 I want things in different places. This is TWIS. This week in science episode number 620, recorded on Wednesday, May 24th, 2017. This week in irrational exuberance. I'm Dr. Kiki, and today we will fill your heads with ant control, snakes, and a beautiful interview, but first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer. The wilderness is all around us. At least it once was. Full of predators and prey, elemental exposures of heat and cold, pokey things on the ground, and infectious things all around. Sure old dangers of every sort. We survived as a species in this dangerous world because we knew how to. We found solutions for survival, learned from our mistakes, and we passed knowledge on to future generations. And while the wilderness has been banished to the fringes of most human society, the civilized world remains a dangerous place. And nothing can be more dangerous to a civilized world than forgetting how we got here in the first place. If we forget that we are here because of our ability to reason, to learn and to find solutions, then we are doomed. Doomed, I tell you. Doomed in so many ways. But worst of all, it will be an ignorant sort of doom. The most boring doom possible. One that never sees the threat coming and so takes no action. But thankfully, there are plenty of unboring people left in the world. And right now they are all tuned into This Week in Science, coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I wanna learn it all up with new discoveries that happen every day of the week. There's only one place to go to find the knowledge I seek. I wanna know what's happening? What's happening? What's happening this week in science? What's happening? What's happening? What's happening this week in science? Good science to you, Kiki and Blair. And good science to you, Justin, Blair, and everyone out there. Welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are back yet again as we are just about every single week of the year, just about with lots of wonderful science for you. And we have a really fantastic show ahead. Before we get started, I wanna remind everyone, if you are in the Philadelphia area, we are going to be at the Young Innovators Fair. And the Young Innovators Fair is taking place on June 10th and 11th. You can find information at younginnovatorsfair.com. And on this week's show, we have lots of science news. As I said, I brought stories about sperm in space, scary viruses and fake insects. And we also have an interview with Richard Prum from Yale University on his book, The Evolution of Beauty. Before we get there, Justin, what do you have for us? I've got an ancient mound find that was found a whale of a tail, edible anti-ant traps and audible emissions. And Blair, what does the animal corner hold for us? I'm so glad you asked. I have bird brains, I have snake curtains and I have flamingo legs. Well, I could have told you, no. Well, thank you. You can't see my legs right now, but I'm doing a little bit of a flamingo. I mean, I've been saying for years that bird brains is a compliment, but now, I mean, is flamingo legs a compliment? Hey, you'll have to wait to find out. All right, all right, I'm looking forward to that. Okay, so it's time for us to jump in first and foremost into our newest segment on the show. What has science done for me lately? This email was sent to us by Minyan Joanna Goble. She says, hello, Dr. Kiki, science influences all aspects of our lives. So it was difficult to think of just one thing. I decided to choose my job. I just graduated with a bachelor's degree in biology and I am currently a self-employed private tutor and childcare worker in Alabama. Technology allows me to not only reach out to families and get hired, but to also conduct fast background checks and write lesson plans. Without the internet, I would not have access to a lot of testing and educational services. Thank you, science. Thank you, Joanna, for writing in to let us know what science has done for you lately. And everyone out there, I wanna hear from you. We wanna have at least one letter per episode, so email me your thoughts on what science has done for you lately. My email is kirsten, K-I-R-S-T-E-N at thisweekinscience.com. I will share your writings, your thoughts in an upcoming episode of TWIS, just one a week. That's all I ask. And now it's time for us to get to our interview. I'd like to welcome Richard Prum, author of The Evolution of Beauty, how Darwin's forgotten theory of mate choice shapes the animal world and us to the show. He's William Robertson co-professor of ornithology at Yale University and head curator of vertebrate zoology at the Yale Peabody Museum of Natural History. He's also conducted field work throughout the world and has studied fossil theropod dinosaurs in China. He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 2010 and now he's appearing on This Week in Science. Welcome to the show, Dr. Prum. Thank you, great to be here. Thank you for the invitation. You're welcome. So we're all here because you've written a book, The Evolution of Beauty. And I've started, I've been reading through this book and it's just so fun. Now, can you summarize, just to get started, how you got interested in, just first, studying birds and evolution? Well, I started birdwatching as a kid at the age of 10. And basically it's a pretty boring story in the sense that I've never considered anything else in life. You know, basically I got my first pair of glasses here and the world came into focus and within just a few months, my attention, my curiosity focused on birds and since then it's just been sort of a private mania that became a profession. And luckily there's this institution called Science that lets people like me thrive, really. And it wasn't, you know, I started as a bird watcher and was just interested in seeing as many birds and the variety of birds. Well, when I got to college, I realized that evolution was really the area of science that was about what I thought was so cool about birds. I love your statement in the first paragraph. It says, oh, it's great that this is, I've never really considered doing anything else in my life, which is fortunate because I'm now unfit for any other sort of employment. I mean, you can say that, but you've found what you love and you've been able to parlay that into this great career. Yeah. I suppose that's what science has done for you lately. Yeah, it's been, it's a great run. That's what it's done for me lately, you know. And, you know, the fortunate thing is to be decades in now and as excited as I've ever been about my work, about the prospects and what we're doing in science. Now, the title of the book is, you talk about how Darwin's forgotten theory of mate choice shapes us. And so this forgotten theory that you're talking about, it's not, you know, we all know natural selection from the origin of species, right? But this was his second treatise, his second book from The Descent of Man. And I love that you're going into this, but, you know, in The Descent of Man, it's kind of, he talked about a series of mate choice. We still assume today, I mean, there are many studies that we talk about where it's like, oh, there's the periscuous males and the choosy females. This is just the way it works, right? Because sperm is cheap and eggs are expensive. Right, this is what, yeah, we talk about this. So can you talk a bit about how, or elaborate on how his ideas on sexual selection have been forgotten in comparison to this concept of natural selection that he addressed? Yeah, so really the title is, the subtitle is a bit provocative in the sense that mate choice is found in all sorts of literature and in all textbooks in evolutionary biology. But what really has been forgotten is Darwin's specific view that mate choice occurred because individual animals were acting on their individual desires, that mate choice is not driven necessarily by improvement, by getting better, by having objectively better mates, but really about getting what you want. And this proposed back in the Victorian era that animals were capable of subjective evaluations. That is, they had things that they actually like and that it was really appealing to the sense of individual sense of beauty of the organisms that gives rise to the preferences and ornaments in the world. So what's been forgotten is that is Darwin's view that mate choice is an independent form of, or mechanism of evolution? Beginning right off in the Victorian era, mate choice was critiqued as merely another kind of natural selection that is either irrelevant or identical to Darwin's previous concept of adaptation by natural selection. So basically, especially Alfred Russell Wallace, critiqued Darwin's idea and led to essentially the death of this concept. It went under for almost a century and then re-emerged in the modern world. After some debate in the 70s and 80s, basically the contemporary version of mate choice is really Wallace's. So what's forgotten is Darwin's aesthetic view that beauty and sexual ornament in the natural world can be the product of kind of an irrationally exuberant evolutionary process, beauty for its own sake. I love that, I love that phrase, the irrational exuberance of this. What's interesting, most of my colleagues in evolutionary biology think that beauty, whether it's the peacock's tail or the song of a woodthrush, is really about getting objectively better mates that females or choosers prefer the mates they do because those traits encode information about mate quality, right? And this makes beauty in nature another kind of utility. It means that all choice and desire is about actually betterment, getting better. But the real Darwinian view is that it's really about getting what you want. And lots of times it's unhinged from actually improvement, from any kind of objective betterment. And so that's what the book is really about. The consequences of the idea of thinking of the evolution of beauty as not the handmaiden of natural selection, but a kind of independent force in which the animals are agents in their own evolution. That birds are beautiful, for example, because they're beautiful to themselves, right? And that was the Darwinian view and that's what I've been pushing for a while in science. Yeah, so I mean, I come from, I've studied birds myself and I appreciate their beauty, but can we, where would the appreciation of beauty come into our evolutionary ideas of how... I like that one. I'll take it. It's almost like I'm doing this chicken and egg scenario in my brain where I'm going, oh, so they like it just because it's beautiful, but it's beautiful because being beautiful gets you more mates. But then that means that that's an advantage. So that's not really for the sake of being beautiful. And I kind of get lost. Well, Blair, you're so ready to read the book. That's what I can say. Because we unpack these confusions and I think put it on a framework that clarifies it. But what I can say is that like, there's a lot of sexual behavior and sexual strategy evolution that is independent of the origin of sex, right? If you give a talk about a thrush song and you say, oh, I think these are arbitrary, aesthetic traits that involve people who say, well, how do you explain the origin of preference and trait in this thrush? But no one would ever ask at an ornithology meeting, how do you explain the origin of sex in those thrushes, right? In fact, the origin of sex is an ancient thing going back to our worm-like ancestors, right? And in the case of birds, mate choice itself probably evolved in a lineage of theropod dinosaurs in the Jurassic, right? There are no species of birds that don't exist, some kind of mate choice. So what we have within extant birds is just the proliferation of this project. This is, I mean, what I think why aesthetic evolution is so interesting. Birds are this amazing aesthetic radiation. And I propose that concept in the book as a contrast to the classic idea of adaptive radiation. Natural selection producing lots of different ecological and functional solutions to the talents of the world. Well, adaptive radiation is the flourishing of a whole different diversity of standards of beauty among different species, which may or may not be, have any adaptive content or meaning at all. You brought up the peacock's tail and I do love the story of the peacock's tail where Darwin had issues with it. He's like, I look at it and I kind of hate it. The sight of an eye in the peacock's tail makes me sick, which is what he wrote to Asa Gray, a botanist at Harvard in 1861. After writing the origin, Darwin had lots of outstanding questions. One was no theory of genetics. He had no theory of inheritance, right? Which was a special role here. Of course, nobody had read Mendel's papers. Mendel was forgotten, buried. So he'd missed that. And then he had no explicit concept of human evolution, though he had some good ideas. And then he didn't have any theory of beauty. So it was really a conundrum for him. And it took him another decade and plus. And then he produced Descent of Man, which I think is an underrated book. And part of the reason why it's underrated is because people had so much problem with the concept of mate choice. They really, Darwin's audience, were true believers. They had converted from monotheism to kind of monoidism, one idea. And that one idea was adaptation by natural selection. They'd been sold that this was the singular important explanation of biodiversity. And then he, in a wily and foxy way, comes around and proposes another theory, another mechanism of mate choice, which give rise to beauty, which he thought of as independent. And that was too much for them. And it was actually, you know, it is still too much for most of my professional colleagues. You can't have both, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And by the way, peacocks, peacocks, by the way, it's not about the feathers. In the mating, they're looking at the feet. They're checking out their feet. So that's what's next. That doesn't make sense, because if you shaved off the feathers and just had the feet, I mean, I know they're paying attention to the feet, but what do we know about the recognition of peacock? So I think, I guess they care more about the feet, but they'd miss the feathers if they were gone. So I think that if you get the feet without the feathers would result in mate choice. So you don't get to the peacock's tail by looking at the feet, let's just put it. So that proximity is not an explanation of the evolution of the tail. I think, yeah. Get this concept of beauty first, because if beauty does, if the mating is based on what they're attracted to, what they like, and that's what they go seek out, natural selection's going to fall in place behind that regardless, because you're going to have- That's just not true. Beautiful meaning more, right? Well, that's not true. Basically, what happens, according to the Wallacean view or this honest advertisement, which is the current name for this, what that means is that you have the peacock's tail and to the honest advertisement, the peacock's tail is like a rainbow leading to a pot of gold. And in that pot of gold are a bunch of extrinsic benefits, like good genes or good worms or no sexually transmitted diseases, objective benefits, right? And so the mainstream view is that the beauty of the trail is extrinsic to the tail. It's not actually the tail, right? And the Darwinian view is that it's beauty for its own sake, right, the benefit of the trail. I compare this to the origin of the value of money, right? And so let's just pull out a dollar here. Well, I don't have a dollar, here's $10. Okay, right? All right, $10, $10, right? So under the gold standard, the dollar had value originally because it stood in lieu of a tiny piece of gold in Fort Knox. So under the gold standard, the value of the dollar is extrinsic to the dollar. It's not actually in the dollar anymore, right? And this was just a, and that's, my colleagues are on the gold standard. They believe that the value of the peacock's tail like the dollar under the gold standard is extrinsic. It's in the gold, right? I am on new money, right? Basically, the Darwinian idea is like money in the absence of the gold standard. The value of the dollar is intrinsic to the dollar. It occurs just because we all agree that it has value. So this is sounding almost like... And that, so that's the distinction. So the question is, is there any gold or not? Is there extrinsic value or not? And that is a special association between variance and phenotype and some other benefit, which is, of course, testable. And so that's how we should, I think, adjudicate this. In the book and in previous writings, I proposed that the social contrivance of value like modern money or Bitcoin is the null hypothesis, right? That the burden of proof is on the adaptations to show that there is a pot of gold full of good genes and direct benefits. But there's logic that adaptation is a strong force that must predominate, goes back to Wallace's immediate criticisms of Darwin back in the 1870s and 80s. And it was essentially an anti-Darwinian argument then and it still is today. So is this like with, let's say, there's poison dart frogs, right? Who are brightly colored, which indicate that they are poisonous, so you shouldn't eat them. And then there are the mimics, right? That are also brightly colored, but don't spend the energy to make poisons. They're just kind of riding on the coattails, right? So is that kind of where this comes from I think and in other writing I propose that that is a kind of aesthetic evolution as well, right? That is, I mean, aesthetic evolution is really about those aspects of the phenotype that function in the perception of other individuals. They don't function in the physical world per se in terms of like the roots of a plant attaching to the soil, soaking up water, et cetera. But the flower functions in the perceptions of pollinators like bees, right? And that is a different functional substrate. And so I would say there's a watershed between those things that function in the physical world and those things that function socially and cognitively and perceptually, right? And so the action of predators is distinct from, and the way they develop and evolve is different than in sexual preferences. But yeah, that is a kind of aesthetic evolution. So we can jump from this into kind of the idea you brought up briefly, honest versus dishonest signals, Dan, so. The contrast of honest is not dishonest. It's just aesthetic. I mean, basically an arbitrary trait is what I would call the contrast to honest. An arbitrary trait is not dishonest or not. It just is available to decide whether you like it, right? There's nothing at stake. There's no other information, no other correlation with other aspects of quality that are available. All right. So how does this honest versus, I guess you would go about, honest versus arbitrary, you would go about testing this using, when I think of mating systems themselves, you have some species that are monogamous, others like you talk about in the book that mate using lex and they're more social. Others, they mate once, the father helps to care for the young, others, the father takes off and mates with, they're polygamous and the father takes off and mates with somebody else. So that's a whole fascinating area of behavioral ecology that isn't really part of the book because it's a whole other field, but essentially those kind of changes in breeding system establish the strength or the possibility for sexual selection to act, right? So when you got mom and dad at the nest occurs in 95% of bird species, the opportunity for sexual selection is less because the difference between the most and least successful individuals is not that big, but when you have bird of paradise or a peacock, then five or 10% of the males are enormously successful. It's like the distribution in sexual success is like the distribution in the income, the current income distribution, right? You got 5% of males getting 50% of the copulations and another 10, 20% of the males probably getting the rest and then 50% of the males are probably never mating in their lives, right? Or more, right? So that's a really strong skew and those are the conditions under which you get really strong sexual selection and that's where the dynamics are revealed what happens when sexual selection is really strong, right? Yeah, so with the peacock again, I love the idea that the males, they will have false or fake mating calls to make it sound as if they're, or mating coos to make it sound as if they're getting more partners than they are. Well, you know, I mean, what's fake? You know, I mean, I think, you know, the adaptive view has often reinterpreted female behavior as, or male behavior as manipulation when it doesn't conform to the prediction that females should like objectively better mates, right? So if it's, so it's basically they're telling it's like, you know, like the dad telling his daughter that, you know, she shouldn't like that motorcycle guy, right? No, no, no, you know, you should be going out with the future banker, right? And it's like, who's to say what she likes, right? She is. And so when people say that a male has manipulated or deceived the female, you know, I think that's inappropriate. Basically, it's the female that decides what the female wants. And that's actually the way evolution works. And in fact, what I call the arbitrary model, what I call it is the beauty happens process. Basically, when you have opportunity for perception, cognitive evaluation and choice, then beauty happens. That's those are the conditions under which the social contrivance of some kind of normative desire will evolve. It just sort of self-organizes in the population, giving rise to some kind of thing, which will drive some preference, which will drive drive evolution forward. So we're talking about males and females generally. And so now let's jump to humans and make choice in humans. Women wear lipstick. Is this an arbitrary signal? Well, you know, starting in the system of honest and dishonest starting, starting, starting with humans, it gets really tough because in fact, human sexuality, obviously we're fascinated by it, but in fact, it's like the hardest case because every mechanism of sexual selection is occurring at the same time. So basically you have male male competition, female female competition. You have a male mate choice and female mate choice. You have sexual conflict between the sexes that incurs male coercion and female coercion. And then on top of that, you've got culture and then cultural diversity through 100,000, 200,000 years of history. So it's not surprising that we get it wrong or hard. So you have one person talking to one thing, another person talking to another level, all simultaneously. So it takes a lot of caveats or advanced to get there and get it right. So yes, there are lots of things about human culture, aesthetic culture, human sexual cultures that I think our novel are happening at this cultural level that don't reflect our evolutionary history, but part of our evolutionary history was the invention of culture, which allows it to change and get quite diverse. So yeah, so people would, they're the whole field of evolutionary psychology, which is mostly about applying an adaptationist view, the idea that adaptation is a strong force to human biology. And in many areas of that literature, yes, interpreted almost every aspect, especially of the female body and female behavior as a kind of adaptive quality, indicating a strategy. In the book, I review some of that literature, a couple of very important books about evolutionary psychology, so I couldn't do that entirely. But I think like that work in birds, I think it's notably weak in humans as well. Yeah, one interesting point that you do bring up in your book is how different our mating system is from our primate cousins or our ancestors, where we look at primates today and males are promiscuous and they mate with just about anyone and the females are more choosy, but in human culture, males are picky. And you bring up a James Bond example of James Bond, never really going for the always available, but very bright and attractive money penny. Yeah, what's with that? What's happening? And evolutionary psychology, even the concept that sperm is cheap and eggs are rare or expensive, so males should be profligate and females should be coy. And what's remarkable about that, how little of human biology that actually explains. If you really do the research on the variance in lifetime male partners between men and women, it's not that big. And actually it changes more over decades over time, that is through cultural change, then the difference is between sexes, right? And so, and that makes sense, because of course, who are all those guys sleeping with anyway, right? There's no other view. Even just through the math model of that, we never really made any sense, right? So what's really notable is that in chimpanzees and gorillas, males never give up any sexual opportunities at all and females never refuse because they don't really have any choice. They act, yes, with any offer or any proposal. And so, as a result, there's almost no choice going on. And so what's really extraordinary about human sexual behavior is the evolution of choosiness, the evolution of preference and the action of those preferences on the biology of people. Yeah, and even in bonobos, there's not a lot of choosiness. Right, I mean, there's a lot of activity, but there's not the, yeah. I don't doubt they have favorites, right? But obviously, their sexual behavior is extremely diverse. Yeah, and non-hierarchical and diverse, yeah. Yeah, the book is just so fun. It covers so many, going from birds, birds to people and talking about, how these mating, how these, how mate choice could have come about and all the examples you bring up are just fun to read about. I had a lot of fun. Birds and humans, humans, birds, because they're very, they're fun to look at and they have these wonderful behaviors and beautiful feathers. You studied theropod dinosaurs and you mentioned that also, I mean, there's evidence of feathers. Do you think that they had mating displays, lacking behavior that we see now in these birds? Yeah, a whole other area of my work for nearly 20 years has been about feather evolution and development, right? So understanding the origin of feathers is a tough problem because until recently, the first fossils in the feather, in the fossil record, first fossil feathers were basically like modern feathers entirely. So we had to imagine backwards into the history of feathers to imagine what they could be like. And so at that time, I started looking at how feathers grow to associate that with how feathers evolve. Thinking that a good theory of feather evolution ought to be a good theory of the evolution of feather growth, right? So this is called evo-devo or divo-evo and it was notably successful. So we came up with a theory of how feathers evolve based on growth. And it was supported by a lot of the new discoveries in fossil dinosaurs. But what we were able to do was show that the main hypothesis for most of the 20th century about feather evolution was wrong. That is, feathers did not evolve for flight. The most modern thing about feathers is their use in flight. In fact, feathers evolve for something else. What else that is, is probably diverse at different stages in the evolution. But one of the most interesting or weird things is how you got, I mean, the first feather was like a tubular pasta, like ziti coming out of the skin, right? And then the next thing was a tuft of feather. And then after that, you got a plane, you know? And the question is why the plane? Why did you get a planar feather? It wouldn't be more water repellent and it wouldn't be warmer. What would it be? What advantage could it be? Well, one of the things that I think is plausible is that the planar feather would have created a sleek plumage appearance and that it literally provided a palette upon which, or a canvas upon which you can portray pigment patterns. You can make spots and dots and stripes and patches, right, like modern birds. So it could very easily have been that beauty and the desire for beauty drove the innovation of the planar feather. And what's interesting about that is that people have thought that this arbitrary view of beauty means that beauty is irrelevant or trivial or not interesting. But in fact, beauty may be responsible for the origin of the planar feather, which then later was co-opted in the evolution of flight, which means that all of birds and all of flying and all of bird biology may have been dependent on this early origin of mate choice or social selection on coloration pattern. So aesthetic evolution, even if it's arbitrary, can drive innovation and evolution and is a core issue in all of our favorite topics in evolution of biodiversity. And I think similar arguments could be made across flowers and fruits and insects and butterfly diversity and lots of other clades. Well, I think your timing is wonderful and that I hope lots and lots of evolutionary biologists are taking a hard look at your work and coming up with experiments to test these ideas because I can't wait to hear more about them. Your book, The Evolution of Beauty, how Darwin's forgotten theory of mate choice shapes the animal world and us is available now. And it's, there's some beautiful pictures and there are many topics that we did not even get to. We didn't get to the evolution of orgasm. Didn't. We didn't and there's a whole chapter in there. So, you know, or the baculum, the loss of the human penis bone, how did that happen? We talk about those all the time on the show. Inquiring minds we'll want to know and there's more in the book. Yes, there are duck penises and the baculum. I was wondering if that was gonna come up today, the duck penis. Oh yes, this book is full of fun topics. Duck sex tends to dominate almost every conversation in which it's introduced. So, it's maybe okay that it's just added at the end here. Teaser. The name of my next pop band is gonna be Duck Sex. All right, it has been just a pleasure speaking with you tonight, Richard. If people are interested in finding out more about you, your work, your book, is there a website or anywhere that you can send them? Well, I have a web page at Yale with most of my publications are listed and there's a Facebook page for the book which people can like and follow to find out more about the book. Wonderful. Yeah, thank you very much. Real pleasure to have been here. Yeah, it's been just wonderful. Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks for stopping by. Take care, good night. Have a great night. Good night. All right, everybody, that was Richard Prum and as he said, he has a website over at Yale and that will be, we will make that available, the link available in our show notes. So you'll be able to find the link in our show notes at twist.org and also on our YouTube show notes as well. And you're going to have to buy the book to find the origin of the orgasm. That's right, we got it. We have to leave people hanging a little bit but it's true, there is an entire, oops, that's the rundown, I didn't stop sharing. There is an entire chapter in here about the orgasm. And look, here's a picture of a 42 centimeter duck penis of a male Argentine Lake duck. There we go. This book has lots of great stuff in here and we didn't cover the best stuff. But anyway, I hope your whistle was wetted Blair for. Indeed. Interesting word choice and I take it. All right, everybody, this does it for the first part of this week in science. We are going to take a very short break so that we can all stop laughing. This is the break break. This is the break break. We're going to be back in just a few, unless you guys want to do stories, let's take a break and then we'll, we're just going to go through those stories. We'll take two breaks tonight. No, just one, just one, just one right now. Everybody, we're taking a break. Stay tuned for more this week in science. The reason shows the way to go. Hey everybody, I hope you're enjoying the show. We just had a fabulous interview that I hope you enjoyed as much as I did. It was full of some interesting information. And we try to do things like bring authors on the show, bring scientists on the show to talk about the things they know to explain ideas that we've maybe touched on here on the show in our news reporting. But that people can explain so much more. And this is something that we want to do as much as possible. And you make all of this possible, right? You, you out there, you make all of this possible. In a couple of weeks, not that long now, we're going to be in Philadelphia, Philly. And we're going to be at the Young Innovators Fair in Philly. And we would love to see you if you are able to join us. You can go to younginnovatorsfair.com to find information about our June 10th and 11th shows at the Young Innovators Fair in Philadelphia. Join us, come on out. And we are going to try to also do some live broadcasting maybe on our Facebook channel. We're going to work on it. Can't make any promises, but if you're local to Philly, come see us. 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Never even bothering to stop and fish. And we're back with more of this week in Science Kiki. Yay! What's that? Oh, it's my turn. I got science stories. All right. Did you know that a Sinestia is by Concave? Pardon me. OK, first, what's a Sinestia? And then what's by Concave? What? All right. So researchers from UC Davis, this is the exciting part of this story, have done some mathematical modeling of the rotation of celestial objects and their rotational inertia and then how they would continue to rotate and combine their inertial momentum upon collisions. And so very much like an ice skater who is able to spin faster by pulling her arms in or out. If two ice skaters are spinning separately and then joined together in a spin, their spin, their angular momentum would combine and grow together. And so these researchers were using this kind of an idea, this additive aspect of momentum, rotational, angular momentum to figure out what shapes. Planets and other objects in the universe would be when they combine, you know, we have a history where once upon a time there were a bunch of rocks around the sun and they smashed together and some of them turned into the earth. But then there was another big collision and we got the moon, right? What did they look like in their in-between states? And so we have our nice spherical or oblate spheroid, depending on what you're kind of looking at, spherical bodies known as planets. We have also planets like Saturn that have disks, but maybe there's some kind of an in-between or a protoplanetary format. It looks kind of like a doughnut without the middle completely smushed out, kind of like a red blood cell, which is a biconcave disk where there are two concave impressions. Oh, I know. It's like a lifesaver. It's like a lifesaver or it's like a pizza bagel with the mozzarella right in the middle, right? I think you have the winner right there. That's right. This is this is the pizza bagel in space. But they have named it. This this was an unknown celestial shape before. They've named it a synestia for sin, for having the same or symmetrical similar and Estia being the goddess of architecture and structures in Greek. So structural similarity, structural. Anyway, they named they named it a synestia. And so now we have these new objects that have not ever actually been seen in space before, but that they could look for in space to see whether or not they're actually there, which could be pretty cool. Pizza bagels in space. Who knew? Sin for together. That's right. Structures together. Yeah. And so anyway, this is new ways to think about how the moon may have formed, what intermediate forms the earth and that body that slammed into it may have taken after the impact. And so these are new things to aim our telescopes at. Sinestia. Sinestia. I just like saying it. Sinestia. Anyway, is that what your next child is going to be named? Maybe my next cat. I don't know. Moving forward, I got some more stuff in space. Sperm. Sperm. In. Sperm, Sperm, Sperm, Sperm. That's right. In space. Wait, that's right. Sperm in space. Japanese researchers launched freeze-dried mouse spermatozoa into space. And these freeze-dried sperm were kept on the International Space Station for nine months, three quarters of a year. And then they came back to earth. They hydrated them and they fertilized some mice, fertilized mouse eggs. And the freeze-dried sperm can do this very fine. Upon inspection, the freeze-dried sperm did have a lot of damage. There was actually damage due to radiation in outer space to the sperm. But all the offspring were born normal with no mutations. Harden? Yeah. So even though the sperm were the DNA in the sperm was damaged from exposure to space radiation. Upon the fertilization process, those errors were either nullified or they got fixed. And none of the offspring had any mutations or they all grew to adulthood and they were they were fertile themselves. Oh, yes. Good to know. This is good to know because there are people who want to want humanity to become a space fairing race. And I cannot wait for everybody else to take up this idea and move there. Yeah. So next are we going to look at what happens to eggs? That is another good question. But because really, it's just sounding like the male's role in all of this has become less and less important. We're just going to raise the sperm. If you can damage the sperm and it still does its job, who's picking up the slack? It's got to be the egg. The egg. Now, wow, yeah. So they don't know. And that's what they yeah. And that's what they do bring up is that it could be these repairs are made by the eggs cytoplasm by the site cytoplasm. Yeah, because there's no there was no impairment in birth rate and everyone was normal. So we could are we going to raise farms in outer space? Right, space cows, space cows. This really are we really going to have pigs in space? So I think the next step is to find out what happens to female eggs and to see whether or not because they will be damaged, of course. But will that be fixable? I would like to just briefly bring up the 3D printed pizza again. So you are all about food tonight. First, we've got pizza bagels and now we've got pizza on the break. But why do we need to bring cows into space? If we have the technology to basically have a real world replicator to like make the food that we need with components that don't eat or poop. Right, which is something that would be important on an interstellar space trip. But if we were on a planet, yeah, we could have animals on that planet. We could take our animals. But, you know, there is also the question of long distance voyaging, if if a trip will take several generations. What are the effects going to be on the offspring, on the people? Yeah, yeah. And so can you have people just travel through space and not have to worry about the radiation as much? Or do all the sperm need to be freeze dried? Ahead of time. Or do we all wear lead chastity belts while in space? These are all very important questions. Very interesting questions. All right, 3D printed space pizza. Really, I'm looking. What is the sperm on top? What are we talking about? Wait, Blair, where is your mind tonight? I didn't say that. What is it? Farmer. Yeah, yeah. What's that song, the farmer? This farmer, the farmer on the spaceship, the farmer on the spaceship. Yeah. Hi, ho, the Dario, the farmer on the spaceship. OK, my gosh. And that's it for me for the first part of the show. Justin, what do you have? Hey, if I were to tell you that artifacts were a tree from near an ancient pyramid that included food remains, stone tools, cultural features such as ornate baskets and textiles, you would assume I was talking about aliens. Exactly. Ancient Egypt or Egypt. Maybe ancient Egypt, yeah. Maybe ancient Egyptians. But amongst the artifacts, the 6,200 year old indigo blue cotton textile, which we mentioned on a past show. And a large 90 foot tall mound architecture are older than the pyramids. They come instead from the ruins of an ancient civilization inhabited by aliens. No, wait, humans. No, humans. Sorry. It's all in place. And now they know that this was a culture starting about 15,000 years ago, 10,000 years before the curtain peoples of Europe had settled down and began building and farming in Europe. They speak, of course, about the people of Huwaka Prieta and coastal Peru. Site was recently pushed back after radio carbon dating confirmed the age of some of the mound found bits of sciency garbage. Human inhabitants deep, deep, deep within the giant mound. They did that like a core sample and they went way, way down and found really old evidence of humans persisting there. And this is already a very old site. But this this push that it was the site was known to be in there started around 8000 years ago. So this is pushing it back 7000 more years. Radio carbon dates from the charcoal placed the earliest human occupation nearly 15000 years ago. They also have evidence of hearthfires, animal bones, plant remains, some stone tools are there. Other recent artifacts excavated are tools used to capture deep sea fish like herring, a variety of hooks have been found in getting diversity and fishing took place and almost certainly the use of boats that could withstand rough waters, but they're not that rough in the Pacific. They also combined their exploration of maritime economy with growing crops like chili pepper, squash, avocado, some form of medicinal plant that's not named here in a way that produced a large economic surplus. Apparently extensive collection of basket remnants have been retrieved from the site as well, some from the local reed that's grown there already and even more elaborate ones made out of cotton that had segments put together. And it was a domesticated cotton that they were using. They were color dyeing these things and they had corn cobs, corn cobs that they date back to about 6800 years, which is sort of rivaling the the the domestication of corn, which was not too far away, but thought to be central Mexico at about that same time. But this shows that they were already eating this cutting edge new food source right at about the time when we think it was created somewhere else. The society that left all these artifacts behind is thought to have started 15,000 years ago. Eventually their ingenuity led to a larger society size, the emergence of bureaucracy and a highly organized religion. So inevitably about 4,000 years ago, they called it quits. Although, although one of the world's largest or the new world, I should say, the Americas largest pyramid is right nearby. Although it doesn't show up to nearly a thousand or a little over a thousand years after this culture had sort of vanished. Also an intriguing part of this site is that it looks like it had been hit by something of a tsunami at some point, which also may have had something to do with why the culture sort of left the area for a while. But it's also a sort of natural flood plain for the ocean. Like it's got a deep inlet bay that goes in and goes back out again and leaves all these ponds and puddles. So it was when this happens, when this big tidal shift happens, you can actually go and grab things like and and see basically sea fish in these little pools where they get trapped. So it must have also been a really easy place to do some inland fishing when this happened. But again, we're finding more and more evidence of ancient societies in the Americas pushing back ever further the age of the settlement of North and South America. I think that stuff, the stuff is so neat because it's like we it all we only it only gets pushed back when we make some kind of new find when something gets uncovered. And it's like it's these little tiny chance findings. OK, well, this seems like a good place to look. Why don't we look here, you know, but the environment has changed as a result of climate change over, you know, millennia. And so what was once a rich, wet habitat? Good for fishing, good for all this, not so anymore, you know, that so maybe you maybe you wouldn't expect to find. A people's in a particular area, right, you know, in this particular yeah, in this particular area, though, modern day, it's still going. Yes, modern day is still going. But in other places, people have had to leave and they've because it's completely changed. Right. And and another good point to that, too, is yeah, with a lot of these, this is sort of an inland and they've they've built this giant mound for some reason, maybe because of the flooding, maybe they were actually trying to build a high spot, you know, 90 foot earth mound that got built there over many thousands of years. Maybe they were all just trying to keep a little bit of high ground near the good fishing area, right, where they could where they could stay even even when that next tsunami came or when the when that that tidal flood came in and out. So yeah, but a pretty advanced looking culture from what we've seen so far, this mound is massive and really all they know of it is in the depths of it and the way back portions of it are from cores that went all the way down. So hopefully this this I mean, this isn't the tip of the iceberg. This is all the way down to the bottom of the iceberg. But it's just a core sample of the iceberg. There's a whole lot of I don't know. There's going to be a lot of stuff around it. Yeah, in there. This is a giant archaeological site. We now now know goes back 15,000 years in Peru. And we're just getting the the smallest snippets of it so far. Love it. Love it. Oh, do you know what snippets it's time for right now? What's it time for? It's time for Blair's animal snippets. Have you got animal snippets for us today, Vlad? Did you make sure? What? That's what. Take two. Take two. Or we could just go. Well, I have a story about bird brains. Just a quick guess. What do you think we found? Birds are smart. Yeah, that's true. Birds are smart. They do stuff we didn't think they could do. This one is about cockatoos and their tool use. That almost rhymes. And cockatoos also are able to fashion tools for specific tasks just like New Caledonian crows. Like we've talked about a lot on the show. And researchers from University of Veterinary Medicine in Vienna and the University of Vienna have shown another element to cockatool cockatool use cockatool. That just happened. And we're going to keep it to cockatool use that we haven't seen before. And that is that if you are hammering a nail into a wall, then you you're hammering a bunch of nails into a wall and you drop a nail. Are you going to go put your hammer down across the room to go pick up that nail and then go back to get your hammer and then walk back over to your project and then start hammering again? Sadly, probably. But or are you going to put that hammer in the little loop in your carpenter's pants? You're going to put it in a spot where you can keep it nearby. If you can, you're going to put it in your handy dandy contractor belt. Tool belt, little loop on your pants. Maybe your tool bench is nearby. Maybe you're working at your tool bench. Maybe you have your toolbox. We have places to put our tools while animals are not so different. Cockatoos were given a very specific task. They were allowed to use a single stick as a tool to retrieve a nut from several low level or highly elevated food boxes. And to add additional difficulty, the nuts were encased in small pill capsules in half of the cases. So the birds not only had to show that they were able to use the tool, but they also to consider the possibility of recycling their tool to retrieve the next award. So they had to pull this thing out with the use of the tool. And then they had to use their beak and a foot to break open the capsule. So the question is, if there are five holes with capsules in them and one tool, what do you do with that stick while you're breaking open that capsule? Yeah, because somebody might steal your stick. Somebody might steal the stick. Put it behind your ear. Yeah, birds don't have external ear flaps. So that's a bummer. Yeah. But so they could drop it, they could break it, it could get stolen. There's many different things that they could do with it. So how do you keep that tool safe? Well, it turns out that they learned very quickly how to keep their tool safe and that that methodology varied based on the environment that they were in. So when safekeeping tools on the low platform, they held the tool in one of their claws while picking up the food reward in their beak. In the higher platform, they actually, I love this, they put the tool, they inserted the tool into a previous foraging hole and let it rest on that space also while holding it with their other foot. They were going to hold this right here because I don't want it to fall. Exactly. So they found a safe place to put it, but also wanted to keep a foot on it just in case. So that is the arguably you'd call it the safer mode of keeping the tool from dropping or getting broken or lost. So they actually adjusted their behavior depending on the situation, but all of those behaviors included saving their tool for later. And so basically this shows a few things. The shows that their tool use is very. Meticulous is very intentional. It shows that they have foresight for the future. It shows how extremely elastic their their ability to understand challenges and address them is because most of these, so all of the cocktails, none of them did this immediately. It wasn't a passed on treat. It wasn't something that they inherently knew how to do something they figured out within two or three tries of dropping the stick. Don't drop the stick. Don't drop the stick. I might drop the stick, so I don't want to do that. So I better put it somewhere. I'm going to hold on to it or I get it. I don't drop the stick. Yes. Yeah. And that also within all of the the cockatoo in the study, their their behavior also had some variants. So some birds pretty much only held the tool in their claws, even when they were using it. Others would press it against the apparatus. Others would deposit it while foraging. So they all kind of had different rules and methods. But overall, that was kind of the overarching methodology that we found. And so it really shows foresight and thought going into these birds actions. So I wonder like how how many animals they really worked with in this in this study. I mean, the New Caledonian crow studies very often, you know, they've come out in the media is sounding like these. Oh, these all of these crows do this when it's really like one or two individuals. Yeah, it's always in the lab. Yeah, it's always in the lab. You know, they're not really seeing it in the wild. And so and then not even all the individuals are picking it up from other individuals, even though they're the researchers are saying that it's a learned trait and can be passed along culturally. There's, you know, the evidence is rather limited. And so I'm just wondering, you know, what the what the extent here of, you know, unfortunately, I don't have access to the full paper because it's real pricey. So I don't know what the sample size was. But I think that just like in any other organism, there are smarty pants. Right? Yeah. And that's what I'm going to say too is it like, doesn't it matter like, I mean, I don't think you would judge all mankind by and say, yes, because Einstein is as smart as he was. And then therefore, all mankind is also this smart. I don't think that's it. But when you're talking about the capacity, like what's the capacity for the human brain? Like what can it, what can somebody do with it under the right circumstances? Yeah, what could they do? And you would maybe point Einstein, right? What could the right brain do in their given the right circumstances? Along with the left brain, it's got to be both together. As, you know, as Blair brought up, not even all there were, there was variation in the behavior of some of the animals being a little bit more careful about how they held it and what they, you know, what exactly they did, you know, more methodical in their actions, whereas others were maybe a little bit more less affair about their saving behaviors. And so there's this individual variation that's based on differences in the brain. And yeah. But I guess, I guess my point is like, whenever I'm hearing an animal intelligence story, if it's a high watermark, if it's an outlier, if it's the genius bird, I think that's fine. You know, I think that's still telling us what the bird brain is capable of, even if it's not the average, even if it's not the norm, even if there's, there may be birds with more intelligence even than are being tested, you know? We could, we could account for that a little bit too. So we keep testing, we keep finding new high watermarks for cognitive ability within animals that we may have underappreciated in the past. Well, and this is the perfect segue to my next story. I'm actually planned. Can you imagine that? How did that happen? So we move from the unmeasured intelligence of one type of animal to another. Do you know how many species of snakes there are in the world? Two. There are over 3,000. There's actually about 3,600 snakes. Wow, I totally under... You are pretty far off. Can you guess how many of the species have been observed hunting in the wild? Oh, I would say probably a few of them, a lot of them. Yes, the verbiage in the press release is a few. I think in actuality, it's close to 10. But not many, not many snake species have been observed hunting in the wild. I feel like I've seen enough TV specials. Yes, that's the majority of them, yeah. Okay, that's all of them. That's most of them. So the point being, there are a lot of assumptions that have been made about how snakes hunt that we don't actually have proof of yet. The main one being that snakes are sneaky and loners and solitary and they sneak up on their food and they eat it by themselves. And all of this kind of comes from this weird stigma about snakes and may add to it. This is a strange thing about snakes, but there was in, oh gosh, the Harrison Ford movie, the Indiana Jones, thank you very much, a pit of snakes. Yes, a pit of snakes, yes. We know that snakes hang out in pits together. They habitat, cohabitate, cohabitate, cohabitate together. And big groups, like even the rattlesnakes, why then would you make the assumption that they hunt alone? It's an interesting question. Because otherwise they would be as scary as spiders. Right, right. A new study from the University of Tennessee in Knoxville showed that snakes actually coordinate their hunts to increase their chances of success. And this was observed with Cuban boas and it's actually because these Cuban boas eat bats. Wait, huh? Yes. That's gotta be tough. What they do is they grab the bats when the bats fly out at dusk or return at dawn. They do that by hanging down from the ceiling of the cave entrance. Oh my goodness. And grabbing passing bats in mid air. Oh my goodness. Oh wow, that is wild. So this research found that if more than one boa was present, they would coordinate their position so that they were well distributed across the entrance of the cave, which made it difficult or impossible for bats to pass without getting within striking distance of at least one snake. You just go around it. Yes, groups of Cuban boas were always successful. And the more snakes were present, the less time it took to capture a bat. But if there's only one boa, it often failed to get a bat at all. Yeah. So basically it was, I picture like a beaded curtain. Yeah. But of snakes. Beaded curtain of snakes. And they're going to eat the bats. Oh. Yeah, absolutely. I'm just picturing it from the bat perspective. Snake, snake, how'd they get up here? Snake, how'd another keep flying? Snake, ah, there's another one. Ah, look out. Exactly. What are they doing up here? Snake. Oh, oh my goodness. Yeah. So the boas are coordinating their efforts in working together to catch food. And this is interesting for a few reasons. One, ecologically for the Cuban boa, this is a problem because their numbers are declining for several reasons. One being that these caves are, a lot of them are not protected. And so people go in, get scared, kill snakes. They also, they kill snakes for their hide. They probably kill bats too. Bats are probably dying. Yeah, and these snakes are very commonly captured for the pet trade because they're only about eight to 10 feet long. That's kind of the larger end of the pet trade boa constrictor that is sought after, like rosy-tailed boas and stuff like that. Those are about eight feet long. So all of those things, that means that if the numbers are dwindling, that's gonna cause an exponential decrease if these guys can't catch their food if they're hunting together. The other thing that makes this interesting is that if we have only observed about 10 snake species in the whole world out of over 3,000, and we are making an assumption about how snakes hunt, and now we find out that they have coordinated hunting behavior in one species, who's to say there's not more? And now maybe we know what happened to all the snake researchers who went into the field looking for snakes, but never came back. Snakes aren't, snakes don't eat humans, you know that. An eight to 10 foot snake, yeah, an eight to 10 foot snake isn't big enough. We don't know that, we don't know that at all, we haven't eaten them. No, an eight to 10 foot snake couldn't swallow a human. It would have to be bigger in Anaconda. Yeah, like in the movie. Yeah, just like in the movie. Science is like the movies guys, that's what Keegan just told you. I did not. It's on a cave. And then I will just say since, I'm just gonna say that we don't wanna, we don't wanna perpetuate people's fear of snakes or spiders or anything. We are not speciesist, and what Blair is bringing up is just some very interesting behavior in these animals, and you know. So maybe it's better to think about it as though the snakes were working together, and they were smart enough to be able to coordinate a group effort. And that actually elevates potentially their cognitive abilities in our brains, and it helps us understand how valuable they are. Or it could be that, or it could be that they just don't like being, you know, too close to each other really, and so they have this nice- But they sniffing giant balls of snakes, where they like, you can't tell where one snake starts and you begin. Some species. We don't know if the boas do that. We don't know if these Cuban boas do that, but I don't know that anyway. But yeah, and there are some snakes that do like to hunt alone, like snakes in Australia. Oh, Australia. You're a piece of work. Do you want me to throw my last story in here since we're already in the second half of the show anyway? Sure, whatever you wanna do. So this one is just a quick one I wanna mention. I could spend an hour talking about it. So I'll just kind of tease it so that I encourage people to check out our show notes and look it up themselves. But flamingo legs are very interesting because I think most people listening to this or watching this have seen a flamingo napping. They do it on one leg, but I don't think any of us thinks that we could sleep on one leg, standing on one leg for very long. And so the mechanics of that have long been hypothesized, but there hasn't been a lot of study done on it. And there's actually kind of been two schools of thought as to why they sleep on one leg. One being that it actually reduces heat loss because they stand in water as they sleep. And the other being that it reduces muscle fatigue. So by studying flamingos that they placed on what was essentially a Wii Fit Board. Yeah, by doing that, it's called a force plate, but basically it's a Wii balance board. So if anyone ever has done Wii yoga before, you kind of try to balance in the center of the pressure from your feet. And there's this little line that bumps around the screen and you try to keep it in the circle. So all of your weight is kind of centered under your body. So that's what they measured through this force plate, this other version of a Wii balance board sort of situation. And so they could watch what happened to the weight distribution from the flamingo legs. And what they found was that when they were sleeping on one leg, it was steady. They were not fluctuating, they were solid. When they were on two feet, they were not. So what is happening here? Well, even though bird legs, like on the picture that Kiki's showing now, the knees are forever bent. So if you just tried to stand here with your knees bent, even let's say at a 45 degree angle, not a 90 degree angle like theirs is, after a few minutes, you'd get pretty tired. And your stance is hard, people sitting in a squat. Your thigh muscles would start to tremor. It would be stressful on our body. And so the idea from these researchers was that it must be stressful on them. But instead, what I'll kind of equate it to is if you lock your knees, you stand on one leg. You might be kind of wobbling around a little bit. But if you kind of try to lean this way to compensate, I'm standing on my right leg and then I'm leaning towards my left leg that is raised, suddenly things become a lot more stable. And that's essentially what's happening with them is that they are the anatomy of their leg, the locking position is bent. And by leaning so that the foot of the single leg is kind of in the center of their body weight, they are extremely stable. And that actually puts out less energy and their muscles are less strained from doing that than from standing on two feet. Interesting. So they're in a sense, they're taking their hip bone or their thigh and putting it toward the center of their body to be able to readjust the weight. So they're not doing a squat. So even though it looks like they are, because that is the kind of resting position. Is that their ankle? That's not their knee. That's straight. So their ankle is in the middle of their leg there. Their ankle is up there by their body. Yes, so basically it would be as if they, yeah, as if you could put your knee up underneath your torso and use that your torso and your knee to support yourself. So that makes, yeah, that makes more sense. It would strengthen it. Right. So basically just their personal, their anatomy and then their adjustment to gravity make standing on one leg the least energetically expensive method. Ooh. Yeah. Even better than standing on two legs. Yeah. And so they found this out by standing live flamingos on a force board. And then by taking flamingos that were no longer with us and essentially just kind of, and I hesitate using this word, but playing with the center of gravity and seeing where the joints locked and at what orientation the joints locked. And so they were able to see the articulation of these bones and to see where these kinds of tendons and muscles would rest. And yeah, they found out that standing on one leg is actually their best resting posture. So now the question is, why did that happen? Was that to reduce heat loss? This is very much a chicken and egg scenario, right? Is this the result of wanting to do that for another reason and then hundreds of thousands of years of evolution of making that energetically less expensive? Or do they do it simply because it was already inherently energetically less expensive? I don't know. I don't know. That's fascinating. Yeah, we still don't know why. Nope. We know it's energetically better, but we don't know. So of course it would help them, but why? Right, so is that enough of a reason or? Is it enough? Yeah. Great question. I don't know. Dave Shorty in the chat room said, it's the equivalent of squatting on your toes and leaning your cheek on your knees. Sort of, yeah. Sort of like that, yeah. I'm not gonna save the flamingo pattern to my Pinterest. I don't even, what? What? I don't know what you're talking about. Hey you guys, this is This Week in Science. I hope that you're enjoying the show so far. We just finished the animal corner. Hey Justin, tell me a story. I don't have a story for you, but I've got a pop quiz. How come whales are so dang big? They live in the ocean and there's lots of space because they need lots of blubber. They don't have to support their own weight. Well, yes. If you're thinking there's a size limit to creatures on land because of gravity, yes, dinosaurs simply couldn't grow as big as a blue whale without being crushed by their own weight, but that's not quite the question I've had in mind here. They can get big, but how did it happen? How did they become this gigantic, ginormous? The blue whale can reach lengths of over 100 feet. It is the largest vertebrate animal that has ever lived and been on the planet and it's here right now. And those other creatures that were almost as big that were, you know, the next contenders for biggest thing that's ever lived on the planet are also baleen whales. What is it about the whale? It's strategy, it's being in the buoyancy of the water. Why does it get to be so big? According to new research from scientists at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, it was only recently in the whales evolutionary past that they became so ginormous. And the proceedings of the Royal Society B, Nicholas Payinson, I'm gonna have to find a way to say his name, Payinson. Oh, and Payinson could be wrong. The museum's creator of fossil marine mammals and collaborators, Graham Slater, University of Chicago, Jeremy Goldenbogan at Stanford University traced the evolution of whale size through more than 30 million years of fossil history. They found very large whales appeared along several branches of the family tree about two to three million years ago. But why? Well, their hypothesis is increasing ice sheets in the Northern Hemisphere during this period. Likely altered the way whales food was distributed in the oceans and enhanced the benefits of a large body size, they say. So part of the problem going in was they don't have a great fossil record of full whale bodies. They have tons of fragments and skulls that held up pretty well, but they didn't have quite the right data until they sort of, there was a recent discovery that the thickness of the skull, or excuse me, the width of a whale skull is a good indicator of its overall body size. So with this insight, they started looking for skulls of whales to study. The Smithsonian holds the largest skull collection for both living in extinct, baleen whales. So they started measuring them. And with that, they came up with the lengths of whales, the size of whales, over 30 million years. And this one to two million year period is when all of a sudden they started increasing in size and it matched up with an ice age. So still why? So we know the ice age is there. And what they kind of decided was that there would be, before the ice sheets were covering, there was sort of food fairly well distributed across the oceans. When the glaciation begins, there's runoff from new ice caps, which would have washed nutrients into coastal waters at certain times of the year, seasonally boosting the nutrient supply, the food supply, and therefore the baleen whales, which feeds on this smaller prey like krill, it would boost their food supplies into these sort of dense patches. That because the modern whale forging behavior was going all the way back there, that they were just happened to be in the right time at the right place for this baleen foraging. And what's interesting too is they noticed the large whales, which were the larger than, could migrate thousands of miles to find these sort of seasonal pockets of dense nutrients where the smaller whales started to disappear. They started to go extinct during this time. So, sort of interesting too. And one of the things that it says here too is an animal size determined so much about its ecological role, says Pyneson. Our research sheds light on why today's oceans and climate can support Earth's most massive vertebrates, but today's oceans and climates are changing the geological scales in the course of human lifetimes with these rapid changes. Does the ocean have the capacity of the same several billion people on land in the world's largest whales in the waters? That's a tough question, we don't know. But he thinks the answer might be somewhere in the fossil record. There's also something interesting that they don't point to in this that I just sort of picture though, with the glaciation, with that runoff, you would picture there being a lot more temperature change in the waters, colder waters up north, and those fish that were evenly dispersed sort of moving more equatorial, moving sort of away from the poles as the population. But in doing that, they would also be creating less competition for the bottom of the food chain all the way up. So there would probably be more krill, I mean, even more than today. And so the bigger whales got bigger and needed to keep traveling further as they would devour one portion over here and have to go into the other pole. Yeah, well this is your hypothesis then krill should be doing awesome right now because we're killing all the fish. So if the fish stocks are declining, then krill should be doing awesome and our very hard whales should be doing just fine. Doing absolutely just swell. Yeah, there are some big questions ahead as to, I mean, it's interesting. The earth changes, life changes along with it. It'll be interesting to see as the earth continues to change due to our forcings, how will life continue and change to excel? Not just to live, but excel. One question is predation. We're talking a bit about these whales are after little tiny krill, the bottom of the food chain. In the world, outside of the water though, we've got insects that get eaten by birds. And you know, we hear the idiom, the early bird gets the worm, right? You picture that bird with a little worm in its mouth. So if you're a worm, sleep late. That's right, sleep late. There's a study out this week in science that was sent to us by Matt Stafford to take a look at it. Researchers at the Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences decided they wanted to figure out how predation rates change or if they change as you move from the equator to the poles. And we kind of know that as you get out of the equatorial region, you got fewer and fewer bugs. It's less dense. It's less dense, right? There isn't that less life that is supported. Everything gets, it changes, you go from the equator. Everything changes as a result of the environment and the climate changing as you go from the center to the poles and life moves along with it. So if the insects are moving, if there's insects and little worms and things all over the place, less so. But if they're still there, are there rates of predation different? Are there lots of animals going to the poles and then just eating all the insects? Are insects more predated in the poles than they are in the equator? Or is it more in the equator than in other places? Anyway, this question, you can probably have your own ideas about, but they did a study at 31 sites from the Arctic Circle to Australia, basically all over the world, 31 different sites. They made little clay caterpillars, little tiny clay caterpillars. And they're so cute. They're little neon green. They stand out from the foliage so that birds or other insects would be likely to see them. Little tiny, very cute little worms, probably not too hard to make. And they made a few thousand of these and stuck them around different places. So then they wanted to know, okay, what actually happens to them? What does happen to them is that they find them and they have different imprints on them based on who the predator was. And so in this image that I'm showing on the screen right now, there's a little worm in the researcher's hand and it's got these little wedge marks in it. And it's very likely from the wedge-shaped beak of a bird. So the indications of this attack were bird as opposed to anything else. There are other indications for different kinds of animals. And so what they found overall is that predation is highest near the equator. So you have more insects, you also have more predation. And predation is lowest near the poles. And so for every degree of latitude that you move north or south of the equator, the odds, the probability of one of their little fake insects, their little fake worms getting attacked goes down by 2.7%. And so by Greenland, a little fake worm is 87% less likely to be bitten than the caterpillar at the equator. And this all kind of makes sense. The thing that is very interesting here though is that the increased predation at the equator is not necessarily birds or even mammals. It's other bugs. And so for every degree difference in latitude, predation by arthropods went down by 3.5%. Every 100 meters above sea level, arthropod, other insect attacks decreased by 9.6%. And so it's a really interesting question. The researchers who are involved, they say that they don't really know why this happened. They're hypothesizing migratory birds can redistribute themselves to find food and insects can't redistribute themselves. Like we think of birds, we think of them migrating from these over-incredible distances and insects, they're gonna migrate over maybe a much more short local distance. Also, insects are ectotherms and so they're not really producing their own internal heat and so the warm weather in the equator might increase their activity because it's warmer there generally. One of their researchers says their data suggests that bird migration could be so effective that it equalizes predation rates on prey at a global scale. That is a remarkable result with further testing, especially given the decline and vulnerability of so many migratory species. But there's a lack of a relationship between mammals and the predation. So there's no real understanding as to why there's no real relationship there other than the fact that it just decreases over distance from the equator. So this really interesting methodology, the thing that's interesting about it is to be able to look at, I mean, they're not looking at little tiny interactions just in a local area like the Amazon or a very small area. They're looking at large global patterns of change and of interactions between multiple species. And so they're gonna continue looking at this question and try and figure out a little bit more about predator-prey relationships and the movement of these species and why predation goes up or down in different places. I like the methodology. It's pretty great. Little fake worms. Little essentially like silly putty trying to get the impression of what's grabbing it. It's so smart. I love it. Exactly. Yeah. I just imagined being one of the research assistants or grad student having to sit there and shape all these little tiny worms. No, you're making it too thick. Like this. Try again. Start over. It has to be exactly the same as the first. And don't forget the googly eyes. Don't forget the googly eyes. Yeah. Well, anyway, out there, it's a buggy bug world. Another study, Justin? I just had to have an audible emission here. An acoustic emission, if you will. What is an acoustic emission, you ask? This is a OK. So this is the Volkswagen story. Remember, remember Volkswagen? They're diesel vehicles. Very recently, they got kind of busted because it looked like they were faking some emissions. Yeah. So there was an investigation to this and they've discovered actually the actual computer code on board that did this. So the cars basically weren't really passing the emissions tests. What they did was they would counter the emissions test by knowing what the emissions test was. There's a set sort of condition speed that they would run the wheels at. They keep the steering wheel locked. And whenever this computer code would sense at this sort of certain speed range with the steering wheel not moving for this period of time, it would change the amount of emissions that are going out. And it would drop it by 40-fold. 40? Wow. That's a lot. That's an intense computer program. Yeah. The team that found this code was led by Creole Levchenko, Computer Scientist University of California, San Diego. We were able to find the smoking gun, he says. We found the system and how it was used. Computer scientists obtained copies of the code running on Volkswagen onboard computers from the company's own maintenance website and from forums run by car enthusiasts. So this was apparently public out there already. Code was running on a wide range of models, including Jetta, Golf Passat, as well as Audi models, Audi A and Q series. We found evidence of the fraud right there in public view, Levchenko says. During emissions standards test, cars are placed on a chassis or equipped with a dynamometer. Which measures the power output of the engine, the vehicle follows a precisely defined speed profile that tires to mimic real driving and urban route. Frequent stops, conditions of the test are also standardized and public knowledge, which is what made it possible for the manufacturers to intentionally alter the behavior of the vehicles during the test cycle. The code found in Volkswagen vehicles, it checks the number of conditions associated with the driving test, such as distant speed, even the position of the wheel, conditions are met. Code directs the onboard computer to activate emissions curving mechanisms, which of course reduces the vehicle's overall performance. And then once those conditions are no longer in play, it reverts back to the 40 times, 40 times emissions than it had before. Apparently this also took place on a Fiat. The Fiat solution was when you first start the car for the first 26 minutes, which is a little bit longer than the testing time for emissions. The first 26 minutes and 40 seconds after the engine starts, it would work on a lower emissions level and then check out. What's sort of interesting though and why this is an acoustic emission story, the specific piece of code that they found was labeled acoustic condition. I have sensually way to control sound that the engine makes, but in reality, it was the euphemism for conditions during which an emissions test was taking place. The code even allowed for as many as 10 different profiles for potential tests. And when it can determine the car was undergoing the test, that's when the emissions curbing kicked in, reducing the amount of nitrogen oxide emitted. So not just... Wow, they were really, really, really working to... Really working. I feel like you could use that problem solving to just improve your emissions. Just make it better in emissions, right. And they can. I mean, obviously they can have less emissions, but it reduced the output of the engine. So it would be less... So get your scientists on that. Yeah. How interesting. The researchers note that Volkswagen and Fiat, the vehicle engine control unit is manufactured by the same automotive component, giant, which is Robert Bosch. Car manufacturers then enable the code by entering the specific parameters that they want it to fit. So he draws attention to the regulatory challenges of verifying software-controlled systems that may try to hide the behavior and calls for new breed of techniques that work in an adversarial setting. Well, people use this. People, beyond just the manufacturers of these vehicles to get around emissions testing, people use this for their own souped up version. I mean, in California alone, because of the emissions requirements, if you're going to do any post-market modifications to the engine of your vehicle to kind of hot rod it, you're going to want a little computer chip that you can turn on and off. So it tricks the engine when into allowing it to be a hot rod during certain times and then puts it back in the basic model mode when you go in to have your smog tested or when you go in to have, to your dealership, to have your engine looked at. You just click the doot-doot, poke in a little code and your car goes back to normal again. This is already being done everywhere. So it's not the big issue. It's being done by consumers who are post-modding their cars but the issue here is that this is being massive, done on a massive scale by manufacturers. Yes. Yeah, I had to smog my hybrid right here, we're looking at. I had to smog my hybrid because people started using, I guess, putting large engines for some reason into Priuses because they never had to smog them. Oh, that's funny. So you could actually plug your whole, and you wouldn't have to have the chip during these fixes so you could just modify the heck out of a hybrid. That is hilarious. Yeah, I know. Put a Ferrari engine smog in your Prius. Wow. Prius or Camry or Accord or whatever hybrid out there. People just like to have the power of a car. The dynamo is pronounced, oh, I said dynamometer, not dynamometer. Dynamometer, dynamomometer. Dynamometer? I like dynamometer. Can I just call it a dynamometer? Yeah. You can call it whatever you want. Yeah, they're not gonna use it anymore. They're gonna have to find something that works. All right, I've got a few more stories before we get to the end of the show. So really cool discoveries this last week in the land of viruses. Researchers looked at two antibodies that were, they looked at antibodies that were isolated from a human survivor of the last Ebola epidemic that we reported on a bunch between 2013 and 2016 where everybody was like, Ebola's coming to America. And everybody was freaking out. Well, anyway, some people survived the epidemic, survived their infection. And from one of these people, two antibodies were isolated that were shown to not only protect cells in a dish against all strains of Ebola, they were able to protect mice and ferrets against the big top three strains of Ebola that are known to cause outbreaks. Awesome. Very exciting news because we use antibodies to be able to make what, you guys? Vaccines. Vaccines, yes, to make vaccines. And so what we've used historically are these monoclonal antibodies that usually are only good against one strain. So it's like one antibody against one particular strain. And so you might be able to protect a subset of the population, but you're not gonna protect against multiple different possible outbreaks. And so having these two antibodies that can work, and the way they work is pretty cool, that they can work against multiple strains. This is very exciting news because it could potentially lead to a treatment to protect more people. The way that these antibodies work is that they encounter the virus, when the virus gets into the blood. They bind to it and they bind to glycoproteins, or these like carbohydrate proteins that are attached to the virus. And the virus then keeps swimming around in the bloodstream, but it's got these two little hitchhikers hanging out. And then when the virus tries to get into a cell and to get into and tries to do its thing inside the cell, the virus has to fuse with a membrane, a lysosome membrane inside the cell to get to where it wants to go to multiply. But the antibodies that are stuck to it, they just get in the way. And so the virus is prevented from getting into the cell to multiply and it just stops. And so the virus actually gets, not doesn't stay in the bloodstream, the virus then gets stuck and it can't get out. And so it's kind of just, it's in a prison. In a cellular prison, yes. And the infection just gets stopped. So this is, yeah. So this is a methodology or a mechanism that these antibodies use that could be very useful against hope, maybe more than three strains, but they know for sure that Ebola virus and Bundabugyo virus and Sudan virus are the three that it will protect mice and ferrets against and hopefully people eventually. And then in other news related to viruses, Zika virus, one of our favorites. We know Zika very well. We've been reporting on it in the last couple of years. The big question about Zika is why did it suddenly appear? It's been kind of, it's been around in Africa. We've known about it since like the 1940s. It's really not been a big deal though. It's this virus, it's around the world, but it's really never caused a problem. So why now? Why is it emerged in Brazil into this just crazy problem? Why is it, what happened? And so researchers have been looking at the genome of this Zika virus to figure out what could have possibly happened, comparing it against other strains that have popped up historically. They checked mutations against a Zika virus outbreak that was in Southeast Asia 2017 and 2012. And then also another version from Africa and also this virus in the Americas. And the data, the researchers conclude, offer a potential explanation for the recent reemergence of Zika virus. And they suggest that co-evolution between a virus and mosquitoes, its vector, is just as important for outbreak risk as co-evolution with its hosts. And what has happened is that they've discovered that there was a mutation that allowed the virus to get better at infecting the 80s Egyptis mosquito. A very, it's a single mutation. The 2016 virus produces higher levels of a protein called non-structural protein one or NS1. And this is absolutely critical to the spread of the virus. Not only is it, and not only is it worse or I guess better for infection of the mosquitoes, it's also makes it more of a problem for humans. And so if they boosted these NS1 levels to a specific mutation in the gene that codes for the protein and they found that the substitution mutation alone all by itself could switch proteins from low to high. So one mutation, it's a mutation in alanine to avaline amino acid substitution at a single residue, residue 188 of the gene for this protein. A single mutation is potentially the sole reason why Zika virus has emerged in the Americas as such a problem. Wow. Fascinating. Yes, this is published in Nature this week. And then we love Tabi star. So I just wanted to let everybody know that Tabi star is up to something. Tabi star is the weird star that people thought might be aliens, but it's probably not. It dims and then it comes back to brightness and it's kind of cyclical. Well, it looks like it's dimming again. And so this dimming, once again, will allow researchers a chance to look at Tabi star and to make measurements that potentially will get us even closer to discovering more about what exactly is going on in this wonderful strange star, Tabitha star. It's not aliens. I'm pretty sure it's not aliens. But I don't know. It's a binary system with a star and a black hole. Right. Yes, anyway, there are lots of ideas as to what it could be. It's very exciting stuff. I hope everyone has enjoyed our very long show. I got one left. I got one left. I had to do the answer. I'm sorry. That's how you were doing the answer. This is real quick. Scientists at the University of California Riverside have developed an inexpensive biodegradable seaweed based ant bait that when tested had between 61 and 79. So we'll call it 70% reduction in invasive ants. This is the invasive Argentine ant populations that they're trying to get to. I guess this has been a problem in Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Tennessee and North Carolina and not to leave out, of course, California. So this ant is everywhere now. And this knocked it down 70% without using poison that was sprayed or anything like that. This was a little gel pill type thing that they disperse and the ants grafted it because there's a little bit of sugar water in there. And well, 0.0001% insecticide that they're saying a hundredfold less than is used in a standard gel bait that is out there. But it's also a thousand times less concentrated than a spray insecticide. Also more targeted because it's not going to like a spray would affect any kind of bugs that were in the area, pollinators included. This is something that there's very specific to ants. So using a thousand times less little sugar water and something biodegradable like seaweed, they feel like they're on to the next big thing and pest control. Absolutely. I mean, if it's biodegradable means it's not going to sit around in the environment for a long time. It won't build up potentially in the environment. And if it's something that the ants really like to eat, it's got to get rid of the ants. Which people in Portland are going to love. No, you're not on the West. You're just killing your native ants. That's different. You're the invasive species there. No. Okay, fine. Don't kill too many ants, everybody. Ants are a wonderful part of the environment even though they are kind of annoying in your kitchen or even more annoying in your bedroom. But anyway. Or as a picnic. Or the ants at the picnic. That's right. I actually don't mind them in your kitchen. It's when they come to my kitchen that it annoys me. My kitchen, your kitchen. It's time though for us to come to the end of the show. Thank you everyone for listening or watching. Really appreciate it. It is time for me to thank our Patreon sponsors. 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Got it around here somewhere, here it is. Bill Shutt and cannibalism next week. So, natural history of cannibalism. It's natural, everybody. So, I hope you all can join us. Next week, we will be broadcasting once again, 8 p.m. Pacific time on twist.org slash live. You can watch live and join our chat room. Hey chat room! You guys are awesome in there. Don't worry if you can't make it though, our past episodes are going to be found at twist.org slash YouTube or just twist.org. Thank you for enjoying the show. Twist is also available as a podcast. Just Google this week in science in your iTunes directory or if you have a mobile type device. You can look for twist, the number four, Droid app in the Android Marketplace or simply this week in science and anything Apple Marketplace-y. For more information on anything you've heard here today that could be pizza bagels or 3D pizza or any sort of pizza related science, show notes will be available on our website. 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This Week in Science. This Week in Science. This Week in Science, This Week in Science, This Week in Science, This Week in Science. And we have come to the end of another episode of This Week in Science. We do hope you enjoyed the show. Okay bye. Okay bye. Okay bye. Okay bye, okay. Okay, I love you, goodbye. I love you, bye. I'm really annoyed. I made that. It's all in your head hat and it didn't go on to the store and I can't figure out why. Like there's a post it for sale button when I first open the page and then it disappears by the time the page loads all the way. That's weird. That is a weird thing. Why is it not working? I don't know. I need to get one of those hats and then I'll get a t-shirt too. It's all in your head. That's what we need. Yeah, I'll figure out the hat situation. That's a great idea first. Ooh, should I contact the store owner? Tell them about this problem. Yeah, maybe you should. Yeah, I think I might email them at some point and just say like, what up? What up with this? What up with? Oh, yeah, what up? Everyone over on YouTube. Hey, if you're in the chat room over there, thanks for watching here. Lana Patrick says, can we now find out what sea plants as the seaweed kill spider mites and aphids? That would be the next one, right? My roses, I don't have the aphids. I don't want them to have the aphids. Range Safety Office. Thanks so much, Berio Mack. Do you remember what it is? It's like that book. I know, I want both of those books when you're done with them, please. Can I borrow them when you're done? Of course, we'll pass. I'll pass them along with this book. It looks thick, but I started reading it and it just. I really would. I mean, this is something I'm very interested in, obviously, but I really like it. It's just fascinating and and and and the read is very easy, too. He has an easy writing style and he talks great. He has a lot of stories from his own field work. And so, you know, there's like tales of his studying mannequins in South America and Suriname. And yeah, lots of yeah, stories from his life as a scientist as well. So it's yeah, and as a birder, I totally get it. And he knows my graduate adviser, Nikki. He does. Yeah, I was like, oh, we were talking before the show. And I was like, yeah, do you know Nicola Clayton? He's like, I mean, Nikki, he said, I've known her for years. She came to my my my grad adviser's lab when I was a grad student. So that's pretty fun. Oh, I think I figured it out. The little connections in the bird research world. That's great. Oh, yeah. Ed Ed from Kinetic is saying also the book is available on Audible so you can listen to it if you don't want to read it. It's also available as ebook and all that kind of stuff. I need to re figure out how to get my this week in science. What is it that where I can get a little cut of the the account where I can get a little cut of the money from the sales? If we have a link on our website to a book and then that book gets bought clicked on, the book is bought by somebody. Yeah. Hey, you get that. Back up again. It died a long time ago. Did I catch a what you all catch the video? It was during the show that Ed put up in the chat room. Half long, but I suggest watching it snakes in a coordinated attack. Oh, yeah, I've seen that before. We've talked about that. So that one. I don't know if that's technically a coordinated attack either. I watched it again. Yeah, I did. And I'm not sure because I figured this would come up. Yeah, but yeah, I'm not sure about that. Well, there's a part early on there where the first snake kind of comes up and seems to like doesn't go in for a kill shot, but like rubs up against the iguana and sets it running. And then it's like all the others are launching out as though they were waiting for this thing to run by, which they might do all day long, regardless, and there's just a bunch of snakes there. But and then when they finally do catch them, it's a couple of snakes that move in together to try to subdue. Looked at from that perspective with if you thought that snakes don't coordinate attacks ever, that that's just not possible, then you dismiss it. It's just a place with a lot of snakes. But if you if you think along the coordinated for a moment and see the different angles that they take to try to get them, it can look pretty coordinated, even though it gets away, which is the great thing about this video. Gwana gets away. Yeah, I don't think so. I think all the snakes are in it for their own gain. But more snakes hunting more snakes hunting kind of in a group situation, not just as not just as lone snakes. Right. OK. But then again, the way that the snakes aren't all like launching from the same location, you could sort of say that's sort of what the Hanging Bow is then are doing because they're spread out because they're all solitary hunting then, right? The fact that these are all sort of launching from distances away from each other as this thing runs past reminds me directly of hanging in different locations from the cave ceiling. You know, if you if you dismiss one, you kind of have to dismiss the other under the same logic. No, I don't think so, because I think that those snakes are just hanging out where it's warm. Good day. I don't know a lot of snakes. That's a lot of snakes. Yeah, I can't watch that. I can't watch it again. OK, the hat should be posted within 24 hours. Oh, good. I agree with that. It seems like there was a little bit of hurting going on by some of them. Um, Kiki, yeah, I'm going to message you in the hangout right now. A question. OK. Oh, my gosh, that's so obscene. What are you messaging me? Oh, wait, do I have to turn on the messaging thing? Yeah, unless there's a bigger number. I mean, of course, it gets bigger. Let me see what it is on other things. Yeah, I think I don't know how to find out what it is on other things. I don't know. Oh, boy, yeah. How much would people spend on a hat? That's what I need to know. Yeah, it's because it's the really. No, it's way more than that, because it's one of the flex fit hats. It's one of the fitted hats. Oh, right. I want to. That's the one I like. Yeah, well, I couldn't do that and get our logo on. I mean, the only other way to work is that the flex fit hats allow us to put the logo on the back. Remember the logo on the back. It's all in your head and then the twist logo on it. I still want Marshall's original trekker hat again. I had one and it's been lost to them. We've gotten rid of one in the archives somewhere. If there's one in the archives, I'll hang on to it for you back there with the Ark. I don't know how many. I don't know if we have any left off to look. We've given away a bunch. Slowly over the years. Ben Rothig says he loves flex fit and would buy one. Great. Yeah, I can't figure out how much people spend on those hats. I don't ever buy those kinds of hats. Yeah, I don't wear hats. Yeah, OK, flex fit. Oh, I see. Interesting. They're kind of all over the map. Yeah. OK, let me change it. I don't know. OK, that's better. I fixed it. You fixed it. Yeah, I changed it. Make it reasonable. Good, good, good. It needs to be a reasonable price. No, it's I mean, yeah, it's the same. The price is the same. We were looking up before. It's just not posted for sale. They have to make sure I didn't post anything obscene on it. Oh, right, because we do that all the time. Right. I mean, I'm sure other. People have a good night. Fada, Fada's out of here. Ben just spent 35 on the Cubs Champion Edition flex fit. Well, that's the Cubs Championship. And and you're the champions of science. Our twist, my friends, will bring the science till that was pitchy till the end. Will bring the science. Will bring the science. No time for fake news because we bring the science. Once again, every week. Let's see, what is our number one selling item? I don't know. I'm not in the account. I don't know. Oh, the smug, the mug. That's pretty cool. Twist, basic tea, twist, mousepad, twist, trucker hat. I don't even have one of those. Twist hoodie. We've sold five of those. That's pretty cool. Twist apron. Oh, my God, that's adorable. Right. Isn't that cute? Oh, we've sold some posters, some postage stamps. Oh, and then there's some stuff I bought. Someone bought a T-Rex mug. Oh, that's awesome. Yes, yes, I saw that when that was ordered. And someone bought a T-Rex mousepad, too. Oh, people have bought the mammoth pillow. No, oh, really? Yeah, I think so. That wasn't me yet, but I'm that's I'm getting that. I bought the grizzly bear pillow. That was me. Ah, I'm pretty sure someone got the mammoth pillow. Has gotten it. Oh, someone got the iPhone case. Someone bought the tote bag. Oh, that's cool. I'm really sad. I need to get I think I need to get an iPhone. Yeah, I bet you're sad about that. I don't want to have one. You'd want? No, I don't. I got because of the Mevo that I bought. Can you just get an iPad like a reefer by pet? Yeah, I think. Oh, wait, there's the there's the I think I can do a refer the iPad. What are you trying to do, Justin? Oh, nothing. I'm just now I'm following along. What a twist.org and click on the Zazzle Store tab. You know, like we say earlier in the show. That's nine. Right. Oh, this is dangerous. Brandon in the chat room says Mevo has an Android beta. No, that's what I need. How do I get that? But I already got the Mevo before. Oh, but I guess if they have the app. Yeah, in the meantime, in the Mevo time, if you will. I want to do that. Thank you for letting me know, Brandon. Be able to borrow that iPad that I borrowed before again for Philly. That could work. I've got the right IOS IOS. Yeah, I can check. Mevo app for Android. Early public beta version. That means I'm going to have to get it and try using it before our I have to try using it before we actually I'm going to get a new phone anyway. So even if my phone doesn't work, Nexus, Samsung Yep, got to get a new phone. OK, I'll get a new phone. And OK, I was going to get a new phone. I'm going to go get a new phone tomorrow. Oh, I need a new phone. OK, or I need a device that has iOS 9.3 and later to use with the Mevo. Hey, a lot of the T-Rex stuff has like this border on the bottom. That's weird. So I experimented in the Zazzle Store with different branding options. So some of them. I buy it. I buy it. You're buying it. By your sister. Well, you're just cutting me off without hearing the whole explanation. That's rude. I know. OK, I'm going to go. Oh, my God. I'm just saying that it's well, or it isn't iPhone five case. Hang on. I think I need that mouse pad for one. Which one? The twist one, twist logo. That's the classic. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Now today, I bought the Toad twist logo thing and mouse pad and I brought that to work. Good. Yeah. That the San Francisco Zoo should have more love of twists. Yes. Well, the deputy director of the zoo buys my calendar now both years and he he has it up above his desk and refers to it all the time. Awesome. Yeah, he's like, well, there's holiday this this day is coming up. Yeah, we do something about this day. Oh, also, have you guys heard of this book that I just bought? I don't know what it is yet. I don't know. Maybe down the most comprehensive plan ever post proposed to reverse global warming. I have not heard of it. I don't want to have this guy on the show, actually. What's his name? Paul. His name is Paul Hocken, H-A-W-K-E-N. And so they basically they just consolidated. Like essentially thousands of research papers to try to figure out the best action plan based on like how realistic it would be to actually implement this change, what the actual impact on warming would be. And my favorite thing is that it includes all sorts of interesting stuff. Like he has a whole chapter on eating plants more and less meats and cheeses. Oh, but plants are sentient. I just found that out on Facebook. Somebody just somebody just posted that on Facebook. Plants are sentient. But this is my favorite is that how did I find out about this guy? I can't remember now. I saw him on a show. Maybe I don't remember. There's an entire chapter on women and girls. And that, in fact, educating young women, just better education for women is in the top 10 most effective strategies to combat climate change. Because, well, several reasons, but one being that educated women stay in school and practice family planning. And so they don't have overpopulation and then women's health care is one of the other big ones. All because family planning is a huge kind of chunk out of the carbon dioxide problem. It's interesting, but I'm excited to read it. I haven't started reading it yet. I just got it in the mail a couple of days ago. So, yes, energy, food, women and girls, buildings and cities, land use. That's something that Justin might be interested in. Transport materials. Coming attractions. Sextions. Let's see. Kirk has reviewed some owls. Just for fun. Oh, you cute owls. There's owls in here. They're called Spotted Owl Hatchelings on Mossy Hemlock Branch in Northern Oregon. Kirkus Reviews says it is an optimistic program for getting out of our current mess while deserving of the broadest possible readership. Yeah. No, Kirkus usually has pretty good reviews. I'm excited to read it. Who is this Paul Hawkin? Well, let's see. I bet it's in the introduction. Who is he? It's a neat idea. And it's a .org that has, so it's Paul Hawkin, but it's a .org. Project Drawdown is the most comprehensive plan ever proposed to reverse global warming. Our organization did not make or devise the plan. We found the plan because it already exists. We gathered a qualified and diverse group of researchers from around the world to identify research and model the 100 most substantive existing solutions to address climate change. What was uncovered is a path forward that can roll back global warming within 30 years. It shows that humanity has the means at hand. Nothing new needs to be invented. The solutions are in place and in action. Our work is to accelerate the knowledge and growth of what is possible. We chose the name Drawdown because if we do not name the goal, we are unlikely to achieve it. I love that. Let's see. The coalition. There are these people. Who are you? Advisors, fellows, no. You're not telling me about the mission, the vision. Frequently asked questions. Interesting. Yeah, I don't know. It's kind of, I guess he didn't really want to be talked about or something, but. Yeah, I'm trying to find the information on him. Yeah, interesting. I want the twist basic logo mug, but I want the logo on the other side. I can fix that. Or both sides. So you can do it other handed. Because if I had one right now and I was doing this. Yeah, I agree. It's because of a bunch of those things. Zazzle is really awesome in that you can upload something and click a bunch of items and it puts it on there pretty well. But then, yeah, if we want to customize it like that, we have to do that one by one. Yeah, I can't figure out who he is either. I think I saw him in an interview. Yeah, I can't remember. It sounds like he is, from what I can tell, he is, what does it say here? He is an environmentalist, entrepreneur, author, and activist. He is the co-founder and executive director of Project Drawdown. Non-profit that describes when and how global warming can be reversed. He's from the Bay Area. He's been working in environmental fields for a while. He's written a few interesting books, Natural Capitalism. An idea of natural capital and direct accounting for ecosystems. Could be interesting. I don't know. I like the idea that they base it all, that it's all on science, but I need to have more cross-referencing. Yeah, and I'm going to read it a little bit, too, so. Yeah, help it, yo. Oh, yeah, I have to, like, Lana Patrick wants a twist tool belt, please. Good night, Barry. So I just switched it. Cheese stays. I just switched the logo to the other side of the mug. You can duplicate it. But I don't know. I'm not saving it or anything. It's still going to be there. I couldn't duplicate it. I'd have to have, like, a zazzle account. Oh, yeah. Let me just fix it for you. Hold on one friggin' second. Where's my bill up to so far? Let me see. I've selected, I've selected $70. Oh, but there's a coupon. There's a coupon right now. That's helpful. Riveting to watch, I am sure. I'm trying to consider this idea. We've talked about it briefly before, this idea of plants as sentient beings. Right, like, they can hear clicking and make decisions and stuff. Right. They can learn, remember, communicate. They perceive. But I don't know if that, I mean, I don't know if that's a misuse if, yes, they have these abilities, but. Okay, so the definition of sentience, on Wikipedia, is the capacity to feel, perceive, or experience subjectively. 18th century philosophers used the concept to distinguish the ability to think or reason from the ability to feel. But I would think that it's, but then the free dictionary, the quality or state of being sentient, consciousness, and I don't think that equates to consciousness or awareness. So there's got to be something in there that's in the middle perceptive. I think I would say aware. This is in terms of what, again? Plants. Plants. Yes, sentience too much. Sentient is like seeing things in a mirror and knowing it's you. Yeah, it's like, yeah. But it's definitely, it implies more consciousness, I think, the awareness or consciousness. So, yeah. Okay, Justin, I posted the mug like you'd probably want it. Sapience. Oh. Yeah, what is sapience? But it might not post right away, Justin, so I would suggest you just look at it tomorrow because they have to, again, they have to make sure I didn't put anything vulgar on there. Okay. Sapience, having or showing great wisdom. Unless you refresh it and it's right there now. Judgment. Plants are not sapient. Yeah, nope. Not yet. We'll have the gem doctor. Plants may be sentient, but they're stupid and should be eaten. No, I think it's there, Justin. It's there on yours. Mine is still showing it's only on one side. I will enjoy my next salad. I do enjoy salads. Justin. Captain Picard. Thank you, Identity Four. Go to our store again, refresh, and show needless at top. Consciousness. Yes. Yes. Okay. Are we ready for bed? Yeah, we're ready for bed. You guys are working on, working on mugs. I finished. Always the zazzle. I was thinking, I don't, I haven't looked at other zazzle options, but I was looking at this other website, Society Six. And there's also Redbubble. Society Six Redbubble. Yes, I like Redbubble. I bought some stuff off Redbubble before. Yeah, and I'm thinking that there might be some neat, I don't know, neat like leggings. There's art, there's art prints. I know Society Six does like wall drapings. So, yeah. Shower curtains, so I'm wondering. Does anyone even want a mantis shrimp shower curtain? Right, who doesn't? Or a flamboyant cuttlefish shower curtain? Oh, flamboyant cuttlefish. Cuttlefish, cuttlefish, swimming in the water. I'm a six of the way through the calendar. Show me your daughter. Noodle, noodle. There's noodling. That's what she told me in the chat. That's awesome. I wrote noddle. Noddle, noodle. Noddle, noodle. Noodle, noddle. Noodle, noddle, doodle, doddle. Noddle, noodle, noddle. Little fiddle, noddle, niddle. I don't have internet. Not everybody should have internet. Don't take away Justin's internet. We'll never see him again. I know. No, I would never do that. It's the only place that I actually exist. Yeah, you only exist in the internet, in those two, in the series of tubes. The tubes. Did I shatner that line? I tried a little bit. I tried a little bit. I was kind of mixing the Captain Picard and the shatner together. Bones. It's not time for bed. Once again. Is it? It is. It is. It is that time we had a very long show. Yeah, Identity Four. You guys, between now and next week, help me figure out another word to describe these feeling plants that are in the world. It's not sentience. Sentience is not the right word. Let's figure out a better word for plant perception of their environment. Yeah, it's about perception and it's not about free choice. That's kind of the difference. Like, I see sentience as free choice. Can they be Vegeant? Vegeant. The state of being a vegetable. We'll just, yeah, we'll say they're in a vegetative state. Yeah, we're just like responsive. Responsive, right? Yeah. Perceptive, responsive, reactive. Yeah. Plants. I was just at the exploratorium today and saw the plants that we poked. Oh, I love those. That was so long ago. It was a long time ago. Mimosas. Mimosas, yes. We need to make more videos. Yes. Oh, we will when I come to Oregon. Oh, we will. It's true. Hot rod likes Vegeant. I'm going to find a new one. I need my plant-ish. Plant-ish. Ronnie, you don't look plant-ish. Okay. It's good. I don't want to, I don't want to appear plant-ish. All right. I got to go. All right. Why Flamingo feet hurt? Yeah, because you're standing like I am and we can't go Flamingo because then we'd have our chin on our big toe. I don't know. Yeah. Plant-ish. All right. You Flamingo's out there. Make sure to switch legs every once in a while. Yes. Yes. Somebody asked in the YouTube chat room whether or not the Flamingo's prefer one leg over the other. Not to my knowledge. Whether there's a leggy preference. They switch legs. They switch off. Unknown at this point. They do switch for sure. But it is time for us to switch off. So thank you all for watching. Yet again, another episode of This Week in Science. Fantastic interview. Fantastic news in a fantastic chat room. Thank you for joining us. Thank you everyone out there who joined us on the multiple channels that we're on. We do appreciate your time and your attention and your appreciation. We'll see you next week. Good night, Justin. Good night, Justin. Say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. Say good night, Dr. Kiki. Good night, Dr. Kiki. Good night, everyone.