Science has a habit of making the weird feel wonderfully ordinary. This week, we’re serving up a trio of stories that blur the line between curiosity and absurdity. From chickens moonlighting as beauty judges to casual world record breakers and the real-life roots of a mythical horned rabbit, it turns out the world is even stranger than you think.
It’s pretty natural for humans to gravitate towards the most attractive person in the room. But do animals do it too? At Stockholm University, researchers decided to see if chickens could spot a hottie. They trained these birds to peck at faces on a screen and found that chickens prefer the same facial features that humans rate as attractive. Apparently, hotness isn’t just a matter of human opinion. Even a chicken can pick out a looker. Does that make us RSPCA approved?
Accidentally Breaking a Video Game World Record
In 2007, Billy Baker started writing a book about jugglers. At the time, there was a controversial movement to turn the performance art of juggling into a competitive sport but this story isn’t about juggling. It’s about video games. During his research, Baker’s curiosity led him from online juggling forums down the rabbit hole of video games where he learned the world record of Tetris stood at 327 lines. Here’s the twist…his own wife easily scored up to 500 or 600 lines on her old Game Boy at home. She was just casually breaking a video game world record without even knowing.
Jackalopes: When Myth Meets Mutation
You’ve heard of the jackalope, right? That legendary rabbit with antelope horns. Turns out, they might just be real. Back in 1933, virologist Richard Shope discovered a virus that causes rabbits to grow cancerous horn-like growths all over their face. Suddenly, the jackalope isn’t just a campfire story. What if the tales we’ve written off to be myths were actually sightings of cancerous rabbits?
CHAPTERS:
00:00 Theories of Physical Attractiveness
02:29 Chickens and Human Hotness
06:27 Juggling and Competitive Sports
07:46 Speedrunning Super Mario Brothers
10:37 Cryptozoology and Mythical Creatures
11:47 The Jackalope: America's Mythical Creature
12:15 Historical References to Horned Rabbits
14:38 The Shope Papilloma Virus Discovery
17:08 Modern Day Jackalope Sightings
SOURCES:
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[00:00:00] WILL: It is time for a little bit of science. I'm will grant an associate professor in science communication at the Australian National University.
[00:00:13] ROD: and I'm Rod Lambert. I'm a 30 year science communication veteran with a mind of a teenage boy.
[00:00:18] WILL: and today. Well, we've been at the Beach Large Hadron Collider.
[00:00:23] ROD: Yeah. Drinking in swimming cocktails. In fact, I'm still there. I dunno where you
[00:00:28] WILL: are of, uh, isotopes and science and stuff like that. So rather than giving you our regular pile of science, we've
[00:00:35] ROD: saved you something delicious. We've been scrolling away little snippets throughout the millennium and you're gonna get a bunch of those right now.
[00:00:42] It's gonna be fab.
[00:00:43] WILL: Enjoy. so there's a couple of big theories about physical hotness, big
[00:00:51] beauty. Attraction.
[00:00:53] ROD: Oh, that kind of
[00:00:54] WILL: good? Yeah, looking good. Keep talking. Uh, the major theory is that the, the point of being hot is to signal to potential mates
[00:01:05] ROD: that you have a raging erection that could ejaculate nine times a minute or something like that.
[00:01:10] Or really fertile
[00:01:11] WILL: but gen yeah. Or really fertile eggs. But generally that your good quality, that your children, uh, the children that you make together will go on to make more good children. so, uh, in, in a sense it's a bit of a communication thing that, uh, you know, that one side is communicating to the other, you know, I'm hot and the other side has to be able to pick up those signals.
[00:01:31] ROD: ah, you gonna say pe Some people are hot, blind.
[00:01:33] WILL: I don't doubt people are hot blind. But, uh, that's not the, that's not the story today. But other people might be arguing that actually yeah, maybe that's going on, but maybe there's other things as well. Maybe, maybe, maybe there's. Some inherent biases due to like how we are wired.
[00:01:47] ROD: Oh, literally wiring, not culture,
[00:01:49] WILL: No. Yeah. Wiring. Like, like, like wiring. There might be some other things going on.
[00:01:53] ROD: Yeah.
[00:01:53] WILL: the question is here, what makes hotness and, and some researchers have said, you know,
[00:01:59] is [00:02:00] hotness, um, species specific. Can humans tell hot humans or
[00:02:04] ROD: or can they tell hot antelope
[00:02:07] WILL: yes. What? Yes, can, can we go cross species
[00:02:12] ROD: That is one superb.
[00:02:13] looking. Pike
[00:02:14] Pike
[00:02:15] WILL: you went straight to humans raiding, raid antelopes. I did, but uh, a team at Stockholm University, they wanted to test it and they went the other way.
[00:02:22] ROD: Oh, antelopes rating humans.
[00:02:24] WILL: Yes.
[00:02:24] ROD: Obvious.
[00:02:25] always go with herd animals.
[00:02:26] WILL: Well, they didn't go with antelopes. They didn't go with antelopes. Okay. They got a bunch of chickens.
[00:02:31] ROD: for fuck's sake, chickens. Imagination, Finland, or where are they from?
[00:02:36] WILL: No, but chickens stock on. I mean, it was other, it was either gonna be mice or chickens, you know, like you're not getting like elephants,
[00:02:42] ROD: rat rats. Oh, oh, no, no. Um uh, like Simeon.
[00:02:46] WILL: could. Yeah, but that's too close. 'cause 'cause they might be looking at, I don't know, hands or something.
[00:02:50] ROD: So does a chicken look at the Victoria's Secret fashion parade and go.
[00:02:53] B, for example,
[00:02:56] WILL: be surprised. Oh, I would, you'd be surprised. Okay, so first of all, uh, they trained the chickens, first to pack at visual stimuli on a computer screen.
[00:03:04] Like just if you, if you pack at the thing, you'll get a reward. So first of all, we've gotta train, train up the chickens for that.
[00:03:10] ROD: How's work today, honey? Just
[00:03:11] WILL: clarify, of the six chickens for, for lady chickens or hens and two Cocks or Mr. Chicken?
[00:03:17] ROD: Mr. Chicken.
[00:03:18] WILL: Mr. Chicken. Mr. Chicken, So next, they made some human faces
[00:03:22] ROD: made.
[00:03:23] WILL: Yeah. Uh, so what they did is they got a whole bunch of pictures of, of actual people, average them through a computer to make an average human face.
[00:03:33] ROD: Yeah.
[00:03:33] WILL: it's, you know, it looks, it's definitely human. Like there, there's the picture and then what they did is they, is they tweaked them in a, in a no, in a bunch of known parameters to make them more masculine or more feminine and to dial up the hotness of the woman or the
[00:03:48] ROD: push the make hotter button?
[00:03:50] WILL: I think roughly, I mean there, there's some science in there that I don't have that bit, but
[00:03:53] ROD: hot rhythm.
[00:03:55] WILL: Parameters. They dialed it up. so they had a, a scale of one to, uh, uh, to [00:04:00] seven. So,
[00:04:00] ROD: The obvious top end of hotness. It's
[00:04:02] WILL: a like at scale, man.
[00:04:03] ROD: Sure. It can be whatever you want.
[00:04:04] WILL: actually they did use the other classic, uh, zero to 10.
[00:04:07] First they got some undergraduates to rate these faces. Oh. Um, to say how desirable would it to be go, to go on a date with the portrayed person? They got seven, seven undergraduate, uh, men. Seven undergraduate women. Yep. I don't know their sexuality here. Wasn't reported in the paper.
[00:04:22] ROD: but they probably, they probably had one, but yes, it would be good to know.
[00:04:25] WILL: Well, no, not necessarily. but anyway. they, they rated them. And so, so just, just to say, where do the humans rate these people? That's the hot one. That's the not hot one. Yeah. There you go.
[00:04:34] So once they had the human rating of hotness of the faces, they put the chickens back in. And so the chickens would see a face first they train them on face pecking in general to see if they would, you know, they'd react to faces.
[00:04:47] ROD: Mm-hmm.
[00:04:47] WILL: Then they got, gave them options.
[00:04:49] The hotter face or the less hot face.
[00:04:52] ROD: Yeah.
[00:04:52] WILL: Turns out chickens prefer.
[00:04:55] ROD: Yeah.
[00:04:56] WILL: identical, the same rate as human preferences for hotness.
[00:05:01] ROD: how do they show their preference? They pick more on the
[00:05:03] they pick, they,
[00:05:04] WILL: they pick more on the one that they like. So if there's, there's options, they'll choose the, they're, they're more likely to choose the hotter face.
[00:05:11] Ooh, so here's the thing. Chickens cross species, like, like chickens obviously know what chicken hotness is, obviously,
[00:05:17] ROD: well, obviously, yeah,
[00:05:18] WILL: yeah. Obviously. But they are also able to tell to a correlation of 0.98. Like, you look at this graph and you're like,
[00:05:25] ROD: no, that's ridiculous.
[00:05:26] WILL: the same thing.
[00:05:27] They can tell. Which one is the hotter human? So,
[00:05:31] ROD: so
[00:05:31] undergraduates are like chickens.
[00:05:34] WILL: Well, there's that
[00:05:35] ROD: This is what I'm hearing.
[00:05:37] WILL: so there you go. I don't know what that means for the theory, but it does suggest that, uh, other species can tell which of us is hot. And if you look at a dog and you go, that's probably a hot dog, that an attractive cable, then, then other dogs probably think that too. In fact, there was a, there was a related study. Indian miners were trained on pictures
[00:05:57] ROD: of peacock bird, as in the birds, not the people who dig things. [00:06:00] We're
[00:06:00] WILL: trained on pictures of peacocks, and they all showed a preference for the peacocks with the most magnificent tail.
[00:06:05] ROD: We all do. We all do.
[00:06:08] WILL: So there you go. And it, and it let the researchers come up with the title at the end of their paper.
[00:06:13] Chickens prefer Beautiful Humans, and I'm just like.
[00:06:16] ROD: do better. Do better. Hot chook.
[00:06:20] WILL: Hot chook. Hot human.
[00:06:21] ROD: look, I got a lot of questions, but I'm glad that science does this.
[00:06:27] WILL: In 2007, Billy Baker. If you're working on a book about jugglers
[00:06:33] ROD: oh, always wanted to
[00:06:35] WILL: read a
[00:06:35] book about Well, well, you could, you can go and check his book. So, um, well, I dunno, 2007, I assume he's finished or he's given up on it
[00:06:44] ROD: um,
[00:06:44] Um, no, no. He's like George, RR Martin. I'm so fucking close this time. 15 years. I just need 15 more years and I'll cover all
[00:06:52] WILL: juggling.
[00:06:53] But there was a, there was a controversial movement at the time to turn the performance art of juggling into a competitive sport.
[00:07:00] I don't know where that
[00:07:01] ended
[00:07:01] up it That is not the point of this story. Uh, but part of his, uh, reporting had involved diving into internet juggling forums, you know, so he's, he's, he's in 2007 internet. He's going on the forums. How does
[00:07:13] one day they, they, one of the juggling forums had a non juggling side forum. Like where you can chitchat, that's not juggling related.
[00:07:21] Like
[00:07:22] ROD: this is more about polishing your, your
[00:07:24] WILL: battens
[00:07:25] could be whatever. Could be whatever. And some guy, uh, whose name turned out to be Andrew Garas, posted something called Super Mario Brothers.
[00:07:33] One. The guy Andrew Garas was a 17-year-old in 2007 who wrote, my record of five minutes and nine seconds was broken. Mm. I'll tie it eventually. Ugh. And what Andrew was mentioning there is that he, at the time had the world record for the fastest speed run of Super Mario Brothers. One now Super Mario Brothers.
[00:07:56] One total classic game. Like massive, massive, massive game. [00:08:00] And I think it still remains the biggest selling video game of
[00:08:02] all
[00:08:02] time.
[00:08:03] Yeah. Like, like it huge at the time. And, and, and so having the world record on that is a thing. And just to confirm for now. Andrew Garas is one of the three people who have achieved the perfect possible time of five minutes and eight seconds.
[00:08:18] So worry, don't worry. Andrew's fine. But the story, the story took a twist for Billy when he was like, oh, there's a link to twin galaxies.com, the official electronic scoreboard now Billy Baker, he's not a video game person, but he said like everyone of his generation, I was hooked on Mario, you know, in the, in the eighties.
[00:08:38] Mario was huge. Everything was there. was like. why is some 17-year-old in 2007, someone who was born in 1990, long after the game, you know, this, he, he would've never experienced the Mario Brothers
[00:08:51] peak
[00:08:52] ROD: originals.
[00:08:52] WILL: eight
[00:08:53] 1980s. Yeah.
[00:08:54] Why was, why was he fanging to get the top record? And so he is like, I wanna know a little bit more about this.
[00:09:00] So he co contacted a guy called Mr. Kelly r Fluen,
[00:09:03] who, as Billy says, always signs his correspondence this way. Who is both a 29-year-old gas station attendant in Winnipeg, Manitoba, and the senior referee@twingalaxies.com. So he was in charge of the video game records.
[00:09:18] so Billy called up Kelly and said, I, I, I wanna know about these, you know, so why does this guy care about this record?
[00:09:25] And then they got onto a big topic about, he was like, you know, the classic games that's like, there, there's records in all games all over the place. you know, there's so many games out there that people can have records
[00:09:33] all
[00:09:34] over But the classics, they're the big ones like that.
[00:09:37] That's
[00:09:37] where
[00:09:38] that was there.
[00:09:39] ROD: Load Runner,
[00:09:40] obviously Pacman,
[00:09:41] WILL: super, Mario Brothers, donkey Kong, Tetris,
[00:09:44] Tetris. Tetris.
[00:09:46] Tetris. Now
[00:09:48] ROD: Strangely,
[00:09:48] and so
[00:09:49] WILL: horrifically.
[00:09:49] Oh my God. Tetris. And so Billy is like, oh.
[00:09:54] Tetris.
[00:09:55] That's really interesting because if we've got, I don't play games much.
[00:09:59] My wife doesn't play [00:10:00] games much, but we've got an old Nintendo game boy floating around the house, and Tetris is the only game
[00:10:04] own.
[00:10:05] And, um, and my wife, you know, she'll sometimes dig it out to play, when we go on airplanes or on long card rides. And, uh, what Kelly said next, he'll never forget.
[00:10:18] Because Kelly said. Well, the world record is uh, 327 lines, and Billy is like, but my wife gets 500 or 600. No problem. And Kelly just went, I love a bit of
[00:10:37] Cryptozoology. for those
[00:10:38] out there. Not versed in the
[00:10:40] long words. Cryptozoology.
[00:10:42] It's the hunt for the mythical
[00:10:44] animals.
[00:10:45] ROD: Yeah,
[00:10:46] Um,
[00:10:46] Lochness
[00:10:48] WILL: Monster.
[00:10:48] ROD: Your big feet. Big feet.
[00:10:49] WILL: Big feet. I mean, I I don't think I would ever be the
[00:10:52] kind of person
[00:10:53] that would go out there and actually hunt
[00:10:54] for one,
[00:10:55] the Jackalope,
[00:10:57] ROD: is that it's a rabbit with
[00:10:58] dog ears nailed on, or
[00:10:59] dog with rabbits, ears nailed onto it. And
[00:11:01] fangs.
[00:11:02] WILL: Close. So the Jackalope is a North American mythical crypted
[00:11:05] animal. Mm-hmm. it's a, a, rabbit of some sort. A jack rabbit often, but
[00:11:09] might be rabbit hair. And it's got horns.
[00:11:13] ROD: Oh,
[00:11:13] WILL: It's got horns. And so
[00:11:15] ROD: an
[00:11:15] antelope. Yeah.
[00:11:16] WILL: So Jackalope jack rabbit,
[00:11:18] antelope, jackal.
[00:11:20] In fact, jackalopes , are a fun thing for taxi dermis to do.
[00:11:24] Mm. Uh, since the 1930s, there was a guy in
[00:11:26] Wyoming and his brother, a guy, and his brother, uh, named Douglas Herrick, they get a bunch of rabbits and they get a bunch of, , deer handlers,
[00:11:33] chuck 'em together and put 'em up, you know, and sell 'em.
[00:11:36] And so, you know, there's your
[00:11:37] your
[00:11:38] ROD: Yeah. your rabbit with
[00:11:39] WILL: And
[00:11:39] so they're
[00:11:40] pretty popular all, um, throughout bars in a
[00:11:42] lot of areas like Wyoming, South Dakota, you know, sort of western western
[00:11:47] states in
[00:11:47] ROD: America.
[00:11:48] Honestly, I really want to go to
[00:11:49] those bars now that 'cause that's
[00:11:50] just hilarious.
[00:11:51] WILL: it's
[00:11:51] great. it's great. in
[00:11:52] fact, the Wyoming
[00:11:53] legislature has considered bills, considered bills and plural here. I, I don't have the confirmation
[00:11:59] [00:12:00] here to make the jackalope, the state's
[00:12:01] official mythological creature.
[00:12:03] ROD: and Allstate
[00:12:04] needs
[00:12:04] one of those.
[00:12:05] WILL: Oh, he does? It
[00:12:06] does.
[00:12:06] ROD: Like the Florida
[00:12:07] one
[00:12:07] is Florida, man.
[00:12:10] WILL: No, I don't think that's mythical.
[00:12:12] I don't think Florida man is, is close
[00:12:13] to
[00:12:14] mythical. But America might not be the origin story of
[00:12:17] the Jackalope because
[00:12:19] ideas of horned rabbits.
[00:12:22] go back a
[00:12:23] lot
[00:12:23] further. Why, why, who doesn't wanna think about horned rabbits like they're rabbits with horns.
[00:12:28] So there's like a 13th century Persian work,
[00:12:31] ROD: where serious
[00:12:32] WILL: there's a picture of a rabbit with a single horn, like a unicorn.
[00:12:34] There's, stuff in Medieval and Renaissance Europe. It's called the Leis. Cornus
[00:12:40] is it? Or, or horned hair. Or even in Germany, it's called the Wapa Tiner, where, you know, there's a rabbit that's got horns and that one's got
[00:12:48] wings as well.
[00:12:48] And I dunno about the wings. the wings.
[00:12:50] might be a,
[00:12:50] ROD: but see, now I'm
[00:12:51] interested if it can
[00:12:51] fly as well.
[00:12:52] WILL: But the thing, the interesting
[00:12:53] thing, Throughout the, the European
[00:12:55] literature here in the 16th, 17th and 18th century. Yeah. it's treated as, totally
[00:12:59] real. Like, don't worry. There's rabbits out there with horns,
[00:13:02] like, you know, that's, there's, there's normal rabbits and there's rabbits with
[00:13:05] ROD: and there's horn
[00:13:05] WILL: rabbit. So, you know, there's a bunch of books with Latin names,
[00:13:08] hysteria, naturalists, de quadratus liberty.
[00:13:12] the
[00:13:12] ROD: the natural history of four-legged animals.
[00:13:14] Li
[00:13:14] WILL: There you go. Library.
[00:13:15] Yeah. By Johannes
[00:13:17] Stenson.
[00:13:17] ROD: We don't have to tell me that.
[00:13:18] WILL: Yeah, exactly. That was in the 17th century. And it's like, here's a picture of the horned rabbit.
[00:13:22] Uh, totally
[00:13:22] legit. There
[00:13:23] it
[00:13:23] is. That's what
[00:13:24] ROD: looks like. And by picture I
[00:13:24] mean drawing
[00:13:25] WILL: Well, yeah, drawing. yeah,
[00:13:26] yeah, Drawing.
[00:13:27] Yeah. Like so, so, so definitely. Here's a, here's a drawing with
[00:13:30] pencils. But we couldn't have
[00:13:31] made this
[00:13:32] up. No.
[00:13:33] ROD: Like that.
[00:13:33] No,
[00:13:33] it's
[00:13:33] WILL: impossible.
[00:13:34] It would be
[00:13:35] ROD: if you
[00:13:35] didn't see it. How the hell
[00:13:36] could you draw it?
[00:13:37] Yep.
[00:13:37] WILL: There's others in the 16th century in the
[00:13:39] Analia quad edia
[00:13:41] at reptil
[00:13:43] bracket terror.
[00:13:44] ROD: Why is it always
[00:13:45] quad?
[00:13:46] WILL: Well, they, they're like, we wanna look at the quaded.
[00:13:48] So none of the
[00:13:49] ROD: No Birds
[00:13:50] WILL: no, we're not
[00:13:50] doing the bipeds. no. No, That's in a separate book.
[00:13:53] Ah,
[00:13:53] that's the book. BP pia. Yeah.
[00:13:55] Anyway. the whole thing, they, they were like
[00:13:57] no, these are, these are totally legit. We just don't see 'em [00:14:00] very often.
[00:14:00] Right.
[00:14:00] Um, Up until the 18th century. But then, scientists came along and ruined everything. They're like, no, no, there's no,
[00:14:05] such thing as horned rabbits. Horned
[00:14:08] ROD: And let's describe humor too.
[00:14:09] That'll
[00:14:09] make it
[00:14:10] better,
[00:14:10] WILL: but yeah. But I wanna show you some pictures.
[00:14:12] Okay.
[00:14:13] so these are rabbits from Northwest
[00:14:16] America,
[00:14:17] uh, quite
[00:14:18] ROD: recently.
[00:14:18] This is
[00:14:19] last of
[00:14:20] us,
[00:14:20] like mangled mutant
[00:14:22] creatures.
[00:14:23] WILL: Yeah, they are
[00:14:23] mangled
[00:14:24] mutant creatures.
[00:14:25] ROD: They got horns coming out of All over
[00:14:27] their
[00:14:27] face.
[00:14:27] WILL: All over their face.
[00:14:28] There's been an
[00:14:28] outbreak
[00:14:29] ROD: recently.
[00:14:29] Uh, I
[00:14:29] had a feeling.
[00:14:30] WILL: There's been an outbreak, but it has been something that
[00:14:33] has been observed. Not too regularly,
[00:14:35] but it does
[00:14:36] ROD: Is it called
[00:14:36] Jack Opsis?
[00:14:37] WILL: Uh, not
[00:14:38] quite. It's the Chop papilloma virus. Oh. So in 1933, Richard E Chop, he's American Vir Virologist, who also, um, discovered the cause of the 1918 pandemic, , the Spanish flu. , He worked word out, wolfs going. He said, you know, it's influenza. He figured all that out. But anyway, , he heard that some hunters had found some
[00:14:57] horned rabbits, and he's like, gotta check that shit out.
[00:15:01] And, and he's like, oh,
[00:15:02] you know what? This is,, he,
[00:15:04] got some specimens. Hmm. Uh, isolated these horned rabbits and they definitely
[00:15:08] have growths coming
[00:15:09] out of their
[00:15:10] ROD: from those photos There's no
[00:15:11] question.
[00:15:12] WILL: These, these are often,
[00:15:13] ROD: these are, mangled
[00:15:14] WILL: are the recent ones. Yeah.
[00:15:15] Uh, but he found the
[00:15:16] same things and they can have all sorts of horned growths coming out of
[00:15:20] their heads.
[00:15:20] They look just wild suffering. Not too
[00:15:24] much. Okay. So, no, it causes no pain to them.
[00:15:28] It can kill them if the growths get to a point where they can't
[00:15:31] eat.
[00:15:32] Like the growth Well, that would
[00:15:33] ROD: Yes. Coming
[00:15:34] out of their
[00:15:34] mouth and you can't get like that. But otherwise, they could just have a
[00:15:36] WILL: horn. Or they could just have, you know, bits coming
[00:15:39] out of their face and
[00:15:40] ROD: the lady
[00:15:40] rabbits dig that
[00:15:41] WILL: they might like. I.
[00:15:42] I
[00:15:42] ROD: I
[00:15:43] WILL: It's a, it's
[00:15:44] a cancer causing
[00:15:45] virus.
[00:15:46] ROD: Papillo. Yeah.
[00:15:47] WILL: Yeah,
[00:15:48] ROD: Paloma like, like.
[00:15:49] WILL: And it's the
[00:15:49] first
[00:15:49] one, the first one
[00:15:50] that was detected. So in
[00:15:52] 1933, Richard Chop,
[00:15:53] uh, virologist and, a legendary figure in
[00:15:56] virology found what was the first of the onca viruses. [00:16:00] These
[00:16:00] are viruses that cause cancer. In these rabbits, , growing these weird growths that are cancerous, but fairly benign in the way that they are.
[00:16:08] ROD: Does this
[00:16:08] mean for the
[00:16:09] human
[00:16:10] papillo virus? The way you can tell
[00:16:12] if a lady has it is
[00:16:14] there's all these
[00:16:14] horns growing out of their
[00:16:15] lady areas.
[00:16:17] WILL: I did not think
[00:16:19] that that's what you would ask.
[00:16:21] Um, and so I didn't do the research
[00:16:22] and
[00:16:23] ROD: we can get back to me.
[00:16:24] WILL: I, uh, I'll take
[00:16:25] that
[00:16:25] ROD: note. Send
[00:16:26] me a text
[00:16:27] because you can imagine like, how the hell do we know?
[00:16:29] I was like, ah,
[00:16:30] I, I can
[00:16:31] WILL: So,
[00:16:31] so there's been a bit of
[00:16:31] an outbreak and people are seeing a lot more of
[00:16:33] these
[00:16:33] photos now. And here's my question.
[00:16:35] is that, is that the jackalope?
[00:16:37] Is
[00:16:37] the Jackalope
[00:16:38] a real thing that is just a virus that's
[00:16:41] been going through rabbits and
[00:16:42] hairs?
[00:16:43] ROD: Entirely possible, entirely.
[00:16:44] possible. In fact, I'm gonna go out on limb and
[00:16:47] say likely,
[00:16:49] That's wild.
[00:16:50] WILL: I, I like the
[00:16:50] idea that cryptozoology can someday not give a new species,
[00:16:55] but maybe, some weird thing
[00:16:57] out of nature.
[00:16:58] Might
[00:16:59] ROD: actually
[00:16:59] mean
[00:16:59] Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:17:00] WILL: some cryptoids
[00:17:01] ROD: actually, based on things people really did
[00:17:04] see.
[00:17:04] Yeah. As opposed
[00:17:05] to got drunk
[00:17:07] hallucinated and just made
[00:17:08] shit up.
[00:17:08] WILL: So there you go. Dragons obviously real.
[00:17:15] Well, that was your little bit of science for the week.
[00:17:17] ROD: holiday edition. You're special by the pool wearing a bikini edition.
[00:17:21] WILL: But because you're on holiday, you know that you still have the power to give us the rating that you need to give us. Yeah,
[00:17:28] ROD: seven stars on every app. Even things that don't do podcasts.
[00:17:31] Yeah.
[00:17:31] WILL: Go out there and write it on like a recipe app
[00:17:33] ROD: an Uber and Yelp. Is it Yelp still a thing?
[00:17:36] WILL: I think so. I'm
[00:17:37] ROD: I don't know. I'm at a restaurant where Don't ye
[00:17:38] WILL: listener, if you've got some topics that you want us to explore,
[00:17:42] ROD: tell Will.
[00:17:43] WILL: How would you tell Will his
[00:17:44] ROD: number is? 0 4 0 5 oh. Uh, cheers. At a little bit of science Do com
[00:17:51] WILL: au.
[00:17:52] ROD: au
[00:17:52] WILL: Do that. We want your stories.
[00:17:54] ROD: we wanna hear from you.
[00:17:55] WILL: Lovely listener. Enjoy the pina colada.
[00:17:58] ROD: Oh and [00:18:00] the
[00:18:00] WILL: col. Pin colada.
[00:18:01] ROD: Pini Kaia Pina Pia
[00:18:02] WILL: Pina Kaia of
[00:18:03] ROD: of the Clade
[00:18:04] WILL: Penai. Cate.
