Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and my name is Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: And it is that time again. Sometimes we don't get
Speaker 2: around to these till November, but this year we're hitting
Speaker 2: them fresh off of the shelf. The winners were just
Speaker 2: announced last Thursday evening. I believe it is time wants
Speaker 2: more to discuss some of the winners for this year's
Speaker 2: Ignobel Prizes. Now, if you're not familiar with these, if
Speaker 2: you haven't been listening to the show that long, or
Speaker 2: maybe you just need a reminder. The ig Nobels are
Speaker 2: a series of awards given out once a year by
Speaker 2: a scientific humor journal named the Annals of Improbable Research,
Speaker 2: edited for many years now by Mark Abrahams, and their
Speaker 2: stated purpose is to quote honor achievements that first make
Speaker 2: people laugh and then make them think. We always have
Speaker 2: a great time with these. You can learn more about
Speaker 2: them at Improbable dot com. They have a big one
Speaker 2: pager there where you can go through all of the
Speaker 2: winners throughout the years. There's a lot of amusing stuff.
Speaker 3: In there that's right, and they feature works that are
Speaker 3: funny for different reasons. Sometimes the papers that get selected
Speaker 3: for prizes are things that are supposed to be funny,
Speaker 3: like they are intentionally satirical. One that often comes to
Speaker 3: mind is a paper we covered on the raiology of cats,
Speaker 3: meaning the study of how cats flow our cats a
Speaker 3: liquid or a solid. But more often these are just
Speaker 3: real scientific experiments that are straightforward science in one way
Speaker 3: or another, published in real scientific journals that happen to
Speaker 3: have some weirdly funny either methodology, the format of the
Speaker 3: experiment is funny, or the finding of the experiment is funny.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it varies greatly. It depends on what
Speaker 2: the subject matter is, the methodology, and yet your point,
Speaker 2: sometimes it is something that was intended to be more
Speaker 2: overtly satirical. And then also the other thing that's worth
Speaker 2: driving home here, and this will become very apparent as
Speaker 2: we get into some of the winners we're discussing and
Speaker 2: from this year, is that sometimes these are fairly recent
Speaker 2: studies that have recently made it through even the mainstream
Speaker 2: news cycle because they are kind of giggle inducing. But
Speaker 2: other times they dig deeper and they get stuff that's
Speaker 2: decades old. So you know, it's not necessary, it's not
Speaker 2: as timely as some awards shows might be. But the
Speaker 2: results are always interesting, you know, sometimes they really pull
Speaker 2: out a deep cut. Now, in the past, we've been
Speaker 2: covering these for many years. In the past, we've tried
Speaker 2: to cover all of the winners, or a vast majority
Speaker 2: of the winners. I don't think we're doing that this year.
Speaker 2: I think we're probably just going to cover some of
Speaker 2: the winners, some of the ones that jump out to
Speaker 2: us the most, that would be the most fun for
Speaker 2: us to chat about. But again, if you want to
Speaker 2: read the fullest of awards from this year and check
Speaker 2: out all of the research that got highlighted this year's awards, here,
Speaker 2: you can go to the Journal's web website. Again, that
Speaker 2: is improbable dot com.
Speaker 3: Robert, you all right, if I kick things off with
Speaker 3: this year's Physiology Prize.
Speaker 2: Yes, give the people what they want.
Speaker 3: Trivia question, how many different holes in your body can
Speaker 3: you breathe through?
Speaker 2: Take your time think about it.
Speaker 3: I had to think, and I was like, I'm pretty
Speaker 3: sure the answer is three. Right, I got mouth, nostril, nostril,
Speaker 3: any other serious ones, And I think that's it now.
Speaker 3: Of course, these three orifices do not represent fundamentally different
Speaker 3: ways of breathing. They're just different doorways to the exact
Speaker 3: same hallway, right. They're all different openings that lead to
Speaker 3: the same exchange machinery. In the lungs, of course, the
Speaker 3: cells in our bodies need oxygen for cellular respiration. Oxygen
Speaker 3: is used to break down the energy containing molecules that
Speaker 3: we get from food to generate a tendency in triphosphate
Speaker 3: or ATP, which powers our bodies at the cellular level.
Speaker 3: This respiration process in the cells, of course, requires a
Speaker 3: constant supply of incoming oxygen, and it generates carbon dioxide
Speaker 3: as a primary waste product, which is also exchanged through
Speaker 3: the lungs purged when we breathe out. So, yes, these
Speaker 3: three holes are the normal three ways you get oxygen
Speaker 3: into the lungs and carbon dioxide out. But here's a
Speaker 3: perhaps tougher trivia question. Can any of our body cells
Speaker 3: get their oxygen from anywhere other than the lungs. The
Speaker 3: surprising answer to this one is yes. Now, the proportion
Speaker 3: of our cells that can do this is relatively small.
Speaker 3: Most of our cells rely on oxygen delivered through the
Speaker 3: blood stream from the lungs to perform cellular respiration. So
Speaker 3: don't start thinking you don't need your lungs. But it's
Speaker 3: true that some cells in our bodies acquire oxygen by
Speaker 3: passive diffusion from the surrounding air. Unsurprisingly, these tend to
Speaker 3: be cells on the outsides of our bodies, so the
Speaker 3: very outermost layer of our skin, cells in the top
Speaker 3: quarter of a millimeter or so, or maybe a little
Speaker 3: bit deeper. Also, the cells on the outside front of
Speaker 3: our eyeballs, according to what I was reading, gets some
Speaker 3: amount of oxygen from the surrounding air. This would be
Speaker 3: cells in the tissue known as the cornea. And it's
Speaker 3: especially important here for the cornea not to be completely vascularized,
Speaker 3: not to be supplied with blood vessels, because we have
Speaker 3: to see through the lens of our eyes covering the
Speaker 3: pupil in order to get the light in onto the retina.
Speaker 3: You can imagine it might be a little distracting if
Speaker 3: the lenses of your eyes were full of blood vessels.
Speaker 3: To supply all those cells with freshly oxygenated blood.
Speaker 2: Well, this seems like a refreshingly mature subject area for
Speaker 2: the ignobells to have focused on here something about our
Speaker 2: cornea is breathing. Yeah, I like it.
Speaker 3: That's not what this prize is about. So this year's
Speaker 3: Physiology prize was awarded to and I apologize if I
Speaker 3: pronounced anybody's name wrong, but two a list of authors
Speaker 3: including Riyo Okabe, Toyo, Toyofumi, f Chin Yoshikawa, Yosuke Yoonoyama,
Speaker 3: yo Hey Yokoyama, Satona Tanaka, Akihiko Yoshizawa, Wendy L. Thompson,
Speaker 3: Gokul khanan Aji Kobayashi, Hiroshi Daate, and Takanori takebe four
Speaker 3: discovering that many mammals are capable of breathing through their anus.
Speaker 3: All right, there it is now. This paper was published
Speaker 3: in the Journal MED in May or June of twenty
Speaker 3: twenty one. I've seen different citations on that. In the
Speaker 3: spring of twenty twenty one, whenever that issue was and
Speaker 3: I was reading several supplementary sources to get some background
Speaker 3: and explanation on their findings. And so these sources include
Speaker 3: a commentary piece also published in the Journal MED, sort
Speaker 3: of explaining the background and significance of this main research paper.
Speaker 3: The commentary piece was by a Yale gastroentrology fellow named
Speaker 3: Caleb Kelly. This was published along with the paper and
Speaker 3: the same issue, I believe, And then also I was
Speaker 3: reading a New York Times article reporting on the findings
Speaker 3: and including some interviews. This was by Elizabeth Preston from
Speaker 3: May twenty twenty one. So I think this paper is
Speaker 3: a bullseye in terms of the Ignobel's goal of making
Speaker 3: people laugh and then making them think, yes, it is
Speaker 3: about breathing through your butt, but it sent me down
Speaker 3: a lot of interesting trails and it may turn out
Speaker 3: to have quite real medical significance. So the procedure that
Speaker 3: they're going to be describing in this paper is being
Speaker 3: called EVA or EVA, which stands for interial ventilation via anus.
Speaker 3: Shout out to all the people named EVA or AVA.
Speaker 3: If this becomes a part of the common medical parlance,
Speaker 3: you're just gonna have to deal with.
Speaker 2: It, yea. It might have to bust out full Evelyn
Speaker 2: or whatever.
Speaker 3: Yeah. So Caleb Kelly in the commentary piece makes an
Speaker 3: interesting observation about this, which is that, yes, it's funny
Speaker 3: to think about breathing via the anus. But Kelly writes,
Speaker 3: quote initial perception of AVA is likely to parallel that
Speaker 3: of fecal microbiota transplant for recurrency deficial infection, which not
Speaker 3: long ago was deemed untenable for quote practical and esthetic reasons,
Speaker 3: but now has less stigma as data supporting effectiveness are overwhelming.
Speaker 3: So this is talking about another medical discovery in recent
Speaker 3: decades that was once considered much more weird and shocking
Speaker 3: the use of fecal microbiota transplants literally transplanting poop from
Speaker 3: one person's digestive system into another and carrying along with
Speaker 3: it all of the microbiota that live on it, transplanting
Speaker 3: that into the digestive system of somebody who has maybe
Speaker 3: an antibiotic resistant infection by the Bacterium seed officile. This
Speaker 3: was once considered a fairly crazy treatment idea, but now
Speaker 3: it is widely used and is considered generally very effective.
Speaker 3: So could ventilation via the anus one day have a similar.
Speaker 2: Arc Yeah, I mean it's possible, because yeah, I remember
Speaker 2: when the idea of fecal transplants was more of this
Speaker 2: kind of like fringy. Oh my goodness, imagine imagine if
Speaker 2: this became standard, and now it pretty much has. You know,
Speaker 2: it's not that crazy of an idea, So I don't
Speaker 2: know it's possible. I mean, the thing is if it
Speaker 2: ultimately works and it helps save lives, that you know,
Speaker 2: that's going to make all the difference.
Speaker 3: So the New York Times article and this included some
Speaker 3: quotes from one of the lead authors of the study,
Speaker 3: doctor Takanori Takebe of the Tokyo Medical and Dental University,
Speaker 3: who apparently got the idea to work on this after
Speaker 3: experiencing his father fighting lung disease. And of course part
Speaker 3: of the problem is, you know, when a patient's lungs
Speaker 3: are failing, a hospital will usually try to use a
Speaker 3: mechanical ventilator to help keep the patient alive and keep
Speaker 3: their tissues oxygenated. But there are cases where this solution
Speaker 3: either isn't available or isn't appropriate. One example they cite
Speaker 3: is the horrible event that there was a there was
Speaker 3: a mass shortage of mechanical ventilators during the early COVID
Speaker 3: nineteen pandemic. So of course mechanical ventilators are a finite resource,
Speaker 3: but also there are other complications. This is a point
Speaker 3: made by Kelly in that commentary piece. Kelly writes, quote,
Speaker 3: even if mechanical ventilation is available. In severe disease, gas
Speaker 3: exchange may be impaired to the degree that oxygenation is inadequate.
Speaker 3: So in some cases you may be able to actually
Speaker 3: use a mechanical ventilator to pump into the lungs, but
Speaker 3: you still will not be able to get enough oxygen in.
Speaker 3: And so Kelly says quote, faced with this situation, extra
Speaker 3: corporeal membrane oxygenation is a technology that can temporarily replace
Speaker 3: the functions of the heart and lungs, providing forward flow
Speaker 3: of blood and gas exchange using an external apparatus. And
Speaker 3: if you've never seen this, this is like a type
Speaker 3: of machine that essentially does the job of the heart
Speaker 3: and lungs outside of the body. They hook up an
Speaker 3: artery in a vein to this machine and it pumps
Speaker 3: the blood through, oxygenates it, and then returns it to
Speaker 3: the body. But Kelly goes on to say, quote yet,
Speaker 3: extra corporeal membrane oxygenation has inherent risks, requires significant outlay
Speaker 3: of human labor and financial resources, and therefore availability is limited.
Speaker 3: So the question is what if the EVA the ventilation
Speaker 3: through the anus approach could help increase the range of
Speaker 3: options available when a patient has failing lungs. So the
Speaker 3: Times article gets into the question of how did this
Speaker 3: idea come about? Doctor Takeba had Apparently he had previously
Speaker 3: experimented with using stem cells to try to grow new
Speaker 3: auxiliary organs like tiny lungs, but branching out of this,
Speaker 3: he instead got the idea of using body organs that
Speaker 3: we already have organs other than the lungs to provide
Speaker 3: oxygen to our blood. Now, the inspiration for this, I
Speaker 3: thought was very interesting. It was a bit of inspiration
Speaker 3: from the animal kingdom. Takeba cited the example of a
Speaker 3: fish called a loach. So a loach is any fish
Speaker 3: from a family of freshwater fishes also known as the
Speaker 3: kobitidy or cobitidoids. They're often fairly elongated, and some species
Speaker 3: kind of look a little bit like snakes or eels
Speaker 3: because they're kind of long, but they're fish. Like most fish,
Speaker 3: Loaches primarily breathe with their gills, so they use the
Speaker 3: gills these, you know, these sort of thin booklike surfaces,
Speaker 3: to extract dissolved oxygen from the water around them. But
Speaker 3: they have a backup method for getting extra oxygen if
Speaker 3: they need it. Loaches can stick their heads up out
Speaker 3: of the water and take a bite out of the atmosphere.
Speaker 3: So they don't have lungs. They can't normally breathe through
Speaker 3: their mouths like we can. Instead, a loach uses its
Speaker 3: mouth to take in and swallow a mass of air.
Speaker 3: Swallow the air into its digestive system, and that bubble
Speaker 3: of air goes down into the digestive tract and then
Speaker 3: the walls of the fishes intestines absorb extra oxygen from
Speaker 3: the air that the fish eat.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, they really are eating air.
Speaker 3: Yeah. I loved this fact and I didn't know about
Speaker 3: this before. So the article sites of biologists talking about
Speaker 3: these fish. The biologist is Jonathan Mark Wilson, who is
Speaker 3: on faculty at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada, and
Speaker 3: Wilson says like, sometimes a loach will be trapped in
Speaker 3: some kind of situation where the oxygen in the water
Speaker 3: around it is not sufficient the oxygen that it will
Speaker 3: normally get from its gills. So one example of this
Speaker 3: would be if it is stuck in a pond or
Speaker 3: even a puddle with low amounts of oxygen due to overcrowding.
Speaker 3: There might be a lot of animals or other fish
Speaker 3: in the water, and they're extracting a lot of the oxygen,
Speaker 3: so it can't get enough with its gills. It has
Speaker 3: this air eating method to get extra oxygen from the environment.
Speaker 3: So that's a fish obviously fairly different biology than mammals
Speaker 3: like us. But Ta Keba and colleagues wondered could a
Speaker 3: mammals intestines do the same thing get oxygen from air
Speaker 3: or even pure oxygen gas inserted into the digestive system.
Speaker 3: So initial experiments showed that when mice were deprived of oxygen,
Speaker 3: if you stuck an oxygen pump up the anus, it
Speaker 3: did actually work. But in order for it to work well,
Speaker 3: in order for it to work optimally, the researchers had
Speaker 3: to sort of inflict little abrasions on the mucous membrane
Speaker 3: of the intestinal wall, so when the wall was thinned,
Speaker 3: the oxygen was absorbed better. Obviously, that's not ideal. Having
Speaker 3: to scrape the inside of your colon or your intestines
Speaker 3: to help you absorb anally supplied air is not the best.
Speaker 3: So they came up with the second idea. Instead of
Speaker 3: supplying O two in its gas form, what about a
Speaker 3: liquid enema containing oxygen.
Speaker 2: Oh my goodness, you're for science fiction fans out there.
Speaker 2: This would of course be the same technology that the
Speaker 2: deep divers are supposed to be using in James Cameron's
Speaker 2: The Abyss.
Speaker 3: Oh yes, yeah.
Speaker 2: Except that this would be in the other end of
Speaker 2: the suit. Obviously, that's right.
Speaker 3: So the researchers here experimented with I don't know if
Speaker 3: they name the chemical in the ABYSS, I don't recall,
Speaker 3: but what they're working with here is a type of
Speaker 3: perfluorochemical which exists in liquid form but is able to
Speaker 3: absorb and carry gases, especially oxygen. Specifically, the chemical that
Speaker 3: they used in this experiment was called perfluorodecyln or PFD,
Speaker 3: which Kelly explains in his commentary. He says, it's a
Speaker 3: it's a hydrocarbon where you strip the hydrogen atoms out,
Speaker 3: you swap them with fluorine, which allows this fluid to
Speaker 3: buckle in a bunch of oxygen, carry a lot of
Speaker 3: oxygen along with it, and it is such a remarkable
Speaker 3: oxygen delivery device. Here's here's more. The ABYSS style image
Speaker 3: that experiments in the nineteen sixties showed that you could
Speaker 3: take unconscious anesthetized mice and you could dunk them under
Speaker 3: I was going to say underwater. It's not water under.
Speaker 3: Submerge them in this fluid for hours and they would
Speaker 3: breathe the liquid and they would survive. Apparently. It has
Speaker 3: also been explored in various experiments as a potential platform
Speaker 3: for artificial blood. We've talked about ideas about artificial blood
Speaker 3: and episodes in the past. It is a long sought
Speaker 3: type of prosthesis or medical device that has always been
Speaker 3: somewhat elusive, and I think it for various reasons. There
Speaker 3: were questions about whether it should continue to be pursued
Speaker 3: as an artificial blood platform, but at least the idea
Speaker 3: was there, and so the idea in this experiment was
Speaker 3: try this stuff per fluorodecylin jacked full of oxygen, put
Speaker 3: it up the anis into the colon to get extra
Speaker 3: oxygen into the blood. And the experiment found, yes, it
Speaker 3: did work. It worked with both mice and pigs that
Speaker 3: were in a hypoxic state, meaning they were deprived of oxygen.
Speaker 3: They were supplied with oxygen packed per flora chemicals in
Speaker 3: this solution via the anis, and it signified bagantly improved
Speaker 3: their levels of blood oxygen. There were also behavioral markers,
Speaker 3: like the mice that had been inactive due to low
Speaker 3: oxygen got up and started walking around again. However, there
Speaker 3: are some important limitations to consider. One is time. So
Speaker 3: Kelly in his commentary piece writes, quote, promising results are
Speaker 3: also reported using a porcine model, meaning a pig model,
Speaker 3: in which mean improvement in oxygenation after EVA innima persists
Speaker 3: for eighteen point seven minutes. Thus, in current form, this
Speaker 3: therapy requires repeated cycling of fluid, and the potential of
Speaker 3: EVA is in short term treatment of hypoxia, so that
Speaker 3: means it only lasts a short while, and in order
Speaker 3: to keep getting continued effects and keep oxygenating the body
Speaker 3: and the blood via the anus, you would have to
Speaker 3: keep cycling in new fluid. Another thing to consider is
Speaker 3: that breathing fulfills two extramely important jobs at the same time.
Speaker 3: It brings in oxygen that your cells need, and it
Speaker 3: also purges carbon dioxide that your cells have to get
Speaker 3: rid of. And these early results showed more promise with
Speaker 3: providing oxygen than with purging CO two. You have to
Speaker 3: do both, and so Kelly writes, quote, EVA appears to
Speaker 3: be more efficient at oxygen delivery than carbon dioxide removal,
Speaker 3: and one can quibble that ventilation is an overstatement. Yet
Speaker 3: the liquid used in EVA has capacity to carry carbon dioxide,
Speaker 3: and the experiments presented test its effectiveness in hypoxia rather
Speaker 3: than hypercarbiam models. So that's the thing. I guess left
Speaker 3: yet to explore whether it could be effective at removing
Speaker 3: carbon dioxide as well. Okay, there are other important complications
Speaker 3: to consider, and Kelly mentions these. I didn't initially think
Speaker 3: of them, but this is a good kind of practice
Speaker 3: for thinking about medical problems. You solve one problem, maybe
Speaker 3: create another. So the surface epithelium of the colon is
Speaker 3: adapted to have low exposure to oxygen. That's just its
Speaker 3: natural state. There's not usually a lot of oxygen getting
Speaker 3: in there, and it's unclear if there would be any
Speaker 3: negative consequences from exposing it to lots of unexpected oxygen. Also,
Speaker 3: the gut is not just an organ, it is a world.
Speaker 3: It's an inhabited world, and the inhabitants of that world
Speaker 3: have great influence over us over our health. So would
Speaker 3: anything happen to the microbial populations of the distal gut
Speaker 3: if they were suddenly exposed to aerobic conditions instead of
Speaker 3: their natural and aerobic conditions.
Speaker 2: That's interesting. I mean, just spitballing here, but I mean
Speaker 2: you could potentially have a situation where following this kind
Speaker 2: of treatment, you would have to have something like fecal
Speaker 2: transplant in order to repopulate the gut it. Indeed, if
Speaker 2: this procedure did theoretically like mess with the microbiome to
Speaker 2: some degree.
Speaker 3: Right, Yeah, so that's a good thing to raise. Kelly says.
Speaker 3: The authors did investigate this somewhat. They looked at they
Speaker 3: tried to see if there were markers of toxic blooms
Speaker 3: of gut microbiota by looking for a bacterial indotoxin called
Speaker 3: a lipopolysaccharide in the blood of these animals, and they
Speaker 3: did not observe any increases at least in these cases.
Speaker 3: But Kelly writes, quote, it must be remembered, however, that
Speaker 3: the models of acute hypoxia in the study do not
Speaker 3: fully reflect the complex multisystem insults experienced by critically ill
Speaker 3: patients that add infection, inflammation, and hypoperfusion. So it's saying,
Speaker 3: you know, if we ever actually were to move to
Speaker 3: human trials here. Often a person who's in a state
Speaker 3: where they need supplemental oxiden might have a lot of
Speaker 3: different things going wrong in their body all at the
Speaker 3: same time that could make them especially vulnerable to maybe
Speaker 3: changes in oxygenation of gut tissues that are not normally oxygenated,
Speaker 3: or changing the microbial environment and possibly causing a flare
Speaker 3: up of some kind of you know, toxic bacteria you
Speaker 3: don't want.
Speaker 2: That's a great point as well.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so in the end they're sort of saying about
Speaker 3: these these counter considerations like this, you know, this is
Speaker 3: not what the colon was meant to do. The distal
Speaker 3: gut is not It can apparently breathe a little bit,
Speaker 3: you can get some oxygen in there, that'll help out,
Speaker 3: but that's not what it was you know, designed by
Speaker 3: evolution to do. And so we don't really know what
Speaker 3: the consequences would be of repurposing it in this way,
Speaker 3: especially for prolonged periods.
Speaker 2: Now, this should not hold James Cameron back though. If
Speaker 2: there's a sci fi application here, explore it. I mean,
Speaker 2: that is what science fiction is for, that's.
Speaker 3: Right, So, yes, I fully support all kinds of storytelling
Speaker 3: with sci fi butt breathing astronauts. I don't know how
Speaker 3: that would it would ultimately cause them to like evolve
Speaker 3: in different directions where they like have different ways of language,
Speaker 3: where they maybe end up speaking through their butts. I
Speaker 3: don't know. But anyway, despite all these counter considerations, this
Speaker 3: is a very fascinating and exciting early result. And you know,
Speaker 3: some of the scientists quoted they said, like, obviously, we're
Speaker 3: not at the human trial stage yet, we don't know
Speaker 3: that this would be good for humans. But if it
Speaker 3: did turn out to be a real way of additionally
Speaker 3: supplementing oxygen, this could be a life saving thing in
Speaker 3: many conditions. So we're not at the human trials yet,
Speaker 3: but the fact that it worked in mammals like mice
Speaker 3: and pigs is very promising and it may one day
Speaker 3: become a way of getting extra oxygen to people who
Speaker 3: badly need it.
Speaker 2: Excellent. Yeah, I mean again, coming back to your point
Speaker 2: about fecal transplants, they could very well be a situation
Speaker 2: where people giggle today, but they giggle less and less
Speaker 2: as the years go by. When if we realize that
Speaker 2: this is an actual treatment that can be utilized to
Speaker 2: save lives.
Speaker 3: That's right, Especially I see quoted in the media. Kelly
Speaker 3: was talking about this point that like, don't let the
Speaker 3: weirdness of this make you dismiss the idea, he told
Speaker 3: The Times quote it really should be the data rather
Speaker 3: than our visceral reactions to the concept that guide us.
Speaker 3: Well said, so we'll see if this ever goes anywhere,
Speaker 3: and if it does, maybe one day you will you
Speaker 3: will benefit from from breathing through the butt.
Speaker 2: All right, Well, that was the Physiology Prize, and I
Speaker 2: want to talk a little bit about the Biology Prize
Speaker 2: from this year. This one is also a lot of
Speaker 2: fun and it made me, you know, made me laugh,
Speaker 2: but then also did true to the mission statement, make
Speaker 2: me think a little bit more about about in this
Speaker 2: case about dairy about the milking of because this particular
Speaker 2: study that they honored this was in the Journal of
Speaker 2: Dairy Science, and this one was from nineteen forty one,
Speaker 2: so this is definitely an older study and we have
Speaker 2: to sort of keep reminding ourselves of that this is
Speaker 2: not like the cutting edge of research, but it is
Speaker 2: historically interesting in like the research journey that dairy scientists
Speaker 2: have been on.
Speaker 3: Maybe the methods they employ are not the same ones
Speaker 3: that would be used today.
Speaker 2: Well, yes, one method in particular, which is really spelled
Speaker 2: out in the initial write up on the prize. The
Speaker 2: Biology Prize went to Fortace Elli and William E. Peterson
Speaker 2: for exploding a paper bag next to a cat that's
Speaker 2: standing on the back of a cow to explore how
Speaker 2: and when cows spew their milk beautiful the paper was,
Speaker 2: of course, was not titled that though the paper was
Speaker 2: factors involved in the ejection of milk. Now, I think
Speaker 2: you know everything you need to know really to know
Speaker 2: why this is funny. And they apparently played it up
Speaker 2: during the ceremony. They brought out a person in like
Speaker 2: a big inflatable cow costume, and somebody brought out a
Speaker 2: house cat got to set on top of the cow,
Speaker 2: and I think they to somebody, look, I can you
Speaker 2: can see from the image here or that I shared Joe,
Speaker 2: that there is indeed a paper bag in one gentleman's belt.
Speaker 2: I imagine that paper bag is about to be inflated
Speaker 2: and then popped behind the cat. This was in fact
Speaker 2: part of the methodology that was explored in this nineteen
Speaker 2: forty one study.
Speaker 3: I wonder if the cat behaved itself during the ceremony I.
Speaker 2: Mean, I would doubt it would. I would be doubtful
Speaker 2: if this cat behaved, and I'm doubtful that any cats
Speaker 2: that they attempted to use during the experiment behaved. But
Speaker 2: you know, this one's so, this one's obvious why this
Speaker 2: one is funny, And I've I've long found the topic
Speaker 2: and I guess the trope of animals upon animal to
Speaker 2: be rather amusing. This is long entertained us. There's a
Speaker 2: motif of a monkey riding a horse that has a
Speaker 2: very long history in East Asia, where you know, on
Speaker 2: top of just checking off all the general boxes for
Speaker 2: cute and whimsical, it is also associated with austerity. It
Speaker 2: has to do with similarities between the sounds of the
Speaker 2: words for monkey and for high official, so it's based
Speaker 2: in the world of Chinese homonyms. So the general idea
Speaker 2: is that, you know, it captures a sense of rapid
Speaker 2: advancement in one's work. But again, the basic concept has
Speaker 2: vast cross cultural appeal. There's something strange and fascinating about
Speaker 2: say a goat standing on the back of another animal,
Speaker 2: which sometimes they you know, you can observe this happening,
Speaker 2: or or monkeys jumping on the backs of any like
Speaker 2: large or befores that sort of thing. And so when
Speaker 2: I saw that one of the honored studies this year
Speaker 2: revolved around around frightening a cat sitting atop of a cow,
Speaker 2: I was instantly all in. Plus, it's ultimately a study
Speaker 2: regarding animal lactation, which makes it even more perplexing at
Speaker 2: first pass, Like, what could this post we have to
Speaker 2: do with milking a cow? Why are you scaring a
Speaker 2: cat on top of the cow?
Speaker 3: I've got to know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, So a little background. This was again
Speaker 2: a nineteen forty one dairy science paper, so it's kind
Speaker 2: of a kind of a deep cut. Lead author Fortis
Speaker 2: Eli was a professor and chairman of the Department of
Speaker 2: Dairy Science at Ohio State University from nineteen forty seven
Speaker 2: through sixty three, among other various jobs throughout his career.
Speaker 2: So you know, this was a serious dairy science paper
Speaker 2: of the time period. This was not a fluke. There's
Speaker 2: nothing fringe about this. Basically, the stated reason for the
Speaker 2: study is that cows and dairy herds will habitually let
Speaker 2: down or hold up their milk, and that the physiological
Speaker 2: factors involved were poorly understood at the time. Now I
Speaker 2: had to look up the terminology here. According to the
Speaker 2: Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, lactation is
Speaker 2: the continuous secretion and storage of milk in the utter,
Speaker 2: But milk ejection or let is a short term reflex
Speaker 2: effect that can be inhibited by pain or fear, but
Speaker 2: can be stimulated by proper care and animal husbandry. Still,
Speaker 2: at least ten percent of secreted milk, they point out,
Speaker 2: will be retained in the utter as residual milk. So
Speaker 2: the study is all about better understanding what's going going
Speaker 2: on here again in nineteen forty one, because as is obvious,
Speaker 2: a humans relationship with the domesticated cow tends to center
Speaker 2: around milk. How do we get the milk out of
Speaker 2: the cow? What are the best conditions to get the
Speaker 2: milk out of the cow? And of course this equation
Speaker 2: changes throughout the history of our relationship with cattle because
Speaker 2: as things get more industrialized things, you know, there's a
Speaker 2: huge effort to streamline things, industrialize things. But then this
Speaker 2: can bring in various complications that end up hurting your
Speaker 2: ability to actually get milk out of the animal, you know,
Speaker 2: for various reasons. So we'll get into here, but One
Speaker 2: of the big ones, of course, is are you making
Speaker 2: the animal stressed out? Are you making animal afraid? Because
Speaker 2: this inevitably ends up impacting the production and quality of
Speaker 2: their milk. And I know that for any of you
Speaker 2: four h kids out there, this is like a big
Speaker 2: This is as obvious as it gets. This is an
Speaker 2: overstatement of the obvious. But I think a lot of
Speaker 2: us forget this. You know, we end up having this
Speaker 2: kind of like video game idea of milking the cow,
Speaker 2: where it's like, oh, here's cow, here's the milking process,
Speaker 2: and it just equals milk.
Speaker 3: It's basically it's like a soda fountain, you know, it
Speaker 3: just distributes the milk. But no, like a cow is
Speaker 3: an animal, and the and its milk production and yield
Speaker 3: is going to be influenced by things like how it
Speaker 3: feels about its environment.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So in this nineteen forty one paper they cite
Speaker 2: a nerve stimulant study where a nerve stimulant was administered
Speaker 2: to cattle, to dairy cows to see how this would
Speaker 2: affect of their milk production. There's another study they side
Speaker 2: that involves them milking of cats. It has nothing to
Speaker 2: do with their use of a cat, But it is
Speaker 2: interesting that cats come up a couple of times in
Speaker 2: the article. There's another study that looks at lactating rats
Speaker 2: and another that involves whales and dolphins. And this paper
Speaker 2: and its initial experiments get pretty into the weeds on
Speaker 2: the physiological details of what's going on with a cow's milking.
Speaker 2: But to get into the meat of the study, at
Speaker 2: least as far as the igno bells are concerned, this
Speaker 2: comes to a section on the effect of fright on
Speaker 2: the ejection of milk.
Speaker 3: The specific use of the word fright there makes me
Speaker 3: think we're dealing with something a little a little more
Speaker 3: acute than stress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so what basically they were like, Well, for the
Speaker 2: purposes of this study that involves several different things. For instance,
Speaker 2: they denervated the left half of the utters, so remove
Speaker 2: nerves in order to be able to compare the different
Speaker 2: sides during this experiment. So you know, there's a lot
Speaker 2: going on here that just the vocation of the cat
Speaker 2: doesn't capture. But it did definitely in its early stages
Speaker 2: involve quote. The following frightening at first consisted in placing
Speaker 2: a cat on the cow's back and exploding paper bags
Speaker 2: every ten seconds for two minutes later, the cat was
Speaker 2: dispensed with as unnecessary.
Speaker 3: Oh maybe that just mean they took it home, took it,
Speaker 3: they didn't terminate the cat.
Speaker 2: I think that I did not read that into it
Speaker 2: at all. I mean one can. I can only imagine
Speaker 2: they realized there were vast difficulties in getting a cat
Speaker 2: to work with them for this study, because I guess
Speaker 2: the idea here is you you scare the cat to
Speaker 2: scare the cow, and or you scare both of them
Speaker 2: at the same time, and the cat's fright will compound
Speaker 2: the fright experienced by the cow. But then I guess
Speaker 2: you're having to replace a cat that you've just terrified
Speaker 2: every ten seconds for two minutes. And maybe that means
Speaker 2: you've got to have multiple cats on hand, and cats
Speaker 2: don't get along. So I just can't imagine how this
Speaker 2: would work. It feels just very Sussian in its absurdity.
Speaker 2: But I think the big take home here is that
Speaker 2: they quickly realized, no, the exploding paper bag is sufficient,
Speaker 2: Like we are scaring the cow regularly with the exploding
Speaker 2: paper bag. The cat is just an unnecessary complication.
Speaker 3: Wait, is there explanation anywhere why the cat was ever
Speaker 3: included in the first place. Other I mean, I know,
Speaker 3: like it just seems like, oh, that's even more to
Speaker 3: deal with.
Speaker 2: No, they don't really get into it. I think it's
Speaker 2: just implied that this was perhaps that perhaps they thought
Speaker 2: it was necessary to actually have that fright stimuli, but
Speaker 2: then they quickly realized that this was enough. There's another
Speaker 2: bit where they refer back to it and they say
Speaker 2: sight and sound stimuli. Exploding bags seems to have a
Speaker 2: much more pronounced effect as measured by the rate of
Speaker 2: milk ejection.
Speaker 3: Okay, I'm imagining an experiment today where they test what
Speaker 3: happens when you wake people up with a vampire standing
Speaker 3: at the foot of your bed. But it's not good
Speaker 3: enough to just have the vampire. You've also got to
Speaker 3: put a lizard on their arm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's that sort of thing. Yeah. So again, this
Speaker 2: was a fairly involved experiment or series of experiments. They
Speaker 2: also injected some of the cows with adrenaline and other
Speaker 2: substances to test things out. Now, one of the things
Speaker 2: again about a study like this is that it's not current.
Speaker 2: It stands more as a part of the history of
Speaker 2: research into the topic, rather than some new advancement or
Speaker 2: some glimpse into the future. But it seems to be
Speaker 2: agreed upon that stressed or fearful cows produce the hormone
Speaker 2: adrenaline and this counteracts the activity of oxytocin. It inhibits
Speaker 2: the milk let down. I mean. And again this probably
Speaker 2: comes back to something that is really long realized in
Speaker 2: animal husbandry, and that is that you need to take
Speaker 2: care of your farm animals and you don't want your
Speaker 2: dairy cows to be afraid or nervous. You need to
Speaker 2: nurture a proper relationship with them. But again, I you
Speaker 2: know what, you get the feeling that with the industrialization
Speaker 2: of the farm, a lot of these things then have
Speaker 2: to be relearned or you have to then go back
Speaker 2: and realize, oh, this is why we always did it
Speaker 2: this way, and if we are going to try and
Speaker 2: mechanize this to varying degrees, we need to hold on
Speaker 2: to these lessons from the past. Now, there have been
Speaker 2: plenty more recent studies on callactation. Again, you know, dairy
Speaker 2: remains a huge industry and there are always studies into
Speaker 2: ways how to do it, you know, ways to do
Speaker 2: it more efficiently, more humanely, and so forth. For instance,
Speaker 2: there was a nineteen ninety nine study by Jay Russian
Speaker 2: who they found that fears certain only plays a role
Speaker 2: in milk production, and they found that the fear can
Speaker 2: can certainly revolve around humans in the cow's vicinity, and
Speaker 2: it can also you can have a situation where fear
Speaker 2: of individual handlers can impact milk yield. So you know,
Speaker 2: it's like cows often, I guess they can often feel
Speaker 2: hard to read, at least for those of us who
Speaker 2: are not involved in their care. And you can think, well,
Speaker 2: they don't know what's going on, they don't know one
Speaker 2: human from the next, But that doesn't seem to be
Speaker 2: the case, and they can have certain associations with different humans.
Speaker 2: And furthermore, they can they can have various fears and
Speaker 2: anxieties around various containment systems, milking machines and so forth. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I was looking at a write up for the University
Speaker 2: of Minnesota Extension from twenty twenty three, or at least
Speaker 2: that was like the update date on it by Marcia Indris,
Speaker 2: and this author points out that the comfort of a
Speaker 2: dairy cow is of course very important to milk yield,
Speaker 2: to milk quality, and much more. They need proper handling
Speaker 2: and environment in order to deliver to their fullest, and
Speaker 2: the author points out that above all, this is of
Speaker 2: course just the right thing to do. And I really
Speaker 2: appreciate this point that we domesticated cows for this purpose.
Speaker 2: We took something wild and we made it into what
Speaker 2: it is so that it could produce milk for us.
Speaker 2: Not it's young, but another species that just likes that
Speaker 2: milk and grows to depend them on that milk, And
Speaker 2: so we should treat them right, like it's we kind
Speaker 2: of they didn't really have much of a say in
Speaker 2: this bargain, but this bargain was made, and we kind
Speaker 2: of need to keep our end up. But then the
Speaker 2: author here also stresses that a comfortable cow is a
Speaker 2: cash cow and that I like this one was a
Speaker 2: little more perplexing, but I think it also seems solid
Speaker 2: that today's cows are like high performance athletes, which makes
Speaker 2: them more sensitive to negative aspects of their environment or management.
Speaker 3: Well, I like that. So it's like, hey, we should
Speaker 3: treat cows right because it's the right thing to do,
Speaker 3: but also if you don't care, you better do it,
Speaker 3: or they're not going.
Speaker 2: To give you the milk.
Speaker 3: You need.
Speaker 2: This also seems to be a certain commentary on the
Speaker 2: way we treat high performance athletes like dairy cattle, like
Speaker 2: like animals that we want a particular product out of which,
Speaker 2: so maybe they're getting a little additional commentary in there. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but yeah, this means factoring in quality human care, quiet
Speaker 2: and peaceful environments. Proper resting space, head lunch space is
Speaker 2: apparently very important. You know, it basically breaks down do
Speaker 2: they have room to move their heads around soft stall
Speaker 2: surfaces and again sensitive positive human handling. And again I'm
Speaker 2: sure that those of you out there that grew up
Speaker 2: around cattle and have more experience with cattle and other
Speaker 2: farm animals, you're just nodding your head to this because
Speaker 2: this is a no brainer. But again, I think it's
Speaker 2: easy to forget these realities. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Well, a lot of people don't know anything about farms.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I mean we go to great pains at
Speaker 2: times to distance ourselves from the realities of the farms,
Speaker 2: both the positive and the negatives, or the perceived negatives
Speaker 2: and sometimes the outright negatives. Certainly when you get into
Speaker 2: some practices. Now, this reminded me of something that I
Speaker 2: had heard about, and I had to look it up because
Speaker 2: I think a lot of this came from a splendid
Speaker 2: table article or audio piece that I heard on NPR
Speaker 2: back I think in twenty fourteen, so I had to
Speaker 2: look it up again, and basically revolves around water buffalo milking.
Speaker 2: So basically you may have heard this through in various
Speaker 2: works over the years, but the water buffalos seem to
Speaker 2: be an even more pronounced example of everything we've been
Speaker 2: discussing here, so highly susceptible to fall offs due to
Speaker 2: minor changes in their milking routine, like even apparently the
Speaker 2: presence of strangers they're not used to. I've read elsewhere
Speaker 2: that yeah, that in some traditions of milking water buffalo
Speaker 2: there's like one designated person for the water b in question,
Speaker 2: Like you don't just mix it up, not anybody can
Speaker 2: do it. So it's almost like it needs to be
Speaker 2: an even more special relationship between the human and the
Speaker 2: animal in this situation. And I was looking at a
Speaker 2: paper here by Mikou at all. This is water buffalo
Speaker 2: responsiveness during milking Implications for production outputs, reproduction fitness, and
Speaker 2: Animal Welfare from twenty twenty two published in the journal
Speaker 2: Animals and this study backed up a lot of these
Speaker 2: same principles, talking about how well there have been attempts
Speaker 2: to do things like give them oxytocin injections to keep
Speaker 2: them calm, but then this can introduce animal welfare concerns
Speaker 2: and it can disrupt ovarian cycles. So they ultimately recommend that, Okay,
Speaker 2: you can select for calmer water buffaloes. But at the
Speaker 2: end of the day, I mean, it seems like you
Speaker 2: are dealing with a more sensitive species and a species
Speaker 2: that is a little harder or maybe a lot hard
Speaker 2: to industrialize, and so that is often held back efforts
Speaker 2: or and or proposals to try and establish water buffalo
Speaker 2: milk production more say in the United States. So I
Speaker 2: don't know. Again, this is an example of where at
Speaker 2: the top of it, I just found it funny that
Speaker 2: serious researchers would place the cat on a cow back
Speaker 2: and then slowly begin to inflate a brown paper bag
Speaker 2: for science. But it, you know, it forced me to
Speaker 2: sort of you know, realize, relearn, and you know, and
Speaker 2: learn for the first time some of these realities around
Speaker 2: the relationship between the dairy cow and dairy farmer.
Speaker 3: I'm wondering, is the cat looking at them while they're
Speaker 3: doing it, while they're like twisting off the end of
Speaker 3: the bag and getting ready, are they making eye contact?
Speaker 2: Like? I can't help but imagine that whoever's idea was
Speaker 2: to use the cat had not really been around cats
Speaker 2: that much and just assumed that this was possible. Because
Speaker 2: if you've been around cats, if you have a cat,
Speaker 2: you know that they don't cooperate with the slightest little thing.
Speaker 2: And the idea that you're going to get them to
Speaker 2: cooperate in a scientific experiment like this, no, it just
Speaker 2: it was doomed to failure. And in this case, you know, certainly,
Speaker 2: if not doomed to failure, they at least quickly realized
Speaker 2: this is a totally unnecessary part of the experiment. We
Speaker 2: can streamline this experiment and remove this wild variable from it.
Speaker 3: Good thinking. These are professionals.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I kind of want to look out for
Speaker 2: this in future studies, you know, cases where they were like, actually,
Speaker 2: we realized that this was a bad idea. We streamline experience.
Speaker 2: We did not need a cat involved. We did not
Speaker 2: need to have I don't know, some sort of a
Speaker 2: you know Rube Goldberg machine spinning across the room. You
Speaker 2: know you can simplify. It doesn't need to be It
Speaker 2: doesn't need to be any more complex than it needs
Speaker 2: to be.
Speaker 3: Cut out the middle man.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, we're gonna go ahead and uh close
Speaker 2: out this episode, but we'll be back with another episode
Speaker 2: on third in which we will look at a few
Speaker 2: more of the winners from this year's Ignobel prizes. So
Speaker 2: tune in on Thursday and see which ones we picked out.
Speaker 2: We'll talk, we'll talk about it. In the meantime, We'll
Speaker 2: just remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is
Speaker 2: primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we do a short form episode,
Speaker 2: and on Fridays we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 2: just talk about a weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hi,
Speaker 3: you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
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