The BrainFood Show

As anyone who’s perused the internet knows, arguably the most bizarre mating practices of all can be found among humans, with Rule 34 being a rather immutable law of nature. But it turns out, other animal mating practices can be just as interesting, so today we’re going to be looking at the Wild and Wacky World of Animal Mating, from the bizarre, to the humorous, to the downright disgusting. So, for example, if you’ve ever wondered how porcupines mate given their quill covered bodies, want to know which animal literally helicopters their poop and pee at their mate to attract them… besides my college girlfriend that is… how Finding Nemo would have been VERY different if actually accurate to the species, the intricacies of lobster lovin’, the fascinating and rather humorous world of giraffe mating, the momentous mating that led to the darkly humorous Dead Duck Day, and much, much more, well, stick around because this one just might give you and your partner some ideas…

Authors: Daven Hiskey, Karl Smallwood, Melissa Blevins, Emily Upton

Editor: Daven Hiskey

Host: Daven Hiskey

Producer: Caden Nielsen

0:00 Intro

2:35 Porcupine Porking

5:05 Disturbing Ducks and Dead Duck Day

12:51 Hyena Lady Bits

14:08 Exploding Bees

17:50 Bees are so Freaking Cool

22:42 Honeybees are Better at Math Than You

25:04 Clownfish and Why Finding Nemo is All Wrong

30:26 The Bizarre World of Giraffe Mating

32:59 Helicoptering Hippos

33:50 White Fronted Parrot Date Night

34:27 Make Love Not War- The Bonobo

35:47 What a Way to Go

36:33 To Die For- The Black Widow and Mantis Myths

38:17 Lobster Lovin' and Popular Myths

41:50 Arabian Camel's are So Gross

43:05 Sword Fight and Nomming Man Bits

45:00 Life... uh... Finds a Way

45:43 Angler Fish Weirdness

46:30 The Romantic Mating of Seahorses

48:50 The Mating Cycle of Nightmares

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When one thinks of nuclear nations, the United Kingdom usually doesn’t spring to mind. But Old Blighty has a long and impressive record of nuclear accomplishments dating back to the very origins of the field. British scientists like William Penney, Rudolf Peierls, and John Cockcroft were instrumental in kickstarting the Manhattan Project, while on October 3, 1952 Britain became the third nation after the United States and Soviet Union to build and test its own atomic bomb. Throughout the Cold War, squadrons of Royal Air Force V-Bombers armed stood ready to counter any Soviet attack, while today the Royal Navy’s four Vanguard-class submarines, armed with up to 16 Trident II ballistic missiles each, prowl the world’s oceans on vital deterrence patrols. And on October 10, 1957, decades before better-known disasters like Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukushima, the UK became the site of one of the Nuclear Age’s first major accidents. On that day, a reactor at Cumbria accidentally caught fire, threatening to contaminate hundreds of square kilometres of English countryside with deadly radioactive fallout. This is the story of the Windscale Fire, the UK’s forgotten nuclear disaster.

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“You always remember the bad guy.” These were the words of the late David Prowse, the man who physically portrayed Darth Vader in the original trilogy and it’s kind of ridiculous just how right he was. Almost 50 years later Darth Vader is just as iconic and instantly recognisable as he was when he first power-walked into frame to his own theme song.

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team-powered, gunned-up, and utterly cursed—cruiser submarines were meant to revolutionize naval warfare. Instead, they sank their own crews more often than the enemy. Here’s the story of history’s worst sub design.

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When thinking about the middle ages, chances are that among the many images popping into your mind there stands a noble knight. Now, there are a variety of myths about what it was like to be a knight during medieval times, not just spread by Hollywood, but even by the contemporary legends during medieval times themselves- in both featuring widespread depictions of the chivalric knight rushing to the aid of damsels in distress and generally spending their time being bastions of all that is good and the very definition of "noble". We’ll get into a lot of these myths throughout this video, but within this mythology we have the white clad Christian knight, his shield or surcoat adorned with a cross. And on the other side an equally imposing Muslim horseman, peppering said knight with dozens of arrows.

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“[T]here would not be I believe, a happier being in the United States… [c]ould I have just enough business to support my expences, so as to relieve me from the mortification of being at my time of life, a burden to my Parents…” -John Quincy Adams (December 14, 1790)

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Much like is the case with some adult humans, in the morning our miniature Sapiens often have a preference for expressing themselves in low-pitched, unintelligible grunts, mumbled from within the cavernous darkness of their bedrooms as you try to wake them up. The words might be jumbled, but the meaning is rather clear: ‘It’s too early. I want to sleep. Leave me alone.’

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Unsurprisingly to anyone who’s historied, Hitler was a man who promoted a hateful ideology, had millions murdered, crippled a generation, and plunged an entire continent into ruin. What’s maybe slightly less known is that before he did all this, he was a lazy layabout, ultimately squandering his inheritance culminating in him becoming homeless for a few years. To say Hitler avoided anything even remotely resembling work, except for the work he put into not doing any work, or responsibility leading up to his rise would be a gross understatement. On top of that, his first dalliances into love were about as creepy as you can come by, including at one point devising a plan to murder the object of his love because she wasn’t into him. If he couldn’t have her, he simply planned to Romeo and Juliet himself and her. It should also be noted he never actually bothered to talk to her even once in his life before planning this all out, only stalking her from afar for years…

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“What are the Qualifications of a Secretary of State? He ought to be a Man of universal Reading in Laws, Governments, History. Our whole terrestrial Universe ought to be summarily comprehended in his Mind.” -John Adams July 5, 1811

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If you were to travel down the Rio Magdalena just north of the Columbian capital of Bogotá, you might just come across some rather out-of-place wildlife: a herd of African Hippopotamuses. The herd, which now numbers nearly 100, is descended from four individuals imported in the 1980s by notorious drug lord Pablo Escobar, and kept in a private zoo on his estate in Puerto Triunfo. When Escobar was killed in 1993, the hippos escaped into the surrounding rivers and multiplied…and multiplied, and multiplied. The enormous invasive species then proceeded to wreak havoc on the local ecosystem, destroying local plant life, disrupting the habitat of native animals like crocodiles and manatees, and killing fish with copious amounts of noxious faeces. If left unchecked, biologists fear the population could reach 1,000 by 2035, causing untold environmental damage. But as bizarre as this environmental crisis might seem, the exact same scenario might very well have played out in the United States more than 100 years ago, thanks to one of the strangest bills in U.S. congressional history. This is the wild and unlikely story of how the U.S. government tried to introduce hippo ranching to America.

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