Technology
Milk Snakes
In this episode of 'Cool Facts about Animals,' the hosts dive into the fascinating world of milk snakes. They explore the origins of the milk snake's name, their unique adaptations, and...
Milk Snakes
Technology •
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Interactive Transcript
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Hello! Hello!
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Beings and servants and welcome you to the second greatest podcast on earth all about cooking.
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That's right. Give it up for Jaguar.
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Give it up for Jaguar. It's Cool Facts about Animals.
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That's what I said.
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Okay. Good.
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Welcome to all about cooking cool facts about animals.
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Where are we cooking danger animals?
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And our editor takes forever to edit the episodes.
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You know, we have a world of dangling episodes ready to come out soon.
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That was recorded like five months ago and it still hasn't been edited.
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Can you believe it?
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Anyway, welcome to Cool Facts about Animals.
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We're here with...
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Oh, Teddy.
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Grady.
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Clara.
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Quartery!
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And...
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And...
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Drumroll.
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Drumroll.
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Shaguar.
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Woohoo.
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And I'm Ali.
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And today we're doing a podcast episode about...
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Milk snakes.
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Do you solve the riddle? It was in our hardest riddle.
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But we did get something wrong in the riddle.
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And we did say that they bite you.
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But that's not true. These snakes are constrictors, which we'll learn more about later.
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Cool.
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All right. So, Teddy, why did you want to choose this one?
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Uh, because I thought it sounded cool.
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What did you think sounded cool about them?
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Their name? I don't know.
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Okay. Well, let's talk about their name, Clara.
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Can you explain where the milk snake name came from?
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Yeah, there's a folklore that the milk...
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Wait, wait, wait. Did you want Quartery and Jaguar to act this out?
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Oh, yeah. Okay.
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All right, Jaguar.
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Teddy, what happened?
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How it happened?
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I want to see. I want to see that thing.
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Okay. Did you get that name from a folklow?
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Has a snake bring it into a bar and stealing milk from nursing cows?
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Which is probably just...
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The myth made up so that...
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Oh, so that farmers who have cows that don't bring as much milk can have an excuse.
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So, do we have milk snake?
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And I'll be the cow and mommy, you can be the farmer.
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Woo!
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Wooo!
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Oh, cow.
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You have so little milk.
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Why, oh, why do you have so little milk?
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Last night, a sneaky milk spring.
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Wapped into the bar.
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Brr, brr, brr.
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That's not gonna be enough, but nice.
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Suddenly, he started to milk me.
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With his lips.
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Wait a second, wait a second.
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Snakes don't have lips.
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And cows get to that.
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Wooo!
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Jaguar, what do you think about this?
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You're not actually this part out very well.
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I don't know.
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It's a lie, apparently, that the farmer made up.
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Oh, that rascally milk snake always taking my cows precious milk.
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Wooo!
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I wonder why the farmer would ever make up such that thing.
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Maybe it's because you're not making that much money if you want an excuse.
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It's certainly not me drinking the milk.
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I don't have hands or a milk.
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Oh, me not.
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But if you guys didn't catch what's happening, then that's funny.
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But basically what happened is the milk snake that farmer made up of a myth
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where the milk snake went into the bar and stole all the farmer's milk.
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And that's how they got their name.
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But that's not possible, right?
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Why isn't that possible, Grady?
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Snakes do not have lips.
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Or arms or hands.
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Or arms or hands or anything.
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And also they don't drink milk because they're carnivores, right?
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Yeah.
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But they could have like cut it open, cut the cows open and just, I don't know,
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not drinking it.
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Well, you know, I guess they're constrictors, right?
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They could have constricted the milk out of the others.
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That doesn't work.
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Okay.
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All right.
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So, Tani, what do they look like?
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They mean the mimic coral snakes because coral snakes are very venomous.
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So they mimic them to scare away predators.
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But they're striped and they have a thin black stripe and
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then a thin white stripe and then a thin black stripe and then a big orange stripe.
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And then a thin black stripe and then a white, thin white stripe and
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then a thin black stripe and then a long orang stripe and
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then a thin black stripe and a thin white stripe.
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There a whole bunch of different subspecies of the milk snake and
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they don't all look exactly alike, great?
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No.
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Some of them have like different patterns.
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They're like, they're all sort of have a like stripe look, but some of them aren't like black and white.
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And there's one that's actually almost all black, right? Yeah, like darker colors. So
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because they look so much like the coral snake, there's a few rhymes made up to tell them apart.
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Can I tell them right? Sure.
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Red and yellow kills a fellow. Red and black, friend of Jack.
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Jack. Jack, do you want to do one?
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Red on yellow kills a fellow. Red on black, red on black.
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The final one is red touches black. It's a friend of Jack. Red touches yellow. It's bad for a fellow.
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Boy, this Jack, I really has me puzzled. Do you think that's the farmer? Well, maybe it's like
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Jack war. Like, oh, Jack war. Jack war.
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How big are they? Well, there's a bunch of different sub species of snakes. Like, there's actually
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like, they're 24 and there was so much that they made one sub species of milk snake a separate species.
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Scarlet. That's not why they made it a separate species though. They can be 14 to 16 inches.
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Well, 14 to 16. Did you say? Yeah. But I think some snakes are bigger than that, some species of this.
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And it's a big range, 14 to 16. And they have round pupils, like some other. They don't have
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slip pupils, like some other non-banamist snakes. So if they're not venomous, and they're kind of
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horrors, how do they get their food? They constrict them. They choke their bodies. And then they eat them.
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They eat them whole, right? Yes. Jack, where do you want to evolve to be a constrictor? I already
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am. Oh, okay. The things that eat the small mammals, like mice, rats, and other rodents, also some
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birds, lizards, other snakes, and snake eggs. Don't they even eat the coral snake? Yeah, they do. They eat
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their venomous sibling snake. That's kind of funny. I mean not funny, but weird funny.
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They are snakes, they're liars! They're trying to create a lot of like, rattle snakes, and sometimes they
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shake their tails, they act like they're rattle snakes. Oh yeah? Their predators are coyotes, skunks,
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foxes, and birds of prey, and raccoons. So you talked about how they can mimic a rattle snake,
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and they can mimic a venomous snake. What's another thing that they can do to warn off potential
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predators? Fart bones. That's kind of right. Can you explain that in more detail? When threatened,
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in a low-end male snake, discharges pungent fluid from its cloca as it warms these behaviors to
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turn some predators. Kind of like a skunk. It makes us think he smelled that makes things not want to
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eat them. And I know we've done this in other episodes before, but can somebody explain the
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difference between venomous and poisonous? Venomous is when an animal is venomous if it
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bites you or stings you or something, and that's how the poison gets into your system. And then
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if it's poisonous, if you eat it, then that's how it gets into your system. And if you touch it,
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it's poisonous. Okay, what's next, Clare? They live in eastern North and Central America,
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anywhere from sea level to 8,000 feet in elevation. Okay, so they have quite a range, both in size and
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their ability to protect themselves and where they live. 8,000 feet, it's high. They mostly live in
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forest, but they can also live in fields, rocky places, and farms, and barns. They can also live in
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New Hampshire. Yeah, and they spend the day under rocks because they're nocturnal. So, especially in
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the summer, they spend most of their nights outside and their days sleeping. Let's talk about their
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life cycle for a little bit. Females have 60 day pregnancies, and they breed yearly from April to June.
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They can lay anywhere between 5 and 20 eggs, and the eggs will usually hatch between 28 and 38 days.
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They lay their eggs in rotting logs, beneath rocks, and soil, and that keeps them warm.
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So, it's kind of like a nest. Do the parents seem to be very, very convenient for us to eat them.
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So, I know where to look, Jaguar. I feel like every episode Jaguar eats the species. Well, that's kind
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of his thing. I mean, it's what the show's all about, really. All about cooking. All about cooking.
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All about cooking. Also, the parents leave after the eggs are hatched. Okay, so they don't care
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for the snakes. How long does it take for the snakes to become fully adult snakes?
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About three to... Jaguarness. Well, I don't really know, but what I do know is that when the snakes
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become adult snakes, they probably tell you to go and listen to World of Jaguar. World of Jaguar
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is a podcast that being quartering made, or mostly me, Quartering Kind just helps. But,
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and we do all sorts of stuff on there, and it's really, really good. So, if you like the little
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like the bonus episodes that we have and stuff, you should look over there. And we have very valuable
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information that everyone should know about Girl Scouts. So, listen to it. Wherever you can
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care podcasts. The parents actually can't tell the kids to listen to World of Jaguar podcasts,
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because they leave as soon as the eggs hatch. Well, that's in the adults' town, everyone else to do that.
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Just not their kids, and everyone else. Yeah. Well, anyway, there are adults after three to four
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years, and they live up to 20 years. That's one. Their colors are brighter as babies. They tend to
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dull. I say grow up. You told me something interesting about the mating habits of this snake.
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Yeah, so they sometimes mate while still in their winter dents, because they brew mate, which is
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sort of like hibernation, but they wait to drink water. And another species that brew mates
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alligators, actually. And what is brew mate again? It's like hibernation, but you wake up to drink water.
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And if the female leaves, when the female leaves outside, they leave a pheromone trail behind her,
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so the males can follow their trail. So, kind of like with a cat and heat, where the male cats can
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smell out the female and find her, it sounds similar to that for the snake. Yeah. And
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they have like a sort of meabing dance thing. Why did the milk snake cross the road? Why? To eat a cow.
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To go to the farmer's house. How so known as a barn?
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Good one, Jaguar. You know, farmers live in barns. That's what I told my cousin.
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He said, nope. Oh, don't shh. Good one. Who's your cousin?
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Jack. Oh, a friend of Jack. Yeah. So milk snakes are actually popular pets. Like they're
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I've, when I was researching, I heard that they were actually maybe the best pets snakes I have.
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Come. Because they're good pets snakes.
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You know the Illinois State snake. So, anyway, that's all the facts we have.
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Pretty cool. My favorite fact was about how they can mimic other snakes to protect themselves,
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even though they're not venomous or rattlesnakes themselves. Yeah. My favorite fact was that
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you can eat them. My second favorite fact was that they tell all their friends to listen to
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the world of Jaguar. Yeah, that was my favorite fact actually. My favorite fact was that
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half a sozovers that I can take a nap. A quarter of it.
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A quarter of Anclara had been a little bit sick this week.
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The backwards been making me work all day and all night and all day before the end all night before the
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Jaguar. So we're having fun. It's that was the episode. The world of Jaguar episode will be edited right now.
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Just saying. It's not my job to edit the episode. No, it's my job. It's our editors job.
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All right. Hopefully she'll edit this one right away. Creature quiz.
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Hey, we know that we're about to ask questions.
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We know that we're going to ask questions.
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We know that we're going to ask questions.
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Oh, can I go first? Okay.
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What order do their stripes go in?
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How many sub species of the species are there?
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And for boy and mispoins, which species of milk snakes is at not actually a species of milk snake?
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They're great. How long can milk snakes live?
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Jaguar. What do adult milk snakes tell all their friends but not their kids?
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Out world of Jaguar!
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Hint! You can listen to it wherever you can get your protest and a really good show.
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It's world of Jaguar adult show. Sure, it's for everybody.
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Yeah. I guess that's why they only tell their friends and not their kids.
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Yeah.
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Gordard, do you have one?
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Why did the chicken cross the road?
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Why?
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Because the milk snake was on the other side and they were really good friends and they were
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going to listen to world of Jaguar together.
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And then we had a bonus that if you want to make up a rhyme for how to tell the snakes apart,
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then you can do that too. Try not to use jack or fellow in your rhyme.
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Okay, fellow Jack.
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It's not actually a question but it's a joke.
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Why did the milk snake cross the road?
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The way to get to his friend Jack.
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Also, try not to use any colors in your rhymes.
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It will be especially impressed.
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I have a good one. Do you want to hear mine, Jaguar?
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Why?
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Milk snake, milk snake, milk snake, milk snake.
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The brides!
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The brides!
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All right.
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Kid power?
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Kid power.
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Kid power.
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Kid power.
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Kid power.
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His head on over to that search bar and whatever podcast I've played for you to use.
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And search W-O-R-L-D-Space-O-F-Space-J-A-G-U-A-R.
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Then press enter on your device.
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And then the first one that pops up should be something that has like a orange cover with
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a yellow Jaguar face and it says world of Jaguar.
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And then you start pressing play on all the episodes.
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Make sure it plays on repeat.
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Okay. I have an idea.
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So on Tuesday, hopefully this podcast will come out right around there,
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but Tuesday, November 5th, it's election day.
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And you might be having some new representatives elected into office.
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And you can write to them.
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All of your elected officials have publicly available emails and addresses.
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And you can write to them and tell them why you think it's important to protect animals.
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Yeah, that's good.
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Okay.
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Cool. And then, Riddle?
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This animal.
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It's big and it's tall.
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It jumps long and fall.
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It doesn't actually fall, but it's big and it's tall.
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It's listening to Australia.
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We mentioned this animal in a Koala episode.
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Hmm.
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It hops really typical.
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It hops like a glob.
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If you want to guess, send us an email at coolfacts.bot animals at gmail.com.
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Also let us know if you did the kid challenge or if you know the answers to the creature quiz.
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All right, guys, with that, let's sign off.
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Thank you, especially to Clara for so much research on this episode.
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Thank you.
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You're welcome.
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La la la la la.