Episode 183 – Satanic Leaf-Tailed Gecko: The Devil’s Disguises

“…and today we’re talking about a gecko that just does what it wilsts. But more on that later.”

The 80s spawned a lot of things: Reaganomics, Terminator, Steve Perry. But it also gave rise to the Satanic Panic. And one of the most prominent kinds of Satanists that the decade produced was an evil race of tiny geckos with leaves for tails. These dastardly reptiles can hide in plain sight, and though they don’t worship the beast, they do eat beelzelbugs on the regular. But that’s just how the satanic leaf-tailed gecko operates here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

Episode 182 – Toucan: A Cool Snoot for Fruit

“…we’re talking about a colorful jungle bird that follows his nose for froot… I mean fruit. But more on that later.”

The jungle is a paradise of delectable nectar and fantastic fruit. For those that can reach these delights, the jungle provides everything you need. But it takes some special equipment to take advantage of such decadent prizes. But nature can throw all kinds of challenges your way, so the toucan carries a multitool on the front of its face. It’s a lesson in being prepared for anything, in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

Episode 181 – Saiga Antelope: The Nose Knows

“…and today we’re talking about the tibetan fox of antelopes. By that I mean it looks like a child’s drawing of the antelope that isn’t quite right. But more on that later.”

On the steppes of the stans in Central Asia, a goofy-looking antelope grazes around the countryside, using its odd snout to sniff the ground as it walks. But having such a problematic proboscis can be more trouble than it’s worth, as a silent killer stalks these nefarious noses. But having a slinky snout is just how the Saiga antelope stays cool here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

Episode 180 – Eastern Screech Owl: Snakes in the Nest

“…and today we’re talking about an owl with an eye for allies. But more on that later.”

Small things slithering across the woodlands know to watch the skies. A killer approaches silently as it glides from high perches. For most small mammals and invertebrates that meet this aerial doom, it’s time to say goodbye to this mortal coil. But when a particular snake comes face-to-beak with the eastern screech owl, they have one more chance to prove their worth. But sometimes, combating deadly predators is a matter of being worth more alive than dead in Life, Death, and Taxonomy. 

Episode 179 – Brown-Throated Sloth: The Slowest Mammal

“…and today we’re talking about the sloooowest mammal in the world. But more on that later.”

The Amazon jungle is home to a wide variety of animals both fast and slow, with one of the slowest being the brown-throated sloth. But with so many fierce predators on the jungle floor, it helps to spend all your time hanging out in the trees. The only problem is, there aren’t a lot of good things to eat way high up in the trees. So to stay healthy, and stay slow, the sloth has some unorthodox ways of getting his vitamins here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

Episode 178 – Spiny Leaf Insect: Egg Mimicry

“…and today we’re talking about a bug that looks like a deep fried praying mantis. But more on that later.”

The forest is a dangerous place for an egg. They are packed with proteins and fats in order to grow the new creature inside, but those qualities also make them tasty morsels for foragers. Moms of all sizes search high and low for a safe place to deposit her ovum, except for one insect. The spiny leaf insect perches high in a tree and flicks her eggs out onto the forest floor, never to be seen again. But she’s not neglectful, she knows they have all they need to make it in Life, Death, and Taxonomy. 

Description

  • Looks like a combination of sticks and leaves. 
  • Long, narrow body and six long legs with flattened sections to resemble leaves
  • Its abdomen curls up behind it like a scorpion when it’s threatened 
  • It has a teardrop-shaped head with two long antennae sticking out. Its head actually looks a lot like an ant’s

Measure Up

Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words Measure Up into ldtaxonomy at gmail dot com. We do have a Measure Up intro this week from our friend Laura.

Female Length 

  • 5 to 8 inches (20 cm)
  • How many female spiny leaf insects go into the longest ever knitted scarf?
  • Hint: The scarf was made by Helge Johansen in Oslo, Norway in 2013. The scarf was rolled into a tight ball which he unrolled in a sports arena. 
  • 22,467.8 stick insects. The scarf was 4,565.46 m (14,978 ft 6.16 in).

Male Length

  • 11 cm (4.3 inches)
  • How many males go into the diameter of the smallest known star in the universe?
  • Hint: The star is called EBLM J0555-57Ab and it’s in the Milky Way Galaxy with us, about 600 lightyears away. It’s pushing the limits when it comes to small stars. If it were any smaller, there wouldn’t be enough mass putting pressure on the core for the hydrogen fusion process to take place. 
  • 1,058,758,160 male stick insects. The star is about the same size as Saturn which is 72,367 mi.

Fast Facts

  • Diet: Like the humble Koala, SLI mostly just eats Eucalyptus leaves. They can eat other kinds of leaves, but they don’t get as big and have different coloration
  • Behavior: 
    • SLI Cooper has an arsenal of defense mechanisms to hide from and ward off predators.
    • For starters, they have passive camouflage (meaning they don’t have to do anything) – since they, you know, look like sticks. Just hanging out on their favorite Eucalyptus perches keeps them pretty well hidden.
    • They’ll also use active camouflage (meaning they have agency). When the wind blows the tree they’re in, they’ll sway back and forth so that it’s not obvious that they’re the only thing not moving.
    • On top of that, if the camouflage doesn’t work, this stick bug is also covered in thorns so that it can David Hyde Pierce its enemies.
    • When threatened, it will use its spiny rear legs to poke attackers.
    • As nymphs, they look almost exactly like ants to avoid predation
    • Males have wings and are good flyers 

Major Fact: Egg Mimicry 

There are many plants around the world that get benefits from producing tasty seeds. While it seems counter productive, animals that eat seeds disperse them wherever they leave droppings. And the seeds are robust enough to make it through digestion without being destroyed.

This technique helps plants to distribute their offspring far and wide without sapping all of the resources out of a particular area. Some animals could benefit from a similar method. If you’re a stick insect, you don’t want your family to eat all the food in your area and then starve. But how to achieve optimal dispersal.

Certain plants in the leaf insect’s home range drop oval seeds with a tasty white cap. The cap attracts ants that pull the seeds underground to be stored and eaten. The remaining bits of the seed germinate and grow new plants.

The leaf insect and several of its cousins drop eggs that look almost identical to these seeds. It even sports that fat capsule that attracts ants. So stick insects simply sit in a tree and lay an egg that tumbles to the forest floor. Not nesting or hunting for the perfect burrow. They just plop it on the ground. 

The ants do the rest. Scouts will find the egg and pull it into their stores underground. But when the egg reaches the inspection team, someone says, this thing is no seed, it’s breed! Most eggs get ignored by the ants after that. Once they’re underground, they’re safe from other predators, as eggs and once they hatch.

It’s a good thing too because these eggs need a safe place for a long time. They could take up to three years to hatch. 

Researchers thought that maybe these eggs are more like seeds than we thought. Maybe they can even survive gestation like some seeds. So in 2011, scientists feed stick insect eggs to some birds to see what would happen. The birds loved them but the eggs were completely digested. 

Since birds seem to like these eggs and totally destroy them, researchers believe there must be a way that the risk of this egg laying method is covered in nature. Perhaps the ants are more of a crucial part of the stick insect’s life cycle than we thought. 

What About Males?

Now, you’re smart and you might have some good questions about this method. Like what happens when the baby hatches in the middle of an ant nest? Well, hatchlings look a lot like ants. They have thin bodies and legs with a big head. Still, once they hatch, baby stick insects make a break for the nearest tree as soon as possible. 

You may also ask, “What about mating? When do males fertilize these eggs?” Stick insects to produce sexually, but they don’t have to. An unfertilized egg can produce a baby insect no problem. When this happens, the hatchling is always female. If a male happens to find one of these egg drops, a fertilized egg can produce a male or a female.  

Ending: So blend in, keep your thorns sharp, and throw your young into the dens of better parents like the spiny leaf insect here in LDT.

Episode 177 – Sea Pen: A Perfect Plume

“…and today we’re talking about the plume in the room. But more on that later.”

At the bottom of the deepest oceanic trench, you’ll find an animal that’s worth writing home about. The sea pen is a feathery friend with multiple personalities and penchant for puffing itself up when the coast is clear. But when slow-moving danger is around every corner, you have to be ready to retreat here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

Description

  • The sea pen is so named because it sort of looks like a feather pen. 
  • The feathers are actually tentacle-like appendages
  • A smooth bulb anchors the sea pen in the sediment and a stock rises and curls like a fancy quill.
  • Branches from the quill have tentacles that give the organism a feathery appearance. 
  • They come in a variety of light colors from a cream color to pink. 

Measure Up

Welcome to the beloved Measure Up segment. The official listener’s favorite part of the show! The part of the show when we present the animal’s size and dimension in relatable terms through a quiz that’s fun for the whole family. It’s also the part of the show that’s introduced by you when you send in audio of yourself saying, singing, or chittering the words Measure Up into ldtaxonomy at gmail dot com. We do have a Measure Up intro this week from our friend Calvin. 

Length at Sexual Maturity

  • 55 and 90 mm
  • How many sea pens go into the length of the longest feather ever recorded?
  • Hint: According to Guinness, the longest feather ever recorded was documented in 1972 in Kochi, Shikoku, Japan. The feather belonged to a phoenix fowl, also called a yokohama chicken.
  • 117.7 sea pens. The feather was 10.6 m (34 ft 9.5 in). 

Living depth

  • 6,100 m (3.7 miles)
  • How many sea pen living depths would go into the length of RNA needed to vaccinate the entire world?
  • Hint: This came from the subreddit r/theydidthemath, which I found because we’re mentioned in the comments for our measurement-based assault on mathematics. Thanks to listener Jessica for emailing to let me know that were mentioned on at least one corner of Reddit.
  • 49,709,695,400,000 depths. It would take 296 trillion km (31 light years) of RNA.

Fast Facts

Though sea pens look like plants, they live down where no plants can survive because of a lack of sunlight. They can live in shallow reef areas to deep intertidal abysses. 

They like all kinds of regions but prefer tropical and temperate water.

The entire order pennatulacea are called sea pens but only members of subselliflorae really look like feather pens. Other orders can be found in a variety of fanciful shapes from feather dusters to peacock plumage.

The fully unfurled plume is actually full of water and it can deflate like a broken arm flailing inflatable tube man. When there’s danger around, the pen will expel water to shrink down into the sand.

This particular genus has several bioluminescent species.

Some species of sea pens can use barbed nematocysts to sting and harpoon prey. 

Also, sea pens could possibly live for more than a century. Their tentacles also have stingers. They can get up to almost 6.6 ft.

Major Fact: We are Legion

I was going to talk about the fact that the sea pen is the only non-extinct animal with glide reflection symmetry, but it turns out that it involves Euclidean geometry so it’s tough to explain. Basically, it means that the pen is symmetrical, but slightly askew so it’s not symmetrical at all.

Instead, let’s talk about polyps. You may have noticed that the sub class was “octocorallia”, which is octocorals. 

So the sea pen has more in common with coral than anything else. 

Each polyp is basically a tiny jellyfish octopus – a cnidarian with eight tentacles that all come together to form a single animal. 

The first polyp will lose its tentacles and turn into the tree trunk of the pen with a large root at the bottom (otherwise known as the peduncle) and anchoring itself in the sea floor.

Then other polyps bud from it and each one specializes in a different function. Like pluripotent cells.

Some polyps become gills, others become rudimentary stomachs, and others become reproductive organs. Like a more advanced version of three kids wearing a big trenchcoat to get into a PG-13 rated movie. 

When you see a sea pen in its full glory, it’s actually mostly filled with water. If it’s threatened, it can expel that water and deflate, disappearing into the sand. This process can take up to 4 hours, but when your primary predators are sea slugs and star fish, you have time.

Ending: So anchor yourself, work on your Euclidean reflection geometry, and remember that the pen is mightier than the swordfish here in LDT.

Episode 176 – Pronghorn: Fastest in the New World

“And today we’re talking about one of the fastest ungulates west of the Mississippi. But more on that later.”

North America has a few big animals, but it’s mostly dominated by smaller fauna that have learned to thrive in the amber waves of grain. However, America was once a continent like Africa, home to great beasts that made the bison look like a midsized megafauna. It also used to have predators like lions, hyenas, and cheetahs. But there’s one relic of epochs long gone that still follows the old ways of the Pleistocene era. The pronghorn may be a product of its time but sometimes the good old-fashioned lessons still hold up in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

Episode 175 – Honeypot Ant: Living Honey Chandeliers

“…and today we’re talking about an insect that’s part ant and part dump truck. But more on that later.”

For most animals, storing food for later is for jive squares. It’s all about getting as much food as you can stomach right now and letting tomorrow take care of itself. For the more prudent, however, food storage is a life-saving hassle. The honeypot ant may not be able to create an elaborate hive like the famous honeybee, but it has an interesting way of using its workers to keep snacks for the leaner times. But using your friends as living pantries is sometimes the best way to survive here in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.

Episode 174 – Shield-Tailed Agama: The Aegis Posterior

“…and today we’re talking about a spike-covered tush that lives out in the bush. But more on that later.” 

The subterranean lifestyle has it’s benefits and many small animals make their beds below the earth. From the sleeping cicada to the idle fox, the shelter of a sand and soil roof provides protection from predatory prowlers. But there’s one flaw in this tactic. What if someone or something can fit in your hiding place? The shield-tailed agama isn’t willing to leave any attack unprepared for. He’s developed an interesting way to enter dreamland free of the fear of tunnel-going hunters. But covering all your bases is one way to beat insomnia in Life, Death, and Taxonomy.