18: Giant Manta Ray & Red Panda
Ellen: Hey there, Weatherfriends!
Christian: Aaaahhh!
Ellen: Do you like it?
Christian: I love it.
Ellen: I got it from Ashley Tucker. Thanks Ashley. This is Ellen Weatherford.
Christian: And Christian Weatherford.
Ellen: And we are here with Just the Zoo of Us, the animal review podcast where we take your favorite species of animals and we rate them out of 10 in the categories of effectiveness, ingenuity and aesthetics.
Christian: We are not zoological experts. However, we do a lot of research and we try our best, but by all means, let us know if we get it wrong. Lthat's a rock. That's not an animal. [inaudible]
Ellen: Dang. We did a whole entire segment on Stonehenge. Darn, thought it was the best animal.
Christian: The first clue should have been the straight 1s we gave across the board.
Ellen: I know, it just... Pitiful. No ingenuity. I wanted to give a quick update before we launch into things because we actually haven't recorded an episode since we launched all these cool new features that we have. We launched a brand new website!
Christian: It's the best website.
Ellen: It's the best website ever. It's called justthezooofus.com and we launched it thanks to support from our patrons at Patreon. We also launched a Patreon! Also that.
Christian: It's been quite the week.
Ellen: It has. Yeah, it feels like it was 30,000 years ago, but we're just now recording, so I'm going to drop some more information about that in the middle of the show because I know you guys are itching to get to these animal reviews, but for right now you can find us at justthezooofus.com for links to our listening platforms, transcripts, contacts, and you know, whatever. Now Christian and I have just come back from a really big trip.
Christian: Yes! We just went to Atlanta, Georgia.
Ellen: A lot of people assumed that we were in Atlanta for Dragon Con, but we weren't. We just happened to be in Atlanta during Dragon Con. We were there for some live shows that we were attending and also while we were there, we made sure to fill our time with, first of all, the Georgia Aquarium, which I insist on hitting up every single time we're in Atlanta. Without fail, it has become an annual tradition for the Weatherford family to head over to the Georgia Aquarium and it's worth it every single time.
Christian: It is. I believe this makes the third time. Yes?
Ellen: Yup. This is our third consecutive, uh, annual Georgia Aquarium visit and it never disappoints. And we also, this time, this was our first time getting to go to Zoo Atlanta.
Christian: Yeah! Which strangely enough did not know existed prior to a month ago or so.
Ellen: Well, Christian didn't.
Christian: I didn't. I'm not very attentive.
Ellen: But so we got to go to Zoo Atlanta and it was really great. It was an extremely impressive zoo. We saw so many cool things. We saw pandas, which I have never seen before in my life.
Christian: Likewise.
Ellen: Never seen pandas, so I was really excited about that. Very, very few pandas in zoos in the United States, which we delve into in episode 3 about the giant panda. So we had actually already talked about pandas, so it felt, it felt really cool to see them in the zoo already having that background knowledge and already being kind of familiar with the panda after having talked about them on the show.
Christian: Yeah. You kind of give a face to the voice, I guess.
Ellen: Yeah, like we were already pretty familiar with them and it was just really exciting to see them in person. They were so cute.
Christian: Yeah, the little ears.
Ellen: So cute. That kind of whole weekend experience of going to the Georgia Aquarium and the Atlanta Zoo inspired us to do two animals species this week that we really connected with while we were there.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Last week I went first with the veiled chameleon, so Christian, it's your turn. You're up.
Christian: All right, here we go.
Ellen: Okay, let's hear it.
Christian: So I know our opening is we rate your favorite animals. However, this animal was not submitted to us. I was simply inspired by its glory at the Georgia Aquarium. It's mine, it's mine.
Ellen: It's somebody's favorite animal and that somebody is you, Christian Weatherford.
Christian: Ooh! All right. So this one is the giant manta ray.
Ellen: Love it.
Christian: The scientific name is Manta birostris, hoping I pronounced that right.
Ellen: Yeah. Cause I think that birostris means it has those two lobes on the rostral like, area.
Christian: Yes!
Ellen: This is similar to the cownose ray.
Christian: Yes, yes. A lot of the same anatomy there. Those are actually called...
Ellen: Are these the little flippy flaps in the front of the face?
Christian: Yes. They're called cephalic lobes.
Ellen: Cephalic.... lobes.
Christian: Also could be called cephalic fins.
Ellen: Okay. Oh fins! Oh, that's kind of cute. They have a little fins on their face.
Christian: Yep.
Ellen: Face fins.
Christian: Before I get into that, real quick, I just wanted to mention my sources. I have quite a few for this one. So of course the main one being the Georgia Aquarium itself, along with its website, georgiaaquarium.org.
Ellen: Represent.
Christian: Yes, along with mantamatcher.org.
Ellen: What? Hold on.
Christian: I'll get back to that.
Ellen: That's a dating website.
Christian: It is not! Animal Planet's "The Aquarium," a show about the Georgia Aquarium that has aired recently. And finally the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, Fisheries website.
Ellen: You know I love them.
Christian: Fisheries.noaa.gov, which is part of the US Department of Commerce, turns out. So, uh, back to our little thing about...
Ellen: Face flaps.
Christian: Oh, I thought it was onlymantas.com. No, no. So, mantamatcher.org is actually a website to identify individual manta rays.
Ellen: Oh, like at a... Personal level?
Christian: Yeah. Well, like on an individual level. So, so let me describe what manta rays look like for those that maybe haven't seen them up close. They have the typical shape of a ray, a diamond shape, very pointed fins rather than rounded. On the top side of their body is mostly black with a little bit of white around the shoulders sometimes. And then the lower side is mostly white, but with black splotches. And those spots, so to say, are unique on every individual.
Ellen: Oh, I didn't know this.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: Which is interesting, right, because I had noted that the largest one in the aquarium had spots that looked like a T-rex footprint, right?
Ellen: Oh yeah.
Christian: Yeah. So that's funny that that was my identifier for that manta ray, and that's what's used, it turns out,
Ellen: I imagine you'll probably go into this later, but can they identify each other by these markings?
Christian: I don't know about between themselves, but this is what humans use to identify individuals.
Ellen: Sure, sure, sure. Okay.
Christian: So the whole point of that website is, you know, people will upload pictures of manta rays that they come across. So of course the underside, s,o usually scuba divers and then they upload it to this website and it keeps track of them and is able to identify individuals based on those markings if you've got a good enough picture of it.
Ellen: Oh wow.
Christian: So it's very possible, you know, several people could run into the same individual manta ray.
Ellen: That is really cute. I really like that. I guess it's more likely for that to happen because of how big the manta rays are.
Christian: They're very big. Specifically, their wingspan can be up to 29 feet.
Ellen: Oh...
Christian: Or 8.8 meters.
Ellen: That's so many.
Christian: That's very big.
Ellen: That is like... 30 chickens.
Christian: Dang it! This again!
Ellen: You thought I forgot!
Christian: Uh, yeah, so that's about the length of a small bus, to put that in perspective.
Ellen: Now when you say wingspan, you mean...?
Christian: So tip to tip of their flaps.
Ellen: Yes. Side to side.
Christian: Yeah. And they can weigh up to 5,300 pounds or about 2,400 kilograms.
Ellen: Goodness!
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: That's a couple tons!
Christian: It's a biggun.
Ellen: Big boi.
Christian: The Georgia Aquarium has three giant manta rays and their names are Blue, Raven and Tallulah.
Ellen: Blue, Raven, and Tallulah.
Christian: Yes. They also have a reef manta ray, whose name is Nandi.
Ellen: Okay, so there's different types of Manta rays.
Christian: Yeah, there are two species. So the one we're talking about here is the giant manta ray and the other one is the reef manta ray. So, as might be indicated by their names, the reef manta ray is typically smaller than the giant.
Ellen: Makes sense, yeah, got it.
Christian: Some other small differences there, but mainly the size. Also coloration, and actually the giant manta ray has a remnant spine.
Ellen: Remnant spine? What does remnant mean here?
Christian: So many rays have spines on their tails, right?
Ellen: Oh, you mean- you're talking about a spine, like the stinger?
Christian: Yeah, like a stinger.
Ellen: Okay. I thought you were talking about like, vertibrae.
Christian: No, no, no, no.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: So the giant manta ray has a little bump where a stinger might be on a ray, but it's just a remnant of it.
Ellen: Oh, like they used to have them and they don't have them anymore.
Christian: Yeah. Yeah.
Ellen: I guess when you're that big, you really don't need the stinger. Right?
Christian: I guess.
Ellen: The stinger, at that point it just kind of becomes like the end of a musket. It's like a saber that you've got like...
Christian: So yeah, and earlier we talked about the two appendages at the front of its face. So first of all, the manta ray's mouth is on its very front rather than on its underside.
Ellen: Oh, so this is different from the cownose ray.
Christian: Right.
Ellen: When we talked about the cownose ray, their mouth is on the bottom.
Christian: Correct. And the biggest reason why is that the manta ray is a filter feeder.
Ellen: Oh, okay okay okay.
Christian: Yes. And not unlike the whale sharks. So, they typically eat plankton-like animals and also small fish.
Ellen: They don't eat by... Like the cownose ray eats their food just by sucking it up off the bottom, but they don't do that. They just swim through the water and catch whatever they, whatever falls into their mouth.
Christian: Yep. And they have gill rakers that will stop the food from flowing through their gills along with the rest of the water as they've, as they swim.
Ellen: Oh, okay. So it's like a, like a mesh inside of their gills? What does it look like inside their gills?
Christian: I think it looks more like a brush.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: Like baleen almost? Like a similar structure?
Christian: It's not as fine. It's more coarse than that. It's a little hard to describe without seeing it, but it's easily found on the internet. Oh, and like we said, you know, there's two appendages are called cephalic lobes or cephalic fins. And what they do is that when they're feeding, they kind of pull them in and create a funnel to make the water flow into their mouths.
Ellen: Oh my gosh! That makes sense though.
Christian: Yeah!
Ellen: A little hydrodynamic lesson for ya.
Christian: Yeah. And those little lobes, by the way, have given them a nickname called the devil ray.
Ellen: Oh. Cause they look like devil horns!
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: That's so cute.
Christian: And also that sleek black on the top side of them, I think it's pretty interesting looking.
Ellen: Yeah, I think it makes them look like spaceships.
Christian: Now, where they're found. According to NOAA Fisheries website, the giant manta ray is found worldwide in tropical, subtropical, and temperate bodies of water and is commonly found offshore in oceanic waters and near productive coastlines. So you can find these all over the world within a certain latitude.
Ellen: I would imagine just in a big enough body of water.
Christian: Latitude or longitude? I always get those mixed up.
Ellen: I don't know which one is which. I'm so sorry.
Christian: So you'll find them along the world as long as you're close enough to the equator, but still a pretty wide berth there, and wherever you would find plankton of course. So, uh, they belong to the taxonomic family Mobulidae... or Mobulidae [pronounced differently]. Probably that one. The notable relatives there are just large ocean rays in general. Now let's get into the ratings.
Ellen: Yay!
Christian: First up effectiveness. This is the one where how good do they do the things they do?
Ellen: Okay. The thing that they do is...?
Christian: Filter feed, mostly. So like I said, they feed on plankton and small fish using gill rakers. Very large, like we mentioned.
Ellen: Ooh, they're big. They're so big.
Christian: So, my observation at the Georgia Aquarium was their largest one, Tallulah, the one I mentioned that looks like has a t-rex footprint on its belly, it to me looked like it was wider than all the other whale sharks in the tank.
Ellen: This is a big girl.
Christian: Yup.
Ellen: She's thick.
Christian: Definitely not as long as the whale sharks.
Ellen: Oh, no.
Christian: But I think at least as wide, or wider than. So because of that large sizes, they aren't really threatened by many things except for very large predators, like the larger sharks and of course humans. So I'm giving them a 9 out of 10 for effectiveness. And the only point I'm deducting is they don't really have a defense mechanism. It's just their size. That's it.
Ellen: This is similar to what you said for the manatee, that just their size is kind of their only- like nothing's gonna really fight them because of how big they are. Right? Like the size is a defense mechanism. But other than that, nothing much else.
Christian: Yeah. Cause it's not particularly fast.
Ellen: Oh yeah. They aren't, are they? They look- well I've seen them like get some air.
Christian: Yes. They breach.
Ellen: Yeah.
Christian: So that is thought to be a social behavior.
Ellen: Really?
Christian: Yes. Either for mating or just social interaction in general.
Ellen: They're showing off.
Christian: Basically.
Ellen: They're flexing on their buds, a little bit.
Christian: So yeah, 9 out of 10 for effectiveness.
Ellen: That's pretty good.
Christian: Ingenuity. This is how well do they do smart things, like tool use could be an example or interesting tactics, that sort of thing.
Ellen: Planning, thinking, solving puzzles.
Christian: Um, so I'm giving a 6 out of 10 for this one.
Ellen: Okay.
Christian: It's generally just swimming through the water. However, they can do flips in the water.
Ellen: It's so cute.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: I love it.
Christian: So they'll do interesting little maneuvers in the water to maximize the amount of plankton flowing into their mouths.
Ellen: It's so cute.
Christian: It's very interesting to watch. We got to see it a little bit at the main tank in the aquarium while we were there.
Ellen: We did, I loved it. It was so sweet.
Christian: Yeah, it's very good.
Ellen: And, and you know what? It's really surprising to see them do that because of how big they are.
Christian: Yeah, yeah.
Ellen: They're massive. Right? They're huge. You don't expect it. And they're massive, and also in the tank, they're moving slowly. They're not really booking it.
Christian: I mean, I'd say they're probably moving around the average speed of most things in that tank.
Ellen: Yeah. But still, like they're not getting the type of speed that you would expect them to be like doing cool tricks and stuff.
Christian: Right.
Ellen: They're just kind of moseying around the tank and then all of a sudden you look up and they're just pulling off a sweet 360 kickflip.
Christian: So, I mentioned one of my sources being the show The Aquarium on Animal Planet. So, the specific episode- I unfortunately did not note the episode number or the title of this episode- but one of the things they did in there was measuring the weight of one of their manta rays, and it was actually the reef manta ray, Nandi.
Ellen: The more little one.
Christian: Yeah. Yeah. And by the way, this show aired this summer. I'm not sure when it was recorded. I'm sure it was at least a year ago, if they were airing it this summer. You know, they had gotten a new system because their manta rays had gotten too big for their old system to measure their weight.
Ellen: Oh Wow.
Christian: Yeah. So they were starting with their smallest manta ray to test out the new system, and while they were doing it, they kind of showed how they feed them, which I thought was interesting. They have these little cups full of like, shrimp and krill and stuff on these big long poles and they kind of tap it on the top of the water and the in the main tank, and then the manta rays know like, oh, this is food time. So that they start swimming towards the surface of the water and the person feeding them will kind of walk along the edge of the tank, kind of dropping the food into the water in front of them and letting it flow into their mouths as they're moving.
Ellen: Oh, okay.
Christian: Yeah, it's pretty cute.
Ellen: Making a little food cloud.
Christian: And they have to be careful. Uh, so one of the reasons they weigh them is so they know exactly how much food to give them. So it's important that they feed them individually so they can track how much each one has had.
Ellen: Why is that so important?
Christian: Oh, cause they don't want to overfeed or underfeed.
Ellen: Oh. Yeah.
Christian: And they can't just throw it in the water and...
Ellen: Hope for the best?
Christian: Cause there's other things in the tank. Right? So, just so everyone is maybe not so familiar with the Georgia aquarium, it is the largest aquarium in the western hemisphere.
Ellen: So big. It's so big.
Christian: It is one of the only ones with whale sharks.
Ellen: Very impressive.
Christian: And in that main tank with the whale sharks are these manta rays along with, gosh, I want to say..
Ellen: Everything. So many.
Christian: What, like a hundred other species of fish in there maybe?
Ellen: Probably even more than that. They got crabs, they got sharks, they got turtles, they got... Random fish. They got those little wormy things that poke their heads out of the sand.
Christian: Well, I'm talking about the main tank though.
Ellen: Weren't those in the main tank?
Christian: They were in their own thing.
Ellen: Oh, well anyway...
Christian: I mean, they might be in there too. I don't know.
Ellen: They got grouper! Those big huge groupers that swim around looking all grumpy all the time. They got those. And they got all these, not just manta rays but like tons and tons of different types of rays also, like eagle rays and...
Christian: The cow nose rays that you were talking about in a prior episode.
Ellen: Just so many. I mean you could sit there all day and see all sorts of cool stuff.
Christian: So yeah, this is a huge, huge, huge tank. Big enough for the whale sharks and that's what we're talking about here.
Ellen: Big enough for FOUR whale sharks.
Christian: Yes, four. So if you ever, if you ever get the chance, check it out. It's pretty impressive.
Ellen: And you think like, a tank with four whale sharks in it and also these- how many did you say? How many manta rays?
Christian: Four.
Ellen: Four whale sharks, four manta rays. There are- the tank is so big that you could be sitting there and at times you do not see any of them because they're over in a different part of the tank and the tank is just so big that even though these are like, some of the biggest animals in the world, they're completely invisible because of how far away they are.
Christian: And they're actually working on a shark expansion. So yeah, that was the ingenuity. 6 out of 10, mostly for the flips and stuff.
Ellen: Yeah, I mean you can give them points for that! That's pretty good!
Christian: Yeah! Aesthetics, probably not surprising, I'm giving them a full 10 out of 10 for aesthetics.
Ellen: Oh, they're beautiful.
Christian: I think they're really cool looking.
Ellen: They are. We mentioned this while we were sitting there looking at them, I think they look like alien space ships. They look like, to me, they are going to jump out of the water and hover over the ground and the bottom of them is going to open up and these little aliens are going to come out and they're going to like, start collecting samples of the earth and take them back to their alien planet. That's just what they look like to me.
Christian: Yup. They're very cool looking and I find them very sleek from the top down, seeing the black wings.
Ellen: Perfect for space travel.
Christian: So, some other information. Conservation status on the IUCN Red List, they are listed as vulnerable. First of all, they're threatened by overfishing, and that is both deliberate and as bycatch
Ellen: They are being fished... Like people are catching them? Or are catching the things that they need to eat?
Christian: So... Them. People are catching them on purpose and also catching them on accident.
Ellen: Why would you want to catch one?
Christian: So unfortunately, in parts of the world, they are valued for their flesh as food...
Ellen: Aw, gross.
Christian: But also, as their gill rakers.
Ellen: ...What?
Christian: Yes, their gill rakers are used in traditional Chinese medicine.
Ellen: Oh that's not good.
Christian: It is not, as it seems to be the case in all animal products used for that.
Ellen: Yeah, don't do that. That's incorrect. Don't do it.
Christian: So that's what threatens them, and also their birth rate makes it difficult for them to make comebacks. AndI'll talk about that here... Now, actually. Right now. So, a little bit more details on their birth. So they are what's called ovo...vivi...parous.
Ellen: We've done this word three times now.
Christian: Yes. Meaning the embryo develops within eggs retained in the mother's uterus.
Ellen: Very good.
Christian: And for manta rays- for giant manta rays, that is- they're thought to give birth to a single pup every two or three years.
Ellen: Okay. Yeah. I mean when you got big pub, when they're so big.
Christian: So yeah. So that's what I'm talking about with, you know, because of that birth rate, it makes things difficult to come back from, you know, over fishing and whatnot. Now here's my favorite part about the birth. So when born, the pup folds its wings around its body to make the exit out of the birth canal easier. So it's like a little manta ray burrito.
Ellen: Oh my god! Oh my god he's folded up in a tortilla! Oh my God, that's so cute!
Christian: Right?
Ellen: Did you see any like pictures or videos of this happening?
Christian: It was really difficult to find pictures. I didn't, I couldn't find one of it happening, but I think I found a picture of one. Just a baby. They're very cute.
Ellen: This makes me think of in old cartoons, you would see a stork delivering babies to their, you know, awaiting families and the baby- the stork would always be carrying the baby in this cloth like, bag thing. And the baby is always like wrapped up like swaddled in a piece of cloth. This makes me think of the manta ray being like, swaddled in its little flip flaps that it's got wrapped around so, so tenderly and then delivered via stork to the very eager Mama Manta Ray.
Christian: Right?
Ellen: Oh man. They swaddle themselves! I'm dying. I can't. I love it.
Christian: I thought you would enjoy that imagery too.
Ellen: Wow, that's really great. I didn't even know that.
Christian: Very good. So that's probably a good note to leave on for the manta ray- the giant manta ray.
Ellen: I love the giant manta ray. Thank you Christian. That was really delightful.
Christian: Anytime.
Ellen: I know you were very charmed by them in the aquarium. We had a lot of fun watching them.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: And what's really cool in that aquarium is that it has that type of thing where there's a big sort of tunnel for you to go through that goes underneath the tank. So you're going through this big tunnel and all around you, you're seeing the inside of the tank, so you're seeing whale sharks and manta rays swim over your head. It was so neat.
Christian: I love it, personally.
Ellen: It's really great. I could spend all day there. I took a lot of cool pictures too.
Christian: Yeah, I'm really excited to see some of them.
Ellen: Yeah, I'm going to have to go through them tomorrow. Well, so for those of you that don't know, we're in Jacksonville, Florida and there's a hurricane coming our way, so we may have some time on our hands over the next few days.
Christian: Ooh, I hope we don't lose power, like tomorrow or...
Ellen: Yeah, we might. We might. Who knows?
Christian: Maybe this, this episode might be delayed because of that, but we'll see.
Ellen: Stay tuned. I don't know. We'll figure it out. We'll do our best. Anything for y'all because we love you guys.
Christian: So now that brings us to the middle of the podcast episode. Do you want to talk about our patrons?
Ellen: Yes, I do. I mentioned earlier that we started a Patreon and it went really, really well and we had, you know, a few people already kind of signed up to pledge. So we're really excited about that, it helped us be able to launch our new website. We bought a domain and you know, like built the website and it we're really happy about it. So, if you want to help like, kind of get it on that action and help us grow and do other really cool things- We want to do all sorts of really cool things. Like, we want to start doing interviews and like onsite recordings and we want to just really start getting out there and doing some cool stuff, but that requires some investments on our part. So, if you- if any of that stuff sounds exciting to you and you want to help us get there, you can help us grow and also get access to some other really cool perks, like a feed of the show without ads and a patron-only discord server and some other pretty neat stuff. I'm actually looking into more things that I can include in the patron perks, so go check it out. You can support us for as little as $1 a month over at patreon.com/justthezooofus. And for this week's episode, I would like to especially thank our patrons, Briana Feinberg, Krystina Sanders and Shae Winters.
Christian: Yeah, thank you folks.
Ellen: Yeah, one of the patron tiers involves being included in this little segment right here. So you know, if you want your name included in that shout out list, go check us out on Patreon.
Christian: All right, hun, what do you got for us this week?
Ellen: So I also chose to talk about an animal that I fell in love with at Zoo Atlanta. They call it Zoo Atlanta.
Christian: Yup.
Ellen: So an animal that I fell in love with there- I talked about how I was really excited for giant panda, but we already talked about giant panda, so I couldn't do that one.
Christian: Whoops.
Ellen: But so I chose the red panda. This is called Ailurus fulgens.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: I fell in love with this animal at Zoo Atlanta, but it had also been requested to us by Juan Ocharan. So he requested a very long time ago and it's been sitting on my list and I've been eyeballing it and wanting to talk about it for a long time and I figured this would be a great opportunity to do it because they're fresh on the brain.
Ellen: Cool, thanks Juan.
Ellen: Yes, thank you so much. So I'm getting my information for this segment from, naturally, Zoo Atlanta, but also the San Diego Zoo and Smithsonian National Zoo. So I'm gonna introduce you to my new best friend, the red panda. If you have never seen this animal before, I call it a cinnamon raccoon. It is a- imagine a raccoon, and a thicc one...
Christian: Spicy.
Ellen: A spicy, thick raccoon, and it has thick, fluffy, bright red fur... Either bright red or like a dark red with a black belly, black legs, and then white markings on its face and white ears. And its kind of defining characteristic is it has this really long, really bushy tail with red and gold rings. Oh, it's stellar. I can't go too much into it cause I have a whole section for that.
Christian: Yep, yep yep.
Ellen: So they're only about the size of, like a large house cat. Maybe like a small to medium dog. They're not that big. They're only about two feet long, or around 60 centimeters. Now the bushy tail adds another foot and a half, or 45 centimeters. So yeah, it's about the size of like a smallish dog. You're gonna find these cuties in rainy forests at high altitudes in the mountains of Nepal, China, India and Tibet and kind of that whole like, sort of Southeast Asia area. Think like Himalayas.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: Himalayan mountains. Like there, you're going to find them in very, very rainy forests up high in the mountains. Their taxonomic family is Ailuridae. Now, let's talk taxonomy. This is an ordeal. This is a whole situation. I really didn't think I was going to have so many notes on taxonomy, but here we are. So looking at the panda, looks like raccoon. Also, similar to panda bear. They have many similar traits that I'll go into in a few minutes.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: They're also called pandas. So, the red panda belongs to this family Ailuridae. They are the only member of the Ailuridae family, and they have no living relatives at all.
Ellen: Woah.
Ellen: None. So throughout kind of their whole history, their taxonomy has been really controversial. So when they were originally found, they were believed to be members of the raccoon family, the same family as raccoons, but then they were studied a little bit more and moved into the bear family with the giant pandas. But now, they're understood to be completely separate from both. They're not members of either of those families, although the family Ailuridae is believed to be part of the super family called Musteloidea, which also contains the procyonids, which are raccoons and coatimundis and stuff like that, and also the mustelids, which are weasels and badgers and things like that. So they're in the same superfamily with those, but they're not part of the families. They're their own family and they don't have any other members. So it's just them in their family.
Christian: That's interesting.
Ellen: It is. It's actually really, really cool. They have some common ancestors, but they go back millions of years, right.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: So what's actually really kinda, I thought was cool is that you hear way more about giant pandas than you hear about red pandas. The red panda was named first.
Christian: Really?
Ellen: The red panda was documented by French zoologist, Frederic Cuvier 48 years before the giant panda.
Christian: Okay, huh.
Ellen: And named panda, like red panda.
Christian: Oh, you know what? This is jogging my memory a little bit. I think I came across this when I was doing the giant panda. Yeah.
Ellen: Yeah, so actually the red panda was named first and then the giant panda was named after it, which is funny cause now the giant panda is the one that gets all the spotlight.
Christian: I don't know if this is me remembering it wrong, but I feel like they weren't called red pandas at first. They were just pandas.
Ellen: Yeah. And then the giant panda came along and then you had the giant panda and the lesser panda.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: They are also called the lesser panda, but most people call them red pandas right now.
Christian: Right.
Ellen: So what I thought was kinda cute is that its scientific name comes from the Greek word for cat and then the Latin word for fire, giving us fire cat.
Christian: Oh, that's cool.
Ellen: Yeah. That also means like glowing or something that's like bright. It could also mean like a glowing cat.
Christian: It's like the um... The character from Legend of Korra.
Ellen: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah! Yeah, yeah, yeah. Just like that. That- my favorite creature. Yeah. So that's just kinda where the whole etymology of the red panda came from.
Christian: That is quite the roller coaster.
Ellen: Yeah. I definitely thought that the red panda was like named after the giant panda, but they're not.
Christian: You'd think so, yeah.
Ellen: Effectiveness. How good they do. I gave it an 8 out of 10.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: 8 out of 10. These are pretty good, they're pretty good. They are very well adapted to cold climates because they live up there in the forest, really high up in the mountains. So they're dealing with some pretty cold temperatures. They deal with some pretty heavy snowfall and they're very well acclimated to it. They have that layered fur that you see in a lot of cold weather mammals. It has this course, outer guard hairs and then a wooly undercoat underneath it that helps them insulate their body and keep them warm in the Himalayan snow.
Christian: Nice and toasty.
Ellen: It is nice, it just keeps them real snug as a bug. But even more than that, they have that long fluffy tail. It has two purposes. The first is my favorite. They wrap their tail around their body to keep them warm while they sleep.
Christian: Ohhh!
Ellen: Yes, it's perfect and amazing. Actually, the one that we saw at the zoo was doing this. It was all wrapped up with it's tail.
Christian: Awww.
Ellen: Very cute. Yeah, it's adorable. It's so sweet. So yes, buil-tin blanket, obviously fantastic right there. But another thing that they use it for is that they use it to stay balanced while they're climbing.
Christian: Makes sense.
Ellen: Cause they live up in the trees and they spend most of their time moving around between branches and stuff. So the tail helps them stay up while they're walking on narrow limbs. So another way they deal with these really cold temperatures is similar to the slath that we just talked about very recently, they can slow down their metabolic activity to this dormant state, in order to allow them to conserve energy during times of extreme temperatures. So this is particularly important because like the sloth, they have a diet that's not very nutritionally dense. So they're not getting a lot of energy input, so they have to make sure they're not outputting very much.
Christian: That makes sense.
Ellen: Yeah, so they can actually regulate their metabolism to sort of optimize that. So they have some other adaptations that give them some nutritional advantages as well. They are technically part of the carnivora order, but they're actually omnivores and they do have strongly herbiv- herBIvorous? HerbiVORous? HerBIvorous. Herbivorous tendencies. Most of their diet is bamboo. Like 90% of their diet is bamboo. That's what they mostly eat. But they also like to eat things like acorns, fruits, leaves, other stuff like that. And they do sometimes eat things like birds or eggs or little things that they can catch or whatever. It's not a lot.
Christian: Like, opportunistically.
Ellen: Yeah. They'll take it if it's there, but I mean it's not something that they typically will go out and- they're not hunters. They don't go out and hunt for things, but they- so, since they do have that tendency to eat a little bit of both, they have both sharp canine teeth at the front of their mouth as well as these big thick, powerful molars in the back of their mouth. So that makes it really easy for them to both tear and chew through tough vegetation or whatever it is that they're trying to eat. Their teeth are adapted for both eating meat or eating plants.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Yeah, so they can do either one. They're pretty good at that. I thought that gave them a huge edge over the giant panda for having that variety in their diet. Right? They're not just eating bamboo all the time.
Christian: Just the straight refusal to do the rest of their diet.
Ellen: Yeah. They're a little bit... But so this is also something that I learned. They have a what's called a pseudo thumb that is a digit that they share with the giant panda. I don't remember whether you talked about this in your segment on the panda or not.
Christian: I might not have talked about it, but I do remember reading about it.
Ellen: Yeah. So what this is is this is an enlarged wrist bone, actually. It's a bone in their wrist that is bigger, that basically makes their front paws... it looks to me like they had an opposable thumb, but the digit got like, yanked off? Like, it looks like if you looked at somebody's hand and their thumb was gone, but they would still have that sort of bulging part on the side of the hand.
Christian: Sure.
Ellen: That's what it looks like to me. So it's basically just like this padded bump on their wrist, and what that does is it lets them wrap their paw around bamboo and grip it better with that sort of fake thumb. It's not a full digit, but it acts as a grip enhancer basically. So while I'm talking about their paws, this surprised me while I was looking at them. The pads of their paws are covered with hair.
Ellen: Really?
Ellen: Yeah. I have never seen another animal with paws like this where rather than that bare skin, those pads that you usually see on other mustelids, procyonids and bears, they all have these paws that have these bare pads on the bottom of it where it's just skin, it's bald skin, but the red panda's paws are covered in hair. So this is because the forest that they live in experience a lot of rainfall, so the branches ended up being really, really wet and slippery and the hair helps them grip onto it. And it's also really good for helping them move around in ice and snow. The hair makes them grip better in ice in the snow and it's just, it's better for them to move around.
Christian: That's cool. I know other animals have that kind of adaptation for stealth advantage.
Ellen: Yeah, I did see- I saw like, one other source say it was to mask their scent and that it kept them from leaving behind so much scent, but I couldn't- I only saw it on one source, I don't know if that's true or not.
Christian: Sure, sure.
Ellen: I saw it on the Internet floating around there somewhere. So, I don't know.
Christian: Gotcha.
Ellen: Yeah. So that's my 8 out of 10. They have a bunch of really cool adaptations that make them really, really good for living where they live. Better than the giant panda, I'll give them that.
Christian: Yeah.
Ellen: So ingenuity. I also gave the red panda a 6 out of 10.
Christian: Okay.
Ellen: Mostly because I couldn't really find very much about them. You know, they live alone, they're solitary. What I thought was kind of cool was that females, when they're ready to give birth to their babies, they build a nest out of twigs and grass and they line it with moss so that it's nice and insulated and soft for their babies. Yeah. Yeah, so they actually like kind of build their own nest. It's usually up in trees, like up in a crook of a tree or something. So I dunno, I gave them a couple of points for building nest. I thought that was kind of cute. And there is a lot to be said for the fact that they get most of their food from foraging. So naturally they have to be pretty decent at figuring out how to get their food. So Zoo Atlanta provides enrichment for their red pandas in the form of treats that are hidden in boxes or tubes that the panda has to manipulate to get out. So they can at least do those. Right? I don't know how complicated they are. I don't know if they're like puzzle cubes or whatever, but it's at least something that gets their brain stimulated a little bit.
Christian: Well good.
Ellen: Yeah. So I couldn't really find very much else on their intelligence. They're just, I just gave them a 6. It seems like not fantastic, but they're probably not dumb.
Christian: Right.
Ellen: So that's my, my 6 out of 10 for ingenuity. Aesthetics. Come on, 10 out of 10. Perfect. You can't improve on this.
Christian: They're very cute.
Ellen: So actually, the zoologist I mentioned at the beginning, Cuvier, the guy that first cataloged them, described the red panda as the most beautiful animal he'd ever seen.
Christian: Aww.
Ellen: Yeah. Said it was like, the most beautiful animal in the world. And I think he's right. Everything about them is perfect and I would protect them with my life. These are very good, thicc bois and they're very soft and they have these really sweet soft ears and their face is so tiny for their fluffy body and the ears do a really cute thing to where they have this like, tuft of fur, like underneath their ears that gives this the sort of, it's a very cat-like appearance. But definitely go down the YouTube rabbit hole of red panda videos because, as adorable as they are to look at in pictures, there's 60 times more adorable in motion. So watching videos of them, just how they tumble around, they're so cute. They seem like they just kind of throw themselves everywhere they go. Like they just jump everywhere. It's so cute.
Christian: At the zoo, I noticed it had bigger claws than I was expecting.
Ellen: Big sharp claws. They actually can use those for self-defense too.
Christian: Really?
Ellen: Yeah. So when they're threatened, they will actually stand up on their hind legs and swipe with their claws.
Christian: Okay! Get it.
Ellen: Yeah. It's pretty cute.
Christian: Well...
Ellen: That's probably not what they're going for, but I think it's cute. But yeah, there's also a subreddit dedicated to red pandas. It's just called red pandas.
Christian: Alright.
Ellen: Yeah, it's pretty great. I spent a little bit of time just kind of wasting time on there today and watching some really cute red panda videos. They're so cute!
Ellen: Aren't they?
Ellen: My favorite videos are of them playing in the snow because they really like to like, slide down hills in the snow and they seem like they're having a good time.
Christian: I believe there's a zoo in the U.S. that recently got cubs.
Ellen: Oh, you know what? I shared something about that.
Christian: I think it was the Cincinnati Zoo? Maybe?
Ellen: That sounds right. I'll look into it. I'll fix it if it needs to.
Christian: Just- yeah, take this whole bit out if I was wrong.
Ellen: Somewhere, there's- how about this. Somewhere in the world right now, there's baby red pandas, and that's enough to be happy about.
Christian: Yes.
Ellen: Well, that brings us to the conservation status...
Christian: Okay!
Ellen: Endangered.
Christian: Aww...
Ellen: Not doing good. So red pandas have legal protection in the countries that they live in, but they still are facing a lot of threatening factors. So first of all, they're losing habitat due to deforestation, and that deforestation results from a lot of different things. It could be logging or farming or clearing land for livestock or harvesting firewood. Lot of different reasons people are cutting down forests in the areas that they live in. So this reduces the amount of space available for the red panda to live in, and it also fragments their habitat. And we've talked about this with a few different animals before, that this causes the populations to become cut off from each other. And that means that they can't find new mates to mate with. And this results in inbreeding and really poor genetic diversity. So, the populations there then become at higher risk of genetic problems or threat from disease. All these different problems from the habitat being broken into chunks. Livestock in the areas that they live in can also deplete vegetation and leave the red panda without enough bamboo to eat, cause livestock will move into an area, eat all the bamboo and it doesn't leave enough for the red panda.
Christian: Don't do that...
Ellen: No, it's not nice. Yeah, so even though they do... Even though they are legally protected in the areas that they live in, unfortunately illegal poaching and trade still kind of persists, and is actually on the rise. So it happens more and more in these areas. So unfortunately their 10 out of 10 aesthetic score works against them in this department because since they are so incredibly beautiful, they're hunted for their skin. Their pelts are very valuable because of how beautiful it is, it's got that really nice rich red color. So they're hunted for their pelts, but also they're just so cute and they're so like, mild mannered and chill and, you know, they're not that difficult to handle because of how small they are, and they're so cute, they're a prime target for illegal pet trade. So people will grab them and just kind of turn them into pets.
Christian: Man...
Ellen: Hey y'all? Stop doing that. Don't do that. Don't bring wild animals into your house. Super Duper don't do that. Like, a lot of times you'll see videos floating around on social media of like wildlife rehabilitators that for whatever reason are like rehabilitating an animal in their home, or for whatever reason they just have a wild animal that they're taking care of in their home, and then that pops off on social media, it gets shared everywhe, people think, oh my gosh, it's totally cool for me to bring, you know, whatever wild animal I want into my house because this other person is doing it. When it's like you don't know the story that's going on there. You don't know if maybe that animal can't go back to the wild or maybe they rescued it for something from something like you don't know the whole story. But then it makes people think, "oh, I want to have a red panda in my house and it'll be fine!" But it's super duper super duper not, not cool and not good to do that. So don't bring wildlife into your house is my thing.
Christian: Yup. Golden rule.
Ellen: That's our golden rule. Sure. There's some other golden rules floating around out there, but ours...
Christian: Probably not. This is the only one.
Ellen: No, this is the one. So yeah, that's the red panda.
Christian: Well, thank you!
Ellen: They're very cute, but please leave them outside.
Christian: Thank you honey. Very good animal.
Ellen: You're welcome. Uh, yeah. So next up I've got some audience responses. I have two that I would really like to share with you. Yep. They're really good.
Christian: Yay!
Ellen: So our buddy Emily Bell said in response to the honey bee segment in episode 15, Emily says: "In this episode you asked something to the effect of what's it called when an invasive species is good, in reference to the honey bees being established in the U.S. but not native. Well, this is kind of what I do. I am a natural resource planner specializing in invasive species issues and I wanted to answer this. The definition of an invasive species is a non-native species that is established and typically expanding in its new range and causes environmental harm, economic harm and or harm to human health and quality of life. All this to say that the term non-native doesn't automatically mean invasive. There are many species brought in for agriculture or horticulture that are introduced, but that we do not apply the term invasive too like honeybees."
Christian: Very interesting.
Ellen: Yep! So that was pretty cool. That was some really cool insight that we got on invasive versus non native species.
Christian: Yeah. Thank you Emily.
Ellen: Yeah, thank you Emily. And the next one that I wanted to share is from our friend Miranda Lowery, who we met at the aquarium!
Christian: Yeah!
Ellen: Yeah, that was so fun! That was really exciting for us. Miranda Lowery pointed out in response to the slotgs segment in episode 16 in which we coined the iconic slogan fartboat: "While sloths have a ton of gasses from basically fermented vegetation in their gut, they are the only proven mammal that can't fart."
Christian: So sad!
Ellen: They just can't. So all that fart boat hype for nothing. They can't fart.
Christian: That's so sad. Alexa...
Ellen: Shhh! She can hear you.
Christian: I just heard her say "WHAT?" from the room over.
Ellen: She's so mad at us. So yeah, sorry. No fart boats. But apparently they release the fermented gases through their breath. So...
Christian: That's...
Ellen: Worse.
Christian: Yeah. Not better.
Ellen: No, it's not better at all. It's not an improvement. Well, that's all I had.
Christian: My feedback: we're great! - Christian Weatherford
Ellen: Thanks for your feedback. Hey, wait, your feedback doesn't count because you don't listen to the show. Listen to the show, and then you can put in feedback.
Christian: People tell me it's great.
Ellen: Anyway, well that's all I had this week, so thank you so much. I want to thank everybody who has been listening to the show and especially everybody who has been recommending our show and submitting reviews to your podcatcher of choice. Those really help us out a lot, so thank you very much for doing that. You can connect with us on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram by searching the title of the show. Please come hang out with us in our Facebook group! It's so fun! It's called Just the Zoo of Us: Official Friend Squad and it's really great. Y'all are hilarious. That's where we're getting a lot of these like audience feedback, like a lot of these like listener responses and stuff are coming from the Facebook group so it's...
Christian: Good stuff.
Ellen: It's really popping off. If you have an animal species you want to hear us review, you could submit those to me personally at ellen@justthezooofus.com.
Christian: Oh thank God.
Ellen: I know Christian was really... Christian was really distressed by the fact that our old Gmail address did not line up with our other social media handles. He was really upset about that. A transcript of this episode and other episodes can be found at www.justthezooofus.com. Last note. Thank you Louie Zong for the use of your song "Adventuring" from your album Bee Sides. We love you.
Christian: Especially me.
Ellen: Yeah. Especially Christian. I don't know why you said that so weird.
Christian: I don't know. I love that song.
Ellen: We love that song and we love all of his album and all of his, we love all of his albums and all of his music and everything he does is great and perfect. Just like the red panda!
Christian: I frequently wake up with his music stuck in my head.
Ellen: It's a really good music to wake up to though. It's very peppy and it makes you feel good. Just like our podcast!
Christian: There's the plug.
Ellen: Just like our podcast that you're currently listening to, and that I'm still trying to sell you on for some reason. I mean, we're like an hour into the show and you're still listening, so I don't think I need to keep putting the hustle in.
Christian: All right.
Ellen: All right. Thanks everybody. We love you.
Christian: Thank you!
Ellen: Byeee!
Christian: Bye!