Terrestrials: The Snow Beast

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Speaker 10 It's 1972. A A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes.
Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

Speaker 10 All they have left is a life raft and each other.

Speaker 10 This is the true story of the Robertson family and their fight to survive, hosted by me, Becky Milligan. Listen to Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House.

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Speaker 14 Hello, Latif Nasser.

Speaker 15 Hi, Lula Miller.

Speaker 14 This is Radiolab, and I'm feeling very gloaty because I finally dragged you onto an episode of Terrestrials.

Speaker 16 Yeah, that's true.

Speaker 14 You told a story, you sang, you did the whole thing, and it's really wonderful. And it's about a creature that you keep a surprise.

Speaker 4 It's one of my favorite creatures on this planet of ours.

Speaker 14 I feel like it's a signature you story.

Speaker 16 Oh, thank you.

Speaker 14 Something you told me about a while ago. I've never been able to forget.
And it kind of like has the effect of truly turning your sense of nature and the world upside down.

Speaker 14 And so we're going to play it here today on Radio Lab.

Speaker 18 Because there's a new season of terrestrials out.

Speaker 16 Yes.

Speaker 19 And we're sort of in the middle of it.

Speaker 18 There are a few already out that you can hear.

Speaker 20 It's very exciting.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 14 It's all about the monsters among us. And you can go listen to new episodes on the Radio Lab for Kids Feed.
And we're playing playing this one because I think it's interesting for anyone of any age.

Speaker 14 Okay, so to get a taste, here we go with Latif's Mystery Animal, an episode we called the Snow Beast.

Speaker 20 Oh, wait, you're listening.

Speaker 16 Okay,

Speaker 16 all right,

Speaker 16 okay,

Speaker 21 all right.

Speaker 15 You're listening

Speaker 16 to Radio Lab, Lab, Radio Lab from

Speaker 3 WNYC.

Speaker 16 Three,

Speaker 14 two,

Speaker 16 one.

Speaker 23 Imagine you are one of the toughest snow beasts out there.

Speaker 16 You can chew thorns,

Speaker 11 walk barefoot across frigid surfaces, spit a kind of potion to ward off threats.

Speaker 14 Your face can zip itself away from the frosty winds.

Speaker 7 And at almost nine feet tall, your long legs can easily step through deep, deep snow.

Speaker 24 But for some reason, no one really thinks of you as a snow beast.

Speaker 16 You have become.

Speaker 12 Well, I'm not telling yet.

Speaker 16 Okay, fine.

Speaker 14 Now is the part where we sing the theme song.

Speaker 26 Oh, can I join in?

Speaker 14 Join in.

Speaker 27 Terrestrial, terrestrial.

Speaker 21 We are not the worst.

Speaker 28 We are the

Speaker 29 best real.

Speaker 21 Bestrial. Yeah.

Speaker 14 I'm your host of the miller, joined us always by my song, bud.

Speaker 15 Alan.

Speaker 27 Making snow angels.

Speaker 14 And today's storyteller is one of my favorite storytellers on the entire planet. My co-host at Radiolab, my partner in radio crime, Latif Nasser.

Speaker 16 Hello. Hi.

Speaker 12 Thanks for having me.

Speaker 28 Longtime fan.

Speaker 14 And you wanted to do things a little differently today. Yeah.
Your animal is a kind of mystery animal, which you will reveal to us partway through the show, and then we will go meet one.

Speaker 16 Can we talk about these gnarly, gnarly teeth?

Speaker 30 Yeah, because it's an animal you know, but it's a story about it you don't.

Speaker 4 So you know how Batman got all his super crime fighting skills by training on other continents?

Speaker 14 Yeah, I guess.

Speaker 18 Well, this story is a little like that

Speaker 20 about the unexpected place our mystery animal evolved all its powers.

Speaker 19 And like, it's stranger than fiction.

Speaker 4 Like, you couldn't make up the backstory of this creature.

Speaker 31 You just couldn't.

Speaker 14 All right. Let's do this thing.

Speaker 22 So the story begins with this woman. Her name is Natalia Rybchinski.

Speaker 15 Okay.

Speaker 28 She is what's called a paleobiologist, which basically just means she specializes in digging up old dead stuff.

Speaker 22 Okay. She said someone once called her Dr.
Dead Things.

Speaker 11 Yeah, that's true. And here she is.
Mostly animals.

Speaker 32 And over the years, Natalia has come across some very cool ancient creatures that are now extinct, but used to roam the earth millions of years ago, such as...

Speaker 11 Oh, well, there's like a deerlet that...

Speaker 14 I'm sorry. Is a deerlet a tiny deer?

Speaker 27 Yes.

Speaker 17 Sort of like a lap deer, maybe?

Speaker 15 An ancient bunny.

Speaker 11 An arctic frog.

Speaker 14 How would a frog survive in the Arctic?

Speaker 13 Would it have to freeze?

Speaker 11 Yeah, freeze solid.

Speaker 28 Plus, the bear.

Speaker 29 An extinct bird.

Speaker 11 We're still working on the bear.

Speaker 15 Ooh.

Speaker 20 Yeah, so kind of that's her job.

Speaker 22 It is especially interesting because she does it in really extreme and interesting places.

Speaker 15 And one day in 2006, she grabs some tools and hops into a helicopter to fly way up north.

Speaker 11 Over a thousand kilometers north of the Arctic Circle.

Speaker 3 To an almost uninhabited island near the North Pole.

Speaker 16 Very cold, very remote.

Speaker 15 Ellesmere Island, Canada.

Speaker 22 They set up camp.

Speaker 11 There's no one else around. We're living in tents.
A trip line around the tents in case a bear comes into the camp at night. Ooh.

Speaker 7 And they spend pretty much every waking hour of every day just walking up this kind of giant, steep, sandy hill.

Speaker 36 Wait a second, the songbud just will start singing whatever you say.

Speaker 27 Yeah, that's how it works. Pretty cool, huh?

Speaker 15 Love it.

Speaker 32 Okay, so Natalia and her team, they're just scuffing through the sand, scanning around to see if the melting snow or wind has surfaced any little, you know, treasures.

Speaker 7 People have dug there before, but the only dead stuff anyone had ever found in this area was like prehistoric plant parts and some insects from millions of years ago.

Speaker 4 Basically, wood from extinct trees.

Speaker 11 Little pieces of moss, stems, leaves.

Speaker 33 And that's why they called it files leaf beds.

Speaker 14 Like beds of leaves.

Speaker 16 Yeah.

Speaker 22 So that's what she was expecting to find.

Speaker 21 stuffing searching for something

Speaker 22 and on this particular day it's the afternoon

Speaker 22 and she finds something just right there, just lying on the surface.

Speaker 11 The size of my thumb.

Speaker 28 Like rusty, sort of a colored.

Speaker 14 Like a big potato chip or something.

Speaker 28 Yeah, a big potato chip is a good way to put it. Okay.

Speaker 22 So she gets out her hand lens.

Speaker 11 A little magnifying glass.

Speaker 4 She's looking at it real closely and wondering what species of tree it might be.

Speaker 37 And she's like, wait a second.

Speaker 28 This thing doesn't actually look like wood.

Speaker 24 It doesn't have tree rings.

Speaker 11 With the hand lens, I could tell the cross section had these little pores. And that's the giveaway that it was bone.

Speaker 11 Just a little chunk of bone.

Speaker 32 This is huge.

Speaker 15 Because as far as she knows, in this four million-year-old leaf pile, she is the first person to ever find a bone.

Speaker 38 Oh my gosh, really?

Speaker 16 Yeah. Whoa.

Speaker 15 And what's wild is that...

Speaker 11 We could tell from this one scrap that it's a big animal.

Speaker 14 How can you tell that from a tiny scrap?

Speaker 11 You can see the thickness. A long bone that's like an inch thick.
So what kind of animal would have that? It would have to be a pretty big animal.

Speaker 14 Huh. So like a moose or a woolly mammoth or like a snow dinosaur?

Speaker 14 Side note, were there snow dinosaurs?

Speaker 11 Oh, absolutely. We have in the Canadian Arctic and also in Alaska evidence of dinosaurs.

Speaker 27 Let's take a break to consider that they used to be snow dinosaurs. And if they slipped and fell down a hill, they'd technically be sweaty

Speaker 21 dinosaurs.

Speaker 21 but to find out what creature this really was natalya would need to find way more bone fragments so for years summer after summer she kept going back to that exact spot just like walking stuffing searching for something just looking is anything coming up and she finds more and more pieces of this ancient bone 30 fragments it's all these rusty little chips these rusty little chips exactly but what they are kind of is like rusty little puzzle pieces.

Speaker 22 So she put all these things together. She was like, Okay, this is a tibia, it's a leg bone from a mammal.

Speaker 4 Hmm. So it could be a cow.

Speaker 11 No, no, this is much bigger.

Speaker 14 Much bigger than a cow.

Speaker 13 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 14 Man, so you really have like an Arctic beast on your hands here.

Speaker 13 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 And that's when Dr.

Speaker 38 Dead things does something kind of shocking to this precious ancient bone.

Speaker 14 We took a saw

Speaker 11 and we just cut off a little corner of it.

Speaker 16 Huh.

Speaker 22 And then right away they smelt it.

Speaker 14 They smelled the old bone?

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 22 When they did that, it smelled gross.

Speaker 11 It's kind of like the smell of burning flesh.

Speaker 13 Ew.

Speaker 22 But Natalya knew right away exactly what that smell was.

Speaker 14 Something called collagen. Collagen.

Speaker 3 You can think of collagen kind of like the glue that holds together your flesh and bones.

Speaker 38 And it's rare to find it intact in something that old. So Natalia was excited because in the same way detectives could use fingerprints to ID a person,

Speaker 13 scientists can use collagen to identify a species.

Speaker 15 Whoa.

Speaker 22 So she takes one of the little fragments of this bone, she puts it basically in an envelope

Speaker 22 and sends it in the mail to this guy at the University of Manchester. He's in England, so it goes over the ocean from Canada to England.

Speaker 22 He opens up his envelope, runs it through his collagen fingerprinting machinery.

Speaker 13 Uh-huh.

Speaker 1 A week goes by.

Speaker 14 Two weeks. Are you kind of on pins and needles?

Speaker 27 Are you feeling excited?

Speaker 14 Are you feeling like...

Speaker 11 Oh, yeah, I was on vacation, but I was checking my email every day.

Speaker 22 And then

Speaker 22 he finds a match.

Speaker 22 This three and a half million-year-old bone that Natalia had pulled out of the high Arctic tundra

Speaker 22 belonged to.

Speaker 3 Yes.

Speaker 28 I'll tell you what it is after the break.

Speaker 13 Nah, come on.

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Speaker 6 Radiolab is supported by Apple TV.

Speaker 41 It's 1972. A young British family is attempting to sail around the world when disaster strikes.
Their boat is hit by killer whales and it sinks in seconds.

Speaker 41 All they have left is a life raft and each other.

Speaker 6 How will they survive?

Speaker 41 The true story of a family's fight for survival, hosted by Becky Milligan. This is Adrift, an Apple original podcast produced by Blanchard House.

Speaker 41 Apple TV subscribers get special early access to the entire season.

Speaker 6 Follow and listen on Apple Podcasts.

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Speaker 14 Terrestrials is back. We are about to unveil the identity of a giant ice monster that Dr.
Natalia, aka Dr. Dead Things, has discovered up near the North Pole in Canada.
Drumroll, please, for Latif.

Speaker 22 This three and a half million-year-old bone belonged to.

Speaker 25 Huh?

Speaker 11 It's a camel

Speaker 14 wait camels like desert hot Egypt yeah

Speaker 4 camel yeah camel that with the hump that spits yeah stuff yeah I mean the spit is to distract predators but yeah yes yeah we were stunned so that's like what we're like really so she's like no this can't be right camels don't live in Canada

Speaker 22 as someone having grown up in Canada I can attest I never saw a camel growing up.

Speaker 24 Huh.

Speaker 15 So they're like, okay, weird.

Speaker 3 And I had no idea about this until Natalia's story, but surprise, surprise, camels

Speaker 20 are actually originally a North American creature.

Speaker 14 No.

Speaker 15 What?

Speaker 22 For 40 of the 45 million years that camels have been on planet Earth, they could only be found in North America.

Speaker 14 What? So like alongside just all the things we think of in North America, like,

Speaker 15 I don't know, black bears and badgers and beavers.

Speaker 16 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 14 There were camels?

Speaker 4 Camels.

Speaker 22 There were at least 20 different camel species in North America. Whoa.
Maybe more.

Speaker 14 It was just like camel country over here.

Speaker 22 It was camel country. There was one kind of camel that had a really long neck, kind of like a giraffe.

Speaker 22 Some had snouts like crocodiles.

Speaker 15 Whoa.

Speaker 22 The earliest camels were the size of rabbits.

Speaker 14 Tiny camels?

Speaker 16 Like with their little hooves?

Speaker 22 This huge diversity of camels across North America.

Speaker 13 It's so wild.

Speaker 4 And you just want a pet rabbit camel, right?

Speaker 14 Immediately. I just want to like put it under my arm, sit with it on the couch, and tickle its legs.

Speaker 19 And like

Speaker 22 stroke its hump.

Speaker 26 Yeah, yeah, yeah, totally.

Speaker 27 Paint its nails.

Speaker 2 And in addition to tiny rabbit camels,

Speaker 31 thanks to Natalia's discovery, we now know that there were giant Arctic camels that weighed a ton, were way taller than today's camel, like as tall as a school bus, and would have been totally at home in the deep, deep snow.

Speaker 15 Wow.

Speaker 14 And at that point, there's truly none over in the desert where we think of them, like in Africa or in the Middle East.

Speaker 14 There's none?

Speaker 11 Nothing. Wow.
Nothing.

Speaker 18 It wasn't until long after camels took over North America, like 40 million years later, that they finally wandered across across this huge bridge.

Speaker 4 I mean, people actually call it a land bridge that used to connect North America and Russia.

Speaker 31 It was over 600 miles long.

Speaker 11 With forests all the way across.

Speaker 3 And camels walked all the way across it and had babies, who had babies, who had babies, and they all kept walking into Russia and Asia and eventually into the deserts of the Middle East and Africa.

Speaker 15 Yeah, it's pretty far.

Speaker 16 It's pretty far.

Speaker 25 Huh.

Speaker 14 But this is so confusing to me that camels didn't come from the desert because aren't they perfectly adapted for the desert? Like, isn't everything that makes them kind of weird looking?

Speaker 14 No offense, camels, but you know, the hump, the goofy body, isn't all that the stuff that makes them, you know, desert superstars?

Speaker 18 They are, they are desert superstars.

Speaker 4 Just to wow you a little bit about that.

Speaker 19 Yeah.

Speaker 31 Join me here in the desert for a tour through the camel's signature body parts.

Speaker 15 Sure.

Speaker 3 What do you say, Sungbud?

Speaker 19 Can I get a little help?

Speaker 16 Absolutely.

Speaker 34 The eyes, the mouth, the feet, and the hump.

Speaker 29 The four main secrets to how they strut their stuff.

Speaker 34 The eyes, the mouth, the feet, and the hump.

Speaker 29 Join me on a tour from their head to their rump.

Speaker 18 Let's start with the eyes.

Speaker 45 Big long lashes, as cute as can be.

Speaker 47 But they're there for a reason.

Speaker 34 Sandstorms can get really nasty.

Speaker 29 The lashes blink away the sand in the hot desert wind.

Speaker 48 And a transparent set of eyelids keeps it all from getting in.

Speaker 34 The mouth.

Speaker 46 That big goofy smile is the toughest of lips. It can gobble things more extreme than it spits.
Cacti and thorns ain't no problem for them.

Speaker 7 It can eat these spiny desert plants that almost no other mammal can.

Speaker 15 Wow.

Speaker 15 Next up, the eyes, the mouth, the feet.

Speaker 29 The feet are quite amazing. Big and flat like frying pans.

Speaker 48 They keep these heavy beasts from sinking deep into the sand.

Speaker 29 But of the eyes, the mouth, the feet, and the hump, the cameliest characteristic of all

Speaker 13 is the hump.

Speaker 32 The hump.

Speaker 29 Some have one and some have two.

Speaker 46 But the humps do not store water. They actually store food.

Speaker 13 What?

Speaker 14 I thought we were always told the hump stores water.

Speaker 24 The hump is fat.

Speaker 37 It's like a fat backpack they're carrying around with them.

Speaker 28 So they can go long periods without having to eat.

Speaker 14 It's just like backup snacks.

Speaker 26 It's backup snacks.

Speaker 15 Yeah.

Speaker 46 But that thing about storing water is absolutely true.

Speaker 29 They could go without a sip for like a week or even two.

Speaker 46 Really?

Speaker 29 Weight they do it, though, has nothing to do with the hump.

Speaker 15 It's a tiny set of organs, much closer to the rump.

Speaker 34 The kidneys.

Speaker 39 They're like a filter so that camel can drink water that's salty or water that stinks.

Speaker 16 the water in the body instead of wasting it on pee-pee camel pee comes out like syrup ew that's so gross to imagine and yet incredibly water efficient slurp slurp

Speaker 14 Wow now I'm just more convinced they they belong in the desert and don't belong over in that snowy land where Natalia found this bone like right because that's what we all thought

Speaker 28 when you look at them you say of course they must have perfectly evolved for this environment But then Natalya's idea was: wait, no, we're looking at this backwards.

Speaker 11 Once you find a giant camel in the Arctic, you start thinking about camels differently.

Speaker 28 Her theory is: maybe all the body parts that make us think they're, you know, quintessentially hot desert creatures, what if those initially made it good in the snow?

Speaker 16 Huh.

Speaker 14 Can you sing your camel in the snow song?

Speaker 47 I don't have my auto-tune on. A camel in the snow.
Camel in the snow.

Speaker 14 To make sure I really understood Natalia's backwards idea about camel features initially being good for the snow, I traveled to a very frosty place with lots of snow. It is legit cold.

Speaker 14 A farm in Wisconsin in the middle of winter. Can I touch the hub?

Speaker 16 Go right ahead. Okay.

Speaker 47 This is the most famous feature.

Speaker 14 Where there happens to live a seven-foot-tall camel named Peanut.

Speaker 17 Are you trying to eat my backpack?

Speaker 14 And lovingly pushing Peanut's mouth away from my backpack is Peanut's human friend, Shane.

Speaker 47 Peanut is an incredible camel.

Speaker 17 Oh my gosh, you are so cute. Okay.

Speaker 14 Now, to me, Peanut looks totally out of place on this snowy, snowy farm with pine trees in the back and humans wearing mittens all around him.

Speaker 14 But to Shane, who has spent nearly four years caring for Peanut, he's not surprised at Natalia's theory at all. He says that Peanut adores the snow.

Speaker 14 In fact, Peanut's sheer joy whenever it starts snowing inspired him to write this hit song.

Speaker 16 Camel in the snow, in the snow.

Speaker 14 Or hit to me and his like 20,000 TikTok followers, where he posts videos of Peanut and his other two camel friends rolling, frolicking, playing in the snow every time it snows.

Speaker 14 And so now, with Shane and Peanut's help, we are going to run back through those same four features that made the camel so good in the desert.

Speaker 34 The eyes, the mouth, the feet, and the hump.

Speaker 14 And explain how they make the camel great in the snow.

Speaker 7 Yeah, let's do it, song, bud.

Speaker 28 Okay.

Speaker 21 First, the long lashes on those pretty brown eyes.

Speaker 14 I put on mascara today. Who's got better eyelashes? Me or peanut?

Speaker 47 Be honest, you're a peanut. Look at those.

Speaker 14 It's like not even a competition.

Speaker 15 So long.

Speaker 29 Great for swatting away sand, but.

Speaker 22 Oh, yeah, I guess that works in a snowstorm, too.

Speaker 47 They're kind of built in windshield wipers.

Speaker 21 Wow.

Speaker 48 Next up, the mouth.

Speaker 14 You put your bare hand in his mouth, peeled back his lips. They look like tentacles.

Speaker 29 A mouth lined with tough bumps can allow it to gobble down a spiny cactus.

Speaker 31 Isn't that neat?

Speaker 29 If you could imagine, where else might this ability be good?

Speaker 46 How about the thorns and brambles of the cold winter woods?

Speaker 39 Oh.

Speaker 47 A camel will eat anything it has to to survive. Shrubs, greens, trees, cactus.

Speaker 17 You try to eat my backpack.

Speaker 13 Next up, the eyes, the mouth, the feet.

Speaker 3 Think about those big, huge feet.

Speaker 22 We think about them tromping over sand, right?

Speaker 39 Yep.

Speaker 22 But what if they were tromping over snow?

Speaker 47 Now, when I put his foot back down, it's going to expand about a half inch to an inch.

Speaker 14 It likes spreads out.

Speaker 22 Like a pair of snowshoes.

Speaker 14 It's like a giant pancake. Giant pancake for sure.

Speaker 48 Let's it walk for miles a day without sinking to its knees.

Speaker 3 Now, what's that last lumpy trait that lets camels survive the deep freeze?

Speaker 29 That backpack full of junk, the camel's funky, lumpy humps.

Speaker 1 Think about it.

Speaker 22 Would it be helpful to have an extra store of fat during a six-month-long winter?

Speaker 27 Oh my gosh, especially.

Speaker 24 Sounds pretty helpful, actually.

Speaker 14 It keeps you warm and gives you food.

Speaker 19 There's usually not a lot growing out there in the middle of winter.

Speaker 39 The eyes, the mouth, the feet and the hump.

Speaker 46 An Arctic superstar that struts its snowy stuff.

Speaker 15 Wow.

Speaker 15 Wow.

Speaker 17 Wow.

Speaker 47 You're going to walk on up. You're going to put your foot over like a bike.

Speaker 14 Okay. To close out our adventure, Shane asked me if I wanted to ride Peanuts.
I've certainly never ridden a camel before. So I climbed up.

Speaker 16 Okay, here we go.

Speaker 14 Into the little arch between its hump and its neck.

Speaker 14 And then Shane opened the gate to the barn and let us just go.

Speaker 14 Peanut walking effortlessly through a snowy field toward pine trees and faraway barns.

Speaker 17 Wow.

Speaker 14 Hey, big guy.

Speaker 14 It's a nice ride. Can go like miles and miles a day.

Speaker 47 Miles, miles, miles, miles and miles.

Speaker 14 And at some point, sitting up high on that camel, I started to see through that same backwards fun house mirror that Natalia did.

Speaker 16 Right.

Speaker 22 You see a camel in the desert.

Speaker 28 And in your mind, you jump to, this is exactly the way it's always been and it's supposed to be and it fits perfectly, right?

Speaker 16 Right.

Speaker 22 And it might not have gone that way.

Speaker 18 It might be a completely different story, a weirder story that you would never predict.

Speaker 27 Yeah.

Speaker 14 It makes me think that like belonging comes in all kinds of ways. Maybe you're born into a situation where you fit perfectly, or maybe the place where you fit is coming down the line.

Speaker 14 And everything you're doing right now will help you get there.

Speaker 22 Yeah.

Speaker 18 And for Natalia, looking closely at the camel, which is, you know, this globe trotter that's trotted its big feet across the globe, it's shown her not just the strange story that's behind it, but also the one in front of it.

Speaker 11 These are the animals of the future because they're so resilient.

Speaker 11 If we think about the future in a much hotter Earth with drought and these unexpected weather changes. Hmm.

Speaker 3 If only there was a creature that could go weeks without water and that could endure 120 degree heat without slowing down.

Speaker 11 This is a kind of animal that can survive all that.

Speaker 28 And there are serious proposals on the table to bring camels back to the USA to be farm animals

Speaker 3 because they can better endure the heat and because they could graze on all that spiny underbrush that can catch fire so easily and cause wildfires to spread.

Speaker 4 And as someone who literally had to flee my home this year because of a wildfire, let me just put on the record that I am pro any anti-wildfire uses of camels.

Speaker 15 Wow.

Speaker 11 We're shifting back to much warmer time. Camels are one of the animals that should do better than others.

Speaker 14 This is so fun. This is like the best day of my winter by far.

Speaker 25 Hey, you.

Speaker 14 You are so handsome. Anything to say, my friend?

Speaker 21 Camel in the snow, ha ha ha ha. Camel in the snow.

Speaker 15 It's snowy, and you're a camel.

Speaker 21 You're a snowy camel. Camel in the snow.

Speaker 25 From here up high,

Speaker 21 atop this camel. We see it walk the earth below.

Speaker 45 It all makes sense, we see so clearly. This camel seems just right at home.

Speaker 21 Camel in the snow.

Speaker 21 Camel in the snow,

Speaker 21 camel in the snow,

Speaker 21 camel in the snow.

Speaker 14 Alan Gofinsky in harmony with his incredible wife, Alita Gofinsky. Let's hear it for the Gofinskis

Speaker 14 on skis on a camel.

Speaker 19 Okay, and that's it. That's all for us.
Nothing even remotely interesting happening after that.

Speaker 16 What's that? Excuse me.

Speaker 45 I have a question.

Speaker 13 B2, B3, B4.

Speaker 16 The Badgers!

Speaker 14 Listeners with Badgering Questions for the Expert. Natalia, Shane, you ready?

Speaker 29 Absolutely.

Speaker 27 For sure.

Speaker 49 Hi, my name is Anissa. I'm 25.
Have you ever been spit on by a camel?

Speaker 47 Honestly, I get spit on a couple times a year. It's very, very gross.
I have longer hair, and it's definitely like a two or three shower ordeal if it gets in there.

Speaker 16 Wow.

Speaker 50 Hi, Hi, my name is Alice. I'm 10 years old and my question is has there ever been a three hunt camel?

Speaker 47 Pregnant.

Speaker 14 Oh da dunch.

Speaker 50 My name is Owen and I'm 10 years old. You've used smell to identify bones but have you ever tasted a potential fossil to see if it's legit?

Speaker 11 I've licked a fossil.

Speaker 16 You've licked a fossil?

Speaker 28 Yes.

Speaker 11 If you pick up a bone out of the ground and then if you lick it, you'll be like, oh look, it actually is a nice shiny little tooth. Why does licking it tell you it's a tooth?

Speaker 11 It just cleans it up really fast.

Speaker 16 Wow.

Speaker 14 Okay, so paleobiologists putting all five senses to work.

Speaker 50 My name is Walter Arm7.

Speaker 13 Does camels make milk?

Speaker 47 Yeah, it's special.

Speaker 47 What does it taste like? It's salty and it's thick. But camel milk is actually really, really good for people that are lactose intolerant too.
A lot of people can tolerate the camel milk.

Speaker 14 Do people eat like camel cheese?

Speaker 47 Yeah, so there's camel cheese, there's camel ice cream, camel body wash, camel soap.

Speaker 14 What would you call camel ice cream flavor?

Speaker 47 Camel caramel.

Speaker 14 Camel. Camel Ralph.
Camel.

Speaker 25 My tamel hunger.

Speaker 16 Try to say that.

Speaker 50 My name is Ida. I'm eight years old.
What's the biggest mistake you've made on the job?

Speaker 11 We didn't put enough gas in the ATV one day.

Speaker 16 Okay.

Speaker 11 But it broke down next to a new fossil.

Speaker 16 So that turns out okay.

Speaker 24 What did you find?

Speaker 11 Oh, that was a walking seal.

Speaker 14 Oh, sorry, what?

Speaker 11 A seal that represents a time in the evolution of seals before they had flippers.

Speaker 14 Like a land seal?

Speaker 11 Yeah, he looked like an otter. Webbed feet and a long tail.

Speaker 11 And he lived in the Arctic like 20 million years ago.

Speaker 38 Wait, Alan, Alan, did you know there were walking seals?

Speaker 4 I had no idea. Are we talking like five toes?

Speaker 27 Yes. Really?

Speaker 4 Like, I'm imagining them with like Air Jordans on.

Speaker 47 This is how I prefer to think about seals from now on.

Speaker 15 Like walking through the forest. Are they kind of waddling like penguins? They're on all fours.

Speaker 11 Yeah, yeah. They're on all fours.
They're not, yeah, they're not upright.

Speaker 14 I am now picturing it with sneakers, Alan.

Speaker 11 I love that.

Speaker 14 Terrestrials was created by me, Lula Miller, with WNYC Studios. Our executive producer is Sarah Sandback.

Speaker 14 This episode was produced by Alan Gofinsky, Mira Bertwintanik, Ana Gonzalez, Tanya Chala, Sarah Sambach, Joe Plord, and me with fact-checking by Anna Pugiol-Mazzini.

Speaker 14 Support for Terrestrials is provided by the Simons Foundation, the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, and the John Templeton Foundation. Thank you.

Speaker 14 And big special thanks to my co-host at Radiolab, Latif Nasser, for for telling us this story. He originally told it as a TED talk where he brought out a live camel at the very end.
It's incredible.

Speaker 14 And if you want to see it, just Google Latif Nasser, Camel, and Ted.

Speaker 14 Thank you also to Carly Mensch, Juliette Blake, Anna Bechtolstone Dow, Natalia Rachinski, and our camel man, Shane Rigdon.

Speaker 14 If you are in Wisconsin, you can go meet his camels at Rigden Ranch, and you can follow his truly delightful TikTok to see camels in the snow

Speaker 14 at Rigden Ranch.

Speaker 14 I wonder what a camel snow angel would look like.

Speaker 14 Or Santa's sleigh drawn by flying camels. Maybe some of them wearing winter hats.
I don't know. Maybe you do.

Speaker 13 Anyway, send us a drawing at T-E-R-R-E-S-T R-I-A-L-S.org.

Speaker 14 And hey, if you want to get emails from us, just sign up for our newsletter by going to www.terrestrialspodcast.org.

Speaker 14 And if you want to see pictures of the animals from our episodes and silly videos of us dancing and singing, follow us on Instagram and TikTok at TerrestrialsPodcast.

Speaker 14 And finally, if you like our strange little show about the Earth and the creatures on it, please rate and review our podcast on Apple or Spotify. It really makes a huge difference.

Speaker 14 And or go a little further and pledge a few dollars of your support. You can support Terrestrials by becoming a member of the lab.
To do that, just go to terrestrialspodcast.org slash join.

Speaker 14 This season, if you sign up, you will get a photocopy of a rat from our rats episode. I promise it's cute and kind of stylish and not gross, and I will sign it.

Speaker 14 Anyway, that was a lot of links. All of them are also linked in the episode description on whatever you're listening to right now.
You can just scroll down and you'll see them.

Speaker 14 Anyway, okay, that's it. Enough words.
See you in a couple spins of this snowy old planet of ours.

Speaker 14 Bye.

Speaker 44 Hi, I'm Eiley and I'm from North Carolina and here are the staff credits. Radio Lab was created by Jad Ablunrod and is edited by Soren Wheeler.
Lulu Miller and Letif Nasser are our co-hosts.

Speaker 44 Dylan Keefe is our director of sound design. Our staff includes Simon Adler, Jeremy Bloom, Becca Bressler, W.

Speaker 44 Harry Fortuna, David Gable, Maria Paz Gutierrez, Sindhun Yanan Sambandan, Matt Kielty, Annie McEwen, Alex Neeson, Sara Kari, Sarah Sandback, Anissa Vitza, Arianne Wack, Pat Walters, and Molly Webster.

Speaker 44 Our fact-checkers are Diane Kelly, Emily Krieger, and Natalie Middleton.

Speaker 51 Hi, my name is Diana, and I'm calling from Madrid, Spain.

Speaker 51 Leadership support for Radiolab science programming is provided by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation, Science Sandbox, a Simons Foundation initiative, and the John Templeton Foundation.

Speaker 51 Foundational support for Radio Lab was provided by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Speaker 6 Radiolab is supported by the National Forest Foundation, a nonprofit transforming America's love of nature into action for our forests.

Speaker 35 Did you know that national forests provide clean drinking water to one in three Americans?

Speaker 5 And when forests struggle, so do we.

Speaker 35 The National Forest Foundation creates lasting impact by restoring forests and watersheds, strengthening wildfire resilience, and expanding recreation access for all.

Speaker 35 Last year, they planted 5.3 million trees and led over 300 projects to protect nature and communities nationwide.

Speaker 6 Learn more at nationalforests.org slash radiolab.

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Speaker 12 Every new Toyota hybrid comes with Toyota Care, two-year complimentary scheduled maintenance, an exclusive hybrid battery warranty, and Toyota's legendary quality and reliability.

Speaker 12 Visit your local Toyota dealer today, Toyota. Let's go places.
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