19: Quokka & Peacock Mantis Shrimp

Ellen: Hey there, Weatherfriends.

Christian: Hi everyone.

Ellen: This is Ellen Weatherford.

Christian: And Christian Weatherford.

Ellen: And we are Just the Zoo of Us, your favorite animal review podcast where we take your favorite species of animals and we review them and rate them out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity and aesthetics.

Christian: We are experts in many things, but zoology is not one of them.

Ellen: That's true. We do a lot of research and we do our best to make sure that we're presenting you really good information from really trustworthy sources, and we always cite those sources so you know where our information is coming from. You know, we're not just making this stuff up. Well, we're making the numbers up. The numbers part is arbitrary. We made that stuff up.

Christian: I mean we didn't create the number system

Ellen: We did, actually. Numbers didn't exist before us. We invented the numerical scale.

Christian: We got lazy and decided to make some numbers just upside down version of other numbers, so there.

Ellen: Some people call them negatives.

Christian: I meant like, nine and six, but okay.

Ellen: That's the dumbest joke we've ever made on this whole show. We're 19 episodes in and that was the stupidest thing either one of us has ever said. So yeah, we cite our sources. That's all I was going to say about that.

Christian: Third bullet...

Ellen: So yeah, we do our best to make sure that we're giving you really good information. But by all means, if something seems amiss to you and you are a zoological expert, feel free to shoot us a message. Don't worry. We are very friendly. We do not bite and we will be sure to make it right.

Christian: But make sure you give some context that message, because if some rando just messages my personal Facebook says, "how dare you give a 9 when it should have been a 10?" And I don't know what you're talking about.

Ellen: And it's actually me from another account. Just mad that you didn't give the um, what was it that I thought you should have done a better one?

Christian: Literally everything.

Ellen: I'm always so mad at you for your numbers. So Christian, last week you went first.

Christian: You're right.

Ellen: So this week it's my turn and I'm really, really excited because we have some crowd pleasers this week.

Christian: What do you got for us this week?

Ellen: So, we decided this week to do two of our most highly requested animals. We kind of bumped them up due to popular demand, and mine that I'm talking about this week is the quokka!

Christian: Quokka?

Ellen: Quokka! This is spelled Q. U. O. K. K. A.

Christian: Alright.

Ellen: The scientific name is Setonix brachyurus.

Christian: I didn't think you can get much more difficult than quokka, but it did!

Ellen: So quokka, I think, is a really cute name because it reminds me of the noise that Pac-man makes.

Christian: Ah, very good.

Ellen: So the quokka was requested by Alyssa Años, Dena Tygart and Taylor Gordon-Wood. And Taylor, by the way, made our beautiful cover art.

Christian: It's very good.

Ellen: Yes, it's excellent. Oh-

Christian: Now available on merchandise.

Ellen: Yeah! Oh, now available on merch, which I haven't mentioned on the podcast yet. Oops. But it's out there. Anyway. Also, Alyssa Años, my cousin, requested this animal in the ideal request format. She sent an email to our email address and it literally was just the word quokka.

Christian: Was it in the subject or the body of the email?

Ellen: Both.

Christian: Ah, same word twice then.

Ellen: It's, it was just one word: quokka. And I was like, well, received.

Christian: To the point.

Ellen: Message received.

Christian: Efficient.

Ellen: Yes. . I'm all about efficiency. So we're here with the quokka. So the information that I'm getting on the quokka I have gathered from Nature Conservancy Australia, the Australian Museum and Rottnest Island Wildlife's fact file on the quokka.

Christian: All right.

Ellen: So you'll never guess where this animal is from.

Christian: Antarctica.

Ellen: So, I'm going to introduce you to my buddy, the quokka. At their adult size, they are 40 to 55 centimeters, or 15 to 22 inches long. Their tail adds another 25 to 30 centimeters, or 10 to 12 inches. So this is roughly the size of a house cat or maybe a large chicken.

Christian: So when you were saying 40 to 50, I don't know why, but I was thinking of, oh, she's about to say feet. I know she's about to say feet!

Ellen: Forty to fifty FEET. TALL.

Christian: Australia why?!

Ellen: Oh, you haven't heard about the 50 foot tall marsupial roaming the wilderness of Australia?

Christian: It's that weird forced perspective the camera does, just the opposite.

Ellen: So, anyway, you're going to find these little dudes in one very, very specific place called Rottnest Island. This is an island in southwestern Australia, near the city of Perth. Now, there are some other smaller populations in the mainland of Australia in sort of the southwestern forests, but by far the largest population is on Rottnest Island. There are an estimated 10,000 of them on this island.

Christian: Wow.

Ellen: Yeah, so actually what's interesting is that this island, Rottnest Island, was named after the population of quokkas living there. So the Dutch explorer- I'm going to do my best here Willem de Vlamingh?

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: Vlah-ming? Vlay-ming? Something like that. He was the one that named this island, and he described these quokkas as giant rats, which makes sense when you look at them, they look like they could be rodents, and they also have the long, hairless tails that rats have.

Christian: Aw man.

Ellen: Yeah, I know you're not a fan of it. But anyway, so he saw that and assumed that they were types of rats. So he named the island Rottenest, which translates to rat nest.

Christian: Makes sense.

Ellen: A nest of rats. Yeah. So they're actually with the island is named after, even though it's not a very cute name. And you would not think they were very cute based on that name. I mean it's got the word rot in it. Right? That doesn't sound great. That doesn't sound very appealing.

Christian: Yeah...

Ellen: But anyway, so the taxonomic family that the quokka belongs to is called Macropodidae. These are macropods. Macropods are the family of marsupials that includes kangaroos and wallabies.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: So there are marsupials outside of the macropod family. Those are going to be like possums.

Christian: So, is the quokka a marsupial itself?

Ellen: Yes. Yes, all macropods are marsupials.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: A lot of sources that I saw described the quokkas as a type of wallaby, and then that made me dig a little bit further into what counts as a wallaby. Because I guess I always thought a wallaby was like, a certain type of species, but actually the term wallaby doesn't have a very strict genetic definition. So the term wallaby really just refers to a small macropod that is not a kangaroo.

Christian: Oh, that's pretty general.

Ellen: Yeah. So quokkas are kind of considered part of that because they don't- it's just not a very strict term. But the quokka is the only species in their genus, Setonix. They don't really have any other species within that genus, but they are related to the wallabies.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: Yup. So that's just kind of your little introduction to the quokka. I'm going to get started with our rating system. We start with effectiveness, which for us here at Just the Zoo of Us (if this is your first time joining_ for us, effectiveness is physical adaptations that the animal has that make them do a good job at the things that they're trying to do. So these are things that are built into their body to make them do a good job. I gave the quokka an 8 out of 10 for effectiveness.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: The bulk of the points I gave them are for their very fast and efficient reproduction. They are very quick at it. Gestation period is only about a month, so the joey- oh, I should even say being a marsupial, their babies are called joeys. Just like Kangaroos.

Christian: Ah, okay okay.

Ellen: Yeah, they're their joeys. So the joey is born about a month after the mother mates. Now they are super teeny tiny when they're born and they live in their mother's pouch for six months. And then after six months they come out.

Christian: Yeah, because I mean at the earliest stages, they might as well just be a fetus that's just no longer on the inside, right?

Ellen: A jelly bean, really. It's a small bean. So now here's where it starts to get a little bit rough after this. So I'm just going to put a quick little content warning that the following is a little bit... Um, it's challenging content so be careful.

Christian: Suited for mature listeners.

Ellen: I don't... Um, yeah. So, the joey lives in its mother's pouch for six months, at which point it emerges. Now the mother keeps a backup- at least one, sometimes more- backup, undeveloped joeys in her womb. They're not developed fully yet, but little fetuses, she keeps them in her womb just in case the first one doesn't work out.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: So if things don't go so good with that baby, she's got some backup babies ready to go. In the oven. Now, this is especially useful for them because- I'm so sorry, but one of the quokka's escape tactics when chased by a predator...

Christian: Oh, no.

Ellen: Is to abandon the joey, take it out of the pouch and just kinda smoke bomb, kind of leave the baby there and use it as bait to distract the predator for long enough for the mother to get away.

Christian: Oh no...

Ellen: Yeah, it's not good.

Christian: I guess it's kind of that whole, "I don't need to outrun the predator, I just have to out run the rest of you."

Ellen: So this might seem counterproductive. Why has the mother fed its baby to a predator? So you have to not view this through the human lens of morality and don't make assumptions about ethics for quokkas. Think about it. It's very easy for the mother to make more babies. The baby can't make more mamas. It just mathematically, for their population, makes more sense.

Christian: I mean, sure, there are animals that eat their young, so...

Ellen: Yeah, they haven't necessarily eaten their young, but they've fed their young to a predator to kind of buy time for them to get away. So in the grand scheme of things, she is typically okay with sacrificing one of her babies.

Christian: Can I ask in this part of Australia, what is the most common predator they they have to contend with outside of humans?

Ellen: So on this island, there are feral populations of invasive species like cats and foxes.

Christian: Okay.

Ellen: Yeah. So they, they have those to kind of compete with. I would imagine things like large birds of prey, uh, snakes, maybe? Reptiles?

Christian: I'm just trying to think of things that they would need to outrun. Um, I guess that wouldn't be... Reptiles, per se.

Ellen: I don't know off the top of my head, but...

Christian: No worries. I was just curious.

Ellen: Yeah. But so yeah, that's why one of the biggest things that people say is to please do not scare the quokkas because they will smoke bomb their babies.

Christian: Oh no.

Ellen: Yeah, it's not great. They'll just kind of spike them right on the ground and peace out.

Christian: Do they come back and just be like... did it work out?

Ellen: No, they do not.

Christian: Oh, they just assumed.

Ellen: Yeah, so um, bad moms, but... I mean, you gotta give them some logic points for that, right?

Christian: Sure....?

Ellen: So, yeah, I mean they will leave their babies behind and everything, but it's super easy for them to make more. So I gave them some effectiveness points for that.

Christian: I guess I would've put that in the second category, personally. But...

Ellen: You know, I couldn't bring myself to. I couldn't bring myself to award them ingenuity points for infanticide. I just couldn't let myself do that.

Christian: I mean...

Ellen: Moving on. Away from this.

Christian: Next!

Ellen: Leaving this whole topic in the dust. So, quokkas living in some pretty dry areas of the world, they are able to store fat deposits in their tails. So this allows them to survive for up to a month at a time without water or food. This is really important because during the dry summers, water gets really scarce on their island and they get a lot of it from eating vegetation and succulents that grow on the island. Now, something to keep in mind is that in Australia, their seasons are reversed from ours.

Christian: Sure.

Ellen: So their summer occurs from December to February. Whereas for us in the United States, our summer is typically from May to August. Well, we live in Florida, so ours is from March to the next March. Ours is forever. It's just summer and that's it. Unfortunately, a lot of quokkas actually end up not surviving the summer, but the ones that do are able to very efficiently reproduce to maintain their population numbers.

Christian: I guess they have to, huh?

Ellen: Yeah. So it's kind of a harsh environment that they live in, but they've kind of adapted to take advantage of it. Yeah. So moving on to ingenuity, these are behavioral adaptations that the animal has made that just kind of make it a little bit clever at solving the problems that it faces on a daily basis. So, I gave the quokka 7 out of 10 for ingenuity. Quokkas are mostly nocturnal. During the day, they like to hide in really dense bushes and kind of underbrush, and inside that thick vegetation, they actually make their own hidden trails. So they have little paths and trails that they've made for themselves that they use for quick escapes or efficient paths to food sources. Yeah. So they have a little tunnel system, almost. It's not underground or anything. It's usually just like, under like thickets and stuff. But they have little tunnels that they make for themselves. They typically live together in groups. In the mainland, these groups are pretty small and they're mostly just little family units. But on the Rottnest Island, the groups can be really large. There's groups of like up to 150 of these things.

Christian: Wow.

Ellen: Running around together as like a big fam. So, during the summer when food and water are low, quokkas have been observed expanding their diet to become more omnivorous. So they're normally just herbivores. They just eat plants, succulents, stuff like that. But sometimes if it's really, really dry and they don't have a lot of food opportunities, they'll start to eat small animals like snails and lizards.

Christian: Oh wow.

Ellen: Even though they're not really meant to do that, they will do it sometimes. So, you know, a little bit of an opportunist there. Quokkas are very trusting of humans, and large numbers of them can be found in the more developed area of the island. They- it's called the Settlement. So this island is kind of divided up into these different like biomes, and you can find a lot of quokkas in the more urban area of the island because food and water are more likely to be found there. So quokkas like to hang out there. So they kind of, you know, they've kind of figured out where they're going to get a better selection of nutrition and they like to hang out around there. There is part of this island that are these really like dry scrub lands, and occasionally those areas will have these brush fires where there'll be like a big fire, a bunch of it will burn down, and then after that there will be these periods of new growth. So quokkas will kind of prefer those areas during the post-fire growth period. So you'll see, whenever there's like a big fire in that area quokkas will kind of move in afterwards and then enjoy that more rich nutrition. And then once things kind of even out, they'll move on and go to find more like swampy areas that they like to hang out in.

Christian: Oh cool.

Ellen: Yeah. So they're, they're kind of, um... I gave them some ingenuity points for being clever about like relocating themselves to give themselves like better advantages. I dunno. I thought that was pretty cool.

Christian: Yeah, for sure. And then I bet the plants that grow after the fires are also pretty tender since they're new and budding and...

Ellen: Some good dank leaves out there.

Christian: And then they're like, oh, it's all gone. Time to go to the wet place.

Ellen: Yeah. So I dunno. I mean 7 out of 10, they're pretty good.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: Kinda... Kinda clever little critters. Now, aesthetics. This is what you guys want to hear about for the quokka. 9 out of 10. So quokkas are famous for their naturally photogenic smile. They have- they're not expressing anything. That's just the way their face is.

Christian: Sure.

Ellen: They have a resting happy face. It's just, it's so cute. Their little mouth is like turned up in this really cute little smile, they have really big round eyes, they have round, fluffy ears and these really big, fluffy, chubby cheeks, and it just makes them really cute. On top of that, they're also pretty friendly and they're not really very afraid of humans. So their adorable appearance and their friendly demeanor has made them one of the most popular tourist attractions on Rottnest Island.

Christian: Okay!

Ellen: They're kind of the island's claim to fame. This has inspired the social media trend of quokkas selfies that you've probably seen.

Christian: Hmm.

Ellen: This is like, the bulk of the reason people have asked us to talk about them is because of these quokka selfie threads. So some particularly noteworthy examples are from Chris Hemsworth and Margot Robbie, two Australian celebrities that have taken quokka selfies and put them up on their social media. Chris Hemsworth being Thor.

Christian: Yeah, I guess I didn't realize he was Australian.

Ellen: And then Margot Robbie being Harley Quinn from the Suicide Squad movie?

Christian: I didn't see it.

Ellen: Me neither. Anyway, so yeah, so these celebrity quokkas selfies and then just kind of the ensuing like... Everyone who goes to this island posts their quokka selfies have been really great for the visibility of the quokka and of Rottnest Island in general. It's like nobody knew about them before, and then all of a sudden these selfies got really, really popular. And then, you know, went like viral on social media and now everybody knows about them. So they've been really, really good for, you know, generating a lot of tourism and a lot of revenue for the island.

Ellen: Now it is super important to follow the directions of local authorities when it comes to interacting with not just this wildlife but any wildlife in general that you come across. So people trying to get selfies with quokkas will unfortunately sometimes try to tempt them with offerings of food. Uh, don't do that. That can be very unhealthy for the quokka, especially if it is junk food. It can be super bad for them. Do not do that. So although it might be really, really tempting, the penalty for touching or feeding a quokka is $150.

Christian: Wow... Is that US dollars?

Ellen: It's Australian dollars.

Christian: Oh, okay.

Ellen: Don't just go running around petting these little dudes cause there's a $150 fine for it.

Christian: Yeah. So, I'm guessing when they get these selfies, it's a no-touch selfie?

Ellen: Do not touch.

Christian: Gotcha.

Ellen: Yeah. There's actually a fair amount of controversy around quokka selfies. So particularly Instagram issues a warning that displays when you search for the hashtag "#quokkaselfie." I tested this, like I saw an article about it on the Internet and then I tested it on my own Instagram to be sure, and it really does happen. If you go to Instagram and you search the hashtag "#quokkaselfie", a warning screen comes up and it says: "You are searching for a hashtag that may be associated with posts that encourage harmful behavior to animals or the environment."

Christian: Wow!

Ellen: Yeah. It also gives a link to Instagram's wildlife exploitation guidelines, which I will say this, they have some really good, really valid points about illegal trade and have really good warnings about things like potentially sketchy practices, especially like paid photo opportunities with super endangered animals. Always, always, always be super wary of that stuff, but actually Rottnest Island Authority has publicly spoken against this notice. They object to it. They object to this notice being displayed for the #quokkaselfie hashtag. They said, and this is a quote from the spokesman for the Rottnest Island Authority, "It does not serve to educate or inform the public about our conservation efforts, or direct people to how they might develop a better understanding of this native species." So there's some beef there. Yeah. Instagram and the Rottnest Island Authority have some... Feud.

Christian: Well I guess, you know, it's a common problem with other animals, especially animals that are typically found to be cute but not so friendly and also more dangerous.

Ellen: Yeah. So you know, quokkas can be very easily startled. You could spook them very easily and make them drop their baby. But like... Yes, it is true that like it's very bad for people to try to, for example, feed junk food to quokkas to get them to pose for a selfie, like I get what Instagram is going for. I think that it is a good thing for them to be conscientious of how their platform is being used, especially when it comes to, you know, wildlife exploitation. I think this is one of those cases where they might want to tweak the wording of the notice because it can kind of raise some hairs to say like, "oh, this might be animal abuse" when people are just like taking pictures of wildlife without really disturbing them in any way.

Christian: I'd be interested to hear the other side of the story too though. Cause I imagine that is a common reaction to that even when maybe not so black and white.

Ellen: Yeah, I think it's a very interesting discussion because, I don't know, I kind of agree with both sides. It's, it's kinda tough. It's a tough one. But I thought it was really interesting to see that sort of back and forth.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: So yeah, that's my 9 out of 10 for aesthetics. They are so cute that it has caused a sort of an international feud.

Christian: Controversially cute.

Ellen: They are controversially cute. Yes. So, adorable little friends. So I will wrap up by giving you some final miscellaneous information about the quokka. Their conservation status is listed as vulnerable. So they are threatened, like I said earlier, by predation by feral populations of invasive predators, like cats and foxes. These are European, you know, non-native species that have been brought in and they're kind of destroying everything as they tend to do when they are in places they don't belong. But they're also facing a lot of habitat loss due to, you know, forests in their areas being cleared out for things like agriculture, housing or logging. It seems like this is more of a problem in the mainland. But in Rottnest Island, all of the wildlife on that island is federally protected.

Christian: Very cool.

Ellen: Yeah. But they are still vulnerable. So, you know there are still things that you can do to help them out. And I really recommend checking out the Rottnest Island Authority's website cause they have so much good information on there. My last thing that I wanted to say about them, I thought this was really cool. I found this article from Scitech's science media website Particle and this article was titled "Quokka Cure Not Quackery"...

Christian: Oh my.

Ellen: By Kirsten Flint in August of 2017, and I'm not going to pull any direct quotes or anything, but just to summarize like what I read: there were quokkas that were kept in labs in like the fifties and sixties, and these quokkas started to experience muscular dystrophy and it was resulting from a vitamin E deficiency. So it had been thought, up until that point that muscle fibers were completely just not capable of regenerating. Like once you're paralyzed, you're paralyzed forever. But, after the quokkas were documented completely recovering from paralysis once their vitamin deficiencies were corrected, this sparked this huge like, rush of research into possible treatments for muscular dystrophy in humans. So there's this big spike in research, you know, once people were like, "oh my gosh, it turns out muscle fibers actually can heal," then that just kind of like changed the game for muscular dystrophy research.

Christian: Well I think that would have also been the middle of the polio epidemic as well.

Ellen: I think so.

Christian: Um, so that, that makes sense that there was a big interest in that.

Ellen: Yeah. I'm sorry, I'm not a huge history buff or anything like that. I just thought it was really interesting that like, this pretty relatively unknown little like... Funky little marsupial had a really, really big impact in like medical research history. I thought that was pretty cool.

Christian: Yeah, for sure.

Ellen: So they've kind of impacted human history in their own adorable little way. So yeah, that is the quokka.

Christian: Well, thank you honey.

Ellen: You're welcome. Before we move on, I want to thank our patrons on Patreon! These- there are some people out there who are throwing us a couple bucks a month to help us grow and get bigger and better and get cooler. They were able to help us launch our website, which was really neat. Patrons get access to some really cool extra stuff like a feed of the show without ads, a patron-only discord server, and I just added, actually, I'm going to be sending out monthly photography prints to our patrons at various levels. So, you know, go, go check that out and consider pledging a couple dollars to support us and help us get bigger and better. For this week's episode. I want to thank our patrons, Brianna Feinberg and Krystina Sanders. So thank you guys.

Christian: Thank you. And those prints are very pretty. I can personally attest to them.

Ellen: You're biased.

Christian: Maybe. It doesn't mean I'm wrong though.

Ellen: I should mention that they're prints of photos that I took, they're not just like prints I like... Got off Google or something.

Christian: Here you go.

Ellen: Hope these aren't copyrighted!

Christian: Here's some stock images commonly used in memes!

Ellen: What if I sent them out and like, they all had like Getty images watermarked on them.

Christian: Just straight up memes, like, "guess I'll die."

Ellen: I'm going to actually start printing out memes on printer paper and sending them in the mail to our patrons, and signing them.

Christian: You can use that, um, that terrible quality paper I bought like five years ago. We still have,

Ellen: Yeah, I'll be sure to do that. So patrons, you're really getting your money's worth out of that. Anyway... Christian, it's your turn. You have another crowd-pleaser for us, don't you?

Christian: Yes, I do. So for this week I've got another animal that had lots of requests and that is the peacock mantis shrimp. So I chose the peacock mantis shrimp as a specific species, but a lot of people just know it as the mantis shrimp and it was suggested as such by Kyle Rauch, Michael Solon, Nicholas Kight, and Susanna Lewis at the Thornvale podcast, on Twitter as @KeeperSusannah.

Ellen: Thank you all.

Christian: Yes, thank you. So as I said, the peacock mantis shrimp is the specific species that I'm going with. Its scientific name is Odontodactylus scyllarus.

Ellen: Oh, I thought you were done after the first one. There was more.

Christian: I wish I was. It's a mouthful. My sources are coming from oceana.org, the National Aquarium website aqua.org, which is in Baltimore, Maryland, by the way.

Ellen: Oh wow.

Christian: Yup. And animaldiversity.org. Now, I know what you're thinking.

Ellen: Do you?

Christian: But Christian, The Oatmeal has talked about the mantis shrimp many a time.

Ellen: Oh, see, I was thinking about the RadioLab episode.

Christian: Oh, that too. It's a popular animal.

Ellen: I feel like the Radiolab episode came first.

Christian: Maybe.

Ellen: I think it was. I think that was what like sparked public interest in the Mantis shrimp.

Christian: For me, it's more of the visual cue of the Oatmeal stuff.

Ellen: Oh, yeah. Sure.

Christian: But yeah, a very interesting animal. So this particular species, its adult size is between 2 and 7 inches, or approximately 5 and 18 centimeters long.

Ellen: It's like the talon of a chicken.

Christian: It's bigger than that.

Ellen: The toe of a chicken?

Christian: It's like a small lobster.

Ellen: I thought you said two inches.

Christian: Two to seven inches.

Ellen: Two inches is like the toe of a chicken.

Christian: ...No way. I mean, yeah, at its smallest. I'm not- I'm going to start talking about chickens now. And these little dudes can be found in the warm waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans. They belong to the taxonomic family... Uh, another big word.

Ellen: Okay, let's go.

Christian: Odontodactylidae.

Ellen: Oh- hold on. Odontodactylidae.

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: What! That's every consonant in the entire English language.

Christian: It's so many. Uh, the other things in that family are the other mantis shrimp, of which there are approximately 400 different species of.

Ellen: Y'all gotta be more specific with your species requests PLEASE.

Christian: So I chose the peacock one because it's pretty, and that's that.

Ellen: Excellent. That's also how I make choices of things.

Christian: Effectiveness: So I'm going to give it a full 10 out of 10 nice. My first and biggest point is they have the hands that no one wants to catch. The hands with a swiftness! But they aren't really hands. So they have these little hard clubs that are also called raptorial appendages.

Ellen: I'm sorry. Raptorial?

Christian: Yes. I guess the adjective form of raptor.

Ellen: I didn't know that raptor had an adjective form.

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: I... That's incredible. That's a very powerful word.

Christian: Yes. So they have these little club-like appendages. Think of them as being their first set of legs, are these little appendages.

Ellen: They're boxing gloves?

Christian: Kind of look like that. So they're calcified claws basically, and they use them to deal massive amounts of bludgeoning damage, in D&D terms.

Ellen: Like 2d8 bludgeoning damage.

Christian: 2d12 is more like. But and they're strong. So what they're meant to do is to break through the shells of things like clams, oysters, other crabs and lobsters, that kind of thing.

Ellen: Wow.

Christian: Yup. The larger specimens have actually been known to damage the glass and aquariums with this, with these strikes.

Ellen: Incredible.

Christian: They're very, very strong.

Ellen: This is probably why I have not seen one in an aquarium.

Christian: Supposedly some do, just like the National Aquarium actually, which is why I'm pulling information from them. So if we ever find ourselves in that part of the country, maybe we can check it out. But their strike travels around 20 meters per second. That's fast. Very fast.

Ellen: Do you happen to have an imperial conversion for that?

Christian: I don't. I won't....

Ellen: Please?

Christian: And I shon't. I Dunno. Like 60 feet per second?

Ellen: What did you say the number was?

Christian: 20 meters per second.

Ellen: *googling* 20 meters per second...

Christian: But that's like what? A hundred feet per...

Ellen: 45 miles per hour.

Christian: You missed my joke.

Ellen: Was it good?

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: What was it?

Christian: I said, so that's what a hundred feet per football game?

Ellen: Okay, well it's 45 miles per hour.

Christian: Is that right?

Ellen: 20 meters per second. 20 meters per second equals 45 miles per hour. Google says it right here!

Christian: Okay, that makes a little sense I suppose because a lot of sources will say, oh, this is as fast as a 22 caliber bullet, which is not right. It is the same amount of force as a 22 caliber bullet.

Ellen: Oh, okay.

Christian: But the speed of a bullet is more than 10 times faster than that. Oh, okay. So I think that just might be a little confusion here and there.

Ellen: Either way, you don't want get hit by one.

Christian: Yes. And now, part of the reason that all that force is in addition to the initial strike, that strike is also creating what's called a cavitation bubble of air.

Ellen: Cavitation?

Christian: Yes. So that strike is transferring so much kinetic energy that it causes a bubble in the water. And as that bubble implodes on itself, or collapses on itself, it creates heat, light, and sound.

Ellen: What?

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: So it's also doing radiant damage.

Christian: Aw, these things are like paladins. But yes, tough little dudes.

Ellen: This is like when you uh, are playing a Skyrim save and you max out your melee skill

Christian: Gloves of the pugilist or however that's pronounced. And then, the way they hold their claws, they're kind of folded out in front of them. It's very much like the mantis insect, like the praying mantis.

Ellen: That's probably where they got their name.

Christian: Yep. So that's where that part of the name comes from. And then, the peacock part of this one is because of how pretty it is. I'll get to that shortly.

Ellen: We have a whole section for that.

Christian: Yes. The next effective thing that I'm giving them points for, their vision. So this is another thing that has been talked about a lot.

Ellen: Let's hear it again, Christians.

Christian: Yes. So they have incredible vision. They can see colors in wavelength that we cannot, examples being ultraviolet and polarized light. So part of the reason for this is because their compound eyes have 16 types of color receptive cones, whereas most humans only have three. I say most because some have four, and there's a whole other RadioLab podcast about that ability.

Ellen: Yeah, check out the radio lab episode colors for more information on...

Christian: Those might be in the same episode.

Ellen: Yeah, it's the one episode where they talk about mantis shrimps, and cause they talk about other animals with different numbers of receptors in their eyes. So yeah, if you haven't heard it yet, check out the RadioLab episode tellers for a deep dive into like photoreceptive- an explanation on photo receptive cells in your eyes and stuff. It's really cool.

Christian: So what this basically translates to is the more different kinds of these you have, and if they're sensitive to different frequencies of light, it gives you a better ability to distinguish between different colors. And also in the mantis shrimp case, they can see beyond the, what we know as the visual spectrum. So, you know, ultraviolet, being part of that, we cannot see older violet light directly. And it turns out they look even cooler when you see them the way another mantis shrimp would.

Ellen: Oh really?

Christian: Yeah. So just with our eyesight, their colors are very vivid and interesting. But with the eyes of another mantis shrimp, it's even better.

Ellen: What would elf eyes see?

Christian: They're taking the crustaceans to Isengard!

Ellen: No.

Christian: No? Okay.

Ellen: I regret setting you up for that.

Christian: Well, then I just spiked it into the ground.

Ellen: Not unlike a quokka spiking its baby.

Christian: Womp. So that was a 10 out of 10 for effectiveness.

Ellen: Perfect score, nicely done. Slam dunk.

Christian: Yep. Ingenuity: I'm giving them I guess a modest 7 out of 10 for ingenuity.

Ellen: Really?

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: That's a lot for a shrimp.

Christian: Well, so they, they dig these interesting tunnels that are kind of U-shaped. They spend most of their time there, they hang out when they're not actively doing anything else it seems. They'll breed there, they'll, they'll raise their young there...

Ellen: I also hang out in a cave when I'm not doing anything else.

Christian: And I just thought it was interesting that they know that they have the ability to break open the shells of other creatures. Like, "I have these powerful hands" just start breaking open to other animals to get at their yummy, gooey parts.

Ellen: I wonder how much of that is trial and error. I wonder if they ever like run up on like, a shark or something and be like, "yeah, surely I can take this."

Christian: I mean, the way I think of it, the first one was probably like... Two different crustaceans. One was like, "hey Mike, shake my hand!" "Okay, here you go- Oh God!"

Ellen: Yeah. That's probably how that went down.

Christian: "Your hand is gone!"

Ellen: Or maybe he was just trying to like, greet his, uh, like hermit crab buddy...

Christian: By knocking on the door, that is his shell.

Ellen: Yeah. And he went to knock on the door of his house and then just...

Christian: No more door. Uh, that's all I have for ingenuity.

Ellen: This poor mantis shrimp can't make any friends!

Christian: He's too powerful and too beautiful.

Ellen: Too strong. It's the Dragon Ball Z curse

Christian: Speaking of beauty, aesthetics. 10 out of 10. They're very pretty and they have stunning colors. They're very, it's just almost iridescent and is just... You really have to see it. And in particular it's the males that have the coloration that's most interesting. And it has lots of greens and blues and reds.

Ellen: Ain't that always the way it goes?

Christian: Yeah. I mean, the females are mostly red. Still pretty though.

Ellen: How come the dudes are always the fabulous ones?

Christian: It's just like peacock. Right? And then also the eyes themselves, they look very interesting. I'm not going to try to describe them through voice, but I do highly recommend to check them out to see what the eyes themselves look like.

Ellen: Is it the color or the shape of them or?

Christian: The anatomy itself. Cause they're compound eyes, not unlike many insects.

Ellen: Those always look really cool, cause they always have interesting geometric patterns to them.

Christian: Yeah, and they have distinct parts. So they have horizontal bands that go through the middle. It kind of looks like they have several pupils that are kind of moving around too.

Ellen: Hmmm. Interesting.

Christian: Yeah. A little miscellaneous info about our friends: their conservation status is insufficient data.

Ellen: Oh!

Christian: Yeah. We don't know. I mean it's thought that they could be vulnerable to destruction of coral reef habitats, cause that's where they're primarily found. Other than that, no real data there.

Ellen: Okay. Well, hope for the best.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: Fingers crossed for the mantis shrimp. Hope they're doing good.

Christian: Yeah. And they are pretty valued by aquarium collectors. Some, I should say. So like I said, they're very beautiful to look at but the negatives are, you know, one: when they're bigger they could damage the tank.

Ellen: Yeah. You need a bulletproof tank, huh.

Christian: But also they have a tendency to eat anything else that's in the tank. So...

Ellen: Who's gonna step to them?

Christian: Just stay out of reach, I guess.

Ellen: Nobody can keep them in check. Like you can't have fish cop coming in there, like trying to keep everyone in line!

Christian: Even another mantis shrimp. They're pretty territorial. They try to crack each other's tails open, and it turns out that that part of their shell is the thickest part because of that.

Ellen: For that exact reason. They've evolved like, bulletproof Kevlar tails.

Christian: An evolutionary arms race.

Ellen: Well, I gotta say they're winning.

Christian: And they're actually kind of known that if you have tanks that have living coral in it, they are known to like basically think, "I want to dig a tunnel through this," punch, punch, punch, punch, punch. Now this coral has a big hole in it.

Ellen: Jerks! That's rude! Leave the coral alone

Christian: Yeah. And then I'm going to wrap up with what they do with their eggs. I think it's nice. So when the eggs are laid, the female kind of holds them on her "person," for the lack of a better term. Just kind of holding them in and they're also like adhered to their body.

Ellen: Oh, interesting. So she's keeping them close.

Christian: Yeah. So she holds onto them and cleans them until they're hatched.

Ellen: That's kinda cute! She cleans her little eggs.

Christian: She doesn't eat during this period.

Ellen: Oh...

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: She's a much better mother than the quokka. The quokka mom was like, "BYE!"

Christian: Okay, but... If it wanted to, it could use them like bullets. Cause there's just so many.

Ellen: WHAT. No, it couldn't. You made that up.

Christian: That's true. They don't really have any digits to grab that kind of thing with. But it'd be funny.

Ellen: That's a funny visual. Now you mentioned that they're supremely powerful.

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: They have incredible detection capabilities.

Christian: Yes.

Ellen: And they're supremely stylish. Is this an anime villain?

Christian: Uh, if you're a mollusk.

Ellen: Mantis shrimp confirmed anime antagonist. You know this to be true.

Christian: Jojo!

Ellen: Jotaro!!

Christian: That's the peacock mantis shrimp.

Ellen: Thank you, my love. That was delightful.

Christian: It was enjoyable for me as well.

Ellen: I'm glad. That was really good. I had heard it talked about but not by you.

Christian: I might have mentioned it once or twice in passing.

Ellen: Alright, well those are our animals segments. I want to wrap up the show with our relatively new audience response segment. Only had one that I wanted to share this week. So last week we talked about the giant manta ray, and in response to that segment, our friend Jacob Jones shared his experience with giant manta rays in the wild. So our friend Jacob works in commercial fishing, he works on a shrimp boat and he had this to say about giant manta rays: he says, "I've caught two giant mantas in the last seven years. With shrimping, we use large nets that go to the ocean floor, and inside of the nets there is a large grid called a turtle extraction device, or a T.E.D., That lets the larger things escape, like most sport fish, sharks, dolphins, turtles, etc. But the giant mantas are too heckin big and can't make it to this part of the net, because they taper down from a 68 foot circumference, or 34 on the first boat I worked on, down to like a four foot circumference as they go to the bags where the catch is held. So when we pick up and pull the bags in, we will see them flapping irately in the nets until they slide out." So I was concerned and I asked if the manta rays are able to get out safely once the net is pulled up, and Jacob said, "Yeah, they slide right out. They don't seem to have any issues as they flap on the surface for a moment as if cussing at us, and then they swim off. I have never once seen one get wounded from being in the net. Just annoyed that we interrupted their swim."

Christian: Angery sea blanket! But yeah, I really appreciate that. Thank you Jacob.

Ellen: Yeah, I thought that was really cool because I've definitely never seen a manta ray in the wild, but it must be really interesting to get a chance to see so many really cool ocean species out in their native habitat. Jacob also mentioned that they had caught a basket star and I thought that was really cool.

Christian: Yeah. So I had actually, I saw this on Facebook and I did a little research on the T.E.D. Device. So they are purposely meant for sea turtles, right? Because you know, the difference between the manta rays and the sea turtle is that the sea turtle eventually needs to get air from the surface. So the manta is probably okay because it's, even if it doesn't get all the way through, it's still having water pass over its gills, it's going to be okay, whereas a sea turtle, it will eventually drown. Right?

Ellen: Sure.

Christian: And then, I've read that even sometimes, not all of these devices work because there are turtles that get too big for that.

Ellen: Oh no.

Christian: Like the uh, the loggerhead turtle.

Ellen: Oh, like, yeah- Oh, those are big.

Christian: Yeah.

Ellen: Yeah, so I thought that was really neat, to some firsthand experience of an encounter with giant manta rays and the visual of them being quite perturbed by being caught in a net, I thought was kind of funny.

Christian: I've heard them described by people who have seen them out in the ocean is that they look like a large quilt just kind of floating through the water.

Ellen: That makes sense. I mean they do have that like, square shape. I thought that was pretty cool. So thank you for sharing your experience, Jacob.

Christian: Yeah, thanks!

Ellen: All right, so that's our show. We're all done. We're going to wrap up with a few final notes. I want to thank everybody who has been listening and everybody who's been recommending us to your friends, you guys are the best and I love you and thank you, especially, to people who have been leaving reviews on your podcatchers. That means a lot to us and it helps us out a lot. Hopefully we've earned a good review from you, so if you feel so inclined, please drop us a drop a little five star rating on there.

Christian: Yeah. Plus it makes us feel good!

Ellen: It makes me really happy. You know I thrive on validation and I live for it. So, you know...

Christian: Can I review it?

Ellen: Yeah, let's hear it. Let's hear your review of the show that we're doing right now.

Christian: ...Oh man.

Ellen: The pressure's on.

Christian: Ellen is awesome. The other person, [some dumb inaudible noise because Christian's a mean jerk]... I don't know. I don't know how to translate that to text, but...

Ellen: Well, I guess I'm going to have to do it when I'm doing the transcript, won't I?

Christian: Dear Future Ellen, I'm so sorry.

Ellen: You're not sorry, because you keep saying you are, and you keep doing it anyway. The best apology is changed behavior, Christian Weatherford. Anyway, you can connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram by searching the title of the show. You can also find our official website at www.justthezooofus.com, if you have an animal species you want to hear us review, you can submit that to us either on social media or just via email at Ellen@justthezooofus.com.

Christian: Yes.

Christian: Transcripts of this episode and others will be going live on our website as soon as I can get through them. They take a very long time, please be patient with me. And as our final note, I want to thank Louie Zong for the use of his song "Adventuring" off of the album Bee Sides.

Christian: It's good stuff.

Christian: We love it.

Christian: Merch store.

Ellen: Merch store? Oh! Yeah, gosh, yeah. I put some designs up that you can buy and put on things that you wear.

Christian: And drink from, right?

Ellen: And drink from! Yes, there's like coffee mugs on there. I think there's also a reusable cotton tote.

Christian: Everyday items you interact with, with our brand on it!

Ellen: You can add them to your inventory and use them for functions. They're functional, and they have our little cover out on them. I'm also working on some other little designs that I think would make cute merch, so... I'm working on it. So yeah, that's our show.

Christian: Thanks everyone!

Ellen: Thanks. We love you.

Christian: Especially me.

Ellen: Bye.

Christian: Bye!