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