23: Roly Poly & Keel-Billed Toucan
Christian: Hi everyone, this is Christian Weatherford.
Ellen: And this is Ellen Weatherford.
Christian: And you're listening to Just the Zoo of Us, a podcast where we rate your animals both favorite and... Opposite of favorite.
Ellen: What's the opposite of favorite, Christian? Quick, hit me with that.
Christian: Extreme dislike. So we take those animals and we give them a rating out of 10 for three categories. I don't remember if we mention those categories here or not, but it just in case we do, here it is future Ellen: effectiveness, ingenuity, and aesthetics! I'm bringing good energy.
Ellen: Christian and I are not zoological experts but we do a lot of research to get ready for the show, and we make sure that the information we're giving you is reliable and it comes from good sources. So feel free to reach out to us if you are an animal expert and want to chit chat about anything we've gone over on the show. We really love that.
Christian: Yes, and a lot of you are actual zoological experts.
Ellen: Mhmm, and we love you. Well, last week you talked about the matamata turtle, and you went first. So this week it's my turn to go first.
Christian: Excellent. What do you have for us this week?
Ellen: This week I am talking about an animal that I'm pretty sure almost everybody in the United States probably has some hands on experience with, but probably doesn't actually know very much about.
Christian: Oh?
Ellen: This is the roly poly.
Christian: Ah!
Ellen: Some other names you might know the roly poly by are the pill bug, the doodle bug or the woodlouse.
Christian: I do like the name doodlebug.
Ellen: Yeah, you know, I keep seeing references to it, but I don't know of anybody around here who calls them that.
Christian: It might be a regional thing.
Ellen: Yeah. For context, we live in Florida, and I don't know of anybody here who calls them doodlebugs. But the name that I have always known them by is roly polies, so that is the name that I will be using for them for the entirety of the segment and also my life. So, sorry. The scientific name for the roly poly is Armadillidium vulgare.
Christian: Okay. So, you know, obviously... Armadillo. Right?
Ellen: Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's the name of their genus, and it does come from armadillo because they do roll up into a little ball. That's where they get the name roly poly, cause they roll up into a ball. And then "vulgare" comes from the Latin word for like, common. So this is kind of just the common woodlouse, the one that you're going to find pretty much everywhere in our country that we live in. This species was requested of us by the What Are You Podcast, and this is very charming because this is a show about animals by 4-year-old Dylan and his mom, Megan. It's so cute. I was listening to it a little bit earlier today and it's so precious. So we love y'all, Dylan and Megan, and hope you like our bit on the roly poly.
Christian: Excellent.
Ellen: So, uh, before I launch into it, I'm getting my information from the University of Michigan's Animal Diversity Web, as well as a video that I watched on roly polies from PBS's Deep Look series. To introduce you to my dear friend, the roly poly, their adult size is up to a whopping half inch, or 1.27 centimeters.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Yeah. It's about the size of your fingernail or perhaps... The eyeball of a chicken. You're gonna find these pretty much all over the world. They've established populations on every continent except Antarctica, and they are originally from the Mediterranean. So they started there, and then they just kinda took off everywhere, so you can find them all over the world now. Uh, but that does not necessarily mean that they are invasive. They're actually pretty good for whatever habitat they live in.
Christian: Interesting.
Ellen: Yeah, they're really cool. Now their taxonomic family. Buckle up for this one cause it's a bumpy ride.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Armadillidiidae.
Christian: Nice. Is that all one word?
Ellen: Yes it is. And also, I had to look up how it's pronounced and I practiced it before this.
Christian: Whoa. Good on you.
Ellen: Thank you.
Christian: I cannot say I did the same.
Ellen: I really put a lot of effort into this one because I knew it was going to trip me up, and I wanted my editing process to be easier.
Christian: Alright.
Ellen: This is the family that contains the other woodlice. There are other species of them other than the roly poly, but they're not as cute. So I'm not talking about them today. Sorry.
Christian: Which is the singular and which is the plural?
Ellen: Lice is the plural, and louse is the singular.
Christian: Got it.
Ellen: This is just like mouse and mice.
Christian: Makes sense.
Ellen: Yeah. I'm going to ask you, uh, what other like, common animal do you think is related to the roly poly?
Christian: Um, I would think millipedes.
Ellen: That's an excellent guess, but it is not correct. I'm sorry. Roly polies and woodlice are isopods, which means they are not even a little bit related to bugs.
Christian: Wow!
Ellen: Not even a little bit. They're not related to bugs or millipedes, not insects, not millipedes, none of that stuff. Actually, being isopods, they are terrestrial crustaceans. They are more closely related to crabs and lobsters and shrimp. So they're actually in the same class, Malacostraca.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Now, there is actually a pill millipede, which looks and functions exactly like a roly poly. They're easy to tell apart when you see them side by side, but if you were to just see a pill millipede like out and about, you would reasonably guess that it was a roly poly. But they're actually, they come from completely different evolutionary branches.
Christian: Huh. I'll have to look those up later.
Ellen: I mean, they look like a roly poly, I don't know what else to tell you.
Christian: I'm wondering what do I have in my memory? Which one is it?
Ellen: So the roly poly's totally gray and the pill millipede has more of a brownish color and some variation on their colors, whereas the roly poly's pretty much a solid plain gray color.
Christian: Don't worry, I'll get my reality in order later.
Ellen: Okay. We'll figure it out. But so the roly poly and the pill millipede, having nothing to do with each other evolutionarily but looking and functioning pretty much exactly the same way is another example of convergent evolution. I think the last time we talked about convergent evolution was with the vultures.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: Yeah. So this is way even farther back than that cause these are completely different animals. Um, but so keep in mind, keep that in your head that they are crustaceans and that they come from isopods which come from the ocean. They have come out of the ocean onto the land, so just keep that in the back of your head cause I'm going to revisit that later.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: To get started on our rating system. I'm going to start with effectiveness. And if this is your first time joining us, we define effectiveness as how good an animal is physically at accomplishing its goals and doing what it's trying to do on a daily basis. So these are physical adaptations that let the animal do their thing. I'm giving the roly poly a 6 out of 10.
Christian: Really?
Ellen: It's okay. It's okay.
Christian: Just tell me it has a rollout attack.
Ellen: An attack would be a strong word to use. But that was the first thing I was going to talk about, was their habit of rolling up into a ball. So there's actually a word for this behavior. It's called conglobation.
Christian: Interesting.
Ellen: Yeah. Which you can see the root word of "globe" in there. Con-GLOB-ation. That's how I remember it, at least. So you use this to describe roly polies, but also the pill millipedes and also armadillos. That's the same rolling up into a ball as a defense strategy. That's, that's how they do.
Christian: Sandshrew.
Ellen: Yeah, just like it. So I gave it some self-defense points for this conglobation thing. So other isopods can't do that because their exoskeletons are not segmented in the same way. So the roly poly has adapted to be able to do that whereas other isopods haven't. So that's definitely something that's like, kind of unique to them. Unique to them and the other members of the Armadillidiidae family, I'll say that. They have another self defense strategy that I did not know about. When they are threatened or stressed, they can actually secrete an unpleasant odor to deter predators.
Christian: Aha!
Ellen: Yeah, I didn't actually know that they did that.
Christian: "I am now round and smell bad!"
Ellen: Same.
Christian: Predator's just like, "I'm confused, mostly. Goodbye."
Ellen: Yeah, so... Now, I really couldn't give it that many points for this because the roly poly is very small and curling up into a ball doesn't really do it very many favors, because there are a lot of predators that have kind of figured that one out. Like, there are a lot of bugs that eat them that have just evolved long noses that can poke inside of their ball and pry them open. Or like, birds have long, skinny beaks so that they can pull them open and like it's just... It's not that effective of a defense. Like they've got it, but it doesn't do much.
Christian: If they happen to be on a steep hill though...
Ellen: There you go. There could be an escape.
Christian: Then they're a moving target.
Ellen: It could be an escape. Yeah.
Christian: Until the hill ends.
Ellen: Yeah. Another effectiveness point that I gave them was for being able to go a surprisingly long time without eating. So in a lab they were documented surviving for up to three months with no food.
Christian: So what is it that they eat?
Ellen: They are detritivores. So they eat rotting plant matter, they eat decaying plant matter, leaf litter, stuff like that. But they also have some sort of herbivorous tendencies where they will kinda eat any plant matter. But most of what they eat is like, dead and decaying plants.
Christian: So the root of that word, is it pronounced DE-tritus or de-TRI-tus?
Ellen: That's a fantastic question. Moving on. So another interesting thing that I didn't know about them that I learned that I thought gave them kind of, I had to give them some props for is that rather than laying eggs on the ground or in a nest, the female roly poly carries her brood of eggs around in a brood pouch called a marsupium. And this is a pouch that she has on the underside, kind of like where you would guess her belly to be.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: And she keeps her eggs under there, and she just holds them there and carries them around until they hatch. So when they hatch, the baby roly polies have a special word for their baby form. They're called mancas, or maybe it's, it might be mancae, like a-e? This is like one of those weird Latin things where like in Latin, a word that ends in a, when you make it plural, it becomes -ae, but like we're not speaking Latin, so like you don't have to use it that way. I don't know what the plural form is. I'm going to say mancas.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: But so the little baby mancas, they will actually stay in the mom's marsupium for like a day or so before fully emerging.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: So yeah, I just thought that was kind of interesting that they've evolved this sort of little egg transportation device. I thought that was beneficial to them because that means they don't have to lay their eggs and then just, you know, leave them there because then that puts the eggs at risk of being eaten or destroyed. I think that like finding a way to protect your babies is a good idea.
Christian: And then when they roll up, the eggs are in the safest place.
Ellen: Yeah. So I gave the roly poly some good mom points.
Christian: Cool.
Ellen: I know I really had to break my habit of talking about all these bad moms.
Christian: Say, did you hear that, quokka?
Ellen: Yeah, take notes. Take notes. So yeah, I thought those were pretty neat. Now I'm going to move on to talk about the deductions I took off for their effectiveness because there's a few.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: The roly poly has very poor perception. They have eyes, their eyes are on the front and on either side of their little head segment, which I didn't know that. But when you look at pictures of a roly poly, like zoomed in, they're actually kinda cute. They have eyes on the front of their face, but those eyes can't see for squat.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: The eyes can pretty much only detect the presence or absence of light and that's it. This is not the 4K experience. They can see- they can basically tell whether it's bright or dark, and that's it. They can't distinguish shapes or colors or any of that stuff. So, they can't see real good. They also don't have ears. Like sound is just not an option for them. That's not something they can perceive.
Christian: Huh.
Ellen: Yeah. They don't have ears at all, so sound is not a thing. Now they can detect vibrations. So they have these little tiny, tiny little hairs all over both their feet and their antenna, and kind of like along the underside of their exoskeleton, they have these little hairs and the hairs can pick up vibrations. So they can feel vibrations, and those vibrations are what trigger their conglomeration. So if they feel a heavy enough vibration, then it'll trigger them to roll up into a ball, but they can't hear anything. So that's not an option for them. I was just like, wow, that's garbage. I'm so sorry. That's like, jeez, you're missing out on a lot, my friends.
Christian: I guess for what they're doing, I guess that's all I need.
Ellen: I mean... Sure?
Christian: What are they gonna do run away?
Ellen: They could hide or something? I don't know. But so, yeah, kind of their most important method of perceiving their surroundings is actually chemical sensing. So they pick up chemical signals with their antennae, like I mentioned, how they're covered in those little hairs.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: And they actually communicate with each other using pheromones, which I'll talk a little bit about in the ingenuity section. The, I kind of have, my biggest deduction for them was that they really didn't fully transition into terrestrial life. They kinda, they came out of the water and they were like, okay, we got the legs... And that's about it. So they still actually have gills.
Christian: Whoa.
Ellen: Yes. They have gills on the underside of their body. Their gills have evolved to have these little air sacs in them that let them breathe air so they don't have to breathe in the water. But they do actually need to keep their gills wet to work. They need moisture in order to function. So that's why desiccation, which means basically drying out is a huge, huge, huge threat to roly polies. So this is why you always see them in the wet sort of in humid areas. You find them in wet dirt and mud and you always find them in places that are like a little bit damp.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: It's because they need it to breathe.
Christian: Huh.
Ellen: Yeah. Now they cannot swim, by the way, which seems counterintuitive to this whole thing. Cause it's like they really committed a hundred percent to living on land, but were like, "mmm, we're going to keep the gills though." Like why would you go that far?
Christian: It's like someone explained lungs to them once and briefly and then they were like, "yeah, I got this. "
Ellen: Yeah, we got the idea, we got the idea. We'll do that. Yeah. That's really what it is. It's, it's not ideal, honestly. They kind of got the worst of both worlds. Like they need it to be like a little wet but not all the way wet.
Christian: I guess this is also one of the things that really, really separate them from insects cause they have a whole other different way of getting air into their systems.
Ellen: Yeah. With insects it's, it's wild. It's something like, they take air in and then it doesn't go to like any sort of lung place, it like distributes the air over the body?
Christian: Yeah, they basically absorb it through their skin.
Ellen: It's the wildest thing. But yeah, so the roly polies don't do that. They need moisture in the air to breathe, which I think is not a great strat, but what are you going to do.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Anyway, so to move on to ingenuity, we define ingenuity as behavioral adaptations that an animal has that let it like, figure out clever ways of defeating obstacles in its path or figuring out cool solutions to problems they face every day. I gave the roly poly a 4 out of 10 because it is, you know, like that.
Christian: It's probably a little generous, honestly.
Ellen: So what I thought about was that I thought about how I think I gave the sloth a 4 out of 10. I have been, I think I've been generous with my ingenuity scores, but I'm giving the roly poly a 4 out of 10. There's a couple things a roly poly does that kinda help it along. When roly polies are born, what they will actually do is they will try to find a new place to live that's better for them than the place they were born in. So when they're first born, they will actually try to leave. They will try to go as far away as they can from the place where they were born. But then, if it takes too long for them to find a better place for them to live, they'll turn around and come back to the place where they were born. Because they figure, well,, it'll take me too long- Like it's taking too long for me to find somewhere that's good for me to live. I'm wasting energy trying to find somewhere else. I'm going to go back to where I was born because I know I can survive there. So they'll turn around and come back.
Christian: Yeah, that's pretty smart.
Ellen: Yeah, that was, that was a little bit more processing power than I thought they had in the ol' roly poly noggin. So like mentioned earlier, they communicate with each other with pheromones and roly polies actually do kind of live socially. They kind of hang out with each other and they use pheromones to let each other know that they're there, basically, since they can't see or hear each other. Roly polies produce pheromones and signal to each other their presence, but the concentration of that pheromone increases during mating season. So males, when they pick up the female pheromone, they can tell by the concentration of that pheromone whether that female is ready to mate or not. So that's pretty cool.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: And also, when a roly poly is kind of looking around for a new place to live, if it moves into an area where it detects the pheromones of other roly polies, that's its signal that this is a good place for me to live because it says, "Oh, there's other roly polies here. That means they're thriving and surviving here. This is probably a good place for me."
Christian: Interesting.
Ellen: Yeah, so it's not necessarily like territory marking how other animals will kind of leave pheromones to let other animals know not to go there. This is kind of the opposite. They're like, "Hey, this is a cool roly polies city. Like, come hang out with us and all of our roly poly buds."
Christian: That's fun.
Ellen: Yeah. They're like leaving little signs like, "Hey, this is good. Come live here. Come live here in roly polytown with us." Actually, some studies have shown that socialization is a really important survival mechanic to roly polies and that roly polies kept in captivity, even when provided with all of the basically criteria that they need to survive, when separated from other roly polies, they die very quickly.
Ellen: Aw...
Ellen: Yeah. They will also cannibalize each other.
Christian: Oh.
Ellen: Yeah. Sometimes.
Christian: Like, living?
Ellen: Yeah, like living. But it's like if one of them is really weak, so if one of them is injured or something like that or maybe if it's like mid-molt, cause they do have to molt their exoskeletons just like crabs do...
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: Then they're kind of in a vulnerable spot and roly polies will kind of eat each other and that's just the way that they do. So, that was just part of the 4 out of 10.
Christian: Welp.
Ellen: I wouldn't describe them as bright. Oh, another thing that they do, I don't know if I mentioned this earlier or not, they will actually flee from bright light. So if there's a bright light on them, they will pick up on that and they will run and try to as fast as they can, they try to find somewhere dark to hide because bright sunlight can dry them out faster and that can kill them.
Christian: Oh, so they think they like, just walked out of the shade or something.
Ellen: Yeah. Like they think there's like, bright sunlight or something and so they just run and try to find somewhere to hide.
Christian: Okay. I was about to say, cause it's kinda the opposite when you're talking about sensing a predator.
Ellen: Yeah, no, it's, it's just the light. Like they, they know that if they're in really bright light, they know that they can dry out more quickly so they will run and try to find somewhere dark.
Christian: Okay, makes sense.
Ellen: Yeah. And it's kinda funny, I read something about how they travel, not in straight lines, but in zigzags that they alternate turning left and right. Like they don't just go straight forward in a path, they turn left and then they turn right and go back and forth like that.
Christian: Wonder why that is.
Ellen: The thing that I was reading said that it was like exploratory. Like they're looking for new resources and they can cover more ground by zigzagging rather than going in a straight line. So I thought that was pretty interesting.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: They're okay... They're okay. Just okay. I think that typically when we're giving animals scores, most animals that are alive are going to have pretty good scores because they've evolved, right? Like they've gone through millions of years of adapting in ways that are supposed to be beneficial for them and let them survive better. I think that the roly poly is doing so incredibly well and so very populous because they have like, anywhere from 1 to 300 babies at a time.
Ellen: Woah.
Ellen: So I think they're playing the numbers game. I think it's not because they're particularly good at the things that they're doing, but I think it's that they make very many of them.
Christian: That is a strategy.
Ellen: But so, yeah, they're just, they're friendly boys. Like they just, they eat dead plants and we need them to do that anyway. So they're actually like really good for if- Like you want to have them around, because they keep your soil nice and like- a lot of people will see them in like a garden or something and think, Oh no, they're a pest. But they actually don't normally eat live plants, so you kind of want them to keep around because they'll eat your dead plants and they'll keep your nutrients cycling. They're just, they're good to have around. I'm actually going to talk about that a little bit more in a few minutes. Before I move on to that. I want to talk about their aesthetics.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Aesthetics is self explanatory. I give them a 9 out of 10. Oh my God, they're so cute.
Christian: Huh.
Ellen: And I thought to myself, when I look at one zoomed up all the way up close, it's going to be hideous and I'm going to hate it and I'm going to be freaked out and I'm going to regret that I picked to do the roly poly to talk about. But then I watched this video, this PBS video, the Deep Look video, and it had all these zoomed up roly polies and they're so cute. It's so cute. They have the little face with the big round eyes on either side of their head and they got the little antenna that they're wiggling around all the time and have all those little feet. And then when they roll up in a ball, it's so cute. I love roly polies. 9 out of 10. And I only gave them a 9 out of 10 instead of a 10 out of 10 because when you look at them from the underneath, it's a little weird. It's kinda gross. Also, roly poly babies are actually really cute.
Christian: Oh yeah?
Ellen: The mancas that I talked about, so when they're born, they're white, they're completely white, and they're kind of squishy looking and I really like those. So yeah, I'm just very charmed by roly polies.
Christian: I'm gonna have to look at all these pictures later.
Ellen: Yeah, they're really cool. So, I'm assuming most people have probably picked up and bothered roly polies before like I have, but this is the, the same one that you're gonna find if you go out. I bet if we walked outside right now, it would take us less than five minutes to find a roly poly.
Christian: It is nighttime.
Ellen: It is. That's why I said that. Cause it's dark. That's when they come out.
Christian: Yeah, but we won't find them.
Ellen: We have flashlights and stuff.
Christian: But it's spooky.
Ellen: Here, we'll set a-
Christian: You know what month it is right now?
Ellen: Oh that's true... Oh it's October. Oh you're right. We're not going out at night.
Christian: Too spooky.
Ellen: Yeah. So yeah, that's my 9 out of 10 for aesthetics. They're very cute. So to wrap things up with the roly polies and miscellaneous information, their conservation status is not evaluated. That is not a surprise. They are doing fine. Do not worry about roly polies. Now, roly polies are detritivores like I mentioned earlier, they eat mostly dead and decaying plant matter. Roly polies are commonly used in bioactive enclosures for captive habitats. So pet owners or anybody who's keeping captive animals, a lot of times they will have what's called a bioactive enclosure. So this is an enclosure for their pet that is sort of self-contained, like a fully functional ecosystem rather than just like, a tank with like some fake plants and some mulch on the bottom. This is like, there is legitimate like soil with plants planted in there that are growing, and bugs and roly polies and all those sorts of things that are living in the tank to sort of move the ecosystem along naturally rather than you having to like, treat it for all this stuff. So I was looking all this stuff up because I was talking to my childhood best friend Laurel who is preparing a bioactive enclosure, and in preparing this bioactive enclosure, one of the things that she was doing was collecting roly polies. So just going outside, gathering them up and toss them in there. And that the roly polies are really, really useful for that. She said that in her enclosure, they're really, really good for cleaning up waste, keeping fungus in check and cycling nutrients to enrich the soil for the plants.
Christian: Yeah, so I guess the key here is to not have an animal in there that would eat the roly polies.
Ellen: She mentioned that, you know, for people who keep things like tarantulas or millipedes or something like that that would bother to eat the roly polies, then yes, they would totally do that.
Christian: Well, but here's the thing. If you have just one clutch of roly polies hatching a tank, that's a huge number of those little guys, isn't it?
Ellen: I would imagine that at that point there just wouldn't be enough stuff for them to eat and they wouldn't...
Christian: Oh, That's where the cannibalism comes into play, I bet.
Ellen: Perfect. That's a self-solving problem.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: But uh, Laurel also mentioned that roly polies actually need calcium to keep their exoskeleton nice and strong. So she said that for her captive roly polies, she uses eggshells and cuttlefish bones as calcium supplements.
Christian: Where do the cuttlefish bones come from?
Ellen: So, cuttlefish bones are actually really, really common, bird owners give their birds cuttlefish bones. These are the white oval-shaped things. Yup. That's what that is.
Christian: You're blowing my mind. I didn't know cuttlefish... Wait, are these actually from cuttlefish?
Ellen: Yes. And I will relate with you on this because I also did not know that they were actual cuttlefish bones until she told me this like three days ago, and I freaked out because I worked at a pet store where I gave cuttle bones to birds on a daily basis for two years in a row, and not once did it click in my head that those were actual cuttlefish bones.
Christian: I'm still working on the fact that cuttlefish even have bones.
Ellen: Well, it comes from the cuttlefish.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: It's not exactly the same as our bones, but it's kind of an internal shell inside of their body that helps them float. A lot of bird owners feed them to their birds for calcium supplements, and apparently they're good for roly polies too.
Christian: That is insane.
Ellen: Yeah, I, I'm not kidding when I say that I handled them every single day for two years in a row and never even once realized that they come from actual cuttlefish. Did not know that. So that's the roly poly.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Yeah, I just, I feel like a lot of people probably have handled them many times in their life and probably have very fond memories associated with roly polies, probably of playing with them and digging them up out of the ground and throwing them at your siblings and doing all sorts of stuff like that as kids, so...
Christian: Eatin' em.
Ellen: I'm sorry, what?
Christian: Eatin' em.
Ellen: I saw somewhere on the internet... I saw on the internet that you can eat them, and that people sometimes cook them.
Christian: So...
Ellen: Oh no.
Christian: No. So pop culture references here. Um, do you remember the animated movie that was in Peru? Cusco's New...
Ellen: The Emperor's New Groove.
Christian: The Emperor's New Groove. Do you remember when they went to that restaurant and they had giant pill bugs- Sorry. Giant roly polies?
Ellen: Now, hold on. Were they pill bugs or where they pill millipedes? Pill millipedes are bigger.
Christian: No, these were giant. Bigger than any insects. So this was dramatized of course.
Ellen: Okay. I mean you could have just gone with the grubs in The Lion King, cause I'm pretty sure some of them were roly polies too.
Christian: Also A Bug's Life. Disney's A Bug's Life has two roly polies in there.
Ellen: Oh yeah! Roly polies in there!
Christian: They were acrobats!
Ellen: I forgot about that! Yeah. So I think that roly polies are very culturally important and I feel like people in, at least in our part of the country hold them a very high regard and have very fond memories of them and thoughts of roly polies. I think a lot of people love roly polies but maybe don't know that much about them. So hopefully now you do.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah.
Christian: Well thanks hun.
Ellen: No problem.
Christian: You blew my mind several times in the past 35-ish minutes.
Ellen: I'm glad I could. So before we move on to Christian's animal, I would like to take a really quick minute to mention that we have a Patreon. So if you want to help us grow and get better and better, you can support us on there and also get access to some cool stuff like a feed of the show with no ads in it and a patron discord and all sorts of really cool stuff, so come check us out at patrion.com/justthezooofus and for this week's episode, I want to thank our patrons, Brianna Feinberg, Krystina Sanders, and The Jungle Gym Queen.
Christian: Thanks y'all.
Ellen: Yeah, thank you everybody! All right, Christian, what do you have for us this week?
Christian: This week, I have the keel-billed toucan.
Ellen: Yessss! I love this bird.
Christian: The species was submitted by our friend Kyle Rauch.
Ellen: Thank you Kyle.
Christian: Yes, thank you.
Ellen: You can take it down a notch now.
Christian: So the scientific name for this one is Ramphastos sulfuratus. It also goes by the common name rainbow-billed toucan.
Ellen: Oh, how lovely.
Christian: For obvious reasons, when you see a picture of it. I'm getting my information for the keel-billed toucan from two different websites run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, one being Neotropical Birds, found at neotropical.birds.cornell.edu, and also All About Birds, found at allaboutbirds.org. Also from Animal Diversity Web, found at animaldiversity.org.
Ellen: University of Michigan's Museum of Zoology.
Christian: Cool.
Ellen: Yeah!
Christian: So a little bit of some stats about the keel-billed toucan.
Ellen: Yeah. Let me hear these stats.
Christian: The males average about 554 meters- sorry... Yes. 554 meters.
Ellen: WHAT.
Christian: Half a kilometer,
Ellen: This is like the 50-foot-tall quokka! So we've got a 50-foot-tall quokka, a half meter- half kilometer toucan... Fight.
Christian: I'm pretty sure it goes to the letter. Okay. So males average 554 millimeters in length...
Ellen: There we go.
Christian: Or 22 inches, whereas the females average 520 millimeters or 20 inches in length. They weigh around 400 grams, which is 14 ounces. So less than a pound. Their location extends from Southern Mexico to Northwestern Venezuela. So talking about Central America in the very northern part of South America.
Ellen: Very cool.
Christian: Yes. They belong to the taxonomic family Ramphastidae. Uh, their notable evolutionary relatives are other toucans. The family is known as the Neotropical near passerine bird family.
Ellen: Oh, that was a lot of words.
Christian: Yes. I'm gonna dunk right into it with the effectiveness.
Ellen: Yes.
Christian: I'm giving this birb an 8 out of 10 for effectiveness.
Ellen: That's good!
Christian: So it'\s main thing here is, unsurprisingly, it's big bill.
Ellen: Big ol' beak.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: Big ol' schnoz on him.
Christian: So for those that maybe have never seen a toucan...
Ellen: Have you eaten fruit loops before?
Christian: Have you played the latest generation of Pokemon RPG games?
Ellen: Oh, It's in there too. Lots of toucans.
Christian: Yes. So they're birds that fly, like most birds are prone to doing.
Ellen: We literally just talked about penguins. We JUST talked about penguins.
Christian: Sorry. All the good birds. And they have, so their feathers are mostly black. They have a big banana-shaped bill, takes up the majority of their face real estate. And just so you know, there are several kinds of toucans in this particular toucan has a very colorful beak. I imagine that's why this one was the specific one submitted to us.
Ellen: It's the most fabulous.
Christian: Yes, but more on that later. Talking about effectiveness now. So first of all, they use those big beaks to take the husks off fruits and nuts.
Ellen: What that beak do tho?
Christian: And I keep saying beak, but I think the appropriate term is bill.
Ellen: What that bill do tho?
Christian: I'm sure there's a scientific difference that I do not know. The length of that bill is useful for getting at fruit that is on branches that are too small to support the full weight of the bird.
Ellen: Oh, I see. That makes sense.
Christian: So people have have a couple of different theories about what that bill is and is not used for. A lot of times in the family, something like this would be used for attracting mates. Like in the case of the peacock, where the male peacocks have big showy, you know, tail feathers. But the thing is with the toucan, or at least this species of toucan, there's no real difference between the bills between male and female. So they don't think it's used for attracting mates.
Ellen: I have some ideas about what it's not used for.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Kebab skewers.
Christian: Correct.
Ellen: Air traffic signaling.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: That's as far as I got.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Do you have any?
Christian: I mean I know. I'm kind of at an advantage here.
Ellen: Of things it's not used for?
Christian: Laparoscopic surgery.
Ellen: Thank you. Was that so hard?
Christian: Now what's really interesting about the bill is one recent proposal on one of its uses comes from allaboutbirds.org, so one idea is that maybe it's used as a heat sink. So they put a toucan in front of a infrared camera and could see the dispersal of heat in the toucan, and they saw that the bill is significantly hotter than the rest of the bird.
Ellen: Oh really?
Christian: So the thought is it's doing the same kind of thing that the ears are used for in elephants.
Ellen: You know, that makes sense.
Christian: Yeah. So they'll disperse heat into that extremity, and then it's used as a heat sink like in a computer. And then that heat is transferred to the air.
Ellen: You said a heat sink like in a computer?
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: That's over my head. I don't know what you're talking about.
Christian: So for those unfamiliar, lots of CPUs- the main thing in your computer- it's the CPU chip, and then on top of that sits a heat sink. Think of it as a series of metal plates that sit on top of your CPU. And then on top of that is a fan. Usually.
Ellen: I know about that part.
Christian: Yes. So the fan is moving air over those metal plates, and those metal plates are in contact with that CPU. So the heat transfers from the CPU into the heat sink, which has a ton more surface area than the CPU itself. So with all that surface area, it's able to disperse that heat better than the CPU itself.
Ellen: Like a toucan's bill.
Christian: Yes! A toucan's bill is big, right?
Ellen: It has the more surface area.
Christian: It's almost a third of its entire length.
Ellen: That actually makes sense.
Christian: Right.
Ellen: I wasn't expecting a computer science lesson.
Christian: Right? And then finally, another thing they use that big bill for is when they have arguments over who gets to use a tree for nesting.
Ellen: I love that.
Christian: So they either use natural or woodpecker-made holes in trees to nest. They don't normally roost in those, but they will nest in those.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: And when there's a clash over who gets the tree, they, they smack their bills against each other.
Ellen: That's so funny.
Christian: It's very lightweight. Cause you know, they still have to fly.
Ellen: Yeah.
Christian: So I imagine it's an interesting sound that that would make. They swallow pitted fruits whole.
Ellen: Pitted fruits meaning like...
Christian: An example would be a peach. But not a peach. Cause they don't have peaches.
Ellen: They swallow it whole, what do they do with pit?
Christian: Can you guess?
Ellen: Ooh, fun game! Do they just digest it?
Christian: So, two things happen, and it depends on the size.
Ellen: Whatever you're about to tell me is gonna just destroy me.
Christian: No, no, no, no. So one, I think a lot of people can guess: if it's small enough, it just passes through their digestive track.
Ellen: Sure.
Christian: They poop it out.
Ellen: No big deal.
Christian: Right. And that helps with dispersing seeds and stuff and et cetera.
Ellen: That's exactly what the plant wants them to do.
Christian: Yes. The other option: also dispersal, but it's different. So if it's too big, what it'll do is after it's done digesting all the fruit flesh from around the pit, it just regurgitates the pit.
Ellen: Oh, blech. Nope, don't need this.
Christian: Yep. And neither of those things hurt the bird.
Ellen: Oh it's gotta be, you gotta have a pretty tough kind of digestive system then.
Christian: And probably a very good judge of the size of things that it's eating. Cause if it hurts going down, it's probably gonna hurt coming out.
Ellen: Gross.
Christian: Either way.
Ellen: I've seen really cool videos of toucans throwing their food up and like, catching it out of the air.
Christian: Yep. That's kind of how they eat. They'll pick things up with the, the end of their bills and then just kind of flip their head back and swallow it. So that's what they're doing. They're swallowing.
Ellen: It's so cuuute. It's so cute! That makes sense. I mean they can't...
Christian: It's how I take pills.
Ellen: They can't exactly chew things.
Christian: And while they eat mostly fruit, it also sometimes eats eggs and hatchlings of other birds along with small lizards, snakes and beetles.
Ellen: Oh...
Christian: Mostly fruit. But it gets a little bit of protein from animal sources.
Ellen: Mostly fruit, but also, smidge of infanticide. You've got to keep the diet varied.
Christian: So that's effectiveness. 8 Out of 10.
Ellen: Okay. Good bird.
Christian: Ingenuity: 7 out of 10. So when they're nesting, they tend to come back to the same tree.
Ellen: Oh, okay.
Christian: I thought that was interesting, to have that, enough mental capacity to remember where the tree was.
Ellen: It's home base.
Christian: Here's something they do with those regurgitated fruit pits: they use them to make nests.
Ellen: Whaaat! Really!
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: This is like penguins with their pebbles.
Christian: So to quote Neotropical Birds, the article I was using: "as a result, the young are reared in a nest with a cobblestone lining of fruit pits the size of large marbles."
Ellen: Whaaat! That's crazy!
Christian: Right?
Ellen: That's awesome. Like they don't necessarily need to go gather all of the nest materials. They can just make some. That's so cool! What an interesting like... Resourcefulness kind of.
Christian: Yeah. I'm sure the seeds aren't happy because that's not what they wanted to do.
Ellen: Hey, wait a minute...
Christian: I'm a wall.
Ellen: I didn't want this at all.
Christian: This is like that movie 300. Oh, here's my favorite little thing about their ingenuity. I wasn't sure if I should count this as ingenuity, but I am.
Ellen: Sure.
Christian: They're known together in small groups of 6 to 22 individuals...
Ellen: That's a lot.
Christian: And they chase each other from branch to branch playing ball.
Ellen: No, they don't. Stop it.
Christian: One bird throws a fruit in the air and another one catches it.
Ellen: NO.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: They do this by themselves?!
Christian: In groups of like 6 to 22, yeah.
Ellen: I mean like, I mean like they do this in the wild.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: What! That's the cutest thing I've ever heard!
Ellen: Right?
Ellen: I love it.
Christian: So I thought that was pretty smart. You don't really see animals that play a lot.
Ellen: I feel like engaging in play is a sign of some real cognitive activity. Right? Like doing things for pleasure instead of just because you need to do them to not die.
Christian: Yeah. Basically.
Ellen: Man. How charming is that?
Christian: Right? That's my favorite part.
Ellen: Yeah.
Christian: On to the last: aesthetics. Full 10 out of 10.
Ellen: Yes, absolutely.
Christian: I feel like any less than I would have been burned at the stake by our listeners. Specifically Kyle.
Ellen: And also me, your wife who's sitting right next to you and you're well within stabbing range.
Christian: I'm just kidding. I agree with this score. First and foremost, pretty colors. And the colors are both on their bill and their body in general. So the colors for their body, mostly black, but also with yellow, red, white and blue because their skin is blue. So you'll notice that their feet are blue, and then the area around their eyes don't have feathers. Like the, like a very small area around their eyes don't have feathers, but their skin is blue so it adds a little blue accent in there.
Ellen: I don't think I ever really realized that their skin was blue. For a really long time, so way, way, way back in high school I did an art portfolio and one of the things I did for my art portfolio was a painting of a toucan.
Christian: Oh yeah?
Ellen: And it was a keel-billed toucan, it was the one you're talking about.
Christian: Oh, cool.
Ellen: So I actually do kind of remember having to make the feathers black, but also blue because they have that sort of sheen to them. Kind of like when we talked about the ravens, how they're black, but in the right light they also look blue.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: But for a while toucans are kind of my go-to. Like if I was just bored and I wanted to doodle something I'd usually draw a toucan, and then also they became kind of my, like, if I got new art supplies and I wanted to test them out, I would usually test them with the toucan because it's a really good way to test out all of your colors. But it's also a good way to test out your tonals and seeing how like faithful your shades of black are.
Christian: That's cool, that's cool. So you especially know this, so they primarily have black feathers and then the part of their feathers that are, like their neck, what we would describe as their neck and the upper breast are yellow and then on their underside towards the tail they kind of have a splash of red feathers and white feathers.
Ellen: I like that they kind of look like they have like a bib. It's like a little bib.
Christian: Yeah. So that's just their body feathers, cause then there's the bill. So the bill is a huge splash of color.
Ellen: It just pops off.
Christian: Yeah. Which is where they get their name. Green, red, orange and blue. All of those colors in there.
Ellen: Got everything.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: This is like, there's that concept in fashion where like, if you're gonna wear a big bold statement accessory, you should pair it with a subtle and understated outfit. They've got like the plain all-black, but then they've paired it with like this bright flashy beak.
Christian: Yeah, yeah. It's very good.
Ellen: It's very aesthetically successful.
Christian: Yep. And other toucans out there will have a similar color, but their beak is primarily just red and orangeish colors without all those bright accents in there.
Ellen: They're so cute.
Christian: Yep.
Ellen: So pretty.
Christian: So speaking of which, my next point for aesthetics was, you know, cute face. I think their faces are cute.
Ellen: They are! It's all nose.
Christian: And the eyes are cute too. I like their curvy shape. I just like the curve of their silhouette of like their overall...
Ellen: It does give them kind of an S shape almost. You know what I mean?
Ellen: Yeah, yeah.
Ellen: Like it sticks out. So it kind of gives them almost an S shape to their body.
Christian: I just had a weird thought of like a scythe, that was actually a toucan. OC do not steal.
Ellen: I was about to say, like, you might encounter this in your next D&D campaign that I'm DMing for you.
Christian: Toucan't possibly win against me.
Ellen: That would work really well against an adventuring party of two people.
Christian: Yes. Uh, final aesthetics point: their toes. Their toes are arranged in what's called the zygodactyl pattern, which means two forward and two back.
Ellen: Very nice.
Christian: Yes. So this is common in arboreal birds, or birds that would be doing a lot of walking through tree canopies. Toucans primarily do that. They walk and hop along branches. They do fly, but that's not for super long distances. It's like it's like to cross a river or a valley or something like that.
Ellen: From tree to tree.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: I mean, they're living in very densely forested areas so they don't really have to fly for very long distances.
Christian: And they're not migratory or anything, either. A couple of little miscellaneous items about the toucan. So, first and foremost, they are rated the least concern on the IUCN Red List.
Ellen: Oh, phew.
Christian: Which is surprising, right? Something that exotic you would think maybe might be in danger.
Ellen: They're also very popular though.
Christian: Yes. So while they are at least concern, their population is on the decline, mostly due to habitat loss. But still of least concern. Primarily because they just have a huge population in that area. There used to be a problem with the illegal pet trade, but since then there are very experienced, I suppose- the industry where they raise these birds in captivity now and breed them in captivity, so there's no reason to take them out of the wild.
Ellen: Sure.
Christian: That being said, they are very popular and very expensive pets. Couple thousand dollars, from what I understand.
Ellen: Are they legal to have as pets?
Christian: I don't know, honestly.
Ellen: Oh. Okay.
Christian: I'm sure. Like...
Ellen: It's just an exotic bird, right?
Christian: Yeah. If, I mean getting through the proper channels, I'm sure. You can't just go take one out of the wild though, I'm sure.
Ellen: Now, legality of keeping a pet and morality of keeping a pet are very different things.
Christian: Very true.
Ellen: There are a lot of animals that it is totally legal to have them as your pet, but don't do it though.
Christian: So funny thing, a lot of places in their native habitat, will just allow them to be out and about. Like they can come and go as they please in the houses.
Ellen: Oh, I like that! I would definitely invite one into my house. If they lived here, I would keep my windows open all the time.
Christian: They are in monogamous pairs when when they breed.
Ellen: Oh! So sweet. Is this like serial monogamy like we talked about with the penguin where it's like one partner at a time?
Christian: You know, I was trying to look for that specification because of, you know what you were saying about penguins. I couldn't find anything more specific than just saying monogamous pairs.
Ellen: Okay. If you are out there listening and you study toucans and you know about their mating habits, please follow up with us and we will include your expertise.
Christian: Yes. Oh, while I was doing this research, I learned a new word: altricial.
Ellen: Altricial.
Christian: Yes. So this describes something that is hatched or born in an undeveloped state, and requires care and feeding by the parents.
Ellen: A baby.
Ellen: Yeah. So a toucan is one of them. Humans are another. So the opposite of altricial is precocial.
Ellen: Precocial. Okay. Like a precocious youngster.
Ellen: Yes. Actually the same root. An example of this are horses.
Ellen: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. How they're born walking. Okay, that makes sense.
Christian: And finally, the toucan is the national bird of Belize, which is a country in Central America, it shares a border to the North with Mexico.
Ellen: Very cool. Awesome. I hope that someday we get to see some. We've seen some in zoos, I think.
Christian: I think so too, but maybe not this specific species.
Ellen: We have seen toucans in zoos, but they were not specifically the keel-billed toucan. But I would really like to see some in the wild someday, so whenever we make our way down to Central or South America, I'm sure we'll see some, we'll have to make a point to visit.
Christian: Yeah. That's all I have.
Ellen: All right. I don't have any audience responses either, so I guess we're just blowing through this one. It's okay cause we talked for a really long time.
Christian: We had some good animals.
Ellen: Yeah, we were content only this episode.
Christian: Definitely no goofs, not at the beginning.
Ellen: This is strictly serious. We are factual information only. We do not goof around here.
Christian: Mhmm. No goofs.
Ellen: No goofs allowed. This is a no-goof zone. Alright, well that wraps things up for us on this week's Just the Zoo of Us. Thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for everybody who's been listening, thank you to everybody who's been recommending us to your friends and family and coworkers and hairdressers and dentists and lawyers.
Christian: That person you met on the street yesterday.
Ellen: Yeah.
Christian: Should probably follow up with that person.
Ellen: Yeah. Actually make sure you give them your personal phone number. Thank you also to everybody who has been hanging out with us in our Facebook group. We love y'all. Y'all are the best, and everybody in our sort of social media circles. You can connect with us on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram by searching the title of the show. That'll get you right to us. If you have an animal species that you want to hear us review, you can get those to me at Ellen@justthezooofus.com, and for our last note, we would like to thank Louie Zong for allowing us to use his song "Adventuring" from his album, Bee Sides.
Ellen: Yes. Thank you so much.
Christian: We love it. You want to hear it?
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Alright, here it is.
Christian: Bye y'all.
Ellen: Bye!