Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, the production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff to
Speaker 3: Blow Your Mind, we're going to be talking about a
Speaker 3: concept called euro hydrosis. I'm not going to do any
Speaker 3: fancy roundabout introduction. I think we owe it to you
Speaker 3: to cut right to the chase, which is that today
Speaker 3: we're going to be talking about the biological reasons an
Speaker 3: animal might want to poop and pee all over itself.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is gonna be one of those episodes. So
Speaker 2: if you're not in the right headspace for this discussion,
Speaker 2: you know, come back and listen to the episode another time.
Speaker 2: But I think most of you are probably on board
Speaker 2: for this.
Speaker 3: So before we get to the reasons why, I think
Speaker 3: we should start with just a kind of visual introduction
Speaker 3: and observation, and it is that if you look at
Speaker 3: some long legged birds strutting around in their natural habitat,
Speaker 3: maybe wandering in the grass or on the rocks, foraging
Speaker 3: for food or getting ready for mating, you will sometimes
Speaker 3: see their legs covered in a pale residue and Rob
Speaker 3: I'm attaching some images for you to look at here
Speaker 3: in the outline, but people at home, you may want
Speaker 3: to look these up for yourself when I give you
Speaker 3: the names. So the examples I'm about to mention would
Speaker 3: be three stork species. One is Seconia episcopus, this is
Speaker 3: the wooly necked stork. Another one is Micteria lucocephala, which
Speaker 3: is the painted stork, and another is Leptoptalus creminifer, the
Speaker 3: Marrabou stork. Now, these are all storks with long, thin legs,
Speaker 3: I would say very roughly, you know, body length or
Speaker 3: longer standing in an upright posture. And in the pictures
Speaker 3: I've provided for you, rob these come from a paper
Speaker 3: that we're going to talk about just a minute. You
Speaker 3: can see in patches that the legs and feet have
Speaker 3: a natural pigmentation.
Speaker 4: They've got maybe a.
Speaker 3: Gray or brown or black color on the skin of
Speaker 3: the legs and feet. But in all three of these images,
Speaker 3: the legs are mostly covered in some kind of white substance.
Speaker 3: And if you had to guess what it is, what
Speaker 3: would you think it is? Indeed, what you're probably.
Speaker 2: Thinking, it's not some sort of a glittery bomb right,
Speaker 2: it's not. It's not any kind of as we discussed,
Speaker 2: it's not clothing that they're wearing here over their their
Speaker 2: long legs.
Speaker 4: It's something else, that's right. It is the bird's poop.
Speaker 3: Technically, in mammal terms, you might want to say it
Speaker 3: is both urine and feces, because birds deal with their
Speaker 3: excreta in a kind of different way than mammals do.
Speaker 3: They basically do it all in one go. It's not
Speaker 3: a separate poop and pee. It's all one thing.
Speaker 2: Yes, the glory of the Cloaca, which a long time
Speaker 2: listeners to stuff the Blu Mind have a fair amount
Speaker 2: of familiarity with. Though I don't think we've done an
Speaker 2: episode on the kloaca recently. An old episode on the kloaca.
Speaker 3: Remember it's a classic from many years ago. I think
Speaker 3: you and Julie did some cloaca.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And then it's come up, you know, it
Speaker 2: comes up anytime we're potentially talking about reproduction and digestion
Speaker 2: when you know, concerning birds and other animals. Sometimes it
Speaker 2: pops up in discussions of prehistoric creatures as well.
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: So with these animals with the bird or reptile lineage,
Speaker 3: you're going to be doing digestive waste, renal system waste,
Speaker 3: and reproduction is just all going in and out the
Speaker 3: same hole, the kloaca. So anyway, I got interested in
Speaker 3: the concept of eurohydrosis, the idea that birds would be
Speaker 3: intentionally having an adaptation to excrete waste all over their
Speaker 3: own bodies, all over their own legs, and so I
Speaker 3: was looking for scientific sources about this. So I found
Speaker 3: a paper from twenty twenty one that lays it all
Speaker 3: out pretty well. This is a paper in the journal
Speaker 3: Scientific Reports, and I apologize if I pronounced any of
Speaker 3: the author's names wrong here. It is by Julian Kabeo Vergel,
Speaker 3: Andrea Soriano, Ridondo Auxiliadora Viegas, Jose A Maseroje M. Sanchez Guzman,
Speaker 3: and Jorge S.
Speaker 4: Gutierres.
Speaker 3: And the paper is called eurohydrosis as an overlooked cooling
Speaker 3: mechanism in long legged birds. So basically, all animals on
Speaker 3: Earth need to regulate their internal body temperature, and there
Speaker 3: are a lot of reasons for this. Of course, we're
Speaker 3: all basically different types of water bags moving around and
Speaker 3: reproducing ourselves, so at the extremes you need to manage
Speaker 3: yourself as a water bag, you need to prevent your
Speaker 3: water content from freezing solid or turning into steam. But
Speaker 3: beyond those extremes, animals also need to keep their body
Speaker 3: temperature within a fairly narrow range to protect cellular function
Speaker 3: and facilitate the chemistry of metabolism, like there are certain
Speaker 3: enzymes in the body that don't work right if they're
Speaker 3: outside of a certain temperature range and so forth. And
Speaker 3: there are broadly two different ways that an animal species
Speaker 3: can be oriented with respect to the regulation of body temperature.
Speaker 3: These are ectothermy and endothermy. Endotherms, also known as warm
Speaker 3: blooded animals, generate their own internal heat from metabolism, so
Speaker 3: they burn food energy and use homeostatic mechanisms like shivering
Speaker 3: and sweating and so forth to keep body temperature within
Speaker 3: a very tight range. Mammals and birds are generally endotherms.
Speaker 3: They primarily regulate their temperature with internal mechanisms. Ectotherms, on
Speaker 3: the other hand, sometimes called cold blooded animals, regulate their
Speaker 3: body temperature mostly with the help of the outside environment.
Speaker 3: So these are the animals that you would think of
Speaker 3: as sun basking or cooling in water in order to
Speaker 3: manage their body temperature. Ectothermic animals include most reptiles, amphibians,
Speaker 3: and fish. Though to be clear, the cut between ectothermy
Speaker 3: and endothermy is not a clean cut. There are a
Speaker 3: lot of kind of blurry cases in between, just sort
Speaker 3: of a generally helpful distinction. Now, there are advantages to
Speaker 3: each of these major strategies. We could come back and
Speaker 3: go deep on this someday, and we've talked about it
Speaker 3: somewhat in the past, I believe, But a very simplified
Speaker 3: version is that endotherms animals that primarily generate their own
Speaker 3: heat through metabolism, they can do a lot more. They
Speaker 3: can sustain more muscular activity, they can grow more powerful brains,
Speaker 3: they can survive in a greater range of different climates
Speaker 3: you know you don't usually see like reptiles and extremely
Speaker 3: cold climates and so forth. But they also require a
Speaker 3: lot more food. Ectotherms are efficient because they don't leave
Speaker 3: the motor running all the time. They can usually go
Speaker 3: much longer in between meals and can survive rough patches
Speaker 3: by kind of going dormant. Now, because this paper is
Speaker 3: focused on birds, we're in the domain of the indotherms,
Speaker 3: the warm blooded animals that primarily generate heat through their
Speaker 3: own internal metabolic mechanisms, but even endotherms can't regulate everything internally,
Speaker 3: and the authors begin the paper by discussing various ways
Speaker 3: that endothermic animals do still have to protect themselves from
Speaker 3: external heat stress, from getting too hot because the environment
Speaker 3: is too hot. And some of these defense mechanisms against
Speaker 3: overheating are physiological and some are what you'd probably call behavioral,
Speaker 3: and the authors say that typically the first response, the
Speaker 3: first priority response, in the responses you go through when
Speaker 3: you're encountering heat stress is behavioral, and this could involve
Speaker 3: the selection of cooler microclimates, going to cooler places from
Speaker 3: warmer places, or what they call heat dissipating behaviors, and
Speaker 3: there are many different kinds of heat dissipating behaviors in nature.
Speaker 3: This could mean something as simple and as familiar to
Speaker 3: us as reducing physical activity. You know it's hot out,
Speaker 3: you stop moving around so much, or moving out of
Speaker 3: the sun and into the shade, or things like getting
Speaker 3: in the water for a swim. Being submerged, even in
Speaker 3: what feels like fairly warm water, actually removes heat from
Speaker 3: the body quite efficiently. The author is mentioned later in
Speaker 3: the paper that the thermal conductivity of water is twenty
Speaker 3: five times that of air. So you might have had
Speaker 3: this experience before where you know, even in a pool
Speaker 3: that doesn't feel very cold, the water feels nice and warm.
Speaker 3: You spend too long in the pool, you really will
Speaker 3: start to chill out and you need to get out
Speaker 3: of the water and warm up.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so you can basically could basically like roleplay all
Speaker 2: of these like you almost have like an innate pull
Speaker 2: towards these various thermoregulation options. You know, if we were
Speaker 2: to position you, say, you know, on a nice pool
Speaker 2: patio on a hot summer day, what are some of
Speaker 2: your options. Do you choose the umbrella, do you choose
Speaker 2: the pool, do you choose the shade of the house,
Speaker 2: and so forth?
Speaker 4: That's right.
Speaker 3: And then there's another class of heat dissipating behaviors which
Speaker 3: could be called like postural adjustments, and this could be
Speaker 3: just positioning the body in different ways to maximize how
Speaker 3: much heat it is getting rid of. One example is
Speaker 3: spreading out the body tissues to increase your surface area.
Speaker 3: So think about how when you're cold, you kind of
Speaker 3: try to shrink down, don't you You try to shrink
Speaker 3: your body into a ball and reduce your surface area.
Speaker 3: You might hug your arms into yourself and kind of
Speaker 3: kind of crouch. But in the heat, if you're overheating,
Speaker 3: you don't want your legs touching each other, and you
Speaker 3: don't want your arms touching your body. You want to
Speaker 3: splay out maximally to have maximal surface area, which means
Speaker 3: heat can escape your body with the greatest efficiency.
Speaker 2: Or you might want to fan out your neural spine
Speaker 2: sale for a yes, or if you want to regulate
Speaker 2: your temperature that way, if you have a neural spine sale,
Speaker 2: I'm not going to presume everyone has one.
Speaker 3: Or if you're a bird, you might want to fold
Speaker 3: unfold your wings, hold your wings out to let heat
Speaker 3: radiate that way. You know, different animals exactly the spine sales.
Speaker 3: This is a great example. You know, different animals have
Speaker 3: different ways of increasing their surface area and radiating more heat. Now,
Speaker 3: if the endothermic animal cannot escape heat stress with just
Speaker 3: the behavioral responses, it has to switch gears into what
Speaker 3: the authors call rapid physiological adjustments. This is things that
Speaker 3: the body does we would usually think of as involuntarily
Speaker 3: to try to remove heat faster. And these can vary
Speaker 3: across different types of animals, but it could include things
Speaker 3: like in humans, sweating, in other animals, panting, or increasing
Speaker 3: the breathing rate to dissipate more heat from the lungs
Speaker 3: and the respiratory system. Now, the authors point out that
Speaker 3: in birds, one of the most common physiological mechanisms for
Speaker 3: removing heat is what they call panting. I've seen some
Speaker 3: sources reject that terminology because maybe because they think it
Speaker 3: incorrectly implies it's the exact same thing that dogs do,
Speaker 3: but either it's similar either way. For birds, panting involves
Speaker 3: rapid breathing with an open mouth, so they might hold
Speaker 3: the bill open and breathe in and out very rapidly
Speaker 3: to purge heat through evaporation from the warm, moist tissues
Speaker 3: inside the mouth, throat, and lungs. This is also sometimes
Speaker 3: accompanied by another response called googler fluttering g u l
Speaker 3: R fluttering, which means like they would, the bird will
Speaker 3: vigorously vibrate the muscles and membranes inside its throat while
Speaker 3: panting to further increase evaporation and the purging of heat. Now,
Speaker 3: these physiological adjustments they do work. They will purge heat
Speaker 3: from the body and help avoid hyperthermia, help the animal
Speaker 3: cool down, But they're also very costly. They're costly and
Speaker 3: thus risky to the animal because they can waste important
Speaker 3: resources like energy and water. Birds can lose a lot
Speaker 3: of water through panting and fluttering, and in addition, the
Speaker 3: authors mentioned that panting in birds can force potentially undesirable
Speaker 3: changes in blood chemistry. So if you're an animal in
Speaker 3: the wild fighting for survival, you have these physiological mechanisms,
Speaker 3: these sort of rapid body adjustments that you can rely
Speaker 3: on if you have to, but you would like.
Speaker 4: To avoid them.
Speaker 3: You would like to avoid going into these wasteful physiological
Speaker 3: protections against heat if you can help it, and the
Speaker 3: more efficient behavioral methods should be your first line of defense.
Speaker 3: So for a human analogy, it's usually it's going to
Speaker 3: be less costly to your body to just get into
Speaker 3: the shade and get out of the heat than it
Speaker 3: is to start sweating bullets. In their introduction, the authors
Speaker 3: of this paper introduce a concept from zoology called heat
Speaker 3: dissipation limit theory, which argues that in indotherms, the problem
Speaker 3: of how to deal with excess heat produced by metabolism
Speaker 3: limits how much which energy you can take in and
Speaker 3: by consequence limits reproductive output. So the author's right that
Speaker 3: under this theory, heat dissipation behaviors could really be crucial
Speaker 3: to the evolutionary success of a species because they allow
Speaker 3: more chemical energy to be devoted to foraging and reproduction
Speaker 3: and things like that, rather than to physiological mechanisms simply
Speaker 3: for getting excess heat out of the body. And the
Speaker 3: authors mentioned that the sort of research context of this
Speaker 3: paper is that thermoregulatory behaviors and animals are increasingly being
Speaker 3: studied because of the current and future increases in heat
Speaker 3: stress on wildlife due to global warming, where the ability
Speaker 3: of an animal species to deal with heat stress without
Speaker 3: resorting to costly physiological mechanisms may be the difference between
Speaker 3: adaptation and extinction. So this is something that is probably
Speaker 3: just going to get more and more attention from people
Speaker 3: who study wildlife, especially as the heat stresses of environments
Speaker 3: are changing more rapidly. Now, another interesting fact about how
Speaker 3: birds protect themselves against overheating has to do with what
Speaker 3: the authors call quote unfeathered and well vascularized appendages, meaning
Speaker 3: parts of the body that are bare so not covered
Speaker 3: in feathers and parts of the body containing a lot
Speaker 3: of blood vessels, and examples here would be the bill,
Speaker 3: the bird's bill around the mouth, and the legs because
Speaker 3: these parts of the body are typically not insulated by
Speaker 3: feathers and lots of blood flows through them, and for
Speaker 3: these two reasons, these parts of the body can be
Speaker 3: utilized pretty well as what the authors call thermal radiators
Speaker 3: to purge excess heat, and this is especially the case
Speaker 3: for storks. The storks belong to the In scientific classification,
Speaker 3: they belong to the family Sickniady, which storks typically have long,
Speaker 3: bare legs and most often live in warm or hot
Speaker 3: climates with little shade. So storks have an internal mechanism
Speaker 3: for making use of these thermal radiators in the body.
Speaker 3: For making use of the long legs for temperature management,
Speaker 3: storks can actually alter the blood flow to their legs,
Speaker 3: constricting the blood vessels down there when it's cold out
Speaker 3: so less blood is flowing through and there's less heat exchange,
Speaker 3: and then dilating the blood vessels in the legs when
Speaker 3: it's hot, promoting more heat loss from the body down
Speaker 3: in the legs. But in the case of storks, the
Speaker 3: use of the legs as thermal radiators. Goes one step further,
Speaker 3: and here's where we get back to the topic for today,
Speaker 3: eurohydrosis the author's right quote. Notably, storks can deliberately excrete
Speaker 3: onto their legs when exposed to increasing environmental temperatures, a
Speaker 3: phenomenon known as eurohydrosis. When overheated, storks repeatedly direct liquid
Speaker 3: excrita toward their legs, only one leg at a time,
Speaker 3: which usually evaporates before reaching the toes. So it's hard
Speaker 3: to imagine this from a human perspective, but the more
Speaker 3: you think about it, the more it does make biological sense.
Speaker 3: Imagine you're out in the sun on a blazing summer day.
Speaker 3: The heat's really getting to you. You have a few
Speaker 3: options to cope. You could stop moving around and flop
Speaker 3: down in a chair. You could get out of the
Speaker 3: sun and into the shade. You could hop into a pool,
Speaker 3: or if those options are not really available to you
Speaker 3: at the moment, you could poop all over your own legs,
Speaker 3: one leg at a time, and then hope that that
Speaker 3: helps cool you off.
Speaker 2: Granted, there are certain consistency challenges here. Yes, yes, some
Speaker 2: dietary adjustments might be necessary in order to ensure this
Speaker 2: as a viable tactic for human beings. But I think
Speaker 2: we all have great imaginations, we can see it.
Speaker 3: I'm not recommending this as a tactic for human beings.
Speaker 3: I don't know that would work for a human. It
Speaker 3: might be a bad trade off. But it works for
Speaker 3: the storks. But the question is how does it work
Speaker 3: for the stork? How does it cool the body? Well,
Speaker 3: it is actually the same physical principle at work as
Speaker 3: many other thermoregulation techniques in nature. It is evaporative cooling.
Speaker 3: We've talked about evaporative cooling and a number of contexts
Speaker 3: on the show before. I think we did an invention
Speaker 3: series on the history of air conditioning, The Invention of
Speaker 3: air Conditioning, where we talked a lot about evaporative cooling,
Speaker 3: and it's come up in a biological context as well.
Speaker 3: But the short version is that the phase transition from
Speaker 3: liquid water into water vapor requires a lot of heat
Speaker 3: energy to take place. So water that is evaporating into
Speaker 3: the air cools down very rapidly and in turn cools
Speaker 3: whatever it is touching, such as your body if it's
Speaker 3: on the surface of your skin. And if you ever
Speaker 3: want to do a simple experiment in your home. To
Speaker 3: see evaporative cooling at work, you can try this is
Speaker 3: kind of fun. You can get two bottles of water
Speaker 3: at the same temperature room temperature bottles of water, and
Speaker 3: you put them both in front of a fan, and
Speaker 3: now one you just sit there with nothing, you know,
Speaker 3: by itself, but the other one wrap the bottle in
Speaker 3: a wet towel, set them both in front of the fan,
Speaker 3: and then come back in like half an hour. The
Speaker 3: regular bottle will not have cooled off significantly, but the
Speaker 3: bottle that you wrapped in a wet towel will be
Speaker 3: very cold because as airflow from the fan causes the
Speaker 3: water in the wet towel to quickly evaporate, it will
Speaker 3: suck heat from the water in the bottle and make
Speaker 3: it cold. I think this is an old trick that
Speaker 3: like people traveling in desert climates, you know, without artificial
Speaker 3: cooling used to use where they would you know, they'd
Speaker 3: have like a big jug of water, like a big
Speaker 3: skin of water, and to keep it cool as they're
Speaker 3: traveling in the hot desert sun. They would also get
Speaker 3: like a cloth and wet it at the beginning of
Speaker 3: the day and wrap it around the outside of this
Speaker 3: skin of water, and as the water evaporate from the
Speaker 3: hot cloth on the outside through the day under the
Speaker 3: hot sun, it sucks heat from the water inside and
Speaker 3: makes the water very cold. And evaporative cooling is why
Speaker 3: sweating cools the body. You know, as sweat evaporates from
Speaker 3: your skin, it steals heat energy from your body and
Speaker 3: it cools you off. Now, of course, sweating has a downside,
Speaker 3: which is that it causes you to lose water and electrolytes.
Speaker 3: So when you're hot and sweaty, it's very important to
Speaker 3: keep hydrated. To compensate for the water loss. Exercising in
Speaker 3: the hot sun one oh one, you got to drink
Speaker 3: lots of fluids. The same is true for birds. Now,
Speaker 3: birds don't sweat, they don't have sweat glands, they can't sweat,
Speaker 3: but they do have their own evaporative cooling techniques, and
Speaker 3: as we talked about, the panting is one of those
Speaker 3: techniques where they can use evaporative cooling in their respiratory
Speaker 3: system with the open bill rapid breathing, and eurohydrosis is
Speaker 3: one of these techniques. The author's right that eurohydrosis is
Speaker 3: relatively rare among birds, because it requires ready access to
Speaker 3: a lot of drinking water, but plenty of bird groups
Speaker 3: have been observed to do it. They list New World vultures, storks, condors, gannets,
Speaker 3: and boobies, and eurohodrosis has been known about for a
Speaker 3: long time, but the authors say there still has been
Speaker 3: relatively little investigation of what exactly are the environmental and
Speaker 3: physiological factors that determine it, like what causes one bird
Speaker 3: group to use eurohydrosis and another group to not use it.
Speaker 3: So the authors came up with a systematic way of
Speaker 3: looking into this. Now, this particular study relied on essentially
Speaker 3: repositories of scientific media, like imagery of birds from various
Speaker 3: field locations that was associated with metadata, so that you
Speaker 3: could try to correlate images of birds doing certain things
Speaker 3: and the environmental data about them. So this was not
Speaker 3: a direct field test with variables that the authors could manipulate,
Speaker 3: but they were just trying to establish correlations between like
Speaker 3: environmental factors and factors about the bird's bodies, along with
Speaker 3: observations of do these birds poop on their own legs
Speaker 3: or not? So what environmental factors did they find correlating.
Speaker 4: With the use of eurohydrosis? By storks.
Speaker 3: The authors found that high temperatures, high solar radiation, higher
Speaker 3: air humidity, and low wind speed were all factors that
Speaker 3: would increase the baseline heat stress risk for an endothermic animal,
Speaker 3: and storks in environments with all of these conditions were
Speaker 3: more likely to engage in eurohydrosis. They also found that
Speaker 3: it was more common among stork species that forage on
Speaker 3: dry land as opposed to those that commonly inhabit water
Speaker 3: bodies and forage by wading, which kind of makes sense
Speaker 3: to me, Like, if you can get your legs wet
Speaker 3: without pooping on them, all the better, right, Some storks
Speaker 3: are not in a position to spend as much time
Speaker 3: hanging out in the water.
Speaker 2: Right right, Or you're dealing with water that's very shallow. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, we've all seen storks in the wild, I think,
Speaker 2: and yeah, yeah, sometimes they're in very shallow waters.
Speaker 3: Now, even storks that sometimes weighed in water do apparently
Speaker 3: use eurohydrosis, just less often.
Speaker 4: For these species, it.
Speaker 3: May be more limited to times when circumstances create a
Speaker 3: higher heat risk, such as during reproduction when they need
Speaker 3: to be out of the water in the heat for
Speaker 3: extended time. But anyway, the authors say that the hypothesis
Speaker 3: that eurohydrosis correlates to open and warm habitats was confirmed.
Speaker 3: Birds that sort of live out in the open in
Speaker 3: hot places, they're the ones that are going to be
Speaker 3: more likely to do this to help cool their bodies. Now,
Speaker 3: there were some other hypotheses that had been put forward
Speaker 3: by these authors and other authors that were not confirmed
Speaker 3: in this research. It had been hypothesized that stork pigmentation
Speaker 3: would be correlated to the use of eurohydrosis. The idea
Speaker 3: is maybe that birds with darker pigmentation absorb more heat
Speaker 3: from the sun, but this was not supported by the survey.
Speaker 3: They did not find that correlation. It had also been
Speaker 3: hypothesized that eurohydrosis would directly correlate to the latitude where
Speaker 3: birds live, with tropical species practicing it more. This was
Speaker 3: also not strictly supported, though again there's some complications because
Speaker 3: some of these birds, you know, they will travel live
Speaker 3: at different latitudes different parts of the year, and again, warmer,
Speaker 3: more open environments did predict it, it was just not
Speaker 3: strictly latitude. Another thing that was not supported was a
Speaker 3: hypothesis about body mass. This was something that the authors
Speaker 3: of this paper predicted. They thought that higher body mass
Speaker 3: would predict more eurohydrosis because the animal would have more
Speaker 3: water reserves to take advantage of. Like, if you're a
Speaker 3: bigger animal, you can drink more water, store more water
Speaker 3: in the body. You can also you've got more to
Speaker 3: waste in pooping on your own legs to cool off.
Speaker 3: But this was actually not the case. This might have
Speaker 3: to do with the fact that these storks all had
Speaker 3: access to water bodies for regular drinking, even if they
Speaker 3: didn't spend a lot of their time waiting around in
Speaker 3: that water, so maybe internal water stores were less of
Speaker 3: a concern. Looking beyond storks, the authors note that even
Speaker 3: other bird groups that practice eurohydrosis, like New World vultures, boobies,
Speaker 3: and gannets, they all tend to breed or forage in hot,
Speaker 3: open land areas under the sun, and they also tend
Speaker 3: to have relatively large and highly vascularized legs, so there
Speaker 3: seemed to be some common environmental and physiological pressures at work.
Speaker 3: Now some other interesting observations from their conclusion I thought
Speaker 3: one was that when comparing different ways of cooling the
Speaker 3: body at the cost of energy and water reserves, the
Speaker 3: authors conclude that eurohydrosis is actually cheaper than panting, which
Speaker 3: was kind of surprising to me that that was counterintuitive,
Speaker 3: but they said this is supported by the fact that
Speaker 3: birds who have the adaptation tend to engage in leg
Speaker 3: pooping at a lower temperature threshold than the temperature threshold
Speaker 3: for panting. So I think kind of like how if
Speaker 3: you're a human, humans will typically resort to like changing
Speaker 3: into short sleeves before they will resort to like jumping
Speaker 3: into an ice water bath. You know, one is like
Speaker 3: a more severe, costly activity than the other, and it
Speaker 3: seems like for these birds, panting is the more severe,
Speaker 3: more costly, and risky activity. The authors also note that
Speaker 3: other animals, apart from birds, use alternative evaporative cooling methods,
Speaker 3: not just not just sweating like we do. They say,
Speaker 3: some mammals produce excess saliva when hot and then use
Speaker 3: evaporative cooling through the mouth or even cool the body
Speaker 3: by like drooling or licking on themselves on the outside
Speaker 3: and then allowing that saliva to evaporate. Rob I know,
Speaker 3: you've got an alternative evaporative cooling method to talk about
Speaker 3: in a minute, But they end up saying that there
Speaker 3: could be some tradeoffs involved here. There's possibly that this
Speaker 3: is not a strong not something strongly established, but a
Speaker 3: possibility is that there could be a tradeoff between mate
Speaker 3: signaling based on the pigmentation of bird legs and the
Speaker 3: cooling benefits of euro hydrosis. But this is yet to
Speaker 3: be fully explored. But the idea here would be if
Speaker 3: this were the case that it helps you advertise mating
Speaker 3: fitness better, if like the correct pigmentation on your legs
Speaker 3: is showing, and that by pooping all over your legs
Speaker 3: this like changes the way you look and sort of
Speaker 3: downgrades your mating appeal. So there could be some push
Speaker 3: and pull there, but that wasn't very well established. But
Speaker 3: more briefly, I did want to mention a second paper
Speaker 3: that involved three of the same authors as the previous
Speaker 3: paper because it had some interesting follow up on this
Speaker 3: and involved a or direct method. And so the second
Speaker 3: paper was by again three of the same authors, Kabeo, Vergel,
Speaker 3: Viegas and Gutierres, and this one was called keeping Cool
Speaker 3: with poop Eurohydrosis lowers leg surface temperature by up to
Speaker 3: six degrees celsius in breeding white storks, published in Ecosphere
Speaker 3: in twenty twenty three, and this study was a direct
Speaker 3: attempt to measure that the magnitude and duration of the
Speaker 3: evaporative cooling that you get from eurohydrosis in free ranging birds.
Speaker 3: This study used observations of eurohydrosis in white storks or
Speaker 3: seconias econia, paired with thermal imaging and microclimate measurements to
Speaker 3: see like exactly how much benefit the leg pooping was providing. Now,
Speaker 3: this next part in the abstract did make me laugh.
Speaker 3: They write, quote, we show that eurohydrosis can reduce leg
Speaker 3: surface temperature by up to six point seven degrees celsius,
Speaker 3: which is actually four point four plus or minus one
Speaker 3: point zero four degrees celsius. Yet its cooling effect was
Speaker 3: of short duration, lasting no more than two point five minutes,
Speaker 3: and decreased with time since defecation. Which actually that makes sense, right,
Speaker 3: because like, if you're trying to work through evaporative cooling,
Speaker 3: as the bird poops on its leg, it will be
Speaker 3: very it will have a great cooling effect while the
Speaker 3: poop is still very wet, but then as it evaporates,
Speaker 3: it will dry up, and then it will provide less
Speaker 3: of a cooling benefit and may even have some negative effect.
Speaker 4: In fact, if it like cakes on you know.
Speaker 2: Let's keep all of this in mind as we perceive, right.
Speaker 3: So, but then there's the second second thing here. The
Speaker 3: selection continues quote. Thus, for your hydrosis to significantly contribute
Speaker 3: to heat dissipation, storks must perform it repeatedly when overheated.
Speaker 3: So the leg pooping must go on and on, and
Speaker 3: it turns out it does. The authors found that the
Speaker 3: white storks here can poop on themselves eleven times per hour.
Speaker 3: And I did a little math there. So with like
Speaker 3: two point five minutes of cooling with each blast, that's
Speaker 3: twenty seven point five minutes of cooling per hour. If
Speaker 3: they do it eleven times, almost half of the time
Speaker 3: of the hour is in cooling mode. So the authors
Speaker 3: estimate that eurohydrosis can cover quote four percent of the
Speaker 3: daily field metabolic rate for an adult stork.
Speaker 4: Wow.
Speaker 2: So it's like any cooling system in a house that
Speaker 2: might it might not be on all the time. That
Speaker 2: would probably be just biologically impossible, but it's going to
Speaker 2: keep coming on periodically to try and keep the temperature down.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a great comparison. It'll it'll trigger repeatedly over
Speaker 3: time to kick off little short periods of cooling and
Speaker 3: then the body temperature will come back up again, and
Speaker 3: then the bird will release the excreta again and it
Speaker 3: will set off another short period of cooling, and it'll go.
Speaker 4: Back and forth.
Speaker 3: Now, I just did want to I mentioned this on
Speaker 3: the earlier study, but I did want to emphasize again,
Speaker 3: unless you think this is just silly, this is actually
Speaker 3: interesting and relevant knowledge, and will things like this will
Speaker 3: be of increasing importance to wildlife and conservation biologists over time.
Speaker 3: The author's right quote, Gaining knowledge about behavioral thermoregulation in
Speaker 3: the heat is therefore crucial to better predict the future
Speaker 3: persistence and vulnerability of species under different climate warming scenarios.
Speaker 3: A lot of these species are going to be living
Speaker 3: in places where the local climate is increasing in heat
Speaker 3: over time. That's increasing the heat stress on animals that
Speaker 3: live in the wild, and some animals will be better
Speaker 3: or worse able to deal with it than others. There
Speaker 3: was another question that came out because I saw some
Speaker 3: stuff online in discussions about eurohedrosis that was about possible
Speaker 3: other functions. It seems pretty clear certainly in storks it's
Speaker 3: playing a role in cooling the body, But is eurohidrosis
Speaker 3: just to cool the body or in some species. Could
Speaker 3: it be playing another role as well, Like I saw
Speaker 3: some ideas that it could possibly have an antibacterial function.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and that brings us back to the gross and
Speaker 2: wonderful world of vultures. These splendid kings and queens who
Speaker 2: keep our streets clear of carcasses and in general are
Speaker 2: just great decomposers. There were a few in our neighborhood
Speaker 2: not too just a week or so ago. They were
Speaker 2: disrupting traffic. But you know, as we went by them,
Speaker 2: we saluted them because they were doing the lord's work
Speaker 2: out there.
Speaker 4: They're worthy of our respect. Yes.
Speaker 2: So yeah, there's this idea that various New World vultures
Speaker 2: are engaging in this kind of you know, possible eurohydrosis,
Speaker 2: but maybe not for temperature control purposes. That you know,
Speaker 2: they've been observed to do it when it's cold, they've
Speaker 2: been serve to do it when it's warm, So what
Speaker 2: could the purpose be? And there is this idea that
Speaker 2: it is essentially kind of like when we reach for
Speaker 2: a container of a hand sanitizer, except for the vulture, whose,
Speaker 2: of course, you know, it's it's getting its talons into
Speaker 2: various you know, grotesque feasts there on the side of
Speaker 2: the road or in the wilderness and so forth. Occasionally
Speaker 2: it makes sense to sanitize those legs with an eye,
Speaker 2: perhaps with a nice you know, coloacal wash. And so
Speaker 2: that is, that is the theory that there is an
Speaker 2: antiseptic nature of vulture defecation, and that it, you know,
Speaker 2: especially would be important for various scrapes and cuts on
Speaker 2: those appendages. And so I was reading about this in
Speaker 2: a twenty twenty two book, Vultures of the World, in
Speaker 2: which the author Keith l Builds and points out that
Speaker 2: at the time, at any rate, the antiseptic nature of
Speaker 2: vulture defication had not been like tested to the full.
Speaker 2: So it's still kind of an open question. But this
Speaker 2: does seem to be a strong argument, again based in
Speaker 2: large part of the fact that they do seem to
Speaker 2: do it both in summer and winter, suggesting that disinfection
Speaker 2: might be at least an important part of the equation
Speaker 2: for like turkey vultures. Okay, now, an interesting fact about this.
Speaker 2: I was not familiar with this, but the author here
Speaker 2: points out that in in US and Canada at any rate,
Speaker 2: vulture researchers are prohibited from using leg bands on turkey
Speaker 2: vultures because there's a risk of uric acid building up
Speaker 2: and cementing around the leg band because again they're pooping
Speaker 2: and peeing down those legs. If you have a band
Speaker 2: there for tracking purposes, it could you know, it gets
Speaker 2: caught there, it drives there, it's cements there, and this
Speaker 2: could effectively hobble the bird over time. Eventually it's like
Speaker 2: too big of a weight for them to fly off with, apparently,
Speaker 2: or at least you know, it would get in the
Speaker 2: way they're flying, in their ability to carry out their
Speaker 2: daily activities. So fortunately there are other methods for tracking them,
Speaker 2: things like wing tags and the like, but putting a
Speaker 2: leg tag on them as a no no. Now, before
Speaker 2: we get away from birds, I do want to point
Speaker 2: out that in looking I'm always interested to see if
Speaker 2: there's any kind of mythological or folklore tie in to
Speaker 2: a particular topic, and I really wasn't expecting much here,
Speaker 2: but I did find mention of this in connection to
Speaker 2: Amazonian mythology via a book titled an Amazonian myth and
Speaker 2: Its History by Peter Goal that came out in two
Speaker 2: thousand and one. So the story involved here is referred
Speaker 2: to as the Sun and it entails a character who
Speaker 2: is at one point eviscerated, but in a nice way,
Speaker 2: like in a like a polite mythic way, like he's
Speaker 2: asleep and the creatures that are working for him remove
Speaker 2: his intestines. But at any rate, the story involves a
Speaker 2: character who's eviscerated becomes gutless, and by becoming gutless, can
Speaker 2: now eat and drink all he wants, but can also
Speaker 2: never be satisfied. And this is a story that Giles
Speaker 2: says is apparently connected to observations of the wood stork
Speaker 2: who appeared gutless, because they are constantly excreting waste. You mentioned,
Speaker 2: like how often per hour they are excreting in order
Speaker 2: to cool those legs down, and it can lead to
Speaker 2: this observation. It's like, well, this animal poops all the time,
Speaker 2: and we don't do that. We you know, we know exactly,
Speaker 2: we know more or less what's happening when we consume
Speaker 2: food and it becomes nourishment and so forth. Perhaps the
Speaker 2: stork is not giving it time at all, is just
Speaker 2: going straight through, and therefore, you know, there's just these
Speaker 2: kind of you know, ravenous but unsatisfied creatures.
Speaker 3: Interesting, now, I didn't come across a poop count on
Speaker 3: the wood stork. But in that one star, yeah there
Speaker 3: was the white stork, and it was up to eleven
Speaker 3: times per hour.
Speaker 4: Wow, that's a lot.
Speaker 2: So the myth, as recounted, apparently involves a man who
Speaker 2: has enslaved the wood storks to do his bidding, but
Speaker 2: then while he's asleep in the canoe, they remove his intestines,
Speaker 2: and they intestines and they like hang them over the
Speaker 2: side of the canoe, and when he wakes up, he's like, hey,
Speaker 2: what's this stuff here? They apparently don't say anything, so
Speaker 2: he throws it out and then the storks tell him
Speaker 2: later they're like, oh, yeah, by the way, those we
Speaker 2: are intestines. So as I understand that what we have
Speaker 2: here is we have an observation of nature, an incorrect hypothesis,
Speaker 2: or a very loose hypothesis that's maybe concerned more with
Speaker 2: the mythic purposes of the tale as opposed to anything else.
Speaker 2: And then this bleeds into an anatomical mythology that presents
Speaker 2: something almost like a hungry ghost, you know, this idea
Speaker 2: of a being that cannot be satisfied because his digestive
Speaker 2: capabilities are just not intact, and that perhaps that's what
Speaker 2: we see when we see these storks as well.
Speaker 4: Interesting.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess that does sort of tie into
Speaker 3: the observation that the storks most likely to engage in
Speaker 3: this are the ones that are going to be out
Speaker 3: in the sun on dry land in the heat, but
Speaker 3: also birds that have ready access to drinking water, and
Speaker 3: that this would probably not be a good adaptation for
Speaker 3: a bird species that had to, you know, that had
Speaker 3: to conserve water resources maximally and did not have ready
Speaker 3: access to water bodies.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't have enough time to really dive into
Speaker 2: this text, but it's out there if anyone else wants
Speaker 2: to look into it again. The author is Peter gow
Speaker 2: He lived nineteen fifty eight through twenty twenty one. He
Speaker 2: was a social anthropologist who worked a lot in the Amazon.
Speaker 3: Interesting story. Yeah, yeah, I also was. I did not
Speaker 3: think there would be a eurohydrosis related myth, But.
Speaker 2: Here we are. Let's see other animals. Though, interestingly enough,
Speaker 2: we also see this in some aquatic mammals. The main
Speaker 2: example that I was reading about in a paper that
Speaker 2: you sent to me, Joe, is the southern fur seal
Speaker 2: or arctocephalus. Is this means bare head because we're talking
Speaker 2: about Antarctic fur seals here. These are furry looking critters
Speaker 2: adapted to thrive in very cold waters. However, as Roger L.
Speaker 2: Gentry discusses in the nineteen seventy three paper Thermoregulatory Behavior
Speaker 2: of eared Seals this is published in the journal Behavior,
Speaker 2: they have other means of thermoregulation that become necessary when
Speaker 2: these well insulated creatures are out of the water and
Speaker 2: caring about on the shore, on the rocks in the sun.
Speaker 3: Ah Okay, so this might be a different situation than
Speaker 3: the storks living in like a really hot climate under
Speaker 3: the direct sun. I mean, I guess you could still
Speaker 3: have the sun beating down on you. But the issue
Speaker 3: here would be that the seals are very well adapted
Speaker 3: to the cold, and so in cases where they're under
Speaker 3: the sun and it's not very cold, their their heat
Speaker 3: conserving adaptations are working against them, right.
Speaker 2: And the situation where this becomes essential, especially for the males,
Speaker 2: it has to do with their their breeding period because
Speaker 2: they you know, they live a lot of their lives
Speaker 2: in the water, but they have to they come on
Speaker 2: to land, you know, during the breeding period, and it's
Speaker 2: very important for a male to hold down his territory.
Speaker 2: So there's a lot of fighting and squabbling for territory
Speaker 2: and for females, and it's a It can be a
Speaker 2: real endurance game for the males of you know, various
Speaker 2: seal species species because they're having to constantly fight and
Speaker 2: at the same time they have to maintain acceptable body temperatures,
Speaker 2: they have to thermoregulate, and they're not in the water
Speaker 2: at this point. The water is the author points out,
Speaker 2: the ideal place for this creature to cool down. But
Speaker 2: you're fighting a territory war, in a mating war up
Speaker 2: here on the rocks. So getting back in the water
Speaker 2: is something you can do, but that is going to
Speaker 2: be like your last resort because you're giving up territory
Speaker 2: at that point, so you have to do other things.
Speaker 2: So Gentry discusses how, especially during the high temperatures in
Speaker 2: these environments, you'll see a few different behaviors. So on
Speaker 2: one hand, they will seek out shade or shade cooled rocks,
Speaker 2: which you know, kind of the same thing. But it's
Speaker 2: essential to note that you know, rocks of course heat
Speaker 2: up in the sun, so being in the shade is
Speaker 2: one level of protection, but also being on rocks that
Speaker 2: are either currently or have just previously been cooled by
Speaker 2: the shade is also worth thinking about. And so according
Speaker 2: to Gentry, during higher temperatures, these seals have been observed
Speaker 2: to stand on all fours and then annoy their flippers
Speaker 2: and bellies with urine, with the back of flippers being
Speaker 2: the key, because then they'll lay on one side and
Speaker 2: extend their now wet rear flipper into the air and
Speaker 2: this will be the way they carry out carry out
Speaker 2: some evaporative cooling. He also notes that the males seemingly
Speaker 2: drink more water in the surf during this time period
Speaker 2: in order to provide more urine for thermal regulation when
Speaker 2: they're out on the shore. So, coming back to what
Speaker 2: we were talking about with the with the storks, if
Speaker 2: you're going to engage in something like this, you've got
Speaker 2: to keep you've got to keep the fluids flowing.
Speaker 3: That is so interesting imagining like the sort of the
Speaker 3: chain of preparations there I'm thinking about. So the mail
Speaker 3: seals like tanking up with water to get ready for
Speaker 3: one of these one of these like breeding season things
Speaker 3: where he knows he's going to be out under the sun.
Speaker 2: Now, this is also interesting to think about for me
Speaker 2: because I did get to see Galapagos fur seals carrying
Speaker 2: out carrying out their various activities on the beach when
Speaker 2: I was down at the Galapagos Island, and I didn't
Speaker 2: even know to look out for any kind of urination
Speaker 2: going on. I don't think I saw any like actual
Speaker 2: throwdowns between male seals, but I did get to see
Speaker 2: like some of what they're up to. So, yeah, I
Speaker 2: wish I'd known to look out for this.
Speaker 3: What does it look What does it look like? Some
Speaker 3: we're just trying to like stake out good territory.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you'll see like a big male and a bunch
Speaker 2: of females and then you know, basically trying to hold
Speaker 2: down the territory of this part of the beach with
Speaker 2: these females. And then occasionally here's some other male seal
Speaker 2: coming that is going to contest this situation, and then
Speaker 2: you know, there are various little squabbles about where the
Speaker 2: females are getting to lay about as well, and then
Speaker 2: you know sometimes and then this is also inevitably happening
Speaker 2: or a lot of the time it's happening on beaches
Speaker 2: that where people are also hanging around, so they're also
Speaker 2: human tourists, so there's a lot of and of course
Speaker 2: when the seals decide they want to go somewhere, it's
Speaker 2: like it's time for the humans to move.
Speaker 4: Yeah, don't mess with seals, folks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but sometimes they could be a little like at
Speaker 2: one point, I was just sitting there with my family
Speaker 2: and there was like a smaller, very loud, female seal
Speaker 2: and she just decided she needed to set where I was,
Speaker 2: So of course I moved and then she sat there
Speaker 2: for a little bit and kind of, you know, catterwalled
Speaker 2: a bit, and then she moved on elsewhere. But it
Speaker 2: was like, I don't know, it kind of felt like
Speaker 2: she was being a little petty. But fair enough, this
Speaker 2: beach belongs to you. I'm just visiting.
Speaker 4: Very magnanimous.
Speaker 2: Yes, hey, just a quick post publication note. I want
Speaker 2: to insert here everything that I was saying about the
Speaker 2: fur seals is correct according to my research. But in
Speaker 2: the heat of the moment, I mentioned the Galapagos and
Speaker 2: I mistook my memory of Galapagos sea lions for Galapagos
Speaker 2: fur seals, So sorry about that. My apologies, but I
Speaker 2: did want to throw in this post publication correction here
Speaker 2: for anyone who listens to the episode later. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: didn't have anything about the Galapagos in my notes. It's
Speaker 2: just as I was going through this part of the episode,
Speaker 2: it stirred a memory, and as is sometimes the case
Speaker 2: with memories that are recalled from the depths, sometimes it
Speaker 2: comes up with a little bit of incorrect information applied there. So,
Speaker 2: without further ado, let's get back into the episode. Now,
Speaker 2: speaking of the Glapagos, this does bring me to the
Speaker 2: next question that I had, because when I was in
Speaker 2: the Glapagos, I did just a little bit of snorkeling
Speaker 2: in very cold waters, and I was wearing a dive
Speaker 2: suit because it gets cold. And if you've ever gone
Speaker 2: diving or done scuba diving or snorkeling and you've worn
Speaker 2: a wet suit and the water's been cold, you might
Speaker 2: have done what a lot of people have done what
Speaker 2: I did as well, and that is urinate in the
Speaker 2: suit while you're in the water too warm. Things is
Speaker 2: up a bit. This instantly came to my mind when
Speaker 2: we started getting into this, because yeah, like this seems
Speaker 2: like an example where humans can get in on the
Speaker 2: euro hydrosis action, right, sort of in the opposite direction,
Speaker 2: in the opposite direction, right, you know, can we just
Speaker 2: pee in our dive suits in order to warm things up?
Speaker 2: And you know, I was able to find a full
Speaker 2: article about this on dive SSI dot com. That's Scuba
Speaker 2: School's International.
Speaker 4: That's beautiful. Well what's the word?
Speaker 2: All right? So yeah, I didn't know what the what
Speaker 2: the full scoop on this was. And I'm not like
Speaker 2: a big I'm not a scuba diver and I am
Speaker 2: not a wetsuit person, so I didn't even know what
Speaker 2: the accepted wisdom was here. But the authors of this
Speaker 2: article point out that, yeah, this is kind of like
Speaker 2: common lore among divers and historically scuba divers that that
Speaker 2: if you get in a little cold, will pee in
Speaker 2: your suit and then all warm things up a bit.
Speaker 2: And they point out that due to the mammalian dive response,
Speaker 2: you might need, you might have a heightened need to
Speaker 2: urinate in this environment, because a submerged mammal is going
Speaker 2: to experience a slowed heart rate during free diving, especially,
Speaker 2: it's going to narrow blood vessels in the extremities, and
Speaker 2: blood's going to shift to the core parts of the
Speaker 2: body all in order to conserve oxygen and maintain blood
Speaker 2: flow while holding one's breath, But more blood ends up
Speaker 2: going to the core and then via the kidneys. This
Speaker 2: increases the urge to urinate. So you might find yourself
Speaker 2: in a situation where you're like, Wow, I just got
Speaker 2: into the water off the boat. It's cold, I need
Speaker 2: a pee anyway, Why don't we warm things up a bit?
Speaker 2: And so Yeah, they point out that this is a
Speaker 2: common bit of diver's lore, and the article states quote
Speaker 2: the wet suit itself works by trapping a thin layer
Speaker 2: of water between the neoprene that's a synthetic rubber and
Speaker 2: the skin, which the body warms. This layer serves as insulation,
Speaker 2: keeping the diver warm in cold water. When a diver
Speaker 2: urinates in their wet suit, the initial warm sensation comes
Speaker 2: from the body warmed urine. However, this effect is fleeting.
Speaker 3: Nothing gold can stay.
Speaker 2: I mean in this we do kind of come back
Speaker 2: to the situation with the storks, right. I mean that
Speaker 2: too is fleeting is a cooling burst that will have
Speaker 2: to be reapplied. I think the problem with divers is
Speaker 2: that you probably don't have that many goes at it. Here, right,
Speaker 2: you probably? I mean, how many times can will you
Speaker 2: urinate in your suit on a given dive or snorkel?
Speaker 2: I could be wrong, but I have a feeling knowing
Speaker 2: my body that truly it's just one, maybe two, but
Speaker 2: not enough to not not eleven times per hour.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and if I'm understanding the dynamics here correctly, it
Speaker 3: even then, like it's still just a sensation of warming.
Speaker 3: Your body is not actually getting warmer from this, like
Speaker 3: you're losing warmth by peeing, but it's it feels warm
Speaker 3: on the outside.
Speaker 2: Right, you're going to get that, and I can testify
Speaker 2: to this. Yeah, you get you get a warming sensation,
Speaker 2: but it is fleeting, they point out, because the urine
Speaker 2: quickly cools and things that will then actually feel colder
Speaker 2: when this cooling occurs. You know, it's kind of like
Speaker 2: when you first get into the cold water to swim about.
Speaker 2: It's like it can be shocking, takes your breath away,
Speaker 2: but then you get used to it and you carry on.
Speaker 2: When you pee your suit in order to warm up,
Speaker 2: you kind of like recreate something like that scenario again,
Speaker 2: we're like, oh, now now it's cold again. Because and
Speaker 2: part of this is the wet suit is not waterproof.
Speaker 2: It's permeable, so outside cold water will directly cool the
Speaker 2: layer of spreading warm urine in the suit. Now, all
Speaker 2: that being said, the article stresses that peeing in your
Speaker 2: wet suit is a common practice and it's not harmful.
Speaker 2: You know, you may have some hygienic or some comfort
Speaker 2: concerns about it, but basically all they really advise on
Speaker 2: this is, look, if you do it, fine, but just
Speaker 2: you want to make sure you wash out your suit afterwards.
Speaker 2: I mean, you're going to be washing your suit out,
Speaker 2: but you know, if if you don't thoroughly wash it out,
Speaker 2: you could get some uh some some some urine odors
Speaker 2: you know, in the material and so forth. But uh,
Speaker 2: and then again they stress that, yeah, you're gonna get
Speaker 2: a warm burst, but it's not going to be lasting.
Speaker 2: It's not It's just just going to be a burst.
Speaker 3: You know, correct me if I'm wrong. But I bet
Speaker 3: a lot of people don't own their own dive suits,
Speaker 3: do your kind? Is it a rental situation?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, I mean now that you mentioned it, like
Speaker 2: the dive suit I urinated in was definitely not mine,
Speaker 2: in no shape was provided for me. And uh, yeah,
Speaker 2: I trust that they sprayed it out afterwards. I guess
Speaker 2: though it didn't seem gross when I put it on.
Speaker 2: So uh And I imagine a lot of people have
Speaker 2: peede in that suit.
Speaker 4: Sound like everybody does it. I'm sure they wash them
Speaker 4: real good.
Speaker 2: I would love to hear from folks out there who've
Speaker 2: done like a lot of like scuba and snorkeling in
Speaker 2: wet suits. And uh, you can add your own, you know,
Speaker 2: two cents to this whole discussion.
Speaker 3: Well, Rob, this topic went places I did not expect,
Speaker 3: but I have found great delight in the twists and turns.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, yeah. As is often the case, once you
Speaker 2: really get into a topic, you don't know where it's
Speaker 2: going to take you.
Speaker 3: Hey, but if you're somebody who happens to see storks, vultures, condors, ganets,
Speaker 3: boobies in the wild and you catch them with like
Speaker 3: seeing this taking place, let us know, do you have
Speaker 3: any pictures what's going on?
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's right, we want natural world observations as well
Speaker 2: as reports on adventures and peeing yourself.
Speaker 4: Please no pictures of human just the.
Speaker 2: Birds, just the birds place or the scenes. Yeah all right,
Speaker 2: Well we're going to go and close out this episode.
Speaker 2: But we'll remind you that Stuff to Blow Your Mind
Speaker 2: is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core episodes
Speaker 2: on Tuesdays and Thursdays and on Fridays. We set aside
Speaker 2: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film
Speaker 2: on Weird House Cinema, so you can always look out
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Speaker 2: are st b y M podcast There.
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 at stuff to blow
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