Could You Train a Dinosaur? Science Says… Maybe!

Could dinosaurs be the next great delivery workers, pest control experts, or even search-and-rescue heroes? In this episode of Wildly Curious, Katy Reiss and Laura Fawks Lapole take a deep dive into the wild world of dinosaur training—imagining what it would take to turn prehistoric creatures into modern-day workers. From speedy compies delivering packages through city streets to armored Borealopelta stopping high-speed car chases, they explore the science behind animal training, intelligence, and behavior.

Packed with humor, science, and the ultimate “what if” scenarios, this episode is a must-listen for dinosaur lovers, science buffs, and anyone who’s ever wondered: Could you actually train a dinosaur?

Transcript

Laura: [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Wildly Curious. A podcast that tells you everything you need to know about nature, and probably more than you wanted to know.

I'm Laura.

Katy: And I'm Katy, and oh my gosh, 

Laura: It's finally here. 

Katy: It is here. So if you guys listened to our last full episode, , we did Dinosaurs just in general which I'd been waiting so long to do. Why we waited so long? I don't know to talk about them but now, we gave you guys a teaser then last week at the end of the Cosmic Critter episode for what this was going to be.

And so today, this is another part of the series of the Could You, series that we've done through all of the seasons.

And it's Could You Train That? And we're talking about dinosaurs. Could, what could you train that? So Laura and I are each going to talk about a dinosaur and then what we would slash could train it for.

Laura: Which I'm, yeah, it's gonna be good. It's gonna be good. I mean, the could use and the would use and whatever, like.

Katy: are always [00:01:00] ridiculous. Yeah. But this one in particular I'm so excited for. However, however

Laura: They're always based in science, though,

Katy: they are, they are, they are.

Laura: you know, this is the best part of science where if you take it just a little bit too far,

Katy: course.

yeah.

of course. But, but I will say, I've been texting Laura all week because I think I have two bits of nature news that I am.

I think, 

Laura: teasing me all week. Oh, you're

not gonna believe this! 

Katy: Yes, because you're not, you're not going to believe it. So I have two, two things that are updates to previous episodes that we've actually done

Laura: Alright.

Katy: for our nature news.

So this first one is just a pure update. The second one is an update with clarification with nature news with an extra update. So it's like layered. All right. So here's the first update. All right. So in 

Laura: one that's not gonna blow my mind as much?

Katy: Oh no, no, it is. I think it is not that this first one is just Interesting. So in our freshwater freaks [00:02:00] episode, we talked about how the aeropima scales are essentially the same strength as reinforced steel.

Laura: Yes. More than that. They were higher than 

Katy: higher. Yeah. And then we brought up Oh my gosh, how would you fillet a fish like 

Laura: Yes, we did.

Katy: I got the answer. So I reached out to the gar guy himself, Dr. Solomon David of the university of Minnesota for some answers. Follow him on social media, he's pretty much on everything, if you guys don't already, Dr.

Solomon David. If you don't, he's a great guy. All the Garfax and all kinds of interesting things that you can think of. 

Laura: We also talked about Gar in that episode.

Katy: Yeah, yep, so make sure you guys follow him. But, he said, typically, you use a hatchet or a machete to filet the fish. 

Laura: Well, duh. Qua 

Katy: go to a home, a family home barbecue, and you have to machete, yeah, machete your, your dinner.

So, so I thought that was funny, because I was like, okay, cool, because yeah, you can't use a knife, but he's , no, you literally have [00:03:00] to use like a hatchet. Or a machete to get through either a gar or arapaima. Yeah.

Laura: That's

Katy: So and that's, that's, so that's a legitimate answer to what we were wondering.

So that's update one. The second one, this is where it's cool. So we, let's go back to then our bioluminescence episode from last season.

Alright? So I do think we need to clarify one thing first before I get into the nature news. So, bioluminescence versus biofluorescence.

Laura: of bring up for a second.

Katy: Yeah, for a split second. Bioluminescence is what primarily we talked about.

And that's when the organism produces its own light through a chemical reaction or other various reactions. Fireflies, the deep sea anglerfish that we talked about. So it's light that is generated inside their bodies that,

Laura: Through chemical processes.

Katy: a chemical process, yeah, and it doesn't need an external light source.

That's kind of the whole point of it.

Laura: Right. 

Katy: What we didn't [00:04:00] talk much about, though, was the biofluorescence, alright? That's the other part of this. And it's when an organism absorbs light, and then can re emit it as a different color, 

Laura: Dude, I, if you are about to tell me,

Katy: Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, just wait, wait, wait, wait.

Pause, pause, pause. So, it needs an external light source like the sunlight or UV light to, to glow. And it's like scorpions, neon corals, some sharks, frogs, things like 

Laura: many things biofluoresce.

Katy: Yeah, yeah. However, this is where the nature news comes in. In a groundbreaking discovery recently, like literally last week, scientists, that's what February of 2025 scientists have found that certain species of birds of paradise exhibit a unique form of bio fluorescence.

So in the Journal of the Royal Society Open Science, just literally like I said last week, it was published that researchers examined prepared specimens housed at the American Museum of Natural [00:05:00] History and found evidence of biofluorescence in 37 of 45 Birds of Paradise species,

which is a lot. So it's pretty much all of them do.

So one of the researchers, Renee Martin, said that what they're doing, the birds are, is taking this UV color, which Like they can't necessarily see

and then they readmit it out of wavelength that is actually visible to their eyes So they can't obviously can't see that wavelength coming in but they've evolved in such a way that they can then Push like that color back out from their body and it ends up being like a bright green Or like a green yellow 

Laura: Ooh. Wait, is that the No, cause that's a different bird that does like the Like, puts up its Yeah,

Katy: all black.

Laura: Yeah, all black but with green

Like it

has like a Oh, okay, okay,

Katy: This is that's that that's one 

Laura: they glowed before. 

Katy: Yeah, we didn't know it. Yeah, we didn't know it bioflouresced.

Laura: looks like Wooo,

Katy: Yeah, yeah And so [00:06:00] it talks about in that art or in this research and everything That that one that is so the one that's really really black with like the blue

Like that is like ultra ultra black.

No, it freaking lights up and so to right and so to the bird So they're taking in UV light. We can't see it. But

whenever they x I don't, export it.

Laura: that they've got,

Katy: Yeah, whenever they send it off, the bird, they put it off in such a way that other birds of paradise can see it.

Which is 

Laura: So it's literally just a neon sign of do me.

Katy: No, that's literally what it is. Literally what it is.

Laura: That's really cool.

Katy: But here's where I'm like, ah, all right.

So I bring, I bring all of this up because in that episode I had made a comment and while yes, like it's really cool nature news, the birds of paradise glow and everything in that episode. [00:07:00] I said, and I made a comment of how much cooler bats would be if they glowed.

They do.

They, yes, right. So they do. So a study recently came out in 2024 and early 2024 from the national university of Mexico and university of Texas hook them, found that certain bat species, such as the Mexican free tailed bat that we have here in Texas, exhibit biofluorescence. When

Laura: cool.

Katy: exposed to UV light, the bristly hairs on their toes emit a bright turquoise and blue glow.

Yes, so this phenomenon was first observed by researchers using UV fluorescent powder to track bats, leading to the unexpected discovery, of their glowing toe bristles.

Laura: Toes.

Katy: Just the toe bristles. The exact 

Laura: light is only done So UV light only exists during the [00:08:00] daytime, right? It's

from the sun. 

Katy: So they're basically charging during the day.

Laura: While they're sleeping,

their toes are charging.

Because they're facing towards the sun. That is 

Katy: To where they come out at night and it's just like glowing toe hairs. Just toe hairs. Now I knew what's in, right? Now I, I did know, so whenever you talk about bats, alright? Especially here in the United States. We have the white nosed bat syndrome.

And, I know that that fungus, biofluorescent, has a biofluorescent. So you can go in with a UV light in caves. And if you see all their little heads, that's how a lot of scientists would be like, This population has white nosed bat syndrome. We need to, either quarantine it off, whatever kind of thing.

And so, that, and then as again, they were tracking these bats, started putting UV powder on them, then they were like, Hang on a second. That's when they realized they're a little, they already have built in UV. And,

Laura: crazy tack. Wait, but is it [00:09:00] visible to the human eye?

Katy: no. Again, again, it's one of those things that's , only visible 

Laura: a lot of the biofluorescence we can see,

but not all of it. 

Katy: Yeah, but yeah, so this one, unfortunately not, and they don't know the exact purpose of the biofluorescence, in bats.

Laura: Twinkle

Katy: No, right? That's how they find a mate.

Laura: That's also their new name.

Katy: Twinkle toes.

Laura: no more Mexican free tailed bat. The

Katy: Twinkle toe bat. So, scientists think that it may play a role, obviously, in some form of communication, because I guess that's just the default of, we don't know what else it's gonna do, I guess it's gonna be communicate, possibly aiding in mate attraction, social signaling of some sort.

Who knows?

Laura: they're just,

Katy: Like,

Laura: well I'm just imagining

Katy: fly 

Laura: sign. Yeah, but like they're doing sign with their little feet. Um, or like, they're just flicking each other off, but it's visible to each other during the dialogue. You know, one buzzes by the other one too

close and he's Pee wee! And they're like,

Katy: Just one, one, glowing toe. [00:10:00] 

Laura: one glowing toe.

Katy: one glowing toe. Just the toe bristles 

Laura: That'd be so cute. Did I just get flicked off by a bat? Like, just

Katy: Yeah, you did. You need a UV light to see it though. But you 

Laura: ha ha! Ha ha ha

ha 

Katy: So anyway, that's why I was teasing Laura all week, cause as soon as I, as soon as I saw the birds thing, and then I, and that's the one, the story that I was reading, it said something about and recently discovered bats, I was like, No!

Did I miss that? And so I started Googling, yeah, sure enough, I missed 

Laura: like, right, we know that some mammals It doesn't surprise I bet so much more it does than we

Katy: Oh, heck yeah. Yeah, that we just can't see.

Laura: Because I thought you were gonna tell me what I just found out. Is that squirrel skulls, specifically their bones, biofluoresce pink.

Katy: Why?

Laura: Don't know.

Katy: So weird.

Laura: Like, different than anything else we've ever, like,

Squirrel bones are pink. 

Katy: [00:11:00] squirrel is cooler than a live squirrel? 

Laura: Kinda. It

just depends on, like, 

Katy: or does it just biofluorescent so much? They just have this pink aura about them. 

Laura: Yeah, yeah, from the bones, just,

Katy: Yeah. Yeah. They're just so razzed up. They're just glowing from the inside.

Laura: that's, it's, the stress influences their bones. Let's just.

Katy: Oh goodness. So anyway, so yeah, you got a machete and air Pima and then toe bristles.

Laura: Twinkletoes.

Katy: Twinkle toes there. Yeah. That's some of the, the most exciting nature news I think I've had, except for aliens. Whenever they finally found out they were real.

Laura: Except for aliens.

Katy: Oh, he's going to go back. Aliens guys. But I will say twinkling toe, toe, back toes, hands down the coolest thing.

And again, I even said, bats would be so much cooler. Listen guys, bats are still one of 

Laura: I knew it. 

Katy: Favorite freaking [00:12:00] animals man. They're just so cool. And people hate them for, for no reason. So awesome. Not now, I've already gone down to Austin to see him coming out, out of the, on the Congress bridge this summer, Luke and I have so many reminders set up on my phone because the largest bat colony on the planet is here in Texas and you can get tickets.

Yeah. Well, yeah. Outside of the, outside of the city of San Antonio, I 

Laura: Oh, say, 

Katy: Yeah, San Antonio. And so, my son and I, we're gonna go down and see it 

Laura: you need U. V. E. torches or

Katy: Right? Right? A UV torch to be like, look at all their twinkling toes!

Like, I don't, their twinkling toes are amazing! So yeah, bats just got way cooler. Now I want I keep talking about how I want a bat tattoo. Now, I gotta do it You know how you can do the ink that's you can see it under the blacklight? Totally adding that to their toes. I'm gonna I'm gonna add I'm just gonna add little toe bristles.

Laura: toes. 

Katy: And no one [00:13:00] Yeah, no one will freaking get it. I'll just be like I mean, I don't go to clubs, I'm 

Laura: but you go. I

was just gonna say, here's what would happen, and this is when people would find out's, when Katy goes to laser bowling

Katy: was gonna say Cause I don't go to clubs, I'm 

Laura: you're not gloving. 

Katy: don't go 

Laura: go to

laser bowling

with all Luke and his friends in high school and like just

glowing bat tattoo

Katy: Why does a bat's toe hair glow? Listen, kids. Did you 

Laura: Let me school you right now 

Katy: Yeah, right. And then I throw a strike. Yeah. Yeah. I'm just Mom out. Just done.

I, I Listen. If that happened, I would just be, I would retire from being 

Laura: the height yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Katy: you're on your own forever now, kid. That's, I peaked right then. I'm like, that's it. Oh,

Laura: get on to [00:14:00] dinosaurs. 

Katy: we need to talk dinosaurs.

Because listen, as awesome as toe bristles are, of toes, twinkle toes, bats are, Gosh, I am so excited for this.

So like we said, this is part of the, could you, whatever we've had. Could you ride that? Could you fight that? Could you be that? Could you measure it? All these could use, could you train that is now this one. And Laura and I, we each have three dinosaurs. We're going to say what the dinosaur is, what we could train them for and then kind of break it down.

We have a different variation of how we're going to, how we're going to break it down here. 

Laura: Yeah, because we went into this one blind guys. We don't know what each other have and we didn't talk about the structure. We just said choose a dino and what would they do and why.

Katy: I'm so excited. Okay.

Laura: I'm pretty excited too. I think you're gonna laugh.

Katy: I, oh, this is going to be a good episode. All right. So the first one I'll go ahead and I'll start. So this is going to be the compso not the guests or the copies. However you 

Laura: I have co Taylor's failed us.

Katy: [00:15:00] Taylor copies. That's okay. That's okay.

I did say I was like, because there's no way, there's no way that we 

Laura: That would be freaking crazy.

Katy: thing.

Yeah. All right. Commonly known as Compies, if you guys think reference here, , the third Jurassic Park movie and then Yeah, the third one at the beginning,

Laura: When they eat the toddler.

Katy: then when they eat the toddler, and then later on they end up following the kid with Dr.

Grant and the van and stuff like that, you're like, oh, compies! They're super, super tiny. They're very agile theropod dinosaurs that lived during the late Jurassic period, so around 150 million years ago. These dinosaurs are roughly the size of a turkey, if not a little bit smaller. 

Measuring no more than about three feet or one meter in length, and weighing only about six pounds.

Despite their small size, they are remarkably fast and nimble, making them one of the more agile dinosaurs of their time. Their fossils suggest that compies were definitely social animals, often found in groups and likely ran in packs. They are believed to have [00:16:00] been scavengers and probably also hunters of small animals, feeding on a diet that included insects, small vertebrates, possibly plant materials if they needed to.

They had sharp teeth, however, even though they were sharp, they weren't specialized for tearing through large prey as some larger theropods.

Again, more so for, suited for catching and consuming smaller animals.

Laura: Yeah. Their jaw muscles, their muzzles were really slender. They didn't have the jaw power.

It was just sharp. 

Katy: Yeah, very, yeah, yeah, which again points back to they were probably more scavengers than anything because it's already dead, don't need much jaw strength to fight anything if it's dead. Compies were a member of the theropod group, like I said, which includes some of the other well known dinosaurs such as the T Rex, Velociraptor, and the such.

Laura: While other theropods, compies had bipedal locomotion. Go back to our first, dinosaur episode two weeks ago, and you'll hear a little bit more about that. Meaning that they walked on two legs, which contributed to their [00:17:00] speed and agility. Do you have any other natural history to add? 

Just a little, I guess if you didn't see Jurassic Park, and you don't have the opportunity to look up what they look like, Katy said like the size they were. The length is a little misleading because

Laura: there's so much tail. They're only a foot tall, but long because of that tail. And then, like Katy said, originally people thought they were probably only chicken size. But then they realize, actually, it's probably more like a turkey, so between 6 to 12 pounds. And they have a really long neck,

which comes into play later for me. 

 Which, it's very bendy and slender. And they have really tiny forearms, kind of picture the T Rex. And really strong back legs.

They're one of the smallest known dinosaurs ever.

And I found that I didn't find the scavenger thing, actually. I found that they thought that they were probably most likely insect and lizard eaters.

Katy: Oh, interesting.

Laura: Because, and they found, at first they weren't sure what this was, but in a [00:18:00] fossil, they know they were carnivores.

At least,

sometimes. 

Katy: Yeah, most of the time.

Laura: they, because they found a lizard skeleton inside the ribcage of

Katy: Oh, cool. 

Laura: Which was like a species they'd never even found before, so they found that inside the belly. Think, they're so quick. Imagine like a bird, , you know,

just snapping up stuff.

Katy: Yeah. It is very like, like 

Laura: Long, right, really long, like a crane. I

just picture them very much like a

Katy: yes, yes, very much so. Okay, so, what would I train them to do then? I would train and rent them out to Amazon for city urban delivery services. So, wouldn't it be cute? So, they're training focus, I broke it 

Laura: Little compy at the door. 

Katy: No, right. I mean, terrifying, but also like,

Laura: You'd have to have some good insurance on your compys because I

think people would just keep them. Come on in! 

Katy: Got you. [00:19:00] All right. So training focus for them would be on their speed of navigation, following routes and identifying locations and efficiencies. So how are we going to accomplish this task? One, Basic training and commands. All right. We're going to start with the basics here.

So imagine trying to get a group of tiny speedy dinosaurs to follow your commands in the middle of a bustling city. What could possibly go wrong other than everything? Because Cause you got to remember too, we said Turkey, so again, think modern birds, 

Laura: not thick like a turkey.

Slender. Yeah. 

Katy: Yeah.

Laura: Tiny little ostriches. To ostriches the size of a turkey.

Katy: Yes, yes. So of course we'd use positive reinforcement to train our compies. 

Laura: Gonna hurt them. yeah, 

Katy: Zap them. That's what they do. So what? They have the little

shock stick thing like the cattle prodders. No, positive reinforcement because that has been proven to work out better in the long term than negative [00:20:00] reinforcement.

 Basically, we would send them to, a compy camp for, training. Like, okay, so remember we talked about in the Cosmic Critter episodes how, they would take stray dogs and cats and then they would pick the best of the best? That would have to be the same situation because you would have to figure out, 

Laura: Like a, like a, like a guide dog program.

Right? Only the best 

Katy: only the best.

So it would be, , go, stop, drop.

Laura: to bypass the Amazon part. You're gonna start your own fleet business. DHL or whatever. You know what I mean? Somebody who's only involved in the shipping part. Or the delivery

part.

Cause I think you can branch away and then you don't have to share anything with them.

Katy: Right, yeah, just take more profit for myself because it's freaking compies. That'd be amazing. 

Laura: You need to come up with a good slogan.

Katy: Do I as you're talking I will find a slogan

Laura: what I was thinking. Yeah,

Katy: so The idea is simple, of course for training compies love food and compies love [00:21:00] teamwork So we give them a tasty treat every time they follow a command

Sit.

Hot dog. Like, sit. Here's a hot dog. Sit. Here's a hot dog. I mean, pretty, pretty easy. The real trick, though, is harnessing those social instincts. Compies were pack animals, of what we're guessing. Think of it as a dino group project. Instead of, barking at orders at them like a drill sergeant, we'd have to make it, a cooperative effort.

Because if you think about, if you're training anything that works in groups, it's very much Training the pack.

Laura: Well, plus, you, your business will be very limited to the size of packages if

Katy: Oh yeah,

Laura: together. 

Katy: right? No, exactly.

Laura: uh, uh, a six pound animal,

that's half the size of my cat.

Katy: Yeah. That's half the size of my

Laura: So like, I, I don't know what size boxes they're gonna be sending.

Katy: Right?

Laura: you have it figured out, what's the harness that you, like, how

Katy: Oh, hold on, hold on. Yeah, we're getting there, we're getting there.

So, the second step, after we do basic commands with them, we pick out the best ones, and we're [00:22:00] like, Alright, these guys are the ones that are gonna work out best so far. We're gonna have to then, map out the routes, and then start getting them used to like, Again, think of a driving test.

You know what I mean? Again, Camp, Camp Compy Part 2, would be like, miniature city, we'll have everything set up, and

Laura: them all on leads, like a dog walker,

Katy: Right, and just get them,

Laura: take them on the route.

Katy: right, right, get them, get them going. We'll outfit the compys with tiny headsets that will provide real time video feedback and then 

Laura: Those cat collars that they have, you know

Katy: I mean because

Laura: the little 

Katy: Exactly, because that way we could see, but then we could also communicate.

Yeah, but we could also communicate with them for signals to be like, No, drop that child. Don't eat his leg. You know, things like that. And then we'd have to, have to re 

Laura: my gosh. You don't

have to be paying so much money in insurance. 

Yeah, I know, I'll start a [00:23:00] delivery business, yeah, with bobcats. You know what I mean? Like, people, you could, the liability

Katy: Right, right, and compies like bobcats for the most part want to stay away from people whereas compies have actively, at least in movie portrayals, they have actively sought to eat things, small children, dogs, things like that. So anyway, so.

Laura: like if you guys have ever seen, yeah, like a flock of chickens attacking something, it's terrifying.

Katy: No, it really is. It really is. I mean, it's not as bad as, Canadian geese, but, I mean,

birds are birds. So, once they've mastered the basics, we move into real world city streets. With their headsets, compies are essentially their own navigators, equipped to avoid traffic, hopefully dodge pedestrians, and go ahead and do their delivery route.

 The third part, then, would have to be, training them for that collective, group, and making sure that they understand the collective. So, let's say if I, you have a string of, ten copies, You know what I mean? And by Compy 2, the delivery's already made.

Everybody's gonna get [00:24:00] a treat. So really, the 10th Compy probably, you know, makes out more than anybody because they're probably not gonna have to do much. But they're gonna get a treat every time. But again, it's like , the cooperative effort. As far as the packages go, it would either need to be by mouth or by harness because they would have to be smaller packages.

But think of it as like an 

Laura: I was just thinking like an Iditarod situation. Where you've got a pack of compies all hooked up to a sledge. And they're

Katy: And just pulling it. 

Laura: Pulling a big box. Ha ha

Katy: so cute.

Laura: just, 

Katy: Like, yeah, 

Laura: Just running really fast.

Katy: Right? Yeah, so, and maybe that's it. Maybe cause I was thinking more of you think of a big city and you think of people on bikes. Like, you know what I mean? That are 

Laura: Yeah, I'm not thinking anything too big because in New York City it's not like you're gonna deliver a giant A package to somebody's

Katy: A couch.

Yeah, 

Laura: But, but, but, you know,

you 

Katy: the sled 

Laura: could go bigger if they had a sledge.

Katy: you have 

Laura: like a skateboard. You know? [00:25:00] like a 

Katy: compies, yeah, it doesn't even need to be big. Just like skateboard size. 

Laura: With wheels, something with wheels.

Katy: Yes, they could just, they could just pull.

Laura: Either that or you, or some type of, I just pictured, you know, they have those, those things for dogs that lose their legs, right? Okay, no listen, reverse it. So essentially, they have a dolly, under their tiny little arms, and they're just pushing a dolly really fast.

Just it'd be so cute. Like a little teeny one, like a,

foot tall. But,

but helps 

Katy: their legs are just,

Laura: Yeah.

Work smarter, not harder. They're not hurting their little bodies

or their backs. They're pushing a dolly. 

Katy: they're pushing it tall.

Laura: And they don't even have to hold it because it's a rig, right?

Katy: Right? 

Laura: over to their, you know, 

Katy: But it's going to look like they're pushing 

Laura: Right, right, right.

They're just 

Katy: Just compies running through the whole thing. So as far as logistics [00:26:00] then go running this urban delivery service, besides the high insurance premiums on all of this,

Laura: I was gonna say like Why? I'm just trying to think of the benefits here of why a compy and not

Katy: because they're small, you, because they are small, because you figure you 

Laura: up traffic. 

Katy: yeah, trap cut through traffic, cut through pedestrians, jump over. I mean, they're very agile. They could jump up high. You know what I mean? Go under 

Laura: go up someone's fire escape. Just

ding ding ding ding ding at the

window. 

Katy: then done. Or go under chain link fences, the possibilities of something that tiny, yeah, would be super 

Laura: Well, what it also reminds me 

of is, 

Robin Hood men in tights. They had the Fennec Fox messages. They like had 

it was a tiny little Fennec Fox, it was fox messengers. Same thing,

same situa

Katy: Yes. the postal you could literally just retrofit the postal service to be compies and it'd probably be faster. 100

I,

I guarantee it. Yeah, I guarantee it would be faster with compies. [00:27:00] Again, minus you'd have to make sure that they would be fed enough to not nibble on a toddler's leg, as a running through the city. But stuff 

Laura: like a rat that they find and get poisoned or

Katy: or a dog or all the 

Laura: that's a little big. 

Katy: stray cats. The only challenges that I would really say see again Rather than the urban hazards of trying to avoid hazards like open manhole covers. 

Laura: Ha! 

Katy: Aggressive street dogs and other urban obstacles would be weather so like You know what? I mean? Because if it's 

Laura: maybe not New York City, maybe someplace like L. A.

Where it's, , more predictable weather. 

I'm so excited to continue on your train, because since I have them

Katy: Yeah, that's pretty much it. We're just making sure that It's a, it's Compy Delivery Service. That's, that was my first dinosaur of Crazy Train. That would be Compys for an Urban Delivery Service.

Laura: this is so perfect, because although we have the same dinosaur, it's not raining on my parade. Because, like Katy and I [00:28:00] always do, our best ideas come through collaboration. And I am quick on your heels of what's gonna happen to all your failed compies from your program. They're gonna come to me, because I'm gonna have compie critter control.

Katy: Oh my gosh. 

Laura: it's a pest control service.

For the compies who don't listen to directions well, but are more in tune with their instincts, which is just elimination, then, so, all I need to do is training for recall. What I want is pest control. I would have a small pack that you could hire for large scale pest control jobs in an urban setting.

So, I'm just the other half of the business.

They would be trained to kill, but not necessarily eat what they find because I'd be

Katy: They would get 

Laura: worried about chemicals and stuff like

Katy: Well, and they get so full so fast.

Laura: right. I just need them. So, it's basically the same concept as a rat terrier that they had back in the day.

They would send in the dogs, the dogs would catch the rats and you'd get paid. So, [00:29:00] same thing. My little compies are going into apartment buildings. Old, condemned buildings, 

Katy: Yeah. 

Laura: they're perfect for this for two reasons. Their speed and their agility. So the agility is obvious, they're bendable, slinky,

like Kitty was saying, they can get in places because of their size. But I just wanted to talk about their speed a little bit too. They found that, like a lot of the theropods, that Compies had mostly hollow bones, so they're very light. Their overall shape, long tail which acted as a counterbalance, basically is leading scientists to believe that they were the fastest dinosaur.

 Estimates range that they ran from 25 to 40 miles per hour.

Which, just in some context, an ostrich can run at 35 and they're the fastest.

Katy: Okay. Again though, again though, imagine in your situation or mine, imagine that package or going to get those rats at 40 miles an hour,

Laura: Pew! 

Katy: but [00:30:00] yeah, like zigzagging through people and stuff like, dude, it'd be so 

Laura: Well, and just right, go in, clear the building, done.

And their neck is long and flexible, which is perfect to get in all the hidey holes that rats would be trying to find, and they're perfect for sneaking in. And they have really long legs in relation to their body with three toes, very much like an ostrich, so clearly their body was made for running.

But because of that small head with the really sharp teeth, it's, like scientists said, they think that they just ate bugs and small vertebrates, which is fine, because like I said, I don't need them to

devour, right? I just need them to grab that rat by the back of the neck, shake it to break its neck, and then continue on.

Katy: I just need you guys to break its neck and then you can move on.

Laura: Or bring it back, well, okay, I guess I would have to train,

Katy: Recall. 

Laura: bring it back, because I need to collect the carcasses, otherwise people are not going to be pleased with that.

Katy: You're just, but

Laura: We come in, clear it, and leave the bodies, 

Katy: that job though. You just have to sit on the floor with a garbage bag. You buy sit there, scroll [00:31:00] on your phone 

Laura: That's, I would be, 

Katy: and then just be like, all right, cool. And then just drop it, drop it. And he just 

it in 

Laura: if I, and then I would give it, you know, if I don't see a compie after 20 minutes, I blow a whistle, job done.

Like, we're clear. We're clearing, we bring them back, donezo. So, copy critter control. Therefore all, you're failed. Yours needs to be a little bit more heavily trained.

Mine are just go kill it and come bring it back.

Katy: yeah, I wonder,

Laura: They're just, and I, I think it would be a better pest control service than something like a dog or

Katy: oh heck 

Laura: of the speed and agility here.

Katy: oh yeah,

Laura: they'd just be able to function in a building like that better than a dog and a cat.

Katy: mm hmm. So I was just looking this up too, because I was like, all right, how would, how would they find them? Paleontologists and scientists believe that combis actually had a relatively good sense of smell, especially compared to other dinosaurs, as evidenced by the size of the olfactory [00:32:00] bulb in the brain, which is responsible for processing scent.

So that would be like, yeah, because they're saying , they think T Rexes actually had an amazing sense of smell, which would make sense if their eyesight wasn't all that 

Laura: Right, and if they are scavengers, they're smelling for dead

Katy: Exactly, exactly. And so that would be, so the compies, kind of the same thing, compared to their size, it actually shows that part of their brain is decently developed, so, yeah, sense of smell, find it, like you said, just snap its neck and bring it back, all righty. My next one I'm gonna talk about the, the OSAs or the Pterodactyls,

Laura: okay. Not a dino.

Katy: not a dinosaur, Correct. 

Laura: it's 

Katy: But 

Laura: Just from our last

Katy: it is, yeah. Not a D note drink. But I did wanna talk about these. I was like, perfect.

Laura: Totally.

Katy: All right, so pterodactyls, pterosaurs, commonly known as pterodactyls, like I said, are, were flying reptiles during the Mesozoic era alongside dinosaurs, with wingspans [00:33:00] ranging from the size of a small bird to the mass of, how do you say that?

Cacalocidae? I don't know. They're huge.

Laura: the Quetzalcoatlus or whatever that

Katy: Yeah, queso, yeah.

Laura: that thing was huge.

Katy: They're a wingspan of 33 feet or 10 meters.

Which is insane. Pterosaurs, yeah, they were definitely the airborne giants of the time. Again, that's a reptile. That's a frickin 

Laura: I literally cannot. I would have a heart attack if I saw

Katy: huge reptile. That's so 

Laura: Their beak was ,

almost that long too. , it

was huge. Just spear you and

No, it's too bird like.

Katy: Two birds one. So despite often being confused with dinosaurs, like we said, they are close relatives, but definitely not a dinosaur.

Pterosaurs had bat like wings formed by a membrane of skin stretched between their elongated forefingers and the body. They were excellent flyers, capable of gliding and soaring for long distances, which would make them the perfect candidates for me training them to be a flying drone show [00:34:00] replacement.

So So

Laura: did they fly at night?

Katy: Uh, they are now. Oh, okay. so, so, whether they want to or not, yeah. I just trained freaking compies to do an urban delivery service, Laura. We're not talking about practicalities here. So, so, so, again, we're not training these guys to deliver packages. Cause you, could you imagine a dinosaur,

Laura: delivery. Yeah, it's just the stork. Stork situation, right? They're dropping babies.

Katy: 33 foot wingspan, just reptile dropping off your baby. 

Laura: It's like an aircraft carrier, but it's a reptile. Just, open

up and unload them. 

Katy: forget coming home from the hospital. And all the hazards of driving in a car. Trust us, we are reptiles with your new baby.[00:35:00] 

Laura: That funny. foot wingspan, just, whoosh, 

two at a time. Twins is not a problem. 

Katy: quadruplets, freak, 

like, God. They could carry, he could carry, he could carry so many babies, like. 

Laura: So

That's another unit of measurement. How many babies a pterosaur can carry.

Katy: many, so many babies. Oh, 

Laura: sorry, drunchos. Drunchos, not 

Katy: you don't even 

Laura: he thought the insurance was bad for the copies. you can't even imagine the

Katy: My whole thing shows that I hate insurance companies, essentially. So, so, so this time, again, they're not delivering packages. They're focusing on their [00:36:00] true aerial potential. Which is creating spectacular drone shows.

So imagine thousands of pterosaurs flying in intricate formations. And the night sky with dazzling synchronized displays like lit up and everything. 

Laura: I just, you're forcing, you're forcing a daytime animal to go out completely blind, covered in lights, like just the amount of training required so they didn't all crash and die. You would have gone through so many pterosaurs to get to that point. Like. Space exploration all over again. Listen, there was pterosaurs

that, they crawled before you could walk, you know, like. 

Katy: goodness. But I mean, you got to start somewhere. I mean, we start this story with cats, you know, in space. And then, uh, just, [00:37:00] 

Laura: Oh, I know, you'll just buy them like night vision goggles.

Strap them on their 

Katy: I don't even know how good their vision really is. Like, cause we don't 

Laura: But surely in daytime, probably.

Katy: Hold on, wait, wait, wait. Let's look this up. Hold on, wait. 

Laura: I'm sure they have no How would you ever tell such a thing? From the anatomy.

Katy: I don't think, I don't 

Laura: the fossil. Probably just most educated guesses. I just can't think of a reptile. Like a flying in the night time? I mean, some

Katy: So it actually does say some pterosaurs were nocturnal, including the Anargothonid pterosaur and the Ramaphoricus.

So there you go. But let's see how big those ones, those two were.

Laura: feel like you need medium sized. Or small.

Katy: Yeah, it says that they were a little bit bigger than modern birds. That's not really a

Laura: Well, you could have thousands then.

Katy: Yeah, thousands of them. I mean, you have thousands of, thousands [00:38:00] of drones. So, first task, then, would be aerial coordination. Second task would be getting them used to the lighting and effects. 

Laura: gosh, yeah. There's just, you quickly find out whether or not they were subject to seizures. 

Katy: Yeah, right? Right? So, training pterosaurs for this task would involve a combination of positive reinforcement and repetition, of course. Again, think of training a pigeon today. Obviously a little more complex than that. But, imagine fying a pigeon at night. The training that would have to go into that.

It would be crazy. Interesting. So start with simple formations, begin with easy slow moving formation like loops and zigzags and gradually build up to more complex patterns like swirling spirals and interlocking shapes. We would use sound cues using like different auditory cues that we can train the pterosaurs to fly in sync with music or lighting cues similar to how drone shows work today.

So okay, again, imagine Think of the best movie composer ever, John Williams, right? [00:39:00] He's done the Star Wars, the Jurassic Parks, like so much. So imagine that soundtrack, but it's pterosaurs lit up flying 

Laura: a bunch of little pea trees is all I'm picturing.

Katy: right? Would be amazing. Yeah, it would be amazing.

Laura: And so cool.

Katy: So the logistics of it, obviously scale of operation, once we've perfected the training, we can scale up operations for massive shows depending on how well they do

citywide drone,

right?

Yeah, way better. So imagine citywide drone shows replaced with Terrasaur performance during major events or celebrations. 

Training management, and of course, safety protocols, because we need probably some safety barriers to ensure they don't crash into the audience or other performance. But, again, think of, the things that happen in drone shows nowadays. They've had some pretty big instances 

Laura: Oh, for sure.

Katy: , So yeah, so again, some challenges that we would face, weather conditions again, but again, you would still face the weather conditions with the drone show. , and then again, I did bring up the nighttime flying that [00:40:00] primarily,

Laura: longer a problem. 

Katy: we're just gonna, we're gonna bypass that. But then again, safeties, make sure that they're well rested and well fed so they don't get distracted mid performance.

, and, give in to their natural hunting instincts and take off a small child or a Katy sized adult. So,

Laura: Katy just assumes that all dinosaurs eat humans. All dinosaurs eat humans.

Katy: I mean, eventually, I'm sure they would get used to it, but a lot of the pterosaurs were, they're reptiles. They're gonna be, being like, snack, bite sized, so. So, yeah, pterosaurs, drone 

Laura: would be a really cool drone show.

I've never even seen a drone show.

Katy: There's, they have some around DFW here, quite a, quite a bit. They're pretty 

Laura: That's cool. They definitely are way more environmentally friendly than the fireworks even though I

do love fireworks so much

Katy: Me too, yeah.

Laura: All right next one so this one was inspired by There is a book. I can't believe you won't know this and Do you remember there is a whole series of [00:41:00] books called dinotopia?

Katy: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Laura: Okay If you guys listeners out there if you have not ever read a dinotopia book or looked at really because it's art You must go

out right now, and it is incredible artwork,

and it is geared towards children But anyone can enjoy it, and it's just like this episode where

it's take science, but then Take it to the next level like what if dinosaurs lived alongside of people

which it's so and the art is 

just incredible So I was looking at that book trying to get some inspiration and I found The job that I wanted and then I was like, okay, I just got to find the perfect dinosaur for this job Here comes the dinosaur to you

Katy: Okay.

Laura: This dinosaur is called

Psittacosaurus 

Katy: Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I know this one.

Laura: Lugia

tonensi.

So Psittacosaurus Lugia Psittacosaurus is one of the parrot lizards

Katy: Mm hmm.

Laura: and [00:42:00] Those that genre the genus is one of the best known dino genre with hundreds of spe hundreds of individuals found in li different life stages, some with skin, I mean, they know, everything

about Psittacosaurus dinosaurs. They've just found so many. So, they were a type of Ceratopsin, which is the same thing as a Triceratops, but instead of the four legs horns, this is, before they ever existed, because these are from the early Cretaceous. It's mostly probably modern day Eastern Asia. They were bipedal, so they stood upright on two legs. So they were beaked, which is what makes all Ceratopsians. Ceratopsians, they have that, and it, literally, they're called a parrot lizard because

Katy: It looks like 

Laura: looks like a parrot, right? It's got a beak, and it's also like a squat, compact

head. Their head is wider than they are long. So It's just square.

They look like they have square heads. 

Katy: it

really does. [00:43:00] Yeah.

Laura: and then they had flared cheekbones. So you just have to look up a picture of this, listeners. It's a weird looking dinosaur.

Like 

Katy: and if you guys go to YouTube, I'll put these pictures of the dinosaurs, as we're talking and doing the video. Search up the Wildly Curious Podcast on YouTube, and then you'll see the video of Laura and I talking, and I'll go ahead and I'll put up all the videos for these two.

Laura: So they were somewhere around, so there's a lot of different species of Psittacosaurus. I'm specifically focusing on Lugia tenensi, In general, this species was around 6 12 feet long and maybe around 3 feet tall. So not a very big dinosaur,

which is good for what I want. And there is wide speculation of how much this dinosaur weighed, but most of what I found said probably around 40 pounds.

So we're talking, medium sized to large dog.

Katy: Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Laura: They bristles on the upper side of their tail, as that was found on a fossil. But, they don't know if it was [00:44:00] bristles, or if it was like webbing in between, something was on it's tail.

Katy: Okay. Yeah. Cause that's the picture I've seen of all of them. And it has that webbing. It's 

Laura: like a tiny fan. 

Katy: yeah, like it has that sale, but it's like just on the tail, which is

Laura: Just the

tail.

And, but some people were like, or maybe it was like porcupine bristles, like who knows.

It's some kind of bristle structure. And small forelimbs, not as small as the compi, more sturdy. They could grasp things with those hands and hold on to them to eat, but only scratch their tummy. And not, they actually couldn't reach their own mouth with their

hand. So pretty limited. So,

like I said, a lot is known about this type of dinosaur. Their brain is actually pretty well known, and they're thought to have an EQ, not to be confused with IQ, but an EQ score about the same as a T Rex, which is only slightly lower than a modern bird. And that's a lot higher than a Triceratops. Right? So Triceratops were pretty young. But these guys were like fairly intelligent. They were herbivores. No teeth. Just [00:45:00] sliced with their beaks. And they actually had stones in either their stomach or gizzard, but since they never found internal organs, they don't know which. Like a bird to help grind those food. And because of the shape of the beak and those stones, leads them to think that they were probably a seed and nut eater. Like a

Which would make sense. Yeah. 

They've also found that they were quadrupedal as babies, and they know that because of the length of bones,

Katy: Huh. 

Laura: and then eventually became upright as adults, which is really interesting and weird. But they were, they were,

it's like,

us, right? We

are quadrupedal as babies. 

Katy: Yeah, but our arms don't get such significantly shorter because we're just like, we don't really need these as we get older. Like, only to scratch our 

Laura: apparently, it's apparently that what they found in these juveniles that they found is that the arms and the legs grow at the same rate for a while and then all of a sudden their arms stop growing and their legs grow rapidly.

So it's just like a,

Katy: Yeah. [00:46:00] Right. So bizarre.

Laura: and they're shown to be, they believe that There's been lots of evidence to show that they were likely gregarious, meaning they were in groups.

Juveniles have been found in groups of different ages. So probably

like a colonial nest situation.

Katy: yeah, yeah.

Laura: Alright. Knowing all of that, what would I have them do? I would have them be nanny dinosaurs.

Katy: Oh 

my gosh. 

Laura: I am looking for any excuse to not have to watch.

Katy: Right?

Laura: Like, I love her. But, it'd be great to be able to send her in the backyard and I can go do some laundry,

Katy: Right, 

Laura: Here come, that's 

Katy: Give her to the 

Laura: comes in. Give her to Psittacosaurus. So I would train a young adult. Okay, that's, we'd start with young adults. Not babies, not a, young adults to act as a nanny for young children. We would have them, they would prevent a toddler from leaving the yard. Protect them from danger, keep them away from dangerous objects, and alert an adult to strangers and any other needs.

Like just make an alarm call if a toddler has a need that's

Katy: Laura, [00:47:00] what I think you just need is a border collie, is I 

Laura: well they were basically like that. Yeah,

Katy: Yeah, you just need, you need to get a, what you're looking for now is just a border collie, 

Laura: I

want well and 

 I think that my goal for this is it's basically a combination between a donkey, because they, basically

donkeys do this for 

Katy: Yeah.

they do. They do. They definitely do.

Laura: and guide dogs. What turns me away from the whole border, so Herding dogs are meant to herd and nip and actively. I want a passive nanny until they're needed and then they step in, right?

Like, they're, they're eating their seeds, keeping an eye on the kids.

Something goes down, they're ready for it.

 So why did I choose this dinosaur above all others? Two reasons. One, size. I don't want anything, I, it's not a huge dinosaur, it's

really the perfect size to be able to keep it inside your house or outside. [00:48:00] But the main reason I chose it is because there is evidence of post hatching care.

Katy: Oh, interesting. Okay.

Laura: So Mayasara gets all the credit as the good mother dinosaur, which they were.

But there is no evidence to show that they ever cared for anyone else's young, just their own.

Katy: Okay.

Laura: I need a dinosaur that would care for young other than their own,

okay? So back in the early 2000s, they found a bone bed, and most of these dinosaurs are found Like I said, in, in modern day eastern Asia,

specifically in China, which is what this dinosaur is named after, the bone bed that they found it in. So they found a bed of juveniles and older, and one older Psittacosaurus skeleton.

So that, at that time they were like, oh look, another parent dinosaur, evidence of parental care, that's great.

Katy: Yeah.

Laura: Fast forward 14 years, so in 2014, somebody was like. We know a lot about these dinosaurs now. We have seen them at all different life stages. [00:49:00] They, it doesn't, they think that this is not the case.

They

think that the adult was actually a babysitter and not a parent. And here's why. Because the adult was young. They actually have, you can look it up online, they know the size and ratio of ages from hatchling to 11. 

They've got the whole spectrum. There's the whole thing. So, this, this adult, adult, was probably only four to five years old.

And through tons of past research and examination of the life cycle of this dinosaur, they found that they probably didn't start reproducing until they were eight or nine years old.

So it's not a parent. It's

a helper. 

Katy: Yeah. 

Laura: An older sibling,

a cousin, something. 

Katy: Yeah, the baby, the neighborhood babysitter. 

Laura: neighborhood babysitter, right? So, perfect.

I will hire that,

that dino. So it's, that way there's not just the instinct to care for what's mine.

So as this young adult ages, it's [00:50:00] not , Oh, well this isn't my baby.

Katy: Yeah.

Laura: it's just the group. And bring your kids, friends over.

this is a group nanny, Right? 

We can have the whole neighborhood being watched or whatever, have, a little co op with your nanny dinosaur. 

Katy: And they're, and they're seed eaters, so unlike all of mine, 

They're not gonna attack the 

Laura: Right, yeah, you're not, your kid is not at risk,

 From such a thing. 

And 

Katy: Unless they're a seed. Hehe.

Laura: Fun fact about this dinosaur too, this really doesn't have much to do other than, maybe it would try and protect them. These dinosaurs. are one of the only or early, very, there's very few evidence that mammals and dinosaurs ever really interacted

that 

Katy: much. 

Yeah.

Laura: They found the most perfect skeleton of this specific dinosaur being preyed on by an early mammal.

And, I'm talking, the skeleton is so cool, the hand of the mammal is wrapped [00:51:00] around the forearm and its teeth are embedded in a 

cheekbone or something, it is locked forever in Mortal Kombat.

And the reason why they know, all of this stuff is so perfect is because, you have to look this up, it's on PBS, this is considered Dinosaur Pompeii because some sort of volcanic eruption happened and froze everything, It's not just this species, all the dinosaurs in the area, some are like sleeping, like they just deadzo.

Katy: Yeah, we'll put, we'll put some links up for you guys on Patreon so that you guys can see some more info.

Laura: And this is the only Psittacosaurus, so they specifically found that, Lugatinensi one doing the babysitting care. So that's why I chose

that specific Psittacosaurus. So yeah, nanny baby,

hire 

Katy: so cool. That's so cool.

Laura: I know, I loved researching this episode so much

Katy: No, me too. It was fun. Even though I went through the, the ridiculous route, I had a lot of, obviously a lot 

Laura: Cause you need the science to back it 

Katy: yes. yes. All righty. So my last dinosaur [00:52:00] that I have is, of course, my favorite. The dyno. The ticus, which is the real velociraptor. So if, if 

I 

Laura: There are velociraptors, but not the ones we picture. 

Katy: So I said this in the last episode two is that if you're thinking of Jurassic Park, those what they call velociraptors are actually the dynamicist.

It's just, I don't know, a velociraptor sounds cooler. Velociraptors are tiny, way smaller, turkey size. They look about the same. They're feathered and stuff, so are Deinonychus, but Think of it as velociraptors are smaller. Deinonychus though are what you're picturing the velociraptor But they're covered in feathers and stuff.

Alright, so the Deinonychus is often thought as like I said the real life velociraptor The fearsome predator from Jurassic Park though it was larger, faster, and more capable than its movie counterpart. In real life the velociraptor like I said is about Size of a turkey. this agile bipedal carnivore, lived during the early [00:53:00] Cretaceous period, about 115 to 108 million years ago, and grew to about 10 feet in length, and weighed about 165 pounds.

So, pretty, pretty big.

Laura: Yeah, pretty big.

Katy: It was a powerful predator, known for its sickle shaped claw, on its second toe, which it used to slash and capture prey.

AKA, cassowary of today.

Laura: Except that at least they're not actively going out trying to slaughter people.

Katy: You were right, yeah, where these ones probably would. The Deinonychus was a highly intelligent, like highly intelligent and social predator, likely hunting in packs much like modern day wolves or lions. Unlike solitary reptiles, it used teamwork to bring down larger prey, making it one of the most advanced hunters of its time.

Laura: imagine that there are a lot, actually, like painted dogs, right? Cause they're painted dogs are so smart.

And the way they hunt,

Katy: Yeah. Yeah, very, very smart. But they also showed to use teamwork to bring down the larger prey. [00:54:00] They did have a keen sense of vision, powerful sense of smell, and an agile body that Deinonychus was capable of running at fast speeds, making it pretty much one of the biggest predators that could quickly track and capture prey.

Laura: Dude, if, I, I hope I know where you're going.

I, I'll die if I do. I'll die if I do. 

Katy: It's large brain and advanced sensory systems, including the binocular vision and a strong sense of smell set it apart from many other dinosaurs, making it more akin to modern birds than the slow lumbering creatures once thought to dominate the Mesozoic landscape. Deinonychus agility, intelligent, social hunting strategies make it an ideal candidate for what I would train it for, and that is the intense field of search and rescue operations.

Laura: Oh, it's close. It's close to what I thought you were gonna do,

Katy: What were you think, what were you thinking?

Laura: it's gonna come up with mine,

Katy: Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. All right. So we were trying to Deinonychus for search and rescue efforts and challenging environments.

Laura: Heck [00:55:00] yes.

Katy: Given their speed, agility, and keen sense of coordination, these dinosaurs could become the go to creatures for search and rescue operations in disaster zones, earthquake, rubble, forest fires, mountain rescues, you name it.

Here's the plan. Tracking, first task one, is tracking and location, locating victims, navigating debris, and then three is the victim recovery and transport. Cause they're pretty big. So, how we train them? I mean, you 

Laura: it like you could in the Jurassic Park? Like, can they be ridden, do you think? I

guess it's probably like an ostrich,

Katy: Yeah, yeah, I know they're 165 pounds 10 feet long. I mean Gotta be able to somewhat ride them at least, so just like everything else, and you guys have seen Jurassic World, , maybe it's not Chris Pratt level of training, blue and everything like that, but, again, positive reinforcement, social bonding, scent task, scent based tasks, would definitely be it, pretty much like you would train an avalanche dog or something like that, think of it that way.

You start with scent and sound [00:56:00] training, we start with scent tracking, using familiar scents or scent trails from volunteers, human scents for example. The Deinonychus would learn to follow a path, honing their natural ability to track down a target, we use food rewards to incentivize the successful scent detection, making it pretty much just like a tracking dog.

So, the agility and obstacle navigations, Deinonychus were highly agile, and so we'd focus on their ability to maneuver through obstacles.

Laura: Right, I think that's what would make them different than search and rescue dogs, right? These guys could jump much higher, I'm

I'm imagining them like going over rubble, like water,

like it's just no problem. 

Katy: just, no issues whatsoever. And you think of their size and it's not that dogs are fragile, but compared to Deinonychus, dogs are fragile, you know what I mean? , they're still part of that greater, reptile group, they're dinosaurs, but they're still part of a better reptile group, you think of, crocodiles, alligators, how many times have you guys seen, video, and, half of a crocodile's jaw is just missing, and they're just, 

trudging on [00:57:00] like it's nothing, so they're very, very, very hardy.

Laura: And like those claws could help grip,

Katy: Mm hmm or slice through rubble or all kinds of things, so again just like with the compies We would definitely do cooperative team training Because search and rescue often requires teamwork We could train them to work with human handlers or other rescue animals like a pack of Diononychus,

Laura: Geez. Yeah. And then the dogs just all get eaten.

You're like, oh, sorry,

Katy: So we would ensure that they would have to follow commands or ensure that they work in sync with human teams, whether it's a search team or a coordinated search effort. For rescue protocols, like for victims, we would start by teaching them how to gently carry small objects, which would simulate lifting injured people.

Their natural instincts to use their claws to capture would be trained to handle objects delicately, ensuring that they can transport victims without harm.

Laura: I can, yeah, can, because can you imagine I'm just picturing myself, let's say I've my car, I'm lost, my car has [00:58:00] driven off into the mountains, it's upside down, and all of a sudden I'm like, I'm gonna die. And I'm grateful to be being rescued, but, I look out the window of my car, and it's that

out there? And then it smashes open my window, and uses its toe knife to slit my seatbelt?

I would be like, 

I don't know, it'd be pretty close to almost being worse than,

Katy: Right 

Laura: Oh,

I'm about to be eviscerated, I thought I was gonna just, die from being hanging upside down. 

Never 

Katy: know what? Just go. Just leave. I'm good. I can, I'll figure this out 

Laura: That's literally, I've seen five minutes of the Paw Patrol movie, but that's literally the first five minutes of the Paw Patrol movie, is some guy is dangling off a bridge in his semi and one of the dogs comes down to save him and he's no thanks, you're a dog.

Katy: I don't know. I am. Again, it would be one of these things where if I was in that situation, I think I'd be like, F yes, [00:59:00] if I'm going to die anyways, might as well go out by Deinonychus, my favorite dinosaur.

 Maybe not ripped to shreds like they do in the movies and stuff, but you know, I mean,

slow painful 

Laura: Yeah. 

Katy: sit upside down in a car, you know, I'll take my chances with a Deinonychus.

But, the scale of the Deinonychus, they're powered, like the scale of the operations, let's talk about that for a second. So the Deinonychus powered search and rescue fleet, I think would be extraordinary, because they are, can, they show that how intelligent that they are. I think that it could be, you could scale it up to whatever you need it to, if it is avalanche, if it is, whatever.

Laura: The cold, do we think?

Katy: let me 

Laura: They're warm, probably, like we were talking about before. They could have been

Katy: Yeah. 

Laura: it is, not cold or warm blooded. What is it? Cool blooded? Or whatever they

Katy: Meso, meso whatever it 

Laura: Yeah, mesothermic.

So maybe they could handle some snow for short periods of time?

Katy: Yeah, it says primarily they think that they lived [01:00:00] in subtropical and not in super cold climates. But again, just like anything else, you can train it. Give it like a little thermal 

Laura: You can try! Get through! Oh, yeah, yeah, maybe if they wore.

Katy: Like a heat 

Laura: own, yes, yeah, I was going to say because if they were cold blooded then a vest would do nothing.

But if, unless it was a heated one, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. 

Katy: A little puffy, 

Laura: I was 

picturing too. They got a little hood with the fur. 

Katy: Yeah, right. So again though, each Deinonychus would have to wear a GPS collar, be equipped with communication devices, just like we would for the compies, ensuring that we could track their movements, and 

Laura: a deton a self destruct button. So then

his stuff started going really wrong.

Just. Hahaha, your face. okay. 

Katy: Let's just, let's just not explain this one, and done.

Laura: Eliminated.

Katy: But, but again though, being able to send them into, think of like the [01:01:00] hazmat, of huge, disaster zones and stuff, asbestos, all that stuff that comes up, Send the dinosaurs in, 

Laura: Well, also, , the atmosphere was different than Tohono, , and the radiation. Maybe they'd be fine with

a radiation than people.

Katy: Yeah, 

So the other things to consider, obviously, they would use, all their senses, incredibly smart, agile, like I said, safety protocols, while Deinonychus were skilled, they need to be kept safe too, this was another one, like the compies, we need to make sure that they remained well rested and properly fed, so that, they could recover people and not recover bodies, and and enjoy them, obviously, some of the challenges navigating the hazardous terrain, even though they could move safely and they are very agile, we'd still have to be careful in extreme conditions like avalanche and stuff like that, but Again, I'm pretty confident with proper training we could, we could do it.

So anyway, Deinonychus, search and rescue team. That's my third one.

Laura: Alright. Mine's [01:02:00] It's not crazy similar, but there are, it's kind of similar ish. Okay, so my dinosaur, is called Borealopelta. I'm gonna send it to you now.

There, there's my beast.

Katy: there's my beast.

Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, 

Laura: so Borealopelta, meaning Northern Shield. Boreal Canada, and then Pelta for Shield. This is such a cool dinosaur.

I've been talking about this, like, all week to people. It was discovered in 2011, so it's a very recent dinosaur. In Alberta, Canada, in an oil sands mine.

So they were not expecting to find this dinosaur in sand, because that would indicate the ocean, right? So they found other dinosaurs here, they were like, oh, it's probably a plesiosaur. Nope.

This one probably washed, it, this was like a shallow sea, so it's probably a situation where it washed out [01:03:00] after death. Or

washed out and then drowned. 

One of The two. But. The coolest part of this dinosaur is that it is the best preserved dinosaur of its size ever found. It is three dimensional with soft tissue.

Katy: geez.

Laura: the chances of this happening, if you guys have to go back to our fossil episode, this is like a one in a billion

chance, okay? Because, and it's not a mummy, because actually sometimes mummified things are less Because they're so shriveled and shrunken, it's hard to

tell things. This is 3D fossil,

showing soft tissue. 

Katy: That's crazy.

Laura: , this guy lived in the early Cretaceous period, in what's now Canada, in North America. It is a notosaurid ankylosaur. So

ankylosaur, most people know,

it's the dinosaurs that are the armored dinosaurs. Typically, when people think of ankylosaur though, they think of something with a mace tail. The nodosaurids are ones that did not have [01:04:00] that.

Katy: Yeah, that's what I was gonna say. Yeah, this one doesn't have 

Laura: just long flexible tail.

But what did this thing look like for us listeners, or you listeners? It was 18 feet long, so it's a big dinosaur. And it weighed 1. 3 metric tons, which is 2, 866 pounds, which is about the size of a modern day bison or female hippo. Much longer than

those animals, but short, and just beefy.

yeah. like a lot more like a bison, but stretched out and

short. Short, thick arms and legs. Narrow muzzle. Modern animals. that have that type of narrow muzzle are called selective feeders, meaning that they eat, very specific foods, which we'll

come back to that. It had three bands of six spines running down its back. And it was covered in plates of armor called osteoderms. And it had, you'll see in the picture if you look up, it had these giant spines [01:05:00] coming out of its shoulders. They're not bone, it's a spine, , like the horns of a bull, but from its shoulder area. 

From what they found, like I said, this dinosaur is so perfectly intact. They, pretty positive it was reddish brown in color, with countershading.

Laura: Countershading is a type of camouflage. It's

dark on top, light on bottom. Camouflage indicates predation. 

Which They have never been sure if this armor and spikes on dinosaurs, maybe that's just a display thing?

For courtship and communication? No, camouflage is predator. So this is armor is defensive,

probably. At, to at least some degree, because this animal's running around with some very large predators. And, it was an herbivore. This dinosaur, you know how every once in a while I'm like, wow, we don't know anything as scientists about certain things, like our own bodies, human bodies are a mystery to us still,

but then you come upon oh, we know literally [01:06:00] everything about this niche topic. They opened up the stomach area, they found the stomach area of this dinosaur and it contained ferns that were halfway through their growing season. So they knew that this dinosaur had eaten ferns within one to two hours before death during the summertime. And there was charcoal bits in there, so it also showed that the area had recently been burned. They knew it's last meal, and because of that narrow muzzle, Selective feeder, cause, so picture, cow, wide, eat anything, deer, narrow, they choose what

They want, so they think that this guy might have been very selectively eating ferns, it's a fern eater.

Katy: Yeah. Hm.

Laura: And it was, yeah,

so just like, so, so, specific,

Katy: Yeah.

Laura: Oh, by the way, this is also the only one of this species ever found.

They, this is the one and only.

Katy: Really? 

Laura: Yeah, Borealopelta.

Katy: Interesting.

Laura: Okay. So, what would I train it to do? After talking with a friend, [01:07:00] I feel like I have dual purposes. It's basically the same thing but for two different organizations. This dinosaur can either be a Hold on, make sure I'm gonna get my acronyms right. It's either gonna be a P. A. D. or a B. H. D. K? P. A. D. for Police Assisting Dinosaur. Or BHD for Bounty Hunting Dinosaur. Okay, which is

where I thought you were gonna go with the

Katy: Yeah, the Deinonychus. 

Laura: gosh, a Deinonychus? would be a really good bounty hunter dinosaur. It could search

out people,

snag them. 

Katy: hunt them down.

Laura: Right?

That's what I'm saying. Yeah.

Katy: I choose, choose to use my powers For

good rather than evil on this one.

Although I'd probably make more money as a bounty hunter.

Laura: so for the most part though, we're gonna say it's probably a P. A. D. The Police Assisting Dinosaur. This behemoth would be trained to assist police during various operations. It could help stop a car during a chase, a ram a vehicle with these giant [01:08:00] spikes. 

Katy: Could you imagine hitting that though with your car? You're like, I'm gonna get away, I'm gonna get away, wham! 

Laura: Yeah, into the shoulder, cause I'm gonna have it stand sideways 18 feet long, and that shoulder spike that's coming

out like 2 feet just straight through the grill. 

Like, stopped. 

Katy: about a way worse of a spike strip than what we use 

Laura: Yeah, that's what I'm saying. And, they can

carry heavy equipment cause they're so big and strong and they can smash doors. So why this specific dinosaur and not any old ankylosaur cause they could all pretty much do the job

 Strong. They all are. I'm gonna say, so I do regret that this guy doesn't have a mace tail because I think that'd be a little bit cooler but

Katy: But,

Laura: We could certainly fit him with tail accessories to aid in different operations. Alright? You would just create some sort of harness that

Katy: Just accessorize him, 

Laura: steel balls on it 

for smashing. It could have spikes. Whatever you needed to do, your operation, [01:09:00] you fit it with the tail accessory.

Katy: Yeah, accessorize him, it's good.

Laura: But the reason why I specifically chose this one is because of the armored plates. Now, we know that all ankylosaurs have these armored plates.

But because we find fossils, not soft tissue, all we find is the bone. We extrapolate, probably they've been covered in keratin, right? It would be weird if it was like a just straight bone, like a deer antler.

But, it could be, it could have been, we never know, until this dinosaur. , tHis one is, it's covered in like an armadillo. So it's got the plates all along the back and all along the sides. This is such a niche job, but so cool. I want to talk to somebody who is a biomechanical

paleontologist. Such a cool. job.

So somebody basically who just figures out how dinosaurs worked. At the physics of it.

 So a biomechanical paleontologist at UCLA said, and I'm going to quote this.

[01:10:00] This thing could tank an F 150 going at speed. Quote, alright? Here's how they know that. Yeah. This was the first ankylosaur to show keratinized bony plates, and it was just, like I said, assumed before that. They actually found that the keratin, which is the stuff your fingernails are made out of, and what covers, turtle shells, was 6.

3 inches in some spots, which is

way deeper than they thought it would be. Like, it's not just like a little bit, it's a lot.

 So then of course they were like, alright, well let's test these things, like the Arapaima scales, right? 

What can these puppies take? So they calculated the force that these plates could withstand. They tested that with the models that they have, and they found that they could take 125, 000 joules of energy per square meter, which doesn't mean much to most of us, but that is about the same as a high speed car crash.

So literally, That's why he said it could [01:11:00] stop an F 150 car, a spike strip, a living spike strip to end high speed car chases, and they'd be totally 

fine.

So the keratin does help distribute some of the force and is more flexible than bone. So it's not just gonna crack on impact, it's gonna bend and bow a little

bit. Plus, those areas get damaged and keratin, you're like your fingernails or a turtle shell, it just flakes off.

So damage, oh well, wait a few months, it'll be totally fine again, good

as new.

Katy: He just needs R& R. Yeah, some R& R and he's good. Back

on the job.

Laura: Buff out his plates a little

bit. And this totally makes sense because this guy lived at the same time in the same area of the world is Acrocanthosaurus which was one of the largest theropods ever. So

bigger than a T Rex, like a giant T Rex.

 And so these plates seem to be able to have withstood the bite of such a large

Katy: That's crazy. 

Laura: So, [01:12:00] like, they were like, psh, whatever.

 And not just that, because, There's, maybe it was just for that. Maybe the plates were so big to defeat the bite force. But also, they really think that it was probably also made to withstand the fighting between males. Because that sort of impact the impact of a high speed car

crash, that's not what's happening when a jaw is biting

you. That's when something 

slams 

into you. So we're just picturing these two tanks just ramming, and they don't have tails, so they gotta be doing it with their bodies, just

smashing into each other in the Canadian wilderness of the Cretaceous.

 Just, badass.

Katy: Yeah. 

Laura: So yeah, that's my P. A. D. Could also help the bounty hunters, you just, you need to stop a vehicle?

Stop it.

You need to, just have them lean against the door of a [01:13:00] house? Poof! whatever you need, they're here to help in operations.

Katy: Just lean right there. You're good. 

Just stay 

Laura: Or, they also, their tail is not gonna inflict as much damage as something like a mace tail, but

it's also not gonna do nothing either. Right? A tail like that is still like, hmmm.

Katy: Yeah. Good Night.

Laura: so excited about that dinosaur. I just thought it was so cool how much we know about it. , so much

specifics. 

Katy: Yeah. That is awesome. That's a good one. Alright guys, that is our Could You Train That episode.

Laura: I feel pretty confident in our ability to do this. I'm

ready to go into the compy business with you.

Katy: yes, right? We'll go halfsies, compy, 

Laura: If they bring them back, I don't want them to, but if they do,

we're ready 

Katy: we're 

Laura: our business plan all ready to go. Just move to a city together, and you'll take the delivery service, and I'll do the pest control.

Katy: We are on it. So if anybody would like to be employees, can't take applications 

Laura: a blast, I bet.

And [01:14:00] how cute, cause I'm literally just imagining they have the personalities of cats, you know? A little bit twitchy, maybe a little bit sassy, but also probably really chin scratches.

Katy: Yeah. Give me, give me, give me. 

Laura: Yeah.

I just have a little compy curled up on my lap with its little head.

I just, that sounds great.

Katy: It does. It does. Minus the probably, the nibbling if I got hungry or anything like that.

Laura: Oh, there's needle teeth.

Katy: Yeah, right. Alright guys, well make sure you go check us out on YouTube, like I said, just search the Wildly Curious Podcast, you'll see this video with the dinosaurs on it, plus several of our other videos for this season and some for the last one.

Also make sure you go over and support us on Patreon so we can keep bringing you this content. And next week we have another Cosmic Critter episode, and then we will continue 

Laura: right? 

Katy: Yeah, it's, yeah, it's mine. Yeah. So I talk about my next one. So make sure you listen next week. Go check us on Patreon on YouTube to support us.

Laura: And

if anybody wants to reach out and tell us, Do you have a dinosaur? That you're like,

yeah,

that's the one. I'm [01:15:00] gonna train it to do that.

Cause I was like, I was trying to crowdsource this to see what people said.

 And there have been children's books written about this. A lot of people have imagined dinosaurs as helping firefighters with those long necks.

You know? 

Katy: I 

imagine 

Laura: being living cranes. I got the suggestion of course, velociraptors being taken into battle. And I was like, no, that's too easy and stupid. But

yeah, tell us if you've 

Katy: turkey size. So come 

Laura: wrong dino, wrong dino. 

Katy: Yeah.

Laura: But yeah, let us know if you've got a cool one. I'd love to hear some

Katy: Yeah. And at least if you're listening to the podcast, you can, there's that link that says send us a text and it's anonymous. And so you can just hit that and then just send us a text and it'll send us your ideas right away. We won't know. We won't know 

Laura: Yeah, or if you're listening on Good Pods, you can chime in,

 At any, you 

know, 

and let us know 

Katy: on there too.

Yep. All right guys. Well thank you for listening to our antics once again as always and we will talk to you guys next week.

Laura: Bye, everybody.