13: Aye-aye & Raven
Ellen: Hey there, this is Ellen Weatherford.
Christian: And Christian Weatherford.
Ellen: And you are listening to Just the Zoo of Us, an animal review podcast where we take your favorite animal species and review them and rate them out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity and of course aesthetics. Christian and I are not zoological experts, we're just enthusiasts. We do a lot of research and we try our best to make sure we're giving you information from trustworthy sources.
Christian: Only the trustiest.
Ellen: Only the trustiest.
Christian: And if we do lead you astray, it'll probably be funny. So there's that.
Ellen: So you're welcome. Honestly, you're welcome. Uh, before we get into it, I wanted to give a quick shout out to our podcast buddies over at the Lukky Go Show. They did a really cool segment, a homage to Just the Zoo of Us where they did their own little review of the hippopotamus and it was really delightful and I enjoyed listening to it and they had some really kind words for our show. So go check them out. They are a family-run, actual play tabletop RPG podcast and they are playing a homebrew campaign basically with mechanics based on the Monster of the Week a game system. But they're really cute, so go check them out. If that sounds like something you'd be interested in. All right babe. I think you went first last week. Am I correct?
Christian: I think that is correct.
Ellen: Okay. So it's my turn to go first this week.
Christian: What we got?
Ellen: So this is our 13th episode.
Christian: Oh?
Ellen: The number 13 in many western cultures is perceived as an unlucky number. It is a number of evil. It is a superstitious number.
Christian: It was a, an argument made by Gandalf in the Hobbit. He was like, "Hey, uh, you could leave Bilbo behind, but then you'd only have 13." and then they're like, "ah, you're right. Let's do it."
Ellen: Is that... True? Is that real?
Christian: Basically. Basically they could have been like, "that's superstitious, Gandalf, we're gona go." End of book.
Ellen: Interesting. So yeah, due to the fact that 13 is considered an unlucky number and it's heavily tied with superstition, I thought it would be cool for us to do an episode about two animals that have been tied to superstition and omens of evil. Yeah, so my animal that I've got is the aye-aye!
Christian: What is that, Ellen?
Ellen: The aye-aye's scientific name is Daubentonia Madagascariensis.
Christian: Whoa.
Ellen: That's a long one, huh?
Christian: That's mouthful.
Ellen: Yeah. The aye-aye does fit the theme of this week, but it had been previously requested by our friend Dustin Barnett.
Christian: Very good.
Ellen: Thank you, Dustin for requesting this animal. We're just now getting around to it, but we felt like it would fit the theme really well.
Christian: For sure.
Ellen: So before I get into it, I will let you guys know that the information I've got here, I got mostly from the Duke Lemur Center at the Duke University in North Carolina where they have very many of these little aye-ayes. There aren't very many aye-ayes in captivity., there's only about 50 in the world and the Duke Lemur Center has 9 of them.
Christian: Wow.
Ellen: Yes. So they have a lot of information on these dudes. So I'm going to introduce you to our friend the aye-aye. This is a little critter that lives in the trees. It has giant round bug eyes. It has huge bat shaped ears. It has skinny clawed fingers, a long bushy tail, and wiry dark brown or black fur with a gray or white face. So that's what it looks like, if you've never seen one. I'm going to ask you, what type of animal do you think it is? What family of animals do you think it is?
Christian: Ummm... Maybe lemurs?
Ellen: You got it! Yeah. It's an a Lemur family. The taxonomic super family is called Lemuroidea. So it belongs to the family of Lemurs...
Christian: I gotta come clean.
Ellen: Okay. Did you look it up before?
Christian: A moment ago, you mentioned the Duke... something about lemurs.
Ellen: Oh, shoot.
Christian: So I was like, they must be related in some way!
Ellen: Darn. I spoiled it. So they belong to the family of Lemurs. Now lemurs are pretty interesting because they belong to a group of primate species called Prosimians. So these evolved from the same common ancestors as today's monkeys, apes and humans, but they split off earlier. They're still in the primate group, but their evolution split off long before ours did. So of course other relatives to the aye-aye are lemurs and sifakas.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So those are their little buds. This is actually, it's a little guy, but he's bigger than other nocturnal primates. So they are 14 to 17 inches, or 35 to 43 centimeters. Their tail adds another up to 2 feet. It's a long tail- or 60 centimeters.
Christian: So like, two or three chickens.
Ellen: It's a couple chickens. Yeah. You're so you're going to find these in forests in Madagascar and that's it. Just Madagascar. I'm going to start our rating with effectiveness, which we define as how good the animal is at doing the thing it's trying to do. You can think of this as physical adaptations that the animal has that make it better at doing its thing. Now for the aye-aye, the effectiveness and the ingenuity are closely tied together. And I'll explain why that is. But for effectiveness, I give the aye-aye and 9 out of 10.
Christian: Woah.
Ellen: The aye-aye is highly specialized to use a very unique hunting technique. And this technique is called percussive foraging. Percussive. So this makes sense when you look at their hands, they have these long, skinny fingers with claws on the ends, but particularly their middle finger is much longer and much skinnier than the other fingers. It looks like a twig.
Christian: Okay...
Ellen: There's nothing to it. It's just bone and skin, like... It's very, very skinny. So the reason they have that finger like that, they use that finger to tap on branches. So as they're climbing through the trees and as they're navigating along the way, they're tap, tap, tap, tap, tapping on the branches and they're holding their giant enormous bat ear up to the branch and they're listening very closely to the sound that the tapping makes on the branch. When they hear an echo, they know that the branch is hollow. So there are insects tunneling through that branch. This is like echolocation, basically.
Christian: Right.
Ellen: They know that there are insects tunneling through the branch, so once they hear a spot where the branch is hollow, they use their really, really sharp teeth to rip away the bark and reveal the larvae that are inside. They eat the larvae of the bugs and then they can use that same skinny tapping finger to, kind of like a pipe cleaner, to shimmy it down into the hole that the insects made in the branch and dig around. And then the hook shaped claw at the end of the finger is used to scoop the larvae out.
Christian: I'm already imagining something very creepy in terms of what this thing looks like.
Ellen: Oh, it's horrifying, yes. Yes, it's very creepy. So it's because it does look very skeletal, right? It's very creepy. So this hunting method of like tapping the wood and listening to it, to listen to hear if there's bugs inside, this is actually- another animal that uses this percussive hunting technique are woodpeckers. But there are no woodpeckers in Madagascar, so the aye-aye doesn't have any competition there. But that's really interesting to see that a bird and a primate evolved the same hunting tactic, even though there's none of them in that area. They don't share the same area, but they both kind of figured out the same method of finding insect larvae.
Christian: So I know when woodpeckers do it, it's very loud. How loud is it when the aye-aye does it?
Ellen: I've seen a video of it, it's not very loud.
Christian: Okay. Which, I guess that makes sense that they have to put their head up against it, with their ear?
Ellen: Yeah, they're listening very closely.
Christian: Whereas with the Woodpecker, it's just so loud...
Ellen: The woodpecker is just throwing its face at the tree over and over again. But so they're also using their fingers to feel the branch, to feel like the vibrations from the tapping, but their sense of hearing is very, very, very acute because of their ears are so big. So they're mostly listening, but they're also feeling for vibrations in the branch.
Christian: I guess that gives them a stealth type of advantage, yeah? Because they can be searching for food and not really giving away their position.
Ellen: Yeah. There are some things in that area that will hunt them. There's like fossas and other predators around there that will prey on aye-ayes, but it's not a huge threat to them.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So they also use that creepy finger for scooping out fruit. They like to eat coconuts and mangoes and stuff like that. They're actually omnivorous. So they'll eat not only bug larvae, but they also eat fruits, nuts, nectar, stuff like that. They'll kinda eat, you know, whatever they can get. Um, so another thing that's really interesting about that creepy finger is that thermal imaging has shown that the aye-aye's middle finger goes completely cold while they're not actively using it. So like, on like a heat sensing video, that middle finger is black. Like no heat. Nothing. Showing that blood flow blood is not flowing to the finger while they're not using it. So when they use it, when they're foraging, like when they're tap tap tapping and stuff, it warms up and it fills with blood.
New Speaker: Huh...
Ellen: Yeah. So that kind of implies that blood flow can be deployed and throttled to that finger at will. People haven't really been able to figure out just quite yet whether it's like a mechanical thing because they curl their finger in when they're not using it, and kind of like when you fold a hose, water doesn't flow through it. Like it could be that, or it could be that like the aye-aye can control blood flow to it somehow, like by like constricting the arteries or something. Haven't really figured that part out yet, but it is interesting. So yeah, the aye-aye kind of has this really, really neat tool built into their hand, so that's really cool. I thought that was neat.
Christian: You know what they could also use it for?
Ellen: What?
Christian: Picking their nose.
Ellen: I guess! So what... What I'm not crazy about with the aye-aye, in other lemurs, they have a cute sort of like, puppy shaped face. Theirs is like waaaaay too similar to human face. Theirs is like right in that uncanny valley. Their nose is not long enough to look like a cute lemur face. It's really unsettling. Don't worry. I'm going to circle back to that in the aesthetics section.
Christian: Yay.
Ellen: We have some things to talk about there. So I wanted to wrap up effectiveness by talking about their teeth. So the incisors of the aye-aye are pretty important for digging out their larval prey. So those teeth never stop growing. They grow continuously, they just grow and grow and grow. This is how rodents do, this is how rodent teeth will grow continually. So this actually caused aye-ayes to be misclassified by some scientists as rodents for a while when they were first discovered. Actually until pretty recently, like taxonomy for the aye-aye has been a little bit up for debate. So, that was my 9 out of 10 for effectiveness for the aye-aye.
Christian: Cool!
Ellen: It's pretty good. Like I said before, ingenuity is tied pretty closely with effectiveness here. I gave them an 8 out of 10 for ingenuity. We define ingenuity at how clever the animal is at coming up with solutions to the problems that faces in its life, so I gave them an 8 out of 10 because I was thinking, I was like, they're not really using tools, but they've kind of made their own tool and they're really good at that. Because it takes some cleverness to be able to figure out, oh, when I make this sound, if I listen, I can listen to the sound it makes back and that'll tell me where my prey is.
Christian: Right.
Ellen: So, you know, I felt like that was just really closely tied to the use of their tapping finger. And there have been some studies showing that they have the capacity to learn how to use tools. So they've been found to use like twigs and vines, but they kind of do it through trial and error. They don't naturally like, seek out tools to use. Not a whole lot is known about their behavior in the wild cause they're really rare and they're, they're nocturnal. And there hasn't been a lot of research done on them in Madagascar. But in more recent years, more resources are starting to be dedicated to researching the aye-aye. So we're starting to learn a little bit more about them. So that's my 8 out of 10 for ingenuity. They're very clever at using their tapping fingers to find their prey. And I think that that itself requires some thinking power.
Christian: Yeah!
Ellen: I thought that that in itself warranted a pretty good ingenuity score.
Christian: Yeah. A pro strat, if you will.
Ellen: It's very- yeah, it's great. Now. Okay, so we're at the aesthetic section and there's a lot going on here. This is a situation. I gave the aye-aye 2 out of 10 for aesthetics.
Christian: Oh, man.
Ellen: I'm so sorry. I've put them with the ranks of the goblin shark.
Christian: Oh, no...
Ellen: And when you see them, you see why. They look like a goblin. They really do. So the aye-aye is just, it's a whole entire head to toe hot mess. I think it looks like an electrified possum that has mange and also anxiety. It's got those bug eyes that like, just stick right out of the head so it looks terrified at all times, and the hair is sticking straight up and it just, it looks like it's stressed out. The skeleton hands really aren't helping either. You just like, stick some creepy claw hands on them and that just makes the whole thing worse. And you know, when we've talked about particularly um, aesthetically unsuccessful animals like the goblin shark and the shoebill, we have given them points for looking like the thing they're supposed to be and being identifiable as that thing. I cannot say this for the aye-aye. I cannot say that it looks like a lemur cause you have to kind of think about it. You have to be like, is it though? Is it?
Christian: Some theater of the mind there.
Ellen: There's some implications going on. So yeah, the aye-aye kind of has it rough in the looks department. Actually, its appearance has factored into its success as a species. Its appearance is kind of playing a role in its conservation status.
New Speaker: Uh oh.
Ellen: Yeah. So the aye-aye is endangered.
New Speaker: Okay...
Ellen: Aye-ayes are often killed on site by some groups of native people in Madagascar. So there's a couple of reasons for this, one of them being that they're known to be pests. Like they won't hesitate to read a village and eat all of their crops. They'll like, get into a crop supply and eat all of their like fruit or something like that.
New Speaker: Okay... This little thing?
Ellen: Yeah. I mean if they find a crop supply, they're gonna, they're gonna have a field day with it.
New Speaker: But they're not that big.
Ellen: No, they're not that big. But they can still put away some- the point being they will eat your fruit.
New Speaker: Sure.
Ellen: But another reason that people don't really love seeing them around is that their deeply unsettling appearance is perceived by a lot of people as an omen of evil. So if one is spotted in or near a village, the presence of an aye-aye dooms a village to a curse of bad luck.
Christian: Oh...
Ellen: Yeah. Often being associated with like an approaching death or something like something bad will happen if you see an aye-aye in or near your village. There have even been stories of some people uprooting and moving an entire village because they saw an aye-aye there.
New Speaker: That's... intense.
Ellen: Yeah. They like, they were like, well, this was nice while we had it I guess.
New Speaker: It's the aye-aye's village now.
Ellen: Yeah. So, a big hassle there. So a lot of people kind of have some negative perceptions of the aye-aye and will kill them. And they're also threatened by, you know, the whole deforestation thing going on in Madagascar.
New Speaker: Sure.
Ellen: There is a lot of deforestation going on over there because of things like the sugar industry and just a lot that's happening. So that is threaten- since these are arboreal animals, the the trees being cut down as is really limiting their habitat so they're not doing so good. Yeah. Now I wanted to wrap up the aye-aye on a positive note. I don't know if this, I wanted to wrap up the aye-aye on a note that I thought would make you laugh. I think you'll find this charming. The Philadelphia Zoo has an aye-aye named Smeagol.
New Speaker: Yay! Okay!
Ellen: And I can't, I got to say that's the most fitting name I've ever heard for an aye-aye.
New Speaker: You're right.
Ellen: It's exactly what they look like.
New Speaker: Woah, we just had two Tolkien references in one segment.
Ellen: That, you know what that means. If we get one more on our punch card, then we get a free lord of the ring. I don't know enough about the franchise to be able to make a good joke. I'm sorry.
Christian: Lords of ring.
Ellen: So, so yeah, that's the aye-aye.
New Speaker: Thank you honey. It's good.
Ellen: It's a good friend. This is literally just like, hey, they look spooky. Don't like that thing. Absolutely not. Good bye. Hate it.
Christian: You know, I bet there's a silver lining to how they look. Probably don't need to worry about them being in the illegal pet trade.
Ellen: Because who would dare? Who would bother? Yeah. This is not a cute, this is not a cute little guy. You're not gonna... You're not gonna see any Instagram accounts of Smeagol the aye-aye.
New Speaker: That's okay. We love them anyway.
Ellen: We do. We love them anyway. You know what? Not all of our friends are pageant queens. They don't have to be winning beauty contest to be our friends. That's it. That's the aye-aye.
Christian: Thanks hun.
Ellen: You're welcome.
New Speaker: Good stuff.
Ellen: Thanks! Okay. Tell us what you have for this special 13th episode.
New Speaker: Yes, so similarly, another animal that is viewed as a, an omen of sorts is the common raven.
Ellen: ...Caw! Caw!
New Speaker: Basically.
Ellen: I don't- we don't have sound effects. We don't have a sound board, so I had to make my own.
Christian: I do actually have some things to talk about how they sound, but I'll get to that. Its scientific name is Corvus corax. My information for this animal will be coming from allaboutbirds.org which I have used previously for birds.
Ellen: We're back for more.
New Speaker: Yeah, and also nationalgeographic.com. So let's talk about what they look like. I think a lot of people will have a basic understanding of what ravens look like. Personally, I find them to look a lot like crows. I would probably have a very hard time differentiating them unless I happen to see one of each next to each other.
Ellen: For the longest time, I thought crow and raven were synonymous. I thought it was just two words for the same animal.
Christian: So they're actually relatives. They both belong to the taxonomic family Corvidae, related to crows, jays and magpies. So, black feathered bird, right. They have this big beak, some describe it as the shape of a Bowie knife and lengthwise, they're 22.1 to 27.2 inches, which is 56 to 69 centimeters.
Ellen: That's a big bird.
Christian: Yeah, they're pretty big.
Ellen: That's really big.
New Speaker: Yeah. So that's one differentiator between them and crows, is that ravens are usually bigger than crows.
Ellen: Okay.
New Speaker: Yeah. Weight, they are 24.32 57.3 ounces or 689 to 1,625 grams.
Ellen: There has to be a better conversion of that. Kilograms?
Christian: Sure, uh, yeah. So 0.6 kilograms to 1.6 kilograms.
Ellen: Thank you. We don't use the metric system often. I'm so sorry to all of our listeners in... Everywhere else in the world that's not here.
Christian: Our bad! Uh wingspan, 45.7 to 46.5 inches or 116 to 118 centimeters. Big wingspan.
Ellen: Big boy!
New Speaker: So like most birds, their wingspan is the biggest dimension on them in terms of length.
Ellen: Absolute unit.
New Speaker: Right. So the common raven, as the name might imply, are found in many, many places. Specifically, all across the northern hemisphere. A lot of the information I'll be talking about are those that are found in North America. They do have subspecies, specifically in North America. They are found in open and forest habitats across western and northern in North America. So they're not actually found in the part of the country where we live.
Ellen: Yeah, I don't think I've seen one.
New Speaker: Right.
Ellen: I've seen lots of crows.
New Speaker: Yeah, for sure. For sure.
Ellen: And I guess for a lot of my life I thought that ravens were the same thing as crows. So I thought I saw ravens all the time, but I didn't. I saw crows.
Christian: Sure, sure. First score: effectiveness. I'm giving the raven a 7 out of 10.
Ellen: Decent.
New Speaker: So first of all, they are excellent flyers. Better flyers than crows. Suck it, crows.
Ellen: Sorry, crows, get stomped on.
New Speaker: So they're known for the aerobatics. They do some pretty fancy dives and rolls in midair. They're actually known to pick things up, fly up with it, drop it, and then catch it as a way of like entertainment.
Ellen: Oh my gosh! They're having fun. That's what I would do if I was a bird.
Christian: And, uh, the next part that I wanted to give them most of their points for with effectiveness is that they'll pretty much eat anything.
Ellen: Oh?
New Speaker: Yeah. So they're technically omnivores. They are known to eat carrion, so that's kind of what they're known for, but also small animals, eggs, insects, grains, berries, pet food, human food, and I guess wolf and sled dog dung
Ellen: ...Ew.
New Speaker: So you thought I was going to say they eat wolves.
Ellen: Yeah! I was like... I know that this is an audio medium, and I'm really sad that our listeners couldn't see the look on my face that I was making as you progressed through that sentence.
Christian: Why has no one talked about the birds that are eating wolves?!
Ellen: That was an emotional roller coaster for me.
Christian: But yeah, so they'll eat pretty much anything. Part of their reputation comes from the fact that they're associated with eating carrion. So this kind of builds into an association with death.
Ellen: Oh, okay. So people see them hanging around dead things, and they're like, oh, it's a bad luck sign.
Christian: Right. That's part of it. Next I'd like to move on to ingenuity. I think I will be giving them a full 10 out of 10 on ingenuity.
Ellen: Clean up ravens!
Christian: Yup. So ravens are extremely intelligent. I have four different things I found that they're pretty good at.
Ellen: Alright.
New Speaker: First up is tool use.
Ellen: Very good. That's kind of the indicator, right?
Christian: Right. There's a popular video I think that goes around on YouTube and Facebook sometimes that shows ravens getting a treat out of a device of some sort. So basicall,y it's a device where they have to use a special tool and it releases their favorite treat. So they've been shown to be able to do that.
Ellen: They're real good at it too.
Christian: Yeah, yeah. So that device, the specifics of that device is different depending on the study. But basically, they can use a special tool to release their favorite treat and eat it. Uh, next up is they're able to plan for the future.
Ellen: Really?
New Speaker: Right. So kind of going back to that special tool release mechanism, if they're offered to pick from a collection of things and one of those things is the special tool, but you're not offering the device with the treat at the same time, they will still pick that special tool.
Ellen: Oh, cause they know they'll need it later!
New Speaker: Yes.
Ellen: What!
Christian: So yeah...
Ellen: It's a surprise tool that'll help us later!
New Speaker: Get my snack later! This works even up to the delay between presentation of the tool and presentation of the treat box where that delay has gone up to 17 hours.
Ellen: What? That's like the next day!
New Speaker: It's intense, right?
Ellen: Yeah. They're like, oh well I'll need this later. Oh my gosh, this, the raven is me playing every video game and I come across literally any item that's not- that I haven't found before and I stockpile 46 of them. No, I'm definitely going to need this healing potion later. I definitely can't use it now.
Christian: So the next thing is bartering.
Ellen: What...
New Speaker: So they can be taught the concept of bartering. So specifically they can be taught to exchange a token of some sort for their favorite treat.
Ellen: They have an economy?!
New Speaker: Well, it's between a human, right.
Ellen: They have economics!
Christian: So like a human can teach them like, hey, if you give me this token, I'll give you your favorite treat.
Ellen: Sure. Huh.
New Speaker: Right?
Ellen: They've learned finance.
Christian: And then the last one is delayed gratification. So this is something a lot of people have a problem with, myself included. If given two choices of an inferior treat that they can have right now, or they can pick the token that they know they can trade later for their favorite treat, they will almost always pick that token.
Ellen: Oh my gosh. Because they know, like, that's better. This is more is it's like they're, they're thinking in their head about value. Like the value of things. It's like this crappy treat is not worth that much to me, but this token is worth very much to me.
Christian: Now the article did say that this particular one is a little open to interpretation because it could be just that the raven more closely associates the token to food than it does the inferior treat.
Ellen: Yeah, but the inferior treat is like, food. Right now. Like, you would expect them to just go straight for the food that they don't have to do anything for. Right?
New Speaker: That's true, that's true. They could just be picky.
Ellen: Yeah. It's just like, it just seems to me more like it's a comprehension of value and like, things having more or less value than other things.
Christian: Right, right. And then another thing that might go into the ingenuity category is that they have the ability to mimic other birds and animals, but also human speech. I couldn't find any support for them being able to actually speak. It seems to just be a mimic type situation. But still interesting, they can mimic the calls of other birds and animals, sometimes just for fun.
Ellen: They seem like they have a lot of personality. They seem like they like to do things their way. They sound like they really just like to have a good time.
Christian: Uh, and so it's usually in captivity that they can mimic human speech. I found one particular video where a raven was taught to mimic the phrase never more.
Ellen: Of course it was.
New Speaker: Right. So being a reference to Edgar Allen Poe.
Ellen: Mhmm. That's, I'm sure that is deeply unsettling to watch.
New Speaker: It is very weird. And they're pretty good at it too.
Ellen: Yeah, that's the creepy bit, right?
Christian: Yeah. So while we're on the topic, the way they sound is a little different from crows. They do still have a caw, but the ravens sound is more musical. It's doing more with the pitch and tone.
Ellen: Huh.
New Speaker: And it kind of sounds, how do I describe it? Gargly, I guess? They have ability to make these funny clicks and...
Ellen: Like uh, gravelly maybe? Like course?
New Speaker: It's interesting. Maybe we can put in a little sample.
Ellen: Raspy? Is raspy the right word?
Christian: No, not really. Uh, I, we can listen to it later. Maybe you can put in a sound bit.
Ellen: We'll try to do that without getting sued.
New Speaker: Maybe. So. Yeah, 10 out of 10 for ingenuity. And lastly aesthetics, I'm giving it a 7 out of 10.
Ellen: Oh...
New Speaker: That's pretty good, I think.
Christian: That's good...
New Speaker: Yeah.
Ellen: I think, I dunno, maybe that's just... *sigh*
New Speaker: So again, completely arbitrary.
Ellen: I know... I just very much like these birds.
New Speaker: They're sleek and black, right? So their entire color palette is black unless you happen to find an albino raven. But the color is actually a little iridescent. So if you, if you happen to see one in direct sunlight, it can kind of take on a purpleish bluish hue.
Ellen: It's so cool.
New Speaker: Yeah.
Ellen: Although it does kind of look oily, it gives them like an oily look.
Christian: True. That's true. Yup. Yup. And like I mentioned earlier, it would be hard for me at least to differentiate them from crows, but maybe that's just because I've never seen a raven in real life. I Dunno. Um, their hatchlings have been described as grotesque gargoyles.
Ellen: Get dunked on. That's so rude. Messy.
Christian: So shots fired, but also still a reference to the whole gothic theme, right?
Ellen: Yeah, this is what you think of when you think of like a gothic aesthetic animal.
Christian: Yeah. Yeah. So some fun facts and some not so fun facts. Uh, the conservation status is of least concern.
Ellen: Great.
Christian: Which makes sense. They're found over a huge swath of the planet.
Ellen: They seem pretty adaptable too, they're pretty good at, you know, making the most of whatever situation they're in.
Christian: So, it turns out there is a reason why they are not in the part of the country where we're at, which is, you know, the southeast of the United States. And this is because as eastern forests were cut down in the 19th and 20th centuries, ravens disappeared from most of eastern North America, but they are beginning to return now that the forest cover regenerates in the northeast at least. So still not anywhere near us, but further up northeast, they're starting to return.
Ellen: Man, we don't get any of the good stuff.
New Speaker: Don't get puffins...
Ellen: We don't get puffins, we don't get ravens. Where's our cool birds?
New Speaker: We don't even get flamingos, really.
Ellen: Which is the crazy thing!
New Speaker: Right?
Ellen: Cause all of our merch has flamingos on it! We don't have them here.
Christian: I read somewhere there are more plastic flamingos, like the lawn ornaments, than there are actual flamingos in Florida.
Ellen: Probably by exponential degrees. We have them at the zoo. They're all up in the zoo.
New Speaker: Yeah. But anyway, different animals.
Ellen: I'm just expressing my feelings.
Christian: Do it. So kind of going back to our whole theme right where the, the unluckiness, the superstition. Since the common raven is found in so much of the world, they are referenced in many, many cultures and religions. A lot of them have kind of similar motifs though. It's usually an association with death because of being carrion-eating birds.
Ellen: Sure.
New Speaker: But also of omens, usually ill omens, but omens in general.
Ellen: Yeah.
New Speaker: I think that comes from their, the way they sound and their ability to mimic.
Ellen: And they're just generally spooky.
New Speaker: Right?
Ellen: They're just generally, they have a spooky kind of vibe to them.
New Speaker: Yep.
Ellen: It's a spooky birb.
Christian: So I mean, obviously Edgar Allen Poe, you know, he found them at least mildly disturbing, to...
Ellen: Well, I mean, he was kind of into that whole scene though. That was kind of his vibe, that whole goth aesthetic was kind of his thing.
Christian: What if he wasn't, and he was just like... What if he wasn't really into it? He was just like, this is the stuff that scares me. And then people were like, "yeah, this is awesome!" he was like, "no, please, no, this is scary!"
Ellen: What if he was like a real softie at heart.
Christian: Um, so like I said, lots and lots of references out there, uh, too much to really pick from. So I just chose one really short Aesop fable.
Ellen: Oh!
Christian: Did I pronounce that right?
Ellen: Sure.
Christian: Um, titled The Crow and the Raven.
Ellen: The Crow AND the Raven?
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: This would have blown my mind if you had told this to me before I knew that they were different animals.
Christian: So it goes, the crow was jealous of the raven whose cry was taken as an omen. Crow tried to mimic the raven, but travelers saw through the ploy and ignored the crow. That's it.
Ellen: End of story? You know, usually like, Aesop's fables have like a, some sort of moral of the story or message to them, but this is just, hey, crow wishes it could.
Christian: I think the moral here is to not try to be something that you aren't,
Ellen: I guess... It's really just dunking on crows. The moral of the story is crow sucks. Raven's great.
Christian: Don't be a crow.
Ellen: Oh Man. That's, that's rough.
Christian: Yup. And then obviously, you know, I think the most recent reference to ravens, of course, is Game of Thrones.
Ellen: Oh, I thought you were going to say Raven Simone from That's So Raven.
Christian: Not quite. Or, Raven from Teen Titans.
Ellen: Oh yeah, her too. Oh yeah. Well, the three eyed raven, right?
Christian: Yeah, yeah. But also they use Ravens as messengers in the
Ellen: Oh yeah. Do they?
Christian: Yeah. They're like-
Ellen: Oh yeah, send a raven.
Christian: Winter's coming.
Ellen: Wintuh is comin'!
Christian: HBO please don't sue us.
Ellen: HBO, ah don't want eht.
Christian: Oh Man. So, uh, those three scores: effectiveness for 7 out of 10, ingenuity 10 out of 10, aesthetics 7 out of 10. That all comes to an overall of an even 8 out of 10.
Ellen: That's a good one! It's a good bird!
Christian: It's a good birb. Good Birb, yeah. I do hope to see them in person someday.
Ellen: I would love to. They seem very spirited. They seem like they have a lot of good personality.
Christian: Yeah. Yeah. And I do recommend folks to maybe check out some videos of ravens. They're funny little dudes.
Ellen: I think. I think on some level they're being funny on purpose.
Christian: Maybe.
Ellen: Good animal. Good job, darlin!
Christian: Thanks honey.
Ellen: You're welcome. All right, well thank you everybody for spending your time listening to our show. We would really like to thank everybody who has been recommending our show to your friends. We've been seeing a lot of growth over the last couple of weeks and we're really excited about that.
Christian: It's been great.
Ellen: It's been so thrilling, so you know, keep it up. Keep letting your friends know about us. We really appreciate it. We have some plans to do some things to give back to our listeners in the future, so stay tuned for updates on that. If you liked what you heard and you want to be our friend, you can connect with us on our Facebook page. We're also on Twitter and Instagram, so all you have to do is search the title of the show and you will find us.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: If you have an animal species that you want us to review, you can submit those to us either via Facebook message or I guess Twitter or Instagram works fine too. Just send us a message on social media or you can email them to us at thezooofus@gmail.com. A transcript of this episode will be made available for your use at justthezooofus.home.blog so if you use transcripts, check those out. Those will be up and available for you. And just our last thing, I would like to wrap up by thanking Louie Zong for the use of his delightful track "Adventuring" off of his album Bee Sides.
Christian: I love listening to that song.
Ellen: We love listening not only to that song but to kind of all of his musical repertoire.
Christian: Very good.
Ellen: It's so good. It's very like chill, upbeat, feel good electronic music and it's just so delightful for any purpose. I recommend putting it on as background music while you're having dinner. It's really nice. Sets a good tone.
Christian: Yeah. For sure.
Ellen: So yeah, thanks everybody for listening. We really appreciate it.
Christian: Yeah, thanks. And y'all stay lucky out there. Avoid those ladders and.. Don't forget to throw salt over your shoulder periodically.
Ellen: Oh... Okay. You had it, you were going so strong for a second there. At first I was like, oh, is this a new sign off? Have we finally come up with what we can commit to? And then, yeah, you took it in a weird direction.
Christian: It's the... the theme...
Ellen: Give your black cat some extra love today.
Christian: They don't deserve all the flack they get.
Ellen: They don't. Actually, you know what? Take it a step further. Go out there, find a black cat. Bring it into your house. That's your black cat now.
Christian: Uh oh. It's a Jaguar. You messed up.
Ellen: How did you do this? How did you pull it- How did you get it into your house?
Christian: This is why you don't walk under ladders.
Ellen: You must have a really big car.
Christian: Alright yall.
Ellen: Alright, thanks everybody.
Christian: Byeee!
Ellen: Byeee!