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Vanessa Hill of BrainCraft & Sugar Gliders | SciShow Talk Show

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Duration:29:26
Uploaded:2016-08-10
Last sync:2024-12-21 17:15

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MLA Full: "Vanessa Hill of BrainCraft & Sugar Gliders | SciShow Talk Show." YouTube, uploaded by SciShow, 10 August 2016, www.youtube.com/watch?v=kdwBjPUK9WI.
MLA Inline: (SciShow, 2016)
APA Full: SciShow. (2016, August 10). Vanessa Hill of BrainCraft & Sugar Gliders | SciShow Talk Show [Video]. YouTube. https://youtube.com/watch?v=kdwBjPUK9WI
APA Inline: (SciShow, 2016)
Chicago Full: SciShow, "Vanessa Hill of BrainCraft & Sugar Gliders | SciShow Talk Show.", August 10, 2016, YouTube, 29:26,
https://youtube.com/watch?v=kdwBjPUK9WI.
Vanessa Hill of BrainCraft shares her science YouTube story with Hank and reveals a big announcement! Jessi from Animal Wonders and a special Australian friend or two join in the second half.

Check out Vanessa's video featuring the SciShow team here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rR2ffO_BXWA&feature=youtu.be

More BrainCraft: https://www.youtube.com/user/braincraftvideo
More Animal Wonders: https://www.youtube.com/user/Anmlwndrs

Hosted by: Hank Green
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 (00:00) to (02:00)


(Intro plays)

H: Hello and welcome to the SciShow Talk Show, the day on SciShow where we talk to interesting people about interesting stuff in our new place, our new land.  Welcome, thank you, this is Vanessa Hill from BrainCraft.  

V: Hello, and thank you.  The new land is very nice.

H: Do you like it?

V: I like it, I like the new digs.  

H: Thanks.  This is our actual office, previously we recorded at like, a place that we just rented and went into and then sometimes people would come in and they would be like, what are you doing?  And now, we have an office.  

V: Yeah, it's nice. 

H: With all this happening behind us.  

V: Yeah, yeah.

H: It may change over the course of more talk shows, we're still working on it.  Thank you for being here.  


V: Of course!  

H: Tell me a little bit about what you do for the people at home.

V: For all the people, okay.  

H: I'm kinda familiar.

V: So, I'm the creator of BrainCraft, which is a YouTube channel on neuroscience and psychology and human behavior.  It's with PBS Digital Studios, and I create short videos about the brain and other areas of science that just interest me sometimes.  I like to do stop motion animation, so my kind of original idea for the channel was I want to create stop motion videos about the brain, which is a bit random, it's a bit specific, but I just thought it could work, and I started doing animations with little bits of paper and kind of moving them around and everything, and I got better at doing them over time and the show has kind of developed over time as well.  Where I'd probably do about one video a month that has those animations in it, and then I have some other bits of content that go (?~1:42) talking about other things.

H: That are a little easier to produce.

V: They're a little easier to produce, yeah, they make my life a little bit easier, yeah, so that's my YouTube channel.  

H: Cool.  And why did you start doing that?  

V: So I worked in the classroom previously, which was really fun.

H: What's your background?  Let's go all the way back.

V: Let's go all the way back.  Okay, so I went to college, as you call it.  
H: What do--what do you call it?

V: Uni.  


 (02:00) to (04:00)


H: Okay.  

V: Like university.

H: You can call it university, I think that we would understand that.

V: You would understand that?  Yeah, okay, well, I, you know, I did that.  I did a Bachelor of Science and I made it in psychology and I wanted to be a zookeeper, I just always liked animals.

H: Well you will get to talk to a zookeeper later today.

V: I know, I know, it is amazing, but I went to the University of New South Wales in Sydney, because I could study zoology and creative writing at the same time, and so that was--

H: Right.  Psychology--

V: But then I ended up majoring in psychology and I studied biology and anatomy and a bunch of different things while I was there, and then when I graduated, I started working for a Australia's national science agency, the (?~2:48) and I was an educator with them, so I worked in outreach and I did that for about four or five years and I went to school, it was all around Australia, which was super cool, because they were a federal agency, and we had, I mean, if you imagine like a museum in a box type set up, where you have a class that you give and we gave classes across all areas of science from like, five to eighteen year old kids and then young adults, basically.  From Kindergarten to senior high school and we covered everything from entymology, to geology, to astronomy, to genetics and all areas of science, and we would have, like, three or four boxes, there was a kit for one program and we would spend a day or two at one school and see all of their kids and kind of develop and deliver these special education programs.

H: That's cool, I imagine in Australia, there's a lot of schools that are fairly rural and might not have easy access to a museum.

V: Yes, definitely.  Yeah, and I went to some pretty wonderful places, and I feel really lucky to have gotten to do that, because I feel like a lot of people don't travel in their own country a lot and I spent a while like, up in the Great Barrier Reef and in my kind of pickup truck that I had with all of my educational programs in the back, my "science truck", I spent a day on a barge going to tropical islands and went to the outback.

 (04:00) to (06:00)


H: Were you going to teach people on tropical islands?

V: Yeah, I wasn't just going there for fun, I mean, it was fun.

H: Well, I thought maybe you were like, collecting for the museum.

V: Oh, I see, I see.

H: There were students there that you--

V: There were students there, yeah.

H: Okay, so it's not just like a tropical island where there's no humans and--

V: People live everywhere.  

H: We cover the whole planet.

V: Yeah, yeah.  We do.  So I went to a lot of places and got to see kids from all walks of life, which was really interesting as well, and see schools in lots of different places because Australia now operates under an Australian curriculum, so we only have seven states and a couple of territories that are kind of easier to manage than the US.

H: Yeah, also our states are--they're--I think, very independent as states go.

V: Yeah, yeah, so--

H: Which is how it was built, because we--it has its pluses and minuses.

V: Yeah, so Australia operates under an Australian curriculum, so all of the states have the same curriculum and I was doing this program say, in schools, in private schools in the middle of Sydney and then in government schools in the middle of the desert, and it was just so interesting to see how one curriculum doesn't necessarily translate to every child at the same (?~5:18)

H: And then you decided that you were gonna start making YouTube videos.

V: Yeah, I mean, (?~5:21)

H: Did you watch a lot of YouTube?  Did you like, start as a fan of content?

V: Yes, I did start as a fan of content and something that was interesting because I was in all of these random places, there's nothing to do when you finish work.  There's like, a hotel and a pub, and it's the same place and it's normally full of like, people who work in mining and wear a lot of like, (?~5:43) clothing and stuff like that, and I would have dinner there and then I'd be like, probably time for me to leave now!  So I actually, I got really into photography, and I used to take photos of all of the random places I was going and of the night sky and do time lapses and everything like that when I was in these really random places, and I started putting them online, so I developed a small following, but a bit of a following, just as like, Vanessa the traveling science educator, and also when I was in these places, I started watching a lot of videos and that was interesting to me.  

 (06:00) to (08:00)


Then about, I think it's been three years ago now, there was a whole bunch of YouTubers who came to Australia for an event in our National Science Week, so I met Henry from minutephysics, I met Destin from SmarterEveryday, ASAPScience guys, (?~6:30) were there as well, Derek from Veritasium, who was living in Sydney but who was also part of (?~6:35) and yeah, there was just--I met a bunch of people and I got to travel around with them a little bit and kind of meet up with them in different places and it was kind of inspiring to me to see what they were doing and I thought I could probably do this myself, I would like to do this myself.

H: Were any of them like, hey, you can, you can do this.  Do the thing!

V: I think I spoke to them about it.  I remember speaking to Henry a lot about it, because his style I think inspired me a lot, and I really liked what he was doing.  He slept on my couch in Sydney for a week and made a minutephysics video in my living room, so like, it was--

H: You got to see the process.

V: Yeah, so I got to see the process and it was interesting for me to see what everyone was doing and I think it was interesting because after that time, I can't even remember what subscriber numbers were like in 2013, but those channels were really popular on YouTube and had big followings, and there seemed to be somewhat of a formula to it, I thought, because I saw what they were doing and I saw the kind of videos they were putting out and they were putting them out regularly and they all seemed to build a really nice audience, and I was like, gosh, I could just do that if I just did videos like that and I put them out at this kind of frequency and like, this could be my full-time job and it was really hard, and it was really hard to build an audience, and I like, worked my butt off doing it and it wasn't easy.  

H: Yeah.

V: Yeah.

 (08:00) to (10:00)


You're like, of course it wouldn't be easy!  But, yeah, I mean, I think just because I had a very skewed experience because I was only hanging out with people who had been very successful at it, and they made it look easy, but that's not only because they're all so good at what they do, so it took me a long time, like a couple of years, to find my feet, I think, until--and I only a few months ago, I think, I became confident in my content.  I'm saying like, two months ago.  I only started to think of myself as like, a proper YouTuber, because before that, I was like, I don't know what I'm doing, I don't really have an audience, I'm just like making things and putting it on the internet and comments are weird and I just didn't really know how to approach it at all, so I'm happy about it now.

H: So how did you go from zookeeping to psychology to brains?  Why did you decide that that was gonna be the thing that you wanted to talk about on your channel?

V: Right, um, the zookeeping thing was interesting.  I did an internship at (?~8:55) Zoo in Sydney, and I ended up in the education center there, and discovered that I really liked talking to people about science and interacting with people more than animals.  Now, I'm like, people are the worst.  

H: Well, YouTube comments will do that to you.  

V: Yeah.  So, I studied, I mean, the first couple of years at University were pretty general, like, biology type sciences, and then I just specialized more in psychology and brain science type subjects, so I ended up majoring in psych.  I did a couple of neuro subjects at University as well, and I think when I was trying to think of what to do for a channel, there seemed to be a lot of physics channels on YouTube, a lot of chemistry content, some biology content, but really nothing that was just focused on the brain, so I think because that was something that I had studied and I was interested in, I saw it as a nice opportunity, but I mean, I'm in no way an expert and I work a lot with PhDs and working professors and things like that to develop scripts and fact-check things that I have written myself.

 (10:00) to (12:00)


H: And I think that it's something that is sort of universally interesting, 'cause we all have a brain.

V: Definitely!

H: And none of us know how it works.

V: No.

(?~10:08)

V: Even people who study it and talk about it and work in the Universities know more about how it works than we do, except by no means do we have all of the functions down pat.

H: Yeah, it's very strange to be--to like, live your life as basically a thing you don't understand.  

V: It's the weirdest thing!

H: Like, I am an ununderstandable thing.  

V: Yes, and I mean, inside of your head, like, if I, you know, just cut it open and took your brain out, it'd be a bit messy, except it would just be--

H: It also--I think they might call the cops.

V: Really?

H: Yeah.  You might have to go to jail for a long time.

V: Okay, hypothetically, let's talk hypothetically then.  If that happened and it was fine and we could just put it back in and it would work perfectly well again, it just--like, a 3 or 4 pound lump of tissue and fat that just makes you, you, and dictates how you operate and how you think and move and how you act and it's so weird.

H: Very weird.  I oftentimes think that I understand why I'm (?~11:09) but I don't.

V: No.  It's been really interesting reading a lot of papers doing Brain Craft, and in a way, when you do a show like that, I read more papers in a month than I ever read in four years of University, and I've learned a lot more about psychology in the past couple of years than I ever did when I studied it, and I learned more about how I work, and I just confuse myself.  I'm like, but I do this, and I know I do this, and I understand why that I keep doing it, and how can I not correct these flaws in my own psychology?  

H: I have identified the problem.

V: Yes.

H: I am going to continue executing the problem.

V: Yeah, but I try not to execute the problem, but I can't fix it.  Like, for example, cognitive biases are really interesting.

H: Oh yeah, I feel like I can keep like, two in mind, but there's like 27.  
V: There are so many.

H: Or like 87.  

V: Yeah.

H: Yeah, and I'm like, well, I'm gonna work on these two and as soon as I try and add a third, I'm like, oh, I dropped that one.

 (12:00) to (14:00)


V: Well, one of them, the big one for me is one called the planning falacy, and it's where you underestimate the amount of time that it takes for you to complete a task.

H: Oh yeah, everybody I work for has that problem.

V: I have this in a big way, and I work for myself and by myself and it just festers, and I think, gosh, I'm gonna take this amount of time to do something but I'm gonna allow an extra two hours to allow for the planning falacy and it just doesn't even matter because it takes me an extra four hours and it's just--yeah, and I can't get over it, and I've always been like that, and people I've worked with in the past know that I'm like that, and I just cannot correct this.

H: It's like, once you're done with a thing, you're like, that wasn't so hard.

V: Yeah.

H: I did it, look, it's done!  And then you forget all of the things that you did in order to make that happen immediately go away.  Yeah, I have the same problem--we're off topic now--but where I know that there are certain behaviors that make me happier, and yet I have a very hard time executing them.

V: Yeah.  

H: I'm like, wh--I know that if I get up at the same time every morning, that makes me a more productive, happier, healthier person.

V: When you go on morning walks.

H: And--yeah.  

V: I watch your Snaps.

H: Alright.

V: I know about your morning walks.

H: So--

V: I feel really creepy right now.

H: But then like, every morning at 7:30, I'm like, who in their right mind would wake up right now?

V: I know.  

H: So you have anything interesting, special going on with Brain Craft right now?

V: I have one thing coming up that is very special and I actually don't think the world knows about this yet.

H: Oh, this is new, we're breaking news.

V: We are breaking news.  I haven't Tweeted it, I haven't Snapped about it, I haven't posted this publicly, this is exclusive, so I'm making a documentary for Brain Craft, so it's gonna be like a TV hour which is 45 minutes for the internet, but it's for the internet and I got a grant from the Australian government to make a internet first documentary for Brain Craft.  It is on the science and ethics of gene editing, so not specifically related to the brain, but it's going--the whole thing is going to be a big moral dilemma, so that's where the kind of psychology comes into it.  

 (14:00) to (16:00)


H: Yeah, yeah, I have all sorts of thoughts on that.

V: Yeah.  

H: It's terrifying.

V: Yes.  

H: And it's coming, too.

V: Yes.

H: Really fast and we have so many different countries that were all treated differently.

V: Yeah, and the idea with this is that we're going to travel around the world talking to researchers and community groups and people in all different countries.  I don't know how much detail I wanna tell you right now, because there's so much I could tell you, but I will just say that it's going into pre-production in the next few months and then we travel around filming and edit and such, so it should be out in March of next year on Brain Craft.

H: Well, that's pretty fast.

V: It is pretty fast, yeah, yeah.

H: So are you editing yourself or--?

V: I'm not editing, I'm directing and writing and hosting and there's a couple of other people who are also kind of researching and writing and someone who is coordinating all of our travel and such, and someone who will edit it as well, so there's a small team of people working on it, which is exciting, because I normally work on it myself, so I'm looking forward to company.  

H: Do you want some company right now?  Would you like to meet something cute and adorable?

V: I would love som--yes.  

H: Okay, let's do it.

V: Yes.  Yeah.

H: Hey there, Jessi.

J: Hey!  

H: (?~15:30) you just appeared out of nowhere.

V: I like it.

H: Wh-wha--how are you doing?

J: Doing good.  

H: Good.

J: Doing good.  Excited to share the animal with you.

H: Okay, let's do that then.  

J: Alright.  Are you ready?

V: I'm ready.  I'm ready.  

H: Something that likes these.  

J: Mmm, mealworms.  

V: Ohhh, yum.

J: Have you ever eaten one?

H: So called 'cause they're a meal.

V: Have I?  No, no I've eaten a witchetty grub.  

J: What's a witchetty grub?

V: A witchetty grub, um, gosh, I can't--I don't know if I can explain--

H: We'll just put a picture up for everybody.

 (16:00) to (18:00)


V: Yeah, picture now of a witchetty grub.  It tastes like raw egg.  

H: Oh.  That's not so bad.

V: Yeah, it's fine.  

J: You've had raw egg?

H: Well, I've had undercooked egg.

J: Yeah, oh, sure.  Okay.

H: I like myself a good uncooked egg yolk, apparently.  I like, I didn't think I was gonna like that, but now that I've had a lot of them, I'm like, yeah, that's real good.

V: Do you--do you mean like, a soft yolk as in runny or just actually--

H: Right, yes, runny.

(?~16:26)

H: No, I've had runny white, I've been there, it's not particularly something that I wanna do all the time, but like, as far as like, what a bug's gonna taste like.

J: Sure, it could taste a lot worse.  

V: Definitely.

H: I killed a roach on my face once and the smell was intensely bad.  

J: There's 4,000--over 4,000 species of cockroaches and I don't think all of them smell bad.

H: Well, I'll tell you what, the (?~16:51)

V: I had, yeah, there's one that's called a Giant Burrowing Cockroach, photo now, and it lives in the rainforest in Australia and it eats Eucalyptus leaves, so it smells kind of like Eucalyptus, yeah, and Eucalyptus oil is actually antibacterial, so it is a clean cockroach compared to the disgusting cockroaches that you have in your house.

(?~17:14)

H: You just like, smash it--

V: And they're huge, they're like, this--they're like this big.

J: So if you're out in the wilderness, yeah.

H: It's like hand sanitizer?

V: They're huge.  

J: Nature's hand sanitizer, yeah.

V: I'd probably just use a leaf rather than the cockroach that eats the leaf?

H: Right, maybe.

V: You could have leaf hands or you could have cockroach hands.  Leaf hands are always my number one preference.

H: I feel like I need to qualify the time when I killed a cockroach on my face.  I was asleep at the time, but not for long afterward.

V: Okay, yeah.

H: It was not a fun way to wake up.  Florida.

V: Makes sense.  So this was like an automatic reaction that you had

(?~17:49)

V: And was there that white milky cockroach juice in your face?

H: It was like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, it was, and like, it's the smell that occasionally something will remind me of and I'll be like--

 (18:00) to (20:00)


J: Gag reflex.

H: Yeah.  Like, certain candies have like a hint of what the inside of a cockroach smells like.

V: I wonder--candy?  Why would you eat that?  

H: Well, I think like, with like the normal stuff, it's like rotten fruit vs fruit.  It still smells kind of like fruit, but it's like rotten.

V: I wonder if the same species of cockroach would smell differently from like, state to state where it eats.

H: Right.

J: If you fed it differently--

(?~18:30)

J: Do you guys want to meet an animal?

H: Sure, let's do that.

V: I mean, we're not gonna talk about cockroaches this whole time?

J: I should have brought cockroaches!

H: You should have brought cockroaches.  You have a lot of them.

V: Really?

J: Uh-huh.  A whole colony of them.

V: Oh, gosh, well, next time.  

J: Alright.

H: Maybe, thankfully not--

J: How about--well, these guys stink.  They do stink.

H: Okay sure.

J: But I hope they don't--hopefully, they don't remind you of cockroaches but--

V: Okay, what do they smell like?

J: You know, some people think they smell like coffee pee.  

H: Coffee pee??

J&V: Coffee pee.  

J: (?~19:02)

V: What's the name of--what is the name of--

J: Smell this.  

V: Yeah, I had a little gag in my throat just then.  What's the name of the animal in Indonesia who eats the coffee beans--

J: A civet.

V: Civet.

J: Palm civet.

V: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.  Yeah.  Is there that kind of smell?

J: Ready?  Um, no, no, no, that's more musky, this is more like ammonia-y.

H: Smells like pee.

All: Yeah.  

V: Okay.

H: I mean, I couldn't--

V: Is that because they've peed in that little pouch?  

J: Uh, yes.

V: Oh my God.  Oh, they're so cute.  

H: There's your little friend.  He's gonna go, he's gonna go right on to your--how about this shoulder?

H: Okay, okay.  For the cameras.  Oh, hi.  Oh, hi.  Oh, hi, oh my God.  Oh my God.  Oh Jesus.

J: He's a little bit more excitable.  

V: Oh yeah!  What's his or her name?  

J: This is Gizmo over here and this is Gadget.  Gadget, would you like a little--here you go--

V: Hi Gadget.  I can't see you, Gadget, but I love you.  

J: He's smelling you right now.  

V: I smell great.

 (20:00) to (22:00)


H: Oh, where are you going?  

J: He might jump.  Here, come here, buddy.  Here, you give your guy a little treat.

V: Gadget, I've never washed this jacket, so I hope that you like it.

J: He is putting his own smell on it.  You wanna jump back here?  

H: Never washed this jacket.

J: He did really good.

V: He did?  

J: Yeah.  So Gadget is new.  So, these guys, I should probably tell you what they are, they're sugar gliders.  Have you ever met one?

V: I've never met a sugar glider IRL.

J: So they live, they're local to like, the Eastern part of Australia, so they live in the forest right around where you're from, and um, Gadget is really new to Animal Wonders so he's gonna, he's gonna run back in his pouch and come out, he's super curious, though (?~20:40)

H: Cause of death (?~20:46)

J: Ohh, delicious.  

V: Oh, gosh, oh he is--oh, wait, is Gadget a boy or a girl?

J: He's a boy.

V: Gadget has the cutest little mouth, like, can we look at that mouth eating that worm?  Oh my God.

J: Look at that mouth eating that worm.  And then, Gizmo over here, he's pretty chill.  He's about 11 years old.

All: Wow.

J: Yeah, he's almost two, we think, so we rescue our animals and so we don't necessarily know exactly how old they are.  He was probably around a year, a little over a year when we got him, and he was about two years old when we got him, so we've had him for quite a while, he's been out and hanging out on people a lot.

V: Is that why he's more chill?  

J: Mhmm, that's exactly why, yeah, this is pretty old for him, you know, old news.  

V: So where did you rescue Gadget from, because I assume it wasn't the forest around Missoula?

J: Yeah, no, we didn't catch him, no, we didn't go to Australia to get him, either.  So these guys are very popular in the pet trade, and so he--someone bought him as a pet and they didn't realize what they were getting into.  These guys, if you look at their eyes, they're very nocturnal.  Not just like, partially nocturnal, they're like, they're sensitive to light and they really don't wanna be awake during the day, so--

H: Unless there's food.

J: Unless there's food, so they're having like a midnight snack right now.  So they're happy enough to come out and eat their food and then go back to sleep, but they're awake at night so they make--

H: Noise all night.  

J: Yeah, and they're really noisy.

H: Yeah?

J: Yeah.  They're super active.

H: Can you do the noise?

V: Can you do the noise.


 (22:00) to (24:00)


J: Well, there's an angry noise, the first one goes 'ba-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na-na'

H: Okay.

V: Yeah, I've heard that noise.

J: You know that?

V: I know that noise, yeah.

J: You were walking through the forest and you heard that?

V: Yeah, well, I mean, I maybe I don't know that noise, they're very--I feel like they sound similar to possums.

J: Yeah, well, they are a possum.

V: And possums have an angry night noise which when you're trying to sleep, you'll hear them do that, on like, on your roof or in the trees or like, all around the house, they would make those noises.

J: That's awesome, yeah, so these guys are a possum.  Not an opossum, they're possums.

H: They're not squirrels.

J: They're not squirrels.  They're not flying squirrels.

V: Squirrels are rodents.

J: Yeah, so flying squirrels are part of the rodent family, these guys are part of the--they're marsupials.

H: Okay.

J: And um, and then they're part of the possum family, which is a bunch of different night-dwelling little guys, marsupials from Australia, and then there's quite a few little gliders, and --there's six different species of these guys, and these are probably the most common and they're gonna be running around like crazy, so they're super active, and they just bound and jump and run around all over the place up in the dense branches.  Here you go, buddy, you're doing awesome.  

V: Can I feed--no?

J: Yes, you feed him.  Do you want him on you again?

V: Um, yeah, yeah.

J: How about you give him a little treat and then--

V: Yeah.  Oh yeah.  Ohhh, look at that worm, it's still alive.

H: Oh yeah.

J: That's a mealworm, so it's actually a little beetle.

V: Oh.

H: Beetle larva.

J: Beetle larva.

V: Excuse me.  

J: Well, I called it a worm first.

V: Okay, you want one of these?  Hey, Gadget.  

 (24:00) to (26:00)


Okay, stop, stop, stop, oh, this is tricky.  I'm just gonna put him down there for you.  

J: Good job, buddy!  Good job.  I should say good job to Gadget--er, Gizmo, too, he's being amazing over there.

V: (?~24:14) become my best friend.  

H: You are, though he has left some--

J: Has he peed on you yet?

H: I think that's just worm guts.

V&J: Ooh.

V: Yum.  

H: Yeah.  Where are you going now?

J: Just hanging out.

H: He's still chewing on something.   

J: Oh, he just dropped the worm down there.

V: Something just fell, yeah.

H: Yeah, it's just guts.  

V: Okay.

H: Wh--aah!  What are you trying to do?

J: Get him on top of your head.

H: Oh, but like, maybe you should pee first?  Pee before you get on my head.  

V: Oh, oh what a good job.  

J: Ohhh, he almost went, he almost went, here you go, buddy.  I don't see where he is.

V: He's just hiding.

J: He's just doing his own little thing, yeah.  

H: Are you sure you don't wanna go on my head?

J: So these guys, they smell pretty intense, so they actually, you asked if they--why they smelled so bad, because they peed on this, and yes, yes, they've peed all over this, and that's just them claiming their territory, so they have a really interesting little social structure.  They live in a little group--here.  Whee!

H: Oh my gosh.  

J: Good job, buddy.  Awesome!

V: Hey.  Hi.  

J: Here.

(?~25:20)

V: Gadget.  Gadget, look at this tasty worm.  Look how tasty it is.  I feel like I'm talking to my dog now.  Like, look at the worm!  Hey, ohh, Gadget, I just want you to be happy.

J: Oh, I know.

V: Oh my God!

J: So that's what I wanted to do to you, Hank, not me!

H: What's that thing from Alien that grabs onto your face, no, not from Alien, from Half-Life.

J: But no, no, Hank, no.

H: Put a picture of the thing from Half-Life that grabs onto your face.  

J: No, these guys are cute.

V: In other news, Gizmo is very well behaved.

H: Are you going home?  Are you gonna go home?  Are you gonna go and get--

All: Ahh!  

 (26:00) to (28:00)


J: That was a good jump, good job, buddy.  So, they are obviously good at jumping, but they don't just jump.  They're--they are kind of lazy (?~26:11) I told you they're super active, they'll run around like crazy, but they're also a little bit lazy.  These guys, I told you they're sugar gliders, and if I can (?~26:18) up here and show you, he has this amazing skin.  

H: Mm, yeah.

J: So all that extra skin there allows them to glide from tree to tree.  They can glide a really long way.  

V: Hey, it is like a possum tail.  

J: Yeah, so it's like a semi-prehensile, they can't really hang from it.  

V: Okay.

J: But they use it to balance and help the--like a rudder as they're like, gliding through the air.  So they'll run and jump off their branch, spread their legs open, and they'll get this nice parachute effect, and they can go like, 140 meters.  It's a really long way.

V: Wow.  Look at that (?~26:55)

J: Do you want the nice guy on here, let me--

V: Hey Gizmo.  

J: Do you want the face jumper, Hank?

H: Uh, that's okay.  That seems--that seems like a bad idea.  

J: So they don't want to actually glide unless they absolutely have to, so they're gonna hang out, they're gonna be eating, like, sugary food.  They're called sugar gliders for a reason.  They eat sugary foods like nectar and sap and um, fruits, juicy fruits, but if they do need to move for some reason--

V: Yeah.  (?~27:23)  Sorry, we're having a moment over here.  

J: I love their little hands.

V: It's just so cute.

H: That's a very cute little mouth, yeah.

V: Smile for the camera.  

H: They seem to like each other a lot.

J: They do, and that was really important.  So, these guys are very, very social.  I told you they had a hierarchy going on and there's a dominant male and then there's actually a co-dominant male, and so they will kind of rule the territory in their little colony.  There's lots of females and there's other subordinate males, and the males do a really good job taking care of the babies as well, so they usually will grow up in the mom's pouch, and then she'll kind of drop them off at daycare with Dad and she'll go out and find food and then she'll come back.

 (28:00) to (29:26)


And they will glide from tree to tree and they will mark their territories and they're really nice to each other, but if any other groups come in, they will defend their territory pretty ferociously.  

H: What adorable animals.

J: Aren't they so cute?  (?~28:27)

V: Do you wanna go home?  Do you wanna go home?

J: No, I just wanna sit here and chew on that for a second.

H: Oh, yeah.  Worm guts.

V: Oh, yeah.  Look.

H: Gonna give us a good jump?

V: You can do it.  I believe in you.

J: Yaaaay!

All: Yaaay!

J: Nice work, guys.  

H: Thank you, Gadget and Gizmo.  Thanks for coming to the show.  You are soft.  Oh, that was funny, I was like, I was looking at a button, then a face came out.  It was a pleasure to have them on the show and a pleasure to have you on the show.

J: Yeah, thanks for inviting me.

H: Now we're gonna record a little episode of BrainCraft.

V: Yes.  I'm excited.

H: So go over to her channel, go to Vanessa's channel, BrainCraft, to see what we did, and Jessi, you can find more of what she's doing at youtube.com/animalwondersmontana and thank you, as always, for joining us here on SciShow: Talk Show.
Questions? Problems? Email barrkj@gmail.com.
To contact John or Hank, please visit hankandjohn.com.
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