Welcome to Creature Future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we are answering some listener questions, and by we I mean me. You write to me your questions to Creature Featurepod at gmail dot com, and guess what, I do my best to answer them, either on the show, or I try to send an email back to you, or I use my brain powers to transmit the answer directly into your minds. Is it working anyways? Let's get right into it and answer some listener questions about evolutionary biology, animals, pets, you name it. Hello, Katie was listening to your latest listener to episode and got to thinking if you knew anything about Manx cats or the tail liss gene. My husband and I do tea in our trap, neuter and release in our neighborhood, just to do our part to keep our feral cat population in check. Recently, our summer mama cat had three kittens. Two of them were tail us. We've never seen that in real life and thought how cute, but we'd never dealt with tail as cats. Oh boy, are we learning a lot about how important tales are for kiddies. Baron Ferdinand Flufferton Wait no, I didn't say that name right. Baron Ferdinand Flufferrington is the boy kitten, and he is overall very healthy and only has an issue with rectal prolapse. But his sister Bunny is missing the last vertebrae and a half of her spine before it was supposed to be a tale, so she is incontinent because of no nerves there. She sits funny and if you want to, can send you her X ray is pretty well to look at. So I got a sad update that Bunny did pass away due to these complications, so you know my condolences for that. They had a normal torty sister and we got her a home, but we accidentally gained a special needs kitten into our clouder, given that they are harder to find homes for and our local rescues are full. Anyways, I don't know if it would make for a good topic, but I would be curious about what causes the M gene. According to the Internet, this is what makes cat's tail is And if the tails are so important to cats, why would they have something in their DNA that makes them not have one. Is it just mutated? I will include pictures of the kittens. Thank you so much and can't wait for the next episode. Sincerely, Danielle s Hi Danielle, thank you so much for the work that you guys do for feral cats. I'm so sorry to hear about Bunny, but I am sure you guys gave her the best care and end of life care possible. So thank you so much for the work that you guys do. One reason that cat rescuers might find a high rate of genetic mutations is that feral cat populations often suffer from genetic bottlenecks, so that's essentially inbreeding. This is caused by freeways or other physical barriers between populations, which can result in a higher rate of genetic mutations. Some feral cat populations are highly diverse, but some are less diverse. It depends on the geography of the area as well as the genetic history of the cats. So, for instance, were these cats all kept together on a property, did they all descend from the same group, did they all take shelter in a single building and breed within the confines there, or other things like are they on an island, are they on the mainland, etc. Additionally, some cats may be more likely to carry the tailless gene because, unfortunately they descend from cats who were purposefully bred not to have a tail for asthetic reasons. There's also the chance that they descended from the Manx cat, which is a short tailed cat breed that arose spontaneously on the Isle of man Again, interestingly, this mutation seemed more likely to propagate due to the narrow genetic bottleneck on this small island. Interestingly, the Japanese bobtail cat, which is another breed of cat, does have a shortened or kinked tail, but this is caused by a different genetic mutation, one that does not seem to adversely affect the spine or the back legs, and so it's associated with fewer health problems. So tails are indeed very important for cats. They help with balance, they provide warmth when they curl up. It's also great for sensing their environment and being able to communicate with other cats, as well as warning off threats by puffing up their tails to appear imposing. So the tailis mutation isn't necessarily beneficial, but a bad mutation can still propagate if there are other factors involved, such as what I mentioned earlier, with a limited genetic pool or human intervention. Sometimes a mutation might not be ideal, but it's not enough to cause the organism to not reproduce, and so that gene will continue to kind of be in the population and sort of sprout up once in a while, especially if it's a recessive gene and it only really comes up when there's some inbreeding involved, so it can remain in the population. Remember that natural selection is not this perfect clairvoyant process. All that really matters is if something manages to breed and pass down its genes, and if that happens, that gene stays in the animal's genetic library and it can pop up again later down the line. So yeah, I mean it's I think it's important to understand that when we do do selective breed of cats, or if there are feral populations that are you know, not well looked after, there there are actual consequences. Unfortunately for these cats. There's consequences also for the wildlife. But yeah, I think it is it's something that is interesting to see as well as being an important reminder of how important the health of animals are as opposed to just sort of the aesthetics of like, oh, it's cute because it has a little bobtail, but not always good for their health. So on to another cat question. Actually here it is, Hi Katie. Why do cats sleep face down? Like? How do you breathe? My guy picture of Festo included best example of the face down pick I could find, though it usually just looks like his face was too heavy and he has to set it down. I really love the show. Highlight of the week. Have a great day, Emily. Well, thank you, Emily. I'm so glad you like the show, and thank you for your question. So your cat, first of all, very cute. Thank you for the picture. Always love them. Your cat is in the classic sea position that cats like to relax in to sleep in. And yes, sometimes kitties like to bury their face in their paws or in their feet, as a Festo seems to be doing so. There are a few reasons that cats like to sleep in this way. It can block out light, which helps them sleep. It keeps themselves warm, so like they're keeping their nose warm with their paws or their feet or their bodies. And then also the hot air that they're expelling out of their nose might actually warm their paws or their feet, so it just creates sort of a warmth bubble. And it also can make them feel safe and secure. They're curled up, all their sensitive bits are covered and safe, so they it's kind of like it's warm, it feels secure, it feels safe, and you don't really need to worry about your cat suffocating itself. He will come up for air if his nose gets blocked, but it's unlikely that he's not getting enough oxygen with his nose covered by his feet. It might just be stinky oxygen, but it's his own stinks, so he probably doesn't mind. But yes, very common. I remember I had a cat that would just fully cersantify himself and it was always a mystery to me, like why why would you want to be in there breathing your own sort of like butt stink with your mouth, But hey, he liked it, so who am I to judge? All Right, on to another question. This one is about dogs, So dog lovers, here we go. My dog is great at playing catch. She anticipates the arc of objects I throw for her and catches them every time on a classic ring shaped rotating the space habitat, though the arc of throwne objects would curve in strange ways due to the gravity coming from the spin of the space station. A ball would dip on naturally, rise strangely, or veered to the left or right, depending on the direction throne. Would a dog still be able to learn how to play catching that environment? Heck? Could humans figure it out? Okay, Katie lol, thanks for the constantly great podcast. This is from Juanito. Thank you so much and I'm glad you're enjoying the show. Thanks for the question. This is a great question. So unfortunately we don't have any dogs on the International Space Station, or maybe fortunately right like we don't necessarily the dogs might not enjoy that so much. But there's no definitive answer about how dogs behave in space, And of course we don't necessarily have the ring shaped space habitat. Yet we don't know what that artificial gravity would feel like for humans other than sort of what we understand from physics, and we certainly don't know what that would be like for dogs. But let's still try to answer this, right, So, there have been other animals in space, and they do struggle with understanding the change in gravity. These are of course all in low gravity. So Japanese quails were hatched on the Russian so I use thirty two station. Many of the embryos didn't even develop right, and those that did struggle to feed themselves. They couldn't figure out how to mate, and they really did not seem to understand how to get around in the low gravity situation. But maybe dogs are more intelligent than quails. So researchers have found that dogs can learn to anticipate the trajectory of objects and will show surprise if an object does not follow the trajectory that they expect. Given that dogs are good at learning and adapting to new patterns, I think it is probable that a dog might be able to learn to pay play fetch in space. So in this research, they kind of the dogs would learn that objects would have a typical trajectory and then they would show interest when the object did not follow that trajectory. But it was a learning process, and so the fact that the dogs seem to have this pattern recognition rather than just maybe the more innate understanding of physics is really interesting. So certainly an anecdote is that my dog seems to have learned how to anticipate different types of throwing of treats that I do. So when I get ready to throw a treat in a gentle arc for her to catch it mid air, she will wash my hand carefully, and then she stays where she is right, so she is ready to just catch a treat that I gently toss to her. But when I get ready to throw a treat across the room for her to go chase after, she'll get up and she'll scamp herway. This is before I throw it, right, She's just seeing my posture how I'm getting ready to throw the treat, and she readies herself to be in the prime position to start running after this treat, and she'll look back at me waiting for me to throw it, try to follow the arc getting ready to get that treat. So, personally, I think a dog is really good at learning and identifying patterns, probably better at that than they are at sort of an understanding of physics. It might take a while for a dog to learn new patterns, and it might be disoriented or surprised when it sort of physical reality is not what it anticipated. Now would be really interesting, again hypothetically, to see the difference between say, puppies raised in a space environment with either low gravity or artificial gravity versus dogs who were raised on Earth and then were sent up into space. I'm not suggesting we do it right. We've had a bad track record with sending animals into space and dogs into space where we have not been very kind to them. But let's imagine a situation in which space would be you know, like people lived up there other than the space station, where it's like a nice life, and dogs could potent be happy and safe there. It would really be interesting to see how they adapt to that new environment. And I would presume that they might actually be quite good at it, because they are so adept at learning patterns and following also the guidance of humans, so paying attention to our cues and using our cues and our behavior to better understand their environment. And so like a hypothetical dog living on a hypothetical space habitat, I think if it was born there, it would learn how objects behave. And if it was born on Earth and went up, I think it might take a little while, but then it would learn relearn how things move and especially if there are humans there to guide and train them, I think that they would actually be able to adapt pretty well. That is one of the really incredible things about dogs and their coevolution with humans. They're great learners. They are really really good at kind of understanding human technology. I mean, for instance, there are dogs who will take the subway. These are like feral dogs in Russia who've learned how to use the subway. And my dog certainly has learned how to use the elevator. And if you think about it from a dog's perspective, you get in a box and maybe you feel some motion of the box, but then you're teleported somewhere else. Like you don't probably have an understanding of how this elevator or how this train car works. It's like a magical thing that you get in. It kind of feels weird for a little bit, and then you get out and you're in a totally different place. But they adapt to it, they figure it out, and so you know, it's it's very interesting. I think that animals, especially dogs, can perhaps cope with things that seem really disorientate, disorientating, disorienting. My dog's very good on the elevator. By the way, I taught her how to safely write it. She's always there with me. I never let her write it alone. But basically, you know, I taught her elevator safety, to go all the way into the elevator and sit down and not wander around so that she never gets caught in the doors. And she's very good at it, and she's a good girl. Just in case you guys were wondering. All right, next listener question. Hi Katie, I've been a longtime believer in evolution, but the leaf cutter ant still blows my mind. How did it evolve? It does not make sense. I don't understand how you can get from a plain old aunt to leaf cutter ant through incremental change. It just seems like there are too many steps in leaf cutter business that had to all pop up at the same time. Thank you, you're the best, Will Hey Will, thank you, and thank you for the question. Evolution can indeed churn out some of the most weirdly complex symbiotic relationships. Just look at any parasite and you'll be awestruck by how complex something has evolved, Like leuco chloridium, that parasite that turns caterpillar eyeballs into undulating egg sacks that attract birds, and then the birds eat the caterpillars and the leuco chloridium completes its life cycle very weird. Similarly, ant colony behavior is incredibly complex, especially ants that practice farming, like leafcutter ants. Leafcutter ants are found in southern US and South and Central America, so they will cut off pieces of specific leaves and take them back to the colony, and you may have seen pictures of them. They'll be sort of in these rows, each carrying a little segment of leaf, really really interesting. They do eat the leaf sap, but there is a greater purpose for these leaves. These leaves are used as fodder for a type of fungus that feeds on the decaying leaves. So the ants actively cultivate the fungus by getting rid of pests and competing molds. And the ants even have another symbiotic back materia on their bodies that act as an antimicrobial, protecting themselves in the fungus. They make sure to only use leaves that are not toxic toxic to the fungus, and they will actively alter which leaves they collect if they notice that leaves are not good for the fungus. So the fungus is so dependent on the ants it no longer produces spores. It completely relies on the ants to reproduce and to propagate, and the ants use the fungus as a food supply for its larvae, who have also grown completely dependent on eating the fungus. So these are codependent species and not unhealthy in the way that it is in human psychology. While this seems ridiculously specialized, right, like, how could this ever just happen naturally, it's really no different than say the human body, or any other animal's body, any other complex organism's body, which is also a complex symbiotic interaction between cells, and even within the cells, you have organelles that are all acting in concert, like the mitochondria interacting with the other organelles in the cell. And it's really really kind of weird when you think about it, because the just one individual organism's body. It is hard to fathom how that came about because you have all of these interconnected systems that are all working in concert, and so how does that happen? Right with evolution, which has a very simple set of rules, which is just did you pass on your genes? Did you survive or didn't you? Did the genes get passed on? That's it. That's the only rule that evolution follows. Nothing else really, And you know, of course it gets more complex when you start talking about like how these things happen, like how does one pass on genes? What are the pressures acting on it? But the basic rule is whether or not something passes its genes on to the next generation. And that is it. Well, one way I like to think about it to kind of understand why these incredible complexities can come out of such a simple rule is thinking about computers. Right, so computers operate on binary you know, you have like on off zero one, and you can think about that in terms of evolution, like zero is it doesn't reproduce one. It does reproduce right off on. And so even though a computer might be based on binary, this very very simple off on sort of you know, building block, it is capable of incredible complexity given enough bytes and given enough processing times. So likewise, evolution operates over millions of years and through trillions of organisms. So you can think of time and the number of cells and organisms as processing time and bites of data for a computer. So even though it starts off with this very simple off on binary system, it becomes exponentially more complex, offering these like seemingly magical kind of things, of being able to create these incredibly complex organisms. Just how a computer based on binary can now do incredible, ridiculous and sometimes stupid things. That's exactly how evolution operates, right, it can make incredible complex and sometimes stupid things. So if you once you start to think about it in that way, right where it is this it is a complexity that unfolds from a simple binary system, then it makes more sense how you get such complexity. Now in terms of like the individual steps, that's always a difficulty as a say, like an evolutionary biologist to try to work backwards and think about all the individual steps that happen to create the complex systems that we see. Sometimes we find evolutionary evidence for it, right, like a related species that seems to have half of the behavior that the other species does, and then we can kind of guess like maybe this is how this happened, you know, And a lot of that is storytelling, right, where if we don't have enough evidence of something we kind of try to come up with stories of like, well, how did this happen? But you know, so I could say, like, well, maybe these ants collected these leaves for food, right like ants will often other species of ants will often collect vegetation, dead things, et cetera, bring them back to the nest in order for them to eat or to feed their offspring. And maybe they did that, and then some fungus started to eat the decaying leaves because that's what fungus does. And then actually they started to eat the fungus because it just happened to be growing there. And then hey, that fungus is actually really nutritious, And so you have, over many years something's kind of happening to happen that fine tunes this relationship between the ants and this fungus until you get to the point today where it is just such a complex, interestingly interwoven relationship. So yeah, I hope that helps. Basically, our planet's a giant computer, but that doesn't doesn't mean that it's not real, all right, So onto the last question. Hi, Katie, I was wondering if you have a favorite adapted insect wing. You know, insects generally have two pairs of wings, but some insects have adapted one or more of these pairs for another use. I am partial to the electra found in beetles. I love the cool shapes and colors. Do you have a favorite? Thanks, Bob Bonus pick of my rat, you know, judging you silently from his box? Fort? Hi, Bob and Juno, do you know your right to judge me from your rat? Fort? I bet you have cool snacks and like rat comic books inside, so I'm very jealous. All right, So, insect wings are incredibly cool. I love that you bring up eletra and how interesting they're. They're beautiful, come in all sorts of different colors, different shapes, different patterns, and they are used to protect the insects. So, and wings in general are really interesting from insects because one of the leading theories is that they evolved from gills that their aquatic ancestors once used, So like, the wings are basically overgrown gills that then they can use two flies, so so yeah. The these wings then evolve into yet other structures like the eletron of beetles, the hardened shell like wings that close over the more fragile wings and protect them and also just protects the beetle. In terms of my favorites, I really do like fasmid wings, so fasmids being things like stick insects. Some species have evolved wings that basically are just used as a threat display. They don't they're tiny. They're actually kind of humorously tiny compared to the rest of the insect, but it is used as a threat display, like a little set of fans that are usually a bright color like bright pink or bright red, and so it's just a flash of this red to scare off predators. An example would be the bud wing stick insects. So I don't know, that's really cool. I love it. I just also love the idea of this insect like fanning open a fan and trying to scare something off, like I'm done with you, go away. Very very sassy and very cool. I also like wings that have been adapted as noise makers, such as in species of crickets. There are some species of crickets that can fly, but a lot of them are flightless, and they use their to produce chirps, like by stridulating and rubbing them against each other, so that is very cool. Insect wings are really awesome and flight is not the only awesome thing about them. And you know, it's interesting because you can kind of see like this doesn't just happen in insects and birds. You see wings being adapted for other purposes than flight. Obviously, flightless birds can use their wings for things like swimming like in penguins, ostriches, rays, and EMUs will use their wings and things like heat control or in mating displays. And then also there's the club wing Mannikin that uses its wings for making sound, similar to say a cricket. So their wings have actually developed to rub against each other to vibrate and create this really interesting sound. It's one I think it is the only bird that is known to use stridulation is sound. And as a consequence, they are actually worse at flying. They're poor flyers. They can still fly, but they're pretty bad at it. Mostly they use their wings for communication through this sound that they make just like a cricket. Very very cool. So, guys, thank you so much for your questions. If you have a question that I did not answer on this episode and you want me to, you can write to me at Creature feature Pod at gmail dot com. That's Creature featurepod at gmail dot com. Send me your questions, your pictures of rat forts, animals, pets. I really appreciate all of that. Thank you guys so much for listening. We will resume the Mystery Animal sound game next week. It's happening. Don't you worry. It's happening. And thanks to this space coassics for They're a super awesome song. Ex Alumina Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts it's like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or Hi Guess what wherever you listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.

Welcome to Creature Future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, and today on the show, we are answering some listener questions, and by we I mean me. You write to me your questions to Creature Featurepod at gmail dot com, and guess what, I do my best to answer them, either on the show, or I try to send an email back to you, or I use my brain powers to transmit the answer directly into your minds. Is it working anyways? Let's get right into it and answer some listener questions about evolutionary biology, animals, pets, you name it. Hello, Katie was listening to your latest listener to episode and got to thinking if you knew anything about Manx cats or the tail liss gene. My husband and I do tea in our trap, neuter and release in our neighborhood, just to do our part to keep our feral cat population in check. Recently, our summer mama cat had three kittens. Two of them were tail us. We've never seen that in real life and thought how cute, but we'd never dealt with tail as cats. Oh boy, are we learning a lot about how important tales are for kiddies. Baron Ferdinand Flufferton Wait no, I didn't say that name right. Baron Ferdinand Flufferrington is the boy kitten, and he is overall very healthy and only has an issue with rectal prolapse. But his sister Bunny is missing the last vertebrae and a half of her spine before it was supposed to be a tale, so she is incontinent because of no nerves there. She sits funny and if you want to, can send you her X ray is pretty well to look at. So I got a sad update that Bunny did pass away due to these complications, so you know my condolences for that. They had a normal torty sister and we got her a home, but we accidentally gained a special needs kitten into our clouder, given that they are harder to find homes for and our local rescues are full. Anyways, I don't know if it would make for a good topic, but I would be curious about what causes the M gene. According to the Internet, this is what makes cat's tail is And if the tails are so important to cats, why would they have something in their DNA that makes them not have one. Is it just mutated? I will include pictures of the kittens. Thank you so much and can't wait for the next episode. Sincerely, Danielle s Hi Danielle, thank you so much for the work that you guys do for feral cats. I'm so sorry to hear about Bunny, but I am sure you guys gave her the best care and end of life care possible. So thank you so much for the work that you guys do. One reason that cat rescuers might find a high rate of genetic mutations is that feral cat populations often suffer from genetic bottlenecks, so that's essentially inbreeding. This is caused by freeways or other physical barriers between populations, which can result in a higher rate of genetic mutations. Some feral cat populations are highly diverse, but some are less diverse. It depends on the geography of the area as well as the genetic history of the cats. So, for instance, were these cats all kept together on a property, did they all descend from the same group, did they all take shelter in a single building and breed within the confines there, or other things like are they on an island, are they on the mainland, etc. Additionally, some cats may be more likely to carry the tailless gene because, unfortunately they descend from cats who were purposefully bred not to have a tail for asthetic reasons. There's also the chance that they descended from the Manx cat, which is a short tailed cat breed that arose spontaneously on the Isle of man Again, interestingly, this mutation seemed more likely to propagate due to the narrow genetic bottleneck on this small island. Interestingly, the Japanese bobtail cat, which is another breed of cat, does have a shortened or kinked tail, but this is caused by a different genetic mutation, one that does not seem to adversely affect the spine or the back legs, and so it's associated with fewer health problems. So tails are indeed very important for cats. They help with balance, they provide warmth when they curl up. It's also great for sensing their environment and being able to communicate with other cats, as well as warning off threats by puffing up their tails to appear imposing. So the tailis mutation isn't necessarily beneficial, but a bad mutation can still propagate if there are other factors involved, such as what I mentioned earlier, with a limited genetic pool or human intervention. Sometimes a mutation might not be ideal, but it's not enough to cause the organism to not reproduce, and so that gene will continue to kind of be in the population and sort of sprout up once in a while, especially if it's a recessive gene and it only really comes up when there's some inbreeding involved, so it can remain in the population. Remember that natural selection is not this perfect clairvoyant process. All that really matters is if something manages to breed and pass down its genes, and if that happens, that gene stays in the animal's genetic library and it can pop up again later down the line. So yeah, I mean it's I think it's important to understand that when we do do selective breed of cats, or if there are feral populations that are you know, not well looked after, there there are actual consequences. Unfortunately for these cats. There's consequences also for the wildlife. But yeah, I think it is it's something that is interesting to see as well as being an important reminder of how important the health of animals are as opposed to just sort of the aesthetics of like, oh, it's cute because it has a little bobtail, but not always good for their health. So on to another cat question. Actually here it is, Hi Katie. Why do cats sleep face down? Like? How do you breathe? My guy picture of Festo included best example of the face down pick I could find, though it usually just looks like his face was too heavy and he has to set it down. I really love the show. Highlight of the week. Have a great day, Emily. Well, thank you, Emily. I'm so glad you like the show, and thank you for your question. So your cat, first of all, very cute. Thank you for the picture. Always love them. Your cat is in the classic sea position that cats like to relax in to sleep in. And yes, sometimes kitties like to bury their face in their paws or in their feet, as a Festo seems to be doing so. There are a few reasons that cats like to sleep in this way. It can block out light, which helps them sleep. It keeps themselves warm, so like they're keeping their nose warm with their paws or their feet or their bodies. And then also the hot air that they're expelling out of their nose might actually warm their paws or their feet, so it just creates sort of a warmth bubble. And it also can make them feel safe and secure. They're curled up, all their sensitive bits are covered and safe, so they it's kind of like it's warm, it feels secure, it feels safe, and you don't really need to worry about your cat suffocating itself. He will come up for air if his nose gets blocked, but it's unlikely that he's not getting enough oxygen with his nose covered by his feet. It might just be stinky oxygen, but it's his own stinks, so he probably doesn't mind. But yes, very common. I remember I had a cat that would just fully cersantify himself and it was always a mystery to me, like why why would you want to be in there breathing your own sort of like butt stink with your mouth, But hey, he liked it, so who am I to judge? All Right, on to another question. This one is about dogs, So dog lovers, here we go. My dog is great at playing catch. She anticipates the arc of objects I throw for her and catches them every time on a classic ring shaped rotating the space habitat, though the arc of throwne objects would curve in strange ways due to the gravity coming from the spin of the space station. A ball would dip on naturally, rise strangely, or veered to the left or right, depending on the direction throne. Would a dog still be able to learn how to play catching that environment? Heck? Could humans figure it out? Okay, Katie lol, thanks for the constantly great podcast. This is from Juanito. Thank you so much and I'm glad you're enjoying the show. Thanks for the question. This is a great question. So unfortunately we don't have any dogs on the International Space Station, or maybe fortunately right like we don't necessarily the dogs might not enjoy that so much. But there's no definitive answer about how dogs behave in space, And of course we don't necessarily have the ring shaped space habitat. Yet we don't know what that artificial gravity would feel like for humans other than sort of what we understand from physics, and we certainly don't know what that would be like for dogs. But let's still try to answer this, right, So, there have been other animals in space, and they do struggle with understanding the change in gravity. These are of course all in low gravity. So Japanese quails were hatched on the Russian so I use thirty two station. Many of the embryos didn't even develop right, and those that did struggle to feed themselves. They couldn't figure out how to mate, and they really did not seem to understand how to get around in the low gravity situation. But maybe dogs are more intelligent than quails. So researchers have found that dogs can learn to anticipate the trajectory of objects and will show surprise if an object does not follow the trajectory that they expect. Given that dogs are good at learning and adapting to new patterns, I think it is probable that a dog might be able to learn to pay play fetch in space. So in this research, they kind of the dogs would learn that objects would have a typical trajectory and then they would show interest when the object did not follow that trajectory. But it was a learning process, and so the fact that the dogs seem to have this pattern recognition rather than just maybe the more innate understanding of physics is really interesting. So certainly an anecdote is that my dog seems to have learned how to anticipate different types of throwing of treats that I do. So when I get ready to throw a treat in a gentle arc for her to catch it mid air, she will wash my hand carefully, and then she stays where she is right, so she is ready to just catch a treat that I gently toss to her. But when I get ready to throw a treat across the room for her to go chase after, she'll get up and she'll scamp herway. This is before I throw it, right, She's just seeing my posture how I'm getting ready to throw the treat, and she readies herself to be in the prime position to start running after this treat, and she'll look back at me waiting for me to throw it, try to follow the arc getting ready to get that treat. So, personally, I think a dog is really good at learning and identifying patterns, probably better at that than they are at sort of an understanding of physics. It might take a while for a dog to learn new patterns, and it might be disoriented or surprised when it sort of physical reality is not what it anticipated. Now would be really interesting, again hypothetically, to see the difference between say, puppies raised in a space environment with either low gravity or artificial gravity versus dogs who were raised on Earth and then were sent up into space. I'm not suggesting we do it right. We've had a bad track record with sending animals into space and dogs into space where we have not been very kind to them. But let's imagine a situation in which space would be you know, like people lived up there other than the space station, where it's like a nice life, and dogs could potent be happy and safe there. It would really be interesting to see how they adapt to that new environment. And I would presume that they might actually be quite good at it, because they are so adept at learning patterns and following also the guidance of humans, so paying attention to our cues and using our cues and our behavior to better understand their environment. And so like a hypothetical dog living on a hypothetical space habitat, I think if it was born there, it would learn how objects behave. And if it was born on Earth and went up, I think it might take a little while, but then it would learn relearn how things move and especially if there are humans there to guide and train them, I think that they would actually be able to adapt pretty well. That is one of the really incredible things about dogs and their coevolution with humans. They're great learners. They are really really good at kind of understanding human technology. I mean, for instance, there are dogs who will take the subway. These are like feral dogs in Russia who've learned how to use the subway. And my dog certainly has learned how to use the elevator. And if you think about it from a dog's perspective, you get in a box and maybe you feel some motion of the box, but then you're teleported somewhere else. Like you don't probably have an understanding of how this elevator or how this train car works. It's like a magical thing that you get in. It kind of feels weird for a little bit, and then you get out and you're in a totally different place. But they adapt to it, they figure it out, and so you know, it's it's very interesting. I think that animals, especially dogs, can perhaps cope with things that seem really disorientate, disorientating, disorienting. My dog's very good on the elevator. By the way, I taught her how to safely write it. She's always there with me. I never let her write it alone. But basically, you know, I taught her elevator safety, to go all the way into the elevator and sit down and not wander around so that she never gets caught in the doors. And she's very good at it, and she's a good girl. Just in case you guys were wondering. All right, next listener question. Hi Katie, I've been a longtime believer in evolution, but the leaf cutter ant still blows my mind. How did it evolve? It does not make sense. I don't understand how you can get from a plain old aunt to leaf cutter ant through incremental change. It just seems like there are too many steps in leaf cutter business that had to all pop up at the same time. Thank you, you're the best, Will Hey Will, thank you, and thank you for the question. Evolution can indeed churn out some of the most weirdly complex symbiotic relationships. Just look at any parasite and you'll be awestruck by how complex something has evolved, Like leuco chloridium, that parasite that turns caterpillar eyeballs into undulating egg sacks that attract birds, and then the birds eat the caterpillars and the leuco chloridium completes its life cycle very weird. Similarly, ant colony behavior is incredibly complex, especially ants that practice farming, like leafcutter ants. Leafcutter ants are found in southern US and South and Central America, so they will cut off pieces of specific leaves and take them back to the colony, and you may have seen pictures of them. They'll be sort of in these rows, each carrying a little segment of leaf, really really interesting. They do eat the leaf sap, but there is a greater purpose for these leaves. These leaves are used as fodder for a type of fungus that feeds on the decaying leaves. So the ants actively cultivate the fungus by getting rid of pests and competing molds. And the ants even have another symbiotic back materia on their bodies that act as an antimicrobial, protecting themselves in the fungus. They make sure to only use leaves that are not toxic toxic to the fungus, and they will actively alter which leaves they collect if they notice that leaves are not good for the fungus. So the fungus is so dependent on the ants it no longer produces spores. It completely relies on the ants to reproduce and to propagate, and the ants use the fungus as a food supply for its larvae, who have also grown completely dependent on eating the fungus. So these are codependent species and not unhealthy in the way that it is in human psychology. While this seems ridiculously specialized, right, like, how could this ever just happen naturally, it's really no different than say the human body, or any other animal's body, any other complex organism's body, which is also a complex symbiotic interaction between cells, and even within the cells, you have organelles that are all acting in concert, like the mitochondria interacting with the other organelles in the cell. And it's really really kind of weird when you think about it, because the just one individual organism's body. It is hard to fathom how that came about because you have all of these interconnected systems that are all working in concert, and so how does that happen? Right with evolution, which has a very simple set of rules, which is just did you pass on your genes? Did you survive or didn't you? Did the genes get passed on? That's it. That's the only rule that evolution follows. Nothing else really, And you know, of course it gets more complex when you start talking about like how these things happen, like how does one pass on genes? What are the pressures acting on it? But the basic rule is whether or not something passes its genes on to the next generation. And that is it. Well, one way I like to think about it to kind of understand why these incredible complexities can come out of such a simple rule is thinking about computers. Right, so computers operate on binary you know, you have like on off zero one, and you can think about that in terms of evolution, like zero is it doesn't reproduce one. It does reproduce right off on. And so even though a computer might be based on binary, this very very simple off on sort of you know, building block, it is capable of incredible complexity given enough bytes and given enough processing times. So likewise, evolution operates over millions of years and through trillions of organisms. So you can think of time and the number of cells and organisms as processing time and bites of data for a computer. So even though it starts off with this very simple off on binary system, it becomes exponentially more complex, offering these like seemingly magical kind of things, of being able to create these incredibly complex organisms. Just how a computer based on binary can now do incredible, ridiculous and sometimes stupid things. That's exactly how evolution operates, right, it can make incredible complex and sometimes stupid things. So if you once you start to think about it in that way, right where it is this it is a complexity that unfolds from a simple binary system, then it makes more sense how you get such complexity. Now in terms of like the individual steps, that's always a difficulty as a say, like an evolutionary biologist to try to work backwards and think about all the individual steps that happen to create the complex systems that we see. Sometimes we find evolutionary evidence for it, right, like a related species that seems to have half of the behavior that the other species does, and then we can kind of guess like maybe this is how this happened, you know, And a lot of that is storytelling, right, where if we don't have enough evidence of something we kind of try to come up with stories of like, well, how did this happen? But you know, so I could say, like, well, maybe these ants collected these leaves for food, right like ants will often other species of ants will often collect vegetation, dead things, et cetera, bring them back to the nest in order for them to eat or to feed their offspring. And maybe they did that, and then some fungus started to eat the decaying leaves because that's what fungus does. And then actually they started to eat the fungus because it just happened to be growing there. And then hey, that fungus is actually really nutritious, And so you have, over many years something's kind of happening to happen that fine tunes this relationship between the ants and this fungus until you get to the point today where it is just such a complex, interestingly interwoven relationship. So yeah, I hope that helps. Basically, our planet's a giant computer, but that doesn't doesn't mean that it's not real, all right, So onto the last question. Hi, Katie, I was wondering if you have a favorite adapted insect wing. You know, insects generally have two pairs of wings, but some insects have adapted one or more of these pairs for another use. I am partial to the electra found in beetles. I love the cool shapes and colors. Do you have a favorite? Thanks, Bob Bonus pick of my rat, you know, judging you silently from his box? Fort? Hi, Bob and Juno, do you know your right to judge me from your rat? Fort? I bet you have cool snacks and like rat comic books inside, so I'm very jealous. All right, So, insect wings are incredibly cool. I love that you bring up eletra and how interesting they're. They're beautiful, come in all sorts of different colors, different shapes, different patterns, and they are used to protect the insects. So, and wings in general are really interesting from insects because one of the leading theories is that they evolved from gills that their aquatic ancestors once used, So like, the wings are basically overgrown gills that then they can use two flies, so so yeah. The these wings then evolve into yet other structures like the eletron of beetles, the hardened shell like wings that close over the more fragile wings and protect them and also just protects the beetle. In terms of my favorites, I really do like fasmid wings, so fasmids being things like stick insects. Some species have evolved wings that basically are just used as a threat display. They don't they're tiny. They're actually kind of humorously tiny compared to the rest of the insect, but it is used as a threat display, like a little set of fans that are usually a bright color like bright pink or bright red, and so it's just a flash of this red to scare off predators. An example would be the bud wing stick insects. So I don't know, that's really cool. I love it. I just also love the idea of this insect like fanning open a fan and trying to scare something off, like I'm done with you, go away. Very very sassy and very cool. I also like wings that have been adapted as noise makers, such as in species of crickets. There are some species of crickets that can fly, but a lot of them are flightless, and they use their to produce chirps, like by stridulating and rubbing them against each other, so that is very cool. Insect wings are really awesome and flight is not the only awesome thing about them. And you know, it's interesting because you can kind of see like this doesn't just happen in insects and birds. You see wings being adapted for other purposes than flight. Obviously, flightless birds can use their wings for things like swimming like in penguins, ostriches, rays, and EMUs will use their wings and things like heat control or in mating displays. And then also there's the club wing Mannikin that uses its wings for making sound, similar to say a cricket. So their wings have actually developed to rub against each other to vibrate and create this really interesting sound. It's one I think it is the only bird that is known to use stridulation is sound. And as a consequence, they are actually worse at flying. They're poor flyers. They can still fly, but they're pretty bad at it. Mostly they use their wings for communication through this sound that they make just like a cricket. Very very cool. So, guys, thank you so much for your questions. If you have a question that I did not answer on this episode and you want me to, you can write to me at Creature feature Pod at gmail dot com. That's Creature featurepod at gmail dot com. Send me your questions, your pictures of rat forts, animals, pets. I really appreciate all of that. Thank you guys so much for listening. We will resume the Mystery Animal sound game next week. It's happening. Don't you worry. It's happening. And thanks to this space coassics for They're a super awesome song. Ex Alumina Creature features a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts it's like the one you just heard, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or Hi Guess what wherever you listen to your favorite shows. See you next Wednesday.