Beaver Skull Obsession, Aussie Widowmakers, Koalas Eating $#!%

WELCOME TO SEASON 10! Jess hosts the show solo while Rachel is on maternity leave, but brings on a pair of her creator friends to chat about how beavers keep wildfires at bay, koalas eating their moms' poop (kind of), and exploding Australian trees. Follow rickypeacock: https://www.twitch.tv/rickypeacock Follow MattyisTalking: https://www.twitch.tv/mattyistalking The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is a podcast by Popular Science. Share your weirdest facts and stories with us in our ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Facebook group⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ or ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠tweet at us⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠Click here to learn more about all of our stories! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Links to Rachel's TikTok, Newsletter, Merch Store and More: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://linktr.ee/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Rachel now has a Patreon, too! Follow her for exclusive bonus content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.patreon.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to Jess' Twitch: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.twitch.tv/jesscapricorn⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Link to all of Jess' content: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.jesscapricorn.com/⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ -- Follow our team on Twitter Rachel Feltman: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/RachelFeltman⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Produced by Jess Boddy: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/JessicaBoddy⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Popular Science: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.twitter.com/PopSci⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Theme music by Billy Cadden: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://open.spotify.com/artist/6LqT4DCuAXlBzX8XlNy4Wq?si=5VF2r2XiQoGepRsMTBsDAQ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Thanks to our Sponsors: Buy or sell your next car today with CarGurus at https://cargurus.com Right now, our listeners get an additional 15% off any annual membership at https://MASTERCLASS.com/WEIRDEST To get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Go to https://Quince.com/weirdest Plans start at $15/month at https://MintMobile.com/WEIRDEST Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 1:19Speaker 03

  At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while a lot of the fun facts we stumble across make it into our articles, there are lots of other weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors at Popular Science. I'm Jess.

• 1:40Speaker 04

  I'm Matty.

• 1:41Speaker 05

  And I'm Ricky.

• 1:42Speaker 03

  Woo, yeah, welcome to the show, yeah. Are you guys excited?

• 1:46Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah, thank you. It sounded like such a, it sounded like such a, like a canned video game celebration. I didn't want to interrupt it.

• 1:58Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:59Speaker 03

  Woo, all right, yeah. Uh huh. Well, okay, tell us about who you are and the stuff you make.

• 2:07Speaker 04

  Um, my name is Matty. I, Matty is talking on everything. I kind of almost exactly like Jess. Podcast producer, video essay maker, fan of information.

• 2:24Speaker 04

  Yeah, I've done a lot of stuff. I do a lot of things, but yeah. I think that's it.

• 2:31Speaker 03

  That sounds like you. Ricky, what about you?

• 2:34Speaker 05

  Um, I'm Ricky. Ricky Peacock. It's my real name and it's also my name on everything. Um, I also, much like Jess, uh, went to the same school, went to the same middle school as her, went to the same high school as her, hung out with her mom a lot, growing up, and...

• 2:51Speaker 03

  You have to explain that. You have to explain that. You can't just say that.

• 2:56Speaker 05

  Well, I mean, she's a teacher and she taught-

• 2:59Speaker 03

  Okay. Thank you, thank you.

• 3:01Speaker 05

  She's a teacher and she taught me. She taught me. And Jess's mom was my teacher growing up and then sparked, and instilled, in a show all about learning things, she instilled a love of learning things in me. And so you, and I'm kind of helping you flesh out your sort of bona fides as the host of this show, eight years in.

• 3:21Speaker 03

  Oh, I suppose you're correct.

• 3:23Speaker 05

  Just so you know, Jess has a mom who loves to teach people to like learning things. Um, and also I'm a Twitch streamer. I'm a Twitch streamer. That's, that's the other thing. I stream on Twitch, twitch.tv/reticpeacock. Anyway.

• 3:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, and all the links will all be in the description as, as usual.

• 3:39Speaker 04

  And click every one.

• 3:40Speaker 05

  Click every one.

• 3:40Speaker 03

  Yeah, click, click them, click them. And, and okay, so you might notice Rachel is absent and that is because she is still uh, on her maternity leave, taking care of a human child. So you'll know that if-

• 3:53Speaker 04

  Congratulations, Rachel.

• 3:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's, it's really exciting. But yeah, if you caught the end of last season, you'll know. She gave, she gave the full spiel, but I'll be holding down the fort for the next couple of episodes, next couple of months. But she'll be back, uh, and we'll be sprinkling in some of me and Rachel's favorite retro episodes too, to pass the time, like from seasons like one and two, because we're, we're now in season 10. This is season 10, episode one.

• 4:20Speaker 05

  Man.

• 4:20Speaker 03

  Which is insane.

• 4:22Speaker 04

  We're kicking off, we're kicking off season 10?

• 4:24Speaker 05

  That's crazy.

• 4:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 4:25Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 4:26Speaker 05

  Wow, we gotta do so, one of the, one of our, one of the beloved characters needs to have a big life-changing moment. Oh, wait, it's, it's happening. The, the host is having a baby. This is such season 10 behavior.

• 4:39Speaker 03

  It really is. So yeah, everything's fine. Everything's good. You'll still get your bi-weekly dose of weird facts.

• 4:47Speaker 05

  I'm freaking out personally.

• 4:49Speaker 04

  Whenever anybody goes, everything's fine.

• 4:53Speaker 05

  It's very calming.

• 4:54Speaker 03

  I'm constantly telling myself that everything's fine and it works out. So, you know, everything is fine.

• 5:02Speaker 04

  Jess, you're kind of like the, you're kind of like the duck paddling on water.

• 5:06Speaker 03

  What does that mean?

• 5:07Speaker 04

  You seem so cool and collected, but underneath, a lot of effort happening.

• 5:13Speaker 03

  A flurry of action.

• 5:14Speaker 05

  Somebody, somebody on the British traders just made that analogy and I thought she invented it.

• 5:20Speaker 04

  Are you kidding? No.

• 5:22Speaker 05

  I was like, that's the smartest thing I've ever heard somebody say.

• 5:26Speaker 04

  And now you know it's not.

• 5:28Speaker 05

  Now I know she's just repeating some crap she heard.

• 5:32Speaker 04

  She heard it from me. On this episode of the podcast?

• 5:36Speaker 05

  That can't be possible.

• 5:37Speaker 04

  Season?

• 5:38Speaker 05

  Season 10 is really starting off crazy. There's a time travel arc.

• 5:45Speaker 04

  Jess is regretting this so.

• 5:47Speaker 03

  I should have asked someone else.

• 5:49Speaker 05

  Are we doing good?

• 5:50Speaker 03

  Oh, brother.

• 5:54Speaker 03

  Okay, let's, let's get into the facts. So this is the, the normal thing Rachel says, which is, on the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a fact or story about something that we learned over the course of reading, writing YouTube videos, gaming, I edited this, having too many tabs open, just being on the computer, et cetera. And then deciding which one of us goes first. Then after we all have a chance to spin our little science yarns, we decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. And that's what Rachel says when she hosts, but we don't decide that there is a winner anymore. And we haven't done that for seasons at this point, but we're too stubborn to change the intro.

• 6:34Speaker 04

  I love that because we all, we all win.

• 6:36Speaker 03

  Exactly. We all get a participation trophy.

• 6:40Speaker 04

  Typical. And knowledge is the greatest trophy there is.

• 6:45Speaker 04

  I would say that.

• 6:46Speaker 03

  We, this, this is a trio of millennials.

• 6:51Speaker 05

  There's a lot of them crawling around these days, man, like it or not, you know? Millennial trios that have podcaster setups are a virus.

• 7:02Speaker 04

  This is technically a streaming center.

• 7:04Speaker 03

  Technically.

• 7:07Speaker 03

  Technically. So to start, we can each, as I just mentioned, give a little overview, one sentence tease about each of our facts. I'll go first. My tease is I'm going to talk about the tree that is actually a bomb.

• 7:22Speaker 04

  Whoa.

• 7:23Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 7:24Speaker 04

  Scary.

• 7:25Speaker 03

  Yep. Uh, Matty, what are you going to talk about?

• 7:28Speaker 04

  Beavers are essentially combating every bad climate thing humans are doing. And, uh,

• 7:35Speaker 03

  Yo.

• 7:35Speaker 04

  I think it's fascinating.

• 7:37Speaker 03

  Actually, climate heroes?

• 7:40Speaker 04

  Actually, beavers are actually climate heroes.

• 7:45Speaker 03

  You're welcome.

• 7:46Speaker 05

  This beaver is actually a climate hero.

• 7:50Speaker 04

  Humans hate this beaver for this one trick.

• 7:56Speaker 03

  Ricky, what's your tease?

• 7:57Speaker 05

  I haven't presented a, okay, my tease. This is the dumbest animal on planet Earth.

• 8:08Speaker 05

  I don't know if that's true or not. I should maybe not make such, paint with such broad strokes.

• 8:13Speaker 03

  I think if you believe it, it should, you should stand by it.

• 8:16Speaker 05

  That's how this show works? Oh, okay.

• 8:21Speaker 03

  Uh, okay. I think I want to hear about the, the climate, the beaver superhero.

• 8:27Speaker 04

  The beavers are climate heroes?

• 8:31Speaker 03

  Urm, what?

• 8:35Speaker 04

  Yeah, absolutely. I happily talk about beavers. They're one of my favorite animals. And honestly, a lot of this information that I learned, I've learned in the last two weeks. Because I have always loved them and appreciated them. And in the back of my mind, I've always had this fact. That second to humans, beavers affect their environment more than any other creature.

• 9:00Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 9:01Speaker 04

  That's a fact.

• 9:02Speaker 03

  And that's like from the dams and stuff?

• 9:04Speaker 04

  Makes sense. I'm, I don't want to spoil it, but yeah.

• 9:06Speaker 03

  Okay, sorry. Really, really putting the law before the horse.

• 9:11Speaker 04

  And wait a second, I thought you said you bleep cuss words.

• 9:14Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 9:16Speaker 04

  Thank you. I wanted to get in there before someone else.

• 9:18Speaker 03

  Oh, I, the, the guests are fighting back.

• 9:23Speaker 04

  Um, no, I, I, uh, I, I found them so fascinating and, uh, so what happened was I was like the rest of the world, apparently, according to box office numbers. I saw Zootopia two.

• 9:41Speaker 04

  Uh, and without spoiling anything, other than the thing I'm about to spoil, it has beavers in it.

• 9:47Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 9:48Speaker 04

  Which I thought.

• 9:49Speaker 03

  Well, what did you, what would you rate it out of 10?

• 9:52Speaker 04

  The movie? I don't do ratings anymore.

• 9:55Speaker 03

  What do you mean you don't do ratings anymore?

• 9:57Speaker 04

  They, I get scared. I don't want like, I don't want to.

• 10:00Speaker 03

  Of what?

• 10:01Speaker 04

  I don't want to, I, you know what? When I was a kid, when I was, when I was a kid, I saw the movie Hugo. I saw the movie Hugo at the River East 21 in Chicago, Illinois. And I gave Hugo, it was like a preview screening and I gave Hugo four stars. And, and in, I was sitting right behind Thelma Shoemaker, or Schumacher, I don't know. Put in the comments, that's called engagement farming. And I rated it four out of five stars. It's directed by Martin Scorsese.

• 10:36Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 10:37Speaker 04

  The, as the, as the theater was filling, or like, uh, what do you, what's the opposite of filling out? Emptying, emptying out.

• 10:43Speaker 03

  Filling in.

• 10:45Speaker 04

  Filling in, emptying out. I was pulled to the side and then someone said, hey, any of you give the movie four stars? And I said, uh, yeah. And they were like, oh, that's great. Our. Our client really wants to speak to someone who gave it four stars.

• 11:03Speaker 03

  What?

• 11:05Speaker 04

  And so I start chewing gum because I'm like, I'm about to tell Martin Scorsese what I thought was wrong with this movie. And it, you know, and the anxiety like almost popped in my head like a grape. And I really regretted giving it four stars, or at least telling anybody. But I was, there was a reprieve because they said, actually, he's got to go. And they left.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  They just threatened you.

• 11:31Speaker 04

  Never again do I want to face someone in their hardware. And it's just takes so, it takes so much effort to get anything made. I just don't like rating things. Anyway, Zootopia, five out of 10, in my opinion.

• 11:44Speaker 04

  It's fine. It's fine. I've never really, uh, a big Zootopia guy. Anyway, this one was great because of the beaver. They put beavers in it. There's a lot of fun, you know, they're not, the movies are not made for me. They're made for kids.

• 12:02Speaker 03

  I do like the animal puns in the first one.

• 12:06Speaker 04

  You like the animal, excuse me?

• 12:08Speaker 03

  The puns, like the sloths being slow at the DMV.

• 12:12Speaker 04

  Yes, now that is funny. That's Zootopia, or Zootropolis and the rest of the world. Yeah, there, there was a couple of funny jokes. There's a, there was a really weird joke where like a lizard was in, because they go, they go to like a lizard water world. And now I am spoiling something.

• 12:29Speaker 03

  Lizard water world?

• 12:32Speaker 04

  The lizards are not allowed in Zootopia. All right, man, I can't.

• 12:37Speaker 03

  Is it a classist story?

• 12:39Speaker 04

  It is a classist story. And then it made you go, oh yeah, I guess in Zootopia one, there are no reptiles. But also beavers, uh, so there's this kind of this, this area where it's like beavers and water mammals live with lizards and like some sort of swamp bayou area. And so the beavers are there. And I was really, I just kind of locked in on the fact that. They obviously animate the big two front teeth, or the big four front teeth, but you really only see the two because they're kind of outside. You know, the larger ones are on the top and the smaller ones on the bottom. Those are called incisors, right?

• 13:21Speaker 04

  And then it got me really fixated on the teeth of the beaver. And I was like, huh. And it's nothing against the movie, but I could not think about anything.

• 13:34Speaker 04

  But, oh, wait, I didn't, I didn't say my, this is all over the place. Sorry, this is me. But there, there's a joke.

• 13:42Speaker 03

  This is me.

• 13:43Speaker 05

  You're drowning, man. What's happening?

• 13:45Speaker 04

  I'm doing great.

• 13:48Speaker 04

  I did 110 episodes of podcast where this was essentially.

• 13:53Speaker 04

  This, there's a joke about one of the lizards drop its tail and then someone freaks out and they go huh. And then the lizard goes, you can keep it. Which I got a real laugh out of me.

• 14:05Speaker 05

  That's awesome. I saw a video of a guy in their, two guys in their garage. This was on Instagram reels. You guys should check it out sometime. A lot of good stuff on there. It was an Instagram reel of two guys in a garage and on their, on the shelves, there was like a iguana or some sort of lizard or something that had made its way into these people's garages, into this people's garage with, on the shelves or whatever. And the one guy goes, look, he's right there. Get him. And the other guy walks up and grabs the tail and they have a little bit of a scuffle for a second. And then the lizard pops his little tail off and scurries away. And the guys are freaking out because the, he throws the, he throws the tail and it lands on the, the hood of the car where the hood and the windshield meet.

• 14:49Speaker 05

  And it's just kind of flopping around next to the, next to the windshield wipers. And they're freaking out and the guy's like, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. And then in the comments, somebody commented, I read about this in books, but I never seen it happen before. And I was like, wow, you know? Me either, I guess. But it's so, it was kind of an educational video as well.

• 15:08Speaker 04

  It's a, it's a really, it's a real thing. I don't know if iguana, I mean, I assume iguanas grow their tail back. They really need the tail.

• 15:15Speaker 03

  They must.

• 15:16Speaker 04

  My wife had some crested geckos.

• 15:21Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 15:22Speaker 04

  No, but that would be her business, not yours.

• 15:25Speaker 05

  And he jerked it off and it never grew back.

• 15:30Speaker 04

  But they, the crested geckos lose their tails, but they don't grow back.

• 15:35Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 15:35Speaker 04

  And they call them frog butts.

• 15:37Speaker 03

  Oh, I didn't know there were lizards that didn't grow back.

• 15:40Speaker 04

  There are.

• 15:41Speaker 03

  Huh.

• 15:42Speaker 04

  Yeah, and that might be the weirdest thing you find out this week, but that's not one of mine.

• 15:46Speaker 05

  That's, I mean, that's gotta be so much anxiety. Talk about like getting anxiety about when to use your consumables, you know, it's like, is this the one time I'm gonna, I'm gonna pop my tail off? Or, or, or should I save it for an even more dangerous predator, you know?

• 16:00Speaker 03

  It's, it's like your master ball.

• 16:02Speaker 04

  Yeah. I guess they don't inherently know that the tail's gonna grow back, but they just do it out of fear and then it does grow back.

• 16:09Speaker 05

  Interesting. I had never even considered the fact that the iguana maybe doesn't even know that his tail's not gonna grow back.

• 16:16Speaker 03

  A crazy thought.

• 16:18Speaker 04

  But it is, it, it's actually like almost electronic, the way that the tail comes off in like a.

• 16:25Speaker 03

  It's like more mechanical than anything, right?

• 16:27Speaker 04

  Yeah, because you can kind of see the port for the tail versus the, the like, the literally, the male part of the tail and the female part of the, you know, hind end where the tail goes in. So, or comes out. It's really fascinating, but yeah, I think if I lost my tail the first time, I'd be so stressed out. And then when it grew back, I'd be like, oh, thank God. And then the second time I did it, I'd be a little bit less stressed out. And the third time, probably the same as the fourth, fifth, sixth. I'm like, whatever. This thing's coming back. Anyway, we're not here to talk about lizard tails. Not even here to talk about beaver tails. That's not even in my stuff, but it's a fascinating element. Sorry, spoiler alert, no beaver tail tongue.

• 17:12Speaker 04

  But anyway, um, so I'm watching Zootopia, putting you back.

• 17:17Speaker 05

  Oh, my God, we're only, we're still getting the framework.

• 17:19Speaker 04

  I haven't even got, I, I, I still have six pages of this stuff.

• 17:23Speaker 05

  Oh, God.

• 17:25Speaker 04

  I don't, I don't, it's not that much. Um, but I'm watching Zootopia. I'm thinking about the beaver teeth, the incisors. I'm going, what's going on in the back? They have the big two, uh, four front teeth. What goes on in the back? Do you all know? I know that you've had, you, some of you have had rodents before.

• 17:41Speaker 05

  My guess is nothing. That was my guess.

• 17:45Speaker 03

  Is it like, is it like molar kind of stuff back there?

• 17:48Speaker 04

  It's molar kind of stuff back there is what I have read down. Yeah, they just have normal, regular molar teeth back there and then the big front incisors. I thought that was fascinating. So I leave Zootopia, in the middle of Zootopia, I go to the restroom and I Google beaver skull. And I am just looking at photos of beaver skulls.

• 18:09Speaker 05

  Some craven pervert in the, in the bathroom of the movie theater gets out of Zootopia and immediately Googling beaver skull.

• 18:16Speaker 04

  I was just consumed by curiosity and I found it incredible. And, and so obviously the teeth are prominently depicted in the film. You have, that's the thing you know about them. They chew wood, take down trees, and then you have the big teeth. Anyway, but yes, they have the molars in the background that grind up vegetation because they're vegetarians or that's not what you call animals.

• 18:42Speaker 05

  Herbivores.

• 18:44Speaker 04

  Herbivores or herbivores. But anyway.

• 18:49Speaker 04

  And I remember about the two front teeth that they grow forever. That, did you know that?

• 18:56Speaker 05

  I had heard that.

• 18:57Speaker 04

  They grow forever. And I remembered very distinctly an episode of the Angry Beavers television show on Nickelodeon where.

• 19:03Speaker 05

  Loves beavers.

• 19:05Speaker 04

  Or cartoons.

• 19:06Speaker 05

  Cartoon, this guy loves cartoon beavers.

• 19:08Speaker 03

  All of his animal knowledge comes from cartoons.

• 19:11Speaker 04

  But you know what's funny is that they're, they're pretty good about it.

• 19:14Speaker 03

  I was gonna say honestly, not a bad, not a bad jumping off point.

• 19:18Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly. And there's a, in an episode of the Angry Beavers, I think there's Dag and Norbert.

• 19:25Speaker 05

  Dag.

• 19:26Speaker 04

  Dag sees a PSA about how the, the beaver incisors can grow forever if they're not worn down by chewing on trees. And if they do grow forever, they can, and this is real, grow in, back into the skull of. Of the, of the beaver, which happens a lot with like ram horns as well. They can, they gotta like bang it on something to wear it down.

• 19:52Speaker 05

  That's right. Cause yeah, then they'll go, they'll go into their head.

• 19:55Speaker 04

  Yeah. And there have been documented, documented cases of beavers, like they're, they're, whether they're like, they can't use the teeth or something for some other reason, but the teeth are growing back in like a loop-de-loop into the skull.

• 20:08Speaker 05

  That's gotta be so stressful to just literally have a thing. That if you don't take care, like I have a chore each day that if you don't care of it, it's going to pierce your brain. I cannot imagine the anxiety.

• 20:20Speaker 04

  They probably don't think about it, but they gotta be like, well, this tooth is getting a little close to my eyeball.

• 20:26Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 20:27Speaker 05

  Um, anyway. I have a confession to make.

• 20:29Speaker 03

  What?

• 20:30Speaker 05

  I guess it's more of a question, but it's, it is, it feels deeply embarrassing.

• 20:35Speaker 03

  Okay.

• 20:36Speaker 05

  Did they eat the wood?

• 20:38Speaker 03

  That's a good question.

• 20:40Speaker 05

  They eat the wood.

• 20:41Speaker 04

  Good question.

• 20:41Speaker 03

  It's a really good question.

• 20:43Speaker 05

  They just chew the wood for their house.

• 20:44Speaker 04

  They just chew the wood for their house.

• 20:46Speaker 05

  They don't eat the wood, so what do they eat?

• 20:48Speaker 04

  Vegetation.

• 20:50Speaker 05

  They're just plants and vegetables?

• 20:52Speaker 03

  Non, non woody vegetation?

• 20:54Speaker 04

  Non wood.

• 20:54Speaker 05

  You're telling me they don't, you're telling me they eat it, they chew it and they don't even get a little bit in there?

• 20:59Speaker 04

  I mean, I'm sure they're eating a little bit of wood.

• 21:02Speaker 03

  It's like seasoning.

• 21:03Speaker 05

  So they're eating a little bit of the wood, but not all of it.

• 21:07Speaker 04

  They're not intentionally eating the wood.

• 21:11Speaker 05

  Okay, okay.

• 21:11Speaker 04

  May I move on?

• 21:13Speaker 05

  Sure, okay. Sorry, I thought this was a show about curiosity.

• 21:18Speaker 04

  Well, I don't have any more information than they don't eat the wood.

• 21:21Speaker 05

  Matty, your curious spirit died when you Googled beaver skull.

• 21:26Speaker 04

  I don't have enough information on whether they eat the wood or not. It's giving me anxiety. So just accept it, accept the fact that they don't eat the wood. I'm not an expert. I'm just fascinated by this. Okay?

• 21:40Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 21:41Speaker 03

  Fine.

• 21:44Speaker 04

  It is a fact that humans, second to humans, beavers change their habitat more than any other creature. They obviously cut down trees, but they can create wetlands and they can change the direction of rivers. Now that is fascinating.

• 22:00Speaker 03

  That's like a.

• 22:01Speaker 04

  Wouldn't you, wouldn't you agree?

• 22:03Speaker 03

  I would agree.

• 22:05Speaker 04

  Uh, because of this, they have been dubbed ecosystem engineers and are called a keystone species, which is also a thing I learned, um, which is a species that have a disproportionately profound impact on their environment relative to their numbers. Now, I would posit, not a scientist, but I would posit that they are not second to humans.

• 22:29Speaker 04

  In the disproportionate changing of their, of their climate.

• 22:33Speaker 03

  Oh, sure. Cause there's so many of us.

• 22:35Speaker 04

  Cause yeah, there's only like 60 million of them or something like that.

• 22:39Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 22:41Speaker 04

  So we have, what are we at? Eight billion?

• 22:46Speaker 04

  I mean, yes, we're doing a number on the.

• 22:48Speaker 05

  Yeah, I think we could do way more environmental destruction. I think we need to get those numbers up. They're pathetic compared to the beavers.

• 22:58Speaker 04

  I'm sure that we are working on it, unfortunately.

• 23:03Speaker 04

  But, okay, so this would become, this would then become no surprise that they are also climate allies because everything they do is natural, unlike humans, which is mostly unnatural stuff, right?

• 23:19Speaker 03

  Right. We're so unnatural.

• 23:22Speaker 04

  When you think of the beaver, you think of what?

• 23:26Speaker 04

  You've already mentioned it.

• 23:27Speaker 03

  Damn.

• 23:28Speaker 05

  The dam.

• 23:29Speaker 04

  Anal gland, anal gland.

• 23:30Speaker 03

  Okay, okay.

• 23:31Speaker 04

  They do. I didn't actually have anything about the anal glands in my research. I did think about it, but I thought.

• 23:38Speaker 03

  That was one of the first facts on this show in like season one.

• 23:42Speaker 05

  Whoa, I'm a bit of a historian of this show.

• 23:45Speaker 03

  Yeah. Oh, yeah. You're, you're a real expert.

• 23:50Speaker 04

  Beaver dams are also incredibly cool, which I didn't know this about beaver dams that they, so they, they knock down all the trees, they chew on the trees, they fall, and then they drag them to make the dam, which makes these little ponds. Now, this is all stuff we know. I'm not teaching anybody anything here. But I, I could stop right there because I think that's fascinating enough, but more interesting is what happens after they make the ponds. The, the dams create big, deep pools of cold water. In this, they build the beaver den. And the dens are basically beaver-made islands in the middle of the ponds, or sometimes

• 24:33Speaker 04

  along the banks, that are only accessible via underground tunnels.

• 24:39Speaker 05

  You must not be an actual Angry Beavers fan, because that's what their house was in the show.

• 24:45Speaker 04

  I didn't watch it. Oh, I haven't watched it in like 20 years.

• 24:48Speaker 05

  That explains why you didn't know that his name was Daggett instead of Dag, which you so embarrassingly, embarrassingly called him. Anyway, that's really awesome, Matty.

• 24:59Speaker 04

  I can't wait for you and your no research.

• 25:04Speaker 04

  I'm gonna go crazy.

• 25:08Speaker 05

  Here's a fact that I, speaking of, speaking of media properties about beavers, here's a fact that I learned it from the, from the film Hundreds of Beavers. They're really susceptible to Looney Tunes style traps. You can make a whole, you can make, you can make a bunch of different kinds of traps and that various beavers will, you can have one that throws them, you put them in a can, shoot them out of a cannon, but actually some of the beavers are really smart. Where they actually didn't get caught by the traps and they had the guy get caught in the trap that he tried to build for the beaver. So I guess it, I guess beavers contain multitudes is what I'm learning.

• 25:42Speaker 04

  This film has been recommended to me by a lot of friends.

• 25:44Speaker 05

  You gotta see it. You would love it.

• 25:45Speaker 04

  Is it? I would love it. Okay.

• 25:47Speaker 05

  As a guy who appreciates, as a guy who appreciate, who just said how hard it is to make something, you would watch this and go, damn.

• 25:55Speaker 04

  Does it? Pun intended.

• 25:57Speaker 05

  That was good.

• 25:57Speaker 04

  Against animals? Does it have?

• 26:00Speaker 05

  No. Well, if you include the guy like,

• 26:03Speaker 04

  Cartoon peril.

• 26:04Speaker 05

  He like, you know, shoots a gun and a big, it says like bam, and then a big smoke and then a guy in a beaver costume falls over. You know, it's like, it's,

• 26:13Speaker 04

  Oh, okay.

• 26:14Speaker 05

  It's as stupid as it can possibly be, but it's very good.

• 26:18Speaker 04

  I'll give it a, I'll give it a shot.

• 26:18Speaker 05

  What is it called again? It's called Hundreds of Beavers, made by a Chicago native, in fact. And he has another, another movie called something to the effect of like, the Lake Michigan monster or something that I really wanna watch as well. It's really, really good. It's like, it's like a live action Looney Tunes with that, doesn't it like, it's like conforming the real world into Looney Tunes logic rather than what happens in like Space Jam where they're conforming Looney Tunes into real world logic, you know?

• 26:48Speaker 04

  I like that.

• 26:49Speaker 05

  It's really good. Also, another cartoon beaver, Matty, have you seen the, or Matty or Jess, have you seen the wild robot?

• 26:57Speaker 03

  No, but I've heard of it.

• 26:58Speaker 05

  Okay.

• 26:59Speaker 04

  I didn't watch The Wild Robot for the same reason I didn't watch Flo. It's because Animals in Peril really.

• 27:05Speaker 05

  I don't like Animals in Peril either. Flo made me a little sad, a little bit too frequently. But The Wild Robot.

• 27:10Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 27:11Speaker 05

  The Wild Robot is pretty good because it is, in my opinion, mostly emotionless and mostly feels like it was made by ChatGPT.

• 27:20Speaker 05

  So you don't have to worry about feeling too strongly about it. But there is a beaver in that, in that movie. And in, you know, the robot is in this community of animals. The, the robot like gets sent by some big company and then gets abandoned in the woods and then becomes friends with all the animals, right? And in this animal community, the fox, by the way, voiced by Pedro Pascal, who is, who's zaddy, am I right, guys?

• 27:44Speaker 05

  There's a beaver in this community and he's like a old, he's like the wily old coot, you know? Um, as they tend to be. Can you say wily old coot on this show? Is that fine?

• 27:54Speaker 04

  Well, you've done it twice now.

• 27:57Speaker 05

  His whole thing is he is trying to cut down this tree that's like the size of a skyscraper. And like, it's like, it's like a mile wide. Okay, probably not a mile, but it's like hundreds of feet wide. And when we meet him, he's like chewing through this tree and everybody's like, "Oh, you're still trying to chew through that big tree?" And he's like, "You'll see, you'll all see." And then at the end of the movie, he chews through the tree, not the huge spoiler. You kind of figure it's kind of Chekhov's tree, you know, when they set it up in the first act. And then he chews through the tree and then all of the animals are like, "Yeah." They're all celebrating and crap. And that was genuinely the most, I almost cried. That was the most emotional part of the whole movie was him, he did it. It was his life's work. He tried to chew through the whole tree and he chewed through the whole tree.

• 28:40Speaker 05

  And, and then all of his friends, who doubted him the whole time, by the way, they all celebrated for him, which is like, I hope you guys never switch up on me like that. If you're fucking doubting me, like, I hope I can at least trust you two to be there by my side. When I'm like, you know, going on a, you know, life-changing undertaking, you know? Basically, if you, you know, you love me at my worst, you, you take me at my best, et cetera.

• 29:04Speaker 05

  So Jess, what do you got going on?

• 29:09Speaker 04

  I looked up a picture of paddler and now I kinda wanna watch the film.

• 29:13Speaker 05

  Is that the guy?

• 29:14Speaker 04

  I think so. Voiced by Matt Berry?

• 29:16Speaker 05

  Beaver?

• 29:17Speaker 04

  Is he voiced voiced by Matt Berry?

• 29:19Speaker 05

  Yes, he is.

• 29:20Speaker 04

  I'm gonna chop this tree down.

• 29:25Speaker 05

  He does, I mean, he really does just sound like that. It was a good movie. I I shouldn't I shouldn't have said the chat GPT thing. It was pretty good.

• 29:35Speaker 03

  He takes it back.

• 29:36Speaker 05

  I redact my statement.

• 29:39Speaker 04

  Following spoilers for The Wild Robot.

• 29:44Speaker 04

  So the the interesting thing about the dam that I did not know, I thought they were just making houses, right?

• 29:51Speaker 04

  But the dam in turn completely alters the ecosystem around them. Obviously, if you think about it one step further, they're stopping water flow. Right? So it can cause floods that make the dry land around them wet, of course. And the cold water is great for the salmon populations that otherwise get either washed downstream and out to sea, or just simply die in waters that are too warm. And it offers salmon, baby salmon, places to hide from predators. So they're kind of like best buds in that way.

• 30:25Speaker 05

  That's sick.

• 30:25Speaker 04

  Which is very sweet.

• 30:26Speaker 05

  That's really awesome.

• 30:27Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 30:29Speaker 04

  Any, any question, or sorry, not any questions. I don't have the answers. So. Any guesses on how long the largest beaver dam in the world is?

• 30:40Speaker 03

  Like length?

• 30:42Speaker 04

  Sure. And and I think it's length and circumference as well, so.

• 30:47Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 30:48Speaker 04

  Take a take a stab at it.

• 30:50Speaker 05

  A hun- a hundred.

• 30:54Speaker 05

  Yards.

• 30:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, football field.

• 30:59Speaker 04

  The largest beaver dam was discovered in 2007 via satellite images.

• 31:05Speaker 05

  Whoa.

• 31:06Speaker 04

  On Google Earth and is 2,790 feet long. That's about 850 meters and is seven times longer than the Hoover Dam.

• 31:17Speaker 05

  Damn.

• 31:17Speaker 03

  Oh, my God.

• 31:19Speaker 05

  I did it again.

• 31:20Speaker 04

  You did it again.

• 31:21Speaker 03

  Damn.

• 31:22Speaker 04

  The wet vegetation that grows as a result of the dams also acts as natural wildfire breaks, which prevent the spread of wildfires, obviously.

• 31:32Speaker 05

  Damn.

• 31:32Speaker 04

  Scientists have actually been able to attribute lower wildfires in areas to the work of beavers. So if there are beavers around wildfires are harder to be found.

• 31:45Speaker 05

  That's sick.

• 31:46Speaker 04

  I think I just made that up. Not the fact, but the rhyme.

• 31:49Speaker 05

  The limerick, yeah.

• 31:50Speaker 03

  Uh huh.

• 31:50Speaker 04

  The limerick. Um, here's a little bit of actual.

• 31:53Speaker 05

  Limerick, sorry.

• 32:00Speaker 04

  I really sometimes wonder if Jess is regretting this or not.

• 32:05Speaker 03

  I'm just, I'm just sitting here letting you two just go to town.

• 32:10Speaker 04

  Um, Alexa Whipple.

• 32:14Speaker 04

  He said that was laughing at me trying to get back on track. Um, and not the name Whipple. Uh, Alexa Whipple, a restoration ecologist with the Methal Beaver Project also found that following a wildfire, the areas with more beavers had more regular pH levels in the years following fires. Alexa attributed this to beaver dams and resulting vegetation trapping and settling sediment and ash quicker than the areas without, obviously, the wetter the area, the faster ash will settle and the less it's floating all over the place. So they're essentially, every bad thing that we're doing as people in, in destroying the

• 32:56Speaker 04

  climate, they are completely undoing and that's kind of why, and I think as chronicled in hundreds of beavers, man and beaver have often been at odds.

• 33:07Speaker 05

  Oh.

• 33:08Speaker 04

  Beavers used to be everywhere. And the fur trade, along with the perception of beavers being nuisances, who cut down desired trees and caused unwanted flooding, has resulted in them being hunted to near extinction in the 1800s.

• 33:23Speaker 05

  It's not right.

• 33:24Speaker 04

  It's not right. But don't freak out. Because with conservation efforts, they are not only at the numbers they once were, but have bounced back significantly and are not endangered. And on the conservation concern list, they are marked as the least concerned. So beavers are back, in a big way.

• 33:43Speaker 05

  They're chilling. Good. Yeah. Thank God.

• 33:45Speaker 04

  Yes. And there may even be more hope, is what I have to say about this, in a sentence that I wrote and have read before. Obviously, as humans have done nearly everything they can to kill the earth, they are now realizing how valuable the beaver is, especially in drought times. An animal that just wants to make dry lands wet? Yes, please. I wrote that part. Another little bonus fact about the beavers is that they tend to form monogamous relationships and mate for life. And for... I know, isn't that sweet?

• 34:25Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 34:26Speaker 04

  And form strong familial bonds. A beaver family can be a mixture of two or three generations of parents or kits.

• 34:34Speaker 03

  That's cute.

• 34:34Speaker 04

  That's not the main fact. I'm past the main facts. These are all bonuses.

• 34:38Speaker 03

  I like the bonuses.

• 34:39Speaker 04

  Thank you. Just thank you so much.

• 34:42Speaker 03

  Yeah. Did you need that little crumb of validation?

• 34:44Speaker 04

  Not really. But I appreciated you giving it to me.

• 34:47Speaker 03

  I'm happy to offer it. Yes.

• 34:51Speaker 04

  Just ignoring Ricky. And they are so close with the other beavers that thankfully, conservationists have realized this. And if a beaver family is encroaching on like a farmer's property or becoming a nuisance, the entire family will be removed and relocated. And they are kept in holding facilities until they can catch all of the others in the family.

• 35:16Speaker 05

  Oh, man.

• 35:16Speaker 04

  So that they are then reunited and moved together like it's the Witness Protection Program.

• 35:21Speaker 05

  That's awesome.

• 35:22Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 35:23Speaker 05

  Yeah, it's awesome. Gotta hope they're not making the holding facilities out of wood.

• 35:29Speaker 05

  That's a little beaver, that's a beaver joke for you.

• 35:31Speaker 04

  That's a really great point. And it was, that truly Ricky was one of those so funny, I didn't forget to laugh, but I just respected it so much.

• 35:39Speaker 05

  It didn't feel that funny, I'll be honest. But I appreciate the, I appreciate the props.

• 35:47Speaker 04

  And that's my, that's my, and thank you for coming to my TED Talk about beavers.

• 35:51Speaker 05

  That was awesome.

• 35:52Speaker 04

  They, they seem to exist in direct competition with humans who want to seemingly destroy the earth. That's the rest, the last thing I wrote.

• 35:57Speaker 03

  Maybe beavers are the only thing keeping the earth alive, you know?

• 36:02Speaker 04

  It feels like it.

• 36:03Speaker 05

  Honestly, beavers and bees, go off.

• 36:06Speaker 04

  Yup.

• 36:07Speaker 05

  Go off.

• 36:08Speaker 03

  Okay, we're gonna take a quick break and then we'll be back with more facts.

• 36:16Speaker 00

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• 37:46Speaker 03

  Okay, we're back and I'm gonna talk about the trees. So

• 37:51Speaker 05

  The beavers start to freak out. Sorry.

• 37:54Speaker 03

  All of our facts are kind of like interconnected this week, actually.

• 37:58Speaker 05

  That's exciting.

• 38:00Speaker 03

  Yeah, we're all aligned. But as you two know, as the listeners probably don't know, I've been in Australia for the last month or so. Ricky was also here semi recently.

• 38:11Speaker 05

  I was.

• 38:13Speaker 03

  And the thing I was most excited about coming here was like all of the new plants and animals that I had never seen before. Because like is wildly different here. Like there is stuff here that is not anywhere else. Like I found one statistic that says seven to 10% of all species on earth are native to Australia. Just across like every, every order. So it's, it's very diverse. And then of that seven to 10% of all species being native to here, of that diversity, 80% of all plants and mammals here are not found anywhere else. So

• 38:52Speaker 05

  That's crazy.

• 38:54Speaker 03

  Yeah, there's just like a lot of stuff here that doesn't leave and it's because it's so isolated. And I've seen a lot of that stuff. Like I went to the zoo and I saw like platypuses and echidnas and bilbies and wombats and kangaroos and emus. And I saw like cuckoo burrows, those, those birds up in the trees.

• 39:14Speaker 05

  They live in the old gum trees.

• 39:16Speaker 03

  Yep, yep, which is the topic of conversation, actually.

• 39:20Speaker 05

  The gum tree?

• 39:21Speaker 03

  Um, perhaps, yes.

• 39:23Speaker 05

  Whoa.

• 39:23Speaker 03

  Uh, indeed. So, uh, speaking of, I think the, the biggest spectacle of Australian wilderness that I've seen is when I went to the Blue Mountains, which is this huge, huge, huge, huge mountain range, like two hours west of Sydney. And huge is in like, it's wider than the Grand Canyon. So it's like 4,400 square miles of mountain.

• 39:47Speaker 03

  And they're 470 million years old. So that's 10 times older than the Grand Canyon as well. So, so kind of a grander canyon, but you know, just saying.

• 39:58Speaker 05

  Really firing a broadside shot at the Grand Canyon? That's kind of all we've got in America, you know that, right?

• 40:04Speaker 03

  Listen, I'm in Australia for three weeks, so things have changed, okay?

• 40:09Speaker 04

  You know, if you come back, the Grand Canyon is gonna be ready to rock.

• 40:13Speaker 03

  Is that a pun?

• 40:16Speaker 04

  Sure.

• 40:20Speaker 03

  And so when I went in these, in the Grand Canyon,

• 40:25Speaker 03

  there were a lot of like weird plants and animals that were really cool. I saw like big ass colorful birds. I saw like a little, a little reptile skink lizard. Cockatoos were everywhere. They were super loud and weird and funny.

• 40:37Speaker 04

  Are they just making noise like, is it just always noise?

• 40:40Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 40:41Speaker 04

  Wow, that sounds nice.

• 40:44Speaker 03

  It was, it, the cockatoos are like, like they are like, not nice chirping.

• 40:51Speaker 04

  I owned a cockatoo when I was a kid.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  You did?

• 40:54Speaker 04

  Might have been a cockatiel, I don't know.

• 40:57Speaker 03

  The cockatoos are like the really like big.

• 41:00Speaker 04

  Commenters, tell me which one I owned more than like,

• 41:04Speaker 04

  in the mid Atlantic region when I was.

• 41:06Speaker 05

  He's a damn professional.

• 41:08Speaker 03

  Oh, this man, this man.

• 41:13Speaker 03

  But I think, I think the, the, you know, the most notable thing about the, the Blue Mountains, as far as flora and fauna go, are the expansive eucalyptus forests. Because the vast majority of the Blue Mountains, which are made of sandstone, by the way, all of, all of these mountains are pretty much like all covered in trees. And for the most part, those trees are eucalyptus trees. And we did like walk by one and grab the leaves and like smell the leaves and I was like, oh, it's eucalyptus. And the eucalyptus forests, what did you say?

• 41:48Speaker 04

  Confirmed. Yep, that's eucalyptus.

• 41:51Speaker 03

  Yes, confirmed. So,

• 41:55Speaker 03

  the eucalyptus forests are why the Blue Mountains are blue. Because if you look off in the distance at the mountains, they have like a blue haze and that's obviously why they're called that. And it's because there are like these oil droplets, the eucalyptus oil droplets that are kind of like emitted from the trees. And.

• 42:18Speaker 03

  Uh, so the sunlight like scatters differently through those droplets and like through dust and other stuff in the air and it makes it look blue. Uh, and that's like not dissimilar to why our sky is blue. Basically like the shorter blue wavelengths of light are scattered more easily through all that junk in the air, uh, in the sky and then also like in the Blue Mountain haze. So, and like longer red orange wavelengths are not scattered. So, kinda neat.

• 42:46Speaker 04

  I didn't know that. That's really funny. I learned that while I was there and that's extremely cool.

• 42:51Speaker 03

  It's a really cool thing. Yeah. Um.

• 42:53Speaker 04

  Save you all a trip if you haven't been to Australia. Now you know.

• 42:57Speaker 03

  Don't go to the Blue Mountains.

• 42:58Speaker 04

  You don't have to go learn that.

• 42:59Speaker 05

  Blue Mountains are blue. Next.

• 43:02Speaker 04

  And the smog is why the sun sets so pretty.

• 43:07Speaker 04

  It's a little LA joke for you.

• 43:09Speaker 03

  Uh, LA is in my fact as well, actually.

• 43:12Speaker 04

  I can't wait.

• 43:13Speaker 03

  Stay tuned. Uh, so yeah, as, as we were like Googling all this Blue Mountains stuff, uh, me and my partner were Googling this over a delicious bowl of pho and drinking a Vietnamese coffee. Uh, cause day, day one, we got there, it was like a hundred degrees hot. Day two, 50 degrees and foggy. Insane.

• 43:31Speaker 04

  Whoa.

• 43:32Speaker 03

  It was crazy. I'm glad we did our hike the first day because you couldn't see [BLEEP].

• 43:36Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 43:37Speaker 03

  On day two. But so, yeah, we got soup on day two. We were Googling stuff. Uh, and that's how we learned about the blue, the blue haze and the eucalyptus. And my partner goes, didn't Americans try to plant a bunch of eucalyptus trees in America back in the day and it all went to [BLEEP] and the branches fell off randomly and then they exploded?

• 43:54Speaker 03

  And I was like, huh?

• 43:57Speaker 04

  Whoa. Are you gonna tell us that did happen?

• 44:01Speaker 03

  And I, I Googled it and he is correct.

• 44:05Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 44:07Speaker 03

  Yeah. Yeah. My, and my partner is Australian. So he's apparently just learned about the stupid Americans planting their Australian trees and, you know. Yep. So, back in the mid 1800s, California, California, here it comes, was facing a timber shortage and they wanted to build.

• 44:23Speaker 04

  Sorry.

• 44:24Speaker 03

  Okay. Yep.

• 44:27Speaker 03

  They wanted to build like railroads and stuff, right? And they didn't have enough trees to like, and forests to like farm lumber. So they heard about the giant, the giant strong eucalyptus trees in Australia. It was being colonized at the time. They were like, yo, let's uh, let's get some of those. So they planted the first seed in California in 1853. By the 1870s, there was eucalyptus craze. People were like obsessed with planting eucalyptus trees. They were convinced it was the solution to their problems. There were, there were these people called forest tycoons that were like trying to make their fortune by planting forests and farming them for lumber. So yeah, and they were great.

• 45:09Speaker 03

  The trees were great because they would grow in really dry soil that was previously unable, unable to like hold onto any vegetation. So instead of like dry grasses, all of a sudden people had like 20, 30, 50 foot trees with like shade and shelter and windbreaks and stuff like that. Uh, and that goes a long way when you have a hot Californian summer. And aside from that too, like their strong root systems improved soil quality for other kinds of like farms and stuff. And they drained swampy areas too. So like less stagnant water, malaria rates dropped because fewer mosquitoes, stuff like that.

• 45:44Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 45:45Speaker 03

  And because eucalyptus didn't naturally grow in the US, they had no natural pests or diseases. So it was like everything coming up eucalyptus.

• 45:54Speaker 04

  Yeah. And that's where it ends and it worked out.

• 45:57Speaker 03

  Yep. And the credits, the credits rolled and everyone lived happily ever after.

• 46:03Speaker 04

  And I'm looking at eucalyptus tree right now outside my apartment.

• 46:08Speaker 03

  Yep. Uh, but then, but then, uh, they tried to start cutting down the trees and use them for railroad cable ties. And when they would try to dry the wood, it wouldn't dry all perfect and nice like it did in Australia. It would twist and warp and then it would get really dense and hard. So you couldn't, it was like impossible to even nail a spike through it, like a railroad spike. Um, and it did the same thing when they would like try to use for framing and fence posts and everything. And why? It's because they were trying to do things the American way and fast track it.

• 46:44Speaker 05

  Classic.

• 46:45Speaker 03

  Yep. Uh, and eucalyptus doesn't really become usable as a timber until it's like really, really, really old, like hundreds of years old, basically. So it's not like worth using as like a farmable timber. Uh, but, uh, it was already everywhere and they had already planted a bazillion eucalyptus trees and oops. Uh, and yeah, sure. There were like some positive benefits, like the ones I mentioned, but they're still a kind of an invasive species. And sure, there are still many eucalyptus trees in California everywhere and they look and smell delightful. Uh, but they do randomly drop their branches seemingly out of nowhere. And it's kind of, it's very funny. It's like an emotional response. Uh, like they do it if they're stressed from heat.

• 47:28Speaker 05

  Like lizards.

• 47:29Speaker 03

  Or whatever. Yeah, it is like lizards. It's straight up is like lizards. Or they'll do it if like they're aging and they like just want to drop a branch. And these are huge trees.

• 47:37Speaker 05

  Yeah, I just looked them up because I was like, have I ever seen one of these before? I don't know.

• 47:41Speaker 03

  You must have. You must have. They're all over LA. Yeah, I'm sure if you know what to look for, you'll see them. Um, and, uh, so in, in Australia, these trees are known as widow makers because the falling branches have killed people.

• 47:57Speaker 05

  Dang.

• 47:59Speaker 03

  Like even just last year and the year before, like a handful of people were killed by falling branches.

• 48:03Speaker 05

  Oh, I had not. That's, that's, hey, that's a badass name for a tree, man. I don't know if they get more badass than that.

• 48:09Speaker 04

  That kind of sounds a lot like, I mean, it must've been the same exact time because California is very young as a place, uh, in terms of like, you know, people kind of building them out as cities. But they also did the same thing with palm trees. And like, they're not native here.

• 48:25Speaker 03

  Yes.

• 48:25Speaker 04

  And, you know, they seem like they offer less than you have these trees, to be quite honest.

• 48:30Speaker 03

  Yes. So, so, but like, that's, that's part of it, right? Is like they have these two invasive trees that are also very flammable, like very, very easy to light on fire. Um, and that is like perhaps the most troubling thing about. At least eucalyptus, I don't really know much about the palms and how they were introduced.

• 48:48Speaker 04

  Well, the palms are also in a very, very similar way. They're just not from here. They, uh, they planted them here because they like the look of them. They don't offer any shade because they're like a hundred feet tall and they have like four leaves and the leaves are massive and they do also, much like eucalyptus, fall in the street.

• 49:08Speaker 03

  Right.

• 49:08Speaker 04

  Um, I don't think they're making widows, but they're certainly causing car accidents.

• 49:13Speaker 03

  Yes, at least inconveniencing.

• 49:16Speaker 04

  Yes, exactly.

• 49:18Speaker 03

  Uh, so, so yeah, the eucalyptus similar and also saturated with that very flammable eucalyptus oil, uh, the stuff that makes the Blue Mountains blue. It also fuels forest fires in Australia and in the US. For instance, the 1991 quote unquote Oakland firestorm. That's what they literally, they literally called that, uh, burned for five days, largely fueled by eucalyptus trees. So killed, killed 25 people, injured 250, destroyed 1500 acres of land, which included 2, 2,843 single family homes, 437 apartments.

• 50:02Speaker 03

  Uh, and in today's money, it's an economic loss of over three billion dollars.

• 50:07Speaker 04

  Smokes.

• 50:09Speaker 04

  That was another pun. That one was in bad taste. That was on completely unintentional.

• 50:12Speaker 03

  I almost.

• 50:13Speaker 04

  Really step.

• 50:14Speaker 03

  I almost didn't catch it.

• 50:17Speaker 04

  I mean, it's not intentional, I promise.

• 50:19Speaker 03

  And one of the people who lost their house in this disaster, uh, was Will Wright, the guy who made The Sims.

• 50:27Speaker 04

  Oh, I was, I was, I literally was like, are you talking about the Sims spore guy? Are you talking about spore?

• 50:32Speaker 03

  Yes, he lost his, how the spore.

• 50:37Speaker 04

  Aren't there spores on the eucalyptus tree? Or no, I was trying to make a connection.

• 50:43Speaker 03

  Well, there is a connection. There's a connection because when he made SimCity 2000, he added a scenario about like the city's recovery from the fire.

• 50:52Speaker 04

  Wow, look at that.

• 50:55Speaker 03

  Yep.

• 50:56Speaker 04

  Healing.

• 50:56Speaker 03

  Uh, and obviously this does like bring to mind the LA fires from a year ago.

• 51:01Speaker 04

  Yes.

• 51:02Speaker 03

  Uh, which were not mainly kicked off by, or like even mainly fueled by eucalyptus, but they did undoubtedly play a part, you know, like they're everywhere. They probably burned in some capacity. Uh, some legislators have pushed for cutting down eucalyptus and flammable trees that like, you know, fuel fires like this, but that's not really a full solution either. Like a full landscape of native plants wouldn't have stopped the fires in their tracks. You know what I mean? It's more about building fire safe buildings, establishing better fire and water protocols.

• 51:36Speaker 04

  Having beavers.

• 51:37Speaker 03

  Beavers. Perhaps having beavers.

• 51:38Speaker 04

  Beavers. We were all getting there at the exact same moment. We want the beavers.

• 51:43Speaker 03

  Yeah. Uh, and you know, like clearing out brush and, and stuff like that. So it's not like a one, one stop shop solution, but anyway, uh, shout out to Australia's Blue Mountains and its eucalyptus trees, uh, without which we wouldn't have a random city fire recovery scenario in Simcity 2000, uh, or something, you know?

• 52:02Speaker 04

  Wow.

• 52:04Speaker 03

  And that's my fact.

• 52:04Speaker 04

  And thank you for that.

• 52:06Speaker 03

  Yep. All right. We're going to take one more quick break and then we'll be back with more facts.

• 52:15Speaker 00

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• 53:15Speaker 03

  Okay, we're back. Ricky, tell us about the animal.

• 53:19Speaker 05

  Jess, you're not gonna believe this. You're not gonna freaking believe this.

• 53:24Speaker 03

  Okay, okay.

• 53:25Speaker 05

  But you decide, you, your facts were all about the eucalyptus tree. Guess what? My fact, my big thing is all about the dang koala. The koala, the guy himself. Basically, what, the, the animal that you could potentially consider to be in a, in a symbiotic, well, maybe even parasitic relationship with the eucalyptus tree. They're, they have, the, they have formed a sort of bond with each other in many ways. The koala, potentially the dumbest animal, um, on earth. It's hard, I mean, obviously, how do you quantify that?

• 54:00Speaker 03

  I like that you've, you've amended your statement to potentially.

• 54:03Speaker 05

  Potentially. I don't wanna paint, you know, I don't, I don't wanna, you know, make any sort of broad claims that I can't back up, um, with the hard science like Matty had of, I watched a movie.

• 54:14Speaker 05

  I did watch a movie, though. I watched a documentary about koala. It was A Life of a Koala. It was really good. I had never seen a koala running at full speed until this documentary, and man.

• 54:25Speaker 03

  I don't think I've seen that.

• 54:26Speaker 05

  It looks so funny. Okay, so, there's all, I didn't have really one fact about a koala, but like, just in general, they are so interesting. First of all, they're totally useless. I mean, everybody kind of, if there's, there's, they're completely useless, right? They sleep for like 20 hours a day. Most people know that. The reason they sleep for 20 hours a day, why, of course, it's because they refuse to eat anything but eucalyptus leaves. Um, and those leaves provide them with essentially zero nutrition. Um, the other thing about the koala, um, is they spend the majority of their life up in

• 55:07Speaker 05

  a eucalyptus tree. They basically, they pick a tree, first of all, another thing, there's like 700 different varieties of eucalyptus tree. The average koala will prefer less than 50, around 30 of them. So not only do they only eat eucalyptus trees, they're also picky eaters when it comes to eucalyptus trees. And you're asking yourself, well Ricky, how do they, how do they determine which eucalyptus trees they like? Well, it's about to get a little yucky, folks. Um, as we all know, koalas are marsupials. They are born of, after I think like seven weeks, they're the size of a jelly bean.

• 55:48Speaker 05

  Um, and then I heard the, the statistic that I think that they used on the, uh, uh, documentary I watched was that a koala goes from its jelly bean size to 25, it grows 25,000 times its size from the course of the moment of its birth to adulthood. So they're about 25,000 jelly beans big.

• 56:10Speaker 04

  Like Smurfs.

• 56:12Speaker 05

  Like Smurfs. Um, so they, they come out of the, they come out of, they come out of the birth canal.

• 56:16Speaker 04

  They're three apples taller, or two apples, two apples tall, whatever.

• 56:19Speaker 03

  I don't, I'm not up on my Smurf lore.

• 56:21Speaker 05

  Yeah, Matty knows all the Smurf, he's the Smurf lore guy of the group. Every friend group got the Smurf lore guy.

• 56:27Speaker 04

  It's one of the first things they say.

• 56:28Speaker 05

  So these, these little, these little seven week old jelly beans crawl out of the birth canal. Weird to think about this. It's got, it's got no eyes and stuff like that. Yes, they literally, it's just a little jelly bean that uses its four limbs to crawl out of the birth canal and it crawls up into the pouch of the koala, which does open downward, I learned, which seems like, why would you evolve to have your pouch open downward when you spend your whole life in a tree? I don't know.

• 56:54Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 56:55Speaker 05

  The koala climbs in, right? And it latches on to the nipple inside of the pocket, okay? And then it drinks the milk of the mom for a long time and it grows big and strong, right? But you're thinking to yourself, okay, it goes from drinking milk to just eating leaves? No, no, no. There, there's kind of an intermediary dietary plan that they get put on, which is, they eat a byproduct of their mother's digestive process called fecal pap, which is more or less what it sounds like. It's just kind of a, it's kind of an advanced version of.

• 57:35Speaker 05

  Of dookie, basically. But, and essentially, what this does is that it, it sort of trains the baby's digestive tract to be able to eat these eucalyptus leaves, right? Because as we, as we, you might know, as, I don't know if you actually discussed this or not, but the eucalyptus, uh, leaves are poisonous.

• 57:53Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 57:54Speaker 05

  To almost-

• 57:55Speaker 03

  I don't think I said this.

• 57:55Speaker 05

  To almost every animal in the world, these eucalyptus leaves are poisonous. There's a few animals that eat them, very few. The koalas are the only ones where they exclusively eat eucalyptus leaves. They have a special digestive, they have a special part of their digestive tract that's basically like the appendix, that lets them ferment the eucalyptus leaves inside of their body and neutralize the toxins, okay? So, basically, these koalas, they, they have these limited, limited varietals of eucalyptus trees that they have eaten ever since they were sucking on they mama's dookie. Um...

• 58:29Speaker 04

  That's gotta be a first for, uh, weirdest thing I learned, right?

• 58:33Speaker 03

  Listen, we get pretty gross on here, so...

• 58:36Speaker 05

  I can only imagine. So, so that's, you know, they have these varietals imprinted in their, in their, like, you know, right down to their core, you know? And they, they find a tree that they like, they crawl up it, and they just sit there every day. They just, they, they basically, you know, it's like, that's like their house. They're just like, this is where I live now. If there's already a koala in said tree, they'll move on. It is literally, I kinda had the realization, because I've also been in a big Lord of the Rings mood lately, but they're kind of like the hobbits of the animal kingdom. They don't do a whole lot, they love, they, they love a leaf substance that gets them mildly [bleeped] up. Um, they, they love to chill in the house, you know?

• 59:19Speaker 05

  They don't really wanna go on any big adventures, you know? They're, they're kind of the homebodies of the animal kingdom, which I really like about them. Um, what else? What else? Oh, and then the reason why they are so dumb, as, you know, is often touted that the, the more wrinkles you have on your brain, the smarter you are. A koala's brain is completely smooth. It looks like a-

• 59:42Speaker 03

  What?

• 59:42Speaker 05

  It looks like a big apple made out of meat, basically. Um, it's, it's really crazy, they are very stupid, but, um, if there's one thing that they have done correct over their long evolutionary, you know, lifespans, or going back, you know, millions and millions of years, they have evolved to be the most-

• 1:00:03Speaker 05

  Adorable by human standards. And I think that is a, that's a really valuable trait to have if you're an animal. They've got big fluffy ears, huge honkable nose, they're about toddler sized. You can pick them up and they kind of just grab on to you like a toddler. And they don't, they don't move really quick, you know? I think when an animal moves too fast, we get too scared, you know? We like somebody that's moving like at a really reasonable pace. Um, but yeah, they're really interesting. I think, I think it's such like, they're similar to pandas in that they have evolved to completely rely on a diet that barely keeps them alive. And I find that to be so interesting.

• 1:00:42Speaker 03

  It is. What's with that?

• 1:00:44Speaker 04

  That is, yeah.

• 1:00:44Speaker 05

  I don't know.

• 1:00:45Speaker 04

  What do they even do for anybody?

• 1:00:47Speaker 05

  They don't do anything for anybody. They don't even do anything for the eucalyptus trees that they, that they, you know, rely on. They don't really give much back to them. They just eat the leaves and then once there's not many leaves left in the tree, they move on to a new tree and that's basically it.

• 1:01:02Speaker 03

  Yeah, it's not even like they're like spreading like seeds or anything for them because a lot of eucalyptus trees like reproduce by fire, like they need fire.

• 1:01:10Speaker 05

  Yeah.

• 1:01:10Speaker 03

  To release their.

• 1:01:11Speaker 05

  Yes, and koalas famously do very poorly in the fire seasons, unfortunately. They really do not know how to handle it because again, they've got their little neighborhoods, you know? They've got their little forest that they live in and they basically stay there their whole life. So when the forest burns, a kangaroo, for example, will move on to a new place. But the koalas, they don't really know how to move that, you know? They don't have the capability to move that far. So there's lots of organizations that help koalas relocate. Unlike the beavers, they don't have any familial ties. Their, koalas are a society of single mothers. Um, they raise their baby for almost exactly 12 months, almost exactly a year. And then as soon as the mom is ready to mate again, she basically says, "All right, kid, you're on your own. It's time to have another baby."

• 1:01:55Speaker 05

  And, uh, and the cycle begins again.

• 1:01:58Speaker 04

  Oh, wow. I didn't realize that.

• 1:01:59Speaker 05

  Yeah, they're really, they're really special creatures. Um, I, I, over the course of watching this documentary that I found on YouTube, I, I learned to love them even more. Um, but you know.

• 1:02:11Speaker 05

  They're pretty much helpless and completely stupid. The only reason that they exist is because they have essentially no natural predators that can get up the tree that they're in.

• 1:02:21Speaker 03

  Right.

• 1:02:22Speaker 05

  Frankly, you know, that's a pretty good evolutionary adaptation to just climb the tree, you know?

• 1:02:27Speaker 03

  Yes. Yeah, they're just up there.

• 1:02:30Speaker 05

  They're just up there and, and you know, a Komodo dragon or whatever can't catch them, or a monitor lizard or whatever's out there on the outback.

• 1:02:40Speaker 05

  Really offensive.

• 1:02:40Speaker 04

  I thought we had, I thought we had Paul Hogan in here.

• 1:02:44Speaker 05

  Anyway, I don't know if I have much more on koalas other than that. It's, it's, there's just a lot of interesting.

• 1:02:49Speaker 03

  That's a lot.

• 1:02:49Speaker 05

  Eccentricities about koalas that, that the more you dive in, you're like, huh? Really? And you guys are still around? Damn, okay. Oh, my last, my last fact about koalas, and this is maybe less of a fact, and this is more editorializing. If there's one thing that a koala can be known for besides all the crap that I just said, that they're cute, right? You know, giraffe got a long neck. Horses got weird knees. Koalas? They're cute. That's like their one trait.

• 1:03:18Speaker 04

  Yeah.

• 1:03:19Speaker 05

  However.

• 1:03:20Speaker 03

  I don't, are they not the ones? Weird knees?

• 1:03:22Speaker 05

  Well, that's, that's not, that's neither here nor there. We're not talking about horses. We're talking about koalas. Yes, Matty?

• 1:03:27Speaker 04

  Are they the ones, or is it sloths that are the connected to chlamydia?

• 1:03:32Speaker 03

  That's what I was gonna bring up.

• 1:03:33Speaker 05

  So that's the other, there is also the chlamydia thing. The koalas do get chlamydia. There's a scene in the documentary I watched, I think of it was, they were implying that-

• 1:03:40Speaker 04

  This is in Zootopia 2.

• 1:03:42Speaker 05

  No, no, no.

• 1:03:44Speaker 05

  No, no, no, that was in, that's in Zootopia 2.5. You gotta get the bonus features. There was a scene in the documentary I watched where they were implying that they were showing a koala who was dying of chlamydia at the foot of a tree. And it was insanely depressing, if you must, if you really must know. But yes, for some reason, koalas are susceptible to getting chlamydia as well.

• 1:04:02Speaker 04

  That's so interesting.

• 1:04:04Speaker 05

  My, my fun fact that it's more, more of an opinion, the koala, potentially the, the number one animal on earth known for being cute, uh, the babies are less cute than the adults.

• 1:04:16Speaker 04

  I was going, so I looked them up while you were talking about this because one of the things that I didn't mention about the beavers is that the beaver kits are probably one of the cutest things I've ever seen. They're like, they're like less filled out beavers. But the, yeah, you, the koalas are one of the distinguishing, like the distinguished for the fact that the adults are way cuter than the babies.

• 1:04:39Speaker 05

  I think sometimes, I think it's more of like the toddlers look a little strange. What it is, is that they don't get their big, round faces. The babies have like a little bit of a weird like horse jaw at some point in their life, or their, their head kinda looks like, they look top-heavy. But you know, when they get all, when they get sort of filled out with their fur, they obviously are extremely cute. I mean, they're, they're cute no matter what. I'm, I'm, I'm really, you know, I'm splitting hairs, hairs here, but I'm just saying, you know, the guys are all cute, but the babies, you know, they got some weird cranial stuff going on.

• 1:05:11Speaker 03

  Ricky hates baby animals.

• 1:05:13Speaker 05

  No, no, I love them. Anyway, that's it.

• 1:05:15Speaker 04

  Ricky kinda went on a hit piece about koalas.

• 1:05:20Speaker 04

  I would encourage everybody to look up beaver kits at some point during their day.

• 1:05:24Speaker 05

  They are very cute.

• 1:05:25Speaker 04

  Because they're extremely adorable. Um, yeah, that's fascinating. I was going to mention, now that you've brought it up a second time, a movie, if you were talking about the most depressing movie in terms of animals I've ever seen, was a documentary called Tardes de Solidad, Adventures of Solitude, which is incredible, like electric magnetic documentary that follows a bullfighter, uh, over the course of several fights. There's no narration, it's just footage. It's incredible to watch. Uh, the first 30 minutes shows one bullfight and I turned it off and cried.

• 1:06:00Speaker 03

  Oh my god.

• 1:06:01Speaker 05

  Sounds like a huge bummer.

• 1:06:03Speaker 04

  It really was, it really was. And I don't know why, Ricky and I often talk about how we're kind of little, um, babies when it comes to animal peril.

• 1:06:11Speaker 03

  I'm the same way. I, it's difficult.

• 1:06:13Speaker 04

  It's awful to watch. And I don't know why, what made me do it, but I did, I tried and, uh, I, I would, I still recommend it. It's a fascinating documentary. I mean, I, you know.

• 1:06:24Speaker 03

  Yeah.

• 1:06:25Speaker 04

  I think everybody should be one. Yeah. I, I, the non-meat eater in me was watching it and I was like, I shouldn't have to watch this. This is for me.

• 1:06:39Speaker 04

  But that's my shout as we get down to the end of the episode.

• 1:06:43Speaker 03

  Good shout. Zootopia 2, the sad bullfighting documentary.

• 1:06:47Speaker 04

  Tardes en la ciudad, yes. Zootropolis 2.

• 1:06:51Speaker 03

  And the Looney Tunes beavers.

• 1:06:53Speaker 05

  Hundreds of beavers, really good.

• 1:06:55Speaker 03

  What a trio.

• 1:06:56Speaker 04

  I've learned so much.

• 1:06:57Speaker 05

  I really have.

• 1:06:58Speaker 03

  I'm so glad. Me too.

• 1:07:01Speaker 04

  They should do more seasons of this show.

• 1:07:03Speaker 03

  The show is succeeding. You know, they should. I agree.

• 1:07:05Speaker 04

  Really fascinating stuff here.

• 1:07:08Speaker 03

  Well, thanks for coming on, both of you. Remind the listeners who you are, what you make, where people can find your stuff, et cetera.

• 1:07:19Speaker 04

  Yes, yes. My name is Matt Riel. Matty is talking on everything. I also Twitch stream, much like the two other people in the call here. I work for a company called Watcher. We just wrapped up 110 episodes of the podcast Get Scared, and I guess I can say we're working on another one.

• 1:07:40Speaker 03

  Oh, sneak peek.

• 1:07:42Speaker 04

  We're working on another one that should be coming soon. So that's exciting.

• 1:07:48Speaker 03

  Whoa.

• 1:07:49Speaker 05

  That's cool. My name is, I'm Ricky, twitch.tv/RickyPeacock. It's my damn real name, if you can believe it. I'm working on playing some video games over there. I like to do a lot of things. I like to think of myself as a patron of the arts. I'm really, I'm leading, I've got two feet in the door of this sentence that I'm trying to get through, and I'm really ready to back out. Never mind. Just follow my Twitch channel if that's the kind of thing that you'd like to be watching.

• 1:08:17Speaker 06

  The Weirdest Thing I Learned This Week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Feltman, along with Jess Bodie, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Belloff. If you have questions, suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at weirdest underscore thing. Thanks for listening, weirdos.

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