This episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.
Fiscally responsible. Financial geniuses.
Monetary magicians. These are things people say about drivers who switch their car insurance to progressive and save hundreds.
Visit progressive.com to see if you could save.
Progressive casualty insurance company and affiliates.
Potential savings will vary, not available in all states or situations.
Big Fit! That's now our name! The Big Fit!
Show's still the same! The Big Fit! Let's play the game!
The Big Fit! We're still on fire, busting wires!
From Lizard Lake, North Carolina. This is The Big Fib.
And now, here's your host, Deborah Goldstein.
Welcome to the Big Fit, the game show where kids choose between the adaptable, pest-eating truth. and the rough, scaly claws of lies.
I'm your host, Deborah Goldstein, and in the studio today is our sound effects robot Lisa, which stands for Live in Studio Audience.
Hey, can you hold this for me? Why are you handing me a t-shirt covered in paint?
I just got back from an epic game of paintball, and I really need to put on a different shirt.
Wow, that sounds like fun. It's the best, Deborah, especially when you've got a total PayPal Pro like me on your team.
But your shirt is covered in paint. Isn't the object of the game not to get hit with paint?
Deborah, that's human paintball. Okay, and what am I supposed to do with this shirt?
Cold wash, gentle cycle, and don't forget the fabric softener.
Thanks. Oh, fine. And I'll thank you for telling us how our game works.
Sure. It's not as much fun as robot paintball, but sure.
Yeah, we can do it. OK. All right. Every week and I'm talking every week.
We don't take weeks off for like staff retreats where Deborah takes me to a spa We bring on two grown-ups.
One is an expert, the other is a liar. And it's the job of a human child to help us figure out who is who.
Because no one can spot a liar better than a kid.
I mean, at least we hope. What are we lying about today, Deborah?
We are lying about lizards, reptiles that have scales for skin, long bodies, and pointy tails.
Lisa, tell us what you know about lizards.
I know they're super funny. Really? Yeah, I'm taking this stand up comedy class.
My instructor, Eddie Lizard, told me that lizards are known for their comedic timing.
Something to do with how fast they have to dart out their tongues to catch bugs.
If you say so. I'm really looking forward to catching your next comedy set, but in the meantime, can you set us up with the name of our contestant?
Okay, I hope he's a lizard. I don't think he is.
Oh, he's not a lizard. Oh, that's fine. Our human child contestant is a nine-year-old who loves going to the Aquatopia water park.
Hi Colin! Welcome! How are you today? feeling good.
I'm so glad to hear it. You must tell us what is this thing you call the Aquatopia water pump.
Well, it's a huge water park with lots of slides.
That's super fun. That sounds terribly dangerous.
Water is very dangerous to you. Yeah. Well, for robots, it is.
And are they really tall slides? Are they kind of scary or?
Some are really scary, some are just... Easy.
Easy. But they're all great. Yeah. And terrifying.
That's really scary. Are you okay, Colin?
Yes. I understand that you learned a trick on your new bike.
Is this true? Yes, I did. What did you learn to do?
How to do a U-turn. So how do you do a U-turn?
Well, you have to make an illegal you turn for cars.
Wait, you have to ride your bike into somebody's car and then take over the steering of the car and then make it turn around?
No. That's an awesome trick, dude. I don't think that's a trick.
Oh, that's not it. No. No, what he's doing is totally legal, right?
Yes. Awesome. Well, we want to learn even more fun facts about you, Colin, but we're going to get into it big fib style.
Yeah, so we're going to play a game called.
Two truths and a lie you, Colin, are going to tell us three facts about yourself, except...
Two of those facts will be true. One of them will be a lie.
And we have to figure out which one is the lie.
Are you ready? Yes. All right, Colin, what are your three facts?
I've been to Costa Rica. I can juggle. I like broccoli.
Okay, well, everybody likes broccoli. That's gotta be true.
What do you think, Lisa? Yeah, you can't juggle, dude.
You just learned to ride your bike into a car and make a U-turn.
There's no way you already know how to juggle.
That's too much talent for one kid. Get it out of here.
That's a lie. That's a difficult fact to believe.
All right, Colin, which one of those facts is actually a lie?
I can't juggle. You cannot juggle. I cannot juggle.
Because he just learned how to commandeer a car.
Of course. Do that, Lisa. Alright, our first expert is Lewis Mercer.
Lewis, please introduce yourself to Colin.
Hi Colin, my name is Lewis Mercer and I'm an aquatic veterinarian at the Turtleback Zoo in New Jersey.
Also a member of the Association of Reptilian and Amphibian Veterinarians.
Thank you, Lewis. That's my favorite veterinarian association.
Is it? Who knew? I did not. Let's meet our second expert, Kylie Williams.
Kylie, please introduce yourself to Colin.
Hi Colin, my name is Kylie. I'm actually a herpetologist, which is a scientist of reference. tiles and I specialize in large lizards.
Okay. Wow, I like those jazzy sounds. Thank you, Deborah.
Those are from my lounge lizard soundtrack album called That means it's time to put our experts on the hot seat while they answer Colin's questions.
Lisa, whom should we put on the hot seat? first.
Kylie Williams, because I think it would be really fun to call her K-dubs.
Okay, Colin, what's your first question for K-dubs?
What does the word camouflage mean? So the word camouflage in reference to reptiles and lizards is their ability to hide. and their ability to blend in with their surroundings.
So, chameleons are able to do that and change their color, whereas some lizards are just the color of the sand and the rocks that they live near.
Can they tell that they're changing color?
Do they see color? Yeah. Yeah. So, chameleons can see some shades of color, not the same shades of color we see.
But they're able to choose what color they're blending into based off of what's in their surroundings.
The way they do that is they get a text message and it's like, hey, you're in front of something green.
And then they're like, oh, change to green.
And then they'll get a text message. It's like, no dude, it's brown.
And then they gotta change to something brown.
Wow, who's sending the text messages? The items in the environment, like the stick will text them and be like, I'm brown.
Wow, cool. Yeah. I guess that's part of the circle of life.
Yeah, yeah, with Mufasa. Good to know. To both of you.
Are lizards good parents? Lizards aren't parents at all, Colin.
Parents. Oh, parents. Parents. Oh, sorry, sorry.
Colin, are you in the market for a new parent?
No. Okay, just checking. Go ahead, experts.
Well, when it comes to lizards, lizards are actually very protective of their young in the initial stages.
But then as time goes by and the young grows up, They kind of let them go off on their own.
So if that's a good parent, I guess yeah, I guess that would be a good parent That's a good point.
It depends on what your definition is of a good parent.
Do you think that sounds like a good parent, Colin?
A little bit. kind of. Maybe they should just leave us alone, right?
Yeah. Yeah. Get off her case. Mama Papa, if you're listening, call me.
Kylie, do you also agree you concur with Lewis?
It actually depends on the species, so crocodilians, so alligators and crocodiles are really good parents, and they'll protect the young even after they hatch out of an egg.
But when it comes to a lot of other species, once they lay the eggs and put them in a nest, they leave them alone and never go back to touch them again.
So that way predators don't know where they laid those eggs.
This one's for Lewis. How does a chameleon catch prey?
A chameleon is it's awesome because a chameleon's vision is super important to capturing its own prey. and it's of course it's camouflage as well.
So in conjunction with each other those two work together with the chameleon and the chameleon sneaks up on the prey. opens its mouth slowly and extends that awesome sticky tongue and catches it.
Whoa. I didn't know that. It's pretty awesome to see.
I thought they'd just lick him and let him go.
I didn't know they ate him. Well, that too.
Lewis, what is the biggest type of wizard?
The biggest type of lizard is the Komodo Dragon.
How big? The Komodo Dragon can get about 10 feet long.
They're pretty nasty, and they can also get about 150 pounds to 300 pounds depending on how many baby goats that they eat.
How many baby goats they eat? Yeah. Yeah, they eat some pretty, they love dead things.
Yeah, it's pretty disgusting. Denver, is that what's happening to all our baby goats?
We don't have any baby goats. Well, not anymore.
Since you got that Kamado dress. Thanks a lot, Deborah.
No, we don't have baby goats and nobody's eating the goats we don't have.
Mm. Kylie, what are you doing on average day of work?
Okay, so I'm on an average day of work. I take temperatures on all my animals and make sure everyone's healthy and doing okay.
And then I have to feed them. That's probably my favorite part of the day.
So I take care of a lot of different lizards and reptiles, and I also do some amphibians and birds as well.
So I have to feed all of those, which actually is the more fun, but I also pick up poop.
A lot of poop. Oh my goodness. Wait a minute.
So when you're feeding them, are you feeding baby goats to Komodo dragons?
So for the most part, Komodo dragons aren't usually fed baby goats.
Um, we actually feed them basically a beat ball that has all the vitamins and nutrition that you would put into them.
Um, because we don't have to give them wild prey and give them baby coats.
But we give them, we'll give them bones and stuff.
Yeah, but it depends on the animals. So some animals we feed salad to without our lizards and some get insects.
It really depends on the species. If I was an animal and you gave me salad, I'd be like, no, dude, I want a meatball.
Yeah. Nice try. That's exactly what happens.
Yeah, our bearded dragons, they can eat both.
And so anytime we put salad in there, they will look at you and give you a nice side eye of why aren't I getting a bug?
Really? Oh yeah. Wow, it's great that you could tell what they're thinking.
That's pretty cool. To Lewis, are our lizards dangerous to humans?
It depends on the lizard. Like a bearded dragon makes a great pet.
But a Komodo dragon would probably eat your face off.
I hate when that happens. You wouldn't want to have a Komodo dragon in your backyard.
Yeah But yes, lizards can make great pets.
They can have personalities just like a cat or a dog would.
It may not be as pronounced as a cat or a dog, but if geckos are awesome.
Uh, yeah, they make great pits, generally.
Can you teach them to do tricks? Uh, some, I mean, they can't do like, you know, they can't have them like sit up and beg or, you know, say donut or something, you can't make them talk.
That's a shame. But yeah, they can do simple tricks.
Like they could crawl up your arm and take some little mealworm out of your ear or something, you know, if you put it there.
Yeah, it's fun, but it can be disgusting for some people.
Oh, Deborah, you could really use that. Your ears are filled with mealworms.
They're really not. Oh, you should check again.
Get a lizard to check for you. Yeah. I'll think about it.
Kylie, what made you want to study lizards?
Um, so actually whenever I was younger, my mother did not like reptiles at all.
So I grew up catching them outside and trying to sneak them in the house to take care of them for a couple days before I'd get caught.
And so ever since then, I always wanted to work with reptiles.
I liked all animals. I wanted to be a veterinarian when I was growing up.
But then I started... But it was really to spite your mother is what you're saying.
Yeah. Oh yeah, definitely. A lot of parenting issues.
Yeah, definitely to start. And even to this day, my mother doesn't understand why I love reptiles the way I do.
She doesn't like coming to visit me because I actually have reptiles in my home.
I've got snakes and lizards and like chameleons.
So like she doesn't really like coming to visit me too often.
Oh, so you have to go visit her. It's not that you don't like her company.
No, not at all. You just have to go see her.
Yeah, she doesn't like snakes. She can deal with lizards, but snakes don't have legs.
So she's not a fan of that. Oh, you know what?
You should buy my new snake leg kit. It comes with four legs and a hot glue gun and your mom will come over right now.
Do not buy that no. It's a terrible kit.
All right. No one's buying it. To Lewis, how can you tell the difference between a no-legged lizard and a snake?
Wait, is there a no-legged lizard? Yes, that's why I'm selling my lizard kits.
Oh my goodness. Yeah, well, if you look, a snake. uh... a no-legged lizard let's say a no-legged lizard would have uh... the the scales uh... around uh... that go all the way around its body and its eyes are very, very small.
It looks more like a worm than it does a snake, but you do have the general shape of the snake body.
But it's hard to tell. It is a little hard to tell, but also the no-legged lizards get fatter.
And they're generally the same size from snout to tail.
It's time for the shorts on fire round when our experts have to answer as many questions as they can before time runs out.
Experts, you'll have to think fast and not drag on your answers.
Colin, let's start with Lewis. You can ask your shorts on fire questions now.
Oh, name a continent where you can't find any wizards.
Oh, Antarctica. What kind of wizard lives on the Galapagos Islands and sneezes to get rid of salt around their nostrils?
What do you call a scientist who studies reptiles and amphibians?
Nerd, herpetologist, huh? What species of lizard is made up of only females?
A maiden gecko. What part of the human brain is the lizard brain?
Pass. What is the name of the animated movie where a chameleon becomes the sheriff of a town called Dirt?
What should I feed my pet lizard? Oh, it depends on the lizard, but crickets are good. mealworms, as I mentioned earlier, as lettuce, broccoli, broccoli, they love broccoli.
And that is time all the time. Sorry. And the answer is goat.
Baby goats. Baby goats. Very good. Okay.
Now we will restart the time or won't we, Lisa?
You know what? What? I was gonna take a nap, but I'll do it.
I appreciate it. Okay. These questions are for Kylie.
You can ask your shorts on fire questions now.
Name a wizard that gives birth to live young instead of laying eggs. the prehensile-tailed skink.
They actually will give birth to one or two babies and actually have a placenta just like humans.
What lizard was named after a dragon in the Hobbit?
I have no idea past. What do you call the flap of skin under some lizard's necks that inflate or gets bigger?
We usually refer to that as a beard What do you call lizards that spend a lot of time in trees?
They'd be called a boreal How many different lizard species are there?
Over 6,000 Oh no, hold on, there's a new one, 6,001.
What is it called when wizards are active during the day and sleep at night?
Pass. If a lizard loses its tail, can it grow back?
Depends on the species, leopard geckos can, but crested geckos can't.
How many species of legless lizards are there?
Two. How do lizards smell? They use their nose so their nostrils they're able to smell just like us.
And time. That's terrible. That's the answer.
We're tweeting on that. I know. Wade answers quickly as a shovel-snatted lizard runs over hot sand.
It's decision time. Colin has to use his own scales to weigh the facts.
Colin, who do you think is our big fibber?
I think it's Kylie. Why do you think Kylie is our fibber?
Well, she passed on some of them. Did she?
Okay. So, let's find out. Will our actual lizard expert please tell us who you are?
It's Kylie. So you went wrong. How could it be?
But that's true. Kylie Williams is an Aquarist at the Maritime Aquarium working with reptiles, amphibians, and birds.
Oh my gosh. Let's do some back checking here, Kylie.
What facts did Lewis share that made you think, I want to call him out on that?
There was quite a few. Yes. I always have it a hard time not saying anything What were some of the most glaring ones?
So the goat, with the Komodo dragons, we don't feed goats to our Komodo dragons.
Right, but they do mean goats. like in the wild yes in the wild they would get them but in human care we don't get to feed them goats Oh, that's awkward.
Oh, that Komodo's were dangerous and they would eat your face.
Komodo's are actually really docile. The food's involved, yes, but they don't really see humans as food, so they could care less about us.
Oh good. What animal do you recommend for if you want your face eaten off?
No animal, let's not have our faces either.
Okay, that's fine. People want it. Okay, well, so, and Lewis, what spineless lies did you tell?
Well, the legless lizard was kind of difficult to stumble through.
I do know there is a difference between the snake and the legless lizard.
I just couldn't call up the facts in my head quickly enough.
What are they, Kylie? What is the difference between a legacy?
So you actually can tell by their cloaca, which is the whole that everything comes out of in a lizard.
Yeah, and so if it's short and stumpy, then it is a legless lizard where snakes have a longer tail after the cloaca.
And a lot of times with lizards, you'll see little nubs still from evolution of them like phasing out their legs.
Whoa. So you might not be able to tell from a distance what the difference is.
You might know. Usually, but they also have heads. that are very lizard-like.
So there was wrong about the eyes being small.
They actually have very large heads and just like a very thick body.
Whoa. Okay, Lewis, can you think of other lies that you told?
Yes, during the shorts on fire, questions Colin asked, what species of lizard is made up of only females?
I said the maiden gecko, which doesn't exist.
I just made that up. Oh, is there a species?
Yeah. So there's quite a few lizard species that are like that, where it's just phased out males. that they can just do parthenogenesis, which means that they can just produce offspring that are an exact copy of themselves. amazing.
All right. Well, we have reached the tail end of our episode today.
Thank you to our contestant Colin for the facts he tried to get correct.
All right. Well, Thank you to our expert and liar, Kylie and Louis, and to Lisa, our lizzo of lizard sounds.
And of course many thanks to our listeners tuning in to The Big Bib, where liars tell lies and we just hear crickets.
The Big Fab is a production of Gen Z Media.
For more great shows, visit gzmshows.com.
While you're there, you can send questions for me to read on Ask Lisa and find out how you can participate and follow us on social media at the Big Fit Podcast. for behind the scenes photos and more true facts.
Also, if you want two to 300 baby goats, let me know.