Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 2: And I am Joe McCormick. And hey, it's Saturday, so
Speaker 2: we're heading into the vault for an older episode of
Speaker 2: the show. This one originally published on December fourteenth, twenty
Speaker 2: twenty three, and it's about the Nutcracker. Yes, the object,
Speaker 2: the tool, the invention, the Nutcracker.
Speaker 1: Yes, that's right. And this, of course is the precursor
Speaker 1: to an episode that will be rerunning later this month
Speaker 1: on the Rat King. The pair of holiday episodes they
Speaker 1: came out last year.
Speaker 3: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert.
Speaker 2: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick. And ooh, I can
Speaker 2: almost smell hot cocoa and peppermint because the Christmas spirit
Speaker 2: is a live. Today we're doing our holiday episode and
Speaker 2: we're going to be talking about the Nutcracker, as promised
Speaker 2: in the last episode.
Speaker 1: That's right. On Tuesday, we discussed the rat King and
Speaker 1: of course how that relates to the Mouse King, the
Speaker 1: enemy of the Nutcracker, from the original source material for
Speaker 1: Tchaikowsky's eighteen ninety two ballet, we talked about this it's
Speaker 1: the work of German dark romantic author Eta Hoffman and
Speaker 1: eighteen sixteen short story titled The Nutcracker in the Mouse King.
Speaker 1: So we talked a good bit about monstrous, multi headed rats,
Speaker 1: and the original short story does feature some just horrific
Speaker 1: visions of this dreaded entity. But today it's time to
Speaker 1: talk about the protagonist of this story. Yes, it's the Nutcracker. Rob.
Speaker 2: When you were a kid, did your family have like
Speaker 2: a classic style Christmas decoration nutcracker with the lever and
Speaker 2: the jaw.
Speaker 1: I think we always had one around, or there was
Speaker 1: at least a Christmas ornament that had a nutcracker on it,
Speaker 1: but I don't remember. We certainly did not have a
Speaker 1: function nutcracker, at least as far as I can recall.
Speaker 2: I remember enjoying the creepy inhuman mechanics of like how
Speaker 2: far the jaw would open, and the very the squareness
Speaker 2: of it, you know. I like the fact that it
Speaker 2: had corners and it was almost like the pharyngeal jaw
Speaker 2: of like the xenomor for something.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, you know, And it's something that you can
Speaker 1: toy around with and yeah, and even if it's decorative
Speaker 1: and you're a kid, if you're left alone with it,
Speaker 1: you're gonna end up trying to crack some nuts in
Speaker 1: that weird jaw of the nutcracker. Now, I feel like
Speaker 1: most of you know exactly what sort of nutcrackers I'm
Speaker 1: talking about here. You know, he's an old timey soldier
Speaker 1: or king standing up, made out of woods, a tall hat,
Speaker 1: big teeth, and a movable jaw that works via a lever.
Speaker 1: So the lever is positioned on the nutcracker's back. You
Speaker 1: pull up on the lever and this opens the jaw.
Speaker 1: Insert a nut, push down on the lever, or pull
Speaker 1: down on the lever, Squeeze down on the lever, however
Speaker 1: you apply it, and the force is going to cause
Speaker 1: the jaws and a nutcracker to close, cracking the nut.
Speaker 1: That is, of course, if you're using a functional wooden nutcracker.
Speaker 1: Many of the ones you encountered today are purely decorative.
Speaker 1: They were never meant to actually crack a nut. Some
Speaker 1: of them even have like little capes on, clearly making
Speaker 1: the lever inaccessible if there even is a lever back there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I recall thinking this about the nutcrackers of my youth.
Speaker 2: It was like this. It does feel flimsy. I don't
Speaker 2: know if it would stand up to a nut.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Many times we don't even need to crack the nuts,
Speaker 1: right we're getting we're receiving our nuts already in some
Speaker 1: sort of a snack mix. They've already been cracked.
Speaker 3: Uh.
Speaker 1: Sometimes cracking is not entirely necessary. You get a nice
Speaker 1: bag of pistachios, they are only going to be those
Speaker 1: problem pistachios that you're gonna have to crack later. The
Speaker 1: rest you can open by getting your your you know,
Speaker 1: your salty fingers in there and then eventually like having
Speaker 1: to to slip your fingernail into the into the crevice
Speaker 1: and pry them open that way.
Speaker 2: But if you apply force in just the wrong way,
Speaker 2: it'll kind of like nick your nail and pull it back. Yeah,
Speaker 2: for creepy feeling, I don't like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's satisfying. You know. It's one of those
Speaker 1: things that is it's like deeply embedded in our genes,
Speaker 1: you know, the idea that oh, here's a nut, I've
Speaker 1: got to crack it, and then I've got this sweet reward,
Speaker 1: and now I'm going to keep doing it again and again.
Speaker 2: It does feel so biologically deep that it's like one
Speaker 2: of our primary metaphors for just solving a problem, cracking
Speaker 2: a nut.
Speaker 1: That's right, got to crack that nut. It is a
Speaker 1: problem to be solved, but there is a reward and
Speaker 1: there's got to be a way into it, you know,
Speaker 1: at least. This is often like you can't just give
Speaker 1: up on that pistatio that can't be opened, or that
Speaker 1: that nut that seemingly can't be cracked, because you know
Speaker 1: there's something good in there now. Quick anthropology note, there
Speaker 1: is a primate species this is Parenthepus boise eye, which
Speaker 1: upon discovery in nineteen fifty nine was dubbed nut cracker
Speaker 1: Man due to the skulls, large back teeth, and jaws.
Speaker 1: I included an image of reconstruction of this particular skull
Speaker 1: for you here, Joe.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, this looks like the opposite of my childhood nutcracker.
Speaker 2: I think that the owner of the skull could have
Speaker 2: dominated some nuts.
Speaker 1: This would make for an interesting monstrous adaptation of the
Speaker 1: nutcracker and the mouse King. Have your multi headed mouse
Speaker 1: king and all fierce and disturbing, but then also have
Speaker 1: your nutcracker be nutcracker man. Now we'll dive into deeper
Speaker 1: history concerning just nutcracking here in a minute, you know,
Speaker 1: and we'll get into other traditional ways of cracking nut,
Speaker 1: some anthropomorphic in nature as well, like our nutcracker soldier.
Speaker 1: But first let's get to know the wooden German nutcracker
Speaker 1: a little bit better. So in looking around for various sources,
Speaker 1: there does seem to be one individual in particular who
Speaker 1: stands out, and it's the nutcracker Lady, and that's Arlene Wagner,
Speaker 1: who is an author, has written books about nutcrackers, and
Speaker 1: is also the co founder of the really fun Looking
Speaker 1: Nutcracker Museum in Levenworth, Washington. And she points out that
Speaker 1: standing wooden nutcrackers like these, like the traditional holiday nutcracker
Speaker 1: as we know them, these were known in nineteenth century
Speaker 1: German as nousnachers, listed as such in the Dictionary of
Speaker 1: the Brothers Grim. Many of these were made in the
Speaker 1: Erzgebirge region and would have been the ones to inspire
Speaker 1: Hoffman in his writing of the Nutcracker and the Mouse King.
Speaker 1: And they were not all powered by lever, as it
Speaker 1: turns out, some of these were powered by screw I
Speaker 1: included an image of a screw based nutcracking nutcracker for
Speaker 1: you here, Joe.
Speaker 2: But they've all got whether it's screw or lever, they've
Speaker 2: all got the mustache. Now, the mustache is essential, as
Speaker 2: is the tall hat. But the screw guy, he has
Speaker 2: just kind of like a wide circular mouth sort of
Speaker 2: a mouth, and in there you see the screw. Like
Speaker 2: basically you would just drive the screw home into the
Speaker 2: top of the nut and the gradual wars would bust it.
Speaker 2: With the screw guy, I kind of missed the mouth
Speaker 2: of saur On style teeth that we have in the
Speaker 2: ones with the levers.
Speaker 1: It does seem like a design misstep because part of
Speaker 1: the whole fun that, like the whole reason you would
Speaker 1: imagine that someone created a humanoid nutcracker is because it
Speaker 1: moves like a jaw and you're putting something into this
Speaker 1: little guy's mouth and making him smash it. This guy
Speaker 1: with a screw that comes down from the roof of
Speaker 1: his mouth like down through his pallet to break open
Speaker 1: the nut like this just it doesn't it doesn't feel
Speaker 1: as natural. It feels like someone improved upon the design
Speaker 1: and destroyed the spirit in the process, but again these
Speaker 1: are also classic nutcrackers fair enough. Now, apparently there was
Speaker 1: a bit more variety in the design until around eighteen
Speaker 1: seventy two, when one Wilhelm of Fuckner produced the first
Speaker 1: commercial nutcrackers based on like one singular design. And this
Speaker 1: was not like a factory situation, it's just using a lathe.
Speaker 1: But this, like apparent kickstarted sort of the canonization of
Speaker 1: what a nutcracker is and what it should look like.
Speaker 1: And his family still produces these. According to Carol Rosenblatt,
Speaker 1: who wrote an article on Atlas Obscura just earlier this
Speaker 1: month about the history of the nutcracker. Now, Wagner writes
Speaker 1: the decorative wooden European nutcrackers in general, like not necessarily soldiers,
Speaker 1: date back to the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in England
Speaker 1: and France, and these traditions continued on during the eighteenth
Speaker 1: and nineteenth centuries. So you saw a great deal of
Speaker 1: ornate wooden nutcracker craftsmanship eventually in the alpine regions of
Speaker 1: Germany and Italy. Because again, there's nothing about a nutcracker
Speaker 1: that demands that it be shaped like a soldier. We're
Speaker 1: talking about a tool that is a simple lever, and
Speaker 1: then at various points people have decided to fancy it
Speaker 1: up a bit because you can just have something that,
Speaker 1: you know, crabcloth crunchers are basically the same thing. Crabcriot
Speaker 1: crackers just a simple lever to allow you to apply
Speaker 1: the necessary force to break a shell open, be it
Speaker 1: the cell of a crustacean or the shell of a nut.
Speaker 1: But people just end up having fun with it, creating
Speaker 1: luxury items even that are still to some degree functional,
Speaker 1: And then in doing it, you know, you can't help
Speaker 1: but let your imagination run wild. Is it the mouth
Speaker 1: of a man? Is it the mouth of a beast?
Speaker 1: The legs of a beast? Perhaps, you know, perhaps it
Speaker 1: has nothing to do with actual anatomical movements. You just
Speaker 1: want to add some beautiful motifs to the overall nutcracker. Now,
Speaker 1: according to Noreen Malone, writing for Slate and twenty ten,
Speaker 1: the German nutcracker dolls the standard ones that we're talking
Speaker 1: about here that look like soldiers were at least considered
Speaker 1: good luck in German traditions. And I've seen other sources
Speaker 1: at least loosely allude to some sort of apotropaic properties
Speaker 1: as well. You know, the idea that it's this soldier
Speaker 1: is going to frighten away evil spirits or bad luck
Speaker 1: or something to that effect. So you know, the idea
Speaker 1: that something not only as could be lucky, but it
Speaker 1: could also keep ill luck, keep bad spirits away. This,
Speaker 1: of course, is not uncommon with artifacts of this basic nature,
Speaker 1: you know, because look at the standard Nutcracker. It has
Speaker 1: a fierce face. Oftentimes it has kind of big and
Speaker 1: alarming eyes, and certainly it's not blinking. So you could
Speaker 1: imagine easily leaning into the idea of putting this character
Speaker 1: on guard against your enemies.
Speaker 2: This seems to connect with traditions as old as the
Speaker 2: ones we talked about in our series on necromancy, this
Speaker 2: October in ancient Mesopotamia, where you would have these little
Speaker 2: figurines that might look like a warrior or king or
Speaker 2: something that would be there to ward off ghosts and
Speaker 2: demons that might want to attack you in your sleep.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so perhaps Hoffman was playing with this concept
Speaker 1: a little bit in his writing of the original Nutcracker story.
Speaker 1: You know, the Nutcracker is a protector in this but
Speaker 1: also he turns things on its head. He is also
Speaker 1: something that needs protecting. He need to be protected by Marie.
Speaker 1: I should point out that, yes, the little girl's name
Speaker 1: is Marie in the original story, even though I believe
Speaker 1: she becomes Clara in the Nutcracker Ballet. So we'll get
Speaker 1: back to traditions of nut cracking technology here in a bit.
Speaker 1: But to give this the proper sort of invention treatment,
Speaker 1: we really need to go back before that. We need
Speaker 1: to get back to the basic idea of cracking nuts.
Speaker 1: And indeed, why crack a nut anyway? And why does
Speaker 1: the nut need to be cracked?
Speaker 2: Great question? So what are nuts? We know them when
Speaker 2: we see them, and we can list a bunch of examples,
Speaker 2: but botanically what are they? And I've actually found some
Speaker 2: rather different definitions offered in seemingly authoritative sources. But to
Speaker 2: synthesize as best I can, here are the main points.
Speaker 2: First of all, nuts are fruits. Huh. Yes, they are fruits.
Speaker 2: We don't usually think of them. So this raises the question,
Speaker 2: going one step back further, what is a fruit? In
Speaker 2: a botanical sense, a fruit is usually defined as the mature,
Speaker 2: ripened ovary of a flowering plant which contains the plant's
Speaker 2: seed or seeds. So, according to scientific classification. Fruits include
Speaker 2: lots of foods we do normally think of as fruits,
Speaker 2: like apples, peaches, and oranges, but lots of other fleshy
Speaker 2: things that grow off of plants that we don't usually
Speaker 2: think of as fruits, even foods like cucumbers, tomatoes, avocados,
Speaker 2: and chili peppers, and in fact, technically even grains like
Speaker 2: wheat and oats are a type of fruit. So a
Speaker 2: fruit is a mass that grows from the reproductive structure
Speaker 2: of a flour and ends up containing or bearing the
Speaker 2: fertilized seed of that plant. The form of the fruit
Speaker 2: is designed by evolution to help the seeds disperse, which
Speaker 2: could mean taking the form of a delicious snack that
Speaker 2: animals will want to eat and then swallow and then
Speaker 2: deposit elsewhere in a nice, healthy pile of dung. But
Speaker 2: there are other animal dispersal strategies we'll get to in
Speaker 2: a minute. So, according to the Encyclopedia of Fruit and
Speaker 2: Nuts edited by Yannick and Paul, nuts are a specialized
Speaker 2: subcategory of fruit quote characterized by a hard shell that
Speaker 2: is separable from a firmer inner kernel. So it's a
Speaker 2: fruit that's got an inside kernel and a hard shell
Speaker 2: on the outside. Now, to offer some of these contrasting definitions,
Speaker 2: I found a different source by the USDA Forest Service
Speaker 2: that claimed that quote nuts are strictly a particular kind
Speaker 2: of dry fruit that has a single seed, a hard shell,
Speaker 2: and a protective husk. Also adding to the confusion is
Speaker 2: the fact that there are some things that are generally
Speaker 2: classified as nuts by people, but are not nuts in
Speaker 2: the botanical sense. Classic example is a peanut. These are
Speaker 2: technically legumes. And in this episode, I am sure we
Speaker 2: will casually refer to some of these false nuts as nuts.
Speaker 2: It's just going to happen. Just be aware that some
Speaker 2: quote nuts are not technically nuts. But to come back
Speaker 2: to the synthesis definition here, among other possible criteria like
Speaker 2: bearing a single seed, or having a husk, or maybe
Speaker 2: having high oil content or something like that, the common
Speaker 2: thread seems to be that nuts are fruits that evolved
Speaker 2: a hard shell. But why how does the plant benefit
Speaker 2: from having a hard shell around its fruit and seed
Speaker 2: as opposed to a nice, soft, fleshy seed capsule like
Speaker 2: a tomato or like any of these other soft fleshy
Speaker 2: fruits where the plant in an evolutionary sense wants the
Speaker 2: animal to gobble them up and carry them away and
Speaker 2: poot them out somewhere. Well, I found a paper that
Speaker 2: explains one important evolutionary strategy of nut bearing plants, and
Speaker 2: I think this is really interesting. So the paper was
Speaker 2: by Stephen B. Van Wall called How Plants Manipulate the
Speaker 2: scatter Hoarding behavior of seed dispersing Animals, published in Philosophical
Speaker 2: Transactions of the Royal Society b Biological Sciences in twenty ten.
Speaker 2: So this paper is about interactions between plants and animals,
Speaker 2: particularly plants and an animal behavior called scatter hoarding, in
Speaker 2: which the animal and you can picture a squirrel, but
Speaker 2: there are a bunch of different kinds of animals that
Speaker 2: do this as well, primarily birds and rodents, in which
Speaker 2: the animal or the squirrel will collect a bunch of
Speaker 2: food items in hidden caches to be stored for later.
Speaker 2: So our squirrel runs around gathering up a bunch of
Speaker 2: nuts fallen from under a tree, and instead of eating
Speaker 2: them right away, the squirrel will carry them off to
Speaker 2: bury or hide somewhere for later, maybe in lots of
Speaker 2: locations all around the squirrel's territory. Now, why does this
Speaker 2: benefit the plant? For the squirrel or other animal to
Speaker 2: do this or run off with a bunch of nuts,
Speaker 2: take them somewhere else and bury them well. In some cases,
Speaker 2: these storage caches of plant seeds will benefit from reproductive
Speaker 2: fitness enhancements via animal dispersal. And we've talked on the
Speaker 2: show before about the reasons that it is good for
Speaker 2: a plant to have its seeds dispersed geographically away, taken
Speaker 2: away from the parent plant. There are multiple reasons for this,
Speaker 2: but just one example is now. If they're dispersed far away,
Speaker 2: the offspring plant will not have to compete with the
Speaker 2: parent plant for access to sunlight. Parent and child will
Speaker 2: not be fighting against one another to get the sun.
Speaker 2: But in many cases, these scatter hoarded caches will be
Speaker 2: forgotten or otherwise abandoned by the animal that made them,
Speaker 2: allowing the seeds to germinate and grow in the places
Speaker 2: they were hidden. So squirrel takes a bunch of nuts,
Speaker 2: stashes them all over the place, buries them, hides them.
Speaker 2: The squirrel will go back and get some of them
Speaker 2: later and eat them. But some of them the squirrels
Speaker 2: never going to get again, and they'll just be wherever
Speaker 2: they are, and they might have a chance to sprout
Speaker 2: and grow.
Speaker 1: Plus, the world can be pretty rough on a squirrel,
Speaker 1: so even if the squirrel remembers where those nuts are,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that squirrel is going to be around
Speaker 1: to come back and claim them later on.
Speaker 2: Right, So, Vanderwald explains how plants have evolved to encourage
Speaker 2: scatter hoarding behavior in animals and why it helps them
Speaker 2: so that you know, it is good for the plant
Speaker 2: to get animals to practice scatter hoarding with its seeds.
Speaker 2: How does it get the animals to do that? First
Speaker 2: of all, by producing seeds that are delicious and nutritious,
Speaker 2: so they are highly attractive to animals as a food.
Speaker 2: But second, here's the important one for our question about
Speaker 2: why why nuts have hard shells, by imposing what Vanderwald
Speaker 2: calls handling costs that mean the animal cannot feasibly eat
Speaker 2: all of the seeds immediately upon discovery. And there are
Speaker 2: two main strategies mentioned for increasing these handling costs. One
Speaker 2: is by lacing the nutritious seed or fruit with chemicals
Speaker 2: that make it hard to digest, such as tannins, which
Speaker 2: kind of slows down the buffet, you know. But then
Speaker 2: the second thing is by putting in place, physical barriers
Speaker 2: that take time and energy to break through. So here's
Speaker 2: our hard outer nutshell. The hard shell of a nut
Speaker 2: makes it impossible for the squirrel to just gobble up
Speaker 2: all of the fruits immediately. They want that good stuff inside,
Speaker 2: but each one is going to take time and energy
Speaker 2: to open an access, So the animal is encouraged to
Speaker 2: take the nuts away and hide them for later. Now,
Speaker 2: there are a couple more strategies Vanderwall mentions as well.
Speaker 2: One is masting. This is quote where a population of
Speaker 2: plants synchronizes reproductive effort, producing large nut crops at intervals
Speaker 2: of several years. Massed crops not only satiate seed predators,
Speaker 2: but also increase the amount of seed dispersal because scatter
Speaker 2: hoarding animals are not easily satiated during cashing, causing animals
Speaker 2: to store more food than they can consume, but are
Speaker 2: satiated during cash recovery. So does that make sense. There's
Speaker 2: a lot of nuts, and because they take time to
Speaker 2: get into, the scatter hoarding animal is going to be
Speaker 2: hungry while they're gathering all these nuts, so it just
Speaker 2: encourages them to keep gathering more and more nuts and
Speaker 2: storing them and planting them for the plant, but then
Speaker 2: they will get full on these nuts when it's finally
Speaker 2: time to recover the cash and crack them open and
Speaker 2: eat them, so they're probably not going to get to
Speaker 2: all of the stuff they stored.
Speaker 1: Basically exploiting a real eyes bigger than one's stomach sort
Speaker 1: of situation with the squirrels exactly.
Speaker 2: And then the last strategy mentioned here is by having
Speaker 2: seeds that don't put off strong smells, making them harder
Speaker 2: for the animal to find later after they are hidden,
Speaker 2: so really just sort of helping squirrel or bird or
Speaker 2: whatever animal forget where it put some of its nuts. So,
Speaker 2: according to this theory, hard nutshells are part of a
Speaker 2: suite of strategies used by plants to aid in seed
Speaker 2: dispersal by animals like birds and rodents, which makes it
Speaker 2: more difficult for the animal to eat the nut, making
Speaker 2: it more likely that the animal will carry the nut
Speaker 2: off and hide it or bury it somewhere later and
Speaker 2: then possibly forget about it or for whatever reason, never
Speaker 2: come back to it, allowing the plant to germinate in
Speaker 2: its hiding place. Hard nutshells you could think of sort
Speaker 2: of like a speed bump in the eating process. They
Speaker 2: make it hard for the bird or the rodent or
Speaker 2: whatever to just like blaze through whatever it finds that
Speaker 2: it can't just eat it all at once, but to
Speaker 2: come back at this from the animal's perspective, nuts are great.
Speaker 2: Animals want to eat them, so how to get the
Speaker 2: good part out? Animals do have strategies for getting at
Speaker 2: those good parts. Even if while benefiting from the nuts
Speaker 2: they do crack open and eat, they're sort of inadvertently
Speaker 2: helping the plant by not getting to a lot of
Speaker 2: the nuts they store. Let's look at a few strategies here.
Speaker 2: One is brute force, you know, teeth, jaws, beaks, or bills,
Speaker 2: and other intrinsic mechanisms that allow an animal to crack
Speaker 2: or punch through hard nutshells. We've already mentioned that rodents
Speaker 2: are a major consumer of nuts in the wild, but
Speaker 2: also other hard substances, and rodents like rats, squirrels, and beavers,
Speaker 2: have an adaptation that helps them in this regard, which
Speaker 2: is they're incisors, pairs of front teeth at the top
Speaker 2: and bottom that, unlike our teeth, continuously grow throughout the
Speaker 2: rodent's life. So this means rodents must gnaw on things
Speaker 2: and also must grind to their front teeth to maintain
Speaker 2: good dental health. Rat incisors not worn down by continuous
Speaker 2: gnawing can grow into a bizarre, unsettling spiral shapes they
Speaker 2: go off, and this is obviously really bad for the rat.
Speaker 2: And while having teeth like this imposes a burden to
Speaker 2: constantly be gnawing and grinding the teeth together, it also
Speaker 2: helps equip rodents to put their front teeth through some
Speaker 2: serious abuse because the teeth will just continue growing in
Speaker 2: and the grinding will continue to sharpen them. So you know,
Speaker 2: if an adult human cracks a tooth, that's sort of
Speaker 2: a permanent problem. Rodents like rats can just let their
Speaker 2: teeth keep growing in so they can put them through
Speaker 2: a lot. Rodents like rats also have very strong and
Speaker 2: specially adapted jaw muscles for their size, specifically the massiter muscles,
Speaker 2: and their special teeth and chewing muscles help them cut
Speaker 2: through tough barriers like nutshells. Of course, on the larger
Speaker 2: of the animal spectrum, you've got bigger animals that just
Speaker 2: have big teeth, big jaws that can pretty easily crush
Speaker 2: through nutshells. For example, elephants and some wild pigs. You know,
Speaker 2: if you've got big enough jaws and teeth and stuff,
Speaker 2: crushing a nutshell isn't that hard. I even found one
Speaker 2: report of gorillas allegedly cracking nuts with their teeth, so
Speaker 2: there's some question about to what extent this comes with
Speaker 2: significant risk of tooth damage to the gorilla. And then
Speaker 2: also some birds, such as like Jay's blue jays, will
Speaker 2: collect the nuts so that they can break through nutshells
Speaker 2: with their bills. But some other animals have a different strategy,
Speaker 2: which is just, you know, swallow the nuts whole and
Speaker 2: let the gizzard work it out. Wild turkeys are an example.
Speaker 1: Here.
Speaker 2: Turkeys eat a lot of nuts, such as wild pecans,
Speaker 2: but they don't bother cracking them or chewing them. There's
Speaker 2: just no need. They gulp the whole thing, shell and all,
Speaker 2: and then it goes to the gizzard. And the gizzard
Speaker 2: works essentially like an internal jaw. It is a part
Speaker 2: of the bird's digestive system, a sort of muscular sack
Speaker 2: in which food stuffs are churned around with externally acquired
Speaker 2: abrasives like rocks and sand, which the turkey also swallows,
Speaker 2: and eventually this muscular sack churning nuts around with rocks
Speaker 2: and sand grinds the nuts or whatever food into pieces
Speaker 2: so it can pass on down through the rest of
Speaker 2: the digestive tract.
Speaker 1: See, we need more gizzard based nutcrackers. Maybe the screw
Speaker 1: nutcracker is kind of a gizzard nutcracker in a limited sense.
Speaker 2: I g Yeah, it would be like what would a
Speaker 2: gizzard based nutcracker be. It would be more like a
Speaker 2: like a rock polisher, you know, you get the nuts
Speaker 2: in there and it's got like an internal like shaker
Speaker 2: with rocks and they bust them up.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So those are the internal mechanisms, but there are also
Speaker 2: animals that do use external mechanisms, in other words, tools
Speaker 2: to crack nuts. Tool use in nutcracking has been observed
Speaker 2: in multiple primate species. I came across a paper for
Speaker 2: documenting novel observations of orangutans figuring out how to smash
Speaker 2: nuts with a wooden hammer. The paper was by Bandini
Speaker 2: at All, called Naive Orangutans Individually Acquire nutcracking using hammer Tools,
Speaker 2: published in the American Journal of Primatology in the year
Speaker 2: twenty twenty one, and I found the background section of
Speaker 2: this paper helpful for collecting other documented examples of primate
Speaker 2: tool use in nutcracking, especially the use of tools by
Speaker 2: chimpanzees to open nuts. The authors say that chimpanzees, long
Speaker 2: tailed macaques, and capuchin monkeys have been observed using tools
Speaker 2: to break through nutshells, and wild chimpanzees have been observed
Speaker 2: in multiple locations using hammer tools to smash nuts and
Speaker 2: access kernels. So, to read from their background quote, the
Speaker 2: crux of the nutcracking behavioral form in chimpanzees involves three steps.
Speaker 2: One retrieving a nut from the surrounding area and placing
Speaker 2: it on an anvil e g. A tree root or
Speaker 2: a stone. Two picking up a stone or a wooden hammer,
Speaker 2: and three hitting the nut with the hammer, parentheses holding
Speaker 2: it with one or both hands until its shell is
Speaker 2: cracked open and the inside kernel can be retrieved and consumed.
Speaker 2: And this is noted as being a really interesting case
Speaker 2: of tool use in non human animals because most cases
Speaker 2: of animal tool use involve only a single object and
Speaker 2: a single type of action, you know, thinking something like
Speaker 2: using a stick to extend reach into holes and crevices.
Speaker 2: But this nut hammering process involves two separate tools apart
Speaker 2: from the nut, the hammer and the anvil, and it
Speaker 2: involves multiple steps, only culminating in a food reward at
Speaker 2: the end of the process. So it's extremely interesting and
Speaker 2: impressive and has been the subject of a lot of
Speaker 2: study and debate, And there are also interesting scientific debates
Speaker 2: about how this process first arose in wild chimpanzees and
Speaker 2: how it gets passed from one individual to another. But anyway,
Speaker 2: coming back to the experimental portion of the study in orangutans,
Speaker 2: the authors here tested naive orangutans who had no experience
Speaker 2: cracking nuts with tools that were in captivity to see
Speaker 2: what they would do if given hard shelled nuts and
Speaker 2: tools for nutcracking, but no demonstration of how it was done.
Speaker 2: So just like, here's the stuff you would need, but
Speaker 2: there's no teaching or showing them. And somewhat shockingly, quote,
Speaker 2: out of twelve orangutans tested, at least four individuals, one
Speaker 2: from Leipzig and three from Zurich, spontaneously expressed nutcracking using
Speaker 2: wooden hammers.
Speaker 1: Fascinating.
Speaker 2: I thought so too, And they say that this result
Speaker 2: seems to be evidence that orangutans can in fact quite
Speaker 2: readily produce emergent tool use behaviors through individual learning, they say,
Speaker 2: just sort of personal trial and error learning without having
Speaker 2: to watch another do it and copy the behavior from them.
Speaker 2: Though they did say they actually make a distinction in
Speaker 2: this paper between non copying social learning and copying social learning.
Speaker 2: So copying social learning is what they call like the
Speaker 2: how to knowledge where you watch another individual do something
Speaker 2: and then you copy what they're doing. They do say
Speaker 2: there could be some social learning involved here. That's not
Speaker 2: watching what the other individual is doing, but just seeing
Speaker 2: kind of like what area of the enclosure they're paying
Speaker 2: attention to, what kind of objects they're paying attention to,
Speaker 2: and so forth, in the words of the author, is
Speaker 2: not how to social information, but sort of what and
Speaker 2: where social information. And then finally just wanted to mention
Speaker 2: that this has also come up on the show before.
Speaker 2: But there are some bird species that have evolved ways
Speaker 2: of using external tools to crack nuts. One of the
Speaker 2: most interesting examples is the case of Japanese crows, specifically
Speaker 2: Japanese crows, because as far as I know, this behavior
Speaker 2: has not been found in crow populations elsewhere, but Japanese
Speaker 2: crows have been observed leaving difficult nuts on busy streets
Speaker 2: so that cars will run over them and crack the
Speaker 2: shells for them.
Speaker 1: That's fascinating, man, to you, it's a highway to us
Speaker 1: a nutcracker. So coming back to humans, specifically, coming back
Speaker 1: to modern humans, modern humans absolutely can crack nuts with
Speaker 1: their teeth. This is a true statement. However, modern humans
Speaker 1: absolutely cannot crack all nuts with their teeth, and they
Speaker 1: certainly can't do so without risking permanent damage to their teeth.
Speaker 2: Right again, we are not rodents. Their teeth will keep
Speaker 2: growing in if they hurt them while getting into a nut.
Speaker 2: Not so much for an adult human, that's right.
Speaker 1: So, as such, there is a huge advantage, even a
Speaker 1: survival advantage, in being able to turn to various tools
Speaker 1: to crack open said nuts and get at the precious
Speaker 1: nutrients inside, and of course then not be held and
Speaker 1: also not be held back by the speed bump so much.
Speaker 1: I mean, you are hitting the speed bump of having
Speaker 1: to manually crack nuts. But if you can utilize technology
Speaker 1: to speed that process along, then you can do a
Speaker 1: whole host of other things.
Speaker 2: That's right.
Speaker 1: As such, prehistoric humans made use of their surroundings to
Speaker 1: open many a nut much in the same way that
Speaker 1: other tool using animals did and the examples that we
Speaker 1: just mentioned stones of course do wonders. And eventually this
Speaker 1: was fine tuned to make use of pitted stones. Pitted stone,
Speaker 1: you know, a stone that has a little indentation there,
Speaker 1: kind of a spot that holds the nut in place
Speaker 1: while you either whack it with another stone or use
Speaker 1: some sort of like hammer and chisel scenario to apply
Speaker 1: force to it. And then this will also sort of
Speaker 1: collect the fragments and keep the nut and or fragments
Speaker 1: from just flying off in all directions.
Speaker 2: In terms of getting over the speed bump is speeding
Speaker 2: up the process. This is a great advancement actually using
Speaker 2: a pitted stone like this, of moving from the hammer
Speaker 2: and anvil principle to the mortar and pestle principle.
Speaker 1: Now, according to Wagner, example of this sort of artifact
Speaker 1: go back thousands and thousands of years. Indeed, according to
Speaker 1: I was looking at a twenty nineteen paper published in
Speaker 1: Plos one or plus one. I forget which way we're
Speaker 1: supposed to say it these days. It's plus plus.
Speaker 2: I said it wrong. For years I spelled it out.
Speaker 1: It's plus all right, Well, plus one, twenty nineteen. This
Speaker 1: was a paper by Colleen Pardeaut titled Quondong stones a
Speaker 1: Specialized Australian nut cracking tool. And in this the author
Speaker 1: points out that paleolithic sites in the levant provide evidence
Speaker 1: of the importance of nuts in the human diet as
Speaker 1: far back as seven hundred and forty thousand to seven
Speaker 1: hundred ninety thousand years ago, and we see this via
Speaker 1: the evidence of specialized stone implements for shell cracking in
Speaker 1: kernel extraction. Additionally, early Holoslene site suggests that hazel nuts
Speaker 1: were important in Mesolithic and early Neolithic European diets. The
Speaker 1: paper in question, by the way, highlights the use of
Speaker 1: pitted stones by Aboriginal Australians to crack open the quandong
Speaker 1: or native peach. They point out that pits in stones
Speaker 1: like this are common and they sometimes indicate other functions.
Speaker 1: It's not always there for nut cracking. You know, it
Speaker 1: could be an anvil or it could have multiple functions,
Speaker 1: but the stones in question have multiple pits and were
Speaker 1: found in areas where quand dongs are common. They also
Speaker 1: analyze the exact nature of the wear and tear on
Speaker 1: these stones. Apparently, if you know what you're looking for.
Speaker 1: You can analyze that wear and tear and see like, okay,
Speaker 1: what kind of regular and or repeated force was applied here?
Speaker 1: And they believe that these artifacts indicate nutcracking. I included
Speaker 1: a couple of pictures here from you below. One is
Speaker 1: from Wagner's museum. You see like basic pitted stone nutcracking scenario.
Speaker 1: And then I have some images from this paper about
Speaker 1: Aboriginal Australian artifacts and you can see like a like
Speaker 1: multiple pits in one of the stones they're talking about.
Speaker 1: M Yeah, by the way, broadly speaking, nuts cracked in
Speaker 1: this manner were sometimes, of course just eaten raw. You know,
Speaker 1: you've solved the puzzle. Now enjoy the spoils. But they
Speaker 1: were also initially eventually used for other purposes. You could
Speaker 1: make flowers out of them, or nut butters. There's apparently
Speaker 1: evidence for peanut butter of a sort in Aztec and
Speaker 1: Inca civilizations, and one can only assume that ancient European
Speaker 1: hazel nuts scavengers would have done something similar, though of course,
Speaker 1: without access to South America's chocolate, they'd be denied the
Speaker 1: invention of nutella. Up until I believe the eighteen hundreds.
Speaker 2: Are you a nutella lover, Rube?
Speaker 1: I mean I like nutella, but I deny myself nutella.
Speaker 2: It's too easy.
Speaker 1: It is it needs some speed bumps, and so the
Speaker 1: speed bump I put down is just not buying it. Now,
Speaker 1: coming back to other nutcracker designs, obviously, simple wooden nutcrackers
Speaker 1: are also a pretty ancient scenario. You know, likely some
Speaker 1: combination of wood pieces, perhaps a strip of leather, exactly
Speaker 1: the sort of thing to easily vanish from the archaeological record,
Speaker 1: like this is just organic matter that's not going to last.
Speaker 1: But eventually, with the advent of metalworking, humans begin making
Speaker 1: simple nutcrackers, which are also again largely identical to crab
Speaker 1: claw crackers that enable them to use hand strength and
Speaker 1: a lever to crack nuts. This again is the basic
Speaker 1: principle of the German wooden nutcracker that we associate with Christmas.
Speaker 1: Wagner writes that the oldest evidence of a metal nutcracker
Speaker 1: goes back to the third or fourth century BCE. Apparently,
Speaker 1: this nutcracker is on display in the Toronto Museum in Italy.
Speaker 1: It's exceedingly ornate, considering consisting of a pair of bronze
Speaker 1: hands with gold bracelets making use of an internal hinge
Speaker 1: to function as a nutcracker. Obviously this is a luxury item,
Speaker 1: and really the subject matter here is quite fascinating. I
Speaker 1: included an image of this nutcracker device for you here, Joe.
Speaker 2: That is creepy looking.
Speaker 1: Yeah, there are like these bronze hands with golden like
Speaker 1: they're dark bronze hands with golden like serpent bracelets, and
Speaker 1: it's like they're reaching up out of the void to
Speaker 1: crack a nut for you.
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly hands from the portal to the underdark. There's
Speaker 2: just like extremely creepy looking. Though when I first saw these,
Speaker 2: I didn't realize these were just solid to be used
Speaker 2: with the lever to crush. What I honestly imagine was
Speaker 2: that these were like rigid metal gloves that you would
Speaker 2: put on to just smash a nut between your palms.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I was looking around to see some sort of
Speaker 1: video or demonstration of exactly how the mechanism works. There.
Speaker 1: Supposedly is a mechanism there, but most of the images
Speaker 1: I was pulling up just show the hands and yeah,
Speaker 1: there they're quite beautiful to look at now. Wagner's Museum
Speaker 1: apparently has a Roman nutcracker dated to between two hundred
Speaker 1: BCE and two hundred CE, and this one is also
Speaker 1: ornate with animal motifs, but it is it is otherwise
Speaker 1: like not something that mimics human or animal crushing power.
Speaker 1: No jaws or anything including an image of this for
Speaker 1: you here as well, Joe.
Speaker 2: It's just the standard pencer lever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and of course you know they're all manner of
Speaker 1: tools and objects in human history that have been turned
Speaker 1: into something ornate and something even more decorative than functional.
Speaker 1: But again, I know there's something about the nutcracker. There's
Speaker 1: sort of even though it is work, there's also sort
Speaker 1: of an implied leisure there, Like it is the kind
Speaker 1: of work that you can imagine even an emperor being
Speaker 1: okay with do because there is something satisfying about it. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Maybe it's because the food reward is in most cases
Speaker 2: implied to be immediate. But I know exactly what you're
Speaker 2: saying that there's a different energy to a nutcracker versus
Speaker 2: like a potato peeler. So you imagine the process of
Speaker 2: peeling a potato is labor. It's not associated with fun.
Speaker 2: It's like just something you've got to do in the
Speaker 2: process of cooking something. But that's not the same. Yeah,
Speaker 2: not the case with a nutcracker. The nutcracker is an
Speaker 2: emblem of coziness and leisure and getting what you want
Speaker 2: right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like a novel technological enhancement of human abilities.
Speaker 1: It's like, look what I can do. That's not as
Speaker 1: nothing compared to my strength, as my strength is accentuated
Speaker 1: by this tiny wooden man that cracks my nuts for
Speaker 1: me now. Wagner also showcases multiple European metal nuttrackers from
Speaker 1: the thirteenth century onward. In many of these, I didn't
Speaker 1: even include pictures off Joe because they just look like
Speaker 1: metal lever tools. You know, it's just exactly all that
Speaker 1: you would need to crack nuts and nothing fancy. But
Speaker 1: they sometimes take on other fanciful forms. I included a
Speaker 1: couple of images from her museum here. One is I
Speaker 1: believe an eagle and the other is a dog.
Speaker 2: Okay, does the eagle crushed the nut in its beak?
Speaker 2: I guess does the beak pop open?
Speaker 1: It looks like, yeah, I believe the beak is powered
Speaker 1: by the lever. And then we also have the dog,
Speaker 1: which I guess the tail is the lever for the
Speaker 1: dog's mouth.
Speaker 2: You know, I really enjoy the grotesque unreality of the
Speaker 2: way that the human awoid nutcracker's mouth opens so wide
Speaker 2: with the lever. I don't think I would have that
Speaker 2: same enjoyment with the dog figure.
Speaker 1: Do you think it's just not becoming of the dog? Yeah.
Speaker 2: I don't know a man whose jaw opens down to
Speaker 2: his belly button and has gigantic teeth bigger than his eyes,
Speaker 2: that's funny. A dog that has that, I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's just like I want it to be cuter.
Speaker 1: Now, there's another variety of metal nut opening. I guess
Speaker 1: you would say tool that I want to touch on here.
Speaker 1: It's one that's also hinged, often of bronze or iron.
Speaker 1: But these are nut openers found in various Asian cultures,
Speaker 1: including in India, in Indonesia, in Afghanistan. Many of these
Speaker 1: also boast animal in human design motifs. These were not
Speaker 1: used to crack open a nut, but to slice the
Speaker 1: aureka nut of the Areca palm, which is then wrapped
Speaker 1: in a beetle leaf. These are beetle nuts. These are
Speaker 1: then chewed, sometimes with other additives, in order to get
Speaker 1: at the psychoactive properties all then I included some images
Speaker 1: of these beetle nut slicers. I guess is really the
Speaker 1: more accurate terminology, though they're basic. The basic physics of
Speaker 1: the design is similar to many of the nutcrackers we're
Speaker 1: talking about here. But as you can see, Joe and
Speaker 1: I encourage folks to look up images of these. There's
Speaker 1: some that look like birds, there are some not pictured
Speaker 1: here for you, Joe, that are very ornate but don't
Speaker 1: look like any any particular animal or what have you.
Speaker 1: And then some just straight up resemble human beings, sometimes
Speaker 1: with the handles of the slicer being the legs of
Speaker 1: a humanoid or the legs of two humanoids that are dancing.
Speaker 2: Okay, but it is a slicing action, not a cracking action,
Speaker 2: so it's more kind of like those little cigar guillotines
Speaker 2: that people have. I don't know what those are called.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I guess it would be similar that similar
Speaker 1: to that. Yeah, they're there for slicing, but they do
Speaker 1: resemble nut crackers a lot, and you'll often find collectors
Speaker 1: of one may collect the other as well.
Speaker 2: Beautiful designs though.
Speaker 1: Now I'd also run across examples of apotropaic uses of
Speaker 1: these devices as well, such as using them to protect
Speaker 1: sleeping child. I also found mention of protective qualities that
Speaker 1: are attributed to beetlenuts in general in some culture. There's
Speaker 1: a nineteenth century beetlenutcutter from Malaysia in the collection of
Speaker 1: the Victoria and Albert Museum in the UK, and they
Speaker 1: have this featured on their website. It has a stylized
Speaker 1: bird shaped head set with rubies mounted with gold, so
Speaker 1: very ornate, and the museum shares the following quote. Although
Speaker 1: the habit of beetle chewing had rapidly declined in the
Speaker 1: Malay world by the mid twentieth century, iron araka nut
Speaker 1: cutters are still in use today for their power, according
Speaker 1: to local tradition, in warding off evil spirits the shears.
Speaker 1: And I think that's accurate. You can describe these as
Speaker 1: shears are usually placed above the head of a newborn
Speaker 1: baby for protection.
Speaker 2: Oh. That's an interesting parallel to the decorative or ritual
Speaker 2: use of the no longer functional nutcrackers and Christmas celebrations.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I do find it fascinating that you'll have
Speaker 1: like two very distant cultures here and they both have
Speaker 1: some sort of an ornate device that has that is
Speaker 1: used to get at the goodness, be it nutritional or psychoactive,
Speaker 1: or I think they are also medicinal traditions concerning the
Speaker 1: beetle nut as well. But to get at the goodness
Speaker 1: in the nut, you have to use this device, and
Speaker 1: then that device becomes more and more ornate, it takes
Speaker 1: on various forms and then begins to have these supernatural
Speaker 1: properties as well. Or even if you're looking at the
Speaker 1: modern nutcracker, like the decorative nutcracker, has no function other
Speaker 1: than to provide a bit of holiday whimsy and to
Speaker 1: you know, to put us in the spirit of things
Speaker 1: for the holiday.
Speaker 2: Or alternately to chase your sibling around the house biting
Speaker 2: at them with.
Speaker 1: Now, I would love to hear from folks out there
Speaker 1: if you have certainly if you can speak from personal
Speaker 1: experience or family experience, cultural experience to anything that we've
Speaker 1: touched on in the episode, including the beetle nuts. Shears.
Speaker 1: But even like the classic German nutcracker, if there's anyone
Speaker 1: out there who has a like a family addition in
Speaker 1: which there are protective elements to it, you know, like
Speaker 1: the nutcracker is placed in a child's room to ward
Speaker 1: off some sort of you know, ill luck, no matter
Speaker 1: how you know, overt no matter how strong the superstition
Speaker 1: or weak the superstition is. I'd love to hear about
Speaker 1: that as well. But so I'm partially speaking from my
Speaker 1: own experience, in which the standard nutcracker like doesn't really
Speaker 1: carry a lot of supernatural or focal or weight. It
Speaker 1: is just festive, you know. It's a completely secular thing.
Speaker 1: Like the elf on the shelf ends up having more
Speaker 1: power in a given home than the nutcracker usually does,
Speaker 1: or at least that's how it seems to me. I'd
Speaker 1: love to hear if that's not the case, though.
Speaker 2: Though at the same time, I wouldn't undervalue the ritual
Speaker 2: power of holiday decorations. I mean, like, it is interesting
Speaker 2: how we surround ourselves with these physical objects literally to
Speaker 2: sort of engineer our own minds. It's like, I want
Speaker 2: to make myself feel festive, I want to put myself
Speaker 2: in the mind space of a particular season, and in
Speaker 2: order to do that, I know I will have to
Speaker 2: surround myself with objects that are hidden for the rest
Speaker 2: of the year.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I feel like that's kind of the approach
Speaker 1: my family takes with our Christmas tree. You know, it's
Speaker 1: and this is you know, I think how a lot
Speaker 1: of people do it. You know, each little decoration you
Speaker 1: put up in there, put up on the tree has
Speaker 1: some sort of value to you. You know, it either
Speaker 1: speaks to a time or a place, or an aspiration
Speaker 1: or an idea that you like. You know, it has
Speaker 1: religious significance and or cultural significance. And it all becomes
Speaker 1: this kind of you know, this kind of amalgam of
Speaker 1: different values. Then you light it up and yeah, you
Speaker 1: transform your world at least for a few weeks there.
Speaker 2: All right, should we crush this nut once and for all.
Speaker 1: Let's do it. Yes. We hope you enjoyed our look
Speaker 1: at the Nutcracker and earlier in the week the rat King.
Speaker 1: If you didn't hear the rat King episode, go back
Speaker 1: listen to that. I think it's a nice companion for
Speaker 1: this episode. But yeah, we obviously we wish everyone out
Speaker 1: there who celebrates the holidays, Happy holidays, will remind you
Speaker 1: that Stuff to Blow your Mind is a science podcast
Speaker 1: for Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Mondays, we
Speaker 1: tend to do listener mail on Wednesdays we tend to
Speaker 1: do a short form monster fact or Artifact episode, and
Speaker 1: on Fridays we set aside most series concerns to just
Speaker 1: talk about a weird movie on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 2: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest
Speaker 2: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact stuff to Blow your
Speaker 2: Mind dot com.
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For
Speaker 3: more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 3: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows
Speaker 3: or