Short Stuff: Why do kangaroos hop?

This is an I heart podcast. Guaranteed human. Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy not quite on humor me with Robert Smigel and friends me and hilarious guests

from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you fun here this week my guess SNL's Mikey Day and head writer street or sidel help an acapella band with their between songs banter where does your group perform. We do

some retirement homes those people are starving for banter Listen to humor me with Robert Smigel and friends on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Dr. Maya Schunker, a cognitive scientist and host of the podcast,

A Slight Change of Plans, a show about who we are and who we become when life makes other plans. I wish that I hadn't resisted for so long the need to change. We have to be willing to live with a kind of uncertainty that none of us

likes. You can have opinions. you can have like a strong stance. And then there's your body having its own program.

Listen to a slight change of plans on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, and welcome to the short stuff.

I'm Josh, and there's Chuck and Jerry's here for Dave. And we're just hopping along, talking about kangaroos and how they hop. That's right.

I want to thank our old colleague, Kristen Conger for writing this article from How Stuff Works Back in the Day. And creator of Unlady Like, the podcast too.

As well as Jennifer Horton wrote another article that I used. Great too. Remember Jennifer. And then I think the San Diego Zoo website

and Nat Geo all pitched in for this one. I thought this was a particularly well researched short stuff. So I should have known that Jennifer Horton

and Kristen Conger had something to do with it. Yeah, so we're talking about kangaroos a little bit, mainly gonna get to how and why they hop, but we should start out by talking about the fact

that roos are marsupials or pouched mammals, because they have a marsupium, which is a little pouch where their little joeys develop. Yeah, we talked, I think, a lot about this

in the naked mole rat episode, where essentially the marsupial fetus does not develop as long inside the body of the mom as it does inside the pouch.

Essentially at some point, it's what you would call born, but really it's just crawling out of the birth canal, outside into the world for a second, and into the pouch. And then the little Joey latches onto a nipple in there.

And the nipple grows three times in size, just like the Grinch's heart. And so the little Joey couldn't let go of the nipple even if he or she wanted to,

until they develop a little further. It's quite ingenious, hats off natural selection. That's a great one. Yeah, that's maybe the fact of the podcast for me.

That's kind of nutty. Oh, I'm sorry I took that. I didn't realize that it was. No, I have to always take the fact of the show.

I like to, you know. I mean, I know it's in my contract and not yours, but I'm willing to give every now and then. That's very generous of you.

Thank you. All right, so Australia is obviously what people, know what comes to mind when you think of marsupials in general because koalas and kangaroos. But we have done a great episode on the opossum, which live all over the place, especially

North Central and South America. But we're talking about kangaroos and wallabies here because they don't have four legs like our opossum friends. They have two big old feet and two little, littler arms.

Yeah. That's a great way to think about it. They don't have four legs. they have two legs and two arms.

And it makes sense. Like if you've ever seen a kangaroo or you just bring one to mind if you're capable of using your mind's eye,

they're sitting on their feet and they're standing or sitting upright and their little almost titanic arms are just kind of hanging out there,

not doing much of anything. Yeah, except boxing probably. The kangaroo, the first sightings apparently traced back to a Dutch merchant

named Francisco Pelsert, who got shipwrecked off the coast of Australia in 1629. And about 150 years later, they were pretty well known throughout Europe. And by 1791, they had brought those things over to London, England.

Here's the fact of the podcast for me, Chuck. Okay. Can I take this one to you? Or should I tee you up? No, double up, baby. So the name kangaroo, the word, as far as anyone is able

to say. We don't know for sure. It's apparently an aboriginal word for I don't know. Isn't that awesome? I don't know. That's pretty funny. It is.

Here's the deal, though, is kangaroos are the only large mammals to hop. And that's basically as like they're, you know, bunnies will hop a little bit, but the kangaroo moves around primarily by hopping. And I guess you wouldn't consider a bunny a large mammal anyway. Here's the deal, if you go back to 25 million years ago and look at

the fossil record, they didn't hop because Australia was a rainforest at the time. So those kangaroos were climbing around for a long, long time. Yeah. So they actually developed what ends up helping them hop long before they actually started to hop. We call that the fourth toe. If you look at a kangaroo's foot,

You can see how it's hopping and Chuck, I think I've kind of set us up for an ab break and we're going to come back and finally talk about how kangaroos hop. What do you think? All right, let's do it.

Another podcast from some SNL late night comedy guy, not quite. On humor me with Robert Smigel and friends, me and hilarious guests from Bob Odenkirk to David Letterman help make you funnier. This week my guests, SNL's Mikey Day and head writer, Streeter Seidel, help an acapella

a band with their between songs banter where does your group perform with some retirement homes. Those people are starving for banter listen to humor me with Roberts Michael and friends on the I heart radio at apple

podcasts or wherever you get your podcast. Life throws hurdles big and small the question is how do you conquer them on hurdle with Emily a body we sit down with the most inspiring women in sports and wellness