Stuff You Should Know - Short Stuff: The Javelina

Episode Date: September 15, 2021

Pigs, hogs, boars and javelinas. What's the difference? Tune in to find out. Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life. Tell everybody, yeah, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen so we'll never, ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff. I'm Josh Clark. There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, Jerry

sitting in for Dave C. And this is short stuff about the javelina, one of the most interesting animals of all time. Yeah, this one came to me. This is my pick. And I was watching for the probably 15th time, the Royal Ten and Bombs. And I always loved the part where Gene Hackman looks up on the wall where his stuffed javelina head is missing. And he goes, where's my javelina? And I was always like, what is a javelina? I was like, is it something that only exists in Wes Anderson's world? Or is it a real, is it just a funny name that he calls a hog or a bore? Yeah. And it turns out a javelina is a javelina. Yeah. And actually, doesn't it first of all, what a great movie, man. Yeah, good movie. And

then secondly, a javelina is not a bore or a hog because those are true pigs. It turns out a javelina is only distantly related to the pig family. It's a collared peckery. And it's pretty interesting because the differences between it and a pig are kind of surprising, especially if you just see one of these things and you're like, oh, it's a pig or it's a warthog is probably what you'd say. Yeah. I would think I would probably call it a bore because we do have boars here in the south. I'm not sure when the video came out, but they did pop up on the news when a viral video was released by a real estate agent in Tucson who did this great video. I'm sure you watched it, of this javelina just trucking kind of beside this apartment complex by itself,

hauling butt. And you always hear that boars and javelinas can be really fast. And they're big animals and you're like, how can they be that fast? But then when you see this thing flying down the road. It's really going fast. It's kind of cool. And then people, of course, put music to it and it became a big thing. But aside from that, if you don't live in probably the handful of states where you might see wild javelinas, you might not know that they're even a thing at all. Yeah. They're pretty cute looking actually, especially if you think boars are cute because they do look a little bit like boars, like warthogs, but they're much smaller. They're maybe two feet tall, up to 55 pounds, which is not much. You could pick up a javelina

if it would let you. Sure. You don't want to though for a couple of reasons that we'll get into in a minute. But one of the big differences is that they don't have a tail or at least not one that you can see, whereas of course pigs do. And then another thing that really stands out about the javelinas is that they tend to hang out in herds much more than a pig. A pig will hang out with you, a human, whereas a javelina doesn't want anything to do with you and would rather hang out with its own people. That's right. And this is a shorty from the House of Works website. And they kind of tick off just a bunch of interesting facts and myths and things. And another identifier is that they have a scent gland near the base of their tail. And they use

that to identify one another. They use it to mark their territory. They will use it to mark each other. They will like a bump scent glands against each other. Pigs are Old World, meaning from Africa, Asia and Europe, whereas these peccaries are all New World from North Central and South America. So they look a lot alike, but they really aren't the same. And actually, Chuck, one way that you could distinguish them, because they do all look alike, or at least they do bear a similarity to pigs, is that javelinas, their noses are different. And actually, now that I say that out loud, I'm not sure if pigs all have different noses, but with javelinas, you can basically use it as like a fingerprint for a human. It's that different,

which is pretty cool. And the tangentially related to that, they have a really great sense of smell because they use musk to kind of mark territory or say hi to one another. They bump their glands. Yeah. And they're very stinky. So they both smell, and they also can smell really well. Get it? I do. They're called musk hogs or skunk pigs sometimes because of that kind of musky nastiness that comes with them. And they also sometimes, I think, have been confused for rodents. I'm not really sure how. I mean, I guess it could be a giant rodent, but giant gerbil, a gerbil from hell. So this expert at least says that it's a common misconception. So who knows? I guess maybe some people do think they're rodents. So Chuck, since we're just tossing out

facts about javelinas, one of the other things that I like is that they can't see very well. So they can see about 30 feet away, almost like they're nearsighted, not even almost like they are nearsighted. They rely mostly on smell. But because of that, it's easy for a human to get close to them. And I'm going to leave it for the other side of this commercial break to answer whether that's a good thing or a bad thing for you, the human. Hey, I'm Lance Bass, host of the new iHeart podcast Frosted Tips with Lance Bass. The hardest thing can be knowing who to turn to when questions arise or times get tough, or you're at the end of the road. Ah, okay, I see what you're doing. Do you ever think to yourself, what advice would

Lance Bass and my favorite boy bands give me in this situation? If you do, you've come to the right place because I'm here to help. This, I promise you. Oh God. Seriously, I swear. And you won't have to send an SOS because I'll be there for you. Oh man. And so my husband, Michael. Um, hey, that's me. Yep, we know that, Michael. And a different hot sexy teen crush boy bander each week to guide you through life step by step. Oh, not another one. Kids, relationships, life in general can get messy. You may be thinking, this is the story of my life. Just stop now. If so, tell everybody, everybody about my new podcast and make sure to listen. So we'll never ever have to say bye, bye, bye. Listen to Frosted Tips with Lance Bass on the iHeart radio app,

Apple podcast, or wherever you listen to podcasts. I'm Mangesh Atikular. And to be honest, I don't believe in astrology. But from the moment I was born, it's been a part of my life. In India, it's like smoking. You might not smoke, but you're going to get secondhand astrology. And lately, I've been wondering if the universe has been trying to tell me to stop running and pay attention. Because maybe there is magic in the stars, if you're willing to look for it. So I rounded up some friends and we dove in and let me tell you, it got weird fast. Tantric curses, Major League Baseball teams, canceled marriages, K-pop. But just when I thought I had a handle on this sweet and curious show about astrology, my whole world came crashing down. Situation doesn't look good.

There is risk to father. And my whole view on astrology, it changed. Whether you're a skeptic or a believer, I think your ideas are going to change too. Listen to Skyline Drive and the iHeart Radio app, Apple podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Just like the number of stars in the sky, there is so much stuff you should know. It's actually a bad thing. Okay. Here we go. Got it? That's a quick answer.

It really was. Let me elaborate. The reason why it's bad is because havelinas have a reputation, at least out west, for being ferocious. And that may or may not be deserved. Because supposedly, people who are havelina experts like Corn Mueller and their ilk say that, no, they're defensive. They're defending their territory. More often than not, they're defending their young. And you've just kind of startled them because you've gotten close to them and they didn't notice you there before because they can't see very well. And now they're saying, back off, our kids are here. Whereas if you're a human, you're just seeing some scary hell pigs coming at you as a group, basically.

They are even what was known as even-toed ungulates, which means they are hoofed mammals, but they bear the weight. And this gets a little wonky, but I love it. They bear the weight almost equally on their third and fourth toes, rather than a horse or a rhinoceros who are odd-toed ungulates. And they bear most of their weight almost entirely on the third. I saw a really cool documentary on horses called Equus EQUUS. It's about the natural history of the horse. And they talk about how the feet of the horse is actually just one toe. So the horses are walking on four toes. That's what they walk and run on. Isn't that amazing? It is. And I'm going to have to see that documentary. Do they talk about Cumberland

Island, Georgia at all? Yeah, I think they do at some point. I don't remember where, but yeah, I think so. Yeah. If you're listening and you don't know anything about it, one of our barrier islands here in Georgia, Cumberland Island, still has wild horses that roam free. Isn't that amazing? It is amazing. You can see video of them. You don't even have to go down there for it. You should travel to Cumberland Island though. It's beautiful. It is. I've never been. I've just seen it on video, but it looks pretty beautiful. It's great. One of the things that really struck me, Chuck, was the second part of that movie is about the domestication of horses and how it first happened on the steps of Mongolia. I love that stuff.

So I get this. I watched that documentary and it seemed vaguely familiar to me. The next day, I was QA'ing an episode on animal domestication and we talked about the exact same thing like six, eight years before. Yeah. See how that happens? Isn't that neat? That timing though, from one night to the next day, bam, bam, and then my range has exploded a little bit. Is that Mandela effect? Is that what that is? I don't think so. I think it's more, oh, maybe it touches on Boderminehoff a little bit. Yeah, that's what I was thinking. We should call this stuff, you should know effect. We should have our own effect by now. Yeah, I think so too. And I know you're pushing for the star wipe all these years, but a different effect. Yeah,

yeah, totally different meaning of the word. Here's another havelina, back to havelinas. Another havelina factoid, that thing is kind of cool, is that they are generally herbivores. They have these, you know, they have kind of the big canines or like tusks and you would think like, boy, those things are some meat eaters and they will eat meat, like if a bird happens to come a little too close or something, but they're generally trying to get down there in the roots and fruits and trying to dig down and eat plants. They're plant eaters. I thought you were going to say something like boots. Oh, I wish I had another one. Roots, shoots, and fruits. Oh, and fruits. Very nice, Chuck. All right. So, yeah, but yeah,

the one of the experts mentions how they'll sometimes find dove feathers in the havelina pen. Yeah. It is a little sad, but I guess it's a natural course of things. And they can be a little, you know, if you live out in Arizona, you might have stories of them coming after your dogs because they might think it's a coyote or something threatening their pack. And there are, I did see some videos of dogs in a fence with havelinas on the outside of the fence kind of, they'll get the mohawk like a dog does on their back when they're upset and the hair pokes up. But I also saw a video of a havelina and a dog playing in a field and it was one of the cutest dang things I've ever seen. I got to see that one. The havelina was just bopping them with his head

and nosing them and the dog was kind of fake biting and they would run around and it's just the best. Do you know what I should search to see that? I would just say havelina dog play. And I bet you that'll take you right there. And boots. And boots. You got anything else about havelinas? No, I think they're the unsung heroes of the even toadongulate community. Very nice. Well, everybody, this short stuff is over. This short stuff is out. Stuff you should know is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts on my heart radio, visit the iHeartRadio app. Apple podcasts are wherever you listen to your favorite shows.