83: No Such Thing As A Flying Sniffer Dog

So what do this animal

and this animal

and this animal

have in common?

They all live on an organic valley farm.

Organic valley dairy comes from small organic family farms that protect the land and the plants and animals that live on it from toxic pesticides, which leads to a thriving ecosystem and delicious, nutritious milk and cheese.

Learn more at ov.coop and taste the difference.

Hello and welcome to another episode of No Such Thing as a Fish, a weekly podcast.

This week coming to you from the Lowry in Salford.

My name is Dan Schreiber.

Joining me on the stage is the three regular elves.

It's Andy Murray, Anna Chaczynski, 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 my fact.

My fact this week is the seventh time park ranger Roy Sullivan was struck by lightning coincided with the 22nd time he fought off a bear with a stick.

So this guy's a park ranger.

I think he was fishing at the time.

So he was just out there.

He's been struck six times before.

And then the lightning was coming.

And he just thought, I'll just stay here.

Probably nothing bad will happen.

Got struck by lightning, was running back to his car, and suddenly a bear comes out of nowhere.

And he's just like, Jesus Christ.

Has to fight off a bear and then went back home.

His diary must have been amazing.

Bear, bear, lightning, lightning and bear.

But as I said, he's been struck seven times.

He was almost struck eight times, but the eighth time when he should have been struck, it hit his wife instead.

It sounds awful.

It sounds terrible because obviously he was interviewed because he was very, he became well known for this.

And he said, naturally, people avoid me.

I was walking with the chief ranger one day and lightning struck way off.

And he said, I'll see you later, Roy.

Then he said, There's a restaurant on Loft Mountain that even it's just overcast, they won't let me in.

It sounds awful.

It sounds terrible because time number four,

this is August 1973.

I think he died in the early 80s, possibly.

But in August 1973, he got in his car and

he accelerated because there was a cloud forming, and he was very nervous about storm clouds by this point.

And he outran it, stopped the car, got out of it to watch the storm, hit by lightning again.

They have a full list of all the times that he was.

The first time he lost his big toenail to lightning.

Oh, so big toe nail.

Yeah, big toenail, yeah.

The fifth time, a bolt came out of a small, low-lying cloud, hit him on the head through his hat, set his hair on fire again, again,

knocked him 10 feet out of his car, and knocked his left shoe off.

Do you know why shoes come off when you get hit by lightning?

Is it because you watch cartoons?

So for example, when it hits a tree, lightning, it will sometimes explode a tree if the moisture is in the middle of the tree because it takes the path of least resistance.

People, obviously, there's moisture everywhere and we're 70% liquid, so it often dissipates all over your skin.

But when it does that, all the sweat and the moisture on you boil into steam immediately.

And sometimes so much steam is produced that your shoes will be blown off.

That's what causes it.

So he got struck seven times.

I found someone who's been struck even more.

Really?

Yeah, recently there's a guy called Melvin Roberts from South Carolina and he at least claims to have been struck ten times.

He was in the news in 2011 for being hit six times and his wife says that he's been struck another four times since.

By lightning, definitely.

She's not just finding him really annoying.

I think I found a group of people who've been struck by lightning even more than that.

Whoa, really?

Yeah, so I was reading The 14 Times.

It's an amazing magazine.

And in it, they had a small story where someone had written in to contest the fact that Roy Sullivan was the most struck person

of all time.

And what they said was that in 1995, a group of explorers who were up on a mountain, mountaineers, got struck 20 times in 16 hours.

A group of five.

And they were in their tent and they all describe the moment that they were struck.

And they were just in there getting struck over and over again, 17 times and they went we've got to get out of there out of here there's a rescue shelter down the mountain so they started absailing and while they were doing that they were struck three more times on the abseil down oh my god to be fair i do think you have to divide that by five though at which point you haven't been in the record anymore very good point yeah it's all about the mass sometimes goes from one person to another as well no yeah or it can it can hit for example uh it can rebound off a tree and into a horse or whatever

it just yeah i mean that and then it's less likely to kill you because at least some of the force has been been dissipated.

Yeah, that's the idea.

Men account for 85% of lightning strikes, isn't that weird?

And the National Weather Service in the US speculated that this might be because men tend to be unaware of all the dangers associated with lightning, more likely to be in vulnerable situations, unwilling to be inconvenienced by the threat of lightning

and don't react quickly to the lightning threat or any combination of these explanations.

So they're stupid, ignorant, pig-headed, and they have very slow reactions.

That actually was just my interpretation, but I think that's the long and short of it.

A man in Croatia has admitted that he has not gone outside after hearing thunder since lightning struck his penis in 2007.

Zoran Djerkovich.

It's there, it's online, honestly.

Zoran Djerkovich said, My friends used to tease me, and I used to tease them back, saying my penis has extraordinary ability now

but it doesn't

it's hard to tease them back when you've just got a sort of charred sponge

so I think there might be something about Croatia God hates it or something so there's a Croatian woman who has been left recently with a severely burned anus after a lightning strike ended her mouth while she was cleaning her teeth and drinking water from the tap, came through the tap, ended her mouth, and then left through the anus so it could earth through the ground.

Apparently, so the report said she was wearing rubber-soled shoes.

So once the lightning had entered through her mouth when she was drinking water from the tap, it took the easiest route and came out of her rectum to reach her rubber-soled shoes.

You know, speaking of lightning coming out the bum,

there actually is a fabled worm called the Mongolian death worm, which is in Mongolia.

And

is it Dan?

Is it?

It's a massive worm, and

all accounts of it say that it can shoot acid from its eyes and lightning bolts from its anus.

Accounts.

I don't think they deserve the name accounts.

No one really knows why lightning happens, do they?

I mean, we kind of do.

Like, when you're at school, they tell you, like, it's because clouds are rubbing together or whatever, and it kind of is that a little bit.

But it's like ice going going up in the clouds and water coming down or the other way around, and they rub against each other and it causes like static electricity, like you would have with a balloon.

But no one really knows why it starts, and it's like a chain reaction that starts.

And one theory, you'll like this, Dan.

Apparently,

there's the latest theory coming from Russia that it's cosmic rays which come from outside the solar system and hit the earth, and that's what starts the lightning in the first place.

Wow.

And no one knows what causes cosmic rays, really.

I mean, it could be supernovas or quasars or the Mongolian death worm.

We can't rule it out.

Yeah, amazing.

You know, America has two annual conferences for lightning strike survivors.

Oh, really?

Yeah.

Don't they say about 80% of people struck by lightning actually survive

strike?

Yes, it does.

80 to 90% live, but it's not plain sailing after that.

It's not as though you have burns and then you recover.

It can scramble your memory.

And there are all these long-term effects that we don't know about.

And it just gets right into your cells.

And there aren't enough cases that are studied in the medical literature to have a proper body of science so it's a lot of guesswork and yeah there just isn't the money to try and work out what exactly has happened.

Okay.

We're going to have to move on to our next fact in a minute.

Is there anything else you guys want to add?

Another thing that we can't explain is the lightning that happens at the beacon of Maracaibo, which is the most incredible place on the planet.

So this is a place in Venezuela.

It's the Catatumbo River, I think in Venezuela.

And it's one tiny spot where for 280 times an hour, for 10 hours a night, for 160 nights a year, lightning strikes this exact same spot, and nobody knows why.

I reckon it could be Roy Sullivan doing some fishing.

But isn't that weird?

And it was mentioned first in a poem about Francis Drake in 1597.

And fishermen use it on this lake in Venezuela to light their way.

So if they're going fishing, they just use this glass and lightning storm to say, okay, well, there's a storm.

I guess we go towards that because that's where we'll get the best light slash die.

And

yeah, no one knows why it happens.

Wow, that's amazing.

I did read about that and I think it replenishes the ozone layer, doesn't it?

Biggest source of ozone on earth, the biggest single source of ozone on earth.

So it's a good thing.

It's a good thing.

That's so cool.

Tired of spills and stains on your sofa?

Washable sofas.com has your back, featuring the Anibay collection, the only designer sofa that's machine washable inside and out, where designer quality meets budget-friendly prices.

That's right, sofas started just $699.

Enjoy a no-risk experience with pet-friendly, stain-resistant, and changeable slip covers made with performance fabrics.

Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing.

The sturdy steel frame ensures longevity, and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime.

Check out washable sofas.com and get up to 60% off your Anibay sofa, backed by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.

If you're not absolutely in love, send it back for a full refund.

No return shipping or restocking fees.

Every penny back.

Upgrade now at washablesofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

Dig into gold and silver mining equity returns with the Sprat Active Gold and Silver Miners ETF, GBUG.

Visit Spratetfs.com or call 1-888-622-1813 for disclosure and prospectus information containing investment objectives, risks, charges, and and expenses, which should be read carefully.

Alf's Distributors Inc.

is the distributor for this Roddy TFs.

Okay, we're going to move on to fact number two, and that is James Harkin.

Okay, my fact this week is that this year, America's Hero Dog of the Year award was won by a cat.

Can't have been a good night to be a dog.

Yeah, so this is Tara the Cat, and I reckon some people will know it, or will at least know the cat itself, because it's been a bit of an internet sensation.

There was a young child being mauled by a dog next to a car.

You might have seen the video on YouTube.

And then this cat runs on and kind of scares the dog away and then runs off again.

And she became such a hero that she is now an honorary dog.

Wow.

What a way to reward her to invite her to a ceremony full of dogs.

Who announced

off that a cat's one.

It is amazing.

She just full-on runs into the dog.

She just smashes her.

Have you guys seen that video?

You must have done right.

Yeah.

It's good.

It's good to watch.

Yeah.

Yeah, she got a few other awards actually.

She was invited by the local baseball team, the Bakersfield Blaze, because this was in Bakersfield in California.

They invited her to throw the first pitch.

No way.

Yeah, at a baseball game.

How did she do?

Well, it said on the news report that she was assisted by her family.

I've watched it and the family do a lot of assisting.

It goes wrong about five times and then basically a guy holding a cat throws a bowl.

That's basically it.

But this video is the first YouTube video in history to reach 20 million views in five days.

And the cat became a hero and the dog was put down.

Was it?

Yeah.

No way.

Did it just bite it?

It had bitten the child really badly on the leg.

Yeah, okay, yeah.

Sorry.

I'm on the dog side.

No, I'm not.

I'm not.

Cats have a long and noble history of dogs though, don't they?

Because they bark like, can bark like dogs.

Like if you have cats and dogs living together then cats will learn to impersonate dogs.

What?

Okay hang on, no, I've never

if you basically look at type into YouTube, cat barking.

Are you sure that a cat can bark like a dog and not that a dog can throw its voice?

Dogs are actually amazing ventriloquists and we've not realized.

But there is a really good video on YouTube of a cat owner.

I mean, I can't believe we're discussing YouTube memes, but let's do it.

Of a cat owner who sneaks up behind her cat, filming her cat, sitting on a window ledge, looking outside at a dog, which obviously lives with the family or lives next door, so it's lived around it, and barking.

And it's honestly going, the cat's going, ruff, ruff, ruff, and it keeps doing this, loads.

And then the person who's holding the camera sort of clears her throat, and the cat hears and looks around and starts going, mew.

And the science came up with some bullshit explanation, like, oh, she turned her vocal vocal cords as she turned around, which changed the tenor of her voice.

But it's quite clearly the cat going, whoopsie, I've been caught right in the act of impersonating a dog.

So just on heroic dogs, I have a couple of different kinds of heroic dogs that we all know about, so bomb detecting dogs, and we know about guide dogs.

There is only one, I believe, there's a great piece in The Guardian about this, there is only one airborne nut allergy dog in the UK.

Sorry, the dog was airborne or the nut.

My fault, should have clarified.

So there's a woman also called Tara, actually, Tara Bedford.

She has an incredibly bad nut allergy, so bad that even the smell of nuts can trigger a reaction.

She says, any Russell on a train or a bus, and it's what are they opening?

Should I move?

She can't go to the cinema, she can't go to a catch, she can't go in a plane because someone opens a packet of peanuts and she's dead.

She's in a plane.

She had to go to A ⁇ E 40 times in four years.

Oh my gosh.

But the story has a happy ending because there was a Labrador who had failed a guide dog test for overuse of the nose.

Put them together.

And now the dog forcefully pushes her whenever the dog smells nuts, a peanut, or a nut she's allergic to.

So it's a very good ending.

A seeing nosed dog.

Seeing nosed dog, yeah.

Wow, that's been incredible.

And he flies as well.

Sorry.

Russia employs sniffer cats.

Do you know that?

Really?

Yeah,

there's some sniffer cats in Russia and they're looking for kind of Russian mafia that might be smuggling fish

for

the caviar for down in the south of Russia.

And the most famous one, the first one, was called Rusik.

And Rusik died when he was hit by a criminal's car quite recently.

And the locals thought that it might be a contract killing because the week before, another cat called Barsic was killed after he was poisoned by a mouse.

Sorry, with a mouse.

Yeah.

I was looking into sort of the latest in cat news, and I headed to a place I discovered a few podcasts ago.

I headed to Pussington Post.

Just a few recent headlines.

Cat ignores frogs sitting on his paw.

That was September 17th, if you want to look that one up.

Well, if you're into cat news which you obviously are

There's this guy who is constantly updating us on cat news he runs a Twitter feed called NBA Cat Watch and the entire Twitter feed is devoting it is devoted to finding out what cats are owned by basketball players

And he's been going for quite a while now.

So he said it started off as a typical dumb Twitter joke But the more I thought about it something caught in my brain.

I'd be watching a basketball game and I'd start to think about who does own a cat on this team.

He said, I'm aware that it's ridiculous trying to find NBA players' cats on social media.

However, it's my niche and I got there first.

And yet no one has ever got there second, have they?

I found a really exciting Guinness book world record, which is for world mousing champion.

And the winner of this, the current champion of this.

It's a dog.

It's a dog.

It's a cat.

But it's amazing that this is an actual record that's being held.

So it's a cat called Towser, and Towser was stationed at a distillery in Scotland

where grouse whiskey is made.

And during her reign, she killed 28,899 mice.

No way.

Yeah, and so that's a Guinness World record.

No way.

Yeah, and then she died, so she got taken over by another cat called Amber, who's been there for 20 years now, and who they've said was not known to have caught a single mouse.

They've all been caught already.

She's just got there on her first day and oh well there's not much to do here is there.

Can I tell you about a couple more little dog things?

Yes please.

So there's another kind of dog which is a

corpse detection dog.

So police use them to find bodies, things like this.

And they have to be trained, but you can't train them obviously on real cases because there are very few of those.

So they're trained by wrapping up pigs' bodies in shower curtains.

And there's a man who runs a search company, his name is Mick Swindles, and he says he always puts clothes on the pigs too

for added realism.

Insert your own David Cameron joke here.

Well, this is the thing he said of them, because he puts clothes on them, and he said, People say, why do you always put them in a skirt?

Have you ever tried putting trousers on a pig?

So presumably these cats are just now really good at detecting clothes pigs.

Dogs are really good at detecting clothes pigs and not that good at detecting human corpses.

We're very similar to pigs in many ways.

Speak for yourself.

We're going to have to move on in a sec.

Can I say one thing?

This original fact was in Bakersfield in California.

And so I found another story from Bakersfield.

It's just a quick one.

It's a guy called Mr.

Slivers.

And he was arrested and they interviewed him afterwards.

And this is what he said: He said, I was just bored, and I decided I wanted to be a cat burglar.

So I kicked in the window and tried to steal the lion, but it was too heavy, so I stole the cat.

And he wanted to be a cat burglar and thought that a cat burglar is something that steals cats.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa.

I'm more interested in the home that owns both the lion and the cat.

It was a museum.

It was a museum.

They were stuffed.

Sorry, right.

Okay, got it.

Otherwise, I don't think you'd be saying the the line is too heavy.

Weight is the least of your problems.

That line was way too bitey on my facey.

Okay, it's time for fact number three, and that is Chaczynski.

Yeah, my fact is that the earliest known penalty for illegal parking was to be impaled on a stake.

Yeah,

it's firm, but it's fair.

And if you appeal, it's a smaller stake.

So, this was actually in 700 BC.

This is the earliest parking restriction I can find.

So, it's in Nineveh, which was the Assyrian capital.

And the parking restriction was put in place by King Sennacherib.

And we have a stone tablet where he's laid out the restriction and it says, Royal road, let no man decrease it, or let no man lessen it, this royal road, and on pain of being impaled on a stake.

And you got impaled on a stake if you did park on the royal road in your chariot, obviously not your motor car,

and impaled on a stake and then planted in your own garden so that people who were coming to visit you could go, oh, I guess he's not available for tea

or whatever.

In your own garden.

Planted in your own garden.

What do you have little labels sticking out like you get on those plants?

Yeah, with the species.

This is a Norman.

Yeah, Sennacherib.

He was, he's most famous for moving his capital city to Nineveh, like you say, and had like a really amazing capital city, didn't he?

He had like gardens.

They think it might have been the hanging gardens if everyone was there.

And yeah, he was just an extremely opulent man.

Apparently, he had a piece of Noah's Ark which he worshipped as a god.

And he once wrote about his enemies, Their testicles I cut off and tore out their privates like the seeds of cucumbers.

He was good with a simile, actually.

Sounds like he was very bad at making sandwiches.

You selectively shave the outside of a cucumber, then you slot it home in the sandwich.

He actually, so he was not a humble man because he did create these incredible gardens.

I mean, he's, I think people should know more about Sennacherib, and very little is written about him.

But a lot of historians now think that the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, as you say, were his gardens and he irrigated the mountains all around.

So he built this incredible canal that stretched 50 kilometers up into the mountains and which irrigated his whole amazing new city.

But he was pretty cocky about it.

So, even on the signpost where he said you'll be impaled on a steak or a cucumber or whatever if you park here,

the little signpost then went on to list his achievements, explaining Sinnacherib is king of the world, favorite of the gods, holder of invincible weapons, and architect of urban design.

So I think that's quite nice.

On those signs, you put a PS.

Here's what I've achieved, guys.

Wow.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Do you know in Britain the first ever parking ticket that was given?

No.

Okay, so it was in September 1960.

They set this up.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

It was quite like where it was like an established property where parking attendants went out.

And the first ever ticket was given to a Dr.

Thomas Creighton, who was answering an emergency call to help a heart attack victim at a West End hotel.

So he raced there, he got out, when he came back he had a ticket and there was so much public outcry that they said, okay, you haven't got a ticket.

That was the first ticket.

Can you imagine the,

how was your first day?

They cocked up pretty badly.

But the first parking ticket in America was also had to be overturned.

Oh, really?

Maybe parking tickets are just a failed enterprise.

Yeah, this was a Reverend, actually, the Reverend C.

H.

North of the Third Pentecostal Pentecostal Holiness Church, and it was a newly installed parking meter, the country's first parking meter.

And he just ran into a shop to get change.

By the time he'd come out, he got a ticket and he complained to the courts and had it overturned.

Wow.

It would be pretty hard to get it overturned in the old days when you're being impaled on a stage.

I've got a story about parking tickets.

So begins so many Amandy's anecdotes.

Okay, so this is from January this year, and it was from the BBC news website.

A traffic warden is being investigated after a parking ticket was placed on a wheelie bin.

The warden was accused of bizarre behaviour.

So one witness said this.

It appeared the warden slapped the plastic ticket envelope on the bin in a moment of high jinx after a member of the public pointed out it was on double yellow lines.

So it's a joke.

It's just a silly joke, yeah.

But then the response, this is in Carmarthen.

Carmarthenshire Council Traffic and Safety Manager John McKevoy said, although this was meant as a humorous incident, we take this kind of thing very seriously and have launched a formal investigation into the conduct of the officer.

Although this was meant as a humorous incident, we are still the arseholes you think we are.

I have some stuff on weird laws and slightly strange punishments, if that's okay.

The Hittites, apparently, they had a rule where anyone found guilty of committing a sex act with a dog or pig would be killed.

Insert your own David Cameron joke here.

But if it was with a horse or a mule, the only punishment that they could give out was that you were no longer allowed to be in the presence of the king.

Wow.

That's good though, isn't it?

And if the king,

sorry,

if the pig mounted the human, then no one would be punished at all.

It had to be the human who was

doing that, yeah.

Well, how would the king, is that his opening question to everyone?

You fucked a horse?

Because you could just be in an audience of the king and it doesn't get to him that you did it.

That's a good point.

Yeah, I don't know.

He was very close with the horse community.

They reported all these things.

Proofington Post.

That's really good.

It's good, but it hurts.

So, do you know about the guy who invented the double yellow lines?

No.

This is a guy called George Bamber, and this is in the

late 19th century, so the 1880s.

And he based the double yellow line design.

He was a farmer and he based the design on the markings he put on his sheep.

So he used to stripe his sheep with double yellow lines.

And he noticed that no one ever walked on his sheep or parked on them.

He thought this is something.

Precisely.

He wanted to keep the entrance to his farm clear on market day so people would come in and buy his produce.

So he thought, oh, what design could I use?

Oh, those yellow lines from the sheep.

And he drew them out and it really caught on in in his village.

So the mayor of his town started using these double yellow lines to stop people parking in undesirable places.

But he received a 10% commission for a number of years on, like, whenever the double yellow lines were used that he'd taken from the sheep, he got a commission on them.

That's amazing.

Isn't that cool?

That is really cool.

It's really cool.

Because I would have thought it was based on the single yellow line, but you're saying that was invented first.

Double yellow line came first.

That is invested.

Yeah.

It's like hearing that Rocky 2 was made before Rocky.

And Rocky 2 was so good.

They thought, we should do all at once.

There's nothing like sinking into luxury.

At washablesofas.com, you'll find the Anibay sofa, which combines ultimate comfort and design at an affordable price.

And get this, it's the only sofa that's fully machine washable from top to bottom, starting at only $699.

The stain-resistant performance fabric slip covers and cloud-like frame duvet can go straight into your wash.

Perfect for anyone with kids, pets, or anyone who loves an easy-to-clean, spotless sofa.

With a modular design and changeable slip covers, you can customize your sofa to fit any space and style.

Whether you need a single chair, love seat, or a luxuriously large sectional, Annabe has you covered.

Visit washable sofas.com to upgrade your home.

Right now, you can shop up to 60% off store-wide with a 30-day money-back guarantee.

Shop now at washablesofas.com.

Add a little

to your life.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

As a mom, you know your home is where your family learns to love, where your little kids learn who they are, and where your bigger kids remember who they were.

It's where dreams are born and come to life.

Your home deserves a spotlight, and Everlights makes that happen.

Everlights is your permanent external lighting expert.

With Everlights, your home can become a princess castle, a summer oasis, or celebration of even the littlest wins.

And with Everlight's limited time 20% off deal, you'll be the hero of your home and your checkbook.

Let's give your home some color with Everlights.

Go to myEverlights.com to get a free quote today.

We're going to have to move on to our next facts.

You guys got any more?

All right, let's do it.

It's time for our final fact of the evening, and that is Andrew Hunter Murray.

My fact is that female corn earworm moths go invisible after sex.

So this needs a bit of explaining.

Basically, when ⁇ so corn earworm moths are a kind of moth, and when males mate with females, they have a protein in their semen which makes the female invisible to other males.

So it gets into the female's body and it inhibits all pheromone production immediately.

And the males only can tell when a female's around by smell.

They don't have very good vision at all.

They can't really see other females.

So when a male, so it's a

self-preservation thing by the male who's done the mating.

He thinks, well, I want this female off the market.

So he just makes the female invisible to other males.

Why didn't he just paint double yellow lines on her?

So

this is from a book called Nature's Nether Regions by a guy called Menno Schiltheesen.

I hope I'm pronouncing his name right.

And I just find that incredible.

Yeah.

That's amazing.

Totally insane.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So basically, there are all kinds of animals which do incredible, strange things through the medium of sex.

So banana flies are a kind of fly, and male banana flies are.

So when male banana flies have sex with female banana flies, they deposit a semen in the female, and that contains a chemical which makes the female go completely off all other males.

So they start kicking away other males, and then they they give off a scent to make themselves unattractive.

And it lasts for a week.

It's not actually that long, is it?

It is if you're a banana flyer.

It completely kills their sex life.

I mean, how much action are these females getting?

Well, I mean, some insects do all their mating on a single day.

Yeah, okay, fair enough.

That's a bit rough there.

Yeah, yeah.

No, sorry.

I read that female beetles

quench their thirst through sex, and it's because of the semen and the fluids in the semen because they get very dehydrated.

And so when they have sex, it's actually just like having a drink for them.

That's the reason we all do it, duh.

Sometimes the tap is too far away.

So

some insects do all the mating.

So bees and ants do all their mating for a lifetime in a single day when the queen does all her mating.

And the males sort of try and fight each other with semen

to do rivalry, basically.

And some queens, if they've mated with a male and they like that male, they can secrete a fluid to protect that male's semen from the rival sperm, basically.

And the scientist who found this out is called Boris Bayer, he's from the University of Western Australia.

And he was asked whether this might happen in humans, whether human women could do such a thing.

And he said that he doubted it.

And he said, to my knowledge, women do not copulate with 90 mates in half an hour.

In his limited experience.

We are learning a lot about you tonight, Alexander.

So the New Zealand giraffe weevil, which it's a weevil, not a giraffe.

The way that they mate is like you get two weevils and they fight against each other.

And usually the biggest weevil wins.

But there are little weevils that kind of sneak around.

around, and when there's two males fighting over a female, that weevil goes in and then steals the female while she's like kind of watching the fight.

And the female actually ends up having sex with the smallest weevil.

Wow.

She actually goes for the lesser of two weevils.

I've never seen you look more disappointed in me than that.

That was incredible.

Mass suicide was committed tonight.

Here's a really, really weird thing, an interesting thing about flies, baby flies.

Baby flies can get characteristics from males who have had sex with their mother, but not their father.

So a male who's had sex with the mother much, much earlier can still give characteristics to the fly.

Wow.

How?

Well, we don't know.

It's really new research.

But that is unbelievably interesting.

But what's a characteristic for them?

So, say, for instance, the female fly had sex with a really big fly,

and then nothing came from it, and then the father ended up being a little scrawny fly, then the baby might have the bigness of the original guy who she had sex with, even though it's not his actual father.

This sounds very suspect.

Are we sure this isn't just a lot of women cheating on their husbands?

No, it's new research that is why this baby's ginger.

Yeah, it's called telegony, and it used to be believed by humans, by people in ancient Greek time.

People thought that

your children would have things from whoever you had sex with, whether it was the father or not.

And it was thought for a long, long time.

And then it was shown to be not true in humans, but they've recently found that it might be true, or probably is true in flies.

Wow.

That's so cool.

When we had a wrong belief, and it was just completely wrong for no reason, and then it it turned out we were right all along.

It's very satisfying

Norway Norwegian rat sperm they can join forces with each other and become a super sperm

They have little hook-shaped heads and hundreds of them just hook onto each other and say guys we can do this together and then they swim faster as a single

it's like it's like the power rangers you remember when they combine forces

to make a larger power ranger

It's much like that.

And that's why Andy never did any more babysitting.

Naked mole rats.

But have you guys all seen naked mole rats?

Because I mean, they're just so extraordinary and basically every single way.

But their sperm are also bizarre.

So only 7% of naked mole rat sperm can swim.

So they ejaculate and then the vast majority of their sperm just like flails and floats around and like drowns or doesn't make it anywhere.

Only 0.1% I think can swim really fast enough to get anywhere.

So they're just constantly ejaculating useless, useless sperm.

But they are immune to all cancer.

So it's like a trade-off.

Yeah, swings and.

Yeah, but up to 90% of human male sperm, as opposed to human-female sperm, obviously,

has two heads or two tails, or is completely deformed in other ways.

There are very few which are

the perfect...

perfect guys you see on the posters.

I just think there are unrealistic standards of beauty for sperm.

Human semen is, I'm sorry about this, but it is really amazing.

Don't apologize.

I'll send you the dry cleaning bill and we'll call it quits.

It contains proteins, ladies and gentlemen, that can forge a kind of mating plug.

Like other animals have mating plugs that stop other males from impregnating females.

But the proteins in human semen can do a similar kind of thing.

And it also contains chemical compounds that prevent the sperm cells from becoming overenthusiastic.

I'm not quite sure what that means, but

they sort of overshoot past the egg and they end up in the kidney or something.

So there was a question on Yahoo answers, which I never know if people are joking on Yahoo answers, but someone posted a question saying, I ran out of shampoo and I don't have any money, have have no choice, and I have to go to work tomorrow.

My hair smells like feces.

Can I just use sperm as my shampoo?

The next post was the next day from the same guy.

Well, no one asked me about the feces smell, at least.

Okay, we're going to wrap up.

Okay, that's it.

That's all of our facts.

Thank you so much for coming tonight, everybody.

If you want to get in contact with us about the things we've said over the course of this podcast, you can reach us on our Twitter accounts.

I'm on at Schreiberland, Andy, at Andrew Hunter M, James, at Egg Shapes, and Anna.

You can email podcast at QI.com.

Yep.

And if there's a little snigger about the fact she's not on Twitter,

still not on Twitter.

Can't believe it.

And if you want to listen to all of our previous episodes, you can head to no such thingasafish.com and you can listen to all the previous episodes.

We're going on tour still.

Thank you so much for being here, guys.

This has been amazing for us.

Thanks for listening at home.

We'll see you again another time next week.

Goodbye.

Tired of spills and stains on your sofa?

WashableSofas.com has your back, featuring the Anibay Collection, the only designer sofa that's machine washable inside and out, where designer quality meets budget-friendly prices.

That's right, sofas started just $699.

Enjoy a no-risk experience with pet-friendly, stain-resistant, and changeable slip covers made with performance fabrics.

Experience cloud-like comfort with high-resilience foam that's hypoallergenic and never needs fluffing.

The sturdy steel frame ensures longevity, and the modular pieces can be rearranged anytime.

Check out washable sofas.com and get up to 60% off your Anibay sofa, backed by a 30-day satisfaction guarantee.

If you're not absolutely in love, send it back for a full refund.

No return shipping or restocking fees.

Every penny back.

Upgrade now at washable sofas.com.

Offers are subject to change and certain restrictions may apply.

As a mom, you know your home is where your family learns to love, where your little kids learn who they are, and where your bigger kids remember who they were.

It's where dreams are born and come to life.

Your home deserves a spotlight, and Everlights makes that happen.

Everlights is your permanent external lighting expert.

With Everlights, your home can become a princess castle, a summer oasis, or celebration of even the littlest wins.

And with Everlights' limited time 20% off deal, you'll be the hero of your home and your checkbook.

Let's give your home some color with Everlights.

Go to myEverlights.com to get a free quote today.