# Re:Invigorate With Woof: "Did You Know These Animals Are Smart?" 🐘🐬🐦‍⬛

Host: Woof (@WoofArmyXX) with cohost Margie B (@MargieAponte2) · Tue, Sep 22 2026 · 1:14:01 · 3 voices (plus the show's recorded intro/outro track)

## TL;DR
- Woof ran the morning show's usual format — weird world news first, then a themed deep dive, today on animal intelligence: elephants, dolphins, corvids, African grey parrots, honeybees, rats, dogs, octopuses and pigs.
- UNCLE CORVUS (@unclecorvus) pulled up early and turned out to be the room's resident field expert on kangaroo combat mechanics, magpie diplomacy and crow crime syndicates.
- Margie B delivered the episode's centerpiece: a five-in-the-morning New York City rat encounter involving two and a half traps, a bathroom garbage can, a pot, a brick, and a friend who was no help whatsoever.
- Running theme Woof kept coming back to: bigger brain ≠ smarter animal — bees grasping a concept of zero was the fact that broke everyone's frame.
- Housekeeping: Re:Invigorate is off until Saturday and Sunday; Margie B put the schedule on the meowaton.

## Highlights

**[4:15] The Tuesday hype track kicks the door open.** The show opens on its recorded intro — coffee, chaos and a sermon about showing up imperfect: "Maybe you're rebuilding from a week that left your star... You survived every bad damn day that tried to keep you there." Woof and Margie B pick it up from there, with Woof introducing "the little fun size Margie B," who advises the room not to sleep on her at five foot [8:59].

**[10:05] Weird news: raccoon boot camp, and a degree to match.** Rescuers in Mississippi run orphan raccoons through six months of tree-climbing and prey-catching training, complete with a graduation ceremony and pomp and circumstance — which Woof confessed he had to have explained to him ("I graduated in 1988. I can't remember that far back"). He landed the diploma himself a beat later [11:47].

**[21:12] UNCLE CORVUS on pre-streaming patience.** Arriving keen for an animal-facts space, he described Saturdays 1pm–4pm in front of *The World Around Us*, the only three hours of peace his parents got — a week's wait for one episode, toilet breaks timed accordingly, kids as the remote controls. Woof matched it with Cousteau reruns.

**[22:03] Kangaroo fight club, briefly explained.** Asked about the very large red kangaroo in the jumbotron, UNCLE CORVUS delivered the full biomechanical breakdown: tail as kickstand, weight back, core engaged, both back legs out to the sternum and rip down. He also noted his mate Jed wants him to arrange a fight with one, and that his professional advice is no, Jed. The coffee cup in the picture is AI; the kangaroo is not.

**[25:42] The elephant that attended a funeral.** UNCLE CORVUS brought a story from about six months back: an elephant tracked a poacher's scent to his village and killed him, then turned up two weeks later to trash the man's funeral and coffin before leaving. Woof's takeaway: be careful who you piss off, because the elephant remembers. Margie B had already set it up beautifully with why elephants grieve — holding vigil, trying to lift a dying family member with trunk and tusks [20:11].

**[37:13] Crows on the payroll.** Following the tool-use segment, UNCLE CORVUS reported a local crime syndicate that trained crows to steal money and pick locks, because the birds go for shiny things. He also explained why he's never been swooped by a magpie in a suburb where everyone else is: he feeds them, one bird's endorsement travels to the whole tribe, and they bring gifts back. His gift economy runs on silver washers, which end up decorating their nests. The PSA within the PSA: never give birds minced meat — only diced — because minced meat lodges in the beak and rots it.

**[44:00] Bees, zero, and the restaurant bill.** Trained honeybees can discriminate quantities and treat an empty set as less than one — a rough concept of zero in a brain the size of a sesame seed. Woof used it to knock down the big-brain-equals-smart assumption (sorry, dinosaurs), then measured himself against it and came up short [46:03]. Margie B backed the bees on culinary grounds and then defended them from an unnamed section of web3 [47:08].

**[48:11] The rat the size of Garfield.** Margie B told the room to gather round with their blankies. A rustle in the bottom cupboard led to traps, and at five in the morning she found a rat dragging two and a half of them across a New York apartment. Containment escalated from bathroom garbage can to pot to brick; her roommate — previously bitten, and a second bite can kill you — retreated shivering, prompting her verdict on the man-or-mouse question. The horror kicker came after: the day before, she'd been feeling around blind in that same cupboard [51:46].

**[53:42] Dogs that know things nobody taught them.** Woof's Nita fetched and returned a tennis ball on a Tennessee vacation with zero training, and his old boxer could pick his truck's exhaust out of a neighborhood full of dual exhausts. Margie B's chihuahua terrier Roscoe would push her back down with his paws and whimper rather than be walked when she was unwell — and reliably lost his mind at one particular houseguest years before she caught up with his assessment [57:50]. Also newly discovered by Woof: dog elbow pads are real, and he told his vet to his face that he was being messed with [1:00:06].

**[1:03:13] The octopus tangent that lost the room in the nicest way.** Woof's octopus segment — eight arms, alien evolutionary path, intelligence that doesn't need to look human — was interrupted by Margie B's theory that *Sister Wives* and polygamy generally were inspired by men watching an octopus multitask. Woof asked UNCLE CORVUS for a sanity check; Margie B's clarification only made it worse [1:04:15]. The Spanish offer of a re-explanation didn't help either.

**[1:09:20] Closing round.** UNCLE CORVUS thanked the room for a space he loved; Margie B, "the meat in the middle of the bread" between his 8am and Woof's, sent people to both, floated a three-hour sequel with more animals (the aardvark has been nominated), and closed warm [1:10:55]. Then the outro track ran with the show's actual thesis [1:13:01].

## Topic timeline

| Time | Topic |
|---|---|
| [1:54]–[4:13] | Pre-show: weather, first day of fall, turkeys in the store already |
| [4:15]–[8:00] | Re:Invigorate intro track |
| [8:40]–[15:53] | Weird world news: raccoon boot camp, opera-singing lemurs, monkeys befriending other species, a "kitten" that wasn't, dolphins stealing regurgitated fish, NASA at 57,600 feet |
| [16:13]–[18:38] | Framing the question: what does "smart" actually mean? |
| [18:38]–[28:05] | Uncle Corvus arrives; kangaroos; elephants — grief, memory, the poacher's funeral |
| [28:59]–[33:00] | Dolphins: signature whistles as names, self-recognition, captivity |
| [33:27]–[40:04] | Corvids: tool sequences, crow crime, magpies, silver washers, the minced-meat PSA |
| [41:00]–[43:26] | African grey parrots and Alex; labels vs. understanding |
| [43:53]–[47:40] | Honeybees, numerical rules, and the concept of zero |
| [47:40]–[53:00] | Rats: helping trapped cage mates, sharing chocolate, and Margie's rat |
| [53:42]–[1:01:00] | Dogs: reading humans, untaught fetch, truck exhaust, elbow pads |
| [1:01:00]–[1:05:29] | Octopuses — and a detour into *Sister Wives* |
| [1:05:29]–[1:08:16] | Pigs, and why we sort intelligent animals into emotional categories |
| [1:09:00]–[1:14:01] | Closings, schedule, outro track |

## Notable quotes

- "A bachelor of dumpster science. That's what they're getting for their degree." — Woof, on raccoon graduation [11:47]
- "That was back in the day where you had to wait a week for your favorite show and you had to time your toilet breaks... that's how patience was developed." — UNCLE CORVUS [21:12]
- "I'm gonna go with the sense of smell... if you have a bad smell, you won't remember about it tomorrow. You'd be all right, you won't be traumatized." — UNCLE CORVUS, on smell vs. elephant memory [28:09]
- "There's some people out here in web three that we surround ourselves that their brain is smaller than a bee's brain." — Margie B [47:08]
- "I'm out. I'm not even taking my clothes, send them to me." — Margie B, on the rat contingency plan [51:39]
- "You just push me further into the cavern of confusion." — UNCLE CORVUS, after the octopus clarification [1:04:59]

## Who said what

**Woof (@WoofArmyXX)** — host and researcher-in-chief; ran the news roundup and all nine animal segments, kept returning to the big question of whether intelligence has to look human, and closed on "maybe the smartest thing we're capable of is realizing how much we don't actually know."

**Margie B (@MargieAponte2)** — cohost, jumbotron and scheduling, and the show's chaos engine; brought the elephant-grief fact, the Roscoe stories, the rat epic, and one theory about octopuses that nobody asked for and nobody will forget.

**UNCLE CORVUS (@unclecorvus)** — guest and unofficial wildlife desk; kangaroo combat, the elephant-and-poacher story, crow and magpie behavior, and the practical bird-feeding advice that was genuinely useful.

## Worth a full listen

- **[48:11]–[52:15]** — Margie B's rat story in full, told at storytelling pace, plus Woof's river-rat sightings and the realization about the cupboard.
- **[36:20]–[40:04]** — the corvid stretch: trained thieving crows, why magpies don't swoop him, silver washers as tribute, bower bird nests, and the minced-meat warning. Dense with things you didn't know.
- **[1:03:13]–[1:05:29]** — the octopus-to-*Sister Wives* detour and two people trying very earnestly to follow it. Cannot be summarized, only witnessed.