Speaker 1: Welcome to Part Time Genius, the production of iHeartRadio. Guess
Speaker 1: what Will?
Speaker 2: What's that Mango?
Speaker 1: So did you know the world's largest bee isn't as
Speaker 1: extinct as we thought, not as extinct we thought.
Speaker 2: I gotta feel like that's too bad. No, it's actually
Speaker 2: a good thing. How our giant monster bees a good thing.
Speaker 2: So for starters, the vs aren't exactly monsters. They're only
Speaker 2: about an inch and a half long, and they've got
Speaker 2: a two and a half inch wingspan, so it's about
Speaker 2: the size of a thumb or I guess three times
Speaker 2: the size of the average honeybee, not the size of
Speaker 2: mathras like you might be imagining. I mean maybe not.
Speaker 2: But actually just pulled up a picture one of these
Speaker 2: things while you were talking, and I have to say,
Speaker 2: this is the most terrifying bee I have seen in
Speaker 2: my life. Like, why do they have such massive pincers
Speaker 2: on their faces? They almost look like these stag beetles,
Speaker 2: but just creepier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So I was trying not to mention that because
Speaker 1: it makes them look so much scarier. But they're actually
Speaker 1: just used to scrape resin off trees to build their homes,
Speaker 1: so it's not that scary. But here's what's really interesting.
Speaker 1: The species was first discovered in Indonesia, and this was
Speaker 1: back in eighteen fifty nine, and then nobody could find
Speaker 1: it again after that, so it was just presumed to
Speaker 1: have gone extinct. And then in nineteen eighty four, this
Speaker 1: entomologist stumbled across the bees alive and well in Indonesia
Speaker 1: and he collected the specimen. He wrote about discovery, but
Speaker 1: he didn't get any video or photos, and then the
Speaker 1: bees trail went cold again.
Speaker 2: But it sounds like now somebody has found them again.
Speaker 1: Is that right? Yeah, so they thought they were extinct,
Speaker 1: but it's totally right. In January this year, this photographer
Speaker 1: named Clay Bolt actually made history by finding the giant
Speaker 1: bees in the wild for the very first time. And
Speaker 1: it sounds like it was a pretty surreal experience because
Speaker 1: apparently the female bees make this really deep thrumming sound
Speaker 1: with their wings, so he could not only hear them,
Speaker 1: he could actually feel the air being displaced as they
Speaker 1: flew by. And it was amazing because it's really this
Speaker 1: creature that he'd only ever imagined about, right, and suddenly
Speaker 1: he has this super tangible and memorable experience with them. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Clay's account got me thinking that this week it would
Speaker 1: be really fun to look into creatures that had come
Speaker 1: back to life. And so that's what we're going to
Speaker 1: talk about, all these weird cases out there where creatures
Speaker 1: seemingly died and then returned. So let's dive in.
Speaker 2: Hey, the podcast listeners, welcome to Part Time Genius. I'm
Speaker 2: Will Pearson and as always I'm joined by my good
Speaker 2: friend mangesh Hot Ticketer and on the other side of
Speaker 2: that soundproof class bringing a dead fern back to life
Speaker 2: at least I think that's what he's doing. That's our
Speaker 2: friend and producer Tristan McNeil.
Speaker 1: Oh, is that what he's doing. I thought Tristan just
Speaker 1: brought in his neglect did the houseplant?
Speaker 2: Actually, Tristan's trick only works with one kind of plant,
Speaker 2: what's called a resurrection fern, which is not the fern
Speaker 2: that he's got over there. But you know, during a
Speaker 2: drought or a heat spell, the ferns will turn brown
Speaker 2: and they shrivel up, and if you look at them,
Speaker 2: they look completely dead. But then you just splash a
Speaker 2: little water on them and press though it takes like
Speaker 2: twenty four hours and the leaves unfurl, turn green again,
Speaker 2: and the whole thing is good as new. I mean,
Speaker 2: it's kind of like magic.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it does sound like something you'd study at Hogwarts
Speaker 1: in the homology class or whatever.
Speaker 2: It's pretty cool. And even though it does seem like magic,
Speaker 2: there is of course a scientific explanation on how these
Speaker 2: ferns come back to life. These resurrection ferns never actually
Speaker 2: die during this dying out process. In fact, these plants
Speaker 2: can lose up to ninety seven percent of their water content,
Speaker 2: and once they're exposed to water again, they'll still spring
Speaker 2: right back. So you know, as long as the fern
Speaker 2: can hold on to at least three percent of its water,
Speaker 2: it actually won't die.
Speaker 1: That's pretty incredible. So those numbers can't hold up for
Speaker 1: most plants.
Speaker 2: Right, No, with most plants, if they lose more than
Speaker 2: ten percent of their water, they are completely done. And
Speaker 2: so the saving grace for resurrection ferns is, you know,
Speaker 2: it's their ability to synthesize these special proteins called dehydrants,
Speaker 2: and so these allow the cell walls of the plant
Speaker 2: to kind of fold and unfold as needed, rather than
Speaker 2: just cracking and crumbling like other plants do when they
Speaker 2: dry out and believe it or not, that's not the
Speaker 2: resurrection ferns only claim to feign because back in nineteen
Speaker 2: ninety seven, astronauts actually took a bunch of these ferns
Speaker 2: with them on the Space Shuttle Discovery, and this was
Speaker 2: a feat that earned the plant the title of first
Speaker 2: fern in space. Isn't that special?
Speaker 1: I like it? But what sort of experiments were they
Speaker 1: running on these plants in space?
Speaker 2: Well, basically, we wanted to see if the plants could
Speaker 2: still resurrect themselves in zero gravity, and apparently they could
Speaker 2: with no problem, and as later explained, the resurrection fern
Speaker 2: quote proved to be a hardy space traveler and exhibited
Speaker 2: regeneration patterns unaltered by its orbital adventure. So not only
Speaker 2: can they cheat death, they can do it while rocketing
Speaker 2: through space at thousands of miles an hour.
Speaker 1: I do like that, but to be fair, resurrection ferns
Speaker 1: aren't the only ones to master the old back from
Speaker 1: the dead routine, and it's not just flowers and trees
Speaker 1: getting into the act either. The animal kingdom has its
Speaker 1: own resurrection like events, including some insects and amphibians that
Speaker 1: can freeze themselves during winter and then thaw out in
Speaker 1: the spring totally alive and healthy.
Speaker 2: But again, like with the ferns, those animals don't technically
Speaker 2: die though, right right, but they come pretty close.
Speaker 1: Like you can take the wood frogs, which we've talked
Speaker 1: about forever ago on the show. But when temperatures drop,
Speaker 1: the wood frogs go into what's basically this state of
Speaker 1: suspended animation and all of their processes shut down. So
Speaker 1: there's no heartbeat, there's no breathing, nothing, but their cells
Speaker 1: stay alive regardless, and it's thanks to this handy adaptation
Speaker 1: they've evolved that lets them survive for long periods without oxygen.
Speaker 2: So I remember talking about them, but remind me how
Speaker 2: long they can actually stay like that, so it can vary.
Speaker 1: I mean, most wood frogs do this extreme hibernation for
Speaker 1: a few days at a time to cope with like
Speaker 1: a cold snap or something like that, but they can
Speaker 1: stay frozen for longer, even for weeks if they.
Speaker 2: Need to, which is pretty amazing. And you mentioned their
Speaker 2: cells still receive oxygen during this big sleep, and that
Speaker 2: makes sense. But what I'm wondering is how those cells
Speaker 2: survive the freezing process at all. I mean, there's water
Speaker 2: inside those cells, and water expands as it freezes to ice,
Speaker 2: and so it seems like those newly formed ice crystals
Speaker 2: would just break the cells apart from within.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's exactly right, and it's a big part of
Speaker 1: why a cryopreservation isn't really an option for humans. Our
Speaker 1: cells just aren't equipped to handle a deep freeze. And
Speaker 1: it's actually the same for wood frogs. If their cells froze,
Speaker 1: they would die too. But that's why whenever there's this
Speaker 1: sub zero temperature that sets in the frog's central organ
Speaker 1: starts expelling moisture, and this way the water surrounding their
Speaker 1: organs freezes into ice, but their organs them cells, and
Speaker 1: their cells don't. And that's not the only trick either.
Speaker 1: Before a wood frog fully freezes, its body floods the
Speaker 1: veins with a special glucose molecule that works like an
Speaker 1: anti freeze. So when the glucose reaches the frog cells,
Speaker 1: it'll dissolve in the water and bond with the water molecules.
Speaker 1: And this means that water molecules in the cell won't
Speaker 1: be able to bind with other water molecules to form ice.
Speaker 1: So even if the water in a cell reaches subzero temperatures,
Speaker 1: it still won't freeze.
Speaker 2: Okay, I think I got it. So they really use
Speaker 2: the same strategy on a cellular level as they do
Speaker 2: for like their central organs, right exactly.
Speaker 1: But the more researchers learn about the frog's approach, the
Speaker 1: better we get it perfecting things like freezing human organs
Speaker 1: for transport, and that technique might help us perfect cry
Speaker 1: of preservation in the future, you know, getting humans into
Speaker 1: this act of resurrecting themselves, which is.
Speaker 2: A little bit creepy, and also, if you think about it,
Speaker 2: some humans have already jumped the gun on the whole
Speaker 2: resurrection thing. I was actually reading about this rare phenomenon
Speaker 2: called auto resuscitation, which is when a person who is
Speaker 2: declared dead spontaneously comes back to life spontaneously.
Speaker 1: So this isn't like a patient who's flatline that doctors
Speaker 1: use those Z clamps on and jolten back to life.
Speaker 1: It's someone who comes back to life on their own.
Speaker 2: That's right. So according to a two thousand and seven
Speaker 2: medical review I believe this was the Journal of the
Speaker 2: Royal Society of Medicine, there've actually been over thirty cases
Speaker 2: of auto resuscitation since the initial report on this condition
Speaker 2: back in nineteen eighty two. So on average, these patients
Speaker 2: return to life did so about seven minutes after doctors
Speaker 2: stopped administering CPR. One patient made it all the way
Speaker 2: to the hospital morgue before suddenly returning to life. I mean,
Speaker 2: can you imagine what that must have been like for
Speaker 2: the poor folks who had to wheel that person down
Speaker 2: there and in the morgue no less, but it's just
Speaker 2: so like, of all places to witness someone coming back
Speaker 2: from the dead, this would have been such a weird experience.
Speaker 1: So these people sort of pop back up? Did they
Speaker 1: live for a while?
Speaker 2: I mean, the sad reality is that the majority of
Speaker 2: these patients die shortly after their auto resuscitated it. But
Speaker 2: I think what's amazing though, is that in a little
Speaker 2: over a third of the reported cases, the patients make
Speaker 2: a full recovery with little or no neurological damage.
Speaker 1: That is wild. So do doctors have any idea of
Speaker 1: why this is happening?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it's tough to say for certain, because
Speaker 2: there've only been, like we said, thirty something cases reported
Speaker 2: in the last forty years, and that's not a lot
Speaker 2: of data to go on. But that said, the reports
Speaker 2: do offer some clues about what might be going on here,
Speaker 2: for instance, the use of CPR, which is something that's
Speaker 2: in all of these reported cases. So remember I said
Speaker 2: the patients came back a few minutes after CPR was stopped. Well,
Speaker 2: that gap and time might actually be the key to
Speaker 2: understanding the whole phenomenon. It's a little bit complicated, So
Speaker 2: I pulled this good breakdown from the Smithsonian and here's
Speaker 2: how they explain it. One popular theory is that dynamic
Speaker 2: hyperinflation which can occur during CPR if the lungs are
Speaker 2: rapidly filled with air without adequate time to exhale. In theory,
Speaker 2: when emergency doctors stop CPR, the lung pressure caused by
Speaker 2: dynamic hyperinflation returns to normal and the blood begins to
Speaker 2: circulate with greater e, producing an auto resuscitation effect.
Speaker 1: Huh, So, how can doctor's guard against this kind of thing? Like?
Speaker 1: Is there a said amount of time they need to wait?
Speaker 2: I don't think there's like a hard and fast rule
Speaker 2: around this, but doctors who've studied the subject do recommend
Speaker 2: waiting at least ten or fifteen minutes after CPR has
Speaker 2: ceased before declaring someone dead, you know, just to be
Speaker 2: on the safe side here.
Speaker 1: That is so strange, Like there's this period of time
Speaker 1: when death isn't necessarily final, that someone might still pop
Speaker 1: back to life.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's it's you know, it's not super likely,
Speaker 2: but it does happen. It makes you wonder about where
Speaker 2: the cutoff is, like that point past which death is irreversible.
Speaker 2: It might be, you know, more fluid than we had
Speaker 2: first guessed.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think you're right. In fact, I was reading
Speaker 1: about this concept people talk about in the conservation world
Speaker 1: called the Lazarus taxon or a Lazarus species, and it's
Speaker 1: basically a group of plants and animals that were believed
Speaker 1: to be extinct but were later rediscovered in the wild.
Speaker 1: Like the giant b I mentioned at the top of
Speaker 1: the show. It's not the same as the biological resurrections
Speaker 1: we've been talking about, but it's another interesting case of
Speaker 1: death not being quite as final as we first looked at.
Speaker 2: I definitely want to hear more about this, but before
Speaker 2: we get to that, let's take a quick break. You're
Speaker 2: listening to Part Time Genius and we're talking about Lazarus species.
Speaker 2: These are the extinct plants and animals that turned out
Speaker 2: to be not so extinct after all. And speaking of Lazarus,
Speaker 2: I actually forgot to mention this earlier, but auto resuscitation
Speaker 2: actually shares some biblical inspiration. It's actually nicknamed the Lazarus phenomenon.
Speaker 2: Have you heard of this? So in both cases the
Speaker 2: name is a nod to the New Testament story where
Speaker 2: Jesus performs a miracle by raising this man named Lazarus
Speaker 2: from the dead. So kind of a fun, if not
Speaker 2: surprising bit of overlap between religion and science here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty cool. But the term Lazarus taxon was
Speaker 1: coined in the nineteen eighties by a couple of paleontologists,
Speaker 1: and they were studying the fossil record. They noticed some
Speaker 1: organisms seem to disappear during one of Earth's massive extinction
Speaker 1: events and then miraculously reappear on the record later, and
Speaker 1: these species taken together, form what the scientists called the
Speaker 1: Lazarus taxon. So these days the term applies more broadly,
Speaker 1: not just to fossilized organisms, but also to living species
Speaker 1: that have been rediscovered after the presumed extinction. Actually, there's
Speaker 1: a slight variation on this called the elvis taxon, which
Speaker 1: is species that seem like they re emerge, but it's
Speaker 1: actually an impostor. This is a true thing. But back
Speaker 1: to the Lazarus. Like you'd think it's this small club
Speaker 1: of species, but there are actually about three hundred and
Speaker 1: fifty species on that list, includes everything from plants to
Speaker 1: insects to every kind of vertebrae.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, so it really runs the gamut. But what
Speaker 2: are some of the most famous on the list, or
Speaker 2: maybe just a few favorites you came across.
Speaker 1: So my favorite species are the ones that turned up
Speaker 1: in the super unexpected places, and one of the oldest
Speaker 1: and most famous of these is definitely the seilican, which
Speaker 1: is this ancient type of fish that was believed to
Speaker 1: have gone extinct over sixty five million years ago. It
Speaker 1: was in the supposed to be wiped out in that
Speaker 1: same extinction event that claimed the dinosaurs.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I actually think I've seen these guys before. They
Speaker 2: live like way down deep, don't they.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean they're bottom dwellers for sure, But that's
Speaker 1: part of the reason it took us so long to
Speaker 1: find one alive. That said living silicans weren't discovered thanks
Speaker 1: to some technological breakthrough or some sort of landmark expedition. Instead,
Speaker 1: it all happened by sheer chance, and here's how it
Speaker 1: went down. So in December nineteen thirty eight, this Natural
Speaker 1: History Museum curator named Marjorie Courtney Latimer was strolling the
Speaker 1: docks in East London, South Africa. Apparently she did this
Speaker 1: often as part of her work for the museum. She'd
Speaker 1: just visit the local fishermen and if anyone thought they'd
Speaker 1: caught something interesting that day, Marjorie would take a closer
Speaker 1: look at their catch. And on that December she indeed
Speaker 1: found something interesting in the hall of this fisherman named
Speaker 1: Captain Hendrik Goosen. So in his pile of fish there
Speaker 1: was this bizarre looking fin that Marjorie had never seen
Speaker 1: at the docks before, and this is how she described it.
Speaker 1: I picked away at a layer of slime to reveal
Speaker 1: the most beautiful fish I had ever seen. It was
Speaker 1: pale mauve blue with faint flecks of whitish spots. It
Speaker 1: had an iridescent silver blue green sheen all over it.
Speaker 1: It was covered in hard scales, and it had four
Speaker 1: limb like fins and a strange puppy dog tail.
Speaker 2: Wait, let me make sure I have this raight. So
Speaker 2: she found what is basically a living fossil, and this
Speaker 2: was at a South African fish market.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was actually really big too, So the
Speaker 1: silicon she found at the market weighed one hundred and
Speaker 1: twenty seven pounds, which made it tough to transport back
Speaker 1: to the museum. And in the end Marjorie and her
Speaker 1: assistant they managed to get the fish into the backseat
Speaker 1: of a taxi, but they nearly got thrown of that too,
Speaker 1: because the fish smelled so bad. Apparently, as they pushed
Speaker 1: it through the door and finally got in, the driver
Speaker 1: was shouting, no stinking fish in my tax Yeah her, I.
Speaker 2: Mean, honestly, can you really blame the guys?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean you can. And once they explained the
Speaker 1: circumstance and probably how big a tip they were going
Speaker 1: to give, the driver agreed to help. Although that wasn't
Speaker 1: the only obstacle Marjorie face that day. So when she
Speaker 1: got the fish back to the museum, she still wasn't
Speaker 1: sure what she'd found. Her expertise was actually in birds,
Speaker 1: not fish, and when she asked the chairman of the
Speaker 1: museum board to help her, identify the specimen. He told
Speaker 1: her it's nothing more than a rock cot and then
Speaker 1: he left to go on his holiday.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's funny, it almost reads like parody. But well,
Speaker 2: obviously the museum was no help. So how did Marjorie
Speaker 2: ultimately crack this case?
Speaker 1: So the first thing she did was to find some
Speaker 1: way to preserve the fish long term. She tried the
Speaker 1: morgue at her local hospital, but they flat out refused
Speaker 1: to store fish, no matter how ancient it was, and
Speaker 1: in the end she had to settle for getting it
Speaker 1: taxidermied instead. So she reached out to a fish curator
Speaker 1: at a different South African museum. This guy at JLB. Smith,
Speaker 1: and she sent the description and sketches of what she'd found.
Speaker 1: Within a month or so, Smith decided to make a
Speaker 1: trip to see the fish for himself, and he definitely
Speaker 1: wasn't disappointed with what he found. In fact, listen to
Speaker 1: how he later described the day he arrived at Marjorie's museum. Quote,
Speaker 1: although I had come prepared, the first sight of the
Speaker 1: fish hit me like a white hot blast and made
Speaker 1: me feel shaky and queer. My body tingled, I stood
Speaker 1: as if stricken to stone. Yes, there was not a
Speaker 1: shadow of a doubt, scale by sale, bone by bone,
Speaker 1: finn by thin. It was a true silicon.
Speaker 2: It must have felt like such vindication.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but plus it must have made the museum chairman
Speaker 1: feel like such a chomp when he got back from
Speaker 1: his vacation.
Speaker 2: I mean, I know I said this earlier, but I
Speaker 2: still can't believe she found an extinct species at a
Speaker 2: fish market. It just seemed like such a weird place
Speaker 2: to find this.
Speaker 1: Well, the craziest part is that it wasn't even the
Speaker 1: only time that's happened. In fact, there are plenty of
Speaker 1: Lazarus species that have showed up at food markets. There's
Speaker 1: the smooth toothed black tip shark that reappeared in this
Speaker 1: fish market in the Middle East. There's the Laotian rock rat,
Speaker 1: which was rediscovered at a meat market, and the Erican
Speaker 1: forest turtle, which debuted at a food market in China.
Speaker 1: But the list just keeps going.
Speaker 2: Pretty sure you made up a couple of those, and
Speaker 2: I'm not sure what it says about us in the
Speaker 2: first place that we find so many supposedly extinct animals
Speaker 2: on our dinner tables. Just it's just so weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it kind of makes me wonder if any Lazarus
Speaker 1: species have actually gone extinct for real, like that way,
Speaker 1: like the humans just ate too many of them without
Speaker 1: scientists walking by and stopping them from eating. But I
Speaker 1: know we've got a few more things to tackle, but first,
Speaker 1: let's take a quick break. Welcome back to part time Genius. So, well,
Speaker 1: I know you wanted to talk about the extinction, which
Speaker 1: is the ability to bring vanished species back to life.
Speaker 1: Do you think that's something we'll be able to do
Speaker 1: one day? And if so, how long until we're all
Speaker 1: riding Willie Manno's to work like God intended.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it's gonna be a little while
Speaker 2: on that one. But yeah, to the question of weather
Speaker 2: we'll be able to bring an extinct species back, I mean,
Speaker 2: the truth is we already have, or at least we
Speaker 2: sort of.
Speaker 1: Did, so I'm curious about this sort of you speak up.
Speaker 2: Well all right, well, let me back up just a
Speaker 2: little bit here. So have you ever heard of Celia,
Speaker 2: who happens to be the last Bucardo?
Speaker 1: No, it sounds like a Tolkien character, though.
Speaker 2: It's actually an extinct species of Ibex that used to
Speaker 2: live in Spain, And I think in southern France, and
Speaker 2: so basically picture a mountain goat or a ram and
Speaker 2: you're not far off from this. But all right, so
Speaker 2: back in two thousand, the last Bucardo on Earth was
Speaker 2: sadly crushed to death by a falling tree. And her
Speaker 2: name was Celia.
Speaker 1: Sure rip Celia, right right?
Speaker 2: So that wasn't the end of the story there though,
Speaker 2: because scientists tried to revive her species, and they used
Speaker 2: the nucleus of a cell extracted intact from Celia.
Speaker 1: So you're saying they cloned her, well sort of like.
Speaker 2: This wasn't like with Dolly the sheep, where her nucleus
Speaker 2: could be implanted in the egg of a sheep from
Speaker 2: the same species. I mean, remember, Celia was the last
Speaker 2: one and there weren't any of her kind around to
Speaker 2: donate an egg, so instead, scientists inserted the nucleus from
Speaker 2: Celia into the unfertilized egg cell of a different kind
Speaker 2: of Spanish ibex. Then they took the resulting embryo and
Speaker 2: transferred it to the womb of a living goat. It's
Speaker 2: just a lot of connections here. And almost a year later,
Speaker 2: in July of two thousand and three, the first baby
Speaker 2: Buchardo since Celia was born.
Speaker 1: Which is kind of amazing. It sounds like some bizarre
Speaker 1: science traducan like a buccardo wrapped in an ibex wrapped
Speaker 1: in a living goat. But is the Bucardo back for real?
Speaker 1: Now it's it's de extinct. No.
Speaker 2: Unfortunately, the baby Buchardo was born with a lung defect
Speaker 2: and only survived seven minutes, and so that means that,
Speaker 2: depending on how you look at it, the Bucardo has
Speaker 2: really gone extinct twice at this point. I not the
Speaker 2: happy ending we might have looked for, But of course
Speaker 2: that's only if you consider that the bucardo made from
Speaker 2: Celia's cell to be a true Bucardo and not some
Speaker 2: kind of hybrid, you know, like a Spanish ibex with
Speaker 2: Bucardo like traits.
Speaker 1: I guess. So, I guess any other species we try
Speaker 1: to de extinct would also be that way, right, Like
Speaker 1: we couldn't make one hundred percent wooly mammoth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it would always be an animal with cells that
Speaker 2: most certainly contain elephant DNA and just a little bit
Speaker 2: of mammoth DNA like the nucleus they took from Celia,
Speaker 2: you know, and with the long extinct creature like a
Speaker 2: wooly mammoth, you'd be even further into hybrid territory. And
Speaker 2: that's because there aren't any living mammoths to harvest intact
Speaker 2: nuclei from, so scientists will be working with far less
Speaker 2: DNA than they had with Celia the bucardo. So all
Speaker 2: the efforts that you hear about bringing back the wooly mammoth,
Speaker 2: those aren't attempts to clone a mammoth so much as
Speaker 2: they are attempts to make an elephant mammoth hybrid. And
Speaker 2: so there are new genome editing methods like Crisper, so
Speaker 2: scientists could kind of cheat a little bit by changing
Speaker 2: the DNA sequences of elephants to it'll look a little
Speaker 2: bit more like the DNA sequences of mammoths. That's why
Speaker 2: I started by saying that the extinction is sort of possible.
Speaker 2: I mean, if you're willing to accept hybrids as the
Speaker 2: real thing, or close enough to it, then I guess
Speaker 2: the extinction will definitely be something we can do within
Speaker 2: the next decade or so. But on the other hand,
Speaker 2: if you want a full on recreation of a vanish species,
Speaker 2: the same genes, same behaviors all of that. I mean,
Speaker 2: that's pretty much never going to happen, and in most cases,
Speaker 2: there just aren't enough ancient DNA lying around to completely
Speaker 2: reconstruct an animal's genome.
Speaker 1: So for all of us Jurassic Park fans, it does
Speaker 1: sound like dinosaur and willing mammoth hybrids are still on
Speaker 1: the table in the not so distant future, and gene
Speaker 1: editing could actually get them looking pretty close to how
Speaker 1: they did originally.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that's actually more like the Jurassic Park dinosaurs
Speaker 2: then straight up clones would be anyway. And you know,
Speaker 2: I'm not sure if you remember, but in the movie
Speaker 2: they filled the gaps in the DNA sequences with frog
Speaker 2: DNA and they messed with the genomes so they actually
Speaker 2: all have scales instead of feathers. So we're on the
Speaker 2: verge of being able to do something pretty similar to that.
Speaker 2: I mean, we'd probably use chicken DNA as our gap
Speaker 2: instead of frogs, but the basic idea wouldn't be too
Speaker 2: far off from that.
Speaker 1: And so what about extinct species that have died out
Speaker 1: more recently, like hundreds or thousands of years ago, for instance,
Speaker 1: instead of millions, Like would those actually be better candidates
Speaker 1: for de extinction absolutely.
Speaker 2: I mean, the passenger pigeon is one example that comes
Speaker 2: up a lot. They went extinct in the early twentieth century,
Speaker 2: so recovering their DNA wouldn't be that difficult, and there's
Speaker 2: a good chance the eggs from a related species of
Speaker 2: pigeon might be close enough of a match to create
Speaker 2: a viable embryo. But funnily enough is researchers say that
Speaker 2: the easiest species to resurrect would actually be the neanderthal,
Speaker 2: which is just so weird to think about. So, according
Speaker 2: to Scientific American quote, there appear to be just slightly
Speaker 2: more than thirty thousand genetic mutations that differentiate us from them,
Speaker 2: and Homo sapiens is the complicated organism best understood by
Speaker 2: human geneticists. So of course, bringing us, you know, a
Speaker 2: sentient human species back to life is a giant ethical
Speaker 2: can of worms. So I don't imagine we'll be bringing
Speaker 2: Neanderthals back anytime soon, or at least telling myself that.
Speaker 1: Which is probably for the best, because you know, I
Speaker 1: read that even though there's no ideal candidate for de extinction,
Speaker 1: the wily mammoth would still be the best choice, just
Speaker 1: because of how much good will it would generate in
Speaker 1: the public. And it makes sense if you think about it, right,
Speaker 1: Like bringing back the willy mammoth has been a collective
Speaker 1: dream for decades now. Plus they look big, free elephants,
Speaker 1: like it just feels so much less threatening than a
Speaker 1: t rex.
Speaker 2: I mean, still pretty threatening, but I think you're right,
Speaker 2: And there's actually another reason why raising the mammoth might
Speaker 2: be the best way to go, and it's something that
Speaker 2: you'd probably never guess, which is climate change.
Speaker 1: So you're gonna have to explain this one.
Speaker 2: All right. Well it sounds ridiculous, but there actually is
Speaker 2: something to this. According to that GEO, Siberia was home
Speaker 2: to mammos and these other giant grazing mammals about twelve
Speaker 2: thousand years ago, and back then the entire region was
Speaker 2: a grassland, not the moss covered tundra that it is today.
Speaker 1: So I'm having a tough time understanding this year you're
Speaker 1: saying the landscape changed into something less productive just because
Speaker 1: the mamm it's one extinct.
Speaker 2: It is possible, yeah, I mean, the idea is that
Speaker 2: the mammos and the other grazing animals used to maintain
Speaker 2: the grassy steps by, you know, trampling moss and shrubs,
Speaker 2: breaking up the soil, fertilizing what they're droppings. But you know,
Speaker 2: once the mammis went the way of the buffalo, the
Speaker 2: moss and the trees took over, and this region gradually
Speaker 2: transformed into a tundra. And so some researchers think that
Speaker 2: reintroducing mammos to the tundra could actually cause the ecosystem
Speaker 2: to shift back again.
Speaker 1: Which is really interesting and good news for the mammoths
Speaker 1: and maybe for any would be farmers in the region.
Speaker 1: But how exactly would this help with climate change?
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it's because the frozen ground in Siberia
Speaker 2: contains a huge amount of carbon, about twice as much
Speaker 2: as what's in the atmosphere already, and the only thing
Speaker 2: keeping those carbon stores in check are the region's Arctic temperatures.
Speaker 2: So as temperatures continue to rise, the chance of that
Speaker 2: permafrost thawing out and that carbon being released rises with them.
Speaker 2: And that's where the mammoths would come in. Like, if
Speaker 2: they were able to transform the region back into a grassland,
Speaker 2: the carbon stores just might stay put. And Smithsonian actually
Speaker 2: had a nice breakdown of why this is exactly and
Speaker 2: so here's how they explained it. Because grass absorbs less
Speaker 2: sunlight than trees, this would cause the ground to absorb
Speaker 2: less heat and in turn keep the carbon pools and
Speaker 2: their greenhouse gases on ice for longer. Large numbers of
Speaker 2: mammoths would also trample snow cover, stopping it from acting
Speaker 2: like insulation for the ground and allowing the permafrost to
Speaker 2: feel the effects of the bitter Arctic winters. Again, this,
Speaker 2: in theory, would keep the ground colder for longer.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't see how anything could go wrong with
Speaker 1: this plan.
Speaker 2: Now it's gonna be great.
Speaker 1: It is funny like, on one hand, resurrecting a species
Speaker 1: kind of feels like playing god, and that's one of
Speaker 1: the main arguments you'll hear from opponents of de extinction.
Speaker 1: And yet at the same time, since humans were responsible
Speaker 1: for so many recent extinctions, it also feels like we
Speaker 1: were playing god when we wipe these creatures out in
Speaker 1: the first place. So maybe bringing them back as a
Speaker 1: way to right some of the wrongs our species has
Speaker 1: done to nature, especially in cases like a Mammo's where
Speaker 1: the revival might also benefit the environment as a whole.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but admitute, Mago, your main motivation is just wanting
Speaker 2: to ride one to work. You said it earlier.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean if writing a Willie manmot to work
Speaker 1: is wrong, then brother, I don't want to be.
Speaker 2: Right that dollar for every time he said that. All right, Well,
Speaker 2: while we're waiting on science to deliver on that promise,
Speaker 2: what do you say we have ourselves a quick.
Speaker 1: Fact off sounds great?
Speaker 2: All right, I'll kick it off here. So remember that
Speaker 2: Siberian permafrost that we talked about a few minutes ago, Well,
Speaker 2: it turns out it's home to more than just carbon deposits.
Speaker 2: Just last year, researchers discovered that the frigid ground had
Speaker 2: also preserved ancient life in the form of two forty
Speaker 2: thousand year old nematodes, or roundworms. So, even more incredibly,
Speaker 2: the researchers were able to successfully quote defrost the creatures,
Speaker 2: according to a report from the Siberian Times. Isn't that amazing?
Speaker 2: There's something called the Siberian Times, not the fact the
Speaker 2: fact that there is a Siberian Times. I just love that.
Speaker 2: And if that's true, then roundworms can endure cryo preservation
Speaker 2: for way way longer than we thought. The previous record
Speaker 2: for anema toad was it was revived like thirty nine
Speaker 2: years of dormancy or something like that. But not only that,
Speaker 2: it would also mean that those resurrected roundworms are now
Speaker 2: the oldest living animals on the planet, and by a
Speaker 2: pretty wide margin, of course.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I've got a weird one for you. The
Speaker 1: name Lazarus came up a lot this week, so I
Speaker 1: did some digging on the name itself, and it turns
Speaker 1: out it's going through a bit of a resurgence right now.
Speaker 1: According to rankings on the top baby naming sites, the
Speaker 1: name Lazarus is now more popular than it's been in
Speaker 1: over a century.
Speaker 2: And so what are these reports based on exactly?
Speaker 1: Yeah, so a lot of the data comes from the
Speaker 1: users on these sites, but the rankings also pull from
Speaker 1: the Social Security Administration. So things like how many babies
Speaker 1: born in twenty eighteen were named Lazarus shows up on this.
Speaker 1: The data goes all the way back to about nineteen hundred,
Speaker 1: which is when the name Lazarus was at its peak
Speaker 1: as the one hundred and fifth most popular name in
Speaker 1: the country.
Speaker 2: Wait, and that was the name at its peak popularity. Yeah,
Speaker 2: but you've got to keep this in perspective. For the
Speaker 2: rest of the twentieth century, the name hovered between the
Speaker 2: three thousand and four thousandth most popular name, and it
Speaker 2: started to rise in the early nineties and now it's
Speaker 2: back in the lowand it's just like it was about
Speaker 2: one hundred years ago. Oh wow, it's impressive.
Speaker 1: Well.
Speaker 2: One neat thing I read about this week is an
Speaker 2: experiment with cryopreserve seeds, and it's called the Project Baseline
Speaker 2: Resurrection Approach. So basically, millions of seeds from different plant
Speaker 2: species are being collected and then ship to a seed
Speaker 2: bank in Colorado, and then they're kept on ice for
Speaker 2: anywhere between five and fifty years. So the idea is
Speaker 2: that once the time is up, scientists of the future
Speaker 2: can actually warm up the seeds, plant them, and bring
Speaker 2: them back to life. And that way they'll be able
Speaker 2: to compare these ancestor plants with their descendants, you know,
Speaker 2: which will be the plants collected from the exact same
Speaker 2: location where the ancestor seeds were first harvested. And so
Speaker 2: the hope is that by looking at this side by
Speaker 2: side comparison across multiple decades, it'll actually allow the scientists
Speaker 2: to see how a certain plant population changed over time.
Speaker 1: That's really cool. It's kind of like a botanical time capsule. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but okay, here's a good one I found about Caspian horses,
Speaker 1: which Nattio describes as having the hallmark movie stylings of
Speaker 1: all Lazarus species. So here's what happened. In nineteen fifty seven,
Speaker 1: an American horse breeder and researcher named Louise Lelan married
Speaker 1: this Iranian aristocrat named Narci Ferruz and they moved to
Speaker 1: Tehran together, and a few years later, the couple opened
Speaker 1: a children's riding academy so that Louise could share her
Speaker 1: love of riding with all the locals. The only problem
Speaker 1: was that the stallions native to the region were way
Speaker 1: too rough and bad tempered for the kids to ride safely.
Speaker 1: So Louise asked around and she hoped to find this
Speaker 1: alternative horse for the kids, and she started hearing these
Speaker 1: rumors about a group of strong but friendly miniature horses
Speaker 1: that lived tucked away in this remote mountain region near
Speaker 1: the Caspian Sea. So, based on that hunch, Louise got
Speaker 1: some friends and they went on this expedition and sure enough,
Speaker 1: they actually found the group of horses that they'd heard about,
Speaker 1: and the more time she spent with them, the more
Speaker 1: she realized they resembled this ancient lost breed of horse
Speaker 1: that these Persian royals had carved all over their palaces.
Speaker 1: It was called the Caspian horse, so Louise made the
Speaker 1: connection almost immediately, but it wasn't until the nineteen nineties
Speaker 1: that DNA testing was finally able to confirm her suspicion.
Speaker 1: But Louise knew the horses pedigree from the start, so
Speaker 1: she brought them back to Tehran for students, and to
Speaker 1: this day, Caspians are still considered the ideal starter horse
Speaker 1: for young riders.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, all right, So to recap, a riding instructor
Speaker 2: turned adventurer discovered a lost colony of royal horses and
Speaker 2: then marched them back to civilization so that children of
Speaker 2: Iran would have had something safe to ride. I don't
Speaker 2: think I can top that today, Mega, so I think
Speaker 2: you win the trophy. Congratulations, Thank you.
Speaker 1: So much, and that does it for today's Part Time
Speaker 1: Genius from Gabe Tristan Willelmy. Thank you so much for listening.
Speaker 2: Part Time Genius is a production of iHeartRadio. For more
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