Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part two of our series on animals
Speaker 1: cooking non human animals and cooking in the sense of
Speaker 1: doing things to food before they eat it other than
Speaker 1: applying heat. Because in the last episode we uh, we
Speaker 1: talked about how humans are the only animals that regularly
Speaker 1: apply heat to their food on purpose to cook it,
Speaker 1: but animals do all kinds of other interesting things to
Speaker 1: their food before eating it. For example, we talked about
Speaker 1: birds that that sort of butcher and smash up and
Speaker 1: and process their their their animal parts before they consume
Speaker 1: them in various ways, like the shrike making shish kebabs
Speaker 1: out of crickets and other critters. And uh, was it
Speaker 1: the lamber guyer that would would smash the bones or
Speaker 1: the turtles. Yeah, And you know, I realized after a
Speaker 1: record of that episode that there's another animal that that
Speaker 1: that cooks that is a part of my weekly life
Speaker 1: that I forgot to mention. It's that little puff on
Speaker 1: Instagram account in which a cat is made to appear
Speaker 1: to cook various items to try to replicate various sort
Speaker 1: of like TikTok cooking trends and crafting trends. Um. Sometimes
Speaker 1: too great success. Sometimes uh it results in disappointing failure. Oh,
Speaker 1: if if you're familiar with TikTok cooking trends, there's one
Speaker 1: that I've seen by image alone. Do you can you
Speaker 1: explain the thing to me where somebody takes a big
Speaker 1: old wad of hamburger meat and they wrap it around
Speaker 1: dry pasta. What is that? Do you know what I'm
Speaker 1: talking about? Well, I am only familiar with TikTok um
Speaker 1: cooking trends that have been featured on that little puff,
Speaker 1: So I don't think I've seen the cat doing this
Speaker 1: to hamburger made yet. Uh. I'm not the one to
Speaker 1: answer that question. Well, I mean it sounds like a
Speaker 1: cat's idea. What to be clear, this cat is is
Speaker 1: not actually has not been trained to do anything. Um,
Speaker 1: it's it's just the appearance of a cat cooking that
Speaker 1: they have created here trick photography. Yeah, cats lousy cooks.
Speaker 1: They're not they're not interested in cooking. But to tie
Speaker 1: it into our first segment here, you know one thing
Speaker 1: that that is great about cats is cats are very clean.
Speaker 1: You know, they enjoy They groom themselves, they clean themselves.
Speaker 1: They lick all over to get the dirt out of
Speaker 1: the fur. Actually, I don't know if that's why they lick.
Speaker 1: They lock themselves. That appears to be for some kind
Speaker 1: of hygienic purpose. I have no idea what it's actually for,
Speaker 1: but that mirrors U some of the behaviors were about
Speaker 1: to talk about in the category of animals washing their
Speaker 1: food before they eat it, and Robert, I don't know
Speaker 1: about your house, but I tend to be pretty fastidious
Speaker 1: about washing fresh produce. Do you do the same. Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I don't want any grit in whatever I'm cooking,
Speaker 1: and certainly, pending on the protosant question, you might get
Speaker 1: some grit if you don't wash it off. Well, if
Speaker 1: I make an ants on a log, I want to
Speaker 1: make sure that I have a scrub my celery sticks
Speaker 1: off before and then dry them, you know, before I
Speaker 1: actually start applying the peanut butter, and said ants. Well,
Speaker 1: it turns out this is one of the food preprocessing
Speaker 1: behaviors that is not unique to humans. All kinds of
Speaker 1: animals exhibit various washing behaviors, and I wanna say washing
Speaker 1: with scare quotes because in some cases this may actually
Speaker 1: be related to cleaning dirt or other materials off of
Speaker 1: the food, and in other cases it may have a
Speaker 1: completely different purpose. But in any case, it is taking
Speaker 1: a piece of food and washing it, or doing something
Speaker 1: that looks like washing with the help of water. That's right. UM.
Speaker 1: I was reading about some of this in a paper
Speaker 1: titled food dunking Behavior by a Eurasian Jay by Dearborn
Speaker 1: and Gager, published in the Ornithological Society of the Middle Least.
Speaker 1: They point out that crows and ravens have been observed
Speaker 1: to quote unquote wash their food and fountains before eating it. Um.
Speaker 1: And then they talk a little bit about how generally
Speaker 1: we see examples of this washing behavior in primates and
Speaker 1: birds um washing or dunking um. And in both birds
Speaker 1: and primates, the two main theories seem to be that
Speaker 1: it's about washing or removing a thin coating from the
Speaker 1: exterior the food, which generally that's what we're doing, or
Speaker 1: it's about making the food easier to eat, which is
Speaker 1: not something we're usually doing if we're just washing our
Speaker 1: produce in the sink. But it is what we're doing
Speaker 1: if we're, say, uh, dipping a particularly tough biscuit into
Speaker 1: a cup of tea or something. Yeah, this is the
Speaker 1: old hard tack tradition. You know, armies of old marching
Speaker 1: around or sailing around with hard tack biscuits. A lot
Speaker 1: of times. You like, you can't even eat these things straight.
Speaker 1: You can't just bite into them. You've gotta like dip
Speaker 1: them into your gravy or some other kind of liquid
Speaker 1: and then soften them up before you can consume. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So some of the examples that they mentioned in this
Speaker 1: paper from from other creatures are carrion crows eating dry
Speaker 1: bread used to be a situation where dry bread has
Speaker 1: been provided for them and they dip it before they
Speaker 1: eat it. Uh. Kill deer have been observed washing muddy
Speaker 1: frogs off before they eat them. Macaques have been observed
Speaker 1: doing the same thing with sandy crabs. Um captive monkeys
Speaker 1: have been observed doing this with dry monkey chow. And
Speaker 1: then the Eurasian jay example studied in the paper I cited.
Speaker 1: It involved the bird in question dunking an egg in
Speaker 1: water and then eating it. Though the researchers ultimately remained
Speaker 1: they remained unclear about what that was all about. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and in a lot of cases, it seems like these washing,
Speaker 1: dunking or dowsing behaviors are still uh, they're still unknown,
Speaker 1: and we still don't know exactly what the cause is
Speaker 1: that we have better ideas in some cases than in others. Uh.
Speaker 1: But one thing I was thinking about is that, um,
Speaker 1: you know, it may depend on your anatomy how important
Speaker 1: it is to douse something in external water before you
Speaker 1: eat it, depending on how strong your salivary glands are,
Speaker 1: because we're doing the same thing, but it happens in
Speaker 1: our mouths. I mean all the foods you eat. It
Speaker 1: gets kind of like coated in saliva and moistened that way,
Speaker 1: and it helps lubricate the swallowing process. Doesn't that sounds
Speaker 1: so appetizing? Yeah, well, I think we've we've touched on
Speaker 1: this before, but actually quite recently, I think talking about
Speaker 1: food and digestion. But like the the digestive process begins
Speaker 1: in the mouth, Like this is where food is initially
Speaker 1: uh masticated, broken up, broken down, um, partially liquefied, and
Speaker 1: then formed into that bolus that will then uh have
Speaker 1: been be swallowed and continue the journey. You don't want
Speaker 1: to be swallowing a dry bolus. No, no, But next,
Speaker 1: I wanted to think about one of the most famous
Speaker 1: examples of animals that appear at least to wash their
Speaker 1: food before eating it, and that is raccoons. This has
Speaker 1: got to be one of the cutest examples. I'm sure
Speaker 1: everybody out there on the internet this point has seen
Speaker 1: the the the heartbreaking video of the raccoon with a
Speaker 1: piece of cotton candy going to the water's edge to
Speaker 1: wash it, and then it dissolving, and the raccoon looks
Speaker 1: just so sad. I don't think I've seen that one,
Speaker 1: but I'm picturing it. I can imagine it. So I
Speaker 1: found something out I didn't know before. You know the
Speaker 1: word raccoon. The English word raccoon is derived from a
Speaker 1: word originally in the Algonquian languages. But do you know
Speaker 1: what the raccoon is called in German? No, what is
Speaker 1: it called? It is the vah bear, the wash bear,
Speaker 1: the bear the washes Oh nice. And the same principle
Speaker 1: shows up in its scientific name, which is procyon low tour,
Speaker 1: which means something like pre dog washer. So a raccoon
Speaker 1: is something that's maybe not quite a dog, not quite
Speaker 1: a dog yet, but it is associated with washing. And
Speaker 1: this etymology carries over multiple languages where the raccoon is
Speaker 1: known as something like the washing bear or the washing
Speaker 1: dog or something like that. Uh, and it refle one
Speaker 1: of the most notable characteristic behaviors of the raccoon, which
Speaker 1: is the fact that when they acquire a piece of
Speaker 1: food and there is water nearby, they will often dunk
Speaker 1: that piece of food in the water and then manipulated
Speaker 1: kind of put it in the water and swish it
Speaker 1: around a bit, maybe feel at it, paw at it,
Speaker 1: rub on it, and then retrieve it from the water
Speaker 1: and eat it. And it gives rise to the idea
Speaker 1: that raccoons are meticulous, little neat freaks that they're I
Speaker 1: don't know, hyper hygienic or germophobes or something, washing every
Speaker 1: bit of dirt and grime from food before consuming it,
Speaker 1: which is kind of funny when you think about other
Speaker 1: feeding habits of raccoons you might be familiar with, such
Speaker 1: as like getting into your garbage can and just eating
Speaker 1: the food in there, and they're not washing that food.
Speaker 1: They don't seem to be concerned about the dirt in
Speaker 1: that case. No, no, this is of course what it
Speaker 1: has learned them the nickname trash pandas before because they
Speaker 1: there's straight up in the garbage can, or certainly they will.
Speaker 1: They don't need to be by a stream to eat.
Speaker 1: You can. You can find poluting evidence of of raccoons
Speaker 1: eating without a handy washing station nearby. Right. So it's
Speaker 1: an activity that they do often enough that it's in
Speaker 1: the name, like they're clearly known for it, but they
Speaker 1: don't always do it. It appears to be optional occasional,
Speaker 1: but again common enough that it is. It has become
Speaker 1: a characteristic feature of the species. And so there's a
Speaker 1: big question like what are they doing. Are they actually
Speaker 1: trying to get dirt off of the food or are
Speaker 1: they doing something else? And there have been experiments that
Speaker 1: looked into this. So one study I wanted to look
Speaker 1: at was by Malcolm Lyle Watson, published in Proceedings of
Speaker 1: the Zoological Society of London in nineteen sixty three, called
Speaker 1: a Critical re Examination of food washing behavior in the
Speaker 1: raccoon or procyon low tour. Now, one thing this article
Speaker 1: says that I found alleged elsewhere on the internet is
Speaker 1: that raccoon food dousing behavior, and it calls the behavior
Speaker 1: dousing instead washing to avoid pre judging the issue of
Speaker 1: the purpose of the dowsing. So raccoons put their food
Speaker 1: in water very often, but we don't know exactly why
Speaker 1: they're doing it yet, so so they say dowsing instead
Speaker 1: of washing. So dousing behavior is something that the author
Speaker 1: here says is only seen in raccoons in captivity. But
Speaker 1: I kind of doubt that. I've just browsing around. I've
Speaker 1: read plenty of reports of people saying they observed this
Speaker 1: behavior and raccoons in the wild. So uh so, so
Speaker 1: I don't know about the the only in captivity part.
Speaker 1: I guess the detail here would be that in captivity
Speaker 1: one generally has a readily available supply of water. There's
Speaker 1: like a dish of water or I did just watch
Speaker 1: that cotton candy video in the background. You know, this
Speaker 1: is a case where it looks like it is a
Speaker 1: raccoon in a captive environment and there is the water
Speaker 1: for it to drink from, so it makes use of
Speaker 1: set water. Right, That's a good point. I mean, so
Speaker 1: captivity clearly provides the right setting and opportunities for this
Speaker 1: behavior to be observed. So maybe if it does occur
Speaker 1: in nature or if it doesn't. Either way, we can
Speaker 1: at least admit that the majority of the times humans
Speaker 1: are witnessing this behavior, it is in raccoons in captivity.
Speaker 1: But Lyle Watson says before this study, opinion was divided
Speaker 1: into roughly two camps about what the purpose of raccoon
Speaker 1: food dousing was. He says that some researchers thought that
Speaker 1: raccoons were actually washing their food, actively getting dirt off
Speaker 1: of it, and others thought that they were moistening it
Speaker 1: to make it easier to eat, you know, to essentially
Speaker 1: lubricated for the mouth, like we were talking about with
Speaker 1: the birds. And before we go onto the actual experiments,
Speaker 1: I just wanted to note something from the paper that
Speaker 1: I thought was interesting. The the author actually makes a
Speaker 1: table of observations of raccoons eating different kinds of foods
Speaker 1: and ranks them by which foods were doused the most
Speaker 1: often to the least often. So so if you look
Speaker 1: at this list, the foods that were doused the least
Speaker 1: often where things like corn oats and earthworms, and the
Speaker 1: foods that were doused the most often were crayfish, shrimp, water, snails,
Speaker 1: land snails, crabs, locusts, cockroaches, muscles, clams, cherries, grapes, eggs,
Speaker 1: and I'm reading down the list now, so I'm getting
Speaker 1: to about the middle. But one thing I thought was
Speaker 1: interesting is that a lot of the food items that
Speaker 1: are the most doused are animals that naturally live in
Speaker 1: the water. So I think they're being given to the raccoon,
Speaker 1: probably already dead or or out of the water when
Speaker 1: the raccoon receives them. But the raccoon is taking them
Speaker 1: to the water and dousing them and then eating them. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is notable on this this hierarchy here though of
Speaker 1: course that you know, you look at it too, and
Speaker 1: you're thrown for a curve on why the cherries are
Speaker 1: ranked so high, why the earthworm is ranked so low? Um.
Speaker 1: Other things seem to make you know a certain amount
Speaker 1: of sense, like okay, yeah, well corn is more us
Speaker 1: good to go the same with a pair. But so
Speaker 1: this study tried a couple of experiments to test the
Speaker 1: reigning hypotheses, the food moistening hypothesis and the active cleansing hypothesis.
Speaker 1: So as far as the cleansing hypothesis, uh, they said Okay,
Speaker 1: what if we try giving raccoons food that is dirty
Speaker 1: and then food that we've already cleaned off to see
Speaker 1: what the raccoons do with it. Will that make a difference?
Speaker 1: Like will they clean? Will they douse dirty food more
Speaker 1: than clean food? So this was tried with quote, small
Speaker 1: mud crabs, so that they might forge for these in
Speaker 1: the wild and you might expect them to have mud
Speaker 1: on them. And so raccoons in captivity were tested with
Speaker 1: clean crabs and dirty crabs, and what do you know,
Speaker 1: it made no difference at all. In fact, this was
Speaker 1: not a significant difference. But they doused the clean crabs
Speaker 1: more than the muddy crabs. Yeah. Yeah, So like if
Speaker 1: you're if you're going to be desperate with findings from
Speaker 1: this study like this wouldn't even back up the idea
Speaker 1: that they're washing anything exactly. So according to this experiment,
Speaker 1: it makes no difference at all, just sometimes they dunk
Speaker 1: and sometimes they don't, and it appears to have no
Speaker 1: relationship whatsoever to the amount of mud. So that's taken
Speaker 1: as a hit against the active cleansing hypothesis. But what
Speaker 1: about the moistening action idea? So what if the point
Speaker 1: of dowsing is too, is that wet food is easier
Speaker 1: to eat. Well, they tested this with an experiment as well.
Speaker 1: Um So Lle Watson says there was a series of
Speaker 1: three trials with the choices between dry dog biscuits, dried shrimps,
Speaker 1: and similar objects which had been soaked in water, and
Speaker 1: the result was again the raccoons showed no significant difference
Speaker 1: at all. They were just as likely to dunk in
Speaker 1: douse wet food objects as they were to douse dry ones.
Speaker 1: So both of the active hypotheses at at the time
Speaker 1: of the study in nineteen sixty three were disconfirmed by
Speaker 1: the experiments that Layle Watson did. So what does the
Speaker 1: author here think that the that the dowsing is actually
Speaker 1: for Well, he has an interesting idea. Of course the
Speaker 1: is not conclusive, but this is his interpretation. He says,
Speaker 1: um that the best explanation is that raccoon dousing of
Speaker 1: food is quote an artificial creation of a natural situation
Speaker 1: whose function is to allow the expression of a thwarted
Speaker 1: independent feeding mechanism. So I think what he means by
Speaker 1: this is that a raccoon, when dousing food, is going
Speaker 1: through the motions of an instinctual water based foraging or
Speaker 1: hunting strategy, that is, that is naturally rewarding, you know,
Speaker 1: in the same way that the hunting or foraging behaviors
Speaker 1: are to all kinds of animals. You know, we're motivated
Speaker 1: to do them, and it's rewarding to the raccoon's brain
Speaker 1: and associated with the acquisition of food, even though in
Speaker 1: these captive scenarios it's not actually doing anything. Now that
Speaker 1: that's interesting. That would mean it's not adaptive. Well, it
Speaker 1: would be. It would be adaptive that a raccoon has
Speaker 1: a natural desire to like fish around in the water
Speaker 1: for food items. But that maybe this this urge is
Speaker 1: so strong it's coming through even in moments where it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually need to forage. It's just satisfying an overwhelming desire.
Speaker 1: And he gives a comparison. So what Watson says, his
Speaker 1: quote the raccoons behavior is perhaps most closely related to
Speaker 1: what may be called the quote revitalizing behavior of certain
Speaker 1: feel a day cats. A captive cat who's hunting patterns
Speaker 1: of behavior are starved by virtue of the fact that
Speaker 1: all food is presented dead, will artificially create the opportunity
Speaker 1: to satisfy these responses by throwing a dead bird into
Speaker 1: the air and quote giving it life in order that
Speaker 1: it may be hunted down and caught before being eaten.
Speaker 1: This has been particularly well observed in the Golden Cat
Speaker 1: or Feelish Taminki at the London Zoo and uh so
Speaker 1: so Yeah, in the same way that you might see
Speaker 1: a cat that doesn't actually need to hunt, kind of
Speaker 1: batting a food item or even like a dead mouse
Speaker 1: around as if like it's still alive. And maybe the
Speaker 1: cat is trying to satisfy some need for hunting behaviors
Speaker 1: just because the hunting behaviors are instinctually rewarding. Perhaps the
Speaker 1: raccoon is doing something similar by fishing around for a
Speaker 1: food item that it actually already has in possession in
Speaker 1: the water, m okay, and so in this it would
Speaker 1: be comparable to like the play we observe in cats.
Speaker 1: We think of it as play. They're playing with a toy,
Speaker 1: but it's of course hunting instinct that you know that
Speaker 1: they've they're highly evolved to partake in. And if it's
Speaker 1: and even though there's nothing live running around your living room, uh,
Speaker 1: they need to engage in that kind of activity anyway, right,
Speaker 1: they have an instinctual drive for for hunting behaviors. They
Speaker 1: can't actually hunt in their environment because there's nothing to hunt,
Speaker 1: so they kind of hunt in superfluous ways, hunt in
Speaker 1: ways that are not really necessary and so uh and
Speaker 1: so Lyle Watson links this to the idea that this
Speaker 1: behavior is primarily observed or in his in his belief,
Speaker 1: only observed in raccoons in captivity. You know, normally they'd
Speaker 1: be out fishing around for crayfish and crabs and stuff
Speaker 1: in the water. In captivity, they don't have to do that,
Speaker 1: so they satisfied this drive by swishing their food items
Speaker 1: around in the water. I've remember hearing before that the
Speaker 1: like the hands of the raccoon are extremely subtle, uh,
Speaker 1: and that they're not affected by the like they can
Speaker 1: reach into cold water and feel around in cold waters
Speaker 1: with a tolerance that that humans are completely incapable of,
Speaker 1: and that their feeling of things in the water is
Speaker 1: more uh in line with like human sight, Like that's
Speaker 1: how sensitive their little hands are. Uh. So yeah, the
Speaker 1: sense experience of this, um uh, it makes sense when
Speaker 1: you think about like this uh, this sort of advanced
Speaker 1: uh grasping that's going on. This this advanced sense of touch. Well,
Speaker 1: that's actually the next thing I was gonna get to that.
Speaker 1: That is the The other or hypothesis that seems to
Speaker 1: be live about why raccoons doused their food is the
Speaker 1: idea that somehow it is it hyper charges the sensory
Speaker 1: abilities of their paws, and exactly like you're saying, raccoons
Speaker 1: are known in the animal world for having incredibly sensitive
Speaker 1: fore paws. Apparently they gather a large proportion of their
Speaker 1: sensations of the world through touch, and of course this
Speaker 1: is very useful if you're an animal that's like rooting
Speaker 1: around in muddy water for for prey. You know, you
Speaker 1: want to be able to get a lot of information
Speaker 1: by the pads on your fore paws, on your your
Speaker 1: hands and fingers, and so it has been argued that
Speaker 1: maybe the dousing behavior is related to the hyper sensitivity
Speaker 1: of their fore paws and the importance of the sensory
Speaker 1: information they get there. So perhaps moistening of the fore
Speaker 1: paws actually makes them more sensitive to textual information about
Speaker 1: the food in hand. So if this hypothesis were correct,
Speaker 1: it would be that dousing serves the purpose of letting
Speaker 1: the raccoon get better sensory information about the food they're
Speaker 1: about to eat in the type of sense uh, since
Speaker 1: realm that is most relevant to them, which is touch.
Speaker 1: So it would be sort of similar to a human
Speaker 1: looking at a morsel of food by holding it up
Speaker 1: to the light so they could get a better look
Speaker 1: at it. Or you know, a dog really going to
Speaker 1: town sniffing a piece of food before they eat it.
Speaker 1: That it would be a specialized sense heightening behavior that
Speaker 1: is particular to the sense regime of the raccoon. Ah.
Speaker 1: Now this, yeah, this makes a lot of sense, and
Speaker 1: at the same time, it also makes that cotton candy
Speaker 1: video all the more heartbreaking because it really wanted to
Speaker 1: understand this. This uh, this sugary concoction. What is this thing? Well,
Speaker 1: let me douse it in the water and feel it
Speaker 1: a little bit more. What now it is completely gone?
Speaker 1: Now I have I know even less about it than
Speaker 1: I did before. But anyway, I'm intrigued by both of
Speaker 1: these hypotheses. I don't know which one I would lean
Speaker 1: more towards, the sort of the hyper charging sensory data
Speaker 1: from the from the hands or the thwarted natural foraging behavior. Uh.
Speaker 1: Both both seem possible to me based on what I've read.
Speaker 1: The interesting thing about the idea of awar thwarted foraging
Speaker 1: behavior is that, um, it would seem to connect to
Speaker 1: that that list of foods that are doused most often,
Speaker 1: that the top of the list was all like aquatic
Speaker 1: animals that the raccoon would naturally forage for in the
Speaker 1: creeks and in the mud. Thank but Rob, if you're ready,
Speaker 1: I would actually like to turn to another example of
Speaker 1: animals doing something to their food that looks like washing
Speaker 1: but has been hypothesized to have a different purpose altogether.
Speaker 1: And this is related to seasoning. So in the last episode,
Speaker 1: uh we spoken whispers of horror about the idea of
Speaker 1: eating an unseasoned potato. You know, potatoes are great, they
Speaker 1: really needs some salt and pepper, hopefully some fat of
Speaker 1: some kind, butter oil or something to take them to
Speaker 1: their full potential. Just just the thought of a completely
Speaker 1: unseasoned cooked potato is is is very unappetizing. Yeah, even
Speaker 1: if you have one of those those really good potatoes,
Speaker 1: you know, like those fingerlings and the purple potatoes and
Speaker 1: of course sweet potatoes, even then they need a little something.
Speaker 1: And if you get into the realm of the Russets
Speaker 1: all the more. Now as always, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: our food preferences could be just cultural preferences. But I
Speaker 1: think it's clear that a really important part of human
Speaker 1: cuisine in general is seasoning. Maybe not to the same
Speaker 1: extent in every single culture in the world, but broadly
Speaker 1: all over the planet. People like to season their food,
Speaker 1: and seasoning amounts to augmenting the natural flavors of bulk
Speaker 1: food stuffs in our diet with with highly flavor relevant
Speaker 1: little little bits of ingredients, usually things like herbs, spices,
Speaker 1: and probably most importantly of all, salt. Now, there's a
Speaker 1: reason humans have a taste for salt. Salt is not
Speaker 1: just a nice to have. It is biologically essential, not
Speaker 1: in the quantities that that we Americans eat it. You
Speaker 1: know that that we we weigh more salt than we need,
Speaker 1: but you you've got to have some salt. Without any salt,
Speaker 1: you would be in a bad place. And we talked
Speaker 1: about this to some extent in our episodes about the
Speaker 1: science of thirst. Remember, you know the things about how
Speaker 1: you've got to have the right balance of osmolality in
Speaker 1: your blood, Like, yeah, the the amount of substances, especially salt,
Speaker 1: dissolved in the blood is relevant to the functioning of cells.
Speaker 1: Without salt, your body just doesn't really work. You need
Speaker 1: some salt. And likewise, you're cooking a stew or a
Speaker 1: soup or just about anything, you often find yourself in
Speaker 1: the situation where you're adding salt to taste, and you
Speaker 1: know it's like, oh, it's not quite there yet a
Speaker 1: little more salt. Not quite there, a little bit more salt.
Speaker 1: But the closer you get, the more stressful it can become,
Speaker 1: because you know that if you over salt it um
Speaker 1: there's not an easy way back. There may not be
Speaker 1: a way back. That is a very good point. Especially, Yeah,
Speaker 1: if it's like one homogeneous mass of food, like a
Speaker 1: like a soup or something, it's it's really hard to
Speaker 1: take the take the salt out, I guess, unless you
Speaker 1: just diluted by adding more water or something, but then
Speaker 1: you screw up the other flavor ratios. Yeah, it's just
Speaker 1: you don't want to over salt that that that's that's
Speaker 1: hard to fix. Steps. Now, lots of foods that we
Speaker 1: would find in the natural environment already have some salt content.
Speaker 1: You know, vegetables already have salt in them. If you,
Speaker 1: you know, like a like a stalk of celery actually
Speaker 1: is you can almost taste that celery is naturally a
Speaker 1: little bit salty. You can sort of taste the sodium
Speaker 1: in there. Of course, meat already has salt in it naturally,
Speaker 1: most people would add more salt to to season and
Speaker 1: but it has some sodium content there already. But we
Speaker 1: want more. And why why is it that we want more?
Speaker 1: As well? It's because the concentrations of salt that we
Speaker 1: naturally find in meat and plants in the environment, it's
Speaker 1: fairly low, and salt is necessary for surve bible. So
Speaker 1: our bodies are shaped by evolution to seek out extra salt. However,
Speaker 1: we can get it, and lots of animals acquire salt
Speaker 1: not just from food, but from mineral reservoirs known as
Speaker 1: salt licks or more accurately, mineral licks. Again, because salt can,
Speaker 1: in the narrow sense, be taken to imply just sodium chloride,
Speaker 1: and sodium is not the only electrolyte or mineral that
Speaker 1: animals need to supplement in this way. Animals are also
Speaker 1: looking for calcium, iron, zinc, phosphorus, and so forth. But
Speaker 1: the idea of a salt lick is interesting to me
Speaker 1: because I was reading about them, and what I had
Speaker 1: always pictured for a salt lick when I was growing
Speaker 1: up was that there's a deer, specifically a deer, and
Speaker 1: it's licking a white rock that has the desired minerals
Speaker 1: on its surface. And while this scenario does happen, apparently
Speaker 1: a lot of times, a mineral lick can also consist
Speaker 1: of like a place where animals come to sort of
Speaker 1: eat dirt or mud or clay that has the molecules
Speaker 1: they're looking for. But of course humans do something pretty interesting,
Speaker 1: which is that we combine the quest for supplemental salt
Speaker 1: with the broader quest for nutrition by salting food directly.
Speaker 1: The result is clearly more than the sum of its parts, because,
Speaker 1: after all, salt doesn't just make food taste saltier. I
Speaker 1: think humans mostly know from experience that it makes food
Speaker 1: taste more like itself. A little bit of salt seems
Speaker 1: to magnify the natural flavors present in whatever you're eating,
Speaker 1: So salt makes chocolate taste more like chocolate, and salt
Speaker 1: makes broccoli taste more like broccoli. It's just a general
Speaker 1: flavor intensifier. Yeah, Even things that don't need salt at all.
Speaker 1: Like a really good slice of watermelon is perfect on
Speaker 1: its own, and yet sprinkle a little salt on there,
Speaker 1: and you've managed to intensify even that. Yeah, it becomes
Speaker 1: hyper watermelon. And because of these obvious you know, sensory
Speaker 1: and pleasure benefits, the complement of supplemental salt to food.
Speaker 1: You might wonder, we'll do any non human animals season
Speaker 1: their food like we do? Do they combine the quest
Speaker 1: for food with the quest for supplemental salt into a
Speaker 1: single consumption activity. And you might assume no, But I
Speaker 1: came across a really interesting surprise here. So I want
Speaker 1: to turn to a actually rather famous episode in the
Speaker 1: history of primatology, but famous for a different reason than
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking about it, and that is
Speaker 1: the potato washing monkeys of Koshima Island in Japan. Rob,
Speaker 1: Have you ever heard about these before? I don't believe
Speaker 1: I had. Um, Yeah, some some of this came up
Speaker 1: in my research, but I knew that you you had
Speaker 1: the primates firmly in your side. Here. Well, I want
Speaker 1: to briefly mention side a couple of papers as sources
Speaker 1: here for what I'm about to talk about. One is
Speaker 1: by Massau Kauai called Newly Acquired pre Cultural Behavior in
Speaker 1: the Natural Troop of Japanese Monkeys of on Koshima inlet
Speaker 1: in the journal Primates in nineteen sixty five. And then
Speaker 1: the other one is a book chapter UH called um
Speaker 1: Sweet Potato Washing Revisited by Satoshi Hirada, Kunio Watanabe, and
Speaker 1: Kawai Masao. The last author is the same as the
Speaker 1: author of the paper from the sixties. Uh. This was
Speaker 1: published in Primate Origins of Human Cognition and Behavior in
Speaker 1: two thousand and eight. Uh So, first of all, one
Speaker 1: thing we should say is that everything we're about to
Speaker 1: describe is not a behavior observed purely spontaneously in the wild,
Speaker 1: but one that is at least in part a result
Speaker 1: of human intervention. So the entire story here comes with
Speaker 1: that caveat, but it's very interesting nonetheless. So on the
Speaker 1: island of Koshima in Japan, there are native populations of
Speaker 1: a monkey called the scientific name is Macaca fuscata, also
Speaker 1: known as the Japanese macaque or the snow monkey. You've
Speaker 1: never seen one of these, you should look them up
Speaker 1: that I think they're very cute. They're they're quite cute.
Speaker 1: They're very soft looking. For I know one shouldn't feel
Speaker 1: this way about wild animals, but I to pet them.
Speaker 1: But anyway, Beginning with some papers published by a scientist
Speaker 1: named Shunzo Kawamura in the nineteen fifties, researchers began to
Speaker 1: document an interesting behavior among a single troop of monkeys
Speaker 1: on Koshima Island, and it was washing their food. So
Speaker 1: the history went like this. In the early nineteen fifties,
Speaker 1: several Japanese researchers began providing food in the form of
Speaker 1: sweet potato pieces to the monkeys on the island, and
Speaker 1: I read in a book passage elsewhere that the original
Speaker 1: purpose of giving them the food like this was to
Speaker 1: lure the monkeys out into an open space near the
Speaker 1: waterfront where it would be easier for the researchers to
Speaker 1: watch them to observe their behavior. And I think part
Speaker 1: of the intended significance of this of this study was
Speaker 1: that the scientists would end up making long, multi generational
Speaker 1: observations of the same monkey troop, with individuals in the
Speaker 1: troop named and differentiated so that their individual behaviors could
Speaker 1: be documented. But of course the monkeys liked the extra food.
Speaker 1: They liked the sweet potato pieces. But the real twist
Speaker 1: came in September of nineteen fifty three when a young monkey,
Speaker 1: a one and a half year old female named Emo,
Speaker 1: appeared to have invented a new behavior. She washed her potato.
Speaker 1: And now washing was not previously part of the behavioral
Speaker 1: repertoire of these monkeys, but apparently Emo was reacting to
Speaker 1: the fact that these sweet potato pieces left out on
Speaker 1: the ground, they would get covered in sand and dirt, which,
Speaker 1: even if you're a monkey, is apparently not the best
Speaker 1: thing to eat. So in September nineteen fifty three, Emo
Speaker 1: started washing the sweet potatoes. So the standard sweet potato
Speaker 1: washing behavior is described as the monkey taking a sweet
Speaker 1: potato piece to the edge of the water um and
Speaker 1: then dipping the potato into the water, holding it in
Speaker 1: one hand, and then removing the sand or grit by
Speaker 1: brushing the potato under the water with the other hand.
Speaker 1: This potato washing behavior became famous because it was taken
Speaker 1: as evidence of the existence of quote culture in non
Speaker 1: human animals because, again according to mess Al Kauai in
Speaker 1: the paper from sixty five, by nineteen fifty six, eleven
Speaker 1: monkeys in the troop had acquired the behavior and had
Speaker 1: themselves become potato washers, and across subsequent research periods after that,
Speaker 1: the behavior continued to spread two more and more of
Speaker 1: the troop. Now, we could probably come back and do
Speaker 1: a whole episode on the idea of whether this should
Speaker 1: be viewed as analogous to human culture. But on its face,
Speaker 1: it seems to have a lot of properties that look
Speaker 1: like culture. It's a behavior that is not instinctual to
Speaker 1: the animal, but is learned and then is spread apparently
Speaker 1: from one individual to the other in the troop through
Speaker 1: a process of copying, eventually becoming the norm for the
Speaker 1: entire animal troop. But then, on the other hand, they're
Speaker 1: interesting questions about this and in differences from how we
Speaker 1: normally think of culture. For one, thing I thought was
Speaker 1: kind of interesting in this instance, Uh, the learning process
Speaker 1: seemed to work backwards from the way human culture is
Speaker 1: presumed to pass across generations, because it looks like sweet
Speaker 1: potato washing started with younger monkeys and gradually spread to
Speaker 1: the older ones. Like they said that Emo's mother apparently
Speaker 1: learned the potato washing behavior from Emo. Oh, well, I
Speaker 1: mean we we mentioned TikTok trends earlier. Okay, and you
Speaker 1: know TikTok trends are often associated with with youth culture,
Speaker 1: so that could be a case, there could be a
Speaker 1: case to be made. Well, yeah, you do have things
Speaker 1: that originate with the young people, with the youth, and
Speaker 1: then they are passed upward two older members of of
Speaker 1: of a population of a culture. I guess. So, yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe it's the the youth innovate and then the elders educate.
Speaker 1: But then certainly it does it does run counter to
Speaker 1: the sort of idea of of elders in a given
Speaker 1: group saying this is the way, this is the way
Speaker 1: we handle potatoes, this is the way we wash potato.
Speaker 1: Obey me, younglings. But but here, here's where we're about
Speaker 1: to get to the part that's relevant to the idea
Speaker 1: of animals seasoning food. So I wanted to read a
Speaker 1: passage from that paper by Kauai in nine. The background
Speaker 1: of this section is that the author is describing two
Speaker 1: distinct variants of sweet potato washing behavior, one in which
Speaker 1: the sweet potato is like I described a minute ago,
Speaker 1: dipped into the water with one hand and then brushed
Speaker 1: with the other hand to remove sand. The other variant
Speaker 1: is known as quote rolling, and it consists of letting
Speaker 1: the sweet potato drop into the shallow part of the
Speaker 1: water and then rolling it back and forth with one
Speaker 1: hand before retrieving and eating it. But now, to read
Speaker 1: from Massau Kauai quote but during the second period, a
Speaker 1: third type appeared. It consisted in dipping the potato into
Speaker 1: the water every time after knowing it once or twice.
Speaker 1: This behavior seems quite different from brushing the sand off
Speaker 1: from the potato. They collect potatoes and take them to
Speaker 1: the seashore. But if this is not for the purpose
Speaker 1: of washing, what reason is there in this behavior except
Speaker 1: for seasoning the potatoes with saltwater. Therefore, I will call
Speaker 1: this behavior the seasoning behavior. Huh So, obviously the behavior
Speaker 1: of repeatedly dipping the sweet potato into saltwater every time
Speaker 1: the monkey takes a bite. That could have other interpretations,
Speaker 1: but the seasoning interpretation seems to be a pretty good one. Like,
Speaker 1: why else would they be dipping it again every time
Speaker 1: they take a bite off of the off of the
Speaker 1: piece of food. Yeah, you can see this is something
Speaker 1: that emerges out of out of purely you know, the
Speaker 1: washing behavior. But then they grow to realize, Yeah, if
Speaker 1: the potato has been dipped in saltwater, it is more satisfying.
Speaker 1: And it of course is not only enhancing taste it
Speaker 1: is uh, it is also supplying something that the monkey's
Speaker 1: body needs exactly. So I would say that I think
Speaker 1: the seasoning interpretation sation of this behavior is not conclusive.
Speaker 1: We don't know for sure that's what they're doing, but
Speaker 1: it seems pretty valid, like it seems certainly on the table. Uh.
Speaker 1: Of course, as we talked about before, a potato tastes
Speaker 1: so much better with some seasoning. The same goes for
Speaker 1: a sweet potato. So yeah, could it be that this
Speaker 1: is not only an example of cultural transmission in non
Speaker 1: human animals and monkeys learning a non instinctual behavior from
Speaker 1: one monkey to another within the troop, but also an
Speaker 1: example of cookery culture cuisine emerging. Yeah. Yeah, I think
Speaker 1: that's a fascinating example. Thank thank now. In putting together
Speaker 1: these episodes, you assembled a list of different things that
Speaker 1: were part of human food culture. Uh, culinary practices uh
Speaker 1: that we were using sort of a guide to try
Speaker 1: and look for behaviors in the animal were old that yeah,
Speaker 1: more or less line up with them like, for instance,
Speaker 1: we we talked about the processing of food, the but
Speaker 1: butchery practices of course of the butcher board, the shrike,
Speaker 1: the lamb of guy or uh you know, and to
Speaker 1: a certain extent, you could make an argument that any
Speaker 1: kind of predator that doesn't eat its prey hole is
Speaker 1: engaging in some sort of butchery. Right. It's if it's
Speaker 1: selectively eating parts of the corpse of the cadaver um,
Speaker 1: then you could make at least a week case for this. Yes, though,
Speaker 1: when I when I start thinking about human butchery, you know,
Speaker 1: one thing my mind goes to is like the classic
Speaker 1: butcher's tools, the tools you see next to the big
Speaker 1: old wooden block that the animal would be taken apart,
Speaker 1: and of course you've got your knives, and that would
Speaker 1: be related to, you know, the things we've already been
Speaker 1: talking about. But another butcher tool you often see is
Speaker 1: that big old hammer. What's that hammer for? For tenderizing
Speaker 1: the meat? Uh? So, for many of our tougher foods,
Speaker 1: the material must be made tender prior to cooking and
Speaker 1: or consumption. The tenderization of meat with a hammer or
Speaker 1: mallet or masher is a great physical example of of this.
Speaker 1: You know, um and uh. You know it also essentially
Speaker 1: busts out some extra chewing prior to cooking. You know,
Speaker 1: you don't want to spend x amount of extra time
Speaker 1: chewing that meat or in any cases of chewing that
Speaker 1: potato or whatever it happens to be. Let's break it
Speaker 1: down a bit physically before it goes into our mouth.
Speaker 1: But of course, we we don't just tenderize foods with
Speaker 1: hammers and mallets. We also tenderize them chemically via special enzymes,
Speaker 1: as well as via mixtures like vinegar and broth. And
Speaker 1: when we apply a marinade, we're not only flavoring the
Speaker 1: matter we intend to cook or and or eat, but
Speaker 1: also we're softening it up. And again, this is a
Speaker 1: chemical breakdown that occurs inside the body as well, beginning
Speaker 1: in the mouth. Now we've discussed some methods of externalizing
Speaker 1: this process before, uh, and they bear at least equipment
Speaker 1: mentioned here. House Flies consume their food is a liquid diet.
Speaker 1: So first, a housefly scrubs food with the that it
Speaker 1: fines with bristles on the end of its proboscis, freeing
Speaker 1: up food particles. So think of these like dusty food
Speaker 1: particles that the house fly has found and then it
Speaker 1: vomits up a slurry of saliva and digestive juices. And
Speaker 1: in doing this, it's kind of like adding hot water
Speaker 1: to instant oatmeal mix. Um. You know. So if you're
Speaker 1: being very generous with the term, you can say a
Speaker 1: house fly is cooking sort of and then of course
Speaker 1: its slurps all of it up. I love that. Yeah,
Speaker 1: so it's it's cooking right from its own gut. Yeah. Uh.
Speaker 1: Spiders are also another great example. They'll inject digestive juices
Speaker 1: into the bodies of their prey to break down the insides,
Speaker 1: you know, particularly prey that's been paralyzed or wrapped up
Speaker 1: in webbing. Uh. And then after this, um, these juices
Speaker 1: have had time to work, they can simply drink the
Speaker 1: insides of the prey that they have captured. I believe
Speaker 1: we did a whole episode on what this would be like,
Speaker 1: What would it would be like to be eaten by
Speaker 1: a spider? It was called I Was Eaten by a
Speaker 1: Giant spider. Um. Yeah, that was a fun one. Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now it's also worth noting that these various means of
Speaker 1: tenderizing organic material, you know, it's it's also comparable to
Speaker 1: the process of decomposition, so we might well loop in
Speaker 1: natural decomposition into this category, especially for scavenger creatures who
Speaker 1: take advantage of such conditions. They can take advantage of
Speaker 1: food material that has been softened by decomposition, and they
Speaker 1: have evolved to tolerate uh levels of decomposition that other
Speaker 1: animals would not be able to handle. Now that that
Speaker 1: brings up another question. Uh, how about fermentation? That was
Speaker 1: another one we had on the list. Are the You know,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of examples of animals that consume fermenting fruit,
Speaker 1: for example, but are there examples of animals that are
Speaker 1: more actively involved in fermentation process? I couldn't really find
Speaker 1: any good examples, but again we could roughly file fermentation
Speaker 1: under the category of decomposition. So animals like elephants, birds,
Speaker 1: and monkeys that eat fermented fruit are also taking advantage
Speaker 1: of this process. And and on that note, I'd like
Speaker 1: to touch on just a few examples of animals that
Speaker 1: get involved with a couple of other activities that are
Speaker 1: that are highly important to human food culture, uh the
Speaker 1: storing of food, but then also of agriculture itself. So
Speaker 1: first on the the just on the topic of hoarding food,
Speaker 1: of of creating a cash of food that one can
Speaker 1: can turn to, especially during the winter. There are numerous
Speaker 1: examples of this, and we could easily talk about chipmunks
Speaker 1: and squirrels and whatnot, but I wanted to talk just
Speaker 1: a little bit about a super predator of note. Um,
Speaker 1: and that is the mole. Sup. Yeah, I mean if
Speaker 1: you're if you're an earth worm, the mole is the
Speaker 1: the ultimate destroyer. It is the super predator of the
Speaker 1: earthworm world. Uh. It eats nearly its weight in worms
Speaker 1: and similar subterranean creatures every day. Uh and um, it's
Speaker 1: it's impressive. But of course this is standard hunt and
Speaker 1: eat behavior, right. Nobody's gonna accuse the mole of engaging
Speaker 1: in uh, you know, culinary activities here by gobbling it's
Speaker 1: it's weight in earthworms every day. But where it begins
Speaker 1: to mirror some aspects of human food culture is that,
Speaker 1: like many other animals, moles also stockpile food for leaner times.
Speaker 1: While various rodents famously stockpile nuts and human stockpile all
Speaker 1: sorts of foods, the mole creates a horrifying subterranean dungeon
Speaker 1: of living worms, and this is an example of larger hoarding.
Speaker 1: Whoa living worms, yeah, or in some cases you might say, um,
Speaker 1: sort of half living worms. I guess it creates a
Speaker 1: limbo of worms, a limbo of of worms. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: was reading about this in a Tree Hugger article by
Speaker 1: Russell McClendon, citing a Mammal Society Species Overview article, and
Speaker 1: it points out that the moles have a worm paralyzing
Speaker 1: toxin in their bite, but they also will just bite
Speaker 1: the heads of of an earthworm to ensure a debilitating
Speaker 1: but non fatal injury to said worm. And then you know,
Speaker 1: they'll eat a lot of worms, obviously, but then they'll
Speaker 1: start dragging them away and they'll create these chambers full
Speaker 1: of still living worms that they can munch on through
Speaker 1: the leaner months. Single single mole chambers have been found
Speaker 1: to contain as many as four hundred and seventy live earthworms.
Speaker 1: So that's about eight hundred and twenty grams or one
Speaker 1: eight pounds of still living, still writhing earthworms for them
Speaker 1: to eat. This one, Like I said, I feel like
Speaker 1: it's a more grizzly and alarming example of the sort
Speaker 1: of thing we're used to. You know, it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the story nuts for the winter. Now, this is
Speaker 1: storing live earthworms and a big dungeon for the winter. Now,
Speaker 1: we would be remiss if we didn't at least touch
Speaker 1: on a topic that, of course, I think we we've
Speaker 1: we've discussed in in greater length before in the past.
Speaker 1: But uh bee honey Uh you know, Um, this is
Speaker 1: the sweet food stuff produced by the honey bee as
Speaker 1: well as some other bee species, and honey is basically
Speaker 1: yes bee vomit. Uh. We have uh enzyme activity playing
Speaker 1: a role in this, as well as water evaporation transforming
Speaker 1: mere sugary organic secretions of usually plants into an ideal
Speaker 1: storable food. So in this example we see both food
Speaker 1: production and storage. Uh. So it's one we're all familiar with.
Speaker 1: We all know where honey comes from. We know the
Speaker 1: miracle of honey. It's one of the great um achievements
Speaker 1: of the animal world, certainly the insect world. But it's
Speaker 1: also when we're so familiar with we kind of uh
Speaker 1: it's easy to forget the wonder of it, to overlook
Speaker 1: the wonder of what is being achieved here. And then
Speaker 1: another prime example from the insect world concerns the marvel
Speaker 1: of the leaf cutter ants, of which there are around
Speaker 1: I think forty seven identified species. They cultivate their own
Speaker 1: crop of fungus, growing it on harvested leaf clippings. In
Speaker 1: some cases, these fungus species are entirely dependent on their
Speaker 1: aunt masters. Uh. You know, we're talking like extinct in
Speaker 1: the wild situations, but it is uh, I mean, these
Speaker 1: are these are complex uh societies of these leaf cutter ants.
Speaker 1: But what they are practicing here is is agriculture in
Speaker 1: a nutshell, and they've been practicing it for for a
Speaker 1: period of time that dwarfs human agricultural practice. They got
Speaker 1: a stew going they do. Yeah, So I mean, I
Speaker 1: think it's neat to kind of look at some of
Speaker 1: those examples, especially because they kind of forecast what humans
Speaker 1: would come to do. Like what humans are doing with
Speaker 1: their food is certainly an advanced model, uh, compared to
Speaker 1: anything going on in the human world. But it's not unconnected.
Speaker 1: It's not it's not an island, you know. You you
Speaker 1: see shadows of what we are doing, uh in these
Speaker 1: other practices, in these other approaches to life, and so yeah,
Speaker 1: what we're doing is just kind of the the human
Speaker 1: complication of that. All right, we're gonna go and close
Speaker 1: out this episode, but you know, we would love to
Speaker 1: come back in the future and discuss the cuisine of
Speaker 1: non animals a bit more so if you have particular
Speaker 1: favorite examples of this, or if there's something in the
Speaker 1: animal world that you would like to personally make a
Speaker 1: case for um or it's just something you've observed right
Speaker 1: in and let us know, we'd love to hear from you.
Speaker 1: And uh, you know, we were just chatting a few
Speaker 1: minutes ago off Mike that you know, there are a
Speaker 1: number of different leads for this episode that we didn't
Speaker 1: have time to look into. So yeah, we could easily
Speaker 1: come back in the future and do a third episode
Speaker 1: if you the listener desires it. In the meantime, if
Speaker 1: you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your on Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays
Speaker 1: and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed Listener
Speaker 1: Mail on Monday, Artifact or Monster Fact on Wednesday, and
Speaker 1: on Fridays, we do Weird House Cinema. That's our time
Speaker 1: to set aside most serious matters and just focus in
Speaker 1: on a strange film. Huge thanks as always to our
Speaker 1: excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future,
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
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