Ugly Animal Babies: Defending Nature's Most Unfortunate Looking Offspring

In this episode of Wildly Curious (formerly For the Love of Nature), co-hosts Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole dive into the strange and endearing world of nature's ugliest babies. From the featherless and squeaky blue jay fledglings to the unsettling appearance of the barn owlet and the naked mole rat, they rank and discuss the most unfortunate-looking animal babies. They explore why some babies appear so odd, while also revealing their redeeming qualities and vital roles in the ecosystem. Tune in for laughs, surprising facts, and a lighthearted defense of nature’s underappreciated youngsters.

Perfect for animal lovers, science enthusiasts, and anyone who enjoys humorous takes on the quirks of the animal kingdom.

Transcript

Hello, and welcome to For the Love of Nature, a podcast where we tell you everything you need to know about nature and probably more than you wanted to know. I'm Laura Fox-Lepol.
And I'm Katy, and today we're gonna be talking about, okay, just hear us out for a minute, ugly and annoying animal babies.
Yes, I told my mom earlier today that I was gonna be talking about ugly babies, and then had to clarify that it wasn't human babies.
Listen, I need to tell you, this should be good, so we're gonna take what we feel are the top ugliest slash annoying animal babies and defend the ugly.
I'm sure there really won't be any, yeah, there really won't be any debate about this. I just, why are they ugly?
Well, I have one that could be, well, no, two. I have two that could be debated. One is highly debated.
The other one is eh.
Okay, okay, no, I'm more excited.
Yeah.
But let me give you a few chuckles. This episode was inspired by my own becoming pregnant and having a baby and being really afraid I was going to have an ugly baby. Thankfully, I did not.
So that, so whenever we were planning for the season, we're like, man, we should do one on ugly babies because it would be so funny. Just rank them like our ugliest, the ones that we feel like are the ugliest, most annoying animal babies out there.
So we're gonna jump right into it. No nature news. Just right on into ugliness or annoyingness.
My first one will be annoying rather than ugly. So my first, this is not really an ugly baby. I mean, maybe ugly, but in an endearing way, it's really just annoying, and it is the blue jay.
Oh man, good one, good one.
I think about this more often than you'd think. I'm just sitting around minding my own business in like the springtime, and then I start hearing the blue jay babies and just thinking how annoying they are.
How honest are we gonna be in this episode? Should we put a warning for children on this one?
Yeah, I mean, honest that, yeah, I mean, I'm going to say straight up what I think about these babies.
Blue jays are jerks.
They can definitely be. So I broke my animals down into how ugly and then their redeeming qualities so that they can have redeeming qualities. How ugly or how annoying?
How annoying are blue jay babies? Well, let's be honest, all ultritional baby birds are ugly, which is the ones that are born helpless with no feathers. They're little pink squirmy things with gangly legs, nubby wings, skin covered eyeballs, and a mouth far too big for their face.
So pretty ugly, at least when they're first hatched. Are they the most ugly bird? No, but they made it onto my list because I think they are the most annoying, or probably the most annoying.
They are very noisy birds that make a wide variety of sounds. Many of these are harsh, squeaky, and loud. If you've ever been outdoors in the spring when blue jays have just fledged, meaning that they just left the nest but still need fed by their parents, you will want to murder all of them.
I'm just gonna walk around stepping on them. Is that too much?
Just stomping them. The babies never stop crying for food. It's just a constant annoying cry that I would think would drive any parent completely insane.
It has to.
It's just squeak, squeak, honk, jay, just constant. And there is never just one fledging. There's always multiples.
So I can't imagine being a poor blue jay parent with this nonstop, mom. It kind of sounds like that. So if you don't know what a blue jay baby sounds like, look it up and then don't imagine that constantly.
Yeah, because it's awful. But of course, all the animals we're going to talk about have some redeeming qualities. I don't want to only rag on them, I suppose.
So redeeming qualities of blue jays, after they're exacerbating fledgling phase. Wow, that's hard to say. Fledgling face?
Phase. Phase. Phase.
I thought you said face. I was like, are you going to try and say that a blue jay is cute? Because they're really still not.
Not really. But I really like adult blue jays. I really like blue jays in general.
They're in the corvid family, meeting their cousins, their crows and ravens, so they're really smart, and they're really big in the family.
But that's what makes them such big jerks. Not that they're really big in the family, that they're smart.
Yeah, it's that, the mafia.
No, it's that they're smart.
Well, yeah, they're really smart. And I mean, they do love their children, so I'll give them that. They're just very talkative and sassy, which I think is kind of endearing.
And they are a beautiful blue color, which is my favorite color. I would invite a blue jay to my feeder any day. I just want them to leave their kids at home.
Just leave the annoying ones at home.
So blue jay babies, probably the most annoying baby bird.
I don't know. It's funny that you brought up blue jays because my first one is uncannily similar. So my first ugly, annoying baby is also a bird, and it's a robin.
Very similar. Yeah, it's just ugly. Again, like Laura said, I feel like all birds are just ugly when they're babies.
Yeah, except for the little chicks and stuff that have actual feathers. All those naked ones are just creepy ones.
So the American robin is a common ground dwelling worm eater. These iconic birds are found pretty much all across North America and stay year round in most of the US. If you haven't seen one of our...
For our large international listener group that we're gaining more and more international listeners, they're gray, brown on their back, and most characterized by their rust, orangish chest color, and their stomach. They're about 10 inches long from beak to tail and weigh next to nothing since they're a bird. When I say next to nothing, what is it?
Like two to three ounces. Like it's really nothing. Like you could break these birds easily.
Not that I'm suggesting you go out and start snapping robins.
Snapping robins?
Yeah, definitely a band name.
Definitely a band name, snapping robins. But you could easily snap a robin. Like I said, they're typically seen eating worms on the ground, but they also eat snails and even fruits like chokeberries or juniper berries.
As far as conservation status goes, these knuckleheads are definitely of least concern. They're every freaking layer. We don't need to conserve them at all because they are just, there's too many of them, if anything.
But they're also known as pretty big spreaders of West Nile virus. But to quote Michael Scott, you can't get diseases from a bird, so you should be okay.
Not true. Yeah.
I'm not sure how you get West Nile from a robin, unless it was like directly from it. It would have to be a mosquito. Anyway, that's not the real reason why we're here to talk about disease spreading, but disease-ridden robins.
That's the album name for Snapping Robins, the band. So let's talk about their ugly babies. So in Springs, males attract females by singing, raising and spreading their tails.
I mean, why wouldn't that get a woman shaking their wings?
Shaking their tail feathers, yeah. Right?
Shaking their wings and inflating their white striped throats. When pairs are forming in spring, you may see the display in which male and females approach, holding their bills open and touching them. It's weird.
Anyway, they lay three to five eggs and up to three broods per year.
Whoa, that's a lot.
Which it is, yeah, which is more than what I was expecting, but I looked it up several different places. Yeah, so the same thing. Three to five, which I was like, okay, three to five.
Yeah, and it is three. However, only about 40% actually survive, probably because of how annoying they are. So how, why are they annoying?
It's very similar to the Blue Jays. The babies hatch about 14 days after the egg is laid. So you literally just get done shoving an egg out of your cloaca, and not even have rest time.
Boom, hatch, cracked open. Here comes first annoying one. Again, 100% helpless pink little creatures that are just screaming at you all the time.
And the only way you can temporarily quiet them for the first five days is to throw up in their mouths. Which on a side note, and maybe it's just because my kid is weird, when he was little, well, I mean, he's five now, so he's still young, but maybe like around three years old, I used to tell him about mama birds, and I would like pretend to throw up in his mouth, and he would laugh uncontrollably because he thought it was so funny. It is both mama and dad that will throw up in the baby's mouth.
There's an SNL skit where they do that.
Oh, really?
They do regurgitate to each other's mouths.
Horrible. Anyway, so after the first five days of parent vomit, there ends up just being a worm massacre. So then from vomiting to a worm massacre, because they just bring worms back to the nest and just rip them to shreds, but all the while, they're still just screaming.
Yeah, just constantly. And I forget, I thought I wrote it down.
I just don't think that their sound is as, it's the harshness of a blue jade.
Yeah, it's not as harsh, it's just constant. Wornless, yeah. Man, I thought I wrote it down, but it was something like 100 trips to the nest a day per parent or something like that.
I believe it.
It's an insane, how more parents just don't die off is beyond me, or even never come back. Yeah, just like, I'm done.
I'm out.
Yeah, because it's like 100 trips, and you figure down back, down all day.
I think a lot of people, I guess I could have mentioned this with mine, because it's just another annoyance of a baby bird, is that the parents take away the little fecal sacks. So their babies poop in little packages, and they have to take that out, like a little diaper, and throw it out of the nest. So yeah, you're regurgitating to their mouths, you're bringing them food, you're taking away their poop, all while they're yelling.
And when they have time to eat, I mean, whenever you have an infant baby, it's tough, but I don't know when they actually have time to eat, like, or sleep, like, oh my goodness.
Although I felt that recently, I almost tweeted, you know you're a mom, when you're eating in the shower.
Yeah, right.
Because there's no time.
It's the only time you can. I am a full advocate. The number of times I've like bought myself an ice cream sandwich, which I actually think I have some downstairs.
That sounds really good right now. But that I've snuck into the pantry to eat snacks, like by myself in quiet. I am 100% one of those moms that have done that.
And I have no shame in admitting that, because sometimes you just need a break. Like, just gotta get away from that tiny human, who I love so much, because he's 100% like me. But anyway, yeah, so just very similar to Laura's first one.
Hopefully all of ours won't be very similar, but. Super annoying, way too many trips up and down. It's just, I mean, it's a baby bird.
They're ugly in general, super annoying.
Although I do think that there is a phase, like once they fledge, maybe not Blue Jays, because their beaks are always too wide for their faces. But Robins get that little Einstein feathers going on on their head.
It does, where it's just plucked everywhere, where it's so- So it's like a cute ugly. Yes, yes.
Because they look grumpy with their big mouths and their Einstein hair.
It's cute.
Alrighty, that was a good one. I agree, they are definitely annoying. Okay, then the rest of mine aren't really annoying.
They're just ugly. So I'm gonna keep on the bird train here and just keep ragging on them. This is my only other bird and then we'll move on.
I am a firm believer that barn owlets are hideous. Really? Yeah, and I think this one's controversial.
I think it is too. My next one's pretty controversial, but this one I could be swayed.
Well, here's how I feel about them. So like I said, I think quite a few people would argue with me about calling any kind of owlet ugly. It's not all owlets, it's these ones in particular.
And I don't think I would use the word cute to describe them either. So it's not that I would say that they're ugly, but I don't think I would call them cute.
Well, I wouldn't. Funny, funny, funny looking. I would agree with people in that they're not ugly.
I would say that they're terrifying. So barn owls already have a creepy face, in my opinion, but picture that face on a gangly half naked body, and it's too much.
Because they're not as fluffy. Do you talk about their legs at all?
They are all legs when they're stretched out. Like it is just a pair of legs with a terrifying face on top. They have a skeletal looking face, a beak that looks like a witch's fingernail, and just the hint of white fluff.
A witch's fingernail?
A witch's fingernail.
I mean, I know exactly what you mean. But they are all legs. Like it's deceptive.
Like, yeah. Yeah, it's deceptive.
Only when they start to get some more fluff, it gets easier to handle. But I think that they're ugly until they get their adult feathers. And then they're-
Gorgeous.
Gorgeously intimidating, but gorgeous. Yeah, but the babies, no. I can't, like, people are always posting pictures of, like, owlets.
And I think a lot of owlets are cute. Like, barn owl babies, so cute. But there's something about that crazy skeletal triangular face.
Also, also, because so many people think all owls hoot, barn owls don't.
They scream.
They scream.
Like a woman being murdered.
Yeah.
So yeah, a baby owl, like a couple of those. Can you imagine, like, you go into a barn at night and you are confronted by, they actually think that the legend of the banshee came from the barn owl.
Let me try to look it up here.
Banshee screaming at you. And it's this skeletal looking something. Maybe it's a bird.
You're not even sure. Cause it doesn't even have feathers yet. Marshall, hang on.
I feel like if we explained it, people just wouldn't believe us.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, cause it's...
That is straight up.
It's the Ring Raids.
Yeah, right?
From Overlord of the Rings. But, oh my gosh, it's just a lot, and...
I remember the first time I was working at the zoo, and I had to catch up a barn owl, because I've heard them, but we caught up...
I had never heard one in the wild.
Like, the most, well, it also didn't help that, like, we were catching up one of the most dramatic barn owls that we've ever, I've ever worked with, or most dramatic birds for crying out loud that I've ever worked with, you would think that we were murdering her because of that scream, and it's horrible, yeah.
Yeah, so ugly, ugly, terrifying, terrifying shrieks add to their overall creep factor.
Dude, it's the legs for me, though, because it's like...
It's that fingernail beak for me.
It's the long little, because they almost have, like, chubby thighs, too. You know what I mean? But it's like fluff, it's not really like thighs, it's like fluff thighs.
They have, like... Little drumsticks.
Yeah, yes, it's like tiny drumsticks. Maybe I'm just hungry or something, but...
So yeah, I think that they are terrifyingly hideous, and I'm not afraid to tell them, although they do have probably the best hearing in the animal kingdom, so I probably shouldn't say that that loudly for fear of their family members coming after me, yeah. So yeah, and I guess, you know, real quick, I didn't do much natural history for any of mine. Barn owls can be found all over the world, so even our international listeners should know what a barn owl looks like.
They're white.
Creepy looking owls, that's what they are. Redeeming qualities, I have to give them a few things. Although these little birds might start out creepy, they are an incredible bird.
They are believed, like I said, to have the best hearing in the animal kingdom, which means they're able to find prey in absolutely lightless conditions. So they don't need to see, only hear. They're also incredible nocturnal hunters, besides just their hearing.
They silent flight all the good owl stuff, and it makes them be super efficient. A family of barn owls, which is usually like two parents and three terrifying babies, eat about 1,000 mice each nesting season. Making them the ultimate form of pest control.
Which is a fun fact for them. I mean, they-
Yeah, 1,000 mice. I mean, that's a lot.
That is a lot.
Of mice for just one season, yeah.
It is.
So although they might be scary, you should probably have them around.
I don't even know if scary. It's just like funny. See, I would probably say the babies are like funny weird.
It's the legs. Like I can't get over how long the legs. Like to me, it's like the first time I realized how long a penguin's neck is.
Like it just cracked me up.
Like I could not stop laughing. Did you send me that TikTok with the rabbit tails?
Oh yeah, like how long a rabbit tail is. It's not just like a little cotton ball on their butt. Like it extends out.
Yeah, no, it's like a little long little tail, like a legit tail. Okay, so my next one is also, it can be swayed, but I'm talking about this one like when it is born.
Okay, I have a couple like that, because there are some that get real cute later.
Okay, this one is definitely one that is real cute later, but ugly when it's born. And there's kind of like a theme that Kim picked up on with my animals. So just keep it in mind.
All right, my first one or my second one, wombat. So found in far Southeast Australia and Eastern Australia up in the central, they live in a variety of habitats depending on where it's located, which like, depending on like where the range is, they can go anywhere from wet deep forests to open dry grasslands. It all kind of depends.
So wombat bats, they have coarse fur and short round ears. Again, an adult wombat, I think is adorable. Yeah.
Yeah, chubbers.
And they can vary based on the different subspecies because there are three different subspecies. Although wombats do look very cute and cuddly, they can have a short temper and become very aggressive if they feel threatened. Which is funny because they're tiny tanks.
Yeah, it reminds me of our version, I guess, of a groundhog. Kind of cute and chubby until you piss them off.
And then, yeah, and then it's a murder tank. Because they're just over three feet long, but they don't look it because they always run compactly. You know what I mean?
They're three feet, but it's like- Like hunched. Yeah, it's like three feet, but that's three feet if you're picking them up and they're all spread out.
Anyway, but up to 88, almost 90 pounds, which is- Yeah, that's what I'm saying. They're tanks.
There are three subspecies, the northern hairy nose, the southern hairy nose, and the bear nose. Why the wombat noses are so important?
It's the only difference between them, maybe.
Apparently.
They all look identical except for their noses.
Right? Well, I do know that, is it the...
While the hairy nose... Okay, hold on. I think it's both the hairy nose ones have soft fur with much larger ears.
I think it's the bear nose, which has very coarse, much coarser fur and shorter ears. But anyway, so they spend about eight hours each night grazing on their favorite food, because they all are nocturnal. I don't think I said this yet, but they are marsupials, just like pretty much everything else in Australia.
I really miss Australia right now. Amazing, amazing country. Favorite wombat fact that you can carry on is that their poop is in the shape of cubes.
Because scientists believe it's because they use their poop to mark their territory, and if they mark their poop with round poop, it would roll away. Which makes sense, how did they poop square cubes? The researchers say that the distinctive cube shape of wombat poop is caused by the result of drying out the feces in the colon and the muscular contractions that happen, which all form a uniform size in corners of square poop.
Yeah, but can you imagine passing a dry cuboid shape poo out?
No, thank you, but apparently the bare-nose ones are really good at it.
Anyway, they're babies, how ugly are they?
Well, again, okay, so a baby wombat is called a joey because it's a marsupial. At birth, the joey only weighs about two grams and is about the size of a jelly bean. The joey will just pitch her a naked, hairy jelly bean or hairless jelly bean, which then crawls into the mother's pouch right after birth to finish developing.
So they're not even developed. I think that's what's weird to me is- Yeah, it's like a crawling fetus.
Another one.
Crawling fetuses, snapping robins, crawling fetuses. Oh, we're getting some good ones. So yeah, it's a crawling fetus that goes into the mother's pouch and hangs out there for about five months before it comes out.
And then it's fully formed, of course, at that point. But it's still completely hairless, naked, fairly helpless. And I mean, it's not-
This one's not annoying. It's just they're just ugly.
Just ugly.
Yeah, they're just ugly. They're just ugly. And it's also reminds me of like a Sphinx cat, like that look, because I just don't like hairless cats.
I am a fan of them in Only Your Mother Could Ever Love You. Okay, well, let's- There is a thing going around right now on the internet of hairless cats in wigs and clothes.
It is one of the scariest things I've ever seen.
Yeah, no thank you.
But I'm okay with hairless cats. I think they're kind of like disgustingly cute.
I just keep going back to that one episode of Friends where Rachel gets a hairless cat, and she swears up and down. It says her name every time it hisses. And it hisses, and then you just hear it go like, Rachel!
But it's a naked cat, and it hates her, so she's trying to sell it, and she's out on the street holding it with oven mitts. It's pretty funny. But anyway, so wombats.
Yeah, they're just ugly. I mean, they're, yeah, it's a naked, undeveloped fetus of just crawling, and yeah, it's just weird. Ugliness.
I will continue on that marsupial train, because I chose one, too. Because, yeah, any marsupial baby is disgusting when first born because of the fetus factor.
Because of the... another great one! Fetus factor.
That's a good one. Wait, what kind of music would that be?
The fetus factor? The fetus factor. Probably, like, punk?
Grunge.
Yeah, like grunge or punk.
So, mine is the Tasmanian devil. I just wanted to choose a marsupial that I didn't know a lot about. So I just randomly chose the Tasmanian devil.
Because any of them would have done. But I'm glad I chose them. Tasmanian devils, for those of you who are not aware, they live in Tasmania, which is a part of Australia.
Used to live in a lot more places, but now only there. And they're, like, two feet long, come way up to 30 pounds. So they're not very big.
They're not as big as the wombat. They're known to be... They can be fierce, earning the nickname of devil, and they are carnivores and scavengers.
So how ugly are we talking here? Okay, so like I said, I kind of just chose a random marsupial because they're all gross and creepy.
They are.
But as I was reading, it got worse, okay?
It got worse!
Yeah, because I also was like, imagine a little jelly bean. No, no, no, no, no, no. That's the size for like a wombat, okay?
This, I looked it up. They said to picture the size of a grain of rice, okay? So imagine a fleshy grain of rice with nubbins for arms and legs that crawls off into a pouch.
And Katy, they have 50 at a time. Wait. 50 that crawl into their pouch.
Well, they attempt to crawl into the pouch. The first four to make it and attach to the nipples are the only ones that survive. What?
How did I not know that?
I know, right? So I'm imagining this, like, creepy little maggot race. A swarm of fleshy, like, naked maggots crawling up.
How did I not know that?
Talk about brutal.
50 born in race. And the babies, although this actually kind of makes them cute rather than ugly, but they're called imps.
Because they're devils.
So yeah, they are disgusting. They attach on to the nipple, and they don't let go for 100 days, like creepy little parasites.
Which I believe that is an all marsupial fact. I don't think there's any marsupials.
They almost fuse on.
Yeah, which is disgusting in itself. Can you imagine if you just had to walk around with a baby fused to your boob for how many months? For those of you who can't see, Laura just shimmied.
Would be so hard to navigate anywhere through doorways, just slinging your fused baby through openings.
Did I just picture like going into a store, like off clothes racks, like shelves, just like taking everything out with this fused baby?
That's so gross. And I just imagine it being completely limp, because it's just like this limp...
That's a damage. It's not going to go out of my brain anytime soon, and I'm so happy.
I know, agreed. It'll only get better and better. My own head will keep elaborating on it.
Of all the things that this fused baby's going to knock over.
Or like the modified clothing that you'd have to have. Oh, goodness. Or the day that they're finally ready to let go of the fruit that just fell off.
That has to be such a relieving feeling. Like a hundred times better than when you get home at the end of a long day and take off your bra. Like it has to be so much better.
And then it just like thumps, and you have to be like ready to catch it.
So I'm just imagining, again, you just brought up this store. There's just some, you're shopping, you don't have a baby attached to your chest. But from a couple of aisles away, you just hear, oh, and then a thump, and you're like, oh, kid must have dropped.
Just.
We humans could have all been so much cooler.
As I'm crying, the redeeming qualities of the Tasmanian devil. Well, clearly, having attached fetuses isn't as bad as it could be. But the good news is about these guys is they get cute.
They are really cute fast. If you look at baby Tasmanian devils, they're so cute. They're all head and mouth.
So as a mother sepul, the young devils are then called joeys. They are so cute in that when they, these animals, when they are trying to be intimidating, right before a fight, they sneeze really loudly. That's what they do to intimidate each other.
I don't know.
I was going to say, if you've ever heard my sister sneeze, it is pretty bad. Ask her husband. Yeah, it's so loud because it's like, it's a little, a little much.
You could have been a Tasmanian devil, right? I'll let her know. They are important scavengers because they clean up carcasses.
They're like vultures in that sense, which is why they have such strong jaws and sharp teeth. Well, I mean, not anymore, but yeah. Unfortunately, they are an endangered species, and one of their biggest threats is something called devil facial tumor disease, which is a fatal disease that is devastating and an animal already only found in one place on Earth.
And I said about the jaw because typically they get it. It's like a cancer of their jaw, and it just like disintegrates their jaw. Yeah, that in itself is disgusting.
Yeah, but yeah, so gross Tasmanian devil babies.
That was a good much needed laugh.
I know me totally.
All right, next one is naked mole rats.
Okay, absolutely agree. They never get cute.
Nope, never, never. Wikipedia, though, starts off with the naked mole rat, also known as the sand puppy. I've never.
No one calls them that.
No one, okay, we've been in the zoo field for, or were in the zoo field for how long? Never heard them called sand puppy.
If somebody did refer to something as a sand puppy, I'd be really excited to see what it was, and then really disappointed when they showed me naked mole rats.
Like a fennec fox is what I would, you know what I mean? Something like that, like something cute. No, not a naked mole rat.
Anyway, ugh. But calling it a puppy doesn't make them any cuter, because babies or adults will like hideously ugly. Um, it's, it's, it's a...
Moving scrotums.
Basically, basically. Um, it's a, it's a rat that is naked. So that's how to describe it.
Everybody's seen a rat. Um, now make it naked. That's a naked mole rat.
It's a naked mole rat. Uh, they're found in eastern Africa. However, unlike other rats, uh, these ones can live for up to 30 years.
Why do these need, why does something that naked and little have to live so long? Beyond me. But I did come across an insane fact that I did not know about the naked mole rats.
Okay, maybe it's just me. The skin of naked mole rats lack neurotransmitters in the cutaneous, like sensory fibers. And as a result, the naked mole rats feel no pain when they are exposed to acid or capsaicin.
What? So they're just numb all the time?
I don't know. But they don't.
Maybe they have like sensory hairs. Like just enough sensory hairs. Because otherwise, how would they, how would you navigate the world?
Well, they definitely have whiskers. That's like the only thing that they have. I don't think they have anything around their body.
Do naked...
Because I looked this up on a few different things. Yeah, it's because of the tunneling, is what this one says.
Gross.
So because of the tunneling, and the sensitive, like, they lost the painful sensitivity to heat that follows injuries in humans and other animals. They don't feel it because the tiny alterations that basically sense pain. Yeah, so just they don't have it.
I had no idea. I mean, it doesn't make them any...
Yeah, I had never heard of that.
It doesn't make them any cuter or cooler, but still. Okay, so they live, naked mole rats, and they also live in large colonies with just one breeding female called the queen.
Yeah, I didn't know they were eusocial, which is freaky.
Yeah, it is freaky. So the queen is the only mole rat to produce offspring, and a single litter averages 12 to 28 pups, which is crazy. Queens live from 13 to 18 years and are extremely hostile to other females, behaving like queens or producing any of the hormones.
Behaving like queens.
Yeah, or if they start producing any of the hormones to become a queen. Reproductively active female naked mole rats tend to associate with unfamiliar males, usually non-kin, whereas reproductively inactive females do not discriminate. Yeah, which I mean makes sense.
So if they're reproductively active, they know to associate with non-kin. However, if they're, they know they're not able to have babies, they don't care.
That's all bets are off.
Yeah, right? Well, I mean, if I can't, yeah. Anyway, they're just gross.
A newborn pup is about the size of a jelly bean. Again, naked jelly beans.
Yeah, gross.
They have a gestation of about 70 days. The colony as itself, you know, will take care of them, move them around because they don't typically like stay in one area. They're naked mole rats.
They have colonies and tunnels, and so they're constantly moving, and the whole colony will move the babies with them. They'll nurse for the queen. Now, remember, a litter is 12 to 28 pups, and they'll nurse from the...
Do she have that many nipples?
I don't know. Well, I mean, it's kind of... I mean, most rats do have large litters.
I don't know how many nipples they have.
Yeah, yeah.
Let me finish reading, but Google how many nipples a rat has. Things you never thought you'd have to Google. So they'll nurse from the queen for about a month, but they may start sampling, which I thought was really funny.
So they may start sampling solid foods in about two weeks. So they won't be on their full diet, but about two weeks will start tasting it. Pups also eat the feces of other workers in the colony, which does help their digestive system and ends up giving them better fauna.
So yeah, so just ugly. Look up a naked mole rat again. Mole rat, naked, naked.
It's gross.
12 nipples is the answer, but only naked naked mole rats are an exception to usually species have like something about the one half rule of nipples, like how many nipples per offspring.
Oh, that's right.
But there is an exception. 12 nipples to feed up to 28 pups.
Well, there you go.
The more you know, the more you know. Well, actually, mine is my next one is similar in its appearance to the naked mole rat, kind of. And mine is the echidna baby.
Oh, OK. OK.
So again, this this when it starts out is we're talking first born. So an echidna is another Australian animal. And it is it's a monotreme, meaning that they're one of the only two types of mammals that lay eggs.
So no surprise that from a process so weird comes a baby that's pretty freaky looking. I actually literally said it looks like a naked mole rat, but not sorry. No, it looks like a naked mole.
Not to be confused with a naked mole rat. OK, so it's like a naked mole. Yeah, just just a naked mole.
So if you pick.
Just I was so confused because I was like, you mean like a mole on your skin that like doesn't have hair like a naked. I was like a mole. Continue the animal.
Mole the animal.
The mole the animal. Declarable.
So mole animal is like it's got like big front claws, a pointy little snout and no ears. And so it looks like that just naked when they first come out of the egg. So their gray pink skin, beady little eyes, big claws, chubby, prominent rear end, no ear flaps, prominent rear end.
They do. They have a big old badonkadonk and a long snoot. So with all their wrinkles, their head looks pretty phallic.
Definitely, it does some resemblance. So we've got the walking scrotums, and now we have the phallic headed echidna. In general, this animal really just looks unfinished, in my opinion.
And in a way it is, because it still does have to grow spines. So when the tiny babies, they hang on in a modified pouch, which I didn't know, and they lap up milk that she secretes. So no nipples involved, just secretion.
Secretes it, which is weird.
Which is gross. And then it will start to grow its spines. Once they grow spines, adorable.
And with a name like a puggle, which is what you call a baby echidna.
Which is cute.
Of course it's going to be cute. So they don't get their spines till around two months, so they're gross until then. But once they do, they become squeaky chunky spiny little creatures with a snoot just asking to be booped.
Snoot asking to be booped.
Asking to be booped. These spiky little ant eaters, which is their nickname, has an amazing nose that can pick up on electrical signals from the insects that it eats.
That's crazy.
It's just going around like do with its little snout. It's one of the Earth's oldest surviving species, which I did not know.
What?
Yeah, apparently they've been around for all, like, and I guess that kind of makes sense that like an egg laying animal. Yeah, I guess. I don't know.
And unfortunately, though, two of the four species are critically endangered. So poor kidneys. Some of them are doing so well.
So terribly, terribly ugly babies, but become really cute pretty quickly.
Kind of cute.
They got a cute snoot.
They got a cute snoot. You ready for my other one? This is completely different than what we've done so far because I chose a fish.
The blob fish.
I mean, okay, I'll come on. That fish is always ugly, too. Like just because it's a baby doesn't mean anything.
Exactly, because it's just as bad. It's the same thing as a naked mole rat. Doesn't matter what stage of life, because I mean, a naked mole rat baby at least looks different than a naked mole rat adult.
I mean, they're still naked and ugly, but a blob fish baby looks the same as a blob fish adult.
Like, I'm totally looking at it.
They just have a smaller like nose.
That's hilarious.
So one, this has been voted several times the world's ugliest animal, and their younger no exception. So you might ask, who voted it? So the Ugly Animal Preservation Society holds a yearly competition in which the blob fish have won several years in a row.
Ugly Animal Preservation Society.
It's run by, what's his name? Simon Watt? Wyatt Watt?
I think it's Watt. Simon Watt. But which they do really cool things.
They, I mean, it's like a comedy society. Like they bring comedy to conservation, which is a nice...
Which is essentially what we're trying to do here.
Exactly. So they have like a nice combo. Anyway, so they hold like a yearly thing to bring awareness to the ugliest animals around the world, to bring awareness.
Because again, things like pandas, which are fund suckers of money, they need to spread that out a little bit. So blob fish...
This isn't real. These pictures can't be real.
There are a lot of fake pictures, because, and I'll get into why. I'll get into why.
Okay, keep going, keep going.
So they're just ugly. A frequently asked question whenever I was googling info about them is are blob fish actually dead? Which I thought was funny, because they are really creepy.
They're only about a foot long, which is a lot bigger than what I was thinking that they would be. I don't know, they seem very tiny, but no, about a foot long. They're found off the coast of Australia, New Zealand, found anywhere from depths from about 2,000 to 4,000 feet below the surface of the water.
And they are rarely encountered alive, because they are just found at such depths, which is probably why our blob fish actually dead, because of how they look. So they eat whatever particles are found down there. Again, they're like a pink with a big nose blobby.
It doesn't look like a real animal.
It doesn't look like a real animal. It looks like a fake fish.
I did just find a real picture of a baby on Twitter here from an Australia park.
It still just as ugly.
Yeah, it just doesn't have the nose. You're right. It's just minus the nose.
Yeah, and it kind of looks mucousy kind of. I don't know.
Yes, absolutely. It looks like someone just like coughed it up. It's like, right, your phlegm just becomes sentient.
Sentient phlegm. Oh, that's another good one.
I'm just going to keep it coming.
Yes. So they do have soft bones and few muscles and lax swim bladder. Again, they live so deep.
Doesn't matter. So because they are rarely found alive and found at depths so deep, scientists do think that they aren't so blobby and ugly when they're underwater. There's a theory that, yeah, that they, I don't know, like, I don't want to say stretch out.
The buoyancy.
But it has to do with the depth and it doesn't end up looking so blobby. Oddly enough, though, I didn't know that the first one was seen in 2003.
That recently?
Mm-hmm. And they lovingly named it Mr. Blobby, which is...
I'm actually... Yeah, they actually have pictures of what they look like down below, and they're not nearly as...
Yeah, as weird-looking. Well, the only ones I've seen of what they look like underwater are like artist renditions.
Okay. Maybe. Yeah, but it's...
What they think. Yeah, it's not so bad. But the ones that we see, yeah, ugly, is all get out.
So that was my second to the last one. Are you ready for your last one, then, Laura?
Yes, I am ready. This is my doozy. This is the ugliest baby that exists on this planet, in my opinion.
And it is the II. Which, coming on the back of pretty recently our Gleamer episode, Hear Me Out, Duke Gleamer Center, I promise I am not only going to trash talk the II. I'm just calling it out for what it is, and then we're going to talk about how amazing of an animal it is.
So, how ugly are I.I.'s? I.I.'s may make you question if there is such a thing as a loving god. Because they are so creepy, and their babies are even worse.
So try and picture an animal that is a cross between a bat and a lemur.
So that's in your head. Now take that animal, give it very little fur, buggy gold eyes, and fingers that would make Nosferatu jealous.
It's pretty accurate.
That's what it is. Seriously, these little guys look like the satanic version of a lemur. They do.
No, they definitely do.
God made lemurs and Satan made the II.
But there's all kinds of folklore around it and stuff to support that. I mean, because they do look creepy.
Terrifying. So if you've ever seen an image of an I, if you have never seen an image of an I.I.'s hands, Google it right now. One article I read called, it's one extra long digit, and I quote, finger of death.
Yeah.
It has a finger of death.
Yeah, and that's where the folklore comes around, is that finger.
So they're so creepy. Like that, like he said, locals believe you can be cursed if an II simply points at you. Or the other thought is that they sneak into houses at night and pick at the hearts of their victim with that finger.
Okay, that's a little bit much.
Can you imagine? All right, kids, night night, don't let the II come in and pick your heart out.
I mean, I could see it being creepy if like it points at you, because to me, I think to me, I think pointing is creepier than coming in, like knowing that it would rip your heart out because that I can at least defend myself against. Whereas pointing, you can't defend yourself against pointing. Like, yeah, it's just gonna sit around across the room and just judge you.
You can't defend yourself against that.
So yeah, and it doesn't help things that they're nocturnal. So they're seen in very poor lighting. So all you're seeing is this terrifying creature.
I'm, and there is no other way to describe the eye-eye than the way I did. If you look it up, I challenge you to describe it any differently.
No, that was very accurate.
So yeah, and the babies, like I said, they're worse than the adults in the fact that they have even less hair, even more buggy eyes and even bigger ears. So even though they look terrible, they are totally incredible animals. And doing the research for this podcast, I always learn so much.
Like I always know like some bare minimums about a lot of animals. I'm more of a generalist.
Yeah, as I say, we're definitely generalists.
I love learning like the in-depth stuff. So here's about the eye-eye.
Hear this. Hear this, hear, hear Laura has an announcement.
So unfortunately, this is my one animal that does not get better looking with age. It gets a bit more fur, and it grows into some of its features, but it's still super creepy. So I know that this lemur gets a lot of hate based on its looks, which I just said are terrifying, but they are the best example I have of an animal that demonstrates that looks aren't everything.
Their long fingers and giant ears are for tapping on trees and rotting logs, listening for sounds bouncing back, called percussive foraging, which is sort of like echolocation, but in a little bit of a different way.
But with a finger!
Right, like tap tap tapping along, trying to find, just listening for bugs. Once they hear the pitter patter of insect feet or the slithering of grubs, they chisel through the bark with their incredibly strong teeth, so strong they have been known to gnaw through concrete in captivity.
That's insane.
Yeah, then they insert that insanely long finger to fish out their food, which is able to rotate 360 degrees because it's in a ball and joint socket, and has a specialized claw at the end.
That makes the finger creepier to me.
Oh yeah, it's definitely creepy, but also incredible. It's got a mobile 360 finger with a hook on the end, specifically for hooking out grubs. It's crazy.
You know where I'm going, folks. You know where I'm going. Human evolution, we have failed.
Continue.
So besides its specialized finger, they are incredibly intelligent. They actually have the largest brain to body ratio of any of the lemurs.
Really?
Yeah, so they're probably the smartest of all the lemurs. Unfortunately, I eyes are considered fatty or taboo in Madagascar and are persecuted for this, likely because they look so scary. So unfortunately, a lot of them are just killed right out because for being considered taboo and potentially like putting curses on people with their creepy fingers.
I just like potentially putting curses on people.
It hasn't been ruled out. No, but unfortunately, it's really terrible because they are really cool animals that are incredibly specialized. And thankfully, our friends at the Duke Lemur Center and other conservation organizations are doing what they can to help out this endangered species because they are endangered like pretty much all of the lemurs.
As we were talking about in one of our past episodes. And I know that the Duke Lemur Center does have several eye eyes at the center, so definitely be sure to check out Duke Lemur Center once again. If you didn't already in our past episode for Lemur Day, check them out again.
They got some really good pictures of eye eyes. Oh, they do? Looking creepy, but cool.
They are cool.
I would say, okay, here's my thoughts. I would love, and Duke Lemur Center, hit us up. I would love to be pointed at by an eye eye, but at the same time, I am always one that I don't mess with stuff that I don't trust or know.
So just the fact that there's a possibility of a curse. I don't want to... I'm not going to take that chance.
Nope. Like haunted houses. I will do fake haunted houses because crap doesn't scare me like that.
It is difficult to actually jump out and scare me. I'm not one that gets startled very easily. So I can walk through a haunted house, like a stage haunted house.
No problem. However, you take me to a legit place that's haunted and then start whipping out Ouija boards and stuff?
Nope. The Ouija board is where I would draw the line.
Nope, nope, nope. I don't just don't care what people believe. Just why would you take that chance and mess with that kind of crap?
Just don't take that chance. So as much as I would love to be pointed at by an aye-aye, I don't know. I still think I would take that chance.
Just to see what it felt like to be pointed at.
What does it feel like?
Does it feel intimidating? Does it feel creepy?
At night, I'm sure it does. In the day, I feel like it wouldn't be very intimidating.
Just like...
Yeah, and then it'd just be like, you, you...
Yeah, what if it's like... Yeah, what if it is really cute during the day when it points? At night, it's just the creepy pointing.
All righty, my last one.
That was my last and best one.
All right, so my last one. Human baby. Now, hear me out.
I'm so glad you're ending it on this one.
Before I start, I will say I am a mother. I love my child. However...
And this one, we're just gonna go completely ad-lib because you and I are both mothers, so I feel like we can both speak to this. And you're a very recent mother. So...
There is nothing cute about a newborn baby. I don't care... what people say.
It is one of the weirdest... The whole pro... Okay, first of all, let's just...
The whole process is weird. The whole... They come out and they're...
Yes, they're screaming. And it's not like an annoying, but like clearly they're not happy to be here. They're all puffy.
Like... Yeah, maybe after they get cleaned up and de-swell some. Yeah.
Yeah, gooey and...
And just gross.
Sometimes they can be weird colors, like red or blue or purple.
I mean, Luke... So Luke, whenever we had Luke's eye to C-section...
Yeah, so he should have been pretty normal looking.
You would think.
Considering.
You would think. So let me just... This...
Well, no. You know what? Let's get into this.
It's biology. Here we go, folks. Luke, all right?
He was over eight and a half pounds at birth. I'm five one and before I was pregnant, like 110 pounds. Tiny person, tiny frame, all right?
Luke was not coming out. Like, yeah, I would have been one of... Without modern medicine, I would have been one of those women that died in the old age.
Like there's no doubt. Because he was not going... He was such a big baby, over eight and a half pounds, which wasn't isn't that big.
I mean, for me, it was huge. But he was like 22, 23 inches or something absurd. So from how big my baby is now, I swear to you, I have to go back and look at how big he was.
But I swear I know he was more than 20 inches. Anyway, but you remember how big I was. You saw when I was pregnant.
I was ginormous.
We actually looked up, can a baby kill you?
We did, yes, which I don't recommend Googling on any work computers because it does not give you back. We wanted to know, yeah, if a baby could kill you from the inside, like could it punch your heart?
Or could it like- He was ripping your intercostals.
Yeah, yeah, in between my ribs. So he ripped that, and then there's no healing that. It just continues to rip because that was probably like six months into it that that started to rip.
And so for the last few months, it just continued to rip. And there's no break. It's just a constant ripping.
So we looked at if a baby could kill you from the inside, like punch your heart or something. It can't, but it didn't stop us from looking it up. So anyway, so small frame, baby's gotta come out, obviously between your hips.
And before the baby comes out, it engages, you know, head first.
Yeah.
But because, like, he couldn't fit, there was no room, but it was like he would engage and then not, engage and then not. And so it was almost like suctioning the back of his head.
Oh, man.
I'll have to find a picture. So when he came out, he had an alien head. Like-
Like a cone head, yeah. Yeah, like- Like the longer baby comes in the birth canal, yeah.
Yeah, and he wasn't even in the birth canal because he-
Why is that crazy?
He should be perfect. Nope. Nope, that's what I'm saying.
Because it was like suctioning him out. It was like, my body was like, get out of here. And it was like, nope.
So it just suctioned his head. So he came out with an elongated head. They thought we were gonna have to put him under a lamp, which to me was, I thought they were joking.
Whenever they were like, oh, look at his Billy Reuben. Yeah, but his Billy Reuben numbers are a little low. Let's see how he is tomorrow.
And if not, we're gonna have to, you have to come back and put him under a lamp.
I was like, yeah.
Yeah, I was like, what? I was like, we're what here now? Like, yeah, but no, they legit put your baby under a lamp.
So elongated head, even though he was a C-section, they literally take you, like take him from my innards, okay, wrap him in a blanket, and is like, here, mom, do you wanna hold him?
I'm like, they didn't even ask me. Yeah, I just flopped it on. There was no, it was, there wasn't even a, there was zero time.
Well, to be fair, to be fair, because I had a C-section and they give you the spinal block, they literally put sandbags on your arms. So, because you like, they don't want you like twitching, and it's like, because your body doesn't know what's like, what it can feel and can't feel, and so it'll send like electrical twitches. And so like your body will twitch to prevent that.
My arms were like sandbagged down. So it's not like I could hold him. So it had to be like the nurse coming over to be like, here's your kid.
And I like the picture, because I was so nervous, not about the birth process, about the spinal block, that I was like, as soon as the anesthesiologist came up, in case they had to like completely knock me out or something, I was like, can you give me anything to help me relax? He's like, oh yeah, I got you. I was like, give me whatever you can without knocking me out.
You can, I was so relaxed. So relaxed. And you know me, when I get really nervous in medical situations, I just start cracking jokes, because I don't know how I was to cope in life.
They all thought I was hilarious, or at least in my mind, I remember, they all thought I was hilarious. And I was so relaxed. So all the first pictures of Luke, like beside me, he's all like swollen, purple, like crying with an elongated head.
And I'm like high as a kite just over there, like horrible pictures. But yeah, I don't know, man. Like they're not coming out.
They're puffy.
Aliens or potatoes.
They're aliens.
I've heard them described in many ways.
Yeah, give them a day or two, and they become the light of your life. But initially from the canal or from being cut seven layers deep out of my stomach, not cute. Not ugly, but I wouldn't say cute either.
Yeah, I was really scared about, because I, yeah, objectively, I've seen some babies that I'm like, not super cute. So I was like, oh man, you guys all have to tell me like, if it's not super cute, because I'm going to post pictures. Tell me if it's an ugly baby and I'll spare you.
Which is hilarious now looking back, because your kid is so freaking cute. And like expression full.
Yeah, she does. She's adorable. And when she was first born, she wasn't the characteristic newborn.
And the nurse commented on it, because she's like, she's not, she wasn't red. She wasn't swollen. She wasn't purple.
She didn't have a cone head. She had one little spot on her head, because she was really only like, the whole thing only was a few hours. And so I guess she wasn't in there for very long.
Yeah, I remember it was quick, yeah.
She came out pretty much just a baby.
She's like, hi guys.
Like she wasn't all crazy and crimped up and all kinds of stuff. And yeah, the only thing about her is she had like a little bit of her eye, like it was only squinties for a long time. She didn't open her eyes very much at all, which makes sense because you've been in darkness for, you know, months, right?
Yeah, no, Luke came out like a wombat. He literally, when they pulled him from my stomach, first of all, and this might be too graphic, but when all I remember is the my doctor who was phenomenal, he said, we're going to try and get your kid out, but he is very big and we might have to cut you hip to hip. So that's how big he was.
And so she's like, you're going to feel some light pushing. And the student nurse was literally on top of my stomach, like, pushing it out so that he could like, and when he came out, because I mean, of course, he had like a ton of hair, because again, my child, but my doctor held him up and he's like, he's a linebacker. And kid you not, because my Reese maiden name family, it's all very broad-shouldered men, like very short, broad-shouldered, like, and that is how Luke, well, was.
Now he's like a skinny little kid, but because he's grown into it. I'll have to find some like, I mean, he was cute.
The hair, you know, it literally looked like somebody took a wig and just plopped it on top of his head. He had epic hair.
It didn't look real.
It didn't look real. No, it did not look real from very early on. Anyway, so human babies, yeah, not give him a couple days and they are all adorable.
I love like my nephew, my sister's kid is so freaking cute. He was really cute at birth, too, but I don't know. All right, everybody, ugly babies and annoying babies.
We promise that they are as ugly as we think. But just remember, ugliness is not everything. These animals, even though they are ugly as babies or even as adults, they still have important roles in our ecosystems.
And, I mean, you know, we need them.
Looks aren't everything because remember, I mean, pandas are super cute and they're worthless.
Yeah, so looks aren't everything.
We're just going to keep attacking poor pandas. The Chinese government is going to come after us one of these days for panda slander or something.
Panda slander!
Such a good one. All right, everybody, until next week.
See you next week. Bye.