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The Huggable, Lovable Walrus · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from how Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm MC Josh,
0:15
Speaker 1: Josh Clark. There's ch ch Chuck Bryant, and then Jerry's
0:20
Speaker 1: the DJ on the wheels and steel of Stuff you
0:24
Speaker 1: Should Know the podcast. And that has nothing to do
0:28
Speaker 1: with what we're talking about today. What, No, it doesn't.
0:32
Speaker 1: I couldn't even faint surprise. I know it has nothing
0:35
Speaker 1: to do with it. I was just being silly. You
0:39
Speaker 1: like it? I love it. Silly Josh is one of
0:42
Speaker 1: my top five favorite Josh is is it? I thought so.
0:48
Speaker 1: I guess you're feeling pretty good today, Jerry, you are too, Yeah,
0:52
Speaker 1: she says, yeah everybody. Um, well, the reason we're feeling
0:56
Speaker 1: good is because there are a fewer just simple pleasures
1:00
Speaker 1: in life then researching and talking about animals. Agreed. It's
1:05
Speaker 1: one of my favorite s Y s K episode categories
1:08
Speaker 1: as animal ones. Yeah, and it sort of don I
1:11
Speaker 1: picked this one out and it sort of dawned on me.
1:12
Speaker 1: It had been a minute, and um. Sometimes these are
1:17
Speaker 1: some of our lighter lifts because we have some really
1:20
Speaker 1: great house to works articles on animals and insects, so
1:23
Speaker 1: it doesn't require like, you know, another twenty hours of
1:27
Speaker 1: research on stuff. Uh, and we needed a lighter lift
1:31
Speaker 1: this week. And I was like, hey, it's been a while.
1:33
Speaker 1: I was perusing I saw walrus Is and they're so
1:36
Speaker 1: darn cute and been lovable. I thought, all right, well
1:41
Speaker 1: we got to get in there on this. Yeah. Plus
1:43
Speaker 1: is a Jennifer Horton joint. And remember she used to
1:46
Speaker 1: be like the in house animal writer. Oh was it? Yeah?
1:49
Speaker 1: She she doesn't remember. Yeah, what would happen to her?
1:52
Speaker 1: I don't know, but she left behind a legacy that
1:56
Speaker 1: includes an article on walrus Is. Yeah. And I will
1:59
Speaker 1: go and say up front, this is now in the
2:01
Speaker 1: running for me with a little competition between the octopus
2:07
Speaker 1: and the jellyfish. Okay, well then this is what we're
2:10
Speaker 1: gonna do. You're gonna go, um, but that's all I
2:16
Speaker 1: can think of when um, when a fact comes up
2:20
Speaker 1: that you're like, this is one of the reasons why
2:22
Speaker 1: they're in competition. Okay, okay, all right. Oh and before
2:27
Speaker 1: we get started. Also before we get started, sorry, um,
2:30
Speaker 1: I wanted to give a big shout out to our
2:32
Speaker 1: pals at The Daily Zeitgeist, one of our sister podcasts.
2:35
Speaker 1: They had me on yesterday. I know, I haven't listened
2:38
Speaker 1: to it yet. How was it? It was pretty great?
2:40
Speaker 1: Like they make it really easy on you. Um, They're like, here,
2:43
Speaker 1: read all these articles that were potentially going to talk
2:46
Speaker 1: about and study them for five hours, just like you
2:49
Speaker 1: do stuff you should know, and then we're not going
2:51
Speaker 1: to talk about any of those not a single article
2:56
Speaker 1: that I researched. Dude, we talk about. But I've managed
3:00
Speaker 1: to keep up anyway. That's how easy those guys make it.
3:02
Speaker 1: So thank you to Jack and Miles and Anna for
3:05
Speaker 1: for having me. And I guess when you're hearing this
3:08
Speaker 1: by yesterday, I mean March five, So go back and
3:11
Speaker 1: listen to the March fifth episode of Daily's Like Guys,
3:13
Speaker 1: and then listen to all the episodes of Daily's Like Guys. Yeah,
3:16
Speaker 1: I saw that they had a cutout, cardboard cutout of
3:18
Speaker 1: you sitting in a chair, which is kind of funny. Yeah,
3:20
Speaker 1: it is funny. But then I'm like, well, what are
3:23
Speaker 1: you guys doing with a cardboard cut out of me?
3:25
Speaker 1: Probably made it right, I guess, but I didn't. That's
3:29
Speaker 1: they got a big budget. Then we don't have a
3:32
Speaker 1: budget for cardboard cutouts. No, But I'm glad you gave
3:34
Speaker 1: me the inside skinny because I'm gonna be on at
3:37
Speaker 1: some point. And now I'm gonna say, hey, don't don't
3:40
Speaker 1: do that crap you did with Josh. I'm not reading
3:43
Speaker 1: a bunch of stuff unless we're doing it. Yeah, no, no,
3:46
Speaker 1: just show up to show up relaxed and prepared to talk,
3:49
Speaker 1: and you will be great. Uh So, the other thing
3:52
Speaker 1: I had to say of the two things running in
3:56
Speaker 1: for my favorite animal and another movie prediction from apparently
4:02
Speaker 1: on the Great Movie Predictor or just Life predictor, uh, Pixar,
4:09
Speaker 1: get on it, because if you don't do a lovable
4:12
Speaker 1: story about a family of walrus is at some point,
4:14
Speaker 1: then someone else is gonna beat you to the punch,
4:17
Speaker 1: maybe us, and it's gonna be great because there's nothing cuter.
4:21
Speaker 1: Just look up on your on your favorite image search
4:25
Speaker 1: walrus calf and mother or just walrus calf and get
4:31
Speaker 1: ready to be outcuted by most other animals. Like they're
4:34
Speaker 1: so cute they can make you forget that you're watching
4:37
Speaker 1: them live in captivity. That's how cute those things that
4:41
Speaker 1: some of these are photographed in the wild. Yeah, the
4:44
Speaker 1: videos that I've seen of calves are mostly the one
4:47
Speaker 1: that was born at Sea World. It was like the
4:49
Speaker 1: first walrus born in captivity. I think, if I'm not mistaken,
4:53
Speaker 1: he is just as cute as the day is long.
4:56
Speaker 1: But not small. I mean like it's it's like our size. Yeah,
5:03
Speaker 1: they're not small. No, So like, apparently here's a fact
5:06
Speaker 1: for you. I'm gonna give you. I'm gonna give you
5:09
Speaker 1: the chance to do your heraldry. I'm not gonna make
5:12
Speaker 1: any sounds alright, cool um, the walrus calf is born
5:18
Speaker 1: born no less than ninety nine pounds and up to
5:22
Speaker 1: a hundred and sixty five pounds born. How much to
5:30
Speaker 1: undred and sixty five pounds? And for our friends outside
5:32
Speaker 1: of the United States, that's forty five born. Yes, so
5:39
Speaker 1: a mother a cow, walrus cow. She's hoping for a
5:44
Speaker 1: nd right for the ease of birth because they only
5:49
Speaker 1: get up to like a hundred pounds. So they're like
5:53
Speaker 1: all calf and they're all water bursts. Though no, there're
5:58
Speaker 1: ice perths. Kind about that. Yeah, all right, we'll get it.
6:01
Speaker 1: We're getting ahead of ourselves. I'm getting excited. All right,
6:04
Speaker 1: we should go back to the beginning. Who invented walters?
6:06
Speaker 1: Is they were invented by the guy who invented sea monkeys, uh,
6:12
Speaker 1: which just dropped today. Yeah, that was a good one.
6:14
Speaker 1: It was alright, So should we go to uh by beginning,
6:21
Speaker 1: we just mean we're going to talk about walters is Well,
6:24
Speaker 1: how about this, we could talk about where they came
6:26
Speaker 1: from because um walrace has lived and they're very very
6:29
Speaker 1: isolated and as they exist today, there's two species and
6:34
Speaker 1: I guess they're really subspecies, but they can't mate and
6:37
Speaker 1: they're geographically isolated, so they're they're technically two different species.
6:41
Speaker 1: Can they not mate because they're not near each other
6:43
Speaker 1: or their parts don't fit? Jennifer Horton, I don't know.
6:47
Speaker 1: She just says that they're um reproductively isolated, which means
6:52
Speaker 1: they can't, you know, so they can kiss. I don't exactly.
6:58
Speaker 1: I don't know if that means that that, yeah, like
7:01
Speaker 1: their parts don't fit or but she says they're they're
7:04
Speaker 1: geographically isolated too, So why would you also say that
7:08
Speaker 1: if you know they were one and the same. So
7:10
Speaker 1: that's just injury, I guess, I guess so. But there
7:14
Speaker 1: are two groups subspecies or species of walrus is the
7:19
Speaker 1: Pacific walrus and the Atlantic walrus, and they're both related.
7:24
Speaker 1: They think they diverged as recently as like half a
7:27
Speaker 1: million years ago. It's like five thousand years ago. There
7:30
Speaker 1: used to be a lot of different walrus species. Now
7:32
Speaker 1: there's just the two um. But at some point they
7:36
Speaker 1: all descended from and the same ancestor of red pandas.
7:42
Speaker 1: So walruses are related to red pandas, just a little
7:45
Speaker 1: back on the family tree. And they're even more related
7:49
Speaker 1: to red Pandas than they would be to say, like manatees,
7:51
Speaker 1: would you'd be like, well, manatees and walrus is the
7:53
Speaker 1: same thing. Nope, not even remotely related. I thought you're
7:57
Speaker 1: gonna say Wilford Brimley, he's one, or Friedrich Nietzsche. Oh,
8:03
Speaker 1: does he have the walrus mustache? Yeah? Are yosemboite Sam? Yeah?
8:07
Speaker 1: And that. Then there was the professional golfer Craig Stadler.
8:11
Speaker 1: I don't remember him he uh, he's probably on the
8:13
Speaker 1: senior tour now, but he was. His nickname was the Walrus. Well,
8:17
Speaker 1: he would need to look out for Jack Nicholas, whose
8:19
Speaker 1: nickname was the Golden Bear. Yeah. They didn't get along, so,
8:24
Speaker 1: really did they not? No? No, that would be the
8:26
Speaker 1: polar bear. Yeah, any I guess so the today, Chuck.
8:33
Speaker 1: There are walrus is in the north of the Pacific
8:36
Speaker 1: and the north of the Atlantic around basically the Arctic. Yes,
8:40
Speaker 1: and there's the Pacific walruses, and then the Atlantic walruses. Yeah,
8:44
Speaker 1: the Pacific. The differentiation here that the males are generally bigger,
8:49
Speaker 1: between nine and twelve feet and roughly sevent undred pounds
8:54
Speaker 1: and about four thousand at the top top end women
8:59
Speaker 1: women females. The ladies are about seven and a half
9:03
Speaker 1: feet to ten feet four hundred to twelve fifty for
9:06
Speaker 1: the Pacific. The Atlantic males are a little smaller. They
9:10
Speaker 1: top out around the low end of the Pacific and
9:13
Speaker 1: about two thousand pounds, and the ladies are shorter and
9:17
Speaker 1: a little heavier and about eight feet so about the
9:21
Speaker 1: same length but a little a little heavier. Yeah, So
9:24
Speaker 1: they're they're big. Man with jam is I mean eight
9:26
Speaker 1: DRAMs for Pacific males. That is, that's those are big boys, um,
9:34
Speaker 1: And they're all they're all members of the order Pinapedia,
9:39
Speaker 1: so they're related to seals and sea lions and their
9:42
Speaker 1: Latin name. Their scientific name is otto benice rose maris,
9:47
Speaker 1: which means are you ready for this tooth walking sea horse.
9:51
Speaker 1: That's great. And the name walrus too, by the way,
9:54
Speaker 1: is a Danish word. Yeah, and of that order uh
9:59
Speaker 1: pinapede ah. They're the second largest only to the elephant
10:03
Speaker 1: seal um. And they're the only one that have those tusks,
10:07
Speaker 1: those hallmark tusks of the walrus um on the male
10:11
Speaker 1: jutting down while females happened two but on the male
10:14
Speaker 1: jutting down from that big um yosemite sam mustache, part
10:18
Speaker 1: of what makes them so cute. Yeah, So those tusks,
10:21
Speaker 1: And I was looking up with the difference between a
10:23
Speaker 1: tusk and a tooth is I think once it really
10:26
Speaker 1: kind of protrudes from the mouth, it becomes a tusk.
10:29
Speaker 1: But their tusks are just overgrown canines nine te um
10:33
Speaker 1: that grow up to I think about a meter three
10:35
Speaker 1: ft long. That's crazy long, it is, and they can
10:39
Speaker 1: do all sorts of stuff with that, right. So, because
10:41
Speaker 1: walruses are so isolated, they're so far north, so far
10:45
Speaker 1: away from most humans, um, they have been little studied scientifically.
10:51
Speaker 1: Although of the two groups, we know the most about
10:54
Speaker 1: the Pacific walrus, but the stuff we do know has
11:00
Speaker 1: been largely guesses like, only very recently did we figure
11:04
Speaker 1: out that they don't use their tusks to eat, because
11:07
Speaker 1: they eat like um, seashells, like mollusks and clams and
11:11
Speaker 1: other bivalves. Right, And they used to think that the
11:14
Speaker 1: walrus is either use their tusks to like route out
11:19
Speaker 1: clams and mollusks off of the sea floor, or they
11:24
Speaker 1: use them to pry open shells. While both of those
11:26
Speaker 1: are wrong. It turns out they don't use their tusks
11:29
Speaker 1: for much except to menace one another when they're trying
11:32
Speaker 1: to establish dominance. Yeah, that's that's one of the things
11:36
Speaker 1: they can do. But um, I think he used a
11:38
Speaker 1: good word, their menace. They don't try and kill one
11:41
Speaker 1: another with their tusks. Uh. They like to jab at
11:44
Speaker 1: one another and established dominance as like, Hey, I'm I've
11:48
Speaker 1: got bigger tusks, some larger than you. But they're not.
11:52
Speaker 1: First of all, they're protected. They have this really thick
11:54
Speaker 1: skin around their neck and shoulders, so they're they're protected
11:58
Speaker 1: in a sense, and they're not getting to kill one
12:00
Speaker 1: another either, right, but they do, I mean, they do
12:03
Speaker 1: draw blood when they jab each other, so they have
12:06
Speaker 1: their their their little technique is they lean their heads
12:09
Speaker 1: back like so so that their tusks are parallel with
12:14
Speaker 1: the earth, and then they go ninja strike right, and
12:20
Speaker 1: they'll draw a little blood and they'll even like leave scars.
12:23
Speaker 1: But like you said, their necks are so protected with blubber.
12:25
Speaker 1: It's like it mainly is just to to make a point,
12:30
Speaker 1: and the point typically is move from what I can understand. Yeah,
12:34
Speaker 1: they also will use their tusks sometimes to break through
12:37
Speaker 1: ice to breathe. And then this one cute, cute move
12:41
Speaker 1: they're swimming around, they're tired, they might stick their head
12:46
Speaker 1: through and hook their tusks onto the ice and just
12:49
Speaker 1: hang there for a bit, Yeah, which is pretty great. Yeah,
12:52
Speaker 1: they have these sacks, fairy geal sacks that allow them
12:55
Speaker 1: to kind of buoy upright, keep their head upright above water.
12:59
Speaker 1: But would guess that that gets tiring after a while
13:02
Speaker 1: and eventually just let the old teeth do it, you know. Yeah,
13:05
Speaker 1: And like I said, the ladies have them too, But
13:07
Speaker 1: the males are longer and stronger, a little bit straighter. Uh,
13:11
Speaker 1: and they can grow. I mean a wal risk can
13:14
Speaker 1: live up to thirty years and the tusks may grow
13:16
Speaker 1: for about half of that life. Yeah, I saw thirty.
13:19
Speaker 1: I also saw forty somewhere that they can live up
13:22
Speaker 1: to forty. All right, that's one of the things. I'm
13:24
Speaker 1: not gonna make the noise, but anytime animals live a
13:28
Speaker 1: long time with one another, um that that kind of
13:31
Speaker 1: gets me. Yeah, and I found this very fascinating about
13:35
Speaker 1: Wallace is Man. They are um, very social creatures. Like
13:41
Speaker 1: they hang out together, they like swim around together. Um.
13:45
Speaker 1: The boys rest together for you know, months at a
13:49
Speaker 1: time or weeks at a time, sometimes during certain times
13:52
Speaker 1: of the year. But they live um apart from one another,
13:56
Speaker 1: males and females. They only come together to mate and
14:00
Speaker 1: then they say, Okay, this has been really great. I'll
14:03
Speaker 1: see you next year. Yeah, I'll see a camp next year.
14:06
Speaker 1: It's very interesting. As far as the rest of their body, Um,
14:09
Speaker 1: they're mostly dark brown. Although I don't want to give
14:12
Speaker 1: it away, but they can change color depending on what
14:15
Speaker 1: they're doing, which is kind of interesting. Uh. And you know,
14:18
Speaker 1: this is one of the situations where they it's a
14:20
Speaker 1: kind of a big, clunky creature on land, but once
14:24
Speaker 1: you get them in the water, then they're just so graceful,
14:27
Speaker 1: which is a really lovely thing to see. Yeah, and
14:30
Speaker 1: when they walk on land, so they turn their flippers out.
14:32
Speaker 1: Their front flippers they have two pair, right, so they
14:35
Speaker 1: turn the front flippers out to their side and just
14:38
Speaker 1: kind of use that for side to side stability. And
14:40
Speaker 1: they put their back flippers underneath their pelvis and they
14:43
Speaker 1: use that to kind of propel themselves forward. It's it's
14:46
Speaker 1: very cute. Yeah. And because they're ance, they're flippers um
14:49
Speaker 1: are have like rough bottoms like a shoe sole almost. Uh.
14:55
Speaker 1: And then in the water, it's kind of a reverse
14:57
Speaker 1: boat thing. They don't steer from the rear. They use
15:01
Speaker 1: those front flippers for steering and obviously power themselves with
15:05
Speaker 1: those super strong alternating backflippers. It's like one of those
15:10
Speaker 1: ships the hides used to scal Oh yeah, remember, yeah,
15:14
Speaker 1: that's right. So it's basically the walrus of the riverboats. Yeah,
15:18
Speaker 1: and these guys can swim. They says they average about
15:20
Speaker 1: four and a half miles an hour. I think that's
15:22
Speaker 1: just when they're kind of cruising, but they can swim
15:25
Speaker 1: as fast as twenty tour if I guess they're fleeing something.
15:30
Speaker 1: Even though they don't really have many predators, No, they don't.
15:33
Speaker 1: They basically have two, don't they? Well, including humans, they
15:38
Speaker 1: have three, don't they? Okay, what are they? Oh? Okay, Well,
15:42
Speaker 1: if you want to talk predators, they have polar bears,
15:45
Speaker 1: as you said earlier, killer whales, and then humans. But
15:51
Speaker 1: that's one of the reasons why they've been so successful.
15:54
Speaker 1: And we'll talk about that, how successful and whether or
15:56
Speaker 1: not they're thriving or stabler whatever spoiler they are right
16:01
Speaker 1: after this. Huh, All right, Chuck, we're back. That's right.
16:16
Speaker 1: And if you've ever have you ever seen did you
16:20
Speaker 1: notice in any of the videos that a walrus up
16:22
Speaker 1: close with like in their face what do you mean?
16:25
Speaker 1: So their eyes in particular, they have like pug eyes,
16:29
Speaker 1: you know, Pug's eyes look like they're about to pop
16:31
Speaker 1: at any minute. Yeah, they always looked a little surprised. Yeah.
16:35
Speaker 1: I didn't know this because there was a camera on
16:36
Speaker 1: them all of a sudden. It could have been I
16:38
Speaker 1: was looking up walrus intelligence because you know, there's a
16:42
Speaker 1: lot of videos about walrus is where they're they're saying, like,
16:47
Speaker 1: you know, whistle or speak or whatever. Because as we'll see,
16:50
Speaker 1: walruses can make a lot of cool noises, and the
16:52
Speaker 1: walruses do the different things. So they're obviously trainable, which
16:55
Speaker 1: means that there's some level of intelligence. But I couldn't
16:57
Speaker 1: find anything about like, oh yeah, these guys are as
17:00
Speaker 1: intelligent as an octopus or a pig or something. Couldn't
17:03
Speaker 1: find anything like that, but they are trainable. Has anyone
17:06
Speaker 1: who's seen the screen classic fifty first Dates can tell you?
17:11
Speaker 1: I don't think I saw that. That's a good one. Actually, yeah, yeah,
17:14
Speaker 1: Sandler and Drew Barryman. Right, where does the walrus fin in?
17:19
Speaker 1: He is like a marine biologists specializes that. I think
17:25
Speaker 1: in Walrus is or something like that, because he's got
17:27
Speaker 1: penguin friends too. But anyway, there's a trained walrus that
17:31
Speaker 1: factors into it. I have to check that out. It's
17:33
Speaker 1: actually a pretty cute movie. Hey you got me at
17:36
Speaker 1: at Adam Sandler and Walrus. Okay, uh so these guys
17:41
Speaker 1: and ladies are, like you said, all over the Arctic. Um,
17:45
Speaker 1: if we're talking Pacific, we're talking to bearing. See the Chukchi,
17:50
Speaker 1: which shout out to my friend Max Goldman. I just
17:53
Speaker 1: saw on Facebook this morning. He had a great picture
17:56
Speaker 1: of himself staring out at the icy Chucky. See, well,
18:00
Speaker 1: my only Alaskan friend. It sounds really cool. Yeah, it
18:03
Speaker 1: was really gorgeous. And I said something about, hey, I
18:07
Speaker 1: was just reading about this, and of course he's on
18:09
Speaker 1: Alaska time, so you probably woken up yet. He's like,
18:11
Speaker 1: I can see Russia from my house. He might. Uh.
18:14
Speaker 1: And then the laptop see in the Pacific uh. And
18:18
Speaker 1: then along the coast of Canada on the Atlantic side
18:21
Speaker 1: in Greenland is where you're gonna find the other guys.
18:25
Speaker 1: And we're talking two hundred and fifty total walrus is
18:30
Speaker 1: about two hundred thousand, of which are Pacific. Yeah, yeah,
18:35
Speaker 1: two total, which doesn't sound like a lot. But again,
18:38
Speaker 1: we'll get to it later. But but they're doing okay, Yeah,
18:41
Speaker 1: they really seem to be, don't they. Yeah, we don't
18:43
Speaker 1: want people to worry too much about the walrus. So
18:46
Speaker 1: so back to the walrus. Is pug eyes, right, they
18:50
Speaker 1: um kind of protrude and you'd think, wow, that walters
18:54
Speaker 1: can see all over the place. It's doing a three
18:57
Speaker 1: sixty with its eye right now. Um, not necessary. Early.
19:00
Speaker 1: They're actually not the best at seeing, but they don't
19:04
Speaker 1: need to be because there are other organs are more
19:07
Speaker 1: evolved to kind of make up for it. They they
19:10
Speaker 1: hunt and can smell out predators using their nose. I
19:15
Speaker 1: think it is probably their primary sense from what I understand. Yeah,
19:18
Speaker 1: in their ears they can hear. They have these two
19:20
Speaker 1: little uh kind of flap ears basically openings with a
19:24
Speaker 1: little protective flap, and uh, they can hear things like
19:30
Speaker 1: perhaps pray up to a mile away. Yes, I was
19:33
Speaker 1: looking for that. Did you Did you see that anywhere else? No,
19:37
Speaker 1: it was one of those ones that raised a red
19:39
Speaker 1: flag because I looked all over it was like seeing
19:42
Speaker 1: just that that. Yeah, they can hear for up two
19:44
Speaker 1: mile away. The closest thing I saw that proved that
19:48
Speaker 1: was demonstrations by um Arctic natives who would make like
19:53
Speaker 1: a walrus call, and like a walrus like a mile
19:57
Speaker 1: away would respond to it. They said hey wa us
20:01
Speaker 1: and the war was looked around. Said you're talking to me, yes, sir.
20:06
Speaker 1: How they talk Yeah, like Southern gentlemen. They have that
20:10
Speaker 1: high cotton accent. I don't even know what that means.
20:15
Speaker 1: That's a Southern thing, like, um, well, there's a bar
20:18
Speaker 1: in Charleston called High Cotton, so I was thinking of. Yeah.
20:21
Speaker 1: So their noses, though, is where that's their money maker. Um,
20:25
Speaker 1: they have it's very sensitive. Um. Like you said, they
20:28
Speaker 1: used to think that they use their tusks or I
20:31
Speaker 1: don't know if you said it, but they used to
20:33
Speaker 1: think they these are tusks to grind into the sea
20:36
Speaker 1: floor dig things up. But that is not the case.
20:39
Speaker 1: They are blowing out of their nose to clear away
20:42
Speaker 1: stuff and stir up things to eat. And those whiskers
20:46
Speaker 1: those uh what do you say called those vieber say
20:49
Speaker 1: viber say, four hundred and seven hundred of those in
20:54
Speaker 1: fifteen rows. Not only do they look cute and like
20:57
Speaker 1: a big walrus mustache, but are super sensitive. Yeah, so
21:02
Speaker 1: that's like their cactile sense. Then these little whiskers, the
21:05
Speaker 1: sensitive whiskers, and they use those. So they shoot water
21:09
Speaker 1: out of their nose into the bottom of the sea
21:13
Speaker 1: and it stirs up some stuff. The clams are like
21:16
Speaker 1: stop stop, and they start to float up, and the
21:18
Speaker 1: walrus is since the clams with their their whiskers their
21:22
Speaker 1: vibers say, or whatever you call them, and then things
21:26
Speaker 1: get even weirder, right because remember they don't use their
21:29
Speaker 1: tusks to open the clams. They don't use their tusks
21:33
Speaker 1: to burrow. Their tusks actually appear to kind of get
21:36
Speaker 1: in the way if anything as far as feeding is concerned,
21:39
Speaker 1: what they do is they they are they have a
21:42
Speaker 1: very high cavity in their mouth and they can pump
21:46
Speaker 1: their tongue back and forth like a piston. So they
21:49
Speaker 1: actually produce of a form of suction so strong it
21:53
Speaker 1: sucks a clam right out of the shell. The clam
21:57
Speaker 1: as as they can't say anything, that poor clam, they're
22:01
Speaker 1: just hanging out down there. Before you know it, they
22:04
Speaker 1: get snotted, snotted on and sucked out, and a lot
22:09
Speaker 1: of them too. It's a very undignified ending for the clam. Yeah,
22:13
Speaker 1: it says in here, and I didn't find back up
22:14
Speaker 1: for this, but I believe it is that that suction
22:16
Speaker 1: is so powerful. They've been known to suck holes in
22:18
Speaker 1: plywood and I saw that. Yeah, I saw that elsewhere too,
22:21
Speaker 1: that they they've had like five pound plugs in some
22:24
Speaker 1: of their aquatic um like habitats. They've sucked out of
22:28
Speaker 1: the flower that's crazy, also known as the floor the flower. Yeah, yeah,
22:33
Speaker 1: so they do have things your hot cotton exit out
22:36
Speaker 1: of the floor. So they do have like that, some
22:40
Speaker 1: amazing suction going on, and they don't even chew. They
22:43
Speaker 1: have these amazing like three ft teeth. They don't even
22:46
Speaker 1: chew with any of them. They just eat a clam hole.
22:50
Speaker 1: And I think, did you say three thousand to six
22:52
Speaker 1: thousand of them? Indicating no, I said a whole lot,
22:55
Speaker 1: that's a lot. Yeah. They said that they can eat
22:58
Speaker 1: um between four and six percent of their body weight
23:02
Speaker 1: each day. So let's just say an average three thousand
23:05
Speaker 1: pound walrus eating about five that's a hundred and fifty
23:09
Speaker 1: pounds a day of not just clams um. They're not
23:13
Speaker 1: super picky anything down there, seaworms, snails, crabs, uh, they'll
23:18
Speaker 1: eat all that stuff. But I get the feeling that
23:20
Speaker 1: they really love those clams. Yeah, they like the claims
23:23
Speaker 1: of the moment, as they should. But think about that.
23:25
Speaker 1: If there's two hundred and fifty thousand walruses in the world,
23:28
Speaker 1: all basically up in the Arctic, and each one is
23:32
Speaker 1: eating something like three thousand to six thousand claims a day,
23:35
Speaker 1: how have clams not taken over the world by now? Yeah,
23:39
Speaker 1: it's crazy. It's um that. You know. The comedian Nate Bargatti, Yes,
23:45
Speaker 1: he has that funny joke about a million sharks a
23:47
Speaker 1: year killed and he was just like, I didn't know
23:50
Speaker 1: there's ever been a million sharks in the history of
23:52
Speaker 1: the world. Like, He's like that just sounds like a
23:55
Speaker 1: lot of sharks, except Nate does it great because his
23:58
Speaker 1: delivery is that of a professional comedian in that high
24:02
Speaker 1: cotton next and not me. Well he's from Tennessee. There
24:05
Speaker 1: you go. Uh, so they're eating cheese. I mean, I
24:09
Speaker 1: can't even do the math. Two fifty thousand times four thousand.
24:13
Speaker 1: Uh they're equals um a ton and we're still able
24:16
Speaker 1: to dip our Christini and clam juice at an Italian dinner.
24:21
Speaker 1: Do you like clams? I'm more of an oyster guy.
24:25
Speaker 1: I like them both. I like to be turned on
24:27
Speaker 1: by my food. You know. Well, I mean I definitely
24:33
Speaker 1: love oysters, and we'll never not order them if it's
24:36
Speaker 1: at a place with a good chance of having good ones.
24:39
Speaker 1: But I'll dip into a clam shell. Well, you put
24:43
Speaker 1: clams in your bloody Mary mix? Oh yeah, clamato, Sure
24:48
Speaker 1: that's clam juice. Yeah, oh man, I could kick it
24:51
Speaker 1: up a notch if I put a couple of clams
24:53
Speaker 1: in there. Yeah, not in the shell, but just like
24:55
Speaker 1: pick the meat out. Well, yeah, live have them like
24:57
Speaker 1: living there for a little while. East of that vodka.
25:02
Speaker 1: They do live up by Russia. I bet there's been
25:05
Speaker 1: more than one beach bar called the Drunken Clam. There's
25:07
Speaker 1: got me in there, like I think that's the that's
25:12
Speaker 1: the bar and the family guy. Oh is it? I'm
25:15
Speaker 1: pretty sure. Oh, we're gonna find out if it's not.
25:20
Speaker 1: I don't know, man, I feel like we've gone a
25:21
Speaker 1: little off the rails. Did we take a break or
25:24
Speaker 1: can we pull it back without it? Uh? Well, quickly,
25:27
Speaker 1: let's talk about the third potential breed um. There is
25:31
Speaker 1: another subspecies that is not officially a subspecies Um that
25:36
Speaker 1: lives in the Laptev Sa near Siberia, called the Laptev walrus,
25:41
Speaker 1: and apparently their skull and body size is pretty similar
25:45
Speaker 1: to the Atlantic and the Pacific um. And I'm not
25:48
Speaker 1: sure why it wants its own distinction, but they haven't
25:50
Speaker 1: been recognized as such. Yeah, I mean there must be
25:55
Speaker 1: different enough in some way. Yeah, I saw. Some people
25:59
Speaker 1: see them is a different species. Other people just do not.
26:02
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the deal is. Maybe they're isolated themselves.
26:07
Speaker 1: I don't know. I don't know either. Now you want
26:10
Speaker 1: to take a break, Okay, all right, So one of
26:25
Speaker 1: the other things that I love insert whatever sound effect
26:29
Speaker 1: is in your head, listener. Uh, is that they are
26:32
Speaker 1: very and this is the same deal with the elephant.
26:34
Speaker 1: In any creature that's very sensitive and caring to one another. Uh,
26:39
Speaker 1: they will watch over their injured friends. Um. If one
26:44
Speaker 1: of them dies, they will push them off the ice
26:47
Speaker 1: if hunters are nearby so they can't get them. Um,
26:51
Speaker 1: the ladies, well this is so sad, but the ladies
26:54
Speaker 1: will carry their dead young away from hunters. And if
26:59
Speaker 1: they sense that they're dudes nearby, these hunter men nearby, Um,
27:03
Speaker 1: they can hack away at ice to break it away
27:07
Speaker 1: and free uh, like a calf that might be stuck
27:11
Speaker 1: or something. Yeah, they could really take care of each other.
27:14
Speaker 1: It's been documented. Yeah, it's pretty cool. They're very sensitive creatures.
27:18
Speaker 1: It turns out, so, Um, I don't think we could
27:22
Speaker 1: talk about walrus is if we didn't talk about blubber, right, Yes,
27:27
Speaker 1: so you said that, Um, it's pretty thick. I think
27:30
Speaker 1: that's an understatement, Chuck. The the blubber layer on a
27:34
Speaker 1: walrus is something like about almost four inches ten centimeters thick,
27:39
Speaker 1: and during the winter, when they're at their blubberyest, it's
27:42
Speaker 1: about a third of their body weight, So they might
27:44
Speaker 1: have like a thousand pounds of fat in in their
27:48
Speaker 1: body at any given point in time, which is is
27:51
Speaker 1: pretty you gotta tip your hat to that. Well. Yeah,
27:54
Speaker 1: and this you know, of course, this is an adaptation
27:57
Speaker 1: to deal with the temperatures where they live. Keeps them warm.
28:01
Speaker 1: Apparently they lose heat twenty seven times faster and water,
28:05
Speaker 1: and they are in water, what is it, like two
28:08
Speaker 1: thirds of their life or something like that. Yeah, so
28:11
Speaker 1: they have this remarkable blubber to keep that body temperature
28:14
Speaker 1: at about ninety eight degrees ninety seven point nine degrees
28:18
Speaker 1: pretty consistently. Right, So you were saying, you were alluding
28:21
Speaker 1: earlier to how they can change color. Here's how you're ready. Yes,
28:26
Speaker 1: when they're in the water for a while or when
28:28
Speaker 1: they're exposed to really really cold temperatures, their um their
28:32
Speaker 1: their body pumps blood away from their skin and sends
28:37
Speaker 1: it to their core to keep their internal organs warm
28:40
Speaker 1: because the skin doesn't need to be as warm as say,
28:43
Speaker 1: the internal organs is survival mechanism, right, And then once
28:47
Speaker 1: they start to warm up, and when that happens, they
28:50
Speaker 1: turn kind of white, like like a white worm, kind
28:53
Speaker 1: of thing going on. Did you ever see that movie
28:56
Speaker 1: The Layer of the White Worm. No, but that sounds familiar.
28:59
Speaker 1: It was an early Hugh Grant movie where like there's
29:02
Speaker 1: this group in uh in England that like worship this
29:07
Speaker 1: white worm that comes out like every century or something
29:10
Speaker 1: like that. It's like a weird English horror movie that
29:14
Speaker 1: is also kind of funny in some ways. It's a
29:16
Speaker 1: good one. But anyway, that's what a walrus looks like
29:19
Speaker 1: when it's really really cool, like you Grant, Yeah, but white,
29:23
Speaker 1: super white. He's about as white as it gets. These
29:26
Speaker 1: guys get even whiter because they're very, very cold, that's right.
29:31
Speaker 1: And then once they get back to like where the
29:33
Speaker 1: sun is shining, or maybe back on the ice where
29:35
Speaker 1: it's ironically slightly warmer um, their color can come back
29:40
Speaker 1: there they're still brown that they can get a little
29:42
Speaker 1: bit more of a pinky look to them. They can
29:46
Speaker 1: with that blubber. They can handle water that's like down
29:48
Speaker 1: to negative four degrees ferret height. It's just something like
29:52
Speaker 1: negative twenty celsius. And they I mean, like you said,
29:55
Speaker 1: they spend two thirds of their life and water this cold.
29:58
Speaker 1: They live in the Arctic, so they're pretty well suited
30:00
Speaker 1: for it. Well, negative four is the low end. It
30:02
Speaker 1: can go all the way down to negative fifty nine.
30:06
Speaker 1: That's nuttie. Uh. And they do have little hairs, uh
30:10
Speaker 1: that they shed in the summer. But it's pretty much
30:14
Speaker 1: everyone is in agreement that it doesn't really do much
30:17
Speaker 1: to keep them warm. It's left over from when they
30:19
Speaker 1: were bears. That's my theory. It probably is. Yeah. Uh,
30:23
Speaker 1: so they have another cool adaptation. Um, they can go
30:26
Speaker 1: a long time without oxygen. And this is all has
30:30
Speaker 1: to do with how they circulate oxygen and their blood.
30:33
Speaker 1: So uh, when they dive, they actually slow their heart
30:37
Speaker 1: rate down and then that blood again goes to those
30:40
Speaker 1: organs because they need oxygen and warmth. And uh. They
30:45
Speaker 1: also have a special protein in their blood called myoglobin
30:48
Speaker 1: that binds with the oxygen and then actually stores it
30:52
Speaker 1: in the muscles. Right, so they have plenty of oxygen
30:56
Speaker 1: whenever they're they're diving. How how deep do they dive?
30:58
Speaker 1: I can't remember it said they feed I think from
31:01
Speaker 1: between like thirty something and a hundred ft, but they
31:08
Speaker 1: they prefer a little shallower because one of the worries
31:11
Speaker 1: with global warming is the sea ice is retreating and
31:14
Speaker 1: going away so they're having to go further and further
31:17
Speaker 1: north to get to the sea ice, which means that
31:22
Speaker 1: the waters are deeper. So they're having to learn how
31:24
Speaker 1: to how to dive deeper to feed and um, you know,
31:29
Speaker 1: there's just one of the effects of global warming is
31:31
Speaker 1: sometimes the moms will get separated from their calves because
31:34
Speaker 1: it's such a long journey and they don't know, like
31:37
Speaker 1: are they going to be able to adapt and learn
31:39
Speaker 1: to dive that deep to hunt for food? Right, And
31:41
Speaker 1: and it's yeah, it's not just um where they where
31:44
Speaker 1: they hunt for food from, like these are it's kind
31:46
Speaker 1: of like their little base, right, So when when they're
31:49
Speaker 1: on ice or an ice flow, they'll dive for food,
31:52
Speaker 1: they'll come back up, they'll rest. That's where they sleep. Um,
31:55
Speaker 1: that's where moms and their calves rest. Sometimes they nurse there.
31:59
Speaker 1: It's where um cows give birth to calves. There's like
32:02
Speaker 1: ice plays a very very important role in the walrus
32:06
Speaker 1: is life, so much so that in the Pacific walrus,
32:09
Speaker 1: the females basically just follow the edge of the ice
32:13
Speaker 1: north in the summer and then come back down south
32:16
Speaker 1: in the winter. Is the ice kind of like ebbs
32:19
Speaker 1: and flows right towards the north pole um and and
32:23
Speaker 1: as it doesn't retreat as far down. It's just it's
32:26
Speaker 1: messing with the program a little bit, Like you said,
32:28
Speaker 1: not just with food, but also with just typical regular behavior. Yeah,
32:32
Speaker 1: I've been in a lot of these cases too. There's
32:34
Speaker 1: got to be just some like confusion, you know. Yeah,
32:40
Speaker 1: Like if you're for however many millions of years, you've
32:43
Speaker 1: been used to the same thing, and if all of
32:46
Speaker 1: a sudden you're like, wait a minute, like where are
32:47
Speaker 1: we going now, They're like, I'm just a walrus. Your
32:52
Speaker 1: your world frightens and confuses me. What happened to the accent? Uh? That? Well,
32:58
Speaker 1: this is a different wal risk, This is ted the walrus.
33:02
Speaker 1: Also that pharyngeal muscle that you were talking about, which
33:05
Speaker 1: can they can puff up to kind of buy them.
33:08
Speaker 1: They also will puff that up to close off water
33:12
Speaker 1: from entering their lungs when they dive. Let's talk about
33:16
Speaker 1: those pharyngeal sacks, because there they are pretty amazing. There's
33:19
Speaker 1: a lot of stuff they can do with those. First
33:21
Speaker 1: of all, walruses make some of the coolest sounds of
33:25
Speaker 1: any animal I've ever heard. There's a clip on YouTube
33:29
Speaker 1: just type in walrus sounds, and there's one that comes up,
33:32
Speaker 1: and it's just a static picture of a big, old,
33:34
Speaker 1: gigantic walrus. Um, what do they call them? Are they
33:38
Speaker 1: called bowls? Well, they call them cows and calves, that probably,
33:42
Speaker 1: but I didn't see bulls anywhere. A dude walrus, right,
33:46
Speaker 1: just a big boy and um, it's about two and
33:48
Speaker 1: a half minutes of just the best walrus sounds. And
33:51
Speaker 1: it's actually in a really weird way, kind of soothing,
33:54
Speaker 1: like you can have it on in the background. I
33:56
Speaker 1: noticed I retained twelve percent more information while it was playing,
34:00
Speaker 1: and I did when I wasn't listening to her, Right,
34:03
Speaker 1: it just made that statistic upture. But you get the point.
34:06
Speaker 1: And well, can we play some of it? Yeah? Can
34:10
Speaker 1: we do that? Sure we can't. Jerry's nodding and she
34:14
Speaker 1: rolled her eyes. Well, here's like seconds is some some
34:17
Speaker 1: good walrus sounds? Halla, so ten twenty seconds? Who knows
34:37
Speaker 1: what it be? Well, we can only use ten because
34:39
Speaker 1: of the rights issues. Okay, get sued by the Walrus Association,
34:44
Speaker 1: right exactly, I'm ted walrus and I've had enough of
34:47
Speaker 1: this getting pushed around. So um, the way that the
34:52
Speaker 1: walrus are one of the ways the walrus makes so
34:55
Speaker 1: many different times. It's because these faaryngeal sacks that they
34:58
Speaker 1: used to buoy themselves with, they use it also as
35:01
Speaker 1: an amplifier, and they make all these sounds when they're
35:04
Speaker 1: mating with women. That's right. So you remember how the
35:08
Speaker 1: females in the Pacific go north in the summer and
35:12
Speaker 1: then come back in the winter. On their way back,
35:14
Speaker 1: they meet up with the guys who generally stay south
35:18
Speaker 1: in the Bearing Sea the whole whole year. Um, And
35:21
Speaker 1: that's just s Pacific the Atlantic ones. They put year around,
35:24
Speaker 1: both males and females. But as the Pacific females are
35:27
Speaker 1: coming back mating season as time perfectly with that, and
35:31
Speaker 1: they will sit in groups of about twenty or twenty
35:34
Speaker 1: three on a big chunk of ice and say, dudes,
35:38
Speaker 1: let's see what you got. And then the little Gilligan's
35:41
Speaker 1: Island Talent show starts and they literally line up out
35:46
Speaker 1: there give each other a little space. They fight for
35:48
Speaker 1: that prime spot. Yeah, they'll tusk. Yeah, that's when they
35:52
Speaker 1: get a little aggressive. And the poor always feel bad
35:55
Speaker 1: for the guys like in the back row or whatever
35:57
Speaker 1: like it. He's got to really ramp up his vocalization.
35:59
Speaker 1: I us and he's like my tusk broke. But he's
36:03
Speaker 1: probably got a lady out there who likes that. But
36:06
Speaker 1: they do they they kind of perform for them. They
36:09
Speaker 1: do a little routine and the ladies are like, you, um,
36:15
Speaker 1: sexually mature man, who I think, Uh, they reached. The
36:19
Speaker 1: male reaches sexual maturity about eight to ten, females five
36:24
Speaker 1: to six. But this is adorable. They still don't hug
36:27
Speaker 1: and kiss until a few years after, just because they just,
36:30
Speaker 1: I don't know, they want to do it the right way.
36:32
Speaker 1: I think that um, that we don't have to take
36:35
Speaker 1: our clothes off. Song is one of the Walrus's favorite
36:38
Speaker 1: songs of all time. They're really big into promise rings,
36:43
Speaker 1: but friendship bracelets first. Uh. So the female has a
36:47
Speaker 1: gestation period about fifteen months, so this is a big deal. Um,
36:52
Speaker 1: you know, they're they're pregnant for a long time, so
36:54
Speaker 1: they want to hook up with the right dude, uh
36:58
Speaker 1: to get them pregnant. Depending on it falls, depending on
37:01
Speaker 1: when it falls in the cycle. They may even sit
37:04
Speaker 1: that out if they're pregnant, you know, like they may
37:07
Speaker 1: take a year off. Yeah, they're like, I'm good I'm covered,
37:12
Speaker 1: but that is it's a thing like if if a
37:14
Speaker 1: if a cow is pregnant come next mating season, like
37:18
Speaker 1: you said, she's gonna kind of hang off to the
37:21
Speaker 1: side and wait for her friends to be done so
37:23
Speaker 1: they can keep going south. Um, but that actually is
37:27
Speaker 1: going to have an impact on her calf because she's
37:31
Speaker 1: gonna spend more time raising it and nursing it. Yeah,
37:34
Speaker 1: which is really great. Like if if that happens in
37:36
Speaker 1: the timing works out, they can they can be with
37:39
Speaker 1: their young for up to a couple of years. Yeah,
37:43
Speaker 1: so I think like a male calf, So remember males
37:47
Speaker 1: and females they separate. They only come together during mating season.
37:51
Speaker 1: And then if you're a male calf that's born, you're
37:54
Speaker 1: hanging out with your mom for a year or two years,
37:56
Speaker 1: depending on the timing of her pregnancy. And then you
38:00
Speaker 1: go off with the mail hurt and say what up, boys,
38:03
Speaker 1: I'm here, it's party, and they said get at the
38:06
Speaker 1: back of the line. Yeah, I saw that. It's just
38:09
Speaker 1: sounds so adorable that very young um walrus calves boys
38:16
Speaker 1: will practice that tusking thing even before their tusks are
38:20
Speaker 1: grown out. So they mess around with each other like
38:22
Speaker 1: I'm gonna I'm gonna tusk you when my tests come in. Look,
38:26
Speaker 1: i'd love to see that. It's like little goats before
38:28
Speaker 1: they get their horns. Yeah, they can do the same
38:30
Speaker 1: thing when they just have those little nubs. They just
38:32
Speaker 1: walk around with headaches all the time. I have goats
38:36
Speaker 1: to live across the street from me. I don't think
38:37
Speaker 1: I've told you that Satanic goats are cute goats, no
38:40
Speaker 1: cutest good Christian goats. Yeah, uh yeah, they're great. They
38:45
Speaker 1: I'm not sure what the pat My neighbor across the
38:48
Speaker 1: street had like seven or eight of them last year
38:50
Speaker 1: and they went away for the winner. And now she
38:51
Speaker 1: has a new batch. And she's jim No, no, no,
38:55
Speaker 1: she's Jamaican. And I think what someone said in the
38:57
Speaker 1: neighborhood is that she's keeps his oats around and then
39:02
Speaker 1: raises them and then has them shipped to Jamaica as
39:05
Speaker 1: like a charitable thing. What you're right where they're eating.
39:11
Speaker 1: I don't know what they're eating. I'm pretty sure. I'm
39:14
Speaker 1: not sure. But this is a new batch of goats.
39:15
Speaker 1: And of course, you know, my kid loves it. Yeah,
39:18
Speaker 1: I love goats too, Little baby goats, baby lambs. I saw, Um,
39:22
Speaker 1: you mean, I watched this documentary called The Secret Life
39:24
Speaker 1: of Dogs. Have you seen it? It's from two thousand thirteen.
39:29
Speaker 1: I think BBC originally made it. If you get a
39:34
Speaker 1: membership with Curiosity, a subscription on Curiosity on Amazon Prime.
39:40
Speaker 1: It's on there. That's the only place I've found it.
39:43
Speaker 1: I think, is it a sub thing I have to
39:45
Speaker 1: join because I'm already on the Prime. Yes, it is.
39:48
Speaker 1: It's an extra subscription, but it's like a seven day
39:51
Speaker 1: trial or something like that. Really curious. You will pay
39:54
Speaker 1: for it, right, so they they have the secret Just
39:57
Speaker 1: check it out. Check You're going to love it. Um.
40:00
Speaker 1: It's just a really well made documentary. But in part
40:03
Speaker 1: of it, there's this this herding dog, some sort of
40:06
Speaker 1: shepherd um that bottle feeds a baby lamb holding a
40:12
Speaker 1: bottle in her mouth. This little lamb is nursing off
40:15
Speaker 1: of the bottle. It's one of the most adorable things
40:17
Speaker 1: you'll ever see in your entire life. Well, I think
40:20
Speaker 1: we've agreed in the past that inter animal mingling and
40:23
Speaker 1: coupling and friendship is the best thing in the world.
40:26
Speaker 1: Maybe not coupling, but the rest of it. Well, I
40:29
Speaker 1: don't mean like, I just mean in a friendly way.
40:32
Speaker 1: Do you one of the other I love? There's just
40:34
Speaker 1: one more thing about this. The the woman who owns
40:37
Speaker 1: the dog, or who I should say is best friends
40:39
Speaker 1: with this dog, said, I didn't teach her this. She
40:42
Speaker 1: picked this up herself. Yeah, and I just dropped the mic.
40:45
Speaker 1: As you can see, I probably watched twenty five minutes
40:49
Speaker 1: the other day of um of baby pigs playing with puppies.
40:56
Speaker 1: Oh that's adorable. It's it's pretty great man. Okay, So
41:00
Speaker 1: so back to the wall, Yeah, back to reproduction. UM,
41:03
Speaker 1: this is kind of really cool. Actually, for the first
41:06
Speaker 1: up to five months of gestation, the eggs aren't even
41:10
Speaker 1: in planting yet, so they just float around in the
41:12
Speaker 1: uterus for up to five months and then eventually will
41:16
Speaker 1: implant on the uterine wall. And they think this is
41:19
Speaker 1: all done on purpose so that the calf is born
41:24
Speaker 1: at the right time in the best environment possible. Yeah.
41:27
Speaker 1: I just I thought that was a weird adaptation, like
41:29
Speaker 1: why not just have a shorter gestation time? But I
41:32
Speaker 1: guess they got figured out. I'm not gonna I'm not
41:34
Speaker 1: gonna pry so the so again, it's fifteen months gest
41:38
Speaker 1: station period, and the calves are born usually on ice,
41:42
Speaker 1: which again melting ice is a problem for him um.
41:46
Speaker 1: And then they stick around for a year or two,
41:48
Speaker 1: go off to the male herd, and then you've got
41:50
Speaker 1: the males and the females, and the females migrate in
41:54
Speaker 1: the Pacific. The males generally stay around the same area,
41:57
Speaker 1: which means that they moved to land when the ice recedes.
42:02
Speaker 1: And there's actually this island in Alaska called Round Island
42:06
Speaker 1: that's very famous for being a walrus summering area where
42:12
Speaker 1: for a couple of a couple of weeks I think,
42:15
Speaker 1: every summer, and for reasons no one knows, the walters
42:19
Speaker 1: males all just come to this one island and they'll
42:23
Speaker 1: be like twelve thousand of them just on top of
42:25
Speaker 1: one another, hanging out, um, just basically being social, having
42:29
Speaker 1: a having a boy's week. That's great. And it's so
42:33
Speaker 1: like dense with walrus. Is it's wall the wall walrus.
42:37
Speaker 1: You can't see the sand or not the sand? But
42:41
Speaker 1: is there sand or is it just ice? It is
42:43
Speaker 1: sand or no, it's I'm sorry, it's if I read
42:45
Speaker 1: that it's rocky, I haven't actually seen it myself, but
42:48
Speaker 1: you can't. You can't see anything beneath the waters. Is
42:50
Speaker 1: it's just walters flesh and blubber. Yeah, there's this one,
42:53
Speaker 1: uh if you ever drive it the coast of California.
42:57
Speaker 1: I'm gonna butcher this because I don't remember what the
43:00
Speaker 1: animal was. If it's a uh, a manatee, it's probably
43:05
Speaker 1: not a manatee. I think it's Sea lions of its
43:07
Speaker 1: seas to California. Yeah, but there's something near the the house,
43:12
Speaker 1: the Hurst Castle. There's a beach that Emily and I
43:15
Speaker 1: drove by that was wall the wall, I guess at
43:17
Speaker 1: Sea Lions when we went, and it's got to be
43:21
Speaker 1: a certain time of year, maybe time of day. I
43:22
Speaker 1: have no idea, but we didn't even know. We just
43:25
Speaker 1: sort of looked upon it and saw a bunch of
43:26
Speaker 1: cars pulled over with mouths agape, and sure enough, the
43:30
Speaker 1: whole thing and the sound was amazing. It was just
43:34
Speaker 1: a bunch of But imagine one thing going and then
43:38
Speaker 1: imagine a thousand things doing that, like the sweat hogs.
43:45
Speaker 1: Mr Kat very nice on cue. Thank you all right, Chuck.
43:49
Speaker 1: So what we said, um, there's three basically three predators
43:53
Speaker 1: for the walrus, the polar bear, which, by the way,
43:56
Speaker 1: I saw that a walrus can fend off a polar
44:00
Speaker 1: air with its tusks one on one. The way that
44:02
Speaker 1: polar bears hunt walruses is they cause a stampede and
44:06
Speaker 1: walruss try to get away from the polar bear and
44:09
Speaker 1: they will trample some a few unfortunate walruses, and the
44:13
Speaker 1: polar bear comes up and says, hey, thanks for the
44:16
Speaker 1: free meal. That's how they hunt walruses. The same thing
44:20
Speaker 1: happens when humans get too close, say like in a
44:23
Speaker 1: low flying plane or um just basically spook the walruses.
44:28
Speaker 1: But they are hunted um but very very very narrowly
44:32
Speaker 1: by a very small group of people. UM that in
44:36
Speaker 1: Upiak and the u Pick natives of the Arctic area.
44:41
Speaker 1: UM in the US, Canada and Russia are basically the
44:44
Speaker 1: only human beings allowed to hunt a walrus. And the
44:47
Speaker 1: reason why is because it's part of their um cultural
44:50
Speaker 1: tradition to hunt walruses. And when they were forced to
44:53
Speaker 1: stop for about thirty years from the sixties to the nineties,
44:56
Speaker 1: their culture really started to suffer a decline as a result. Yeah,
45:01
Speaker 1: and you know that they are protected as such. Now.
45:03
Speaker 1: Over the years there have been. Um. I mean they've
45:05
Speaker 1: been hunting walrus, as it says here since the ninth century.
45:09
Speaker 1: These are oil the ivory of course for art their skin. Uh.
45:13
Speaker 1: And for many years that you know, they were being
45:15
Speaker 1: depleted because of the oil mainly that they would use
45:18
Speaker 1: for you know, soap or lamps or it says here
45:21
Speaker 1: even machine lubricant. But we have gotten on board with
45:24
Speaker 1: protecting them along with like you said, Canada and Russia,
45:27
Speaker 1: and uh, they're they're doing pretty good now. Yeah, apparently
45:32
Speaker 1: the population is stable. They're they're um listed as vulnerable.
45:36
Speaker 1: I didn't see why, um, because they are almost universally
45:40
Speaker 1: protected by Arctic nations. Um, so there's not a ton
45:44
Speaker 1: of poaching a little bit, but it's not like poaching
45:48
Speaker 1: in Africa, right for their ivory typically right. So I
45:52
Speaker 1: think for the reason why it might be climate change,
45:54
Speaker 1: then that would be the only thing I can see
45:56
Speaker 1: because they're pretty well protected, um reproductive, they're doing top
46:01
Speaker 1: notch ah and that's it. I wonder if when a
46:05
Speaker 1: polar bears eating a walrus, if they get in there
46:10
Speaker 1: and they're like, hey, Phil, he's got like two thousand
46:14
Speaker 1: clams in them too. Both ponents H and I've read
46:20
Speaker 1: actually that their um, their meat is like hard, kind
46:24
Speaker 1: of tough, but it's also very lean and supposedly very
46:27
Speaker 1: tasty as well. Really. Yeah, And one of the things
46:29
Speaker 1: that Upak and the U Picks are known for is
46:32
Speaker 1: using of the walrus, is that they kill. Yeah. I
46:37
Speaker 1: think a lot of times, almost all the time, with
46:40
Speaker 1: indigenous people's they understand the value of a creature in
46:44
Speaker 1: respect that animal, and part of that respect is I'm
46:49
Speaker 1: just gonna take these tusks and kick it back in
46:51
Speaker 1: the water. It's using everything from uh, it's the stomach
46:56
Speaker 1: for a drum to the skin to cover your boat,
47:00
Speaker 1: the raincoats. Apparently they used to use their um what
47:05
Speaker 1: was it, the intestines for raincoats. Yeah, it's pretty pretty sharp.
47:10
Speaker 1: And apparently these villages too were um they were early environmentalists.
47:15
Speaker 1: The would set their own standards for hunting because they
47:19
Speaker 1: knew the value of making sure they thrived. Yeah. I've
47:21
Speaker 1: read this really interesting article, I think on a site
47:25
Speaker 1: called like Cultural Survival or something, and it detailed how
47:28
Speaker 1: the the I think, the U Picks and the US
47:32
Speaker 1: government in Alaska, over like thirty years, came to an
47:37
Speaker 1: agreement finally about hunting on Round Island. Um, but it
47:41
Speaker 1: was pretty interesting. I was like, wow, that government really
47:44
Speaker 1: has taken this seriously. This protection they they just wouldn't
47:48
Speaker 1: give at all on any of it. And then finally
47:51
Speaker 1: the U picks were like, we have to do this
47:54
Speaker 1: culturally like this, this is not just us being Yahoo's
47:58
Speaker 1: doing this for fun, like we have to do this.
48:00
Speaker 1: We're losing like this cultural tradition. So they came to
48:03
Speaker 1: an understanding that apparently is doing quite well. Nice just
48:08
Speaker 1: like the Walrus is right. If you want to know
48:10
Speaker 1: more about walruses, check out walrus is on how stuff
48:14
Speaker 1: works dot com. There's a good article on there. And
48:16
Speaker 1: since I say how stuff works, is time for listener mail?
48:21
Speaker 1: All right, I'm gonna call this wonderful email from an
48:25
Speaker 1: eleven year old kid. We always love these. Hey, Josh
48:28
Speaker 1: and Chuck, I love listening to your podcast and it
48:30
Speaker 1: brings me great joy every day. I'm eleven years old,
48:34
Speaker 1: and I think your podcast is awesome for all ages
48:37
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48:41
Speaker 1: My mom is even surprised. I just wanted to let
48:44
Speaker 1: you guys know how happy you make me and how
48:47
Speaker 1: much fun I have listening to you, man. Nice, isn't
48:50
Speaker 1: that nice? I tell people all kinds of things they
48:52
Speaker 1: never know, and they're like, wow, how did you know that?
48:56
Speaker 1: And I say, I listen to how stuff works? Uh,
49:00
Speaker 1: thanks for your time, and stay awesome. That is Lucas, Lucas.
49:04
Speaker 1: You stay awesome. You stay awesome, and you start saying
49:06
Speaker 1: stuff you should know instead of how stuff works. But
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49:14
Speaker 1: find us if he steers them the how stuff works.
49:16
Speaker 1: That's right. We appreciate it, Lucas. And you're uh, if
49:18
Speaker 1: you're listening to us at eleven, then you are on
49:20
Speaker 1: the right track, my friend. And stay cool because remember
49:24
Speaker 1: we lose him around high school. Yeah, don't get lost
49:27
Speaker 1: around high school, Lucas, because we'll still be here making
49:30
Speaker 1: episodes Where will you be Yea and secret. We are cool, yeah,
49:34
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49:37
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49:39
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49:43
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49:56
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50:01
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50:08
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