or down? Yeah. Are they more brave? Are they more bold? Are they able to do more because they know they have this first line of defense if they are shot at, you know? Aaron Ross Powell Well, getting back to hum ans, it's so funny that you mentioned human beings wearing armor. My husband has a black belt in jujitsu and he's a musician, a playwright, he's working on this piece right now, and he's going to perform it in a full suit of armor. And we have a friend who is a prop maker who shipped us his suit of armor. They're about the same size. And literally yesterday, my husband is putting on a full suit of armor in the living room. It's his dream like he has wanted to put on a pseudo armor forever. So then it starts to feel a little different. That feels so good. And he's also clanking around and can barely sit down. He's like, how do people ride horses on this? And I'm like, well, are you more vulnerable wearing that than like, you know, if you got in a fight in that in a bar, like Exactly. I mean I think you can explore, you know, some inner psyche of why your husband wanted that to feel that so much. But it's the same idea of yeah, if you're wearing a giant suit of metal armor, you are lumbering, you're slow, you're you're more vulnerable in that aspect, but you're also far less likely to be stabbed or shot by an arrow. Yeah. You know, so there's definite trade-offs. Maybe you f just feel a lot more safe curled up in a cocoon of of steel. Yeah. Um so th there's definitely some psychological process happening there of being you know wrapped in steel and feeling a bit safer and and more at ease and less stressed I would assume yeah. I have to ask him Okay, I asked him. Most armor has a sort of compressing quality to it. And you know how dogs have thunder shirts sometimes? Like some dogs help their anxiety for storms and fireworks to wear a thunder shirt. That's what armor feels like, you know, feels extra safe and cozy. The timing couldn't be more perfect. Right. Literally lumbering around in it, just so happy. Um, can I ask you questions from listeners? Absolutely. Just a heads up, Jarrett, your pod mother, will be performing this musical live in LA in the next month or so. So follow him on Instagram at Jarrett underscore sleeper. It's J-A-R-R-E-T-T underscore sleeper, like someone who sleeps, where he'll be announcing it. It's so good. Also, he's just making some great content about the world in this a time of chaos. Ward approved, would marry again. But before we hear your questions, patrons, let's take a quick break. We're going to donate to a cause of Ted's selection, which is the Pangol in Crisis Fund, which works to stop the poaching and the trade of and the demand for pangolin and pangolin products. And it raises the profile of the eight species of this little known animal. They deserve their own multi-part episode sometime in the future because they're amazing creatures. They're impacted so adversely by human trade. And so we have to find the best pangolinologist. And yeah, that is a real word. I just looked it up. And also they say 100% of any designated donation to the Pangolin Crisis Fund goes directly to the field. And we're really happy to make that donation on Ted's behalf there at Pangolang Crisisfund.org. We'll link them in the show notes. Thank you to OLG sponsors for making these donations each week possible. This podcast is brought to you by Squarespace. If you haven't heard me gushing about Squarespace for years, it's an all-in-one website platform. Whether you're trying to grow a business you have or if you're just a baby business getting started, it has everything you need. That's where I secured my domain name. It helped me build a professional site. I can update it so easily. I've been using Squarespace since before Oligies existed, after procrastinating for years, I literally built my website in one evening. They have templates, they have flexible editing tools. Squarespace also makes it easy to share your work. You can book clients, you can get paid. have They built -in tools for scheduling and invoicing and email all in one place. Whenever someone I know needs a website, whether they're a scientist that needs to put their work up or someone who's just starting a business, I'm like, dude, Squarespace. So head to squarespace.com/slash ologies for a free trial and when you're ready to launch, use offer code ologies to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. You can do it. Sometimes to thrive from your head to your You can support your daily routine with vitamins, supplements, a few things I have in my cabinet that I take every day. They have an advanced hair, skin, and nails gummy that I love. It's strawberry flavored. If you are experiencing hot flashes, night sweats, perhaps some menopause relief tablets, got a lot of my friends onto those. They're formulated to help provide multi-symptoms su,pport, and relief. Also, I take magnesium glycinate capsules every day. 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Also making the show possible , our patrons at patreon.com/slashologies who submit questions for allogists before we record. And this week we had a great one from A Ortega who asked about noises and communication used for certain types of dangers or threats or urgency. Olga Kolesnikova asked, is screaming actually a good defense mechanism? Screams internally. And Marliti wants to know, do animals in the wild pick up on each other's warnings? Like for example, do squirrels listen to warnings from birds when hawks or eagles fly over? Is there like being on blue sky where everyone's like, hey, this is going on politically, everyone like a mere cat Do they listen to each other's? Absolutely. They do. There's totally shared public information out there, and especially with alarm calls. There's lots and lots of studies looking at how species use information from other species about where food might be, where predators are, and even cases of deception where species will give false alarm calls. They will learn to give the alarm calls of other species in their area and give false alarm calls so the animals like a mere cat might drop the bug it was foraging on and the the other animal, the bird might fly in and grab it and take it. That's so mean. Public information is a very well studied aspect of behavior and it's super common for animals to of course use calls and signs and visual information from other species. Aaron Powell Well you know you mentioned seeing possums when you were younger and we're looking at you know armadillos that are kind of possum size. A lot of people wanted to know Scale Bar, the Cole, Gracie Maldonada, Brittany Corrigan, Jen Squirrel Alvarez, and Justin Bowen. Scale Bar asked, is playing dead ever like backfire? Laying down in front of a predator, Steve's kind of risky. And Justin asked, I wonder if fainting goats qualify as playing dead. So possums don't have any armor on their bellies, but they just keel over drooling. Is that a defense? Is that a bug or a feature? It's absolutely a defense. It's called phenatosis. Okay. It's very hard to study because you just have to opportunistically see it in an animal, right? But it's really the the last option. And normally it's You're trying to get away, but but happens when the predator grabs grabs you and you're in the jaws already. So what other thing, rather than trying to squirm or claw, if you just play dead, maybe they'll stop and drop you and look around and and okay, this this thing, I've killed it. I can s make sure there's no other predators around that might steal this. And you can see videos online of predators drop an opossum on the ground and start to walk around and look for things that might take it and the possum pops up and runs away. It's not a a super common thing that it's successful, but at that point, what else do you have? So death feigning is a thing we see. Fear screams, where screaming bloody murder to hopefully call in other members of your species that might mob the predator to help you out. So you'd be surprised at what animals might do is a last gasp to save themselves, because what else do you have to lose? Yeah. Eleanor Wall said Hello, Alley and guest expert. This is Eleanor from New York. And the thing that I would like to ask you about regarding animal defenses is alarm calls, whether sound based, light based or chemical or any other form. You mentioned anal glands. Does anyone spurt anything to like let other people know like there's some danger in the area ? So chemical for sure, but when we know about the chemicals are in fish. So fish, when they are attacked, they will emit chemicals um from their body that once they're in the water, other fish use that as a as a a cons pecific alarm cue or a alarm cue that s something that death is happening here you and you get away. And so it's found in so many different aquatic species that smelling death will cause other animals to swim away. And if you have questions, uh like is there a fish alarm cue? Luckily for all of us, there's a 2004 study from the Journal of Animal Behavior titled Is There a Fish Alarm Q ffirming Evidence from a Wild Study, which yeah, noted that chemical alarm cues released from injured tissue are not released under any other context and therefore reliably they inform nearby prey of the presence of a predator. And that both laboratory and field studies have demonstrated that most aquatic taxa show antipredator responses to these chemical alarm cues. You can also see the 2022 study attenuation and recovery of an avoidance response to a chemical antipredator cue in an invasive fish, implications for use as a repellent in conservation in the Journal of Conservation Physiology, and it found that these chemosensory alarm cues may prove to be an effective tool in guiding the movement of fish, especially invasive ones for control or for conservation. So conservationists could potentially use these odor cues, kind of like a gentler fish cattle prod made out of stress perfume to guide the fish in order to control these invasive species. However, they did lab tests with sea lampreys and if they're exposed to prolonged alarm cues, like if they just keep smelling the danger scent over and over again. I guess the fish just figure someone's crying literal wolf and they're like, whatever. So yeah, this might be called, say, flooding the zone. So not only does it work to desensitize and numb captive fish, but it's also a political strategy employed by dictatorships. So the term flood the zone, meaning to overwhelm a population with so much bad news or corruption or fear or misinformation that they simply can't keep up and then they tune out for survival. It was actually coined by our current president's chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who famously said that the Democrats don't matter. The real opposition is the media. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit. There you go. So whether you're a fish or a human person, this is handy news to keep hold of . But apparently if the sea lampreys took some time away from the alarm odor, they were more attenuated and active in avoiding the threat. So maybe every day read a romance novel, watch your favorite show for an hour or two, give your brain a break. That way you can stay angry and active. Right now, any skunks, if you're listening to this, you're like, okay, great, but what does this have to do with me? In mammals, in terms of spraying it, so unstudied. Not many people study spraying skunks. I don't know why. They're so fun. But um we don't know a lot about how animals respond to skunk odor in the in their environment. What we do know is skunks can spray, like they might spray your dog intentionally, liquid gets on their face, but they can also release a waft of smell. So sometimes if you're walking around your house and you smell skunk, it might not be that a skunk sprayed a predator or got attacked. It might just be that they got stressed out and at least a puff of odor. And it's lingering in the air and it's sort of staying around. Is that you? That might be an inadvertent response or it could be a warning to other animals in the area that something happened around here. There's some sort of scary thing. But again, we don't know that in mammals for sure. Would that also warn a predator? Like if you're a coyote walking around or you're a bobcat and you start to smell skunk, would you be like, ugh, I'm out of here. This is like a a restaurant that stinks. So our work with coyotes and the responses to skunk oil is kind of mixed. Generally speaking, they they will avoid models that smell strongly of skunks, but that we also use skunk oil as in a mixture with other stuff as an as a lure for for carnivores and predators. So if it smells like skunk oil and death, it can be an attractant. If it just smells purely like skunk oil and it's on a skunk model, like like on a a thing that looks like a skunk that does not look dead, they tend to t just to shy away from it. Oh. So it's context dependent. But it's odd that we use uh the thing that they hate the most being sprayed with is what we use as a lure to draw them in. I know you want more on this. So you can please report to some cozy booknook and curl up with a paper Aversive or Attractive: The Effects of Skunk Oil on Predator Behavior by Professor Holly Schiefobine and our own Dr. Ted, out of yes, his lab at California State Long Beach. So this study notes that skunk carcasses have been encountered in which everything except the anal glands had been consumed by scavengers. Like they were left overs, and they know it's probably coyotes, which could indicate an aversion to an avoidance of the oil contained within these glands. But the researchers in this study they made skunk decoys out of tanned hides and half of them they kept black and white striped and the other half they dyed, they bleached them, and then they paired some with a smell of skunk. So they wanted to see if the coloration in conjunction with the smell did anything. And the study found that scented models were less likely to be visited, indicating yes, there was an avoidance of the oil. But some of my favorite passages of research papers in general are are always hiding out in the methodology section. This one did not disappoint. So they had to make over skunk pelts into a more neutral color. So that they had striped ones and that they had just drab brown ones. So the lab had to create the brown pelts via it says Clairol Basic White Lightener and 40 Volume Cream Developer from Sally Beauty. And then they dyed them brown over that using permanent hair color in the shade dark blonde. And if you listen to our pinnipoledogy episode on seals and sea lions or our recent marmatology episode about groundhogs, you will know human hair dye is part of a mammologist's science kit more often than you would suspect. But I wanna save some skunk facts for a future episode with another years-long quest for a very specific guest. I really need Jerry Dragu of New Mexico. He's exceptionally hard to get a hold of. He is the only skunk expert who will do. I've had my eyes on him forever. Jerry, email me back. I love you. Also, no patrons asked this question, which was shocking to me. How about coyote vests? How about coyote vests? Yeah, like it's spiky little vests . They have a lot of like plastic bright colored spikes. They're so metal, even though they're plastic. But I have a 12-pounder who is not the sharpest, but also I'm sure delicious. Do they work? So the coyote vest is a Kevlar vest and some of them have metal spikes on them, some have little plastic spines sticking up up off the top. It's unclear. It seems like it couldn't hurt. You know, if you're a small dog and get chomped down on by something that's chomping on those spikes, it would certainly hurt to chomp down on those spikes. So I don't think the the creators have any direct scientific evidence of it work ing, but I can totally see it being a reasonable way to to defend your animal. It's not a foolproof way, of course, because it doesn't protect the entire animal and and the head is exposed and but it certainly would be a good first line of defense if you can intervene while they're dealing with that vest. Aaron Powell What about the neck? Like does the neck have to be protected more than other areas? Aaron Powell The neck is one of the most common areas that they go for because it's it's the way to kill the animal so quickly, either by breaking the the spine or by cutting the the jugular vein and to bleed them out. So the neck is what you really want to protect. And so having a spike collar there might be helpful too. Although most small dogs, their body can be crushed in a by strong jaws of mountain lines or coyotes in a variety of ways. So that would be a one of the most vulnerable parts for sure. Aaron Powell And just a heads up, yes, many versions of this coyote vest, or I suppose it's really an anti-coyote vest. They feature like sex pistols level spiked collars as well. And it was invented. I just read this, it made me so sad. It was invented by a Southern California man who was mourning his late ten pound little white fluffy poodle named Buffy, who was stealthily stalked by a coyote while they were at this busy dog park. And the coyote pounced, grabbed Fluffy by the neck, shook her to death in front of her distraught owners, and then the coyote scampered away up a steep hill. They ran after they couldn't catch this coyote with a limp, dead Buffy in its mouth. Buffy was never seen again, and through grief and a lot of I think, if I may, self blame, Buffy's owner created this Kevlar bite proof spiked collar and vest available at Coyote Vest dot com if you're looking. And there have been many reports of attacks that were thwar ted by these spiked little outfits. And my daughter, Gremlin, she's a delicious uh 12-pound meal waiting to happen, may need one of these. I was just shopping. I was like, do I get our pink one? Yellow one? I can't decide, but the tab's open. If you're encountering a lot of coyotes in your neighborhood, though, especially now because it's coyote mating season, like January through March, there are some ways to scare them away. I found this 2023 master's thesis by Gabrielle Lejeunesse, and it was titled Two Programs for Use of Aversive Conditioning to Manage Bold Urban Coyotes. So they lured coyotes with dogs or dog scents. The study also taught community members to stay on the lookout for coyotes and then haze them by running and screaming at them and throwing tennis balls their direction to cause them to retreat from humans. Or they had the high intensity method, which involved a non-contact shot of a chalk pellet toward a coyote with like a paintball gun. And the verdict was the low and the high intensity hazing caused coyotes to leave the immediate area , but only the high intensity hazing, the paintball shotgun, demonstrated measurable changes in subsequent behavior by coyotes. But the yelling though, they say may deter coyotes during conflict situations while increasing the sense of security in residential areas. Either way, haze coyotes when you see one for the good of the nearby pets, but also the coyotes, because it keeps them safer. Even though they belong here as much if not more than us. They were here before us. And if you have an outdoor cat, you're putting so much wildlife at risk because they love to eat lizards and birds and such and you might be feeding the coyotes. So real talk, keep your kitties indoors. But a leash is also a good idea. A leash, yeah. Honestly, if your dog's on a leash, it's close enough to you where you where you can hopefully protect it. Yeah. If you have your dog free roaming, then having a collar with some spikes on it might might be a better idea. Mm-hmm. We talked about stinky stinky glands and Andy Pepper and Emily Stoffer wanted to know. Emily asked, I don't know if this would be part of thisology, but what is it with nervous poops? Is that a defense mechanism? Andy asked, are there animals that poop for defense and not just out of fear? And does it matter? Honorable mention to patron Bryo Diversity, who shared that they quote, know of two snakes, the Sonoran coral snake and the western hooknose snake that use cloacal popping, basically farting on command to repel predators. Bryodiversity called them Ophidian flatulists and wondered if any of Ted's research has caught wind of any other animals that employ fartial arts in self-defense. Honestly, if you've ever been close to someone with IBS, you know, it can certainly keep you anxiously asconced in a bathroom stall when things get dicey. Our brains and guts. Nervous poops might be a way to lighten your body load in preparation for a fast runaway, a fast escape. That's the one thing I can think of it might help you. I don't know of any mammals that release a defensive compound in their poop that would in any way hinder an attack. But it would sort of lighten your lighten your load to to help you escape a predator attack. What about horned lizards? I hand the bee, Lee Jacobsto ck, wanted to know. Jacob asked my question, how the heck do some lizards straight up shoot blood out of their eyeballs? What would the evolutionary advantage of that even be? But the yeah, the horned lizard, the horny toad, hand the bee said that they're native to their home state of Texas. Can we please discuss this bizarre mechanism? Aaron Powell A number of things can shoot bodily fluids out of their body. Indeed. And it's a somewhat common way of defending yourself. If it happened while being squeezed or being attacked or being pressed on and something squeezed out and shot the predator and it deterred it, that animal survived. So guess what? That animal's genes get to live on and be spread, and that trait gets to be spread. So if it's something that happened fortuitously, an animal is more likely to have stuff shoot out of its body when pressed on or squeezed. That gets to spread and more copies of it are found in the next generation. So that's how that thing happens. On this, but let's break down how to shoot blood from your eyes in case there's ever a weird guy staring at you at the bus stop. So, first, be a horned lizard, which means eating a diet of mostly harvester ants. And if you recall from our memories episode with Dr. Terry McGlynn about ants, harvester ants, the juicy ones that used to roam untouched lands, are struggling because of invasive ant colonies, which means horned lizards are going hungry. But as for the blood, so these horned lizards are able to constrict some muscles around their eyes, which keeps the blood kind of shunted and dammed up in a few sinuses under the eyeball. Then as it's ready, it's like building up, the lizard further constricts those muscles really quickly and the blood has nowhere to go but out, and they can shoot it up to four feet away. And this would be like you being able to say like spit the entire length of a bowling lane. How often can they do this? Like if you were at a lizard party, just kind of goofing around. So there's some research out there. For example, the two thousand and one paper titled Blood Squirting Variability in Horned Lizards, which exposed horned lizards to the presence of dogs, and they found that body mass of these lizards was positively correlated with the total number of squirts and the number of days in a row a lizard could continue squirting from its eyeballs. There's this other Stellar Paper, 2004 Spanger, respons es of kit foxes to antipredator blood squirting and blood of Texas horned lizards. And this study gave kit foxes some alive horned lizards to eat during which the lizards squirted blood from the tissues around their eyes. I'm guessing Jackson Pollocked the fox es in the face with their blood. And then when the kit foxes were presented with more horned lizards to eat, the researchers say that the foxes displayed a learned aversion to them. They were like, I'm good, dude. Now the study also suggested active antipredator chemicals are carried in the circulating blood as well as in squirted blood, and that the lizards can tell a fox wants to eat his ass and it's worth doing the blood squirt. Now fast forward a few decades to the october two thousand twenty five paper Antipredator Blood Squirting and Seed Harvesting Ants in the Evolution of Murmacophagy or, ant eating, in horned lizards. So scientists now know that during digestion of these harvester ants, a compound from their toxin enters horned lizard blood, becoming a circulating anti-predator deterrent, the study says. Chemical warfare. Shot out your eyeballs. Also, I read too many studies about horned lizards for this aside, and I can tell you that they were all authored by one guy, Wade C. Sherbrooke, who I was thrilled to find out is alive and well in Arizona. He wrote the book Introduction to Horned Lizards of North America, and he made a recent visit to the Educational Cooper 's Center, which made an Instagram post that said today our team met with the wizard of the lizard, Wade Sherbrooke. Wizard of the Lizard. Folks, beauty's all around us. If you just open your eyes. It provided they're not filled with blood. It's definitely someone I would leave alone. If I could mug someone that was just sitting there or someone that was squirting blood at me through their eyeballs, I definitely would be like, I'm gonna go for the more chill situation. Slow lorises. Alison Clark and Emily Z wanted to know. Alison asked, Pygmy slow loris, are they really the only venomous mammal? Emily Z said, Can we talk about how slow lorises have venomous elbows . What ? This was news to me also. So the slow lorises will take the secretions of the gland from their elbow and spread it on their fur to make themselves toxic, distasteful, poisonous , or their bite can be very painful because it it's in their mouth. However, shrews, selenodons, they all have poison glands in their mouth that they use to subdue prey. Really? And they actually have grooves in their front teeth that they can inject the poison into prey and the prey will become immobilized. They can catch that prey and store it and for a longer period of time. So they're definitely not the only poisonous mammals. And of course platypus, male platypus have have spurs on their lit their hind legs that have venom in them that are used in male male combat. Those are very painful if they stick you in the skin. So there are multiple things that are poisonous among mammals, but very few are used tox ins or poisons as an antipredator defense. We do have a fresh platypus episode for you and in it we go into depth on these venom spurs and exactly how bad they hurt, which is like a bitch. And also most people who get barbed and like crumpled physiologically from these platypus franken creatures, they were actually trying to help them, like scoot them out of the road, only to find that Mother Nature is as cruel as she is funny. They go to help and they get so barbed, so later. So when you say poisonous, like if a slow loris gets eaten, would that venom get denatured in their stomach or would it cause like illness or like would it just taste you know and it uh deterrent to biting your fingernails you put like really bitter stuff on it. I would imagine it would it would just taste really bad. Okay. Yeah. That's usually c cause you wouldn't want it to to wouldn't want it to happen in the stomach as much because by by that point you're dead. Yeah. So you want it to just be a really foul taste on your fur and that's what caused them to spit you out. Yeah. That's good to know if there's any vampires. You just put like the gnarliest cologne on your neck and they're like, uh no. Or some garlic, right? Yeah, a little garlic, after shave. You're good to go. We have a vampire episode. It's two parts. We in it we talk a lot about necks and garlic. Andy Pepper, Erin Burbridge, Brittany Brycenyo wanted to know Britney asked, I've seen videos of killdeers pretending to have a broken wing in order to distract and lure predators away from their nests. So wild. You gotta look it up. I did. And a kill deer, which is named for the sound of its shrieking call . It's a shorebird. It's a type of plover. And it looks kind of like a mix between a hawk and a quail, but smaller, and it sits on the ground with its wings spread and it taps one of them so convincingly in what appears to be like imperiled panic. It almost emotionally feels like it's trying to turn the ignition on a sputtering getaway car. Like such panic. Absolutely Oscar worthy. I have seen far worse acting on Netflix. Erin asked, what about altruistic defense where one member of a group risks their own life, like mother birds faking an injured wing? Is that a defense mechanism? It's absolutely a defense mechanism to protect your prey. And it depends on how you want to define altruism. If you define altruism as something that puts yourself in more danger in order to help another another individual, then yes it's altruism because you're helping your offspring. Parents all the time will alarm call, they'll put themselves in harm's way to help protect their offspring because their offspring are their genes. That's how you pass down your genes. Any behavior that helps to spread your gene genes and make your offspring survive will be favored by natural selection. However, if your idea of it is that there's a no benefit to the actor at all, then it would not be an altruistic act. But absolutely distraction behaviors, as that they talked about, are a thing that happens in lots of different animals. And it would be very favorable to sacrifice yourself to protect your own offspring if there's a good chance that those offspring were going to survive and live on. And taking into account what are your future reproductive opportunities? Would you do it to save your very first baby if you thought that, you know, you're you're gonna live a long life with multiple seasons of mating and reproduction again? Maybe it wouldn't be favored as much. But if you have one big shot at reproduction and there's not a good chance of surviving year to year, then helping this year's brood survive would certainly be a smart thing to do. There are so many oldest kids in therapy for that same reason. As a youngest son, I appreciate that. As a youngest daughter, I would like to apologize to my sister Celeste. I would not like to apologize . Claire Gemin wanted to know, can we talk about the sweet wombat's armored butt . You've gotten to meet a wombat in situ , right? Yes, in the field, yeah. In Australia. They have armored butts? I mean it's it's thickened skin. Okay. Anything that sort of goes into a burrow to plug up a a hole, um, having a armored part of your body would be super helpful. My favorite example of an armored butt is as though there's lots of examples of an armored butt. My favorite example of an armored butt is the pink fairy armadillo. They're one of the smallest armadillo species. Their only armor is a strip of armor along the along its back that's pink , and a plate over the butt that is pink as well. Pink fairy armadillo is more than deserving of your Google image search. But since you might be I don't know, refinishing a bookshelf or driving a weed combine or changing a diaper that needs more immediate attention, or God forbid , maybe you're on a lime scooter right now with no helmet. Don't do that. I'm just gonna share the visuals with you auditorily. So a pink fairy armadillo, it's like four inches long. It's tiny. Absorb that. It's four inches long. It looks like a mole creature with huge big scaly mitts for paws. It's got a furry blonde stomach. And then this blush colored plate of armor on its dorsal side. It looks like if you draped an oblong potholder on its back as it waddled away. It doesn't even cover its whole body. It also doesn't look like an earth creature. It looks like something scuttling in the corner of like starship troopers. I want to witness one. And very small. You can't imagine how that how that armor would really help them. However, the plate over the rear end is much thicker and harder to get through, and they will go into burrows, and that is the plug that helps to protect them from predators. In fact, the armor on the back is not very well uh hardened at all. It's very cut much more leathery. Um it doesn't show up well on CT scans, but the plate over the rump certainly does. So having armor on your rump is great for burrowing animals because it helps to sort of seal things up if a cutter is trying to come down a hole to go after you. It's a trapdoor spider kind of exactly. Yeah. There is a diptych of a pink fairy armadillo and a salmon sushi . Yes . These things look like land prawns. It's bonkers. So yes, we need a whole armadillo episode because there is a pink fairy armadillo, but there's also a screaming hairy armadillo. And allow me to demonstrate via the YouTube channel of a guy named Joe. Joe has a pet screaming hairy armadillo who becomes vocal if he gets rolled into the wrong position for a nap. And side note, this account, Joe, is Joe Furman. Furman . A guy with a hairy armadillo. People, I can't. I just can't. But anyway, Ted has one too, but it's dead and it's used for education and podcaster lab tours. Where do these guys live? Uh South America. Oh how you South America has all the armadola diversity, yeah wow that's we've got one here in in the states i love that it's a screaming hairy can i touch these they're sharp aren't they yes that's like a bed of nails that's like needles. It's like a pincushion reversed. That's cool. I think they're maybe a little softer when they're alive. I think they've maybe hardened up over time Oh I'm in love. Uh Ariel Van Zant had a great question. Are animal defenses done consciously or are they automatic or both? I think it depends on what defense you're talking about. There are defenses that are certainly automatic and subconscious. Other ones like things that actively aim and spray noxious things with their predators are intentional. Because you have to aim and be mindful of what you're doing. Things that where you attack or stab porcupines when they erect their quills and they turn and they are trying to stab you with their quills. That's certainly an intentional thing. But I can imagine armored animals curling up in a ball, you're just curling up in a ball, but the you're not deploying the defense in any particular way. But in the end, it doesn't matter if it's intentional or not. It's whatever. If it works, it works. Yeah. We try not to anthropomorphize too too much and to get into the minds of the animals because selection doesn't care about whether or not they think about it. All it cares about was how effective it was. It is what it is. Well, a bunch of people wanted to know. Mark Rubin, Emily Krieger, Brooke A. Ann Over, Mini Minnie, Ghool Next Door, First Time Question Asker, Mashed Tatoes wanted to know what are some modern human physiological responses or artifacts of defense mechanisms from our ape ancestors? Is it mostly just hiding, climbing, outwitting? We talked about how squishy we are, but like what is keeping That's right. Hiding, climbing, uh throwing things. Oh. Absolutely through throwing objects at threatening uh animals for sure. When when our hair stands up on our body, that that's called pilo erection. That that's a a common thing to make yourself look bigger. Animals do that all the time when they get angry or when they get stressed, they make their hair stand up. Increased heart rate, even sweating to help help make your hands a little bit tacky to climb trees better. So those are all the the the same things that we would have seen in our our ancestors for sure. You can thank a little nut-shaped chunk of your brain called the amygdala for your fear and stress response. I like to call it your screaming almond of terror. And to learn more about anxiety and stress and how to fight it, you can see our widely loved fearology episodes with Dr. Mary Poffinroth, who also just wrote the book Brave Knew You Strategies, Tools, and neurohacks to live more courageously every day. She's amazing. Everyone loves her. We'll link it on our website as a tool for your little eight brains. Have you ever been attacked by something you've studied? I've never been attacked. I've been sprayed by a skunk once. Oh the very first day I was trapping a skunk on a release. I scared it while I was in a trap, waiting to leave a trap and it sprayed my hand as I was trying to open the trap again. But six years and after that it never got sprayed again. Um so as long as you respect them and can read their behavior that they don't want to spray you. Yeah. I tell people if you've been sprayed by a skunk, you've probably, you know, tripped over it, didn't see it, scared it, or you've done something really dumb because they will tell you well beforehand that they're going to spray you. Dogs don't listen to to those same behaviors that that we can. Have I ever been attacked by an animal? No. Or I suppose been on the receiving end of a defense. Well, so working with the echidnas, we think of them as just curling up into a ball with their spikes sticking out. So you can pick them up and you can wear gloves, you pick them up and your hands are protected with leather gloves. When you're handling them, if they're you're fully handling them, they will sort of clench their back muscles and I called it bucking, where they're trying to clench their muscles and jab their spines into your hand. And so they would they would certainly do that while you're handling them and you even with leather gloves, you little spines get through the gloves and you get little tips in your fingers. But that's as closest to an attack I've ever experienced. I've been bitten by a rat during a capture one time, you know, while handling it. But otherwise, nothing that was lever life-threatening. I'm there's lots of people out there who go run and grab animals in the wild. A lot of herpetologists and entomologists will go grab their animals in the wild. That's not my thing. Um I I I just know the stress it puts on animals and I I prefer to t just observe. So I don't have a a history of being attacked or bitten uh in retaliation for grabbing them. So yeah. What'd you do about your hand? So a skunk spray, it's an old myth that tomato juice will descent a skunk. Yeah.. It does not work It just makes you smell the tomato juice. If there's a chemical reaction though where you want to oxidize the the sulfurous thiols in their their spray, where if you use hydrogen peroxide, baking soda, and liquid dish soap in a mixture where if you mix those together no water, that solution will oxidize those stinky chemicals and will your animal w will no longer smell. Bleach will do it too, but you don't want to put bleach on your pet. So when my hand was sprayed, I came back and wrenched it with that solution and it was immediately gone. So on your pet it might take a couple rounds of washing it because it gets in the fur and it's hard you know to get that solution into their fur. Also, that solution can't be kept for a long period of time. It's not shelf stable, so you I would keep those items on hand if you have a dog that's prone to being sprayed by a skunk. Mm-hmm. I have to tell my friend Simone, she's got a dog named Scraps that is I'll have to give you an extra magnet for for for her too. Yeah. We've gotten that call late at night being like, oh no . There are commercial things you can buy as well that that work okay. But just home stuff at home, peroxide, baking soda, liquid dish soap. If you have a dog that is out and could be sprayed, just keep some on hand. Do not use water. Water, there's actually a third sulfurous thioacetate in in skunk o il that um is not as stinky but when you put water on it when it mixes with water it becomes stinkier. So you're just making it worse if you try to use water. Okay, so the recipe is from Ted. Ready? 32 ounces of three percent hydrogen peroxide, that's a quart, one third of a cup of baking soda, and a tablespoon of liquid dish soap. So you need to mix this up as soon as you can. You gotta get rid of it the faster the better. And you gotta make a fresh batch of this stuff each time you need it because it doesn't keep well. So you take this mixture, you scrub it thoroughly into your pet's fur or your face, whatever the problem is. You gotta avoid eyes and mouths. And then you rinse yourself or the pet and you repeat the process if you need to. And Ted notes that this remedy may lighten your pet's fur, but it'll do wonders for reducing the stink. And also everyone loves a makeover. So there you go. Once again, a quart or about a liter of three percent hydrogen peroxide