Advertise on podcast: Brain Junk

Trace found some delightful random facts about birds! Today we're talking "anting", talons locked to the death, and musical cockatoos. Show Notes: Journal of Ornithology: Anting behavior in birds Video of crow anting: aka the spicy spa Bird Note: anting Facebook video of bald eagles cartwheeling Bird Note: Eagles cartwheeling Palm Cockatoos playing their instruments Research paper on Palm Cockatoos Funny vid with Conan O'Brien and a palm cockatoo guest Transcript: [00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk. I'm Amy Barton. [00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And I just saw a spider and I'm terrified. But we're going to do this episode because I'm an adult. Today we're going to, today we're going to talk about everything you never knew you wanted to know about birds. [00:00:20] Speaker A: Just everything about birds. [00:00:21] Speaker B: Everything. [00:00:22] Speaker A: People grab a hot beverage. [00:00:24] Speaker C: Yep. [00:00:24] Speaker B: This episode, it's going to be like 12 hours. It's an eight part episode. No, it's like three things that I really thought were cool. And that's everything. So there you go. [00:00:33] Speaker A: Excellent. [00:00:34] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:00:34] Speaker B: We're winning at information, but I saw the spider. You mentioned ants, and the first thing we're going to talk about is this thing called anting. A-N-T-I-N-G. So it's perfect. It's just synergy. We're just coming together. [00:00:48] Speaker A: Love it. [00:00:51] Speaker B: If you don't like ants, just, you have to skip through this beginning little part. [00:00:56] Speaker A: If you see a whole nest of them, do your feet tingle? If I see a whole pile of them, my feet are like having accidentally. [00:01:04] Speaker B: Stood with my foot in a red ant nest in Georgia. They're so spicy. [00:01:11] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:01:12] Speaker A: I feel like the warmer it gets, the spicier the ants get. That far south. Those are some very exciting ants. [00:01:21] Speaker B: Well, and here's the thing. [00:01:22] Speaker C: Okay. [00:01:22] Speaker B: So there's at least 250 species of birds like crows and robins and jays that love that acidic spa treatment. That is what anting is. Yeah. Okay, so the very thing that we think birds want, the formic acid. [00:01:44] Speaker A: Whoa. Excuse me. I'm so sorry. Did that just blow out your ears? That wasn't an ant effect. [00:01:50] Speaker B: No, it wasn't. Also, it wasn't a. Dad. Know where you're. [00:01:54] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:01:56] Speaker A: Here comes one more. I'm sorry. [00:01:58] Speaker B: Maybe look at the light. [00:01:59] Speaker C: There we go. [00:01:59] Speaker A: Excuse me. Goodness. Okay, Georgia. Spicy ants. [00:02:05] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:02:05] Speaker B: So spicy ants. The thing that makes them spicy is formic acid. Although red ants also bite you. [00:02:11] Speaker A: But they literally are acidic. [00:02:13] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:02:14] Speaker B: They are causing, like on humans, a formic acid. It can cause burns. If it gets in your mouth, it can hurt your eyes, it can make you vomit, headache, confusion. If you went face first into an ant mound and then didn't get up, horrible things would happen to you. Because each of these little ants has the ability to squirt this tiny little amount of acid from their. Well, it's not their butt, but we're just going to call it their butt because that's easier. [00:02:44] Speaker C: Yeah. [00:02:45] Speaker B: But here's the thing, though. Formic acid might help birds get rid of things like mites. [00:02:51] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. [00:02:52] Speaker B: So imagine you've got that big ant hill, thousands of ants walking across it. They're all minding their own business, and a crow lands smack in the middle and starts stomping her feet, laying her feathers out. She gets swarm

We recorded IN PERSON! Trace brought back a whole bunch of fun flavored chips from Uwajimaya, a fantastic Asian grocery store in Seattle! Check out the show notes for our 5 other taste test episodes! Show Notes: P.S. If you like the Non Newtonian fluid cup, it's in our Merch store! P.S.S. in defense of the Pizza flavored chips, when Trace tried them the next day, she could taste the peperoni. Other Taste Test episodes: 9: Crazy food (we eat cherry pickles) 138: Turkey Candy Corn 142: Socially Distanced Taste Test 229: Taco Truck Jelly Bean Taste Test! 235: Tailgate Candy Corn Transcript: [00:00:03] Speaker A: Welcome to Brain Junk. I'm Amy Barton. [00:00:05] Speaker B: And I'm Trace Kerr. And we're in the same room together. [00:00:09] Speaker A: I was just debating. Can I interrupt and say we're here together, right by each other. [00:00:14] Speaker B: It's kind of weird. And we only have one microphone because equipment. And so we're very close. We're standing very not. We're not huggers. We're very close to each other. But we're here because we're going. I know. We're going to talk about. We're going to do a taste test. [00:00:28] Speaker A: Yes. And we're having a whole sensory experience right now already. Actually, there are some smells happening here. [00:00:35] Speaker B: Yeah. Because I wanted to do the fun, different potato chips that we don't get here in the United States. But every time I go on, like Amazon or something, the teeny tiny bags were an insane amount of money. [00:00:49] Speaker A: Yes. Like 39 99 for two bags or something. Absurd. [00:00:52] Speaker B: And then shipping. [00:00:53] Speaker A: Yeah. [00:00:54] Speaker B: And I was at Wajamaya, which is an asian grocery store over in Seattle this weekend, and they had like a wall of a variety of chips. [00:01:06] Speaker A: Do you remember when lay's did? They had a whole series, so it was like biscuits and gravy and there was like a korean barbecue or something. That was delightful. But that's as close as we've gotten here in the US to anything unique. Yeah. [00:01:18] Speaker B: So all different. I immediately texted Amy and I was like, how do you feel about this? And you were like, no seafood. But what we're doing is I put tags on the little chip bags of numbers one through seven. [00:01:33] Speaker A: Nice. [00:01:33] Speaker B: And then I made plates with one through seven and then gave it to Chaz. And he was like, we should have double blind randomized. And I was like, no, do not take the numbers off of the bags so we don't know. So we can try to figure out what the flavor is just by tasting it, and then we can check the bags. [00:01:52] Speaker A: Excellent. [00:01:53] Speaker B: See how close we were, because I love that idea. Science. Although it's only two people, I predict. [00:02:01] Speaker A: That I am going to be very suggestible because my sense of smell is not always particularly reliable. I thought we had an electrical burning smell and they're like, oh, no, that's peach tea or something. All right. Yeah, that could also be that it wasn't peach tea, but it was something entirely different. And so I'm wondering if my sense of taste will be similar. Like, I'm not going to. We're going to find out. [00:02:25] Speaker B: Yeah. And we have all seven out at the same time in the tiny blanket fort. And there's some seaweed. There's some vegetable smells. It's interesting. Should we get started with number one? Number one looks like your traditional lay's potato chip. [00:02:41] Speaker A: It looks like sour cream and onion. [00:02:43] Speaker B: It does. It's got like, little green flecks on it. [00:02:46] Speaker A: Smells like lawn that's been in the bag for a day. Okay, I licked mine first. I'm going to go in cautious here. [00:02:55] Speaker B: Now, this is like the candy corn experience. [00:02:58] Speaker A: I'