No Such Thing As A Fish - 192: No Such Thing As A Restaurant Menu For Hats
Episode Date: November 17, 2017Live from Cardiff, Dan, James Anna and Andy discuss listening to the radio with your hat on, the useless mating call of the pumpkin toadlet, and salmon-shaped mountains....
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Hello and welcome to another episode of no such thing as a fish a weekly podcast this week coming to you from the glee comedy club in
Cardiff
My name is Dan Schreiber. I am sitting here with Anna Chasinski Andrew Hunter Murray and James Harkin and once again
We have gathered around the microphones with our four favorite facts from the last seven days and in no particular order here
We go starting with you James
Okay, my fact this week is the oldest surviving Suti puppet has just been bought at auction and it was bought by Suti
No, yeah, it was by the new guy Richard Caddell who's in charge of Suti at the moment and he
Whenever he bid it for it. He bid it it with Suti on his hands
That is great very cool. It's like Suti's emancipated himself
Yeah, cool, it's actually more like he sold himself back into slavery
Okay, get this when they were on television together Suti and Sue were never allowed to touch each other in case things got too steamy
Yeah, so this is this is true Suti and Sue when Sue was introduced
There was a worry at the BBC that this would introduce a sexual element and too much sexual tension to the show
And so she was only allowed in on sufferance that she never touched him and that he never touched her
They didn't speak to her beforehand then go. This is what you're not allowed to do, right? Well, no for internationalists
They're both love puppet bears. So it's it's easy to enforce
But actually Sue is a panda and pandas aren't bears. Oh
So there's a certain amount of interspecies stuff going on there. Yeah, true. Wow or not
Wasn't she was she voiced by the wife of the person who did? Yes, Suti
Yeah, Harry Corbett's wife played her but then Harry Corbett's son took over the role, but his mum stayed playing
The girlfriend. Oh, but it was it was an unusual setup. Yeah, I think he actually replaced her didn't he his daughter replaced her?
Quite quickly
And said he didn't want her playing Sue anymore
Maybe because of that and also apparently the person who took over playing Sue said she was getting a little bit older
And she was finding it a little bit harder to
Redescript watch a monitor work a puppet and smoke a cigarette all at the same time
Very uncomfortable for parole to
But this the sort of worry about sexuality this was in 1964 to say, you know
And then they got so serious that the director general of the BBC intervened
Personally this went all the way to his desk and he called the host in and said I'm allowing yet
But then two years later they cancelled the show and I went to ITV who didn't care
Did they touch each other? Well, then they went to shallow for and it got extremely steaming
Sue did actually once have a pregnancy scare
Although it turned out she just had a cushion up her jumper, so
simpler times
Imagine if you went to your gynecologist and said I think I'm pregnant
They go, no, you just got a cushion up there
And you're a man
What the fuck are you doing here?
And then I took my feet out of the stirrups and I bit him good day
But the team America guys got in trouble for their puppet sex scene properly didn't they?
So they had to re-edit the sex scene in Team America nine times and resubmit it to the motion picture Association of America
To say is is this okay yet because the you know film association was saying we can only classify Team America as
In America, I think it's NC 17
Which is the rating that means like no under 18 year olds are allowed to go and see it just because these two puppets have sex
Which and as I think Trey Parker pointed out
It doesn't make any sense our characters are made of wood and have no genitals
And yet it is a very it's a very rude scene. It's yeah
Did you have to go with your mom?
This is like watching the city show all over again
Mighty morphine Power Rangers got banned in Malaysia because the morphine bit sounded too much like morphine
They were famously sluggish, weren't they?
Yeah, well you guys in the UK you had Ninja Turtles
Which is what I call them you
Yeah, you called them hero turtles didn't you? Oh, yeah, yeah, because they thought that you weren't able to deal with
Nunchucks basically, but they still have the nunchucks. No, no
Picture today because I had no idea that this was the case in Michelangelo instead of having nunchucks. This is a feather
A nice cup of tea. Yeah, like that guy looks like he needs a hug from the hug turtle
Yeah
Yeah, really they changed it so he just had a grappling hook so
My memory is him having nunchucks
No in the opening scenes
There's a couple of seconds of nunchucks and then if you look at the pictures
Maybe it was only for a few episodes maybe they brought it back, but he has a grappling hook
Well, you can do a lot more damage with a grappling hook. I know it's got spikes on the end. Yeah
So pepper pig this year. I think I quite recently was banned in Australia
Just one episode it was and it was the episode where pepper is taught that spiders are very small and can't hurt you
It gets loads of complaints pepper pig though for being a bad influence on children and
Some of the things that parents have said about it have written and said a father
Wrote into the people who make it and complained that his son has started splashing in muddy puddles on the way to school
I know but no apparently that's bad and
Another mother wrote in and said you'd ask their daughter what she wanted for breakfast and she said chocolate cake and
Another said his son has stopped eating cucumber and tomato sandwiches and these just all sound like terrible parents
Hey, we need to move on to our second fact. It is time for fact number two and that is Andy
My fact is that mountains are partly shaped by salmon
Wow, what? Wow, this is true. This is absolutely true
Salmon play a significant role in the shape of mountains
It happens over a long period of time obviously, but so salmon swim up stream to spawn and then as they do so the female
Kind of stirs up the mud and the sediment at the bottom when she's making a kind of nest in the water
and
That means that the river channels erode faster and it means they rode downstream faster and over hundreds of thousands of years a
Landscape where salmon spawn could be up to 30 percent lower than a landscape with no salmon
Yeah, that's amazing
There's a thing that one of our friends at qi mentioned the other day actually which is that they're paint thinking of painting mountains white
So this is yeah, if you see this it's in the Peruvian Mountains
This is a guy who's going around painting them white. Yeah to combat global warming not just one guy with one paintbrush though
He's it's pretty much slightly into begin with I mean because to begin with everyone thought he was nuts
And he said because they all the ice and all the snow had gone off it and so it just was bare mountains
And he went oh, I'll save the ice and snow by painting it white again to look like it has ice and snow
That's not why he's doing it. That's not why he's doing it. I stopped reading the article there. Okay, so
He's not gone
I'll save these mountains from not being covered in the snow by making it look like they've got snow on them
Maybe that'll convince them it's um
It's so that it keeps the surface cooler because if you've got a white surface then it reflects the heat black
Yeah, so I think the average rock that's covered in white paint is like 17 degrees cooler than
If it's got black paint and then the idea is that the ice will stay on it for longer
And then it can give everyone water and nearby villages and keep the vegetation growing
Yeah mountain painting didn't he win a Nobel Prize for that?
Um, I don't think so maybe you did read the article then
No, I definitely should have though shouldn't I?
He got some kind of a like maybe like a Nickelodeon or kids award or something
Yeah
The tallest mountain in colorado. Okay, it's called mount elbert
And it's next to another mountain called mount massive
um
And mount massive is 12 feet shorter than mount elbert
Okay, I think they have the third and fourth or the second and third biggest mountains in the whole of america
But the next to each other and a lot of there are a lot of fans of mount massive
And what they like to do is go to the top of mount massive and put a big pile of stones on the top so that it becomes
The biggest
But then mount elbert has quite a few fans as well and they keep going up and taking all the rocks down
Wow
Colorado is boring
Here's another fact mountains can suffer from tired mountain syndrome
So this has happened around the world in lots of different places
But at the moment it's happening in north korea
And they have a mountain called mount mantap and due to all of the uh nuclear tests there
Basically, there's a load of geological damage and the rock mass inside the mountain just isn't kind of integral anymore
Did you say it's called mount mantap?
Yes, I heard that. That sounds like how kim jong-un refers to his penis, doesn't it?
This made me think about other syndromes. There might be
So this is um tired mountain syndrome just a few that I found online floppy trunk syndrome
That's the thing that elephants can get. Oh, these are all very sad by the way. These are you know, this is not like a happy flop
Which is another kim jong-un derived, um
Berserk llama syndrome
That's the thing if you're um if you human raise a llama they go crazy and they attack the humans
Uh wobbly hedgehog syndrome
Again, it's not a very nice thing if you're the hedgehog, but it is if you're reading the words on the internet
And there's a guy who was diagnosed with chronic lateness syndrome
This is incredible. This is a real thing apparently it's a bit like adhd
And it means that he can't properly gauge how long things take so he's late for absolutely everything
Come on. I've used this excuse so many times and no it is it is a real thing
It's very funny. You mentioned that James. I because I found out about chronic lateness syndrome and it's weird
He lives near here and I've invited him to be at the show tonight and I just wonder
Are you um oh
In 1945 when people first started testing atomic weapons
Kodak found out about it before anyone else and I had no idea about this
but this is because um film camera film is really sensitive to radiation and they got loads of complaints from people in america
Saying our camera film is fogging up. And so a scientist who was working at kodak looked into it and did some 1940s googling and
He deduced that they must be testing atomic bombs
And he stayed quiet for a little while because he thought I better just won't get involved with that
That's fine
And they put some atomic proof filters around their factory and they just didn't mention it
And then eventually they kept on damaging their films this radiation
And so they tried to sue the american government in 1951
For doing all these nuclear tests that was the worst thing about them apparently was that they were screwing up kodak's film
and
The american government
Agreed to give them all the maps and the schedule of all future nuclear tests on the grounds that they didn't talk about this to anyone anymore
Yeah, and that's amazing. I know just quickly kodak and mountains. This is an interesting connection when george mallory
and Irving the original
Supposedly almost might have made it to the top of everus before hillary did
When mallory and Irving disappeared and there's been a big mystery ever since did they make or did they not?
There's been hunts that have been going on to find them
And the one thing they're looking for is the camera that was had by mallory and Irving because because of the cold nature of the mountain
The film is preserved and kodak say if we find the camera will still be able to develop it at this point
So they do searches
So one thing was when hillary went to the top of the mountain
He did a very basic search for mallory
He was looking for two things the camera and the other thing was a picture of mallory's wife because
Mallory said he was going to bury a picture of his wife on the top of the mountain
So hillary got up there didn't find it then in 1989 people went out to look for the camera and suddenly
perfectly preserved on the snow
Was mallory the body of mallory and they found everything on him. They had his goggles perfect condition
His ice pick they had his wallets. They had everything the one thing they didn't have was his camera
So it must be on Irving
But they were so close to finding out and check this out another thing
They didn't find inside the wallet was the picture of his wife. Ooh
But then again if I was dying I would quickly throw away the photo of my wife
Yeah
So you wouldn't like be looking at it with your dying breath. You'd be like, oh
I'd want her to be remembered as as you know, the wife of the man who first climbed Everest and to successfully do that
You have sometimes you have to cut some strings
I'm sorry if that sounds harsh. She would have understood I think
Um, do you know how tall the uh, the smallest unclimbed mountain in japan is
I'll give you a clue. It's in osaka. I'm going to go for um,
12,000 feet. Okay
That's high. I only work in meters. So I'm going to go for uh,
The tallest unclimbed smallest
Unclimbed the smallest mountain that no one has bothered to climb. This is the most ridiculous question I've ever been asked
And I'm going to go for 1,600 meters. Okay. I'm going to go for four meters. Yeah
hasn't grasped the metric system yet
So what's four meters in feet? Um, that's like three feet. Uh, it's no it. No, no
No, like a meter is longer than a foot. Okay, that's got big feet. That's good. You know what they say about men with big feet
big man's up
It's almost like no one cares how tall they
Know amazingly dan is almost absolutely bang on it is 15 feet above sea level. Yes
It's not a mountain. It is a mountain the japanese geospatial information authority are very relaxed about what qualifies as a mountain
I'm not kidding. It's um
Yeah, it's called mount tenpo and it's basically a pile of dirt which was
dredged out of the harbor in 1832 to allow vessels to sail in to the port
And that is not even the highest point in the park it is in
But the japan's national tourist organization have said that they do have a mountain rescue unit in case anyone gets lost on the slopes
Um, okay, should we move on to fact number three? Okay, it is time for fact number three and that is chasinski
Yes, my fact is that when king george the sixth married the queen mother
The archbishop of canterbury wouldn't let them broadcast the ceremony on the radio
In case people listened in the pub without removing their hats
This was the bbc really wanted to broadcast it was 1923 and bbc had just set up this radio station
They wanted something to broadcast the royal wedding seemed like the right thing
He wasn't george the sixth at the time. This is before he was king
But they asked if they could broadcast it and the abbey chapter said absolutely not veto because people all listen in the pubs
And worse they may listen with their hats still on
And it might be received in an irreverent manner
So did people just used to just keep wearing their hats inside the pub generally no
I think just like if you are really a complete
Lay about you know, if you're really a bad person if you're a drunk
Then you might forget to say you might be wearing a baseball cap or something
What in 1923
I don't know if it was baseball caps. You had in mind
But what i'm saying is that people do sometimes wear hats in pubs
So but this was the thing so you were supposed to take off your hat inside if you were doing something like watching a very
Respectable ceremony
Well, you were always supposed to really weren't you was it not an etica of always taking your hat off when you're inside
I was reading something etiquette and it was actually really complicated
So I think on some inside moments you wouldn't like for instance
You see pictures of bars in the 1920s where men kept their hats on and that was apparently because they couldn't rely on them
Not being stolen if they took them off
Um, yeah, I think the idea is if you're in a place which is akin to a public street
So it could be a corridor or it could be a lobby of a hotel
And I guess you could probably say that pub is a bit like that maybe so what then you can leave your hat on
Yeah, okay, and let's where's the song came from?
Yeah, that's the chorus, but then there's a big log list of things that you're allowed to
If you're in a corridor if you're in a lobby anywhere like a public street
Cool, you don't know that song do you?
And men had to
Take off their hats when the national anthem was being played in the olden days in etica and it's really supposed to now as well
But women are allowed to unless it's a unisex hat
So if it's a hat that anyone I mean anyone could wear any hats. I'm not judging
But let's say it is a baseball cap that is a unisex hat then the women have to take the hat off as well
So it's the hat which is you know god, I can really imagine panicking as to what gender my hat was
What the right thing to do was at that moment
Um, I found a really amazing thing about george the sixth
um
in 1926
And as far as I can tell he's the only british monarch to have done this
So this is prior to him being a king
He competed
In the doubles at wimbledon
As a tennis player really I don't know that cool. How did he do?
He lost the first match and he was out for the rest of it. Um,
But that's extraordinary that suddenly the prince of
Of the uk was suddenly there. That'd be great. Imagine prince charles at the snooker
You'd watch wouldn't you? Well, we have that one who rides the horses
Uh, zara phillips. Oh, yeah. Yeah, exactly. They all ride the horses
professionally
Um, yeah, he was he was amazing
So he they got married only after him trying really hard to marry the queen mother for a long time
He'd proposed twice in the past
And it's so it's so weird that she was known as the queen mother all the way through
Her life
It's like she was destined for the job. She should have known
He was called albert at the time weirdly and uh, she was called elizabeth at the time and she refused his first proposal because
We kind of all remembered the queen mother. She was quite a spunky kind of character
And at the time she refused because she didn't want to feel like she wasn't able to be free to think speak and act
As she felt she ought to so he said i'm only gonna marry this woman. I really love her
So his mom albert's mom invited her up to her house and had some really really sharp words being like
Okay, well, you have to marry my son and then he proposed again and she said no again. So good on her
And then he beat her down the third time like metaphorically
Um, she was the first commoner to be married to a member of the royal family for 200 years
I think
Wow
But she was a commoner, but she was the daughter of the earl of strathmore and she grew up in glam's castle
Yeah, so it's stretching commoner a little bit, isn't it?
And this is a really good fact. I liked about george the sixth during the indo pakistani war of 1947
He technically was at war with himself
Because he was the monarch of both those places
That's amazing
Why are you hitting yourself?
And here's another fact when he died there were more than 300 000 people who queued up to see his body
And that is just about the same as the population of cardiff. Wow
Why did they all go down to do that? You got like a
Weird connection to them. They don't know much entertainment on here
Next week at the glee club
The body of king george, let's say
Just on royal weddings, there was a thing where prince william and kate middleton got married
another
Quite posh commoner marrying into the royal family
But when they got married that was in 2011
I think new zealand released an official stamp to commemorate the occasion
Except what they did was they released the official stamp which had a perforation down the middle between william and kate
So you could tear them apart
And get two stamps
God
Did they do that on purpose? I don't I don't know are they apologized. Wow
I can't look out whether it would have been better or worse for the perforation to go horizontally and cut their heads off
They made the right choice this year it was pipper middleton's wedding
Wasn't it and in our book? We have a little bit about that. Yeah
600 people were invited to pipper middleton's wedding
300 guests and 300 members of the public who were allowed to stand in a pen outside the venue
Did they have a trough at the very least or a nose bag each maybe
What was the
Well, they didn't say exactly why it was well
I guess officially it was kind of just so that the local village can kind of be part of it or whatever
But a lot of people thought that maybe it was to stop the paparazzi game there or or whatever because there's so many people
No one really knows but it was crazy. There were more than 20,000 canapes
There would have been 10,000 fewer within five minutes
Um, so some royal weddings in the past have gone really badly
And they're really fun to read about but so george the fourth for instance
He met his future wife carolina brunswick in 1795 and it was the age when it was just arranged
She was not flown over. She was brought over to the uk
And at the moment he set eyes on her his first words were I am not well get me a glass of brandy
And and he proceeded to spend the next 24 hours in a drunken stupor
And the wedding night lying on the floor in a drunken stupor
He arrived late to that wedding and stumbled up the aisle completely drunk
And then he refused to say any of his vows until his father ordered him to behave himself
And they separated quite soon after that
Wow
I read that he only got married because parliament
Said we will pay off your debts, but only if you marry this woman. Yeah, so that's the sole motivation
He had he seems like the kind of person who would have racked up a lot of debts, doesn't he?
Yeah, and I think what did he did he stare at his mistress who was in the front row throughout the ceremony?
Poor woman. Yeah, there was another one in 1736. There was a german princess augusta arrived in london
She was 17 years old and she had to marry the heir to the throne who was frederick who didn't end up becoming king
But she was told by her mum. Look, they all speak german there. It's fine because she spoke no english
She got there. Nobody spoke any german. Um, she didn't speak any english. Uh, she was absolutely terrified
She was ushered down the aisle. She was sobbing. She was clinging to her mum's coattails apparently saying please don't make me do this
The groom frederick apparently just shouted the vows in her ear that she had to repeat verbatim
And then immediately after that she vomited all down her dress and all over the skirt of her new mother-in-law
And that was the start of what turned out to be quite a happy marriage actually
Oh, we have to move on uh shortly. Um, if you guys have anything before we do
Oh, I've got one thing. Um, the movie the king's speech that was about george thick. He had a uh stutto
It just came out and I did it are you auditioning for the sequel?
Um, he uh, so collin furth played him in the movie
And in order to do it obviously he taught himself to do a stutter for the movie
Then the movie finished and collin furth found himself not being able to get rid of the stutter
So then he himself had to be treated
No for an artificially manufactured stutter
Isn't that great way way
I love that on the dan's wikipedia if if it ever existed you'd look for the citation and at the bottom or just a row of numbers way way way
Um, I also I've got a quite nice hat little thing
So the the politeness of the british with the hat back in the day
Michael bond passed away this year who was the author of paddington bear
And paddington bear was largely based on his father and his father apparently was so polite and nice that when he used to go swimming
He would wear into the ocean his trunks and also his hat
Just in case he passed someone as he was swimming so he could say oh good day to you
I'd ship his hat to them. Isn't that lovely? Yeah
Did you know that on a hat etiquette the reason we have cloak rooms today where you put your hat and your coat in a cloak room
Is because of hats in the olden days
So when everyone was wearing hats up until the early 1900s
They took up half the space in restaurants because as we said earlier men had to take off their top hats when they went inside
Into a restaurant for instance, but then you didn't want to you know leave it under the table because it couldn't really fit
So it would take up a second chair and there was a guy this guy called
AJ Liebling
At one point said you know our restaurants are 50% occupied by hats who don't eat anything
We should really invent a cloak room to store these and that's lovely if there was a smaller hat table with you know
And a hat's menu
You're right. Well, they all got to hang out together. Yeah
Okay, should we move on to our final fact? Okay
It is time for our final fact of the show and that is my fact
My fact this week is that the brazilian frog known as the pumpkin toadlet
Has a mating call that can be heard by every animal out there except for one other pumpkin toadlets
It turns out they're deaf
They do these croaks to get their attention and they keep getting eaten. They're probably going. Why am I exposing myself so much?
And it turns out it must be an evolutionary thing where they did used to be able to hear and somewhere along the line
They they went deaf the entire species. I think there's subspecies within the pumpkin toadlets
so there's a there's two species specifically that are deaf and
What they think is is that when they're doing the call the way it moves their neck
Another pumpkin toadlet female pumpkin toadlet sees the moves of like the shakes or whatever of the toad and they're like
Whoa, that's a that looks like he might be saying something. I have no idea
But it looks hot. So I'll go over
and
but what what usually would happen in
Evolution purposes is that you would lose the call because you would protect yourself from predators
But they haven't and it's the first case that we've ever found of an animal that hasn't lost
The call when it's redundant and exposes it to predators
But it will be getting there presumably
We're always surprised when we find animals that you know, haven't evolved into this perfect being but presumably in a few million years
It's there. We're just in the shit phase
Yeah, you're right. We're in the learning phase when you're in the shit phase you do often die out you get extinct, don't you?
Yeah, that is a risk for the toadlets
Apparently they they do little waves as well. Yeah like this
Well, like I can understand why the females come a flocking
I must admit that is a great podcast material is it? Yeah, yeah
What James was doing is he was making a gesture that made it seem like he was trying to like work out somebody's height
It's like you have a child and you're going he's about four foot five foot four point five
Yeah, what's that like four meters three meters?
Five or six meters, okay
Yeah, so um, fortunately for the frog it happens
To be the case that and it's like a bright orange color. They're really tiny aren't they they're really tiny the size of your thumbnail almost
They're really super small. Yeah, and they're and their call is quite soft as a result
But they still can be heard by the predators, but um
They are incredibly toxic
So if they do get eaten they might end up killing the predator anyway
So they're probably just actually just being really cocky
And they're just going hey, I'm here. I'm here. What are you going to do? What are you going to do? Nothing?
Do you know that there's a type of frog called a cocky frog? No, really? Yeah
Um, I it's in I think I can't remember where they're from they're from an island somewhere
But they're now on hawaii, which is also an island, but it's a different island where they're from
But they're on hawaii and they make a hell of a racket
They're really really loud and a load of people in hawaii are really hating this because it keeps awake at night when they're mating
Just get loads of horny frogs just making loads loads of noise. Yeah
That's like there's uh, there's something called the so I was looking at um other
sounds that animals can make and I was wondering do fish make mating calls
Um, and they they make really loud ones
So there's a fish called the plain fish midshipman fish, which is in the toad fish family
So it's got toad relations and it it hums
To attract mate, so it makes this hum which sounds like a guitar amplifier or um, it sounds like a
flock of flock of bees flock of bees flock of bees
yeah, um and
They it turns out that they make so much noise that they live in california
And they're constant complaints to the police for the noise that they make because they're disrupting people's sleep and drowning out
People's conversations and they growl and they grunt as well to keep out intruders
And they didn't know what it was for a long time
So people were calling the police saying someone's keeping me awake all night
And it's them and the person who eventually found out about this
Weird noise that they make as a researcher called andrew bass
um
B a double s which is the first case of double nominative determinism
I've ever found
As in double it's a fish and it's the bassy noise that the fish make
I thought there was a fish species called andrew
That makes more sense
The andrew fish yeah
Did you guys know some frogs call so much and so
Versiferously for a mate that once they've got a mate they're too tired to follow through and have sex with the female
The female arrives and they say i'm sorry. I can't i'm no good to you now
They lose loads of weight don't they they they can't eat they can't sleep and they're so weak that they've just a floppy mess
and it feels like
Everyone's had a night like that. I mean that is
I've
Overdone it. I found a really cool one. There's a frog in taiwan. It's an urban city frog
And it does a mating call, but it's worked out how to make their mating call better
It goes to storm drains and it uses it as a megaphone
So it gets to the top of a storm drain and it literally is just whatever it's your i'm super horny
Honey honey honey
And they found that the female frog goes to the edge of the uh the storm drain
So it works for them
But do the females know that it's not a because it must sound like a massive frog
It must sound like a super frog
Do you know the biggest frog that's ever lived who's about the size of a beach ball and it at dinosaurs
Wow
It's not like t-rexes though. No like baby dinosaurs. Yeah
Um, so the common toad the um latin name for that is bufo bufo
Uh, and this frog it was known as or is known as bielza bufo
Very that's his official name as well. That's not
Um, but it was the size of a beach ball and they worked out how strong its um bite was and its bite was about
2200 newtons, which is about the same as a lions bite
Wow
Do you know how uh porcupines attract each other or how male porcupines attract females?
Is it really fun to watch really awesome spikes?
Um, it is actually in a way. Yeah
They stand up on their hind legs and they move they shuffle towards the female just with their penis fully erect
And that's how they do it
It's uh, it's an uncompromisingly direct floating method
It's good. There's no question over what he's after we like that. Um
Or sometimes and you can see pictures of this
They hop they lift one arm their front paw off the ground and they hop on the other one whilst clutching their crotch with the one
That's off the ground. They do
Um, and this attracts though the women and if the woman or the female porcupine likes that enough the crotch dance
then she'll allow them to have sex with her and
Usually if she's not up for sex then a male porcupine can't get in there because she's so spiny
And then the way you know that she likes you is she puts her tail up and it covers all of her spines
Which means that you will not be impaled
She's a very good very good system
Um, do you know that some frogs change color to make their life easier when they're in orgies?
Really if you've been an orgy your life doesn't doesn't get much easier
Yeah, you've made it you're fine
Well, it does if you're a frog you see because there there's a lot of them
There's loads and loads of frogs all get together might be a particularly nice puddle or something
But these are in some species they all get together and they'll just
Shag anything uh male female tennis ball, whatever
Um, there are some pictures of tennis balls landing into this orgy of frogs and all the frogs just go for it
Really? What what happens to the the match?
So that's what happens and but there are some species a lot of these species who do this kind of um group mating
They also change color and no one was really sure why and it seems that the reason they do it is to say
I'm a man or I'm a woman, you know keep off me
Oh, wow
It's like when you go to those parties at uni and you have to wear a traffic light color depending on how available you are
Yeah, exactly, but the problem is at the start they're all green
Um, have you heard of this thing?
So when when frogs have it's called explosive breeding, isn't it?
They do this thing called explosive breeding which is instead of mating all year round
They have one session, you know every year and all the mating happens then so some females because the
It's a horrible crush of bodies. Some females are crushed to death in these things
Unfortunately, it's already unfortunate. Yeah
Let me rephrase put the comma in a different place some females crush to death unfortunately
but
But the male frogs will still mate with them
Successfully
Wow
Successfully, okay, so so it's all about the the mating happens outside the body because the female
Gets produces eggs the male produces sperm and they they meet outside the body
So the males sort of go up and squeeze the females. Oh god
And they squeeze it's just nature guys, it's just nature
It can't be gross if it's just nature
No, that's not a defense for anything
Yeah, and they squeeze the eggs out of the body and and then mate with them amazing. Yeah, it is messed up. Sorry
So seahorse
Don't boo the frogs. It's their instincts. I don't think the frogs are the ones being booed
He's pointing at me
So seahorses have the best mating rituals the best way of attracting each other which people might have seen
But it's so great
So they change color as well to attract mates and then when they've got something they think they fancy
They swim for hours and hours together and they get their tails intertwined and they go snout to snout and they spin around
And they do this incredible dance
But another thing they do is when they're in the flirting period they meet up every morning
And they hang out together for a couple of hours and then they part ways again. They they date each other
I know it's so sweet and so they do this sort of pre dawn dance where they meet up
They do that and then once they're ready on like the fourth or fifth date or whenever you think is appropriate
Then they do the full eight hour courtship dance that ends in pregnancy and that's you see and this is how you tell
a story about animal mating
Yeah, there's no booing going on there
Does does the seahorse then die and then they these just punches it in the head until the
The eggs come out is yep, is that the that's the romantic climax
Sorry
I didn't think it was interesting
And I realized it's just horrible
David Attenborough doesn't get this shit does he
Necro with David Attenborough
He picks his targets carefully
We need to wrap up shortly
We need to get in the van and leave this town
Thank you for listening to the last ever episode
Are you guys got anything before we do I can give you some names of frogs
Great. I read a list of all the names of all the frogs Andrew Billy Bobby
Well, Andrew's a fish as we've established
Um, so there is the demonic poison frog. They all have amazing names the hole in the head frog
The brilliant thigh to poison frog
And the popplock
The pop the popplock
Popplock you have to say it like that. That's appropriate because someone had a frog in their fruit as they named that animal
All right, let's wrap up guys. Okay, that's it. That is all of our facts
Thank you so much for listening to us
If you'd like to get in contact with any of us about the things that we've said over the course of this podcast
So we can be found on our twitter accounts. I'm on at Shriverland Andy. Uh, please just don't contact him this week
I
James at James Harkin at Shazinsky. You can email podcast at qi.com. Yep, or you can go to his judge
You want to say your day? Don't you?
I'm immediately setting myself to private
You can get our group account, which is at no such thing or you can go to our website
No such thing as a fish.com
We have all of our previous episodes up there and we also have a link to our book
Which is now out which we're about to give a copy away to one of the members of our audience who sent us in a fact
And that fact Anna, you have it. Yes. This fact is from Hannah Winterbourne
Who I think is in here somewhere. Yes. Um, and this fact this is the fact that six of her
This is the fact that British army soldiers can wear the same underwear for three months straight
Apparently, uh, and that is because it's antibacterial underwear. I believe and Hannah who is here tonight
Has worn this underwear for three months straight. Wow
That's really exciting. Um, cool. Okay. Well, yeah, we'll give you a book after the show guys
Thank you so much for being here tonight. We hope you had fun. We'll be back again next week with another episode. See you then. Goodbye
You