Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and today on the show Inventions Versus Animals,
Speaker 1: Can we innovate our way into being as cool as
Speaker 1: animals can? Animals inspire breakthroughs in medical devices? And what
Speaker 1: does one of history's greatest inventors and sharks have in common?
Speaker 1: Discover this more as we answer the age old question
Speaker 1: who smells the best in the animal kingdom? Or do
Speaker 1: they all smell terrible? Joining me today is Friend of
Speaker 1: the Pod, Friend of Me, Katie and host of a
Speaker 1: podcast that I like to describe as a warm blanket
Speaker 1: that educates you, called secretly incredibly fascinating. Welcome Alex Schmidt.
Speaker 1: It is so good to be here. I'm glad to
Speaker 1: be in this blanket. Feels nice wintertime, northern hemisphere. Gotta
Speaker 1: bundle up. Yeah, just a blanket of education about animals.
Speaker 1: Thankfully it's not a blanket man out of real animals,
Speaker 1: because that would probably be very stinky, being kind of
Speaker 1: clawing you, you know, biting at you, a lot of
Speaker 1: mucus maybe depending on the animal. Just saying one of
Speaker 1: one of Nature's greatest gifts is the fiber animal, where
Speaker 1: you can shear them and receive the fiber and you
Speaker 1: don't have to use the actual animal a time. It
Speaker 1: worked out great. Thank you Nature, Thank you sheep, thank
Speaker 1: you sheeple. But yes, so we are talking about how
Speaker 1: animals stack up to real life inventions, and sometimes animals
Speaker 1: can inspire inventions. Um. But first I want to talk
Speaker 1: about animal smell. And smell is one of those things
Speaker 1: that to me is very mysterious and ephemeral because you
Speaker 1: got this nose. Look if I if I, if I
Speaker 1: smell funny today, you can just say so, like I know,
Speaker 1: it's so bad. It comes through a zoom and I'm
Speaker 1: working on it. Okay, I was gonna say. They're like
Speaker 1: stink plumes coming out of the computer, like like green
Speaker 1: stink lines like in cartoons, and some little some little
Speaker 1: flies hovering around. Yeah, I do. I do. Every every Christmas,
Speaker 1: I receive a Peanuts collection, and the one from this
Speaker 1: Christmas like pig Pen as the cover boy. Pig Pen
Speaker 1: is very much on my mind all the time. Now.
Speaker 1: I just think about the dirtiest character in cartoons frequently.
Speaker 1: The classic pig Pin stink lines. Unfortunately, we cannot see
Speaker 1: smell and we can't We can't send smells over the
Speaker 1: internet yet, which I would love. I would love that
Speaker 1: if we could, because then you read a recipe instead
Speaker 1: of getting the huge prayamble before on the recipe about
Speaker 1: like their childhood or their favorite dog or something. It's like,
Speaker 1: it's the smell of the cooked product over the internet.
Speaker 1: We don't have that technology yet. Humans, we have great eyes, sight,
Speaker 1: great cognitive ability, and you know, decent smell, a decent
Speaker 1: sense of smell, but by far it is not the
Speaker 1: best sense of smell in the animal kingdom, Alex, what
Speaker 1: animal would you guess has the best recorded sense of smell?
Speaker 1: I always I feel like cartoons told me dogs. I'll
Speaker 1: go with dogs. Cartoons. Once again, I'm leading on essentially
Speaker 1: snoopyed out, which is maybe typical, But cartoons told me
Speaker 1: that if a dog is hungry enough, it'll hallucinate you
Speaker 1: as a giant steak and float over there like on
Speaker 1: the smell lines coming out of the giant steak that
Speaker 1: is you. Yeah, especially if you're a very tall, skinny guy,
Speaker 1: you'll be imagined as a hot dog. And if you're
Speaker 1: sort of a rounder, wider guy, you'll be a hamburger
Speaker 1: because it's just science, folks. Yeah, exactly, it's science. Look
Speaker 1: it up, read a book. So yeah, so how do
Speaker 1: you even test the sensitivity of an animal's nose Because
Speaker 1: you can't like take an old sock and hold it
Speaker 1: up to a variety of animals and like see who
Speaker 1: passes out. There's got to be some scientific method with it.
Speaker 1: So researchers have studied old factory receptor genes. So the
Speaker 1: old factory UH system is the UH the smelling, the smell,
Speaker 1: the sniffer, and we have genes that will have genetic
Speaker 1: information relating to our old factory receptors. So there are
Speaker 1: a variety of mammalian species that researchers have looked at
Speaker 1: and they have found that, first of all, there's a
Speaker 1: ton of genes across these species that will code for
Speaker 1: for smell receptors. They've identified a total of ten thousand
Speaker 1: old factory genes over thirteen mammals that they studied, and
Speaker 1: in contrast, these mammals shared only an average of three
Speaker 1: same genes amongst each other. So that means that out
Speaker 1: of ten thousand total identified receptor genes, they've only found
Speaker 1: that they're about three of them that these thirteen mammals
Speaker 1: they've studied share. So each animal species seems to have
Speaker 1: their very own unique library of old factory receptor genes.
Speaker 1: Three out of ten thousand that are that crossover. This
Speaker 1: is incredible. So there's a huge diversity of genes that
Speaker 1: when it comes to old factory receptors and uh, they
Speaker 1: have studied how many genes each species has, and the
Speaker 1: knows the researchers studied that belonged to the animal with
Speaker 1: the most old factory gene means was also the nose
Speaker 1: that makes this sound. So, Alex, who do you think
Speaker 1: that is? I ran out of the room screaming, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: Maybe maybe this sound will help you whittle it down
Speaker 1: a little more So among the animals studied, elephants are
Speaker 1: the clear winner when it comes to number of old
Speaker 1: factory genes. So they have two thousand genes that code
Speaker 1: for old factory receptors. In comparison, dogs only had one thousand,
Speaker 1: and humans and chimps had fewer than four hundred of
Speaker 1: these genes. I feel like that's tracking with Schna's length.
Speaker 1: I know that's not how it works, but I like it.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's not necessarily a bad idea. Elephant trunks
Speaker 1: are incredibly long, incredibly complex. So the idea that maybe
Speaker 1: because they have this really long trunk it could also
Speaker 1: be more sophisticated when it comes to smell, it is not.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's a I think that is probably
Speaker 1: pretty accurate. Man. It's like it's like a Christmas stocking,
Speaker 1: Like the longer it is, the more candy you're gonna get.
Speaker 1: It is fantastic. Just filling it with jeans in the night,
Speaker 1: and that eating cookies and milk got in Santa. I
Speaker 1: guess in this case also evolution. It's a lack going on.
Speaker 1: I mean, Darwin is kind of like an evolution Santa.
Speaker 1: I guess when you think about it, He's got the beard,
Speaker 1: he's got the jolly belly that he fills with eating
Speaker 1: animals he just discovered. So you know, instead of leaving
Speaker 1: out cookies for Darwin, Santa, you leave out a plate
Speaker 1: of some rare turtle from the Galapagos Islands so that
Speaker 1: he can eat it. Okay, kids, let's prepare the plate
Speaker 1: of finches like whoa, whoa? What? Hold on? Like he
Speaker 1: likes he likes to taste everything. He studies. An entire
Speaker 1: wooden English ship lands on your roof. It's terrible, huge
Speaker 1: hall marks on it. Remember some orange slices. Kids, they've
Speaker 1: all got scurvy. So the question is does the number
Speaker 1: of our factory genes necessarily translate to a better sense
Speaker 1: of smell, because if they have, If elephants have about
Speaker 1: two thousand of these genes and dogs only have one thousand,
Speaker 1: our elephants twice as good at smelling as dogs. Well,
Speaker 1: we don't know exactly how the number of genes transcribes
Speaker 1: to goodness of smelling skills, but it does seem that
Speaker 1: more of these genes indicates better senses of smell. So
Speaker 1: research has shown that Asian elephants are at least as
Speaker 1: good as mice, who have around hundred old factories genes
Speaker 1: at telling the difference between smells. So elephants have a
Speaker 1: lot of really amazing smell skills. They're able to recognize
Speaker 1: their family members based on the smell of urine, which
Speaker 1: I guess is one way to do business cards. Basically,
Speaker 1: an elephant business card is p That's why I don't
Speaker 1: put it in my wallet. Yeah, that's why elephant hands
Speaker 1: you this big, stinky, soggy card and it's just covered
Speaker 1: in its urine. Imagine like meeting an elephant who you
Speaker 1: can communicate with and being like, I'll still need a
Speaker 1: business card to remember this. I need a lot of
Speaker 1: elephants I communicate with, Like, give me, give me something
Speaker 1: I can hang on too for this memory. Yeah, put
Speaker 1: it in the rollodex under elephant. Uh, people don't there's
Speaker 1: there aren't even really business Do people still use business
Speaker 1: cards anymore? They certainly don't use rolodex as I know that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I made some for me in my show, but I yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't meet people in person very often, so I
Speaker 1: I just sort of have them. It's mainly been useful
Speaker 1: for like, if I meet someone who I want to
Speaker 1: convince to like listen to it, I can just give
Speaker 1: them that instead of that's a great idea. I feel
Speaker 1: like I should do a business card. But it's a
Speaker 1: scratch and sniff and you scratch and it's sniff you
Speaker 1: sniff and it smells like skunk or like the or
Speaker 1: a bent a wrong anal gland, or maybe maybe a
Speaker 1: beaver anal gland, and it will smell like vanilla. We
Speaker 1: actually talked about that on Alex's show because it's yeah yeah,
Speaker 1: So just hop over to cast storium dot com promo code.
Speaker 1: It's a promo code creature for your very own vial
Speaker 1: of beaver or anal gland castorrium which has the lovely
Speaker 1: smell and flavor of vanilla. So elephants can also detect
Speaker 1: the difference and smells between two groups of people, especially
Speaker 1: when their life is at stakes. So they can smell
Speaker 1: the difference between populations of people and will avoid people
Speaker 1: who hunt them, and they are less avoidant of people
Speaker 1: who don't pose a threat to them. So when they
Speaker 1: are presented with clothes worn by people from a certain
Speaker 1: village or group who are more likely to hunt them,
Speaker 1: the elephants show more of a fear response versus clothes
Speaker 1: from the same types of clothes from another group where
Speaker 1: they are much less likely to hunt the elephants. Additionally,
Speaker 1: and this is um this is unrelated to their sense
Speaker 1: of smell, but to their intelligence, they can tell the
Speaker 1: difference in humans based on their voices, their accent, the
Speaker 1: color of their clothes, and they will wreck ignize them
Speaker 1: and take a note of it. So if there's a
Speaker 1: group of people who are more likely to hunt elephants
Speaker 1: or to kill elephants. They will avoid and learn their accents.
Speaker 1: It's really incredible. Yeah, so I this is thrilling for me,
Speaker 1: especially because I used to be a zoo tour guide, right,
Speaker 1: and so I'd be on a tram going around a zoo,
Speaker 1: projecting my voice through a speaker system as we, among
Speaker 1: other things, went past elephants. This leads me to believe
Speaker 1: they got to know me. This is probably. This is
Speaker 1: really cool. Yeah, absolutely, hide your smell on. They're like, hey,
Speaker 1: look at those stink lines. It must be Alex Schmidt.
Speaker 1: Yeah that too, Yeah, the honey voiced pig pan of
Speaker 1: Brookfield Zoom Alex Schmidt. There is is that on your
Speaker 1: business card? The honey voiced pigpen of the zoo? Yeah? Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then they forget my podcast completely, they do. They're distracted.
Speaker 1: You need to work on your elevator pitch. It's like, hey,
Speaker 1: what's your podcast? Like, okay, so I'm disgusting first of all,
Speaker 1: and I met some elephants this one time. It's not
Speaker 1: like five year old telling a story like just constant
Speaker 1: random details. It's like, I'm disgusting. That does not narrow
Speaker 1: down podcast hosts. I'm sorry, that is like all podcasts.
Speaker 1: We're disgusting. So this is what happens when you have
Speaker 1: a non visual medium. We just you know, there's no
Speaker 1: motivation there right now, there's like there's like an old
Speaker 1: sock sort of stuck to my forehead. You know. It's
Speaker 1: just there needs to be some accountability and there is none.
Speaker 1: It's just exactly those Monty Python peasants every time thing
Speaker 1: and it's one guy shouting about leftism. It really fits. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's that's exactly it for every podcast. They're all the same.
Speaker 1: So furthermore, elephants show a greater sense of smell than
Speaker 1: even dogs in terms of their accuracy. So elephants have
Speaker 1: been shown to be able to distinguish between different quantities
Speaker 1: of food. So, Alex, when you're smelling some food and
Speaker 1: it's like there's a bowl of I don't know what's
Speaker 1: a good what's a good food? You like the smell of, oh,
Speaker 1: something about spaghetti? Spaghetti? I love spaghetti to um. So
Speaker 1: you gotta plate of spaghetti with your favorite toppins with
Speaker 1: your with meatballs and and marinara sauce, parm lots of harm,
Speaker 1: just heaps of farm and you have another plate of
Speaker 1: spaghetti and they're behind a curtain, And if you had
Speaker 1: to smell these two plates of spaghetti, would you be
Speaker 1: able to tell the difference between a plate that's like
Speaker 1: more spaghetti than the other plate. Like, hey, this is
Speaker 1: like a big heap of spaghetti and this is just
Speaker 1: sort of a medium heap of spaghetti. I would never
Speaker 1: know amounts. That's amazing. Yeah, neither can dogs. So take that, dogs,
Speaker 1: You're not so great? Uh That I said to my
Speaker 1: dog today when I was researching this is like, ha ha,
Speaker 1: See you and I aren't so different. Think you better
Speaker 1: than me just because you've got more sensitive nos how
Speaker 1: we treat if I got in my hand, you don't know? Well?
Speaker 1: Funny interesting. So I'm also realized that I set us
Speaker 1: up for a dog eating spaghetti, which is pure lady
Speaker 1: on the tramp stuff. Yeah again, teaching us all tramp
Speaker 1: imagining the waiters is like giant steaks eat some It
Speaker 1: might be thinking of a different movie. Even though dogs
Speaker 1: cannot do this task, Asian elephants can. Asian elephants in
Speaker 1: Thailand were tested on this task, and they were able
Speaker 1: to tell the difference between buckets of sunflower seeds, because
Speaker 1: apparently elephants like some flower seeds, and they would have
Speaker 1: these two opaque buckets with little holes in it so
Speaker 1: the smells could come out, but you couldn't see into
Speaker 1: them with different quantities of sunflower seeds, and they would
Speaker 1: consistently pick the bucket with more sunflower seeds based on
Speaker 1: smell alone. And this was even when the quantity between
Speaker 1: the buckets only different by like a hundred seeds or so.
Speaker 1: So that's absolutely amazing that they can smell quantities they
Speaker 1: can count with their nose. Yeah, that's that's such a
Speaker 1: higher level. Yeah, man, it's smell math. And I like
Speaker 1: that they like sunflower seeds because I associate that snack
Speaker 1: with baseball. So that makes me imagine an elephant playing baseball,
Speaker 1: hold the bat with the trunk, really good eaten sunflower seeds,
Speaker 1: spitting them out with his trunk, like like he's using
Speaker 1: his trunk as sort of a gattling gun and he's
Speaker 1: spitting seeds out of it. This is definitely a cartoon.
Speaker 1: I think that must exist. And you learned, so we
Speaker 1: learned so much from cartoons, like how elephants play baseball. Unfortunately,
Speaker 1: we don't really have any human inventions that can give
Speaker 1: us like super smell. We have things like binoculars or
Speaker 1: telescopes that can give us super sight. We even have
Speaker 1: ways to amplify audio to give us superhearing, but there
Speaker 1: is no device that can give you super smell, at
Speaker 1: least not yet. There is some research to creating a
Speaker 1: smell implant that would function similarly to a cochlear implant
Speaker 1: that could help restore the sense of smell for people
Speaker 1: who have lost their smell due to traumatic injury, which
Speaker 1: is really important because a sense of smell, it's both
Speaker 1: for safety being able to smell smoke or gas, but
Speaker 1: also being able to smell food, and your smell has
Speaker 1: such a big impact on your quality of life, being
Speaker 1: able to smell the fragrance of everyday things, being able
Speaker 1: to enjoy your meals better because smell actually plays a
Speaker 1: huge role in our enjoyment of meals. So being able
Speaker 1: to restore people's sense of smells actually this huge area
Speaker 1: of medicine that we really need to have more breakthroughs in,
Speaker 1: and so it's it's really interesting. Uh, the the research
Speaker 1: is very preliminary. At this point, I saw like there
Speaker 1: was some prototype for one of these potential smell implants.
Speaker 1: And it's like a like a little smell microphone that
Speaker 1: was attached to a pair of sunglasses that would like
Speaker 1: dangle in front of your nose, send that information to
Speaker 1: an external process sissor, and then that would go into
Speaker 1: an implant in your brain. Uh. This has not ever
Speaker 1: been tried on a human before. So the image was
Speaker 1: like on as human skull or a you know, fake skull,
Speaker 1: and so it was like the skull wearing sunglasses. I
Speaker 1: mean for yeah, forget the small part. I just wanted
Speaker 1: to skull wearing sunglasses just like my avatargrapher stuff and
Speaker 1: sounds pretty cool. It's like it's like, yeah, what is
Speaker 1: cooler than a skull wearing sunglasses? Nothing? Maximum coolness. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe if he's were like riding a skateboard doing a kip,
Speaker 1: kick a clip on a skateboard skeleton, sunglasses peak cool
Speaker 1: can't get cooler. So even though there are no like
Speaker 1: super smell binoculars that you can stick up your nose
Speaker 1: like that future Ama, I think there was a thing
Speaker 1: in Futurama where the professor had like a smelloscope which
Speaker 1: was like a telescope but for smells, and he used
Speaker 1: it to smell different planets, which is funny because astronauts
Speaker 1: talk about how space has a weird smell. But yeah,
Speaker 1: we're not we're not there yet. We don't have smell scopes,
Speaker 1: but there is a smellometer. So it may not give
Speaker 1: you a better sense of smell, but it's how you
Speaker 1: can detect the intensity of odors. And it's called drum roll.
Speaker 1: The nasal ranger. The nasal Rangers, I'm just imagined rangers
Speaker 1: a bunch of teenagers and robots suits that form a
Speaker 1: giant knows sniffing out crime like and your absorb will
Speaker 1: be the right nostril. They're like, okay, okay, were is
Speaker 1: this going? And yours will be the septom Uh what
Speaker 1: part is that again? It's the part between the nostrils.
Speaker 1: So the nasal ranger was invented by chemical engineer Chuck
Speaker 1: McGinley and it looks it does kind of look like
Speaker 1: nose binoculars. It's this long, conical device you stick up
Speaker 1: to your nose and you just start sniffing. It's like
Speaker 1: a megaphone kind of, but you put it over your
Speaker 1: nose and I've shared with you, Alex, and this will
Speaker 1: be in the show notes a a picture of Check
Speaker 1: McGinley showcasing the Nasal Ranger, and it's I think one
Speaker 1: of my favorite pictures other than the skull wearing the sunglasses.
Speaker 1: This is also one of my favorite pictures on the internet.
Speaker 1: He does well because he's wearing sunglasses and he's outdoors,
Speaker 1: so he's he's on the go collecting spells. Really good.
Speaker 1: It's so good. Yeah, it's it sort of looks like
Speaker 1: he's trying to speed gun traffic, but with his nose,
Speaker 1: I can smell a speeder. Yeah, he's checking if anybody's
Speaker 1: like not, if anybody doesn't have one of those little
Speaker 1: pine tree air fresheners, then he's gonna catch them and
Speaker 1: pull them over. There's a new law against stinkiness, and
Speaker 1: so he stands on the side of the road just
Speaker 1: smelling people as they come by, and then turns on
Speaker 1: his lights and follows you. If you're a little too stinky.
Speaker 1: I mean, that's actually not as far from the truth
Speaker 1: as you would think. So this doesn't no, no, it's
Speaker 1: it's a good thing. I gotta air freshening fast. He's
Speaker 1: coming for you. It's like, I don't even need this.
Speaker 1: I can see the stink lines coming off with alex
Speaker 1: miles away, So it doesn't enhance smell. But what it
Speaker 1: does is it helps you hone in and measure the
Speaker 1: intensity of a smell. So you put this over your nose,
Speaker 1: kind of forms a seal over your nose. So you're
Speaker 1: smelling through this like smell scope, and it has an
Speaker 1: aperture that allows the odor in and as you're smelling,
Speaker 1: you can slowly close the aperture so it gets smaller
Speaker 1: and smaller. The goal is to close this until you
Speaker 1: can no longer smell the smell, and it measures, you know,
Speaker 1: how tiny this little pinhole is as you close it,
Speaker 1: And the tinier that hole is, the more powerful the
Speaker 1: smell because the more the smell can infiltrate the nasal ranger.
Speaker 1: Which it's one of those things that it's an invention
Speaker 1: where you think, oh right, duh. It's just seeing like
Speaker 1: how much smell can fit through a little tiny hole.
Speaker 1: And if the smell is really strong, it's going to
Speaker 1: be able to get through this little tiny hole easier
Speaker 1: than smells that are weaker. And it's it's very simple,
Speaker 1: but it works. Yeah. I like that. It's a system
Speaker 1: of basically getting overloaded or overwhelmed by smell. Like I
Speaker 1: know the machine is not upset, but it's just like whoa, whoa,
Speaker 1: whoa whoa. If the smell is strong, that's cool. Well, no,
Speaker 1: it's the human. Here's the really interesting thing is it's
Speaker 1: the it has to be operated by a human. There's
Speaker 1: no machine sort of detecting, because you can have something
Speaker 1: that like detects some source of odor, but this is
Speaker 1: actually just a human operated device. So the human operator.
Speaker 1: You hold it up to where you can smell something,
Speaker 1: and you smell and you're like, I can still smell it,
Speaker 1: and you close the aperture a little bit. It's like
Speaker 1: you can still smell it, and you just keep sniffing
Speaker 1: until you can't smell it anymore, and then you take
Speaker 1: your measurement. Wow, okay, you're like a surveyor. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean it's it's it's kind of old school, but
Speaker 1: in a really cool way. It's like, you know, you
Speaker 1: just sense person out there to go sniffing around until
Speaker 1: they find a smell. And this this guy's lab, it's
Speaker 1: involved with a bunch of like smell related science where
Speaker 1: they go around trying to identify foul odors, finding out
Speaker 1: where they are. They create like a sort of lexicon
Speaker 1: for how to describe smells. And this is actually really
Speaker 1: important for a few reasons. It can actually be used
Speaker 1: to measure the power of odors from factories, chemical plants,
Speaker 1: and other industry, which is really important for quality of
Speaker 1: life and for people's health. So, foul smells from industry
Speaker 1: can sometimes make people ill, it can reduce quality of life,
Speaker 1: and it's something really hard to quantify. If so you
Speaker 1: live near some industrial plant, you're like, it smells really bad.
Speaker 1: You know, you can't like capture the smell in a
Speaker 1: jar and send it to the police. So and I've tried,
Speaker 1: and I've tried the jars back. No, pretty at least
Speaker 1: give the jar back. So if you want to be
Speaker 1: able to quantify a bad smell, you need some kind
Speaker 1: of bad smell measurement device and this nasal ranger can
Speaker 1: do that. And so this can help researchers by like
Speaker 1: taking sort of somewhat objective ways to measure the power
Speaker 1: of a smell, and then they can use that in
Speaker 1: research to see if there are health implications for people
Speaker 1: who are living near industrial plants or uh quality of
Speaker 1: life implications. And this this is a very important issue.
Speaker 1: And this is also something that disproportionately affects lower income
Speaker 1: people who often live closer to industrial related or pollution sources,
Speaker 1: and so it is something that could be used to
Speaker 1: help guide policy to try to make up for some
Speaker 1: institutional inequality when it comes to something like smell, which
Speaker 1: it's again one of those things that's easy to kind
Speaker 1: of brush off, is like, well, you know, detecting the
Speaker 1: strength of smells. It's kind of it's kind of funny,
Speaker 1: and I mean it is very funny to see someone
Speaker 1: operating one of these things. But it's something that when
Speaker 1: you think about, yeah, like being able to detect odors,
Speaker 1: especially when it comes to like a chemical plant or
Speaker 1: an industrial plant that's releasing odor pollution, it's very important.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I think, man that when I saw this
Speaker 1: guy's picture, I gott a cop vibe, but I think
Speaker 1: in a good way. Like his His whole vibe is
Speaker 1: not like, look at me doing smells, ha ha. He's like,
Speaker 1: I am on patrol. I'm going to like catch an
Speaker 1: odor that is ruining someone's life. That's really cool. He's
Speaker 1: a smell detective. This the smelliest detective out there. I'm sorry,
Speaker 1: I didn't mean that. Yeah, and so long we've outsourced
Speaker 1: the two hounds and other dogs. Finally a human can
Speaker 1: step in take that job from a doc. Imagine an
Speaker 1: old bloodhound really being mad. That's some guys, some guy
Speaker 1: with his his crazy device stole his job. So, Alex,
Speaker 1: you know that show Shark Tank. Yeah, yeah, it's that
Speaker 1: show where inventors show their stuff too prospective, I guess investors,
Speaker 1: and they judge them or make fun of them, or
Speaker 1: sometimes invest in their product. And those inventions can get
Speaker 1: pretty silly. There was one where a guy made like
Speaker 1: a Transformers costume that you could drive around in. So like,
Speaker 1: what's the silly part? You wear like a car chassis
Speaker 1: and but then it's it's like made out of plastic
Speaker 1: and so you kind of hunch over on all fours
Speaker 1: on the ground. And I've seen versions of this costume
Speaker 1: that worked really well, but this one like the ideas
Speaker 1: that you are actually able to drive around, like as
Speaker 1: if you're a r C car, and so you're balancing
Speaker 1: on these drivable wheels and awkwardly rolling around. And when
Speaker 1: you see it, it's this adult man sort of on
Speaker 1: all fours, somewhat look covered in a car chassis, but
Speaker 1: he can't fully fold himself because you know, he's a
Speaker 1: grown man. And then and so he's kind of balancing
Speaker 1: on these wheels that are rolling around really awkwardly, and
Speaker 1: it's kind of nightmare fuel. I mean, the most awkward
Speaker 1: part was probably when all five sharks tried to give
Speaker 1: him all of the money they had. That really put
Speaker 1: some tension on the show. There was another one called
Speaker 1: the euro Club, which I mean euro club sounds like
Speaker 1: some kind of cool discothequa, you know, where your ego
Speaker 1: and go to a European sort of flavored nightclub. No,
Speaker 1: it's a hollow golf club that you pe in. Oh
Speaker 1: like you like U r oh, Not U r oh, Yes,
Speaker 1: euro U r O Club. It's a hollow golf club
Speaker 1: that you put your wiener in in PN So there's
Speaker 1: a little privacy sheet near the handle that you drape
Speaker 1: over so nobody can see your bits while you're peeing
Speaker 1: into a hollow golf club, so you don't have to
Speaker 1: go all the way to the bathroom while you're on
Speaker 1: the golf course. Yeah, because if there's one thing golfers love,
Speaker 1: it's rough in it. That's why they never use carts.
Speaker 1: Or have a nineteenth whole drink or anything. They love
Speaker 1: having a really rustic day. My favorite, My favorite thing
Speaker 1: about the Peeple Golf Club is that then when you're done,
Speaker 1: and I guess you steal it off, Like you just
Speaker 1: have this club you're carrying around that's sloshing around with
Speaker 1: warm urine in it, and you know it smells. You
Speaker 1: know that it has to smell like pe because it's not.
Speaker 1: It's it's gonna it's gonna smell a peak, and every
Speaker 1: swing would feel weird, like you you mess with the
Speaker 1: entire rhythm that you like, you'd be so much worse
Speaker 1: at golf, Alex, I'm not sure that they golf. The
Speaker 1: weight is wrong. I'm not sure that you're actually supposed
Speaker 1: to golf with the pea club or just put it
Speaker 1: in amongst your other clubs so that you can discreetly
Speaker 1: pee into a club shaped urinal and it's rock you
Speaker 1: put a key in outside your place. It's just it's
Speaker 1: just a fakey hiding plant, right for your peace. Like
Speaker 1: I like your idea better. It's like, okay, so you
Speaker 1: might as well be able to play golf with it,
Speaker 1: right right? Yeah? My, you know you pack your bag
Speaker 1: to be optimized exactly. You don't want to golf club.
Speaker 1: You can't golf with Yeah, cowards, these wonderful inventions aside,
Speaker 1: How do you think it'd go if Nicola Tesla showed
Speaker 1: up on Shark Tank. Let's have a shark tank in
Speaker 1: Nicola Tesla's time. Do you think he'd get like laughed
Speaker 1: out of the room for his alternating current and his
Speaker 1: X ray technology. I hope he goes in only speaks
Speaker 1: Serbian or Croatian and just makes them catch up. I
Speaker 1: do feel really bad for Tesla because he you know,
Speaker 1: I feel like a lot of the recognition of his
Speaker 1: talent was posthumous. There's an invention he made that really
Speaker 1: only got recognition many many decades after he died, and
Speaker 1: he probably would have been better off presenting his inventions
Speaker 1: at an actual shark tank with real sharks, because this
Speaker 1: invention took a page right out of shark biology. Did
Speaker 1: you like that segue? Like? Yeah, it feels crazy. So.
Speaker 1: The Tesla valve is one of Tesla's inventions that he
Speaker 1: intended to use in a steam engine, which allows for
Speaker 1: the flow of fluids in only one direction with no
Speaker 1: moving parts or power needed. The Tesla valve is basically
Speaker 1: a series of tear drop shaped tubes where water can
Speaker 1: flow in one direction, but but when it tries to
Speaker 1: flow in the opposite direction, it becomes trapped in the
Speaker 1: base of the loops. So if you have imagine you
Speaker 1: have like a bendy straw, right and you bend it
Speaker 1: in a U shape and you fill it with water,
Speaker 1: you can actually trap the water inside the bottom of
Speaker 1: that loop, whereas if you pour it out the other way,
Speaker 1: it just comes right out of the straw. And so
Speaker 1: the Tesla valve is like a bunch of these intersecting
Speaker 1: U shaped loops of a hollow tube structure, so it
Speaker 1: can flow one way, but then the other way it
Speaker 1: gets trapped in the basin of these loops. Yeah, I'm
Speaker 1: seeing a diagram here. It's a really cool way to
Speaker 1: do the one way pushing on something. I guess. I
Speaker 1: feel like the steam era was all about pushing steam.
Speaker 1: It was just like that was the entire idea, and
Speaker 1: it let them do everything, including like brass Zeppelin stuff
Speaker 1: on the internet later pushing steam, steam pushers on the
Speaker 1: streets trying to get people to buy their steam. The
Speaker 1: least pleasant panhandler or someone in a dark alley opens
Speaker 1: his trench contains just want to buy some steam, and
Speaker 1: it all comes out and floats up. He's like, god,
Speaker 1: damn it not again. Basically a human tea kettle, just
Speaker 1: like you know. Even though Tesla's original patent on this
Speaker 1: valve didn't do him too much good, at least financially,
Speaker 1: he actually filed for bankruptcy just a few months later.
Speaker 1: Many decades later, the Tesla valve was rediscovered and is
Speaker 1: now used in micro fluid ix so really teeny tiny
Speaker 1: microscopic fluid science, and in things like pulse jet engines.
Speaker 1: So it has all of these incredible uses. But Tesla
Speaker 1: was not the first one to invent this valve. That
Speaker 1: patent goes to Evolution, goes to Santa Darwin. Darwin invented evolution,
Speaker 1: and so he must have invented this, uh, this shark intestine.
Speaker 1: That's how it works, right. I really want Darwin to
Speaker 1: be like pitching every animal function that has ever evolved
Speaker 1: to every live investors, like like like he's trying to
Speaker 1: lay an egg personally, it's coming, it's coming. I came
Speaker 1: up with it. It's coming and there and Mark Cuban's
Speaker 1: just waiting, really really uncomfortable introducing finch point. Oh, the
Speaker 1: new finish for the modern gentleman. Yeah, I mean so, yes,
Speaker 1: Darwin did not invent evolution at all. Always existed forever
Speaker 1: and Darwin merely documented its existence. But yes, so evolution
Speaker 1: created the shark, the world's most lovable death machine with
Speaker 1: the most interesting digestive system. So, digestive systems are very
Speaker 1: important for animals to be alive. We need food to
Speaker 1: go in one end and ways to come out the
Speaker 1: other end. And it's not really good to have partially
Speaker 1: digested food coming back up the way it came unless
Speaker 1: you're like a ruminant where you have a bunch of
Speaker 1: stomachs and you're kind of pushing food up and then
Speaker 1: redigesting it and pushing it back down. But for animals,
Speaker 1: like as humans, we kind of just want one flow
Speaker 1: of food where we basically we eat it, chew it up.
Speaker 1: That's the first stage of the digestion with our saliva
Speaker 1: and enzymes, and then we swallow it down and then
Speaker 1: in our digestive system, after we have digested stuff in
Speaker 1: the stomach, it gets pushed with muscle contractions down our intestines. Yeah,
Speaker 1: a great invention by Darwin Lady rolled that out. I
Speaker 1: have an invention to present to you. It's pooping, and
Speaker 1: I didn't read the terms of service. Turns out it
Speaker 1: smells bad and stuff really really hoisted myself there by
Speaker 1: my own petard. Could someone like patent pooping and collect
Speaker 1: royalties every time someone poops? Oh my god, Oh my god,
Speaker 1: I got I got, I gotta go to the patent
Speaker 1: office real quick. I'll be right back. So sharks do
Speaker 1: use some muscle contractions to move food down, but they
Speaker 1: also use gravity and a very cleverly designed digestive system
Speaker 1: and intestines. So they're intestines are eerily similar to the
Speaker 1: tesla valve they have. They are in the spiral shape
Speaker 1: that effectively creates these loops that as the food moves down,
Speaker 1: it can flow slowly in one direction, but it can't
Speaker 1: move back the other way up. Wow, that's really cool.
Speaker 1: If you could shrink down to be the size of
Speaker 1: like a little fish that got eaten by a shark,
Speaker 1: it would be like moving down this spirally uh water slide,
Speaker 1: but full of digestive juices. I think I think that
Speaker 1: happens in Disney's The Sword in the Stone and I
Speaker 1: wish Arthur pop back out of the fish and said,
Speaker 1: like it was full of tesla alms, just like share
Speaker 1: that information. Merlin's like, yes, I'm teaching tesla alms, not
Speaker 1: how to grow up and be king of England. That's right.
Speaker 1: I love that movie, especially apart with the owl trying
Speaker 1: to explain air dynamics aero dynamics to the little little
Speaker 1: Arthur guy, and then Merlin's like, ah, this is school's boring.
Speaker 1: Let's just turn them into a bird. Yeah, because I yeah,
Speaker 1: I rewatched that movie with the pandemic started and there's
Speaker 1: very little king stuff and it's mostly like just making
Speaker 1: a kid turn out of different animals. The movie it's great,
Speaker 1: Like you want to learn about swimming? I turned you
Speaker 1: into a fish? Could you have made me a bigger fish?
Speaker 1: So I don't get you? Nope, exactly right. Yeah, I've
Speaker 1: seen it probably ten times, that movie. That was one
Speaker 1: of my favorite movies growing up, that in hundred and
Speaker 1: one Dalmatians. But anyways, back to shark guts, a much
Speaker 1: more cheerful topic. Uh yeah, So if you were if
Speaker 1: you were shrunk down to a little bit of shark
Speaker 1: chalm and you're you know, you'd just be slipping and
Speaker 1: sliding your way down there. Intestines that are like some
Speaker 1: the shark's version of the Tesla valve may actually even
Speaker 1: be more efficient than Tesla's design and maybe optimized. And
Speaker 1: researchers think that by studying the sharks and testines, we
Speaker 1: might be able to design better valves for things like
Speaker 1: wastewater filtration systems that use gravity rather than a lot
Speaker 1: of power in order to work. Yeah, and sharks ancients,
Speaker 1: like they've they've been around for so so long that
Speaker 1: this is probably one of the oldest animal systems still
Speaker 1: in use. Yeah. Yeah, it's like that one sewer in
Speaker 1: realme that's from the Roman Empire. But it's just just
Speaker 1: keeps on going. Yeah, yeah, it's uh, it's a I
Speaker 1: mean maybe this is part of the reason why they're
Speaker 1: so old, because there are plenty of other animals that
Speaker 1: were alive during the time, but they haven't survived this long. Sharks, meanwhile,
Speaker 1: have a great design through and through has been tested
Speaker 1: throughout uh you know, millions of years. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: an oreo, don't mess with it. It works. What why,
Speaker 1: It's a pretty normal thing to say. I think sharks
Speaker 1: are arios everyone's saying this. It's all over the streets. U.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to question it. It's great. So, Alex,
Speaker 1: what do you think is the world's most deadly dangerous animal?
Speaker 1: When I'm up, Yeah, Garry comes the stink lines with
Speaker 1: this visible stink lines like a cloud and little little
Speaker 1: black dots buzzing around that are signifying their flies there.
Speaker 1: So yeah, yeah, well it is not Alex Schmidt, although
Speaker 1: probably close seconds, but it is the teeny and tiny mosquito.
Speaker 1: So mosquito, Yeah, they cause the most uh animal related
Speaker 1: deaths per year. They kill over a million people due
Speaker 1: to disease. Malaria alone killed over six thousand people in
Speaker 1: and people who live in areas with poor health, infrastructure
Speaker 1: and more poverished areas are the most vulnerable. And so
Speaker 1: it's understandable that often we UH view mosquitoes as the
Speaker 1: enemy of humanity and that by controlling mosquito populations, by
Speaker 1: killing off mosquitoes, we can save human lives. And you
Speaker 1: know that's very true. But the very thing that makes
Speaker 1: mosquitoes so annoying and dangerous can actually UH save lives potentially.
Speaker 1: So have you ever woken up like the day after
Speaker 1: being out in the evening and maybe wearing shorts or
Speaker 1: coo lots. Yes, yes, I'm trying to be inclusive to
Speaker 1: people who who wears cool Lots. There are dozens of us,
Speaker 1: dozens of No, it's a lot of people. Actually, it's
Speaker 1: not weird. I'm gonna get emails from people like I
Speaker 1: am a proud owner and uh loyal owner of cool Lots.
Speaker 1: I've been wearing cool Lots for over thirty years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: next time you email Katie, do a little cent from
Speaker 1: my cool Laps at the end of the message, right
Speaker 1: like it's an iPhone. Yes, please everybody, everybody sound off,
Speaker 1: sound off and tell me about your cool Lots section.
Speaker 1: If you have anything to say about please leave a
Speaker 1: rating or review of the podcast and then be like, ps,
Speaker 1: I wear cool Lots. That's me. That person is me.
Speaker 1: So but you you, you know, the day after you
Speaker 1: may not notice it the night of, but the day
Speaker 1: after you get all of these itchy bumps, all these
Speaker 1: itchy mosquito bites, and you had no idea that you're
Speaker 1: getting all bitten up. But then you'll wake up and
Speaker 1: you've got like there's like dozens of bites all over,
Speaker 1: Like where did these come from? I don't remember getting bitten.
Speaker 1: We would go to summer camp in western Michigan and
Speaker 1: it's on like the dunes on like Michigan there. It
Speaker 1: turns out their sand dunes there, and it's like people
Speaker 1: would have shirts around town that said, like give blood,
Speaker 1: go to this county because it's so many mosquitoes going
Speaker 1: after people and just drinking them. So you just end
Speaker 1: up with a patch of bites on one spot of
Speaker 1: you that was open and maybe not sprayed. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you can't see it coming because you can't you don't
Speaker 1: feel them biting you. And they're so tiny sometimes you
Speaker 1: don't see them and you'll only really hear them if
Speaker 1: they get close enough to their to your ear. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're they're these little stealthy bloodsuckers. First of all, how
Speaker 1: do they even find you. They seem to just emerge
Speaker 1: from wherever and hunt you down and track you down,
Speaker 1: and indeed they do so. Mosquito bites only come from
Speaker 1: female mosquitoes. Male mosquitoes actually feed on nectar, while female
Speaker 1: mosquitoes enjoy the extra pre orotein they get from your blood,
Speaker 1: which they used to nourish their eggs, So they're really
Speaker 1: only biting you because you know they're good mothers. H
Speaker 1: And I'm pro mothers vote. I'm running for office and
Speaker 1: it's very important. But I come off this way. And
Speaker 1: if you have wondered how these mosquitoes find you, she
Speaker 1: is actually sensing the air you breathe. So when you exhale,
Speaker 1: you release a puff of carbon dioxide. And female mosquitoes
Speaker 1: have receptors that detect concentrations of C O two. And
Speaker 1: we'll move towards its source, which is you. Either it
Speaker 1: could also be a bird or a cow, or you
Speaker 1: a juicy human. Mosquitoes can also smell human skin and
Speaker 1: are attracted to it. So I guess if you want
Speaker 1: to avoid mosquito bites but you don't want to use
Speaker 1: bug spray, you can cover up and not breathe, right,
Speaker 1: why don't I should just become one of those cross
Speaker 1: sections from the Discovery books where it's all of a
Speaker 1: humans muscles with no skin on it. Then there's no skin. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there you go. That sounds uh wet, seems easy to do.
Speaker 1: I'll just go it seems like a sticky existence. But
Speaker 1: you know, hey, but see, even if you did that,
Speaker 1: mosquitoes could still smell the carbon dioxide coming out of
Speaker 1: your you know, skin face, so you know, you know
Speaker 1: what I'm ultimately going to have to be as a
Speaker 1: skull with sunglasses on it ultimately, which is the coolest
Speaker 1: thing to be. I think this trajectory was inevitable. Good dudes,
Speaker 1: we'll all have that chance someday. So that solves how
Speaker 1: mosquitoes find you. But how do they bite you without
Speaker 1: you even knowing? They have optimized being able to suck
Speaker 1: your blood in a stealthy way that is almost completely
Speaker 1: pain less. First of all, they can inject you with
Speaker 1: saliva that actually has anticoagulant chemicals in it that will
Speaker 1: make your blood runnier and so it'll flow easier, and uh,
Speaker 1: you know, so you know, just so they can easily
Speaker 1: slurp up a nice yummy protein shake right out of
Speaker 1: your right out of your body. Um. And but to
Speaker 1: make sure you don't feel it, the proboscis, so that
Speaker 1: pointy little needle on their face is specifically designed to
Speaker 1: inflict minimal damage to tissues and nerves. So the proboscis
Speaker 1: is very teeny teeny tiny, just a few micrometers in diameter,
Speaker 1: and it has these very delicate harpoon like barbs on
Speaker 1: the sides that help ease it in. So when you
Speaker 1: look at it through a microscope, it's like, it seems
Speaker 1: like whoa, Like that's seems like it'd be more painful
Speaker 1: because it's like a harpoon, and you know how like
Speaker 1: a harpoon, it's got these barbs that point down words.
Speaker 1: So if you harpoon something, it can go easily go
Speaker 1: in one way, but it gets caught when you're pulling
Speaker 1: it out, So you think, like, hey, that seems like
Speaker 1: that would kind of hurt. But these are so small
Speaker 1: in microscopic what they do is it just helps it
Speaker 1: get traction against the tissue, and this helps it actually
Speaker 1: very slowly work its way into the skin. So the
Speaker 1: mosquito will actually vibrate its proboscis, which allows it to
Speaker 1: very carefully inch its way into the tissue. Or I
Speaker 1: guess inches sort of a misleading word because it's we're
Speaker 1: not talking about units of inches, we're talking about micrometers,
Speaker 1: really really tiny units. And so like a little notch
Speaker 1: by notch in this barbed bo skis, it works its
Speaker 1: way in. And if you look at how this works,
Speaker 1: imagine like a tube, like a normal needle that's hollow
Speaker 1: and that's at the center of it, and flanking it
Speaker 1: are these two sort of harpoon edges, and it actually
Speaker 1: does this alternating sawing movement of these barbed saws that
Speaker 1: are flanking the needle, and that helps it kind of
Speaker 1: like it's like it's kind of stepping its way into
Speaker 1: the tissues, like gently walking towards the blood source. Yeah,
Speaker 1: we should, we should get this technology to those heist
Speaker 1: guys trying to get your vault doors. Seems like it's
Speaker 1: always just a big drill. I don't think that works
Speaker 1: as well. It seems better. Giant mosquito my blood fault. No,
Speaker 1: I'm the bank president now that I'm very upset. So
Speaker 1: this vibrating sort of method of this proboscis, where just
Speaker 1: very slow only works its way into your skin, is
Speaker 1: actually minimizing damage and disruptance to your tissues. And in fact,
Speaker 1: all of the pain and itchiness from a mosquito bite
Speaker 1: that that bomb, that red spot is not from the
Speaker 1: damage it does with its proboscus. It does very little,
Speaker 1: if any damage with its proboscus. It's actually your body's
Speaker 1: immune response to that saliva. Remember what I said, the
Speaker 1: mosquito actually injects some saliva that acts as an anticoagulant.
Speaker 1: You will have an immune response to that saliva because
Speaker 1: your body detects it as an unknown foreign pathogen, and
Speaker 1: you will issue a response. You'll send down histamines to
Speaker 1: the area that caused that itchiness, causes redness and inflammation.
Speaker 1: So all of that annoying itchiness, it's actually coming from
Speaker 1: your own immune response trying to protect your body from
Speaker 1: this foreign substance. This so liva that came from the mosquito.
Speaker 1: I like that the body is like, hey, this happened.
Speaker 1: It's too late. That's the signal you're getting, is like,
Speaker 1: be sure to be itchy a bunch because something you
Speaker 1: can't fix already happened and it's not really a problem
Speaker 1: in this case. That's pretty much true. It does in
Speaker 1: a way, you know that. It's sometimes it seems silly
Speaker 1: when our immune response has that kind of delayed reaction
Speaker 1: of like, wait a minute, we got bit in a
Speaker 1: few hours ago. Better itch uh. It's it is. Actually,
Speaker 1: it's less that it's trying to warn you about the
Speaker 1: mosquito and more that it is telling the body, hey,
Speaker 1: we've got some foreign substance in here. We should probably
Speaker 1: get rid of it. I see, it's for their benefit,
Speaker 1: not for me on this side of consciousness. Okay, I
Speaker 1: mean it's it's for you, but it's it's not for
Speaker 1: your comfort in terms of itchiness. It's for your your body.
Speaker 1: Your body's immune system doesn't really know about you. It
Speaker 1: just does stuff to protect the whole body, which is weird,
Speaker 1: Like your body does all these things and it doesn't
Speaker 1: even know that. We've got this consciousness sitting in here
Speaker 1: experiencing all the weird feelings. Yeah, such a distant relationship. Yeah, don't.
Speaker 1: I don't feel seen. You know. Sometimes I just feel
Speaker 1: like my body isn't really holding space for me, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. And then my body is like
Speaker 1: I've had a long day. I just want to be here,
Speaker 1: but it's really just not connecting, you know. Come on, yep, yep,
Speaker 1: toxic corpore reality. So there's also a conversation between me
Speaker 1: a sculpt, sunglasses, and then the rest of my body.
Speaker 1: Those are the two sides of it. Well, if you
Speaker 1: were wondering if there were already practical applications of a
Speaker 1: mosquito proboscis, hey, good news in research is tested mosquito
Speaker 1: proboscis inspired or mp I needles that use those harpoon
Speaker 1: those microscopic harpoon notches and incremental insertion techniques that mosquitoes use.
Speaker 1: The researchers found that the mosquito inspired needles caused less
Speaker 1: tissue deformation than typical needles. So this is this is important.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's the aspect of hey, creating a more
Speaker 1: painless needle would be really great for having shots that
Speaker 1: don't hurt and all that, But there's actually a more
Speaker 1: critical use for these needles, and that's for things like biopsies.
Speaker 1: So getting a biopsy sample of a possible cancerous lesion
Speaker 1: is often done with fine needle aspiration. That so that's
Speaker 1: when they entered a very thin needle into the suspicious
Speaker 1: tissue and pull out a sample. But the problem with
Speaker 1: this is if you want a really accurate sample from
Speaker 1: a very specific part of an organ, sometimes the needle
Speaker 1: will actually deform the tissue as it's inserted. I mean
Speaker 1: imagine pushing like a chopstick through some some peas or
Speaker 1: something like as you put and trying to like like
Speaker 1: uh stick like a runs to kitchen starts doing it well,
Speaker 1: trying to like stick a trying to stick in an
Speaker 1: egg on a chopstick. Like if you're eating ramen and
Speaker 1: you've got that nice sort of soft boiled egg in there.
Speaker 1: It's so good, but you're trying to like stick the
Speaker 1: egg on your chopstick, it'll like sometimes like squish out
Speaker 1: of the way. And so imagine that, but on the
Speaker 1: microscopic level, um or a very tiny level with with
Speaker 1: something like your prostate. Imagine your prostate as the delicious
Speaker 1: soft boiled egg and a bowl of ramen that you're
Speaker 1: trying to stab. That's what I tell my doctor every day.
Speaker 1: So so that's the problem. So if you can have
Speaker 1: a needle that is much more accurate and does less
Speaker 1: pushes tissues away less, so you can like just insert
Speaker 1: it into the place you want without it shoving anything
Speaker 1: to the side, without it causing much disturbance to the
Speaker 1: tissues around it, you can get a much more precise biopsy,
Speaker 1: and this could increase the accuracy of early cancer detection
Speaker 1: and help doctors more easily extract biopsy samples. So you know,
Speaker 1: think a mosquito before you smash it. That is that's
Speaker 1: just a really cool, exciting especially because so many people
Speaker 1: are afraid of the needles we've got, you know, like
Speaker 1: whether it's rational or not. If we could just ease that,
Speaker 1: that'd be great. I think we'll have to have a
Speaker 1: better marketing pitch than like, hey, so you know mosquitoes.
Speaker 1: Well we made like a giant proboscis and I say giant,
Speaker 1: but it's not really that big. It's still really tiny.
Speaker 1: It won't hurt, trust me, just like mosquitoes bite don't
Speaker 1: hurt anyways, I'll still relax your muscles. What if the
Speaker 1: pitches we just lie and say the idea came from
Speaker 1: a much cuter animal. Yeah, even if it doesn't make sense, like,
Speaker 1: oh yeah, we got this from pandas. We got from pandas.
Speaker 1: Panda scientists worked real hard on this and they'll be
Speaker 1: real sad if you don't use it. But why does
Speaker 1: it look like a big plastic mosquito. No, that's what
Speaker 1: a panda looks like. You're wrong. You just don't know
Speaker 1: much about pandas. Anyway, Well it's still yeah. I I
Speaker 1: do not have a fear of needles. Uh. I have
Speaker 1: somewhat of a vasovagal reaction, sometimes too getting blood drawn,
Speaker 1: but never when someone's injecting something into me. Because I
Speaker 1: think there's something, there's something going on where it's like
Speaker 1: when someone's doing an inject and of something, it's like
Speaker 1: great new stuff for my body to enjoy. But when
Speaker 1: I'm getting like blood drawn, it's like, hey, I need that,
Speaker 1: and then I feel faint because it's like, hey, stop
Speaker 1: stop taking my blood out. I need it. I need
Speaker 1: that to live. And then the nurses like this. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm a human. This is for human purposes. That's why
Speaker 1: I'm taking it. Delicious, this will feed my babies. What's that? Uh,
Speaker 1: don't be a baby, and you can have this shot.
Speaker 1: Now we're not three mosquitoes in a long coat and
Speaker 1: you're like, I don't know, that's still really small. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't even think three of you guys can hold
Speaker 1: up a coat and you just pull back the coat
Speaker 1: and it's thousands of mosquitoes. But you know, if you're
Speaker 1: out there and you do, like feel faint with needles, like,
Speaker 1: don't don't feel bad because the vase of vagel response,
Speaker 1: that like fainting response or squeamishness response can be really
Speaker 1: hard to come role. And it really it doesn't have
Speaker 1: anything to do with you being brave or anything like
Speaker 1: that it's just just kind of a bodily response, but
Speaker 1: you can train yourself to have less of that response there,
Speaker 1: you know, definitely if you have if you have a
Speaker 1: severe phobia of needles, it's one of the most treatable
Speaker 1: phobias out there. You can go to Yeah, if you
Speaker 1: go uh to a therapist getting getting over those needle
Speaker 1: phobias has a very high success rate. So I would
Speaker 1: highly recommend that if you're if you're nervous about shots,
Speaker 1: because you know it's, uh, it's important to get shots
Speaker 1: for your health. Obviously we know that now too with
Speaker 1: the with the COVID vaccine, very very important. But if
Speaker 1: you're you're kind of scared to get the shot, definitely
Speaker 1: talked to uh, talk to a doctor about about the
Speaker 1: phobia because it is it is treatable, and a lot
Speaker 1: of shots too, depending on like the amount of fluid
Speaker 1: that they need to object With the COVID vaccine, a
Speaker 1: lot of people don't even feel it because it's not
Speaker 1: that much fluid that they have to inject. It's a
Speaker 1: really thin needle. So if you can kind of relax
Speaker 1: your arm a little bit look the other way, you
Speaker 1: won't even feel it. I do I remember my first shot.
Speaker 1: It felt like such a small shot. I was like,
Speaker 1: did you do it? Yeah, that's that's a like if
Speaker 1: you have this needle here, you know, hang in there
Speaker 1: and and like Katie said, you can treat it. It's
Speaker 1: a real thing. But what the first shot. I was like,
Speaker 1: did you push it in yet? Oh? Yeah, we did
Speaker 1: it already. It's okay, cool. Yeah. Yeah. It was the
Speaker 1: same thing for me where it's like, you know, I
Speaker 1: was kind of concerned because I didn't feel it. I
Speaker 1: was like, I hope they actually did it right and
Speaker 1: it actually went in because I want that vaccine. And
Speaker 1: then then I got the sore arm and the and
Speaker 1: sort of the you know a little bit of sometimes
Speaker 1: I was like, okay, okay, this is a legit, legit vaccine.
Speaker 1: But it was so painless. I was like, I hope
Speaker 1: they actually gave me the stuff right. They didn't do
Speaker 1: It'll be like a heist movie where they show the
Speaker 1: moment again and they like slipped it in their pocket
Speaker 1: or so, you know, there's a slow motion of what
Speaker 1: they really did and they're like, no, to go on
Speaker 1: the black market for vaccines. Yeah, yeah, that's how they
Speaker 1: got my zero dollars for the free vaccine. Now I
Speaker 1: know I have to tell you this story. First of all,
Speaker 1: I highly encourage everyone, if you haven't already get your
Speaker 1: booster shot. I don't. I didn't even really have that
Speaker 1: many many side effects from or not side effects, but
Speaker 1: I didn't have like this sort of immune reaction. It
Speaker 1: didn't feel very sick after. It'll vary, but like it's
Speaker 1: it's so so much better than getting getting a real,
Speaker 1: real bad, bad case of macron. So yeah, I get
Speaker 1: that booster shot. Uh. Here in Italy, there was some
Speaker 1: guy who didn't want to get the shot. But here
Speaker 1: you need a green pass to be able to like
Speaker 1: go to restaurants and and do a lot of things. So,
Speaker 1: like he went to get the shot, and the nurse
Speaker 1: noticed his arm was kind of weird and it was
Speaker 1: a prosthetic arm that he like put over his real
Speaker 1: arm so that when she gave him the shot, it
Speaker 1: would just go into silicon instead of his actual flesh.
Speaker 1: And of course she noticed, and he was, you know,
Speaker 1: gone in trouble for it. Are you telling me a
Speaker 1: medical professional can detect mannequin parts? They learned that they
Speaker 1: could actually tell there's actually a quote by her where
Speaker 1: She's like, I honestly feel insulted as a nurse that
Speaker 1: someone would think you could get away with this. My
Speaker 1: my Grandma Schmidt, I really like to donate blood, and
Speaker 1: she would with pride tell us that every nurse would
Speaker 1: be excited about how big her veins were. They'd be like,
Speaker 1: you got some veins on you. You are trying veins,
Speaker 1: like they really noticed arm details. To think that a
Speaker 1: prop arm would fool a nurse is incredible. I feel
Speaker 1: like there's only two kinds of people who would admire
Speaker 1: your veins and compliment you on your veins, A nurse
Speaker 1: a vampire. Note how they're saying it. If it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: you have really nice big veins, or if they're like
Speaker 1: I like this, how big your veins are? Yeah, you
Speaker 1: have such juicy veins. There it is, there's there's the Dracula.
Speaker 1: It took me a little bit to get into it. Man,
Speaker 1: folks in like the Balkans and the Carpathian Mountains, they've
Speaker 1: gotta be so mad about that accent Dracula. It's got
Speaker 1: I am an actual nurse. I want to see your
Speaker 1: veins for for taking your blood test, not going to
Speaker 1: drink it. I want to measure your cholesterol. I keep
Speaker 1: work at work, and then you know, off the clock,
Speaker 1: off the clock vampires. YEA. Well, before we go and
Speaker 1: get sued by everyone from Transylvania. UM, we have got
Speaker 1: to answer an important question. That question was posed last
Speaker 1: week and it was Who's squawking? We are playing the
Speaker 1: gifts who squawking mystery animal sound game? So uh it uh.
Speaker 1: Last week's hint was this guy has a face that
Speaker 1: looks a bit like a US president Chester a Arthur,
Speaker 1: but otherwise there's nothing American about him. And here's that sound,
Speaker 1: and guess who's squawking? So Alex, you've got any guesses?
Speaker 1: I thank you for a Chester a Arthur hint. That
Speaker 1: really really narrows it down. I that's like Lady Hunters,
Speaker 1: U s history. That's my my batch of history that
Speaker 1: I think about the most. Uh. I I'm really thinking
Speaker 1: some kind of little Simian or monkey, like like some
Speaker 1: kind of Capuchin or Tamarin or something, because it is
Speaker 1: like a it's a really chirpy sound, but I feel
Speaker 1: like those little guys will do it. That is a
Speaker 1: great guess, and you are in fact extremely close. So
Speaker 1: first I want to congratulate the listeners who wrote in
Speaker 1: with their guesses. We've got some really really good, really
Speaker 1: close guesses. I had people guessing gibbon, ad someone gissing
Speaker 1: the white cheek gibbon, which is really really close. And
Speaker 1: I want to congratulate Tim M who guessed a gibbon,
Speaker 1: Michael D who guessed even more specifically, a white cheeked gibbon,
Speaker 1: and Maggie M who guessed a buff cheeked gibbon. You're all,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna just give it to you. That is so
Speaker 1: close basically correct. It is a yellow cheeked gibbon, which
Speaker 1: I think, actually, yes, the yellow cheek gibbon is the
Speaker 1: same thing as the buff cheeked gibbons. So amazing job
Speaker 1: you guys. I honestly don't know how you guys do it,
Speaker 1: because I don't think I would have been able to
Speaker 1: do that. It's easy on my end. I like, look
Speaker 1: up the sound of the animal that I want to showcase.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah, that's a gibbon. But it would be
Speaker 1: very hard for me to play my own game, I think.
Speaker 1: But what's amazing is, uh, Katie, what you do? You
Speaker 1: select an animal, then you take a very large wooden
Speaker 1: mallet again from cartoons, and then you hit yourself on
Speaker 1: the head and then you play, and then you hear
Speaker 1: the little tweetie birds. Yes exactly, it's just guess little
Speaker 1: tweety birds every time. That's all you hear. But Michael
Speaker 1: d wrote in Uh that he hears them at the
Speaker 1: San Antonio Zoo and Maggie m here's them at the
Speaker 1: Cincinnati Zoo. So uh, but out you were. You were
Speaker 1: so close. I feel like you deserve credit for being
Speaker 1: very very close. Yes, indeed it is a little monkey.
Speaker 1: So the yellow cheeked crested gibbon is its full name,
Speaker 1: also the buff cheek gibbon. Uh. They live in Vietnam, Louse,
Speaker 1: and Cambodia. So they start out as this really pretty
Speaker 1: blonde as babies, and then as adults they are fur
Speaker 1: turned this inky black, and males keep a streak of
Speaker 1: blonde near their cheeks, which gives them this wonderful chester
Speaker 1: a Arthur Mutton CHOP's facial hair look. And females actually
Speaker 1: throughoutle they start out as blonde and then they get
Speaker 1: this dark fur uh during adolescence, but then once they
Speaker 1: reach sexual maturity they turn blonde again. Other than like
Speaker 1: this black cap that remains on the top of their heads,
Speaker 1: and the babies are always born blonde and that matches
Speaker 1: the mother's fur. The babies blend in with the mother's fur. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and so that they are kind of camouflaged against the mother.
Speaker 1: And this this process of the color changing is really
Speaker 1: interesting because you would wonder, well, why don't female if
Speaker 1: female gibbons end up being blonde as adults, why would
Speaker 1: they start out as they start out as blond, then
Speaker 1: they get black fur, and then they become blonde again. Well,
Speaker 1: it's an interesting question. There are a couple of things
Speaker 1: that could be going on. One is that by being
Speaker 1: blonde when they're fully grown adults and having that coloration,
Speaker 1: it's a signal to the male gibbons that she is
Speaker 1: a sexually mature female. Another thing that could be going
Speaker 1: on is that when the adolescent females get this black fur,
Speaker 1: it makes them blend in with the adolescent males. And
Speaker 1: there's this theory and evolutionary biology that sometimes it is
Speaker 1: beneficial for an animal species when the young uh will
Speaker 1: look similar, like they're less sexually dimorphic, meaning that both
Speaker 1: of the sexes look really similar, so that adult males
Speaker 1: won't go through and try to kill young unrelated males
Speaker 1: to reduce competition before they grow up. So essentially, when
Speaker 1: all the young look alike, the males can't tell the
Speaker 1: difference between the females and the males, so it makes
Speaker 1: it less likely that, say, there would be a strategy
Speaker 1: that an older male would have where they go through
Speaker 1: and try to kill all the male babies so that
Speaker 1: when they grow up they're not competition. That was much
Speaker 1: more harrowing than I expected. And that's fine. Yeah, it's
Speaker 1: a little bit because I have a distinct zoom memory
Speaker 1: of I don't think it's the species, but it was
Speaker 1: a monkey species where I saw they had it was
Speaker 1: a baby just hanging onto the mom's for very tightly,
Speaker 1: and it was like climbing all over the branches and
Speaker 1: trees that were available, and the baby was just on
Speaker 1: it like a little patch. Yeah, so so I jumped.
Speaker 1: I was. I just had that grooving in my hat,
Speaker 1: and it was like and then the father's devoured the young,
Speaker 1: and like, oh no, oh jeez. Then I got real
Speaker 1: biblical on you. Yeah, I mean, I want to emphasize
Speaker 1: this is just this is kind of just my theory
Speaker 1: about why this hair color might change. UM, And it's
Speaker 1: sort of a general theory and evolutionary biology. I'm not
Speaker 1: sure there's anything specifically about these gibbons, like any studies
Speaker 1: that have found that out about whether this is true
Speaker 1: for them, that that is, the coloration morphs changed to
Speaker 1: protect young from that kind of strategy. Um, it just
Speaker 1: could be because like you know, the it could be
Speaker 1: something where maybe in sort of earlier evolutionary iterations where
Speaker 1: the offspring are easy easier to tell apart than you
Speaker 1: would have more of a risk of this kind of strategy.
Speaker 1: But currently, actually gibbons live pretty harmoniously. They live in
Speaker 1: these small family groups and are monogamous. So you'll often
Speaker 1: see a blonde haired gibbon which is a female cuddling
Speaker 1: with a black haired gibbon which is male with like
Speaker 1: a baby, and it's adorable and they like to spoon
Speaker 1: each other and it's so cute. It's really nice. Yeah,
Speaker 1: good for them, Good for them. And so that call
Speaker 1: you just heard as an adult male, yellow cheeked, crested
Speaker 1: gibbon who is potentially seeking a mate or calling out
Speaker 1: for it's made, or maybe even communicating with neighbors. They
Speaker 1: have all sorts of calls, and sometimes they're using it
Speaker 1: to kind of define their resources or their territory, or
Speaker 1: sometimes it's just to communicate with others, like saying like hey,
Speaker 1: I'm here, I'm single, and I'm ready to mingle. Now
Speaker 1: onto this week's mystery animal sound, and the hint for
Speaker 1: this week is don't be alarmed by this animal's name.
Speaker 1: It's called is purely Platonic, warning you about an approaching leopard.
Speaker 1: So you hear that kind of raspy squeaking noise, like
Speaker 1: a squeaker that kind of has lost its squeak a
Speaker 1: little bit, yeah, like yeah, like a worn out squeaker
Speaker 1: to Yeah, So who do you think is squawking? Then?
Speaker 1: Is don't be alarmed by this animal's name. It's called
Speaker 1: is purely Platonic. Oh, I'm really at sea on this one,
Speaker 1: And I don't mean I'm thinking of sea creatures like
Speaker 1: a lot of different land animals. That's the edibles. Weird.
Speaker 1: I guess I'm imagining a little bird, but that's probably
Speaker 1: not correct at all. Well, the answer will be revealed
Speaker 1: next week, so tune in next Wednesday. Alex, thank you
Speaker 1: so much for drying us today. Where can the people
Speaker 1: find you. It's it's great every time, and uh and yeah,
Speaker 1: I hope people check out Secretly incredibly fascinating. If you
Speaker 1: look up sift pod dot fund or just search the
Speaker 1: name Secretly in your podcast and will find it. Each
Speaker 1: episode's about one thing people think is ordinary, and then
Speaker 1: we get into why it's amazing with history and science
Speaker 1: and stories and Katie's put an amazing gust on it.
Speaker 1: Many times. I've been on there and it's great. I
Speaker 1: can personally vouch for it because we've talked about beaver butts,
Speaker 1: We've talked about corn. It's amazing. Oh that Corn show
Speaker 1: so good that kicked off twenty two. It's killer here
Speaker 1: Corn Year. So you can find you can find me
Speaker 1: on the internet at Creature Feature Pod on Instagram, a
Speaker 1: Creature feet Pod on Twitter. That's Evy not et. It's
Speaker 1: something very different. And if you think you know the
Speaker 1: answer to this week's mystery animal sound game, email me
Speaker 1: at Creature Feature Pod at gmail dot com or send
Speaker 1: me your I guess opinions about cool lots. Yeah, that's
Speaker 1: thank you, sen send send cool lot opinions yea or nay.
Speaker 1: And thank you so much to the Space Classics for
Speaker 1: their super awesome song ex Alumina. Creature feature is a
Speaker 1: production of I heart Radio. For more podcasts like the
Speaker 1: one you just heard, visit the I heart Radio app,
Speaker 1: Apple Podcasts, or Hey guess what. Wherever you listen to
Speaker 1: your favorite shows, I don't judge you. See you next Wednesday.