Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of I Heart Radio. I'm
Speaker 1: your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology
Speaker 1: and evolutionary biology, and welcome to Season three a k a.
Speaker 1: This season break I had to do because I moved
Speaker 1: to another country, so I needed time to fly over here,
Speaker 1: and boy are my arms tired. Anyways, I'm back and
Speaker 1: extremely invigorated for season three. I've got so many plans,
Speaker 1: you guys, so many schemes, imachinations. You just have no
Speaker 1: idea what you're in for. But anyways, today on the show,
Speaker 1: we're talking about creatures who spit in the face of gravity.
Speaker 1: These critters laugh at the general concept of physics and
Speaker 1: take things to an extreme level, defying gravity, shrugging off
Speaker 1: space flight, and being extremely improbable in general. Noticed how
Speaker 1: I've carefully avoided saying that we're only talking about animals.
Speaker 1: I'm sure that won't be relevant later. And of course,
Speaker 1: at the end of the episode, I will reveal the
Speaker 1: animal behind the mystery sound from last week and the
Speaker 1: winner of the first ever Guests Who's Talk and contest.
Speaker 1: It has no prizes, no rewards except feeling smug, which
Speaker 1: I think is actually a pretty good reward in smug
Speaker 1: is good joining me today to talk about physics, gravity
Speaker 1: and the animals who scoff at the Cosmos is part
Speaker 1: of all physicist and co host of Daniel and Jorge
Speaker 1: Explain the Universe Daniel whiteson, Hi, I'm here to defend
Speaker 1: gravity against scoffers and everybody who is smugly ignoring it.
Speaker 1: Daniel Whites and attorney at law coming into defend gravity
Speaker 1: to object real heavy mood in the courtroom. That's right.
Speaker 1: You know, Gravity is unionized. They organized and effective and coordinated,
Speaker 1: and I'm here to speak for all of them. Well, dang, so,
Speaker 1: welcome back to this show. I'm really excited to have
Speaker 1: you on here today because we are talking about avity
Speaker 1: and the animals who just think it's no big deal.
Speaker 1: And in fact, later on in the show, we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about animals who are actually in space or
Speaker 1: have been in space. Of course they had little help
Speaker 1: from us humans, but it's still very interesting how they
Speaker 1: adapt to space, something that they have never had to
Speaker 1: deal with until we intervened and decided, let's just let's
Speaker 1: just put you in space, little fellas. See how you
Speaker 1: do well? You know, physics isn't just here to constrain you.
Speaker 1: Physics isn't just here to say what you can't do.
Speaker 1: We also do physics so we can learn how to
Speaker 1: manipulate the universe and how to use it bended to
Speaker 1: our will to accomplish our goals. So physics is also
Speaker 1: a helping hand sometimes exactly. I mean, in fact, the
Speaker 1: first little creature we're going to talk about uses physics
Speaker 1: to its advantage. Actually should say the creatures we're going
Speaker 1: to talk about, because we're gonna we're going to talk
Speaker 1: about wall crawlers. So you know that Spider Man can
Speaker 1: crawl up walls and mess with the multiverse, but real
Speaker 1: spiders and get gos and other arthropods can crawl up
Speaker 1: walls and mess around with the universe on the atomic scale.
Speaker 1: So have you ever wondered how a spider or geck
Speaker 1: or other little wall crawlers managed to climb up on
Speaker 1: a straight vertical like they can go right up a wall,
Speaker 1: even up glass, which seems pretty slippery and hard. I've
Speaker 1: I've tried, and doesn't work for me. I have a
Speaker 1: really fund mental image of you trying to climb the
Speaker 1: outside of a skyscraper. Listen, you know, you never know
Speaker 1: whether you can do it until you try at least once.
Speaker 1: And I got maybe two hands on there, and then
Speaker 1: it didn't keep working. But I'm not a gecko or
Speaker 1: a spider who to thunk it. So well, that's how
Speaker 1: you found out, right, maybe you were gecko or had
Speaker 1: bitten by or had been bitten by a radioactive get go,
Speaker 1: and you wouldn't have gecko woman. That's a good one.
Speaker 1: That's a I think, yeah. And then I'd go around
Speaker 1: and I'd use my razor sharp reflex is to swap
Speaker 1: my tongue out at criminals. That's a that's a great
Speaker 1: superhero we st right for Marvel. I bet Marvel already
Speaker 1: owns that. I p probably they've just taken every animal
Speaker 1: and plant and phungi and like added man or woman
Speaker 1: to the end of it and copyrighted, copyrighted, copyrighted, so
Speaker 1: nobody can do anything anymore. So. The ability of spiders
Speaker 1: and geckos and other small critters to ascend walls is
Speaker 1: thought to be primarily through Vanderwall's forces. So Daniel, you
Speaker 1: probably know how Vanderwall's forces work, as everyone knows Vender's walls,
Speaker 1: yet climb up them. That's right. Vander Wall's forces is
Speaker 1: a force between atoms and molecules, named after a Dutch physicist,
Speaker 1: Johannes vander Walls. And you know, I think it's funny
Speaker 1: how Van Dare makes something sound like, you know, fancy
Speaker 1: or you know, pretendial us or whatever. But in Dutch
Speaker 1: it just means like from the you know, it's like
Speaker 1: Daniel from the Irvine or something, Lothar of the Hill people.
Speaker 1: The same thing in uh in Italian, you know, Davinchi,
Speaker 1: it's like he's just he's from from Vinchi, exactly, no
Speaker 1: big deal. It's like his address, you know, yeah, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Well vander Walt's forces are these forces, you know, between
Speaker 1: atoms and molecules, and they can help hold things together. Um,
Speaker 1: they're kind of weak though, they're not like as strong
Speaker 1: as the electromagnetic force, and they fall off very quickly
Speaker 1: with distances, like you know, if Adams are too far apart,
Speaker 1: they basically don't feel the vander Walt's force at all. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's exactly right. So you know, you don't as a
Speaker 1: human really feel vander Wald's forces. Like if you put
Speaker 1: your hand on a wall, you're not necessarily going to
Speaker 1: feel like, oh yeah, I'm getting sucked into this wall
Speaker 1: because they're so weak. They're unlike other bonds between two atoms,
Speaker 1: Like if two atoms share an electron or have oppositely
Speaker 1: charged ions, it forms a much stronger bond. But the
Speaker 1: Vanderwalt's forces are these kind of it's a very mysterious,
Speaker 1: very gentle force between two atoms. Of course, you know
Speaker 1: more about it than I do. Only one of us
Speaker 1: is a particle physicist. I hate to put you on
Speaker 1: the spot here, but how do Vanderwald's forces work? Like
Speaker 1: why would there be this very weak attraction between two
Speaker 1: atoms or or also very weak uh repellent between two atoms. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: Vanderwaldt's forces are interesting because there's something we call a force.
Speaker 1: But you know, they're not like fundamental force of the universe.
Speaker 1: Like in particle physics we think about electromagnetism and the
Speaker 1: weak nuclear force, and the strong force and the force
Speaker 1: of gravity. These are the ways that particles can repel
Speaker 1: or attract each other. The vander Walt's force is something else.
Speaker 1: It's something that we've found through experiments, or that vander
Speaker 1: Walls found through experiments. It's sort of like an emergent force.
Speaker 1: It's like combination of all these things together has this
Speaker 1: sort of an overall effect. And you know it has
Speaker 1: also to do with like how the objects repel each other.
Speaker 1: It doesn't just attract that sometimes can repel each other
Speaker 1: because like two atoms have electron clouds, and when those
Speaker 1: electron clouds get a little too close to each other,
Speaker 1: they don't like necessarily to overlap, and so those electron
Speaker 1: clouds can like repel each other a little bit. And
Speaker 1: so it's something that like emerges from lots of little
Speaker 1: effects altogether. And are these are these like quantum or
Speaker 1: sub atomic effects? Like how how tiny are we talking about?
Speaker 1: Like at what level is this interacting in the universe. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's something that only really makes sense to talk about
Speaker 1: between atoms and molecules. So if you get down to
Speaker 1: like the tinies little particles like quarks, they don't feel
Speaker 1: vander Wall's forces against each other because it's something that
Speaker 1: only sort of makes sense when you're talking about atoms
Speaker 1: and molecules because it's an emergent phenomena. It's something that
Speaker 1: only arises at that scale um sort of like the
Speaker 1: way you know, ice cream doesn't make sense to talk
Speaker 1: about like an ice cream particle. There's no particle of
Speaker 1: ice cream, but ice cream is the thing we experience
Speaker 1: and we enjoy in the universities, and that comes together
Speaker 1: from other smaller pieces. It sounds like somebody has never
Speaker 1: had dippin dots. Dipping dots are not made of fundamental
Speaker 1: particles of ice cream. Mind blown realization. I don't know.
Speaker 1: I don't know about that. That doesn't sound right. I
Speaker 1: know you're a particle physicist, but there are some things
Speaker 1: you don't know. Well, I actually did build a dipping
Speaker 1: dots collider. We smashed dipping dots together very high energies,
Speaker 1: and we look, we have the data. Okay, um, and
Speaker 1: the dipping dots company is going to come after me
Speaker 1: for docks ing them here on the podcast. But no,
Speaker 1: dipping dots are just ice cream in another shape. Well,
Speaker 1: I would sign up for being a volunteer at that collider.
Speaker 1: Let those dipping dots collide right with my mouth. So yeah,
Speaker 1: It's it's an interesting thing because it's such a weak force.
Speaker 1: It's it's weaker than static electricity, where you know, if
Speaker 1: you rub a balloon on your head and you have
Speaker 1: that electrostatic force of it like clinging to your head.
Speaker 1: It's like that doesn't feel that strong, but it's even
Speaker 1: weaker than something like that. So it seems odd that
Speaker 1: this could be used by something like a spider or
Speaker 1: even a geck, which is relatively large when we're talking
Speaker 1: about atomic forces, to crawl up a wall. But indeed
Speaker 1: they do, and the way they do it is just
Speaker 1: by the power of large numbers. So one kind of
Speaker 1: like little connection between two molecules, uh through vander walls
Speaker 1: is not very strong, but if you multiply that by millions,
Speaker 1: suddenly you actually have something you can work with. So
Speaker 1: with spiders, who are adorable and cute and we love them, uh,
Speaker 1: if you look at their little feet on a microscopic level,
Speaker 1: they have a bunch of little hairs, nearly a million
Speaker 1: little tiny hairs on these feet, and they're so thin.
Speaker 1: What they're able to do that say, like a human
Speaker 1: hand can't do, is make contact really close with the
Speaker 1: surface that they're walking on. So because they have these
Speaker 1: hundreds of thousands of little hairs on each little tiny
Speaker 1: leg tip, uh, that those little teeny tiny like you
Speaker 1: can only see them under an electron microscope, hairs brush
Speaker 1: up against that surface, and each one experiences very weak
Speaker 1: Vanderwall's force, and then you add that up to six
Speaker 1: hundred thousand. Suddenly you've got a spider if she's got
Speaker 1: amazing miracle sticky feet. It's like if you take a
Speaker 1: spoonful of dipping dots, it actually tastes like a spoonful
Speaker 1: of ice cream exactly, so many tiny little exclusions going
Speaker 1: on in your mouth. And you take a spoonful of spiders,
Speaker 1: it's gonna taste like a spoonful of spiders. Have you
Speaker 1: done that experiment? In fact, the cumulative force of these
Speaker 1: tiny hairs on the spider feet are so strong they
Speaker 1: are pound for pound, much stronger than Spider Man himself,
Speaker 1: a very real person. So the adhesive force of six
Speaker 1: hundred thousand spider foot hairs, all taking advantage of Vanderwald's forces,
Speaker 1: allows the spider a grip of a hundred and seventy
Speaker 1: times its own weight. So that's like if Spider Man
Speaker 1: could crawl up a skyscraper while carrying two horses, and
Speaker 1: that's pretty impressive. I can't carry two horses across a
Speaker 1: flat surface, not to mention up a skyscraper. Shamefully, I
Speaker 1: can only carry one horse. So it's the same thing
Speaker 1: with get gos. Have you ever seen a geck foot?
Speaker 1: We used to have a gecko in my family. It
Speaker 1: was our failed experience of having a pet. The gecko
Speaker 1: was not just walking around anymore. Yeah. Yeah, they're very sensitive.
Speaker 1: They're hard to take care of. I had a crusted
Speaker 1: gecko in college. I don't think I was supposed to
Speaker 1: have a pet in the college dorms, but we had
Speaker 1: a crusted gecko, very cute. We fed it baby food.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that was the best thing for
Speaker 1: human babies. Yeah, it was like mango baby food and
Speaker 1: supplemented with the insects we found in our apartment. How
Speaker 1: did that happen to a bunch of college freshmen go
Speaker 1: to the grocery store shopping for gecko food and not
Speaker 1: find any, and they thought, well, they could probably eat
Speaker 1: baby food. Yes, yes, that is what happened, because you
Speaker 1: didn't find any like flies or worms or crickets in
Speaker 1: the grocery store. Yeah, we just had plenty of abundant
Speaker 1: pests in our party. And uh we did mix the
Speaker 1: the baby food with I think some cricket powder, so
Speaker 1: really lovely smell that we had go brewing in there,
Speaker 1: real real nice kind of home cooking that college freshman's did.
Speaker 1: But we actually, we actually took pretty good care of it,
Speaker 1: all things considered. But it was a very adorable little thing.
Speaker 1: In retrospect, I probably wouldn't recommend them as pets, just because,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's a really hard to take care
Speaker 1: of something like a gecko, and it's also hard to
Speaker 1: determine whether they are like ethically sourced. So but I
Speaker 1: was just a dumb college freshman, so what did I know.
Speaker 1: But it's little feet were so interesting, and it could
Speaker 1: crawl up vertically on walls, it could really grip to you,
Speaker 1: it could just crawl up your arm um. And the
Speaker 1: crested gecko actually is a really good jumper, so you
Speaker 1: could jump from one hand to another person across the room.
Speaker 1: It's very impressive. And it's little feet we're really interesting
Speaker 1: because they look like ruffles potato chips. They have these
Speaker 1: little ridges all over it, and when you zoom in
Speaker 1: with a microscope, on each ridge of this gecko's foot
Speaker 1: is millions and millions of little hair like structures called settee,
Speaker 1: and each of these little hairs, again tiny microscopic, small
Speaker 1: hair branches off into even tenier tinier nano scales called spatula,
Speaker 1: and these are so tiny and delicate. When they touch
Speaker 1: a surface like a wall or even a pane of glass,
Speaker 1: just like the spiders and arthropods we talked about earlier,
Speaker 1: they make very close contact with the atoms of that
Speaker 1: surface and they experience Vanderwall's forces. And so like the spiders,
Speaker 1: they by having millions of settee millions of these hair
Speaker 1: like structures and double the number of the little uh
Speaker 1: spetch juli, the nano scales that are on the tips
Speaker 1: of the hair like structures, they are able to get
Speaker 1: a pretty strong grip just using Vanderwald's forces uh and
Speaker 1: which to me is kind of incredible. How it boggles
Speaker 1: my mind from an evolutionary standpoint, because it feels like, sure,
Speaker 1: as you know, someone really smart, like a physicist could
Speaker 1: come up with, Hey, let's like we could take advantage
Speaker 1: of Vanderwald's forces by having a bunch of teeny tiny
Speaker 1: hairs and multiplying them by a million, and we can
Speaker 1: run it through a computer program. In fact, I think
Speaker 1: there are some researchers who have made robotic geckos using
Speaker 1: artificial site um, very cool, but like from an evolutionary perspective,
Speaker 1: like how many little steps you have to go through
Speaker 1: before kind of happening upon like, oh, these little tiny
Speaker 1: hairs on my feet are sticky and they stick to walls.
Speaker 1: It's it's crazy, it's amazing. And how many walls were
Speaker 1: there that these like ancient decos had to scramble up
Speaker 1: to avoid predators? Did they like, you know, run up
Speaker 1: prehistoric glass walls inside volcano shafts or something to avoid predators?
Speaker 1: Why do you even need this crazy skill? Have you
Speaker 1: seen dinosaurs the nineties sitcom? They had houses? I do
Speaker 1: think it's super awesome though, because it reveals to you
Speaker 1: a layer of the universe you don't usually see that
Speaker 1: these surfaces that you think are super slick microscopically are
Speaker 1: fundamentally different, right. They have all sorts of interesting like
Speaker 1: wiggles and cracks and texture to the surface that if
Speaker 1: you understand how to take advantage of microscopically, you can
Speaker 1: do things that macroscopically seem impossible. And I think that's
Speaker 1: a cool lesson. You know that that understanding how things
Speaker 1: work microscopically is actually important, and that the way things
Speaker 1: look is not the way things actually work. Absolutely, And
Speaker 1: I jokingly kind of frame this episode of like animals
Speaker 1: who defy physics, but really they are using physics to
Speaker 1: their advantage. Physics is a neutral force, neither good nor evil. Um,
Speaker 1: it's undefiable, right, Like, you can't defy physics, not like
Speaker 1: some body of law that's going to come and strike
Speaker 1: you down. You're just like you can't. Yeah, science fiction novel.
Speaker 1: What if I say pounds sand physics? Is that defiant enough? Well,
Speaker 1: you're using physics to scream your defiance at physics, my brain.
Speaker 1: Really you're compliant bow my brain. Um. But yeah, So,
Speaker 1: new research indicates that geckos might use, in addition to
Speaker 1: Vanderwald's forces, another molecular force up their sleeves, static electricity,
Speaker 1: which I talked about earlier as being a stronger atomic force. Um. So,
Speaker 1: Researchers at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada gave
Speaker 1: a bunch of geckos teflon foot massages to measure the
Speaker 1: chart charge of their little feet, which sounds like the
Speaker 1: most adorable research I can imagine, Like they just like
Speaker 1: gently rubbed these little gecko feet against the teflon to
Speaker 1: measure the charge. Uh, And they did, in fact find
Speaker 1: that their feet were positively charged and the teflon was
Speaker 1: negatively charged upon contact, so that that difference in charge
Speaker 1: creates an attraction. And just like you know when you
Speaker 1: rub a rub a balloon and your hair all sticks
Speaker 1: up and uh, you know, it's says somehow these geckos
Speaker 1: are able to take advantage of two forces, both vander
Speaker 1: walls and the static electricity. That's pretty amazing, good job geckos.
Speaker 1: See they are masters of physics. They're basically tiny little
Speaker 1: physicists or engineers. I'm not sure. Move over, Daniel, Let
Speaker 1: a gecko take your job. I'm climbing the walls already
Speaker 1: over here. But this doesn't yet disproved that Vanderwall's forces
Speaker 1: are actually the primary uh method for geckos to climb alls,
Speaker 1: because geckos can actually climb up straight surfaces underwater where
Speaker 1: they can't form these electro static connections like the static
Speaker 1: electricity connections. So while the static electricity may help them,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's more of a situational thing, like
Speaker 1: if they can form a static charge against the surface,
Speaker 1: they do and it probably helps them, but they don't
Speaker 1: appear to need that they still rely on this you know,
Speaker 1: very weak force that they just uh, multiply by a million.
Speaker 1: So getck research is like an active area of inquiry,
Speaker 1: Like there're people out there writing grants about geckos and
Speaker 1: raising geckos for research. Is that ethical? Is it ethical? Well,
Speaker 1: you know, I think it's that's a difficult question to answer.
Speaker 1: I think it depends very much on the nature of
Speaker 1: care that the get go are getting. It depends on
Speaker 1: how you source the geckos. If you're getting them, if
Speaker 1: you're breeding them in a lab, I don't think that
Speaker 1: has too much of a negative impact on the environment
Speaker 1: unless you accidentally release them and they become invasive. So,
Speaker 1: you know, it depends on a lot of factors, the
Speaker 1: ethics of geckos. But regardless of the ethics, we have
Speaker 1: shot geckos into space. These are just the fact, regardless
Speaker 1: of the ethics, whatever you say after that, I think
Speaker 1: the geckos need a union and they need representation because
Speaker 1: it sounds like nobody's really thinking about what the get
Speaker 1: go wants in these experiments. Daniel Whites and attorney at
Speaker 1: the Law of Physics here to and geckos so on
Speaker 1: board the b I O n M one unmanned spacecraft.
Speaker 1: There are a bunch of turners thick toad geckos or
Speaker 1: there were, I don't know if this is a currently
Speaker 1: running experiment. And they wanted to see the effects of
Speaker 1: low gravity and and orbit on some reptiles, just see
Speaker 1: how they do. How how do you like that on
Speaker 1: the scale of zero to ten? Like how much you
Speaker 1: like space? Um? And these geckos apparently weren't having such
Speaker 1: a bad time because they were observed doing what appeared
Speaker 1: to be play in space. So one of the get
Speaker 1: gos went rogue, got out of its collar, and because
Speaker 1: they were in low gravity, the collar floated away, and
Speaker 1: the geckos started playing with it, like pushing it, kicking
Speaker 1: it back and forth. One getto tried to put its
Speaker 1: head inside the collar. One of them tried to like
Speaker 1: stand on it. So they seemed to be playing around
Speaker 1: in space, taking an interest in the bizarre physics of
Speaker 1: this floating little tiny gecko collar. Wow, we're really projecting
Speaker 1: human mental models onto geckos that we are torturing by
Speaker 1: launching them into space and then acting as if they
Speaker 1: liked it. You know, look, they're having fun. I mean,
Speaker 1: maybe they're like panicked and they're like scrambling desperately to
Speaker 1: get their collar back on. Who really knows what is
Speaker 1: it like to be a gecko? What is it like
Speaker 1: to be a geck in space? I don't know. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't go into space? Would you? Would you get on
Speaker 1: board and experiment to go into space if they told
Speaker 1: you you could even play games in space as a human?
Speaker 1: Maybe not, But as a gecko, I think I would because, like,
Speaker 1: life as a gecko is already pretty perilous, so you know,
Speaker 1: being a getck Go in space doesn't sound so bad.
Speaker 1: I can already climb walls, so zero gravity shouldn't be
Speaker 1: that weird for me. I guess I'd rather be a
Speaker 1: gecko in space than a get go like trapped in
Speaker 1: a lab somewhere massages or in some like cage in
Speaker 1: some freshman dorm or something, being fed baby food instead
Speaker 1: of okay, we were chilled, We were chill. Get Go
Speaker 1: paid into the beer the beer budget too, so you know,
Speaker 1: I got the party. So when we were to we're
Speaker 1: actually going to talk about even more animals who have
Speaker 1: escaped gravity by literally being shot into space, the reasons
Speaker 1: they were up there and what they experienced while they
Speaker 1: were there, probably some fear. Well we'll find out. So, Daniel,
Speaker 1: do you know who the first animals in space were? Oh?
Speaker 1: I know that there was a Sylviet street dog that
Speaker 1: they launched into space. La. Yes, yes, that's about as
Speaker 1: far back as my knowledge goes that was. It's such
Speaker 1: a tragic story because while it's something really interesting in
Speaker 1: terms of I am, you know, sort of scientific milestone,
Speaker 1: I have so much compassion for dogs. I can't help
Speaker 1: but feel just so emotional about that story, so so
Speaker 1: sorry for like who must have been so scared because
Speaker 1: you know, as as we know, like they were able
Speaker 1: to launch like up into space, up into lower orbit.
Speaker 1: But when they she came back down, the capsule burned
Speaker 1: up and like died, which was very sad. But what
Speaker 1: doesn't make me sad is sending fruit flies into space.
Speaker 1: The first animals in space were not cute little dogs.
Speaker 1: That was not chimpanzees, it wasn't even rats. It was
Speaker 1: fruit flies. And they returned to Earth perfectly safely, which great.
Speaker 1: I don't care as much about the fruit flies as
Speaker 1: I did Like. So that's what you are talking here,
Speaker 1: fruit flies in space, Ninete, what incredible fruit flies went
Speaker 1: to space and came back and we can ask them
Speaker 1: about it and the teeny tiniest of microphones, like, how
Speaker 1: is your experience in space? Mr? Fruit fly? It's like
Speaker 1: not that much fruit, So I wasn't that interested. Um,
Speaker 1: So the US launched a V two rocket from New
Speaker 1: Mexico with a payload of flies. The purpose was to
Speaker 1: see how radiation affects living organisms at high altitudes. So, Danny,
Speaker 1: you probably know, like why radiation is more of a
Speaker 1: concern when you're in space than when you're on Earth. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: because space is filled with radiation. The Sun, for example,
Speaker 1: is constantly pumping out huge amounts of radiation. This means
Speaker 1: like really high energy particles like protons and electrons, and
Speaker 1: also just really high energy photons. But this was not
Speaker 1: something we knew early on. We thought that as you
Speaker 1: went up in space, the radiation would drop. We thought
Speaker 1: maybe the radiation radiation was coming from the Earth like
Speaker 1: minerals in the Earth, and as you went out into
Speaker 1: space it would fall off. So people were actually surprised
Speaker 1: when they discovered that radiation increased as you went up
Speaker 1: into space. Basically that the atmosphere is acting as a
Speaker 1: huge shield, just like a big wet mattress or something
Speaker 1: protecting us from all these tiny bullets from space. This
Speaker 1: atmosphere seems pretty important. Well, good thing, we haven't done
Speaker 1: anything bad to it, so yeah, no, exactly. The sun
Speaker 1: is beaming down a lot of radiation. You feel it
Speaker 1: every time you go outside and you feel warmth on
Speaker 1: your skin. Maybe you get a sunburned. Don't do that
Speaker 1: where sunscreen from a red head to you everybody. You
Speaker 1: don't have to be a redhead to need sunscreen. But yeah,
Speaker 1: when you get a sunburn, that is a radiation burn. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's a relatively mild one that you know, over
Speaker 1: time does increase the chance of skin cancer. But in space,
Speaker 1: with no atmosphere to protect you, the radiation from the
Speaker 1: sun can really wallop you. That's right. Astronauts have to
Speaker 1: be really careful because not only is there a lot
Speaker 1: of radiation, but it fluctuates, like the sun can basically
Speaker 1: like burp and emit huge amounts of radiation, you know,
Speaker 1: like these solar flares. They call this like solar weather
Speaker 1: or space weather, and then you can have like much
Speaker 1: more intense radiation very briefly, and most astronauts and space
Speaker 1: have like a panic room they can go into that's
Speaker 1: extra shielded with like it or something to protect them
Speaker 1: from these bursts of radiation. Makes me wonder if on
Speaker 1: the I. S. S there's like some kind of belch
Speaker 1: and then someone's like, who burped? It's like the Sun.
Speaker 1: Well it's better than calling it, you know, the Sun's flatulence.
Speaker 1: Blame it on the Sun. Astronauts. There's nowhere to hide
Speaker 1: if you fart in the International Space Station. But you know,
Speaker 1: actually space has an interesting smell. You know, when you're
Speaker 1: come in from outer space. Space suits have an interesting
Speaker 1: odor because they've accumulated various stuff that's out there and
Speaker 1: they've been like activated by the various high energy particles,
Speaker 1: and so astronauts have reported that once you come in
Speaker 1: from outer space, they smell this is sort of smells
Speaker 1: a little bit like you know, overdone barbecue. But sometimes
Speaker 1: if you get interesting aromatics, you can have like smells
Speaker 1: of raspberries or all the weird stuff someone's cooking somewhere
Speaker 1: in space. Space Gordon Ramsey yelling at some space chef,
Speaker 1: I love it. Yeah, So why didn't those fruit flies
Speaker 1: go up there and appreciate the raspberry smell of space? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I feel like we should have just left him up there.
Speaker 1: I hate fruit flies. I mean I don't. I don't
Speaker 1: hate any animal really, but still when they get on
Speaker 1: my fruit, it's very annoying. I have a friend who
Speaker 1: does research on fruit fly brains actually, and she just
Speaker 1: kills the fruit flies when she's done. They just you know,
Speaker 1: they knock about with C two and just squish them.
Speaker 1: There's like no compassion there at all. Oh boy man,
Speaker 1: they don't get to retire to a field like a farm,
Speaker 1: a fruit fly sanctuary. Here's a banana one for each
Speaker 1: of you. Thank you for your contributions to science. Nope,
Speaker 1: get knocked out and squished. Well, speaking of questionable practices
Speaker 1: towards animals. While I don't particularly have a huge amount
Speaker 1: of sympathy for fruit flies, although I do not hate them,
Speaker 1: I don't hate any insect. They're all very interesting, uh.
Speaker 1: In the nineteen seventies, NASA, working with Italian researchers, sent
Speaker 1: some bull frogs up into orbit on the Orbiting Frog
Speaker 1: Odalith satellite to see how they dealt with motion sickness, which, god,
Speaker 1: I feel so much sympathy for these poor frogs. As
Speaker 1: someone who has a sensitive stomach and who gets motion
Speaker 1: sick in cars? If I read for like a nanosecond, Ah,
Speaker 1: this sounds like a nightmare. Well why frogs? Why would
Speaker 1: they use frogs? Are frogs particularly sensitive to motion sickness?
Speaker 1: Well that's what's really interesting about this. So to talk
Speaker 1: about why. First, why is it called orbiting frog odalith?
Speaker 1: The odalith refers to a structure in the inner ear
Speaker 1: that allows vertebrates to detect motion and gravity. So in
Speaker 1: humans and other mammals, odaliths are these little grain like
Speaker 1: mineral structures made out of calcium carbonate that are suspended
Speaker 1: in a fluid. So when our heads tilt back and forth,
Speaker 1: or when we experience gravity on our bodies, uh, the
Speaker 1: odalis move inside the fluid and press on cells inside
Speaker 1: your inner ear. Like if you have imagine sort of
Speaker 1: like a jar filled with little rocks, and the jars
Speaker 1: filled with olive oil or something and you move it around, Um,
Speaker 1: they will respond, uh, you know, not extremely quickly, but
Speaker 1: gradually will respond to being tilted here and there and
Speaker 1: and being dropped on the ground. Um. And so what
Speaker 1: happens when these these little grains, these little odaliths move
Speaker 1: flash back and forth in your ear? They press upon
Speaker 1: what are called hair cells. So hair cells don't have
Speaker 1: anything to do with like the hair on your head.
Speaker 1: They are actually slender cells inside your inner ear that
Speaker 1: connect to nerve fibers and sends information to your brain.
Speaker 1: So these odalis form like a little avalanche and press
Speaker 1: on these slender hair like cells, and then that sends
Speaker 1: a message to your brain that oh, I'm falling, this
Speaker 1: is bad. Or you're in a car and you're moving
Speaker 1: and these odalists get pushed back in your ear, and
Speaker 1: if you tilt your head forward, it can give you
Speaker 1: this sense of falling forward and cause you to become
Speaker 1: disoriented and motion sick. So I'm imagining like having a
Speaker 1: cup of coffee in your car and then you hit
Speaker 1: the accelerator and then the surface of the coffee changes right,
Speaker 1: doesn't just stay flatted like moved back towards the cup
Speaker 1: where if you hit the brakes, suddenly your coffee flies
Speaker 1: out of your cup. So you can like have a
Speaker 1: little container of stuff that tells you whether you're accelerating
Speaker 1: forwards or backwards or whatever. So that's what's happening inside
Speaker 1: our ear. We have like little coffee mugs basically, and
Speaker 1: they're telling us whether they're spilling over or not, and
Speaker 1: that tells your brain basically how you're being moved. Little
Speaker 1: coffee mugs with like lumps of sugar in it that
Speaker 1: slash around. So while odolith's function differently in other vertebrates, frogs,
Speaker 1: coming back to your question, Daniel, actually have a similar
Speaker 1: inner ear structure to humans. So that's why we shot
Speaker 1: frogs into space, specifically bull frogs, because their inner ear
Speaker 1: mechanism works similarly to humans. Uh and unfortunately for them,
Speaker 1: very unfortunately for them. So how did they measure motion
Speaker 1: sickness of bull frogs alone in space? Was it little
Speaker 1: froggy barf bags or a survey? Sadly no, they used
Speaker 1: electrodes implanted in their inner ear nerves or vestibular nerves
Speaker 1: to collect data on the activity of those inner ear nerves.
Speaker 1: So activity that varied greatly from baseline indicated that the
Speaker 1: inner ear was panicking and sending frantic messages to the
Speaker 1: brain about weight blessness in spaceflight in orbit. And uh,
Speaker 1: because this was very interesting, uh in terms of like, well,
Speaker 1: what will happen to astronauts that we send out if
Speaker 1: we send them into orbit? Are they just going to
Speaker 1: be vomiting continuously, which would be horrible because in the
Speaker 1: vomit would float away. Uh and uh. What they found
Speaker 1: was that after an initial period of the frog ears
Speaker 1: freaking out, that their ears sending these frantic messages to
Speaker 1: their brand going like what is happening, they actually returned
Speaker 1: to baseline. So that indicated that the bull frogs acclimated
Speaker 1: to low gravity, and after a little while of adjustment,
Speaker 1: they're like, this is fine, I'm fine. You know, image
Speaker 1: of image of that dog sipping coffee in the fire,
Speaker 1: except it's like a bullfrog in space sipping coffee, going
Speaker 1: this is fine, I'm vomiting. Of course, it becomes a
Speaker 1: little more nightmarish when you hear about the actual set
Speaker 1: up of the experiment, because of course they didn't just
Speaker 1: have a bunch of cute little frogs and little froggy
Speaker 1: spacesuits all buckled in, all all cutely. The way the
Speaker 1: frogs were sent into space is a little bit of
Speaker 1: a kind of black mirror situation for frogs. Their arm
Speaker 1: nerves were severed so they wouldn't move and so they
Speaker 1: wouldn't pull out the electrodes, and so that they could
Speaker 1: survive longer without eating um because like by severing their
Speaker 1: arm nerves, it meant they wouldn't move around and they
Speaker 1: would slow down their metabolism. And they were suspended in
Speaker 1: water to allow gas exchange and breathing, so like the
Speaker 1: ultimate sensory deprivation tank. But being shot into space and
Speaker 1: not being able to move your arms and legs, that's
Speaker 1: a you know, I'm glad I wasn't a bullfrog in
Speaker 1: the nineteen seventies. We got to find out who that
Speaker 1: bullfrog's agent was because they really fell down on the job. Like, seriously,
Speaker 1: those frogs needs to representation. That sounds like a nightmare. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and did they did they survived? Did they come back
Speaker 1: to Earth or are they still up there like frozen
Speaker 1: frog somewhere? You know, I'm not sure if they survived.
Speaker 1: I think they did have to retrieve the capsule though,
Speaker 1: to get the electrode data, so one or the other
Speaker 1: the frogs came back to Earth. But regardless of whether
Speaker 1: they survived, they were probably euthanized because what kind of
Speaker 1: a life is it for a frog to, you know,
Speaker 1: just be suspended in water and uh, with all these
Speaker 1: electrodes sticking out of you, maybe you got to listen
Speaker 1: to podcasts. You know that would Yeah, if you're a
Speaker 1: frog in space in some kind of secret experiment. Thanks
Speaker 1: for listening, uh and don't forget to like and subscribe.
Speaker 1: So there's one more organism I want to talk about,
Speaker 1: But the fact that it's going to be orbiting the
Speaker 1: Earth is perhaps the least interesting part about it. And
Speaker 1: so when we return, we're going to be talking about
Speaker 1: a blob. So Daniel, let's talk about the space blob.
Speaker 1: Space blob of what frog vomit or something else. It's
Speaker 1: just the space blob. Period. So earlier in the episode,
Speaker 1: I teas that we're not going to be only talking
Speaker 1: about animals. Uh so most recently, uh so, relatively recently,
Speaker 1: we uh sent wait, no sorries. So we are currently
Speaker 1: sending a rather different organism into space. It is a
Speaker 1: slime mold called VI Serum poly syphonium, which is a
Speaker 1: slime mold known colloquially as the blob. That's like the
Speaker 1: actual name that researchers often referred to. It's it's the
Speaker 1: blob um. They have blob conferences and blob meetings. We
Speaker 1: need to discuss the blob. It's becoming urgent. So this
Speaker 1: thing is not an animal. It's not a fungus, it's
Speaker 1: not a bacteria, and it's not a plant. It is
Speaker 1: a eukaryote like humans and plants and animals, but it
Speaker 1: is a protest, So protest is any eukaryote that's neither
Speaker 1: an animal, plant, or fungus, Which is kind of circular logic,
Speaker 1: isn't it. It's like, right, right, what is it's just
Speaker 1: the miscellaneous bin of animals or actually no, it's the
Speaker 1: miscellaneous bin of non animals that are not plants or fungus.
Speaker 1: But they are eukaryotes, which you know, and they must
Speaker 1: have other things in common with each other, right, They
Speaker 1: can't only be defined by not being something else. That's
Speaker 1: kind of how it is. Actually, they are not necessarily
Speaker 1: always related that closely like. There might be some that
Speaker 1: are more closely related, but there might be some that
Speaker 1: are like more closely related to animals or more closely
Speaker 1: related to plants or to fungus, But they just why
Speaker 1: what they share in common is the lack of being
Speaker 1: an animal, a fungus, our plant, which you know when
Speaker 1: you think about it. Sometimes the strongest friend groups are
Speaker 1: just made based on what you dislike and not what
Speaker 1: you like you get together and I'll complain about the
Speaker 1: same TV show. Yeah, you get together there and complain
Speaker 1: about me and all these animals and plants and and uh,
Speaker 1: fungus just watching Friends reruns. It's not even that good.
Speaker 1: It's not that funny. They just wanted to be invited. Really,
Speaker 1: they're just bitter. Put us in our own little group
Speaker 1: of misfits. Will show you. So are slime mold connected
Speaker 1: to anything else? So they have any like weird other
Speaker 1: evolutionary cousins are They like on their own the only
Speaker 1: things like them on earth. They're kind of on their
Speaker 1: own and even weirder like a slime mold is not again,
Speaker 1: like necessarily all closely related to each other. It's kind
Speaker 1: of like when we talk about fish, where you know,
Speaker 1: we call a lot of things fish, but a one
Speaker 1: fish might be more closely related to humans than it
Speaker 1: is to another fish. It's a similar case with slime molds. Uh.
Speaker 1: They can often look pretty similar or behave somewhat similarly,
Speaker 1: but sometimes they're just not very related at all. They're
Speaker 1: just kind of this like catch all thing of like
Speaker 1: it's weird and slimy and kind of looks like a mold,
Speaker 1: but we don't know. Uh So, the blob. Sorry, excuse me,
Speaker 1: so the blob. Let's get back to the blob. We
Speaker 1: got to talk about the blob. Very important to talk
Speaker 1: about the blob. What does the blob look like? Kind
Speaker 1: of looks like a yellow splat, you say, in the
Speaker 1: most flattering terms possible. It is like a ballago that
Speaker 1: you forcefully threw down on the ground and kind of
Speaker 1: splattered all over the place. Uh So, it is like
Speaker 1: a goop that has these branching yellow veins coming out
Speaker 1: of the goo. Uh yeah, looks it looks looks good,
Speaker 1: looks cool. It looks like a nightmare. It sounds like
Speaker 1: a nightmare. Looks a little bit like neon barf um.
Speaker 1: And aside from living, crawling neon barf living neon barf
Speaker 1: uh And other than that, it's also very strange, very
Speaker 1: weird organism. Uh So, during one stage of its life cycle,
Speaker 1: it is actually an a cellular organism, which means that
Speaker 1: instead of dividing into multiple cells as it grows, it's
Speaker 1: just one big, goopy, expanding cell. It doesn't have like
Speaker 1: cell walls or anything. Well, it has organills, but it
Speaker 1: does not have cell walls at that stage. In its
Speaker 1: life cycle. It has cell walls at different stages in
Speaker 1: its life cycle, which I have tried to study the
Speaker 1: things like life cycle. I've looked at diagrams. It's it's difficult.
Speaker 1: It's a doozy. There's like multiple branching circles that happen,
Speaker 1: and I'm not sure I fully understand it. I'm gonna
Speaker 1: be very candid. It's it's really hard for me to
Speaker 1: wrap my head around. But I'm turning your brain into
Speaker 1: a blob. It's turning my brain into a blob. This
Speaker 1: is how it reproduces. It just turns your brain into
Speaker 1: a blob. But it's going viral because now you're turning
Speaker 1: all your listeners brains into blobs. We all become blob.
Speaker 1: I guess it's better than carsonization, where we all become crabs.
Speaker 1: Welcome to the blob. Everyone more questions about how they work,
Speaker 1: like do they have DNA or any sort of like nucleus. Yes,
Speaker 1: in fact, they have many nucleus is all floating around
Speaker 1: inside just a big old party. It's decisions. Yes, So
Speaker 1: they have one it's one big expanding cell with these
Speaker 1: like branch You see this blob, that's one cell and
Speaker 1: then even it's branching veins that are coming off of it.
Speaker 1: That's all part of the same cell, just kind of
Speaker 1: expanding and growing, and it's got multiple nucleus is inside
Speaker 1: of it instead of having just one nucleus, so you know,
Speaker 1: in these nucleus are full of genetic material and they
Speaker 1: can all start to grow and use this genetic material
Speaker 1: as building blocks at different parts of the cell. So
Speaker 1: that's why it's like a goose bladder that just keeps
Speaker 1: growing and branching out. Um. And I guess that's why
Speaker 1: it's called the blob. And aren't they also like really
Speaker 1: hard to kill, Like they're really hearty objects, aren't they? Yeah?
Speaker 1: I think so, because basically, if you chop off part
Speaker 1: of the blob, there's more blob that still has a
Speaker 1: genetic material inside of it. Uh. So it is interesting
Speaker 1: in that slime molds are often kind of they may
Speaker 1: look similar, but they function differently. So Um, like I said,
Speaker 1: slime molds are sort of a catch all term for
Speaker 1: weird eukaryotes that are kind of unclassifiable. They're not always
Speaker 1: related to each other, but often slime molds are actually
Speaker 1: unicellular organisms that have teamed up into a big ball
Speaker 1: of individual organisms that are working together to form a
Speaker 1: single aggregate. So uh, you know, it's like it's similar
Speaker 1: to you know, as a human, we are a bunch
Speaker 1: of cells all working together, but we're much more organized,
Speaker 1: whereas a slime mold are a bunch of unicellular organisms
Speaker 1: that sometimes work together. Sometimes they'll even form like a
Speaker 1: slug that kind of moves in unison, but ultimately they're
Speaker 1: all in it for themselves. So but on the other hand, uh,
Speaker 1: the blob uh is just one big cell and so
Speaker 1: uh it's this is just incredibly weird. It's there are
Speaker 1: large unicellular organisms, but the blob is weird and that
Speaker 1: it's like it has these multiple nucleus is and it
Speaker 1: kind of just uses outwards and it has a kind
Speaker 1: of weird, spooky intelligence that arises from the ability to
Speaker 1: use these multiple nucleuses to grow and expand in multiple directions. Uh.
Speaker 1: So it can learn the fastest path to grow towards food.
Speaker 1: Keep in mind, this has no brain, It has no
Speaker 1: nerves we'd have, it doesn't really have sensory organs. Uh.
Speaker 1: So how it is able to find the fastest, most
Speaker 1: efficient path towards food is really weird and kind of freaky.
Speaker 1: It's like solving an optimization problem. It's like a little
Speaker 1: distributed computer. Yes. In fact, it is often considered as
Speaker 1: a candidate to build a bio computer because it can
Speaker 1: be trained to be used as a logic gate, because
Speaker 1: it is so efficient at moving from you know, one
Speaker 1: particle of food to the next. Researchers in Japan created
Speaker 1: like a miniature uh Tokyo where they used oat flakes
Speaker 1: to represent like different cities, different like locations, and they
Speaker 1: put the slime mold on it and it grew out.
Speaker 1: It's weird, goopy tendrils to each of the oat flakes.
Speaker 1: I guess they love oat flakes. I don't know, very
Speaker 1: healthy blob um, but uh, and it would grow out,
Speaker 1: and they showed that this network of expanding tubular structures
Speaker 1: coming out of this one blobby cell was so efficient.
Speaker 1: It was similar to how city planning works in terms
Speaker 1: of designing subway lines and transit lines. So we should
Speaker 1: have the blob design our public transport. Look, I'm sorry
Speaker 1: to break it to you urban planners, but the blobs
Speaker 1: coming for your job. Well, we definitely need an improvement
Speaker 1: in our urban planning here in southern California, we basically
Speaker 1: have no public transport, so bring on the blob, Bring
Speaker 1: on the blob. But yeah, it is really it's like
Speaker 1: kind of spooky how intelligent they are, because again, it's
Speaker 1: not like a consciousness. There's no nervous system, there's no brain.
Speaker 1: It's not even like with ants, where you know, each
Speaker 1: of the ants have their own little tiny brain and
Speaker 1: they kind of work together using pheromones, so they kind
Speaker 1: of have this emergent intelligence coming out of an ant colony.
Speaker 1: That kind of makes some sense. But something like this
Speaker 1: blob that has uh, you know, it doesn't have sensory
Speaker 1: organs like animals do. They must be doing it in
Speaker 1: some other ways. So one theory is maybe energy conservation,
Speaker 1: like it's somehow is op of minds towards the most
Speaker 1: efficient kind of energy path. Um, there may be some
Speaker 1: like chemical process that is happening on the surface of
Speaker 1: the blob cell and that allows it to grow towards food.
Speaker 1: It is really weird, really mysterious, and I'm not sure
Speaker 1: that there's a definitive answer yet. And does the blob
Speaker 1: have any predators? Like why hasn't the blob just taken
Speaker 1: over the world by now it's a good question. I
Speaker 1: doubt it tastes very good. In fact, it might not
Speaker 1: be uh super palatable. So that's that's one method of
Speaker 1: of survival is to just be super disgusting. That's what
Speaker 1: that's my strategy. But just don't shower, don't make an effort,
Speaker 1: and people will avoid you. People leave me alone anyway,
Speaker 1: because I'm a physicist. It's just like a second layer
Speaker 1: of protection. So uh So, how though, despite it being
Speaker 1: a disgusting splat, it does undergo sexual fusion with one another,
Speaker 1: which means there's hope for us all. So they can
Speaker 1: form a plasmodium, which is what we've been talking about.
Speaker 1: That is the blob we know and love. That's this
Speaker 1: one big cell, one big happy, massive nucleus is and
Speaker 1: and cytoplasm and goo and growing out and eating oat flakes.
Speaker 1: But this is only one stage of its many stages
Speaker 1: of its life cycle that it can go through. So
Speaker 1: uh it can actually it starts out as a spore,
Speaker 1: which the plasmodium, that the blob can grow a fruiting
Speaker 1: body and send out spores and make more of these
Speaker 1: horrifying things. And so the spore stage actually does have
Speaker 1: a hard cell wall, and it can lie dormant until
Speaker 1: conditions are favorable, and then after that it has an
Speaker 1: amiba stage with a flexible permeable membrane in instead of
Speaker 1: a cell wall. Are these dormant sports? Can they like
Speaker 1: hang off, you know, a hundred years, a thousand years,
Speaker 1: just like waiting for the right moment. They can wait
Speaker 1: a good amount of time. I'm not sure it's thousands
Speaker 1: or hundreds of years, but it's definitely on the order
Speaker 1: of years. Well. I actually once had a listener to
Speaker 1: our podcast, send me a slime mold, because I speculated
Speaker 1: on air about whether there are creatures that could have
Speaker 1: distributed intelligence because we were talking, of course about aliens.
Speaker 1: And one of our listeners was like, you need to
Speaker 1: meet a slime mold. I can send you one. Send
Speaker 1: me a slime mold. And so he did, and he
Speaker 1: sent us a bunch. And my wife is a microbiologist
Speaker 1: who the microbiologist, she grew it and it turned into
Speaker 1: this disgusting Then we have to figure out, like what
Speaker 1: to do with it, because you can't just throw it
Speaker 1: in the garbage. It would like take over the garbage.
Speaker 1: Did did you try to eat it? We did not,
Speaker 1: try to teach. This is my point. This is my point.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean so even weirder, like if they
Speaker 1: develop into these amibas and it turns out life kind
Speaker 1: of sucks, they can revert back into a spore so
Speaker 1: and then go lie dormant again for x amount of
Speaker 1: time and then come back out and become an amiba again.
Speaker 1: And uh, they can be mobile with a flagella, or
Speaker 1: ditch the flagella and just do sexual fusion to become
Speaker 1: the plasmodium. And uh yeah, and then there's other branches
Speaker 1: to its life cycle that I'm gonna be honest with you.
Speaker 1: I got a little bit lost. It's very twisty, attorney,
Speaker 1: very very strange, and like like you said, very Uh,
Speaker 1: it's got a lot of qualities that means it's a
Speaker 1: real survivor so and it's got this spooky emergent intelligence.
Speaker 1: So of course we're going to shoot it in a
Speaker 1: space and see what happens. See if space will reject
Speaker 1: it fit it back at this, what do you do
Speaker 1: when sending me this garbage? Or maybe welcome his return?
Speaker 1: Maybe the slime molds don't look like anything else on
Speaker 1: Earth because they're not from Earth. Yeah, This was its
Speaker 1: plan all along, just be so weird and gross that
Speaker 1: we send it back home. We're throwing it back into
Speaker 1: the Brier patch. So of course France is shooting it
Speaker 1: into space. They love their weird cheeses, They love their
Speaker 1: weird mold on cheeses, so I guess they like their
Speaker 1: weird slime molds. So it is going onto the International
Speaker 1: Space Station to study, uh, And then on Earth, French
Speaker 1: school students are going to be following the progress of
Speaker 1: the blob on and studying it while researchers on the
Speaker 1: International Space Station are studying it, which just sounds like
Speaker 1: the perfect intro to like a science fiction horror apocalypse
Speaker 1: alien takeover thing where it's like, oh, these school students,
Speaker 1: they're just these cute little French students wearing their little berets,
Speaker 1: are studying the slime mold with these astronauts, and they've
Speaker 1: got some kind of on their iPads. They see a
Speaker 1: live feed and then suddenly just mold comes into view
Speaker 1: and then you hear screaming and then silence. Biology is
Speaker 1: always so cute and fuzzy mm hmm, until until you've
Speaker 1: got something that looks like a yellow bar trying to
Speaker 1: grow on the International Space Station. So how we not
Speaker 1: had that movie yet? Slime molds take over the space station.
Speaker 1: It's just so cinematic, these ideas, these concepts. Listen, scriptwriters
Speaker 1: get to it. Uh yeah, they are trying to find
Speaker 1: out whether how they respond to low gravity. So does
Speaker 1: it grow like it does on Earth where it's just
Speaker 1: kind of a splatter, or could it grow into columns,
Speaker 1: or maybe it grows into the brains of astronauts. And
Speaker 1: then they return home and they're like, yes, I am normal.
Speaker 1: I returned from space, so very human. Then so very normal.
Speaker 1: I am not blob. Hey have you about blob? It's
Speaker 1: pretty cool. Everyone's joining Blob. See humans come back, and
Speaker 1: then they are the union representation for the blob speaking
Speaker 1: for the Blob. Everybody needs representation. Listen, join our Blob union.
Speaker 1: Here's my card. Whoops, sorry, I guess now you're part
Speaker 1: of the Blob. Blobs of the world unite. You have
Speaker 1: nothing to lose but your cell walls. Uh perfect, Well,
Speaker 1: I think that about does it. For the animals that
Speaker 1: we've shot into space that are probably going to form
Speaker 1: like an army in attack us any day now. But
Speaker 1: before we go, I do need to reveal the animal
Speaker 1: behind the last week's mystery sound. Oh my gosh, And
Speaker 1: so I've decided to call this segment Guess Who's Talking,
Speaker 1: which I think works. If anyone has a better idea
Speaker 1: for the name of this game, send it in um.
Speaker 1: But to refresh your memory, let me play the mystery
Speaker 1: sound from last week. Can I guess what it sounds like? Yes,
Speaker 1: you can. It sounds to me like a frog in
Speaker 1: suspended It sounds to me like a frog that's had
Speaker 1: its arms severed, suspendion water and forced ten ago crazy
Speaker 1: accelerations I have. I have no arms, and I must
Speaker 1: scream very good guests, Very good guests. Unfortunately incorrect. But
Speaker 1: there are some winners of this contest who guessed correctly
Speaker 1: the incognito animal. So actually I've got two winners because
Speaker 1: they wrote in it like almost exactly the same time,
Speaker 1: Thomas Crone and Jared Miller, who both guessed sage grouse. Congratulations,
Speaker 1: and runner up is a a faction confection on Twitter.
Speaker 1: Great job you guys. I thought I started out with
Speaker 1: a real head scratcher, a real tough one, and you
Speaker 1: have absolutely blown my mind with how good you are
Speaker 1: at guessing sounds. The greater sage grouse which you have heard,
Speaker 1: which apparently sounds like a frog orbiting the earth and distress,
Speaker 1: is actually a ground dwelling bird found in sagebrush planes
Speaker 1: in the US and Canada. These weird calls are mating
Speaker 1: noises that this sage grouse makes in a designated mating
Speaker 1: area called a lek. So the males put on a
Speaker 1: big show for the females. They they inflate their neck sacks,
Speaker 1: which are called gol or pouches, They strut around with
Speaker 1: their tails fanned out, and then they make this extremely
Speaker 1: bizarre noise, apparently to attract the females. Well, it is
Speaker 1: a strange noise, and I guess if I was a
Speaker 1: female grouse, I would find it attractive. I'm not really
Speaker 1: sure what's like to be a female grouse. Nobody knows.
Speaker 1: I mean it sounds rough to me, honestly. So of course,
Speaker 1: now we're going to play around two of guests. Who's talking? Uh?
Speaker 1: So here is our next mystery sound contender And a hint,
Speaker 1: this is a conversation between two Canadians. So, Daniel, who
Speaker 1: do you think is talking in that video? That sounds
Speaker 1: like the Prime Minister and the leader of the opposition.
Speaker 1: You got it? Game over now now right in with
Speaker 1: your guesses to Creature feature Pot at gmail dot com,
Speaker 1: Creature feet Pad on Twitter that's E. E. T Et
Speaker 1: or Creature feature Pod on Instagram. You can also write
Speaker 1: in any questions that you have, animal questions and me
Speaker 1: pictures of your pets, concerns that the slime mold has
Speaker 1: already invaded your brain. If you're starting to feel like
Speaker 1: you want to become a blob, that's one sign of it.
Speaker 1: Uh And I'm afraid it's probably too late for you,
Speaker 1: but you can still write in while you have control
Speaker 1: of your body. Thank you so much for joining me today.
Speaker 1: Daniel H. What what is your favorite animal that we
Speaker 1: shot into space. I'm definitely pro blob, mostly because I
Speaker 1: think the blob has the best chance of eventually taking
Speaker 1: over the Earth. So I'm just sort of making a
Speaker 1: Pascal's wager here and figuring if the Blob listens to
Speaker 1: this podcast, I'm gonna get some points for collaborating earlier. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: you're hedging your beds. I think that's pretty smart. We
Speaker 1: love the blood, don't we, folks. We share love the Blob,
Speaker 1: the Benevolent lab But Thank you guys so much for listening.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying the show, uh, and you have a
Speaker 1: minute to spare, if you can leave me a rating
Speaker 1: or review, it really helps. I read all of them
Speaker 1: and I uh it always makes my day when I
Speaker 1: get a review and I can hear your feedback. And
Speaker 1: of course thanks to the Space Classics for their super
Speaker 1: awesome song. Ex Alumina. Creature features a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. For more podcasts like the one you just,
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Speaker 1: listen to your favorite shows? See you next Wednesday.