Episode 134 – Sanguivores (Blood-Eaters)

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

Science, Education, Earth Sciences, Natural Sciences, Science:natural Sciences

4.8 • 764 Ratings

🗓️ 6 March 2022

⏱️ 150 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Blood is nutritious, easy to digest, and not hard to come by, so it’s unsurprising – if a bit unsettling – that thousands of species have evolved a taste for the stuff. From birds to bats to bugs, the diversity of sanguivores includes a wide variety of body plans, feeding strategies, and unique evolutionary histories, all converging upon a similar set of behaviors and features honed for a diet of blood. Be aware, this episode is, at times, kinda gross. In the news: a new spinosaur, a new pterosaur, a new abelisaur, and a new euphorbia. Time markers:Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:06:00Main discussion, Part 1: 00:39:30Main discussion, Part 2: 01:27:00Patron question: 02:19:00 Check out our blog for bonus info and pictures:http://commondescentpodcast.wordpress.com/ Join us on Patreon to support the podcast and enjoy bonus content! https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Or make a one-time donation via PayPal: https://tinyurl.com/4c68u4hp Find merch at the Common Descent Store! http://zazzle.com/common_descent Join the Common Descent Discord server! https://discord.gg/CwPBxdh9Ev Follow and Support us on: Twitter: https://twitter.com/CommonDescentPCFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/commondescentpodcastInstagram: @commondescentpodcast YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCePRXHEnZmTGum2r1l2mduwPodBean: https://commondescentpodcast.podbean.com/ iTunes: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/the-common-descent-podcast/id1207586509?mt=2 You can email us at commondescentpodcast(at)gmail.comOr send us physical mail at:The Common Descent Podcast1735 W State of Franklin Rd. Ste 5 #165Johnson City, TN 37604 The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org. Musical Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

Transcript

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0:00.0	You're listening to the Common Descent Podcast.
0:19.0	Hello, well. Hello, David.
0:21.2	Hello, everybody, and welcome to the Common Descent Podcast.
0:24.7	This is episode 134, and this episode's topic is sanguivores.
0:32.2	Which is a fancy science word that means things that eat blood.
0:36.9	This episode, we are going to talk about the blood drinkers, the blood suckers, the blood
0:40.8	feeders, the things that make a diet out of eating the blood of other organisms.
0:47.1	Yeah.
0:48.3	Vampires and such.
0:51.3	Blood eating is a habit that has evolved over and over and over again across the animals that live on Earth.
0:58.0	From the famous stuff like mosquitoes and vampire bats to the weird stuff like vampire snails, that's a thing.
1:03.3	We'll talk about that.
1:04.5	So we're going to talk about what blood eating is, what it entails, what cool behaviors and features have evolved repeatedly as adaptations
1:14.2	for feeding on blood. We'll get into the fossil record, of course. We'll get into some evolutionary
1:19.2	history. We will be fascinated and a little bit grossed out. Yeah, it, blood eating is such a cool,
1:26.4	like, it leads to such odd, odd strange fascinating creatures that are all just a
1:31.7	little disturbing it's just a bit unsettling yeah just sometimes sometimes more than a bit yeah no that's
1:38.2	my blood uh i made that myself and i'd like to keep it so we are going to talk about all the different facets of blood
1:45.2	eating. And as such, we are going to put just a little bit of a content warning up here at the
1:50.6	front. We're not going to get into too many gory details. But if you're a person who gets squeamish
1:56.3	at talk of blood and things, sucking on your blood and eating blood, we are going to talk a bunch
2:02.0	about that.
	...

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