How Dolphins Work!

E-e-e-eek! E-e-e-eek, we say! Adding to the tradition of our wonderful animal episodes we contribute this amazing installment on one of the all-time great sea creatures, the dolphin! Attach a sponge to your rostrum and dive in with Josh and Chuck! See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed Human.

• 0:04Josh Clark?

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• 1:49Josh Clark?

  And welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh and there's Chuck. Jerry's here, too. And this is Stuff You Should Know, where we use a lot of up speak. So here we go.

• 2:02Speaker 03

  Was that your dolphin?

• 2:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah. I hadn't practiced for a while, so it was a little rusty.

• 2:09Speaker 03

  Hey, can I just very quickly mention a correction?

• 2:13Josh Clark?

  Oh, sure.

• 2:13Speaker 03

  I'm freewheeling it here, but we got a lot of emails from people that are

• 2:18Speaker 03

  in disbelief that we didn't know it's chassis.

• 2:22Josh Clark?

  Oh, I knew it was chassis. I used it correctly.

• 2:24Speaker 03

  Oh, everyone said that we were saying chassis and every time I said it, you were like, yeah.

• 2:29Josh Clark?

  I didn't, I would, I just didn't correct you.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  Oh, well, I appreciate that.

• 2:34Josh Clark?

  Sometimes you, you don't like to be corrected or else you're like, I know, I'm just saying it that way. So I just didn't. Not to, not to leave you out there twisting or anything like that.

• 2:45Speaker 03

  Okay, interesting.

• 2:46Josh Clark?

  If you want, maybe we can retake this whole thing and I'll just, I'll just take it with you. How about that?

• 2:51Speaker 03

  No, that's all right. Uh, anyway, I didn't know it was pronounced chassis. Now that I hear it, I've heard that word, but I'm not a car guy, so I don't know these things.

• 2:59Josh Clark?

  Well, I feel really terrible. I mean, I, I feel terrible. I'm very sorry. I'll, I'll correct you every single time from now on. Okay?

• 3:07Speaker 03

  Great.

• 3:07Josh Clark?

  Okay. I'll just bring the podcast to a screeching halt and be like, no, that was wrong. Okay.

• 3:14Speaker 03

  That's really funny. What a twist.

• 3:16Josh Clark?

  Man, I'm sorry, Chuck. Uh, so, uh, we're talking about dolphins. Is that how it's pronounced?

• 3:23Speaker 03

  I think so.

• 3:25Josh Clark?

  Okay. That's how we should say it then. I'm pretty excited about this one, Chuck, because as everybody knows, dolphins are awesome. And we're going to talk about all the reasons why they're awesome. That's pretty much the, the gist of this episode.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, you know, dolphins are, uh, marine mammals. I guess we should start there. And that entails a whole host of things that we're going to go over. It's not, it's not just some fish. But they technically are cetaceans. And that's a marine mammal along with, uh, 80 other types of species, including whales. Uh, and if you think porpoises are the same, it's, it's in that same species. So relax.

• 4:06Josh Clark?

  Right. And I just realized Chuck, I don't have any of my notes here, so I could try to wing it, or you can just wait a second and I can go get my notes.

• 4:15Speaker 03

  Uh, go get your notes and I'll just continue and no one will be any the wiser.

• 4:20Josh Clark?

  And then you can fill me in when I get back.

• 4:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 4:23Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  Uh, there are 40 plus species of dolphin and they're in the family of oceanic dolphins or Delphinidae. And there's also river dolphins. So I know everyone's out there saying, hey, there's river dolphins out there. There aren't many. There's four river, not just four, but four kinds of river dolphins and each one is just one species. So those are the river dolphins.

• 4:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I've always found that so weird. I mean, I know that taxonomically you're supposed to really kind of stick to it, but there's got to be a better way, you know?

• 4:55Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. But we're, I mean, we're going to talk a little bit about other kinds, but we're mainly going to be talking about the bottlenose, uh, of which there are about 600,000 because the bottlenose dolphin is the one that everyone is most familiar with and the ones that are on TV and unfortunately, and, uh, dolphinarians.

• 5:13Josh Clark?

  Uh, yeah, where they keep dolphins as hostages?

• 5:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, and make them perform tricks for, for dopes.

• 5:20Josh Clark?

  It's crazy. Um, yeah. Uh, so yeah, bottlenose are the money dolphins. It's what everybody's talking about. Uh, and that's what we're going to talk about. And they, uh, I think they're one of the more studied ones too, even though the common ones, there's so many more of them. But we know that dolphins, bottlenose dolphins, and yeah, I think basically when we're saying dolphins, unless we specify, we're talking about bottlenose dolphins. How's that for some guardrails?

• 5:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. And also, speaking of guardrails, uh, we might as well just go ahead and say, I know there'll be plenty of kids listening because they love our animal episodes.

• 5:53Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  And the dolphin episode gets a little, you know?

• 5:57Josh Clark?

  A little blue.

• 5:58Speaker 03

  Uh, not blue necessarily. It gets a little sexy here and there. Uh, but you know, uh, that's just the deal with dolphins.

• 6:06Josh Clark?

  Uh, okay. So, um, so yeah, so I think that was a pretty good COA, man, because it does get a little.

• 6:13Speaker 03

  I mean, hey, we're, I feel like this is all like scientific stuff, so.

• 6:17Josh Clark?

  All right.

• 6:18Speaker 03

  We should be able to handle it and kids should be able to handle it. But if there are any adults that are like, what are you talking about? Then, uh, do the little research first.

• 6:27Josh Clark?

  Right. Um, oh, so I think I was talking about how bottlenose dolphins are pretty well studied and that we know that they live for about 45 to 50 years.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, pretty good.

• 6:36Josh Clark?

  That's in the wild.

• 6:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, of course.

• 6:38Josh Clark?

  I know we've talked about plenty of animals over the years where they actually live longer in captivity, usually because they're just food for other larger animals. That's not true with dolphins. Their lifespan is usually much shorter. Uh, and that's controversial. We'll talk about that later. But we know that in the wild, 50 years, it's a pretty, pretty aged dolphin, if you think about it.

• 6:59Speaker 03

  No, agreed. That's a nice, long life, I think, for a sea creature.

• 7:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah. What more can they ask for? Stop complaining, dolphins.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  There was one supposedly, uh, that was 67 years old, presumed dead in 2017.

• 7:13Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 7:13Speaker 03

  My friend, I like to think that that dolphin is 75 right now.

• 7:17Josh Clark?

  Nice. I think that's a great way to look at things.

• 7:20Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:21Josh Clark?

  So, uh, do you kind of see dolphins closer to shore? Um, sometimes they are basically just out to sea. It depends on the species. Um, I think common dolphins stay fairly close to shore. Bottlenose will get right up on you, essentially. Um, the place where you and I used to live, kind of along the coast, in our backyard, dolphins would swim. There was like a lagoon. And, um, now that I've, I know a little more about dolphins, I always assumed they were bottlenose. But now that I know a little more, I think that they were probably common dolphins.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Well, there's a lot more. There's like millions and millions of those and about 600,000 bottlenose. So just statistically, you're probably right.

• 8:03Josh Clark?

  Precisely. And then the other reason that I think that is because they, they would basically put on a show chasing fish. They'd jump out of the water and they'd chase the fish backwards. It was really something to see. And apparently the common dolphins are more acrobatic than bottlenose.

• 8:17Speaker 03

  Okay. And they might've been playing, as we'll see. You never know.

• 8:20Josh Clark?

  It's possible. They might've been teasing the poor fish.

• 8:22Speaker 03

  If you are somewhere where you can look up safely on the computer an image, you should look up P A K I C E T U S, the, I guess, the Pecacetus.

• 8:33Josh Clark?

  You nailed it Chuck.

• 8:34Speaker 03

  That is the common ancestor that dolphins share that was around about 50 million years ago. And if you look at it and say, oh, wait a minute Chuck, this thing's walking around on four legs with fur. That's because that's where dolphins came from. It's pretty remarkable when you look at it. It looks like when you see the head of that thing, you can see the dolphin in it, you know?

• 8:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so dolphins are more closely related to hippopotami than they are like sea lions or otters or anything like that that are also aquatic or semi-aquatic. And it's because this, this Pecacetus basically moved to the water little by little by little. And it's one of those rare evolutions where we have like a complete fossil record from Pecacetus to dolphin. We know all of the iterations that went through over the tens and tens of millions of years. But that's, I mean, that's where dolphins came from. They were basically these wolf-sized creatures.

• 9:34Speaker 03

  Yeah. And one of them, I guess, spent a little extra time in the water and was like, you guys, this is fantastic. Like, you should come in here. We should all just stay a little longer. And then before you know it, their legs turned into flippers. I think it was like two or three days.

• 9:49Josh Clark?

  What's cool too is there, when dolphins are in the embryonic stage, they actually start to develop limbs.

• 9:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:58Josh Clark?

  Before the genes kick in and will actually kick off, I guess, and they stop developing and then get absorbed. But they're like in a stage of development, they, they start to grow limbs. So that's, I mean, it's a pretty good indication that that they used to be land mammals.

• 10:15Speaker 03

  Yeah, they have vestigial ears, as we'll see too, but I'll just, just kind of tease that out.

• 10:20Josh Clark?

  Right. And then the, so the speciation from land mammal to semi-aquatic mammal to fully aquatic mammal, the dolphin, was complete when somebody mentioned being wet to a dolphin. And the dolphin said, what is wet?

• 10:35Speaker 03

  Really?

• 10:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that was my, that was my understanding from the National History Museum.

• 10:41Speaker 03

  So, and like we said, they're gonna share some characteristics with land mammals, but they have a lot of really cool traits and some of these are like, you may know, and some of these are just, I mean, if you're wondering why people are obsessed with dolphins, it's not just because they go to a dolphin show and think they're awesome. Or maybe that's why you might be obsessed with them, listener. But there are so many remarkable, amazing facts about dolphins. They just kind of stack up. Like usually when we do animal episodes, there are like one or two like fact of the episodes, but this is just riddled with them.

• 11:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so let's, let's start. And also a big shout out, thanks to Kyle for helping us out with this one.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  Oh, Kyle, okay. Thanks, mate.

• 11:21Josh Clark?

  Or no, it's probably Keely, now that I think about it. I feel, I feel terrible, Chuck. I'm so sorry, man.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  So, that's okay. So they're placental mammals, so they're gonna, they're not gonna lay eggs like you might see a fish do in the water. They bear live young. And it depends on the species, but their pregnancies are gonna be between about 10 and 18 months. I don't think I mentioned while you were gone that orcas are, are part of this group or species?

• 11:51Josh Clark?

  Uh, family.

• 11:52Speaker 03

  Family, okay. I knew it was one of them.

• 11:54Josh Clark?

  They're actually dolphins. They're, they're not real whales.

• 11:57Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. So I think the orcas have the longest gestation period of about 18 months. But it's very cute because they're gonna nurse those calves, sometimes up to two years, at a minimum of six months, and those little babies stay with mama for up to five years.

• 12:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like toddlers. Isn't that adorable?

• 12:14Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:15Josh Clark?

  One thing that I hadn't considered is that, so dolphins nurse underwater.

• 12:19Speaker 03

  Wait a minute, do you think after your child passes toddlerhood, they're just sent out to the wild?

• 12:24Josh Clark?

  That was my understanding, from the National History Museum, again.

• 12:28Speaker 03

  Okay, great, great.

• 12:29Josh Clark?

  They're really misinforming me, apparently. So one thing I hadn't thought of as I was saying is that that a dolphin has to nurse underwater, which could be kind of hard. And then adding to the fact that they don't have lips that they can kind of latch on to a nipple with. It's a puzzler and it turns out that the way that they nurse is by rolling their tongue into essentially a straw.

• 12:52Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 12:53Josh Clark?

  And that's what they latch on to. And apparently we know that it's not the tastiest milk as far as a human palate is concerned, thanks to a scientist named Lilian Eichelberger, who I guess on a dare drank some dolphin milk and was like, it's fishy, oily, it lacks sweetness? No, sir, I don't like it.

• 13:14Speaker 03

  Yeah. And if you think that's a weird thing to do while studying dolphins, just strap in because

• 13:20Josh Clark?

  That's true.

• 13:21Speaker 03

  Things get much weirder. That was

• 13:22Josh Clark?

  For sure.

• 13:23Speaker 03

  1940. Things got weird in the 70s, as we'll see. But it's got like a milkshake consistency, which is why I guess the straw shaped tongue kind of fits, I guess.

• 13:32Josh Clark?

  I guess so.

• 13:33Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 13:34Josh Clark?

  So they have to swim, obviously. They don't have to swim to survive because they breathe air. So it's not like they need air to pass across gills to survive.

• 13:45Speaker 03

  Right. Good point.

• 13:46Josh Clark?

  They do swim quite a bit. They're known for it. Their bodies are actually streamlined to help them swim even more. One thing I also didn't know is that the pectoral fins, the ones that stand up off the back, where you're like shark, and then your friend says, no, it's dolphin. You go, oh, a dolphin. They are, they have no bone. I believe they're just cartilage. And those are, they use those to help to steer.

• 14:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. It's like a little steering unit. They have a layer of blubber. You associate blubber with whales, but the dolphin has blubber too, which is going to provide a little bit of buoyancy. If they haven't had food in a while, you know, just like humans do, they can sort of devour their own fat. Helps out with body heat. And then besides that steering, they have two horizontal flukes on the tail. So they move vertically. So that's another great way to tell a shark from a dolphin. Aside from just opening your eyeballs.

• 14:37Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 14:38Speaker 03

  I think they look quite different, but the shark, you know, has that vertical tail that sort of goes from side to side. The dolphins is flipped and to me, it looks like a more efficient system, but that's just a guess.

• 14:51Josh Clark?

  You'd think so. The sharks seem to do pretty well for themselves, though.

• 14:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, and real quick intro correction, I guess. The dorsal fin is the one on top, right?

• 15:02Josh Clark?

  Yes.

• 15:03Speaker 03

  Yeah, that's for the stability. The steering comes from those little side flippers, the pectoral fins.

• 15:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, okay. I definitely got that wrong. So to like reimagine it. Just imagine a kid running around with their arms sticking out like they're pretending to fly. Except dolphins do it for real and in the water. Those are the big differences.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  That's right. Or like a kid running with their arms to the side, like in the terrifying new movie Weapons.

• 15:27Josh Clark?

  Oh, don't tell me anything about it.

• 15:29Speaker 03

  That's funny that you always say that, even though I've never told you anything about anything.

• 15:34Josh Clark?

  Well, you just told me that. I just want you to stop right there.

• 15:38Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, it's on the poster.

• 15:39Josh Clark?

  Okay, all right. So yeah, I can't wait to see that movie. I'm very excited. And you said to see it in the theater, right?

• 15:46Speaker 03

  I mean, I recommend it. I was at a sold out 10:30 AM, so people are pretty hyped about it. But it was also kind of neat. There were at least 20 local Atlanta crew, as it turned out, because when the credits started rolling, they were all hanging out and like clapping for each other.

• 16:01Josh Clark?

  Oh, neat. That's very supportive. Did you know any of them?

• 16:05Speaker 03

  I did, but I didn't know until afterward when Emily said that my friend Stephanie worked on it. And I was like, oh, she might have been one of those people.

• 16:13Josh Clark?

  That's very cool. So yeah, I want to see that movie.

• 16:17Speaker 03

  Yeah, back to dolphins.

• 16:18Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So dolphins are also known for as far as they swim, they kind of jump in and out of the water and can go quite fast doing that. It's called porpoising, much to dolphin chagrin.

• 16:32Josh Clark?

  And it turns out it's not just porpoises and dolphins that swim like that. Penguins do too. And I was like, no way. This came from the National History Museum, so I had to go double check. And by God, I saw a video of penguins swimming super fast, faster than dolphins. And they were porpoising in and out of the water. It was really something to see.

• 16:51Speaker 03

  I, have you not seen that before?

• 16:55Josh Clark?

  Not that I know of. I mean, I forget stuff, so it's possible, but it seemed pretty shocking to me when I saw it.

• 17:01Speaker 03

  Dolphins are also pretty good smellers. They have a blowhole. It's basically like nostrils and it's above the frontal skull bones. And it's kind of cool because it connects right to their lungs. They're not mouth breathers, even though apparently they did find a mouth breathing Hector's dolphin, which are dolphins near New Zealand in 2015.

• 17:22Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 17:23Speaker 03

  So I don't know what that says about that guy, but he was a mouth breather. But that blowhole, like I said, is connected directly to the lungs and they can open it and close it with a nasal plug. And they can fill that thing up very, very fast, like in a fraction of a second, they can fill up their lungs through the blowhole. They only breathe five or six times a minute and they can't stay underwater all day, but they can stay down there for a few minutes at a time.

• 17:47Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. But if they sit down there too long and they run out of air, they can drown. They are air breathing mammals.

• 17:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, that's the saddest thing I could imagine.

• 17:57Josh Clark?

  Yeah, which we'll get to that later.

• 17:59Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 17:59Josh Clark?

  And the blowhole also does a really good job of expelling air because again, this is like, it's like our mouth breathing in and out, except on the top of our head. So when they breathe out, especially having been underwater for a little while, they're breathing out warm air into usually colder air, because the sea temperature is usually warmer than the surface temperature in a lot of cases. And it'll condense and that's what their, their spout is. It's like you can see it.

• 18:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's pretty cool. And apparently you can tell like different species apart by the like kind of spout they have, right?

• 18:37Josh Clark?

  Yep, from what I understand. I couldn't, but I think scientists can.

• 18:43Speaker 03

  Why don't you take the unihemispheric sleep? Because that's pretty remarkable and you haven't had a wowee.

• 18:47Josh Clark?

  Oh, thanks. Also, I have a correction that I want to put in too. Okay.

• 18:54Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 18:55Josh Clark?

  So, so we're talking about what dolphins do is unihemispheric sleep, which is because they are in danger of predation, because they don't stop and like, you know, fall to the bottom of the ocean. They actually have to keep going while they're sleeping. So what they do is shut down half of their brain and the other half just kind of keeps an eye on things. And then when the one brain, one side of the brain has had enough sleep, it switches over to the other hemisphere. And then that one takes its turn to sleep and the other one takes over to kind of stand guard.

• 19:30Speaker 03

  Yeah, that sleeping with one eye open is kind of an old like Western trope. But that's like so funny that dolphins literally do that.

• 19:37Josh Clark?

  Yeah, for sure. And that actually ties in Chuck, unihemispheric sleep to our Zizians episode because they were trying to figure out how to do that themselves, which seems to be impossible for humans from what I can tell. And by the way, stay tuned for listener mail because I have a correction related to the Zizians episode. So this is like a correction loused episode. Okay?

• 20:00Speaker 03

  All right. Should we take a break?

• 20:02Josh Clark?

  Yes, I think so.

• 20:03Speaker 03

  Okay, we'll come back with correction fest right after this.

• 20:19Josh Clark?

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• 23:07Speaker 03

  All right, we're back with more on dolphins. No more corrections, I promise. They have, and this is to me, another like fact of the show. They have incredible eyesight. They see really, really well within about 150 feet. And they do this because they have two kind of slightly flattened eyeballs on, you know, the sides of their head. When you look at a dolphin, they're kind of on the sides. And they see from both simultaneously. And then, like us with binocular vision, they stitch it together to see one thing. But what that results in is a 300 degree panoramic view.

• 23:40Josh Clark?

  Nice.

• 23:40Speaker 03

  Where they can see basically anywhere they want, except right above them.

• 23:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's their one blind spot is above them. And apparently, if they're trying to get a really good look at you, they'll tilt their head down and try to look at you like that. It's pretty cute.

• 23:55Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 23:56Josh Clark?

  So they actually do have really good eyesight underwater and above water. And the way that they can transition from a fairly dark environment to a bright, you know, sunny environment is because they have a double slit in their pupils. So when their pupils are wide open and say they're kind of dive, they've, they've dived deep and there's not a lot of light, so they're trying to capture all of it. It looks like they have two tiny pupils. But then as they come up to the surface and they get closer to the sun, one of their pupils or one of the slits closes and it narrows, so they don't take in quite as much light. So they can see pretty well. And they're apparently up to 150 feet. They have just really great eyesight from what we can tell.

• 24:41Speaker 03

  Yeah, and they, you know, it's important that they can do that out of the water because when they porpoise and jump out, they want to see everyone going, "Oh, my God, Larry, look."

• 24:53Speaker 03

  And then they give them a little wink.

• 24:54Josh Clark?

  Nice. Yeah, and it makes a ding sound.

• 24:57Speaker 03

  Uh, they have teeth and they're not like, you know, big scary shark teeth. They're kind of cone shaped.

• 25:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 25:04Speaker 03

  They eat fish, of course, crustaceans, squid. And they use their beak. It's also called a rostrum, but we just call it a beak.

• 25:11Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 25:12Speaker 03

  And, you know, they'll grip that prey and they swallow it whole. Uh, they, and they're smart enough to know, and we'll get to how smart they are later, but they're smart enough to know that they gotta swallow this fish head first. So they don't catch those spines on their throats. And if they come up against like a catfish or something that's got like really, you know, spiky spiny things coming off their head, they'll bite those heads off and eat the rest of it.

• 25:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I'll bet that's a sight to see.

• 25:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 25:37Josh Clark?

  Um, so they also have really good hearing, uh, which makes sense because they use echolocation, which we'll talk about, but they, um, have ear canals just like us, but they're totally useless. They're vestigial, um, they don't connect to anything. And in fact, they're plugged up with some pretty serious earwax that everybody just kinda considered a curiosity of, of whales and dolphins, that they have big ear plugs of earwax in their ear canals that don't connect to anything. And scientists realized like, oh, actually they put down layer after layer throughout their life and you can examine an earplug or a plug of earwax, uh, of a dolphin or a whale and pretty closely estimate how old it is, like you're counting tree rings.

• 26:21Speaker 03

  So cool.

• 26:22Josh Clark?

  I think so too.

• 26:23Speaker 03

  I love that. And they can also, you know, get into that earwax and, and, and analyze it and see what kind of like pollutants it was exposed to and stuff like that, maybe hormone fluctuations.

• 26:33Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 26:33Speaker 03

  Uh, so yeah, that's, that's pretty awesome. And that's just like fairly recent, right?

• 26:37Josh Clark?

  Uh, yeah, I don't know exactly when, but it is a fairly recent finding for sure. So, um, yeah, look for more talk about dolphin earwax in the future.

• 26:50Speaker 03

  They don't listen exactly like we do, but they they receive high-frequency sounds through, and this is a pretty good band name, Acoustic Fats, in their lower jaw, and that's going to vibrate through their skull. And they have these, you know, I guess they're unattached internal ear bones that pick up this this sound from the acoustic fats.

• 27:10Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so they can hear sounds, but it's also really useful for echolocation, too, where they send a click out and then wait for it to bounce off something and come back. It's received through that jawbone.

• 27:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:23Josh Clark?

  And apparently, because the teeth are so close to the nerves that transmit this this impulse, they think that the teeth might actually act as amplifiers. And I wonder if that has to do with the cone shape, too.

• 27:37Speaker 03

  Oh, maybe so.

• 27:39Josh Clark?

  Maybe.

• 27:39Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, a cone is a very common way to amplify a sound.

• 27:43Josh Clark?

  It is, like an old-timey cheerleader.

• 27:46Speaker 03

  Yeah, totally. Yeah, I mean, that's just another amazing fact. They, you know, navies use sonar, so it's, and we'll get into this a little bit more, but, you know, everyone has sort of heard the stories about the damage that's done by, you know, ships and navies and exploding things underwater.

• 28:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, one of the largest dolphin strandings took place because of sonar. There was a big multinational naval exercise in the Arabian Sea in 2009.

• 28:15Speaker 03

  I remember that, yeah.

• 28:16Josh Clark?

  And 200 dolphins just stranded themselves, just trying to get away from the horrible sound. So, yeah, we've talked about this before. It's a real issue that's just, nothing's being done about it.

• 28:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, yeah, there's a lot of sadness in this episode, for sure. They do vocalize, you know, you just rewind and listen to Josh at the beginning, if you want to hear exactly what it sounds like. Don't bother going to YouTube or anything. They vocalize with whistles and pops and braze. They they make these sounds with something called phonic lips, and those are near the blowhole.

• 28:52Josh Clark?

  That's a good one, too.

• 28:53Speaker 03

  Did you say band name?

• 28:55Josh Clark?

  That's a good one, yeah.

• 28:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. Sonic Youth and Flaming Lips got together for a superband.

• 29:01Speaker 03

  I just saw the flaming lips and they were great. I hadn't seen them in years.

• 29:04Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 29:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's really, really good.

• 29:05Josh Clark?

  I've never seen them. I'm sure their shows are pretty great.

• 29:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's pretty fun. But they have a larynx at the base of the blowhole and that larynx is going to be able to sort of move and modulate sound by letting air kind of go through at different rates of speed.

• 29:19Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And then they also have something called a melon, which is a big mass of fat in their forehead, which is

• 29:24Speaker 03

  Melon head.

• 29:25Josh Clark?

  Pretty, yeah, it's pretty characteristic of dolphins' look. But that melon is actually able to focus sound like a lens. It, the little fatty lump moves around. They can move it, which is pretty cool. Like those people who can move their forehead up and down.

• 29:41Speaker 03

  Right.

• 29:42Josh Clark?

  I think that's essentially what they're doing and it focuses the sound, including their echolocation.

• 29:49Speaker 03

  Yeah. And get this, here's another fact of the episode. I'll take this one. You can take the next one.

• 29:55Josh Clark?

  Okay.

• 29:55Speaker 03

  They can use this to basically name each other. They can broadcast their identity and their location to other dolphins because they have signature whistles. So they come up with their own whistle. They make that sound and everyone knows that's Josh over there. Josh the Dolphin.

• 30:13Josh Clark?

  Yeah. My, my name sounds like

• 30:17Josh Clark?

  Indolphin.

• 30:19Speaker 03

  And, and talk about what mommies do too. That's another wowee.

• 30:21Josh Clark?

  Well, they found that they use baby talk. They use higher frequency whistles and essentially use baby talk with their own calves, which is adorable.

• 30:30Speaker 03

  Yeah. Are we at echolocation finally?

• 30:34Josh Clark?

  I think so. This is a pretty cool. This is, this is the last fact. The rest of the stuff we're going to talk about is so dry. You might as well just stop the episode.

• 30:41Speaker 03

  No, not true. But you take this because it's a wowee. It's essentially just like bats, right?

• 30:45Josh Clark?

  It is. And they figured out that bats and dolphins are essentially not at all related. So they, they developed pretty much identical forms of echolocation independently.

• 30:57Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:58Josh Clark?

  It's, it's an example of convergent evolution. But what they do is they produce these clicks. They use the melon to focus those things like a laser. And they can not only, so they're bouncing a sound wave off of something. It's coming back. And then it is translated into a mental map. So essentially they're seeing, they're experiencing a form of vision like we would think of it, but they're doing it through, through sonar, essentially their own form of sonar.

• 31:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 31:26Josh Clark?

  And they, it's like really, really accurate, right?

• 31:31Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, uh, they've done some studies and they found that they were able to distinguish different, uh, disc sizes, uh, by as little as one tenth of a centimeter or four hundredths of an inch.

• 31:42Josh Clark?

  Right, which is very small. And I, I thought that was weird. One tenth of a centimeter. I was like, that sounds familiar. And then I realized it's a millimeter. I don't know why anyone would put it like that. That's why you have the metric system.

• 31:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, well, you should ask Kyle.

• 31:57Josh Clark?

  Isn't that bizarre?

• 31:58Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 32:00Josh Clark?

  So that their, their echolocation is quite, quite amazing. Um, and I've seen also that they can, they can see internal organs in other animals. That's how penetrative, I guess, their, their echolocation isn't just how nuanced it is.

• 32:19Speaker 03

  I know Predator is, is heat based, but I just, that's what I think of.

• 32:23Josh Clark?

  That's funny you say that. I watched that two days ago.

• 32:26Speaker 03

  The OG?

• 32:27Josh Clark?

  Yeah. And I was like, this is definitely tied with, um, I guess Commando for Schwarzenegger's best movie.

• 32:36Speaker 03

  I saw Predator, the original one, but I didn't like follow up with the whole Predator universe.

• 32:43Josh Clark?

  No, I didn't either. I, I just watched the first one again. I was like, man, this is good.

• 32:47Speaker 03

  I think those new ones are supposed to be good. That Prey and then that other one coming up.

• 32:51Josh Clark?

  Oh, really? They're supposed to be good?

• 32:53Speaker 03

  That's what I heard.

• 32:54Josh Clark?

  Isn't there like a Predator versus Jason? Didn't it get to like off the, as off the rails as that?

• 32:59Speaker 03

  They did Predator versus Alien, I think.

• 33:01Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 33:02Speaker 03

  I didn't see that either. And I love the Alien universe too.

• 33:05Josh Clark?

  I guarantee Danny McBride's in there.

• 33:07Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 33:10Speaker 03

  Uh, so dolphins are very social and, and that's one of the reasons also that people love them because you often see them swimming in, in large pods and seeming like they're having a good time together. It's because they basically are. Um, pods can be as small as two or up to a thousand, but generally they're between 40 and 60.

• 33:28Josh Clark?

  Mm hmm.

• 33:29Speaker 03

  And they can form very long time social relationships.

• 33:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's different kinds of pods. There's like, uh, you know, the Pod, the original one, there's a bunch of different dolphins that um some have familial ties, some don't. There's juvenile pods where they uh the kids reach, I guess, the end of toddler stage and they're like, go on, go form your own pod. So a bunch of them about the same age will form a pod together. There's bachelor pods, which is usually two, sometimes three males that essentially just form their own jam and cruise around together, um sometimes forming lifelong friendships. Um and all of them have their advantages, like, it's easier to hunt, it's easier to defend against something trying to kill you.

• 34:11Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:12Josh Clark?

  It's easier to pass down knowledge from one generation to another, which we'll talk about in a second. So there's all sorts of advantages, but because of their social nature, they do have a lot of traits that you're like, wow, that's really human like.

• 34:26Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. Uh, this is uh, I told Emily about this one and she's like, well, that's BS. But this is uh, this is sometimes what happens. It's it's fairly rare, but sometimes males will team up and steal a female dolphin from another pod and basically, you know, keep her captive and prevent her from returning. Uh, and it it looks like what they think is going on is like they have a situation where they need a female because their long gestation period is uh and lactation keeps them from being available to breed for sometimes years at a time. So they're like, we gotta breed. We're gonna go take her and keep her here.

• 35:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, there's this high competition for females. So it's not the most tasteful dolphin fact around. Um, so we'll follow that one up with a more heartwarming one, where they also um are have been observed in plenty of instances to to engage in altruistic behavior, like social behavior where they

• 35:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:25Josh Clark?

  don't leave behind like sick or injured friends.

• 35:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, go ahead. Tell them about that one thing.

• 35:31Josh Clark?

  I think this was in the mid two, two thousand aughts, I think, whatever. There was a group of 11 dolphins that essentially swam together to form a raft with their injured um companion in the middle to keep them from from like sinking and dying. Yeah, and I mean, that's, that's pretty amazing altruistic behavior. I think they've also seen other ones do that, too. It's not like this is a one-time thing.

• 36:00Speaker 03

  Right.

• 36:01Josh Clark?

  That's a pretty, I mean, there's a lot of animals that are out there like, oh, you're sick. Good luck dying, we're moving on.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  Yeah, or I'll eat you.

• 36:09Josh Clark?

  Exactly, yeah. Dolphins don't do that. They try to take care of their peeps.

• 36:13Speaker 03

  Amazing. All right, I say we take our second break.

• 36:16Josh Clark?

  Oh, okay.

• 36:17Speaker 03

  And we come back with more on the amazing dolphin right after this.

• 36:33Josh Clark?

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• 36:55Josh Clark?

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• 38:06Josh Clark?

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• 38:34Josh Clark?

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• 39:22Josh Clark?

  So Chuck, one of the great things about dolphins is that we know that they play. It's not anthropomorphizing. It's, it's, they're playing. Juvenals play with one another. They sometimes play with their parents. They'll swim around in the head of another dolphin and just kind of tease them. We talked about them teasing fish earlier. What is that all about?

• 39:44Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean, sometimes they've been observed doing that. Like they'll go up and not eat a fish, but they'll like get the fish's tail in its mouth and being like, like, kind of like, I got your nose. And then they'll swim away and the fish is like, what just happened?

• 39:55Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and then swimming porpoising in the waves of ships that are traveling fairly fast. They think essentially that's for, for thrills and kicks.

• 40:04Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 40:05Josh Clark?

  That's so cool.

• 40:06Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's pretty cool.

• 40:07Josh Clark?

  There are also gay dolphin behaviors as well, where those male friends for life in the bachelor pods, they'll have sex.

• 40:17Speaker 03

  I mean, isn't that the whole point of the Bachelor pod?

• 40:20Josh Clark?

  I think so.

• 40:21Speaker 03

  You know?

• 40:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that and playing video games together afterward.

• 40:24Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly. Yeah, I mean, they, they, this is where, you know, it gets a little sexy, but they, um, basically on a daily basis, they've observed dolphins exhibiting, uh, what's called non-conceptive sexual behavior. So they're not trying to reproduce, they're getting together and having a good time for the fun of it.

• 40:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, and that, uh, NCSB for the churchgoers, um, that also includes masturbation. Apparently captive dolphins do that every day, which makes sense because they've got nothing else to do. So they're just kind of bored, but they will use walls, uh, other dolphins, they'll use, uh, trainers sometimes for stimulation. Um, yeah, and that actually happens.

• 41:09Speaker 03

  Yeah, I saw too, they might lean up against a washing machine from time to time.

• 41:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 41:15Josh Clark?

  Pretty good. Is that real? Is that just a trope or is that real?

• 41:19Speaker 03

  I'm sure it's happened.

• 41:23Speaker 03

  Uh, all right, let's talk, let's clean this thing up. Well, actually, we can't clean it up because we're about to talk about something else like that. Uh, we're talking about dolphins' intelligence and we know they're smart. Um, and a lot of that comes from a guy named Dr. John C. Lilly in the 1960s, who really put dolphins on the map in a bigger way by saying that they're probably as intelligent as we are. Um, he did some pretty awful experience, uh, experiments, like injecting them with LSD. Uh, he mapped, um, unsedated dolphins' cerebral cortex with probes.

• 41:56Josh Clark?

  Ooh.

• 41:57Speaker 03

  Uh, and he was involved in a very infamous experiment in 1963. I said it was the seventies, it was the sixties.

• 42:05Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 42:06Speaker 03

  When he got a woman named Margaret Howell Lovett and paired her with a dolphin named Peter in a flooded apartment so they could live together. And learn more about each other.

• 42:20Josh Clark?

  Yeah, so Lily was obsessed with the idea that dolphins could learn English, not just to understand it, but to speak it. Because sometimes apparently they'll mimic people's people speaking a little bit with one of their squeaks. So he's like, they clearly want to communicate. That's why he injected him with LSD. That's why he had Peter live with Margaret. And she was supposed to teach him how to say hello, Margaret. Apparently, though, the lessons would get interrupted because Peter was rather randy dolphin. He was captive after all. So Margaret Howe Lovett became known as the woman who would manually satisfy.

• 43:05Speaker 03

  Relieve?

• 43:06Josh Clark?

  Relieve. And she was like, yes, I realize this is a very odd behavior. And apparently Hustler picked this up and wrote all about it. This crazy, this crazy thing that was going on. And she was like, look, I'm trying to actually interact with the dolphin, teach the dolphin this. And Peter just can't focus on anything else. So it's like an itch, you scratch it and then you move on. And of course, that's what everybody talked about. But

• 43:32Speaker 03

  Right.

• 43:32Josh Clark?

  Eventually, the the funding dried up and Peter was essentially just kicked out of the apartment, is separated from Margaret, who he'd essentially adopted as either a pod member, or his girlfriend or something. He had a very strong attachment to her. And they just ripped him away from her. And it did not go very well.

• 43:54Speaker 03

  No, he did not say so long and thanks for all the fish. He very sadly appeared to had taken his own life. He just kind of sunk himself to the bottom and didn't breathe anymore.

• 44:05Josh Clark?

  Yeah. How sad is that?

• 44:07Speaker 03

  Oh, dude, I mean, you put this dolphin in an apartment with this woman, and then that happens?

• 44:12Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 44:12Speaker 03

  And then he seemingly kills himself?

• 44:14Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 44:15Speaker 03

  Good God.

• 44:17Josh Clark?

  Yeah, I mean, if you ever see a dolphin in captivity, it's it's a really horrible thing to see. Especially if it's like, just indoors. It's just, it's worse than than other animals, I think. And I don't think any animal should be kept in captivity. But dolphins seem to be, it's just worse, you know?

• 44:37Speaker 03

  Yeah, I mean,

• 44:38Josh Clark?

  To me.

• 44:38Speaker 03

  When you're talking about an ocean dwelling species, that's it's a big area.

• 44:44Josh Clark?

  Right, yeah.

• 44:46Speaker 03

  But they are smart, sort of a long way of getting around to saying, we know they're super smart. We've seen their vocalizations and their social relationships and how they can learn and mimic things.

• 44:55Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 44:56Speaker 03

  But, you know, saying like they're as smart as humans is just a weird... People should stop comparing animals to humans like that.

• 45:03Josh Clark?

  Yeah, that's a great point, Chuck. I mean, they're their own thing. Let's understand them on their own terms.

• 45:08Speaker 03

  Exactly. Meet them where they're at, as they say.

• 45:10Josh Clark?

  We do know they use tools. There is just, there's some dolphins that have been shown to basically attach a sponge to their rostrum, their beak or their schnoz, when they're hunting for food or foraging for food on the seafloor to basically cushion it. Isn't that neat?

• 45:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's amazing. Like a little bumper.

• 45:30Josh Clark?

  Yeah, but even more amazing than that is that not all dolphins do that. Some groups do that and that they learn it from the other members of their pod, which is a cut and dried version of culture that fits essentially all of the boxes for culture. And culture is very rare in the animal kingdom and dolphins seem to display it at least through the sponge tool use.

• 45:53Speaker 03

  Yeah, for sure. So this is sort of the saddest part of the episode is when we talk about captive dolphins and kind of what's... how humans have kind of screwed it all up, as usual. But there has been dolphin entertainment for a long time, since the 19th century. But things really grew after the TV show Flipper in the 1960s. There were three dolphinariums before that and by 2009, there were 100 all over the world. And while trade is illegal in the US, Mexico and Europe, they are captured at different, you know, places in the world and we're going to talk about some specifically, like Japan and Taiwan. But the rate of mortality is disputed. If you want to look at SeaWorld's research, they're

• 46:36Speaker 03

  going to say it's really not that different. If you're going to look at research by people who used to work at SeaWorld and don't anymore, they'll say, no, male orcas live 15 Years less in captivity and females as much as 30. So just, I think that speaks for itself.

• 46:51Josh Clark?

  And there was also a 1988 study Chuck in the journal Marine Mammal Science. And it found that about half of captive dolphins die within 90 days of being captured. So this is not, they're just not a species or a family or a type of animal that should be held in captivity and yet they are. SeaWorld very famously in 2016 said that they were no longer going to breed orcas, but that they weren't about to retire the orcas that they still had left.

• 47:21Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 47:22Josh Clark?

  That was largely thanks to the documentary Blackfish, which you've never seen that. Go watch it right now.

• 47:28Speaker 03

  Yeah, really good one.

• 47:29Josh Clark?

  But they still have captive breeding programs for their dolphins and those don't seem to be going anywhere either.

• 47:36Speaker 03

  Yeah, some people, you know, make an argument that, you know, studying these things in captivity is like how we, how we learn about them, which is obviously true to a certain degree, but

• 47:47Speaker 03

  dolphin experts will say, hey, you're not learning about their real habitat if you're studying a dolphin in captivity because they're in captivity. Like their behaviors change, like, you know, all kinds of things are different because they're swimming around in a pool rather than the ocean.

• 48:00Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like imagine putting a human in a solitary confinement long enough for them to become totally insane and studying their behavior and extrapolating it onto the rest of humanity. That's essentially what the critics are saying that people who study animals in captivity are doing. It's tough to disagree with that as far as I'm concerned.

• 48:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, they're also used by the US Navy. They're the second largest holder of marine mammals in the United States behind SeaWorld.

• 48:28Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 48:29Speaker 03

  They started this program, the Marine Mammal Program for the Navy in 1959. And by the 1980s, they had over 100 dolphins. I think that number has ticked down to like the mid 70s ish now. Uh, but you know, if you've heard stories of like dolphins used in war with like lasers on their head, they don't have lasers on their head, but there have been some verified reports that dolphins have uh like blow guns on their head.

• 48:55Josh Clark?

  Oh, was that verified? I know that there's certainly rumors.

• 48:59Speaker 03

  Well, not verified as in like the US Navy verified it, but I think there have been people that are like, no, this is happening and they've observed it in the Soviet uh space as well.

• 49:09Josh Clark?

  Well, for the, for the most part, what they're used is to either identify mines, like find and identify mines because their echolocation can, can detect the void inside the casing of a mine that's buried under mud. Um, and they'll go tag it essentially, or they'll look for um swimmers or divers who are trying to um sabotage like a ship or something. And they'll go up and basically bump them and put a tracker on that diver and then let the uh, the Navy people take over and track that person. Um, so the Navy's like, no, no, no dolphin has ever killed a person in combat. It just has never happened.

• 49:50Josh Clark?

  Um, but there is one recorded instance of a dolphin killing a human. And from what I can tell, it sounds just.

• 49:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, this was in 1994. There was a dolphin near Sao Paulo, Brazil that was named uh Tiao and he's, he was very uh friendly and gregarious and was well known around the area for like hanging out with people and um had a lot of bad human interactions as a result of that. Uh, this guy was harassing him apparently. Um, there were also, there was also a case where he injured 29 swimmers. They were trying to ride him and put popsicle sticks in his blow hole.

• 50:27Josh Clark?

  Mm-hmm.

• 50:28Speaker 03

  Uh, this guy was harassing him and he, and he basically nosed him in the abdomen and the guy died from internal bleeding.

• 50:33Josh Clark?

  Yeah, like Tiao, he wasn't a naval um uh dolphin, by the way. He was just, this is just the one example of somebody.

• 50:39Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah.

• 50:40Josh Clark?

  Of a dolphin killing a person. But yeah, he, he was very, very friendly and he had to put up with a lot of crud, but he would, he would dish it back out if you pushed him past the, past the point of no return. Um, he apparently, after the guy died, he, Tiao is left and they haven't seen him since. He fled the, he fled the interview.

• 51:00Speaker 03

  Yeah. He's fleeing the interview. Uh, dolphin watching is also, you know, you. You might think like, hey, that's a pretty innocuous thing to ride around a boat and look at these things.

• 51:09Josh Clark?

  Right.

• 51:10Speaker 03

  There are companies that supposedly do it responsibly, but that's after like, you know, we had to get involved and say, hey, you can't feed them. That happened in the early 1990s. Like they're getting hit by boats because they're trying to like, say, hey, you want to see some dolphins? Let's chum the water or whatever.

• 51:28Speaker 03

  Or not chum or whatever they use and they put like time limits and distance limits. If those are followed, then, you know, that's better, but any kind of boat activity like that is just gonna disturb their normal activity. And if you're, if there are too many boats around, these dolphins will just be like, all right, I gotta relocate somewhere, maybe far away. And maybe they're not even able to do that safely, you know?

• 51:52Josh Clark?

  Yeah. Yeah. In that sense, there it's still not enough regulation or protection of the dolphins. But you can make a pretty good case that the United States has some good laws in place that do protect dolphins. There's one that was passed in 1972, the Marine Mammal Protection Act. And among other things, it basically said, you're not allowed to eat dolphin in the United States. They used to hunt dolphin and eat dolphin and apparently people who have eaten dolphin are like, this is pretty good. But you can't do that in the US anymore, not since the swing in 70s. And some people are like, well, you're eating dolphin when you, when you eat canned tuna. That seems to be quite untrue. There's

• 52:36Speaker 03

  People say that?

• 52:36Josh Clark?

  Yeah. There's a canned tuna that says it's dolphin safe. That doesn't mean that dolphins aren't being caught in by catch. It means that there's no dolphin in your tuna. But there are types of tuna fishing that that are much safer for dolphins than others. So if you care about that and you love canned tuna, look for a canned tuna that says it's either pole caught, pole and line caught, troll caught, free school or school caught or fad free. Any of those are much less likely to accidentally catch and kill dolphins when they're fishing for tuna.

• 53:18Speaker 03

  That's right. Uh, I always thought tuna was chicken of the sea. No?

• 53:23Josh Clark?

  Did you ever see that episode of Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachaise?

• 53:27Speaker 03

  Nope.

• 53:28Josh Clark?

  There was, it was insane. Like, I saw that one and like.

• 53:32Speaker 03

  What one? I don't even know what you're talking about.

• 53:33Josh Clark?

  Oh, she was confused. She was eating a can of tuna, chicken of the sea tuna, and she's like, I thought it was chicken. But then he's like, no, you know it's tuna. She's like, no, I know it's tuna, but I thought it was chicken. And it just like you're, you'll start bleeding out of your ear if you try to follow it too closely.

• 53:48Speaker 03

  Oh, interesting.

• 53:50Josh Clark?

  It was something. That show was actually surprisingly good.

• 53:53Speaker 03

  You watched it?

• 53:54Josh Clark?

  Yeah, back in the day.

• 53:55Speaker 03

  That surprises me.

• 53:56Josh Clark?

  Yeah, it surprises me too, now that I think about it.

• 53:59Speaker 03

  Yeah, Josh of now wouldn't watch that, right?

• 54:02Josh Clark?

  Probably not, no.

• 54:03Speaker 03

  Josh of your?

• 54:04Josh Clark?

  Yeah, yeah, for sure.

• 54:06Speaker 03

  Hey, I watched Brett Michaels' Rock of Love.

• 54:09Josh Clark?

  Did you?

• 54:10Speaker 03

  That was, that's my one reality TV show scar.

• 54:12Josh Clark?

  Okay, that's not, that's, yeah, I was gonna say it's not too bad. It's pretty bad.

• 54:17Speaker 03

  It was pretty bad, but that's your, that's your boy.

• 54:19Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah, he's one of them. The whole crew is my boys.

• 54:22Speaker 03

  Yeah, C.C., the gang.

• 54:23Josh Clark?

  That's right.

• 54:24Speaker 03

  Bobby Dahl and Ricky Rocket. I got it.

• 54:26Josh Clark?

  Yeah, nice work, Chuck.

• 54:28Speaker 03

  Uh, dolphin hunting, though, still happens in other places around the world. We promised to talk about it a little bit, but there are drive hunts, uh, very infamous ones that happen in Taiji, Japan, and the Faroe Islands. And there's another great documentary from 2009 called The Cove, uh, about the Japanese hunt, and it's awful to watch, but they round up just thousands and thousands of dolphins and corral them and sell some to dolphinarians and slaughter the rest.

• 54:58Josh Clark?

  You've seen it? I, I, I don't think I could see it, man.

• 55:01Speaker 03

  Yeah, don't bother. You know the deal.

• 55:03Josh Clark?

  There's also another documentary from Netflix called Seaspiracy. Not the best name ever, but it's about the Ginda Drop, which is an annual dolphin hunt in the Faroe Islands off of Denmark. And it's essentially the same thing. They're driven into a corral and then killed, killed by knife. And I think in 2021, 1,400 dolphins were killed in the Ginda Drop that year, which was a record with knives.

• 55:32Speaker 03

  Jeez.

• 55:32Josh Clark?

  I know.

• 55:34Speaker 03

  Uh, we did talk about Bycatch a little bit. Um, there was a study in 2020 that found that fifty, uh, since 1950. Over eighty percent of Indian Ocean dolphins may have been killed as bycatch. Eighty percent with about eighty thousand total cetaceans caught each year.

• 55:50Josh Clark?

  Yeah.

• 55:51Speaker 03

  And then there's ghost fishing, which we did an episode on. And that's, you know, when just the fishing industry as a whole ends up killing, you know, animals in the ocean. Ship strike and predation and starvation and getting caught up in nets and lines and all that awful stuff.

• 56:08Josh Clark?

  Yeah, when they abandon their old fishing gear, they can't use anymore. And it just floats around and can kill animals in the sea for hundreds of years. It's nuts.

• 56:16Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:18Josh Clark?

  We should end this on a high note, Chuck. So just a reminder that dolphin moms use whistles to baby talk with their dolphin calves.

• 56:27Speaker 03

  That's right, and they play with each other.

• 56:29Josh Clark?

  Yep, for sure. That's it for dolphins, everybody. Hopefully you liked this one. We loved it. We might just do it again. Who knows? But in the meantime, while we figure that out, it's time for listener mail.

• 56:45Speaker 03

  This is a, you remember the Volkswagen episode and the lemon ad? We weren't sure exactly what that was all about.

• 56:51Josh Clark?

  Oh, yeah.

• 56:52Speaker 03

  We heard from a lot of people. This is from Lori, and I'm trusting Lori because Lori is an advertising copywriter.

• 56:57Josh Clark?

  Oh, good.

• 56:59Speaker 03

  She says, hey, guys, confusion about the famous VW lemon ad created by Bill Bernbach at DDB. The body copy is about VW's preoccupation with every detail. Each bug goes through a rigorous inspection process, one hundred and eighty-nine checkpoints. If there's any issue at all, no matter how small, the car doesn't leave the factory. So the car in this ad has a scratch in the glove compartment, so it's a lemon. Apparently there was fine print in the ad that explained this. One more thing, though, guys. All good ad campaigns begin with an insight, a simple sentence, a nugget of emotional truth that determines how the brand. Speaks to consumers and how consumers relate to the brand. The insight for the VW Beetle? You don't buy a Beetle, you adopt it.

• 57:41Josh Clark?

  Oh, wow. That's neat.

• 57:43Speaker 03

  We just got Don Drapered by Lori.

• 57:44Josh Clark?

  Yeah, we did. Way to go, Lori. That was a really great email. Hats off to you.

• 57:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, and Lori is a VW Beetle owner as well, so she ticks all the boxes.

• 57:54Josh Clark?

  For sure. I trust Lori. That's a new Stuff You Should Know t-shirt.

• 58:00Speaker 03

  Agreed.

• 58:01Josh Clark?

  Also, Chuck, I want to take a second to put in a correction, which I think we mentioned before from the Zizian episode.

• 58:07Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 58:08Josh Clark?

  So in it, I talked about Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is kind of like his machine intelligence research institute was kind of at the center of the Zizians. Like, that's where they all met.

• 58:19Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 58:19Josh Clark?

  And the machine intelligence research institute is trying to figure out how to create an artificial intelligence that is friendly to humans, that's aligned with human goals and doesn't wipe us out. And I said that Eliezer had basically thrown in the towel and was like, this is not, it's too late. We're not going to make it. We got an email from Mallow Borgan, who is the CEO of Miri. And he said, hey, you got it a little wrong. Eliezer's book that's coming out is called If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies. It's not about throwing in the towel. It's saying like, we're right there on the edge. But there's still time. We can still figure out how to make an AI, a super intelligent AI,

• 59:03Josh Clark?

  that doesn't wipe out humanity, and here's how, and let's get busy now. It's kind of like a call to arms to get humanity in action. So I definitely flubbed that one. And a huge thank you to Mallow for letting us know, but also letting us know really gently.

• 59:21Speaker 03

  Yeah, he's real nice about it.

• 59:21Josh Clark?

  Yeah. So the book, If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies, it's by Eliezer Yudkowsky, who is an amazing thinker, and his collaborator Nate Sores, comes out September 16th, if you want to go buy it.

• 59:36Speaker 03

  Fantastic.

• 59:37Josh Clark?

  Fantastic. And if you want to get in touch with us, like Mallow or Lori, you can send us an email, too. Send it off to [email protected].

• 59:50Speaker 04

  Stuff You Should Know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts, iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.

• 1:00:06Josh Clark?

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• 1:00:38Speaker 04

  Hello?

• 1:00:39Speaker 05

  Hey, it's me, your wallet.

• 1:00:41Speaker 04

  Oh, hey.

• 1:00:42Speaker 05

  I was just wondering if we could maybe take it easy this week?

• 1:00:45Speaker 04

  Absolutely.

• 1:00:46Speaker 05

  Really?

• 1:00:47Speaker 04

  Yep, I'm shopping at Food Lion.

• 1:00:49Speaker 05

  Wait, you mean low prices?

• 1:00:50Speaker 04

  And MVP savings.

• 1:00:52Speaker 05

  Oh, you do care.

• 1:00:54Speaker 04

  Obviously.

• 1:00:55Speaker 05

  Okay, I feel better.

• 1:00:56Speaker 04

  Good, now let's go get some snacks.

• 1:01:00Speaker 06

  At Food Lion, low prices and MVP savings make it easier to shop for what you need without spending more than you have to. When your wallet needs a little TLC, head to your local Food Lion or shop at foodlion.com.

• 1:01:14Speaker 00

  This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human.