Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature future production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on the show, humans are the best at
Speaker 1: being the worst at healing ourselves. That's right. Research now
Speaker 1: confirms it. We are the suckiest at wound healing. And
Speaker 1: we're gonna get into it. Why are humans so bad
Speaker 1: at healing? Why is it not that big of a deal?
Speaker 1: And we will look at an animal that is one
Speaker 1: of the most dead Pool esque critters out there with
Speaker 1: incredible healing skills that are it borders on the grotesque.
Speaker 1: So joining me today is I found one a medical
Speaker 1: professional host of the House of Pod medical podcast, doctor
Speaker 1: cave Hodo, Welcome.
Speaker 2: We'd number one at being the worst.
Speaker 1: Exactly human human pride at sucking h I just love
Speaker 1: it when a study comes out just to confirm what
Speaker 1: we've all already expected that we're not in basically every
Speaker 1: way except our ability to cooperate and pound one rock
Speaker 1: against another rock. We're really not great animals.
Speaker 2: We're great at rock pounding, though, you're really good at that.
Speaker 2: We throw them good, we break them good. You just
Speaker 2: watch the Little Boy I have. I have young sons,
Speaker 2: and the just it's so funny. There is a very
Speaker 2: innate biological drive to throw and break rocks. Just watch
Speaker 2: it in them at a young age is picking up
Speaker 2: rocks and smashing them.
Speaker 1: And it's fun. It is, you know, it's very fun
Speaker 1: and it's and we eventually broken enough rocks and one
Speaker 1: broke into the perfect shape of like, you know, an
Speaker 1: arrow head, a hammer and air, and we're like, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, huh, that's how that's how early evolutionary nail
Speaker 1: psychology works. Yeah. So the reason I brought you on
Speaker 1: and I want to talk about this is there was
Speaker 1: a there's a new review out by Matsumoto Oda at
Speaker 1: All which found that human wound healing is three times
Speaker 1: slower than that of other primates. So yeah, it's we're
Speaker 1: not doing so great in terms of our ability to heal.
Speaker 1: Do you find with like this is a this is
Speaker 1: a question. You don't necessarily just deal with cuts and scrapes,
Speaker 1: but healing like recuperation times, say, between patients. Is there
Speaker 1: a lot of variability of between individuals.
Speaker 2: There's lots of factors that go into it in humans. Again,
Speaker 2: I can't compare. I've never taken care of an ape
Speaker 2: or any sort of non human primate. But in humans,
Speaker 2: there is variation based on your other medical problems. You know,
Speaker 2: their age, medications they're taking, if they are taking things
Speaker 2: like steroids or ammusipressants, that will affect the way they heal.
Speaker 2: So there is quite a bit of variability in terms
Speaker 2: of how humans can heal. And there is a lot
Speaker 2: of danger in the wounds becoming infected as they're healing.
Speaker 2: So there are large portions of the medical system that
Speaker 2: are dedicated solely to helping wound healing. There's lots of
Speaker 2: devices that we have, there's lots of medications, there's lots
Speaker 2: of techniques. There are wound care nurse specialists who have
Speaker 2: expertise in helping that. But yes, there is a wide
Speaker 2: variability and a lot of factors play into it for humans.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's so interesting to me because there is
Speaker 1: also a lot of different strategies when you compare species.
Speaker 1: So even within say mammals, right, different animals will use
Speaker 1: different strategies for healing, including like say, superficial wounds, which
Speaker 1: is we're going to focus mostly on superficial wounds. You know,
Speaker 1: I think the medical terminology is booboos, so we're gonna
Speaker 1: focus on booboos. And so even within species, though, different breeds,
Speaker 1: like within a species, can sometimes have vastly different methods
Speaker 1: of wound healing. So, for instance, ponies and horses, they're
Speaker 1: different breeds within the same species, have very different healing
Speaker 1: rates and methods. So ponies actually heal much faster than horses.
Speaker 1: This is great validation for Broni's you pick the right horse,
Speaker 1: they're really really fast healers. The ponies will deal with
Speaker 1: wounds with something called wound contraction. The skin sort of
Speaker 1: like cinching shut, like I don't know, like sealing off
Speaker 1: a balloon or something. I'm trying to think of a
Speaker 1: good analogy for it. But the wounds sort of contract.
Speaker 1: So it's a technique that's really useful for wound healing
Speaker 1: because it reduces the amount of surface area exposed to
Speaker 1: bacteria and the amount of surface area that you have
Speaker 1: to heal.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we don't do that great on our own. That's
Speaker 2: why we have stitches and butterfly tape and a whole
Speaker 2: other host of mechanism to approximate the edges of a wound.
Speaker 2: Although I will say again I'm not a booboologist, but
Speaker 2: I will say that there are times when you don't
Speaker 2: necessarily want to close off that wound right away. You
Speaker 2: want to make sure it stays clean, and you want
Speaker 2: to be able to debrid it. You want to be
Speaker 2: able to get the bacteria out of it. But again,
Speaker 2: that's humans, and it actually can I be totally honest
Speaker 2: with you, Yes, I don't know if I said this
Speaker 2: on the last time I was on the show. This
Speaker 2: is really embarrassing, but it just goes to prove that really,
Speaker 2: literally anyone can be a doctor. Is I didn't until
Speaker 2: about a year ago, realized that ponies were not just
Speaker 2: young horses.
Speaker 1: M I do, well, they are little horses, yeah, but
Speaker 1: I thought they were just like you thought they were.
Speaker 1: They would keep going, they would keep growing.
Speaker 2: I thought eventually a pony would become a horse.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I mean, you know, I can see the mistake
Speaker 1: because they are little ponies. But yeah, it's sort of
Speaker 1: like the difference between a Great Dane and a Chihuahua.
Speaker 1: Like the chihuahua is never gonna become a great day
Speaker 1: no matter how much it wants and puts it up
Speaker 1: on its vision board.
Speaker 2: Well, I know it now I know that, like you know.
Speaker 1: But it's the thing is like if when I'm selecting
Speaker 1: a doctor and I have a serious issue, like it
Speaker 1: doesn't really matter if they know that ponies are never
Speaker 1: going to become horses, Like, that's not that's not gonna
Speaker 1: help me necessarily.
Speaker 2: Being vulnerable here with you and telling you the truth.
Speaker 1: Right, And I'm reassured and I'm reassuring you that that
Speaker 1: when I when I have a if I'm going into surgery,
Speaker 1: like what I want to know is that they know,
Speaker 1: you know, which leg to operate on, doesn't matter to me.
Speaker 1: If they understand pony biology, I'm much better humans. Right,
Speaker 1: that's good.
Speaker 3: About that's generally good.
Speaker 1: But speaking of pony biology, yeah, ponies heal a lot
Speaker 1: faster than horses, which is really interesting. The skin is
Speaker 1: drawn together faster, it heals faster. Horses have a weaker
Speaker 1: inflammatory response. They are more dependent on a process called
Speaker 1: I'm going to pronounce this the first time I do it.
Speaker 1: Here we go re epithelialization. Does that sound right? Does
Speaker 1: that sound.
Speaker 2: It's a tough one. No, that's you said it right,
Speaker 2: I stumble on it.
Speaker 1: It's a lot. But that's as far as I understand,
Speaker 1: and please do correct me if I'm wrong, as I
Speaker 1: will correct you when you're wrong about ponies. It's like,
Speaker 1: rather than sort of cinching the wound shut, it's building
Speaker 1: a new surface layer of skin over the wound, kind
Speaker 1: of like brick, laying over the wound with new skin,
Speaker 1: like new skin cell turnover.
Speaker 2: That's exactly right. It's just placing more epithelium and lighting there.
Speaker 2: That's exactly what it is.
Speaker 1: Right, And so that's a slower process than the wound
Speaker 1: contraction because essentially you're like repaving the entire skin area
Speaker 1: versus sort of just pulling it taut drying it together
Speaker 1: exactly exactly. And in general, animals that have looser skin,
Speaker 1: so skin that is less connected to the structures underneath
Speaker 1: the skin, rely more on wound contraction versus animals that
Speaker 1: have skin that is more tightly he's he'd one, am
Speaker 1: I trying to say tightly adhere to the underlying structures
Speaker 1: like our skin like have you if you've ever noticed
Speaker 1: an animal like if fly lands on them, they can
Speaker 1: do that cool thing where their skin just twitches and
Speaker 1: chases off the fly. We can't do that. Our skin
Speaker 1: is too thick and it's too tightly secured to the
Speaker 1: underlying structures. So we're not the best at doing that
Speaker 1: wound contraction versus other animals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it'd be weird. I mean, there are some theories
Speaker 2: right about like hair human hair.
Speaker 1: Oh, we're gonna get into that. We're getting into We're
Speaker 1: getting into the hair get hairy, We're getting hairy. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: Because this is what's really interesting is that, in addition
Speaker 1: to the various factors that may play a role in
Speaker 1: faster wound healing in some animals versus others, like inflammatory response,
Speaker 1: the amount of blood vessels in the skin, how firmly
Speaker 1: attached the skin is to the muscle tissue, how thick
Speaker 1: the skin is, et cetera. Even behavioral things such as grooming.
Speaker 1: There is this question of like, well, why do we
Speaker 1: heal slower than say, are really close relatives like chimpanzees,
Speaker 1: Like it seems like we should have about the same
Speaker 1: rate of healing, and yet chimpanzees and other apes primates
Speaker 1: that were related to heal three times faster than us
Speaker 1: on average. But yeah, so, like you pointed out, one
Speaker 1: of the most notable things about humans compared to other
Speaker 1: land mammals is our lack of fur, so we don't
Speaker 1: have a lot of dense hair follicles, and each of
Speaker 1: our hair are I mean definitely varies between individuals, but
Speaker 1: for in general, when we're comparing ourselves to say other
Speaker 1: primates or other mammals, our hair is less thick and
Speaker 1: it's less dense. So, you know, research have found that
Speaker 1: hairless rodents heal more slowly compared to rodents that have fur.
Speaker 1: So that's a very interesting thing. It's again it's not
Speaker 1: yet it's smoking gun though, right, because if you have
Speaker 1: a hairless rodent, there's a whole bunch of other factors
Speaker 1: that go into well, it's hairless, so maybe it's inflammatory
Speaker 1: response is sort of a more sensitive in terms of
Speaker 1: other things going on because it doesn't have this gene
Speaker 1: for hair growth. There's a lot of potential factors. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so when we look at us versus chimpanzees, the interesting
Speaker 1: thing is that chimpanzees compared to say mandrels or baboons,
Speaker 1: heal a lot about the same rate, and chimpanzees compared
Speaker 1: to humans heal three times faster than us. But when
Speaker 1: you look at hair density, like follicular density, uh, chimpanzees
Speaker 1: and humans are about the same. That sounds weird, right,
Speaker 1: because it's like, well, no, chimpanzees are way hairer than us.
Speaker 1: What do you mean that the hair density is about
Speaker 1: the same. It's that their hair is a lot thicker
Speaker 1: and longer than us, so they have bigger hair follicles
Speaker 1: than us, whereas we have we don't have anything.
Speaker 3: We have the same nules.
Speaker 2: Yes, they're okay.
Speaker 1: They're bigger, yeah, exactly, so a similar number of hair
Speaker 1: follicles differently distributed, but also their hair follicles are bigger.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that potentially either having more hair
Speaker 1: of fault, either having more hair follicles or having thicker
Speaker 1: hair follicles could both be away that helps enhance wound
Speaker 1: healing because of the presence of stem cells in the
Speaker 1: hair follicles. So sort of this theory is that when
Speaker 1: you have more hair follicles and or you have bigger
Speaker 1: hair follicles, you're able to recruit more stem cells from
Speaker 1: those hair follicles to help in wound healing.
Speaker 2: As a Iranian male, I love where this conversation is
Speaker 2: going because I like to believe that that makes me
Speaker 2: a little bit more superhuman, right, Feeling wolverine was known
Speaker 2: to be a very hairy mutant. That is the lore.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a here suit man.
Speaker 2: That's very interesting. Now this is I'm sure way more
Speaker 2: depth than is necessary for this. But where are these
Speaker 2: stem cells? Are they sort of in the base of
Speaker 2: the follicle and do they are they released down to
Speaker 2: the skin around it? Like how is this working on
Speaker 2: an anatomic level?
Speaker 1: Like I don't Yeah, I don't know that they know
Speaker 1: yet because they don't even know if this is how
Speaker 1: why this is enhancing the wound healing? Right, Like the
Speaker 1: the in terms of like the stem cells potentially migrat,
Speaker 1: like where the stem cells are along the hair follicle.
Speaker 1: I believe they are at the very sort of base
Speaker 1: of the hair follicle where they're sort of going through
Speaker 1: the whole hair growth cycle. Right, they have some undifferentiated
Speaker 1: cells down there that then can be used to promote
Speaker 1: this hair growth and you know, turn into hair cells.
Speaker 1: But the in terms of how they would potentially be
Speaker 1: say recruited in nearby tissue to help in mound healing,
Speaker 1: I don't know, and I couldn't find research on it.
Speaker 1: That doesn't mean it doesn't exist. So someone please write
Speaker 1: to me tell me I'm dumb. I'm always welcome that.
Speaker 1: But yeah, it's but it's also just not known for
Speaker 1: sure if hair follicles are the sort of like magical reason,
Speaker 1: the smoking gun of who heals better than others, but
Speaker 1: it is. It is a very interesting idea, and it's
Speaker 1: also kind of I really want to talk about he
Speaker 1: humans sort of making this trade off for why aren't
Speaker 1: we all that hairy, right, Like why did we lose
Speaker 1: all of our hair? Seems like if these hair follicles
Speaker 1: represent better wound healing, which we don't know yet, but
Speaker 1: that's a theory. It just adds one more positive attribute
Speaker 1: to having fur, right, Like, if you have fur, you
Speaker 1: have a lot of hair. There's a lot of benefits.
Speaker 1: There's a warmth, there's a protective layer, it's like armor.
Speaker 1: There's also things like social signaling. Having different colored hair
Speaker 1: can help signal like sexual maturity, it can help signal fitness.
Speaker 1: So there's also the social aspect of grooming that is
Speaker 1: present in primates that can be really really good for
Speaker 1: cooperation within a group of apes. So there's a lot
Speaker 1: of benefits to having hair, and yet we only have hair.
Speaker 1: We do have hair all over our bodies actually.
Speaker 2: Big for yourself, my friend. No, that is fascinating to
Speaker 2: me because I always wonder that too. I'm like, it
Speaker 2: doesn't really make that much sense you think that having
Speaker 2: more body hair would be I mean, we take it
Speaker 2: for granted because we wear clothing. We have to wear clothing,
Speaker 2: that's our thing to stay warm in certain climates. But yeah,
Speaker 2: what benefit do we get? Why are we And also,
Speaker 2: I guess another question. I don't know if this is
Speaker 2: evolutionary or if this is a social sort of question.
Speaker 2: Why is less hair considered beautiful? Has that always been
Speaker 2: the case? This might be like a more of an
Speaker 2: anthropology question, like are there cultures in the past where
Speaker 2: being her suit was considered more beautiful? Like, I mean,
Speaker 2: there's been times in our current modern day world where
Speaker 2: being hairy as a man, for example, has been good.
Speaker 1: But yeah, like Gaston right, like remember right, he's covered
Speaker 1: every inch of them is covered in hair, and the
Speaker 1: ladies love it, and the men everyone, and the nbas.
Speaker 2: I am what? I am curious? In general, I can't
Speaker 2: think of any culture offhand where the it's been considered
Speaker 2: a sign of beauty for women to be her suit,
Speaker 2: which seems unfair, but I get, and maybe there is
Speaker 2: one I just don't know. But I'm wondering why that is.
Speaker 2: I'm wondering, like why we are as a society sort
Speaker 2: of more and more over time trying to become less hairy,
Speaker 2: Like what it is about us? If there's some inherent
Speaker 2: biological need or desire to be less hairy, to be
Speaker 2: less furry.
Speaker 1: It's interesting. So I would say that the the human
Speaker 1: like current human preference for less body hair is cultural,
Speaker 1: and it's it's not something that is static throughout time.
Speaker 1: Women shaving their underarms really only popped up, I think,
Speaker 1: kind of in the nineteen around the nineteen twenties, and
Speaker 1: that had to do with fashion changing, because all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, women were actually wearing clothing where you could
Speaker 1: see your armpits and you could see some leg and
Speaker 1: so at that point there was this kind of like
Speaker 1: seeing armpit hair or leg hair as kind of a
Speaker 1: weirdly like sexual thing, and so shaving was introduced as like, well,
Speaker 1: this is good hygiene, right, you want to shave, you
Speaker 1: want to be clean, so that it didn't have this
Speaker 1: kind of like it may have sanitized a bit this
Speaker 1: shift in women's fashion. You see it in also in
Speaker 1: like Greek sculpture, where a lot of Greek sculpture would
Speaker 1: have male body hair sculpted but no female body hair.
Speaker 1: That didn't mean women were shaving a lot back in
Speaker 1: ancient Greece. It actually was because a lot of sculptors
Speaker 1: saw female body hair as an apparently sexual thing, right,
Speaker 1: so they wouldn't want to represent it in sculptures. So
Speaker 1: I would say, yes, today, our preference for doing a
Speaker 1: lot of shaping. Sorry, a lot of what am I
Speaker 1: trying to say a lot of landscaping is is more
Speaker 1: of a modern preference based on some interesting cultural shifts,
Speaker 1: based on fashion changes. So it's a it is. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't say, I can't think of any.
Speaker 2: I mean, I'm sure it's not a biological imperative. It's
Speaker 2: like men deciding what is beauty on some level. Like
Speaker 2: it's funny that all these things they all kind of
Speaker 2: come down to men, or not just men, but women
Speaker 2: having to do the extra work, right A lot more well.
Speaker 1: There is there is manscaping now. So I personally, I'm
Speaker 1: I'm of the brand of feminism where it's like we
Speaker 1: got to drag men down to you know, basically even
Speaker 1: things out so we gotta make more maandscaping gottah, you know,
Speaker 1: make pay win less, just pull you down to our
Speaker 1: like crabs in a bucket. Now. But the one, the
Speaker 1: one possible benefit to not having hair, both culturally right
Speaker 1: like shaving, and in terms of our evolutionary history is parasites,
Speaker 1: so ectoparasites, anything that would come and latch on, so
Speaker 1: fleas and ticks. It's a much more hostile environment for
Speaker 1: them if they don't have body hair, because for the ticks,
Speaker 1: they can't really survive unless there's hair around them. They
Speaker 1: would dry out too quickly, and for the ticks they
Speaker 1: can they of course everyone's probably had some bad experience
Speaker 1: with a tick, but you can find it much easier
Speaker 1: if you're not covered in hair. And so, of course
Speaker 1: we still have ectoparasites. We have demodecks which get into
Speaker 1: our eyebrows. It's a tiny horrifying looking thing if you've
Speaker 1: ever looked at it in a microscope. You have them
Speaker 1: on you right now, and they're not They look like
Speaker 1: sort of a monster from Dune. Not not great to
Speaker 1: look at. They're mostly harmless, but you know, head lice,
Speaker 1: pubic license are both things that we can have so
Speaker 1: there is, but is it sc Scabies is something that
Speaker 1: can affect the skin even when you don't have hair.
Speaker 2: That's I'm sure that's true. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Bed bugs. Bed bugs also can like it's it often
Speaker 1: you like the things that like. Things like bedbugs can
Speaker 1: survive because they don't actually live on you. They bite you,
Speaker 1: but they live in your bedding, which is super annoying.
Speaker 1: So we do still have ectoparasites. But there is a
Speaker 1: theory that by losing some of our hair, it made
Speaker 1: it harder for parasites to latch onto us. That's another
Speaker 1: sort of theory for why maybe grooming like pubic hair
Speaker 1: or grooming beard hair may have gone in and out
Speaker 1: of fashion. Maybe it followed some sort of like when
Speaker 1: cities became more rife with, say, parasites. I'm not exactly sure.
Speaker 1: I think that explains everything, both culturally and in terms
Speaker 1: of evolution. The theory to me that makes the most
Speaker 1: sense as to why human beings lost our hair as
Speaker 1: actually thermal regulation, because we moved from more of a
Speaker 1: kind of like a jungle habitat to the savannah, and
Speaker 1: we had to change our method of living quite a
Speaker 1: bit in order to do that, and one was that
Speaker 1: if we're living out in the savannah where it's very
Speaker 1: hot and we want to be able to eat anything
Speaker 1: that can possibly outrun us, we need to be able
Speaker 1: to thermoregulate and we need to be able to sweat.
Speaker 1: So we potentially made a trade off where we instead
Speaker 1: of having been covered in a bunch of hair, we
Speaker 1: traded that hair for sweat glands. Because we can't any
Speaker 1: organ This is true of any organism. You can't just
Speaker 1: put infinity resources into everything, right. It's like when you're
Speaker 1: making a character in I don't know, Oblivion or Baldersgate
Speaker 1: or any kind of thing where you get the sliders
Speaker 1: and you have to put points and stuff. That's basically
Speaker 1: evolutionary biology where there's sliders right when you turn the
Speaker 1: you know, the endocrine glands up and you have a
Speaker 1: lot of sweat glands, you gotta push down the hairiness
Speaker 1: slider of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah. No, And I think it's been shown that people
Speaker 2: who sweat right are tend to be a little bit
Speaker 2: healthier overall. Like there is a study that I should
Speaker 2: have looked this up before orient but like you know,
Speaker 2: that showed the people who had a little bit more
Speaker 2: sweat a little bit more freely and quicker. Actually tended
Speaker 2: to have better exercise capacity, which makes sense for what
Speaker 2: you're saying. Actually, completely my.
Speaker 1: Personal experience is that's true. I'm not much. It's interesting.
Speaker 1: I'm not much of a sweater when it comes to exercise.
Speaker 1: If I'm nervous, like then I start sweating, which is
Speaker 1: really useful. But yeah, I like, I basically don't start
Speaker 1: to get over the hump, like if I'm hiking or
Speaker 1: doing some intensive exercise, until after I find my body
Speaker 1: finally catches on that, oh, I have to start sweating now,
Speaker 1: and then I'm Actually it's like such a relief when
Speaker 1: that happens, because then I feel better and I get
Speaker 1: over this sort of like hump of like just not
Speaker 1: just it's like I'm going to die, and then realizing
Speaker 1: I'm actually fine, I'm nowhere near death.
Speaker 2: I just well, this is where I again, this is
Speaker 2: where I again am superhuman because I somehow man should
Speaker 2: be both hairy and sweaty. So that's the.
Speaker 1: Ideal human form.
Speaker 2: I am this.
Speaker 1: Yes, it's peak peak human performance sweaty and hairy. But yeah,
Speaker 1: so we potentially traded a lot of that hair. The
Speaker 1: not just the hair density, because like I said, the
Speaker 1: champanzees actually may have a similar number of hair follicles,
Speaker 1: but we traded in the hair thickness for more sweat glands.
Speaker 1: This is a theory. We we can't necessarily prove this,
Speaker 1: but that to me is one of the more convincing ideas,
Speaker 1: because there's other theories about like, well, we lost hair
Speaker 1: on our faces so that we could use social signaling
Speaker 1: like looking at people blushing or something, so we could
Speaker 1: tell if someone's like happy with us or angry. And
Speaker 1: I think that may have been a side benefit, right,
Speaker 1: and it may have influenced say like facial hair patterns,
Speaker 1: but I just don't think that would have been enough
Speaker 1: to have us lose all of our hair. I think
Speaker 1: the thermal regulation it makes a lot of sense in
Speaker 1: terms of our evolutionary history from where we moved basically
Speaker 1: from these essentially like seeing like the difference between humans
Speaker 1: and a lot of primates is where we ended up
Speaker 1: moving to the savannah and away from these these more
Speaker 1: sort of like forest regions, although there are mandrils and
Speaker 1: baboons that also do.
Speaker 2: This, but it is really it makes more sense on
Speaker 2: like a more basic level of what it does for
Speaker 2: your survival chances. Yeah, I get that.
Speaker 1: It's such a It's like, it's such a dramatic change
Speaker 1: that it seems to me something dramatic like being able
Speaker 1: to thermo regulate in an environment that is very hot
Speaker 1: and hostile to something that cannot run effectively in the heat.
Speaker 1: That makes a lot of sense to me. And so
Speaker 1: we potentially lost our hair because of that, And so
Speaker 1: it's interesting because also that the thermoregulation idea and losing
Speaker 1: our hair may have actually resulted in our skin being
Speaker 1: a bit thicker. Our skin is actually thicker than a
Speaker 1: lot of primates, and one of the potential reasons for
Speaker 1: that is without hair, now we don't have that armor,
Speaker 1: so we kind of have to make up for it
Speaker 1: by having thicker skin. And then ironically, another theory is
Speaker 1: that with this thicker skin, that actually makes wound healing harder,
Speaker 1: so you can There's just so many odd trade offs
Speaker 1: that happen with evolution, and these theories really show how
Speaker 1: tricky it is, because you know, what do weigh better
Speaker 1: the ability to heal or to not be injured in
Speaker 1: the first place, And how do you kind of weigh
Speaker 1: both of those things and have them come into balance
Speaker 1: for an organism to be successful.
Speaker 2: Yeah that I have to say. I'm surprised to learn
Speaker 2: that our skin might be thicker than that of other primates.
Speaker 2: But yeah, wondering like, have.
Speaker 1: You ever tried to insult a chimpanzee?
Speaker 2: They really roll with it. Yeah, give them credit. I mean,
Speaker 2: not great at roasting though, they don't seem to get it,
Speaker 2: but they do take a joke.
Speaker 1: Well huh yeah, yeah, I don't know. I I personally
Speaker 1: don't want to insult a gorilla. I don't want to
Speaker 1: see what happens. They're generally nice.
Speaker 2: But did you weigh in on the one hundred men
Speaker 2: versus you know, one gorilla thing? Have you? I'm assuming
Speaker 2: you've covered this at Nauvoom.
Speaker 1: I mean, do the men like, do they have is
Speaker 1: this a is it one man at a time? Do
Speaker 1: they have weapons? Are they wearing the armor?
Speaker 2: No, it's one hundred naked men. Okay, wine, well groom
Speaker 2: didn't clothed gorilla, all right, I have details.
Speaker 1: One hundred naked men. I mean, okay, so obviously I
Speaker 1: think the men went in this situation. I think that
Speaker 1: it's gonna be. It's the it's gonna be sort of
Speaker 1: like the It's sort of like bees versus murder hornets,
Speaker 1: where the bees surround the murder hornets and wiggle until
Speaker 1: the murder hornets die and some bees may be lost
Speaker 1: in the process. This is how I imagine one hundred
Speaker 1: naked men versus a gorilla. They dog pile the gorilla.
Speaker 1: Of course, some of them are going to valiantly lose
Speaker 1: their lives in the great gorilla battle. I'm also wondering, though,
Speaker 1: It's just like, but why gorilla is generally very nice, right,
Speaker 1: I mean, they're actually quite chill.
Speaker 2: That is really, that is really the question is why
Speaker 2: are you thinking about this? Leave these poor gorillas alone,
Speaker 2: them alone, relatively non violent primates, and let them do
Speaker 2: the thing. I think exactly. I'm assuming it's a they're
Speaker 2: being attacked. They're the ones being attacked, and they're defending themselves.
Speaker 1: In this scenario, the men are the gorilla. The gorilla
Speaker 1: glas being attacked. Yeah, I would assume that too.
Speaker 2: I don't think the girl is starting the melee against
Speaker 2: the hundred.
Speaker 1: I don't yeah, I don't think. Yeah. I think gorillas
Speaker 1: are too focused on leaf and termite to do that.
Speaker 1: You know, they just want to hang out and do
Speaker 1: leaf and termite, and men are going like writing on
Speaker 1: Twitter or whatever, going like I think I could beat
Speaker 1: a gorilla.
Speaker 2: Guess what.
Speaker 1: The girl is not even thinking about you, man, girl
Speaker 1: is not even thinking about you.
Speaker 2: That's so sad. It's true. We're humans are the only
Speaker 2: species that would take the time to yeh about this.
Speaker 1: Yeah, no, no, there they're out. They're living their best
Speaker 1: life while we're seething online. So keep that in mind.
Speaker 1: We're going to take a quick break and when we
Speaker 1: get back, we're going to talk about a tiny deadpool.
Speaker 1: This is really interesting to me because when I was
Speaker 1: reading this, this report on this new review of the studies, like,
Speaker 1: I couldn't help but think of one of my favorite
Speaker 1: little freaks of nature, which is the spiny mouse, which
Speaker 1: is such a strange Anneal, have you ever heard of
Speaker 1: this cave?
Speaker 2: I have not heard of the spiny mouse. No, so.
Speaker 1: We have talked about this on the show before, but
Speaker 1: it bears repeating if you haven't heard that episode. It also,
Speaker 1: I think is just so relevant because it's such an
Speaker 1: interesting connection to everything we've been talking about, the wound healing,
Speaker 1: the loose skin, the presence of hair. So there is
Speaker 1: this it's a genus, so there's multiple species within it.
Speaker 1: It's these adorable little mice called spiny mice. They're more
Speaker 1: closely related to durbils than to the house mouse, but
Speaker 1: they look very much like mice.
Speaker 2: I'm looking at a picture of them now, very cute.
Speaker 2: They almost look like the kangaroo, rat or something. They
Speaker 2: have a little longer nose than I expected, small nutsing spines,
Speaker 2: the spine, the aspect.
Speaker 1: Of this they have. It's more. They should be called
Speaker 1: bristle mice, but I guess nobody put me in charge
Speaker 1: of naming things. They should. But you know, they you know,
Speaker 1: all right, But they have guard hairs that are coarser
Speaker 1: and a little bit sturdier. So their guard hairs make
Speaker 1: them less appealing of a prey versus maybe a little
Speaker 1: rodent who has soft hairs. It's just like it hasn't
Speaker 1: reached the level of say like a porcupine or a hedgehog,
Speaker 1: where those those hairs have become really hard in stuff
Speaker 1: such that they really hurt and they can really pokey good.
Speaker 1: These ones, the bristles are unpleasant for predator and kind
Speaker 1: of pokey like if you've ever like with a hair
Speaker 1: brush or you know, something like or a piece of wheat,
Speaker 1: you know, like or grass or something, and you kind
Speaker 1: of sticks on your hand. You're like, ah, it's not
Speaker 1: a great feeling, but it's not like hurry.
Speaker 2: So that's.
Speaker 1: If I'm really hungry, I'm eating a hairbrush. Yeah, exactly.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: So spiny mice are found in African deserts. They are
Speaker 1: these amazingly cute little guys. And then it just turns
Speaker 1: into this like horror show, which is that they have
Speaker 1: this cool trick if they do get caught, which is
Speaker 1: just letting their skin fall off, so they will wiggle around,
Speaker 1: and the strength of which their skin clings to the
Speaker 1: underlying structure is much weaker than other rodents and much
Speaker 1: much weaker than like most other animals. So if you know,
Speaker 1: if you're like kind of holding the skin of this
Speaker 1: mouth and it's like wiggling it around, that skin just
Speaker 1: pops right off at a certain point. Yeah, and it's
Speaker 1: this is not this is not a mistake. This is
Speaker 1: a feature, not a bug, because this is essentially giving
Speaker 1: them a chance to escape. So the predator gets like
Speaker 1: a fistful of hair and skin and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I have something, and the mouse gets away. And so
Speaker 1: the question though, is now that it has this huge,
Speaker 1: gaping wound on its body, because it's skin just popped off,
Speaker 1: what does it do right. It seems like this would
Speaker 1: be a terrible strategy because now you're wounded, you risk infections.
Speaker 1: It's really nasty. Within a single day, that wound has
Speaker 1: already clotted, scabbed over, and the surface area has been reduced.
Speaker 1: Using that we talked about, that wound contraction method of
Speaker 1: just sort of the wound cinching shut, it has already
Speaker 1: contracted by over half of the surface area that was
Speaker 1: exposed is now reduced by half. That's the first day
Speaker 1: of healing. In three days, new skin has already grown
Speaker 1: over the wound, including follicle regeneration, and even parts of
Speaker 1: their bodies that normally mammals in general can't heal very well,
Speaker 1: like ear cartilage, which doesn't heal very well. That's one
Speaker 1: of the reason we can do piercings right and keep
Speaker 1: that hole in our ear. Those their ears can actually
Speaker 1: completely regrow, which is wild.
Speaker 2: This is fascinating, especially because so it sounds like these
Speaker 2: spiny mice live in the desert and that's you're losing
Speaker 2: your skin along with the infection you're mentioning also just
Speaker 2: the risk of dehydration. Yes, your skin helps you maintain
Speaker 2: that hydration to lose that. I mean, it seems like
Speaker 2: such a counterintuitive skill set for an animal living out
Speaker 2: there to have. That's amazing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean it's something where yes, they could still die,
Speaker 1: but they will definitely die if they're caught by a
Speaker 1: predator and eaten. And so it's it's this trade off
Speaker 1: where their chance of survival seems to increase by having
Speaker 1: this like disconnectable skin, and then they compensate for all
Speaker 1: these risks by having this incredible healing process unlike anything
Speaker 1: we really see in other mammals. So and yeah, so
Speaker 1: like essentially, in order to help protect them from that
Speaker 1: massive dehydration, they're sensing that moonshet as quickly as possible,
Speaker 1: reducing the surface area that's exposed to evaporation, exposed to bacteria.
Speaker 1: Uh and then yeah, immediately kind of like putting like
Speaker 1: they're sinching it. They're using the Okay, I'm gonna get
Speaker 1: this re epithelialization. Did they do that? You get it? Great?
Speaker 1: Kay pronunciation? So uh, yeah, they they regenerate that really
Speaker 1: quickly and amazingly though. Not only are they fast, they
Speaker 1: don't generate a lot of scar tissues, so they actually
Speaker 1: have this kind of loose collagen matrix that matches the
Speaker 1: other tissues. So you'd think like they would just kind
Speaker 1: of you know, I compared them to Deadpool. They're actually
Speaker 1: way better than Deadpool because of it. Instead of Ryan
Speaker 1: Reynolds basically having sort of like this patchwork face where
Speaker 1: he's still handsome but he looks kind of sunburned, but
Speaker 1: he's supposed to look really grotesque, they the.
Speaker 2: Most beautiful man in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's yeah, they didn't, you know. It's sort of
Speaker 1: one of those things.
Speaker 3: All yeah, look at.
Speaker 1: Me, I'm unlovable. I'm Ryan Reynolds with a bad subburn. Yeah,
Speaker 1: come on, guy. Anyways, but yeah, these mice, actually they're
Speaker 1: more I should say, they're more like Wolverine. Right, he's
Speaker 1: got the regeneration, right, I'm getting that. Please, I don't
Speaker 1: want to be attacked.
Speaker 2: I will sidetrack this whole episode and to extended detail
Speaker 2: on the Wolverine weaponex lore. But yes, you are right.
Speaker 2: They both share a similar, if not the exact same
Speaker 2: regenerator properties.
Speaker 1: Right, all right, it's only a short period of time
Speaker 1: where they do look kind of gnarly because like their
Speaker 1: skin just pops off in big chunks, which is, you know,
Speaker 1: a little bit of a nightmare. But yeah, So they
Speaker 1: are able to regenerate hair, follicles, epidermis, dermis, sweat glands,
Speaker 1: fat cells, nerves, muscles, cartilage, and they even have some
Speaker 1: evidence that they can regenerate parts of spinal nerves that
Speaker 1: are really difficult for say, other mammals to regenerate. Right, Like,
Speaker 1: when we have a spinal energy, it does not regenerate
Speaker 1: very well.
Speaker 2: No, this is fascinating to me, and I have the
Speaker 2: sinking fear that you're going to follow this up by
Speaker 2: saying that we have almost driven it to extinction and
Speaker 2: will never be able to stay to learn about how
Speaker 2: we as humans could benefit from this.
Speaker 1: No, we're actually studying, like this is one of the
Speaker 1: rare cases where we are studying it and it's not
Speaker 1: it's it doesn't seem to be a near extinction.
Speaker 2: It's fantastic because this is amazing. I'm just thinking about
Speaker 2: all the potential benefits from it. You're exactly right, Like
Speaker 2: just in terms of burn patients, in terms of patients
Speaker 2: with neurologic damage, nerve damage. To find as many ways
Speaker 2: possible as we can to learn to regenerate those things
Speaker 2: which are very difficult, as many options and as angles
Speaker 2: we can find is fascinating. What's also fascinating to me
Speaker 2: is when I did google it once you started talking
Speaker 2: about it and spiny mouse comes up, the first question
Speaker 2: it offers to answer for you is why do spiny
Speaker 2: mice ment straight? I don't know why that is of
Speaker 2: all the things that we're talking about.
Speaker 1: I mean, as as far as I know, they probably
Speaker 1: amin straight in this for the same reason every.
Speaker 2: Every y mammal, unsuccessful pregnancy results into crosis, the shedding
Speaker 2: of the functional layer of the uterus, the endometrium. So
Speaker 2: I don't don't know why for the spike be bouse.
Speaker 1: Fastening. There must but that must be that some that
Speaker 1: feels like it's too deep of a cut for like
Speaker 1: random people to be doing. There's got to be some
Speaker 1: like research intern who's like, wait, why is this dying
Speaker 1: thing menstruating all the time. I'm trying to study it.
Speaker 2: A lot, just view.
Speaker 1: Yeah that's wild. So yeah, I mean it's it's it's
Speaker 1: really amazing. It's healing ability is really amazing. So a
Speaker 1: couple of things are really interesting about this Uh. It
Speaker 1: also demonstrates a better cardiac healing than other mouse species,
Speaker 1: which again is very interesting. And so there's a few
Speaker 1: things going on with this mouse. I mean, let me
Speaker 1: preface it by saying, I don't know, and I don't
Speaker 1: think anyone knows exactly what's going going on with the
Speaker 1: spiny mouse. It's mostly this sort of conjecture because they're
Speaker 1: working on research and hopefully at some point we will
Speaker 1: know more about them. But one of the things with
Speaker 1: the spiny mice is that when you look at their skin, right,
Speaker 1: they have really loose skin. So, like we talked about
Speaker 1: in the first part of the show, where you got
Speaker 1: loose skin, it's easier to kind of synch that up
Speaker 1: like a draw string bag and do a wound contraction.
Speaker 1: But they also have a really high density of hair follicles,
Speaker 1: and they have really thick hair follicles. So they've got
Speaker 1: like everything going on that we've talked about earlier in
Speaker 1: terms of animals that have faster wound healing, right, loose skin,
Speaker 1: a lot of hair, and thick hair. But that obviously
Speaker 1: doesn't necessarily explain everything, right, because if they have faster
Speaker 1: cardiac healing. It's hard for me to imagine by what
Speaker 1: process their skin would help in that, right, Like I
Speaker 1: suppose there could be some weird migration of stem cells
Speaker 1: from the skin to cardiac tissue, but I don't. I
Speaker 1: have never heard of anything like that.
Speaker 2: It's probably a separate mechanism, but how it's related is interesting.
Speaker 2: What there are cells that line, you know, your cardiac
Speaker 2: the cardiac lining. I mean, I guess when you talk
Speaker 2: about cardiac healing, I mean, what does that mean. Are
Speaker 2: they like injuring the heart or are they doing what
Speaker 2: humans do, which is like they plug up the arteries
Speaker 2: and then see if they can re epitheliize that or
Speaker 2: if there can be like new vasculature that forms, because
Speaker 2: what could I've done really just hand waving here, But
Speaker 2: you know, I'm wondering if what they're showing is that
Speaker 2: there is a growth of vasculature to feed blood vessels
Speaker 2: to the rest of the heart if one is injured,
Speaker 2: for example, because that could make sense. That could be
Speaker 2: like stem cell active, causing more or hyper vascularization of
Speaker 2: the tissue of the heart. So that's fascinating. I mean,
Speaker 2: I would love to know about what they're actually doing
Speaker 2: in regards to these studies, how they're studying this. I mean,
Speaker 2: because it sounds like we could learn not only the
Speaker 2: skin stuff, not only the wound healing, not only nerve damage,
Speaker 2: but we could also learn how to heal scarred cardiac
Speaker 2: tissue potentially from these animals.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I believe it does have something to do with
Speaker 1: the revascularization around the heart. I think it might also
Speaker 1: have some ability to tolerate, say like heart attacks, and
Speaker 1: to heal the heart tissue after like an schema schemic event.
Speaker 1: I hope I'm saying that.
Speaker 2: Yeah right, yeah event, Yeah, blood flow.
Speaker 1: Right exactly, So damaged heart tissue as well as potentially
Speaker 1: healing more of the blood vessels. It might be sort
Speaker 1: of both things. They can't regenerate the tissue in the
Speaker 1: same way that they can regenerate their skin tissue. It's
Speaker 1: not like you can they can just like completely damage
Speaker 1: to the heart and then regrow the heart like they
Speaker 1: can with their skin. So it's there's definitely some separate
Speaker 1: process going on. Another interesting aspect to the mices, when
Speaker 1: they look at one thing they do understand a little
Speaker 1: better is their their ear healing is they can see
Speaker 1: that they form again, really hoping I nail the pronunciation
Speaker 1: of this. I think it's called a blastema, which is
Speaker 1: like this this cluster of undifferentiated cells like stem cells
Speaker 1: that form sort of this glob, and then from that
Speaker 1: glob it can start like you know, sit like these
Speaker 1: little undifferentiated cells move on out and start rebuilding whatever
Speaker 1: tissue is needed in that area. And so you see
Speaker 1: similar actually similar structures in say salamander limbs, where salamanders
Speaker 1: can rea grow entire limbs, and so they also have
Speaker 1: a similar like it's just a blob of undifferentiated cells
Speaker 1: them forms in the area and then basically sends out
Speaker 1: like different units like Okay, you go over here and
Speaker 1: then you figure out like hey, I need to be
Speaker 1: this kind of tissue cell and then develops into it
Speaker 1: and then it can regrow entire limbs that way.
Speaker 2: You know. I've heard about that with lizards that they're
Speaker 2: in going back to Marvel Lore doctor Connor's and the
Speaker 2: lizard and how he regrows his arm but becomes a monster,
Speaker 2: But I haven't heard about it much with mammals. I mean,
Speaker 2: in warm blooded creatures. Are there other mammals that can
Speaker 2: have the same sort of regenerative growth.
Speaker 1: I mean, most mammals can to some extent have regenerative growth,
Speaker 1: but we can't do entire limbs. Don't know of any
Speaker 1: mammal that can regrow an entire limb, uh it has
Speaker 1: we we can partially regrow things though, right like, so
Speaker 1: with this spiny mice them regrowing entire skin structures is
Speaker 1: pretty similar. That's maybe they're may be the most similar
Speaker 1: when you can compare mammals to salamanders, to lizards, but
Speaker 1: even like people, right like, if you it depends on
Speaker 1: like we can regrow structures to some extent, it just
Speaker 1: really the point at which you can chop an arm
Speaker 1: off for a human being to regrow is basically just
Speaker 1: the very tippy tippy tips of our fingers, right like,
Speaker 1: we can regrow a little bit of our fingertips, but
Speaker 1: any any further down where we can't. We can't handle that.
Speaker 1: Whereas uh, salamanders essentially just have a much higher higher
Speaker 1: tolerance for having their limb regrowth start at like being
Speaker 1: able to have that limb bud essentially reform and then
Speaker 1: start developed being a new limb, which we cannot and
Speaker 1: other mammals cannot.
Speaker 2: Do what a bummer.
Speaker 1: I know, it would be great. I I wanna, I
Speaker 1: wanna have that ability. But I'd like it to be
Speaker 1: where you not only grow like a new limb, but
Speaker 1: like maybe an extra one. So every time you get hurt,
Speaker 1: like you get like a little hand that comes out
Speaker 1: of like that injury. That would be so cool.
Speaker 2: You have to buy a new wardrobe like all the
Speaker 2: time though.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but then imagine all the snacks you could hold
Speaker 1: in all the little hands that you have. Now fair,
Speaker 1: I think about this a lot. Yeah, yeah, So yeah,
Speaker 1: we got we got weird mice that are growing their skin,
Speaker 1: which could be uh if we player cards right which
Speaker 1: right now we don't seem to be, but it could
Speaker 1: be if we research them more, they may help us
Speaker 1: understand our own uh slow heat healing process and maybe
Speaker 1: how we can improve healing both boo boos and heart booboos.
Speaker 3: Yeah cardio.
Speaker 1: Sorry, the scientific term is cardiac booboo.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, I mean, don't embarrass me in front of
Speaker 2: my doctor friends. That is what we call it. I know,
Speaker 2: I think that is That's fascinating. Again. One thing I
Speaker 2: love about coming on the show is just being introduced
Speaker 2: to these these animals that have all the the in
Speaker 2: vivo studies we could want right there, Yeah, to learn
Speaker 2: more about ourselves, Like, I think it's a great way. Two,
Speaker 2: it's a great way to build the science is to
Speaker 2: to learn about these animals, you know, of course in
Speaker 2: an ethical way, and you know too, to learn a
Speaker 2: little bit more about their healing process and how different
Speaker 2: things can be. It's just nothing else. It opens up
Speaker 2: our minds to the possibilities of what we could be
Speaker 2: doing with humans. I think that's really fun. It's really
Speaker 2: fun because if you get so as doctors, we get
Speaker 2: so like at some point locked into what we can
Speaker 2: do and what we do know and what happens currently
Speaker 2: with the human body. It requires people thinking outside of
Speaker 2: the box like this, to be like, Okay, what is
Speaker 2: this animal doing that's different, and then someone to take
Speaker 2: that information and to eventually work multiple steps, obviously to
Speaker 2: the point where how can this benefit us? Which I
Speaker 2: know makes me sound like a monster. I do love animals,
Speaker 2: even if they can't help us. But I think it's
Speaker 2: really exciting. It's really exciting to another great reason why
Speaker 2: we need to be doing research.
Speaker 1: Because I mean, I'm not an I'm not a vegetarian,
Speaker 1: So the idea that I would make draw the line
Speaker 1: at doing animal research as long as it's you know,
Speaker 1: done humanely, right that it's you know, I don't need
Speaker 1: to eat meat, but I think help people with survive
Speaker 1: heart attacks and stuff is very important. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really exciting. It's really fun to yeah, to
Speaker 2: see that and to be like this, to keep thinking
Speaker 2: of new possibilities. A lot of that the animals are fantastic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely, and I mean hopefully also gives us more
Speaker 1: incentive to Like you said, even though the spiny mouse,
Speaker 1: there could be some species that are in trouble. I
Speaker 1: don't actually know if there are any that are endangered,
Speaker 1: but certainly a lot of species are not endangered. But
Speaker 1: I think it just when we keep our natural ecosystems functioning,
Speaker 1: and there's just like an incredible library of genetic knowledge
Speaker 1: that is completely irreplaceable, right. Like we've talked about this
Speaker 1: before actually when I had you on, Like we talked
Speaker 1: about the gas rooting frog, this frog that has this
Speaker 1: amazing ability not to kill its own offspring that it
Speaker 1: has in its stomach and somehow its stomach acid doesn't
Speaker 1: burn through its own offspring. And just the fact that
Speaker 1: that went extinct and we don't have that incredible sort
Speaker 1: of like you imagine if these spiny mice went extinct,
Speaker 1: right like this, this incredible ability that this animal has,
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a I think it's it is something
Speaker 1: that really it's a good way to be humbled too,
Speaker 1: that like, look, humans are great, we're very very smart,
Speaker 1: but we can't just regrow a huge chunks of our
Speaker 1: skin in like three days. We can't lose like sixty
Speaker 1: percent of our skin and then regrow it and be okay.
Speaker 1: So yeah, just respecting these little guys.
Speaker 2: I mean, and we talked about this last time too.
Speaker 2: It is one of those things where I could easily
Speaker 2: see some politician saying, can you believe that we're spending
Speaker 2: a million dollars to keep a mouse alive in this environment?
Speaker 2: In you were like, yeah, there's a really good reason
Speaker 2: for that. There's a really good reason. It may not
Speaker 2: be obvious right away, but research is always good, you know,
Speaker 2: learning good research is always good for us. So whether
Speaker 2: or not it's obvious initially right away or not, it is.
Speaker 2: I'm sure whoever started looking at the desert mouse, I'm sorry,
Speaker 2: not the spiny mouse didn't know at first all the
Speaker 2: potential benefits of what it can do or what it
Speaker 2: can be, and they just start studying it because they're interested.
Speaker 2: And now we know it can do these remarkable things.
Speaker 1: So yeah, grant writers, just just include in your grant
Speaker 1: somewhere that this might help the libido of aging white
Speaker 1: men in Congress and you know that's there. You go,
Speaker 1: funding that's it.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Before we go, we got to play a little game
Speaker 1: called Guests, Who's Squawk and the Men the Mystery Animal
Speaker 1: Sound Game. Every week I play a mystery animal sound
Speaker 1: in you the guests, and you the listener, try to
Speaker 1: guess who is making this sound. It could be any
Speaker 1: animal in the world. Last week's Mister Animals sound hint
Speaker 1: was this found in eastern North America. You might find
Speaker 1: this little guy boogie wogging, and who can blame him
Speaker 1: with a call like this? Okay, here we go. Oh yeah, god,
Speaker 1: I love this guy. Okay, Oh it's so cute. Favorite
Speaker 1: bird call the bird? Okay, Oh I dang, this is
Speaker 1: a first. I've never accidentally given a hint. I didn't
Speaker 1: mean to, but yes it is a bird.
Speaker 2: So there you go.
Speaker 1: Hint to new hint because I can't keep my mouth shut.
Speaker 1: But yeah, this ahe is so cute. COVID, you got
Speaker 1: any guesses for this adorable little sound?
Speaker 2: Is that this week's or last week?
Speaker 1: So that you're playing that's last week's that I'm flu fun.
Speaker 2: It's okay. It's a bird and as like a little squeak,
Speaker 2: and I think blue jays are squeaky. Is it a
Speaker 2: blue jay?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: What is it?
Speaker 1: It is the American woodcock. So congratulations to Chad F.
Speaker 1: Max and Laura W. Who guessed correctly. American woodcocks. Uh
Speaker 1: kind of you gotta google it. They're so cute they
Speaker 1: they make. In addition to that adorable little pink sound,
Speaker 1: they have these cute little bodies and they have long
Speaker 1: beaks that are way too big for their tininess. But
Speaker 1: another thing that they do that is just so adorable
Speaker 1: is they like to rock back and forth on the ground.
Speaker 1: And if you've seen like a gift of a weird
Speaker 1: little bird doing what looks like the boogie woogie, that's
Speaker 1: an American woodcock because they and one of the theories
Speaker 1: for why they do this is that they're trying to
Speaker 1: coax earthworms up out of the ground, essentially by mimicking
Speaker 1: the vibrations of rain on the ground, which for worms
Speaker 1: would be bad news because when it rains, they come
Speaker 1: out of the ground because they can drown if they
Speaker 1: stay in the soil. And so wow, one of the
Speaker 1: one of the theories, like, there are a few theories
Speaker 1: about why they do this, and this is one of them.
Speaker 1: And my favorite one is that they're doing this to
Speaker 1: try to coax worms up out of the ground with
Speaker 1: their little boogie woggeeing dance. It's adorable. They're so cute, very.
Speaker 2: Poly trees of them.
Speaker 1: It's like very like exactly if you walk with if
Speaker 1: you walk with rhythm, you will attract the worm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. All right, let me let me let me
Speaker 2: hear the wine for next week. I think I'm gonna
Speaker 2: get this.
Speaker 1: Yes, yes, yes, yes, ah yeah, all right. So the
Speaker 1: hint for this week's the ceria sound is this. This
Speaker 1: fierce little carnivore is like a wolf that you can
Speaker 1: fit in your pocket. All right. Can you hear that.
Speaker 2: Very high pitched sound.
Speaker 1: You do not need to adjust your headphones. It is
Speaker 1: that thing that sounds like something is wrong.
Speaker 3: With the audio, guess, and it's wolf like.
Speaker 1: I'll just repeat the hint. It is that this fierce
Speaker 1: little carnivore is like a wolf that you can fit
Speaker 1: in your pocket.
Speaker 2: Okay, here one more time.
Speaker 1: They hear it in a sentence, the sentences.
Speaker 2: And then wolf. Okay, do you know what I think?
Speaker 2: That's a trick question. I think it's a wolf spider
Speaker 2: and somehow making the squeaky sound, which I don't know
Speaker 2: spiders can make a sound. That's between that and my
Speaker 2: pony reference. I think I have out of myself as
Speaker 2: someone doesn't know much about any animals.
Speaker 1: That's an amazing guest. There are spiders who can make sounds,
Speaker 1: so that is not a bad guess.
Speaker 2: At all, but it's not correct.
Speaker 1: Fine, I can't tell you. Okay, no spoilers because you
Speaker 1: got to wait until next week when I answer who
Speaker 1: is making that sound? And if you out there think
Speaker 1: you know who that is, you can write to me
Speaker 1: at Creature feature Pod at gmail dot com. That's right,
Speaker 1: you can compete directly head to head with an actual
Speaker 1: medical doctor. Tell your friends Kevin, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today.
Speaker 2: Oh, thank you so much for having me. I always
Speaker 2: learned so much when I come on the show. It's
Speaker 2: so much fun. I really have in the recent months
Speaker 2: to year has really been trying to learn as much
Speaker 2: as I can about stuff because I feel like it
Speaker 2: keeps me young when I do. I'm trying to like
Speaker 2: reignite my love of education and learning, and this show
Speaker 2: is such a great way to do that. So I
Speaker 2: really appreciate that. Thanks for having me on and thanks
Speaker 2: for doing the show.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Absolutely. Where can people find you?
Speaker 2: I am on a podcast called The House of Pod.
Speaker 2: It is a humor adjacent, fun little medical podcast. You'll
Speaker 2: hear lots of people come on the show, from Peter
Speaker 2: Hotez and other world renowned infectious disease doctors and specialist
Speaker 2: physicians of all kinds, to musicians like Portugal de man
Speaker 2: or comedians like mos Er Browny or amazing podcast host
Speaker 2: Slash and well behavior offficionados like Katie Golden, who's going
Speaker 2: to be on as we speak, is on this week's episode.
Speaker 2: By the time you hear this, it will be last week's.
Speaker 2: So go back and.
Speaker 1: Listen to that's right, cross politics, cross pollination people.
Speaker 2: That's right. So you'll if you like this show, we're
Speaker 2: sort of in a similar vein but more human y,
Speaker 2: and I promise I know more about human bodies than
Speaker 2: to animals. So but you're gonna like it. It's a
Speaker 2: similar vibe. It's like, you know, let's wear animals too.
Speaker 2: So if you like animals.
Speaker 1: Exactly, as long as you stick to human doctoring and
Speaker 1: you don't do pony doctoring, then you should be fine.
Speaker 2: But I.
Speaker 1: I highly recommend the podcast. I actually, when I have
Speaker 1: to fly, like say, I'm visiting my family back in
Speaker 1: the US, that's one of my go to things to
Speaker 1: load up on my phone so I can just listen
Speaker 1: and learn stuff about medicine. But it's not intimidating because.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm not not intimidating.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not intimidating. I know what were until, right,
Speaker 1: So if you're if you're interested in medical topics and
Speaker 1: you're curious about stuff and you want to learn in
Speaker 1: a fun, friendly way, highly recommend that podcast.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 1: Thank you guys for listening to the show. If you
Speaker 1: leave writing a review, I read every single one. Appreciate
Speaker 1: all the reviews. Thank to the Space Classics for their
Speaker 1: super awesome song. Ex Alumina. Creature features a production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: For more podcasts like the one you just heard, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeartRadio, app Apple podcasts are you guess what?
Speaker 2: Where?
Speaker 1: Have you listen to your favorite shows? I'm not your mother.
Speaker 1: I can't tell you what to do. But don't go
Speaker 1: out there and try to get bit by a radioactive
Speaker 1: spiny mouse. You're just probably gonna get real sick, mostly
Speaker 1: from the radiation and maybe a little bit from the
Speaker 1: mouse bite. So don't do that. We can all be.
Speaker 1: We can't all be Peter Parker. Some of us just
Speaker 1: get mad mouse tumors. So don't do that, all right, everybody,
Speaker 1: see you next Wednesday.