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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 3: My name is Robert Lamb and I am Joe McCormick,

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Speaker 3: and we are back for the third and final part

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Speaker 3: in our series on the psychology and cultural significance of

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Speaker 3: number parity pr it y paroity referring to whether a

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Speaker 3: number is even or odd, and we are ending it

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Speaker 3: with an odd number of episodes that just felt right now.

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Speaker 3: If you haven't heard the other parts in this series,

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Speaker 3: you might want to go back and listen to those first.

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Speaker 3: But in part one we talked about the mathematical principle

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Speaker 3: of number parity, as well as some evidence that people,

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Speaker 3: if given the opportunity, will sometimes project associations and emotions

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Speaker 3: onto even and odd numbers, for example by maybe feeling

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Speaker 3: more positivity towards even numbers on average, or by having

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Speaker 3: an esthetic preference for odd numbers in visual art, as

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Speaker 3: reflected in the conventional rule of thirds and rule of

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Speaker 3: odds in art theory, which we discussed in some detail

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Speaker 3: in that episode. But then we also brought in some

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Speaker 3: questions and counter evidence about the real world validity and

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Speaker 3: alleged universality of these preferences for odds in art. In

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Speaker 3: part two of the series, we talked about a research

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Speaker 3: paper on the cognitive psychology of number parity, which advanced

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Speaker 3: what I thought was a really interesting argument that despite

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Speaker 3: the fact that all positive integers are mathematically defined as

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Speaker 3: simply odd or even and nothing in between, our brains

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Speaker 3: may in practice treat some numbers as more even or

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Speaker 3: more odd than others, mentally transforming these definitionally discrete categories

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Speaker 3: into a semi smooth gradient. And this could be due

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Speaker 3: to multiple factors, involving mathematical properties like the ease of divisibility,

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Speaker 3: and also linguistic properties how easily we process different words

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Speaker 3: and their associated concepts. We also talk some more about

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Speaker 3: even and odd groupings in visual art, specifically in religious

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Speaker 3: images such as that of the ten headed demon king

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Speaker 3: Ravna in Hindu mythology, and we also talked about preferences

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Speaker 3: for even or odd groupings on food plates. I think

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Speaker 3: the conventional wisdom favors odd numbers of food items, but

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Speaker 3: the research maybe paints a slightly more complicated picture.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I think in either case, like what does a

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Speaker 2: plate of food and the multi headed incarnation of a

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Speaker 2: Hindu God, what do they have in common? It's that

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Speaker 2: there are other things involved in and how you're ultimately

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Speaker 2: going to perceive this image. Either religious iconography is going

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Speaker 2: to be trying to relate other concepts to you the viewer,

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Speaker 2: the intended audience viewer, and the food imagery is of

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Speaker 2: course showing you something that on some level at least

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Speaker 2: you want to eat.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. So we're here today to finish off this

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Speaker 3: series with a few more things about odd and even topics.

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Speaker 3: So I just wanted to mention at the top of

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Speaker 3: the episode here a few more interesting ideas I came

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Speaker 3: across while reading about evens and odds. Previously, we talked

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Speaker 3: about some evidence that, at least in certain contexts, people

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Speaker 3: like some numbers more than others. For example, they may

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Speaker 3: have more positive emotional feelings about even numbers, or at

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Speaker 3: least about numbers that are easily divisible, because one of

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Speaker 3: the studies we talked about in part one apparently found

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Speaker 3: that people had more positive feelings toward even numbers and

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Speaker 3: numbers divisible by five. Coming back to the question of

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Speaker 3: certain numbers feeling more even or less odd than they

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Speaker 3: really are. So a great example is that twenty five

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Speaker 3: is an odd number, but why does it feel like

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Speaker 3: an even number to me? I would say the ease

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Speaker 3: of divisibility by the sub base of five is a

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Speaker 3: pretty good guess. And this sort of brings me back

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Speaker 3: to idea I first encountered in a couple of the

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Speaker 3: articles that we were talking about in part one by

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Speaker 3: a British author named Alex Bellows who writes newspaper columns

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Speaker 3: about mathematics and puzzles sometimes, but it also written a

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Speaker 3: book addressing some of these topics. And in these articles

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Speaker 3: he talked about people's feelings about odd and even numbers,

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Speaker 3: and the idea he raises that if it's true that

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Speaker 3: people sometimes feel better about even numbers than odd ones,

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Speaker 3: what if that sense of liking for even numbers is

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Speaker 3: related to the concept of processing fluency. Now, this is

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Speaker 3: a psychological concept that has come up on the show before.

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Speaker 3: The gist of the idea is that a lot of

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Speaker 3: the judgments that humans make, from whether we like something

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Speaker 3: to whether we trust a piece of information or believe

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Speaker 3: something is true, a lot of these judgments are influenced

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Speaker 3: by our subconscious reaction to how easy it is for

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Speaker 3: us to mint process the stimulus in question. There are

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Speaker 3: a lot of studies looking at this. I remember this

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Speaker 3: came up when we were discussing the illusory truth effect,

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Speaker 3: the idea that if a claim a claim may have

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Speaker 3: no real evidence for it, or you may have no

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Speaker 3: particular reason for believing a claim is true, but if

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Speaker 3: you hear it repeated a bunch of times, it starts

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Speaker 3: to feel more and more true to you. And one

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Speaker 3: of the popular explanations for this effect is the idea

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Speaker 3: that hearing a hearing a claim on subsequent exposures increases

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Speaker 3: its processing fluency because it's more familiar to you. You've

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Speaker 3: heard it before, so it's easier to take in the second, third, fourth,

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Speaker 3: fifth time you hear it, and thus it because it

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Speaker 3: has increased processing fluency, it just feels more right. It

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Speaker 3: feels more true. One of the key findings that already

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Speaker 3: came up in some of the papers we talked about

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Speaker 3: in Part two is that it seems even numbers are

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Speaker 3: on average more easily processed than odd numbers are. You know,

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Speaker 3: when it's easier to think about even numbers, we can

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Speaker 3: more quickly classify them mathematically as even numbers. It's easier

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Speaker 3: to think about doing mathematical operations with them. Odd numbers

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Speaker 3: are just they're introducing friction to your brain when you

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Speaker 3: have to consider them. And if this is the case,

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Speaker 3: it could be a major contributor to these particular situations

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Speaker 3: where people seem to like even numbers better than odd numbers.

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Speaker 3: But of course we don't always like even numbers better

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Speaker 3: than odd numbers. And this comes back to the issues

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Speaker 3: of these additional bits of context and cultural associations we

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Speaker 3: happen to pin onto these numbers, and whether at the

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Speaker 3: time of us having a feeling about a number or

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Speaker 3: making a judgment about it, these other associations become salient.

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Speaker 3: So anyway, that brings me to another line of research

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Speaker 3: that I stumbled across when looking into this, that I

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Speaker 3: thought was curious and sort of funny also, which is

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Speaker 3: the apparent asociation between number parity and the social concept

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Speaker 3: of gender. Now, in much the same way, it seems

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Speaker 3: absurd that without any context, in other words, without quantifying

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Speaker 3: anything in particular, specific numbers whatever feel good or bad

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Speaker 3: to people. It also seems kind of absurd that anyone

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Speaker 3: would think of standard Arabic numerals as masculine or feminine.

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Speaker 3: But there are some experiments in which researchers claim to

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Speaker 3: have found that in some contexts, there is a pattern

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Speaker 3: of gendered associations between odd and even numbers that emerge.

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Speaker 2: This is interesting because I was thinking about gendered numbers

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Speaker 2: earlier in the research process for this series, because I

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Speaker 2: ran across an interesting skit about the number one on

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Speaker 2: Sesame Street.

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Speaker 3: Oh care to elaborate?

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Speaker 2: Oh sure, sure, So in this sketch this is from

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Speaker 2: nineteen ninety seven, so this is not one that I

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Speaker 2: was originally exposed to as a kid. But we have

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Speaker 2: number one, which is of course or some muppet. It

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Speaker 2: is the numeral one, and it is a she. So

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Speaker 2: then the number one. She is feeling really down about

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Speaker 2: herself because she is such a low value number, like

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Speaker 2: you know, it's just she's it's one and then zero,

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Speaker 2: like all the other numbers are are are more potent

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Speaker 2: than her, more important than her, and she feels she's

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Speaker 2: really feeling down in the dumps about it. Well, who

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Speaker 2: comes up to cheer her up? But the count? Oh,

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Speaker 2: and the count proceeds to sing an entire song for

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Speaker 2: her about how important she is numerically, and then afterwards

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Speaker 2: he's like, do you feel better? And she's like well

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Speaker 2: a little bit, and he says, well, I'm going to

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Speaker 2: sing it for you one more time. But it made

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Speaker 2: got me thinking. It's like, well, you know, I didn't

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Speaker 2: think about one being male female, what have you. I

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Speaker 2: didn't think about the ginger of the number one. I

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Speaker 2: just considered it like a number. But now I'm thinking

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Speaker 2: of it. I just can't help but picture it with

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Speaker 2: like the big full lip and the beauty mark here

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Speaker 2: from this nineteen ninety seven Sesame Street sketch.

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Speaker 3: Well, that is adorable. I like the Count. I hope

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Speaker 3: that the Count can help any number feel better about itself.

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Speaker 3: All numbers are important, but one is really special.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. I think the Count is going to be the

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Speaker 2: biggest fan, the biggest supporter of any number. He's not

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Speaker 2: going to pull a Harry Neilson and talk about how

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Speaker 2: crappy the number one is and how number two is

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Speaker 2: also no good. He's a big fan of all of them.

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Speaker 3: I like knowing you can count on the Count for

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Speaker 3: emotional support. So anyway to mention a couple of these

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Speaker 3: studies apparently finding this association between gender and number parody,

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Speaker 3: A couple of the ones I came across were by

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Speaker 3: a pair of researchers named Wilkie and Bodenhausen. One of

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Speaker 3: these papers was from twenty twelve in the Journal of

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Speaker 3: Experimental Psychology, another one by the same authors from twenty

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Speaker 3: fifteen in Frontiers in Psychology, and these papers publish the

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Speaker 3: results of a number of different experiments about the gender

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Speaker 3: associations of odd and even numbers. Now, some of these

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Speaker 3: experiments involved explicit judgments, just asking people straight up whether

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Speaker 3: they felt like specific numbers were more masculine or feminine,

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Speaker 3: and other experiments looked for indirect associations, like people's tendency

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Speaker 3: to interpret the faces of babies or unfamiliar foreign names

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Speaker 3: with different genders when they were labeled with different numbers.

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Speaker 3: And to note that this indirect measure here does rely

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Speaker 3: on implicit association tests, which have been subjected to various

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Speaker 3: methodological critiques over the years. They've undergone some refinements over

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Speaker 3: time to try to improve reliability, but there's still sort

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Speaker 3: of debates about how they can be depended on and

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Speaker 3: in what context. So anyway, caution on relying too much

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Speaker 3: on the implicit parts of these findings, But the authors

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Speaker 3: say from the totality of their experiments that on average,

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Speaker 3: for some reason, people from sample groups within the United

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Speaker 3: States are more likely to say that odd numbers are

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Speaker 3: masculine and even numbers are feminine. And while that's the

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Speaker 3: general trend, there are some exceptions and caveats. While they

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Speaker 3: say that this pattern was on average true for everyone,

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Speaker 3: the association was stronger among women, So on average, women

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Speaker 3: were more likely to view odd numbers as more masculine

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Speaker 3: and less feminine than even numbers. Weirdly, this is where

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Speaker 3: it starts getting funny. I thought the numbers in when

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Speaker 3: the numbers involved were two digit instead of one digit,

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Speaker 3: men started to drift away from this parody association and

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Speaker 3: started to say that all numbers were masculine, regardless of parity.

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Speaker 3: So I don't whenever we look at studies like this.

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Speaker 3: By the way, I always like raise caution because I

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Speaker 3: just know from experience a lot of people get real

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Speaker 3: excited about like gender differences in responses to psychological experiments

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Speaker 3: and then start overinterpreting, thinking it explains everything about men

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Speaker 3: and women. You know why my husband or my wife

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Speaker 3: acts a certain way, et cetera. And so I will

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Speaker 3: raise the same caution here. You know, it's just a

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Speaker 3: few experiments we're not sure if this is a super

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Speaker 3: robust finding, and even if it is robust, it's easy

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Speaker 3: to get carried away just reading too much into little

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Speaker 3: psychological quirks like this. However, I could not resist finding

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Speaker 3: it hilarious to imagine a guy looking at numbers higher

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Speaker 3: than nine and being like, thirty four. Huh, that's a

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Speaker 3: big number. That's a macho man.

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Speaker 2: In between thoughts about ancient real right.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, so in reality it's probably not that simple, but

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Speaker 3: I was laughing for several minutes after I read this. Anyway,

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Speaker 3: the authors of these studies, so they're making an argument

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Speaker 3: not that there actually is something objectively or universally gendered

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Speaker 3: about even and odd numbers, and instead they're sort of

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Speaker 3: making a case about what they call quote the pervasiveness

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Speaker 3: of gender as a social scaffolding for generating understandings of

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Speaker 3: abstract concept. So the way I take that is they're

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Speaker 3: sort of saying gender is such an important concept to

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Speaker 3: people that we subconsciously apply it to categories of objects

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Speaker 3: that have nothing to do with the primary understanding of

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Speaker 3: masculinity or femininity. It's just like a major way of

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Speaker 3: making category distinctions that the brain kind of defaults to

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Speaker 3: even in situations that don't have anything to do with

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Speaker 3: biological sex or with the social roles of gender.

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Speaker 2: Right right, So yeah, it wouldn't be like the hypothetical

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Speaker 2: male in question is making a conscious effort to think

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Speaker 2: about all higher numbers as men. It's a little more nuance,

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Speaker 2: a little more subconscious than that.

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Speaker 3: Now I mentioned that those studies were done on us

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Speaker 3: test subjects. I came across an interesting variation with respect

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Speaker 3: to culture. So there was a twenty twenty one study

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Speaker 3: in Frontiers and Psychology by Jordan Yakani and Sheen which

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Speaker 3: found some consistency and some variation across cultures regarding the

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Speaker 3: perceived gender of numbers. These researchers tested whether the same

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Speaker 3: patterns of association between number parity and gender would show

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Speaker 3: up among Arabic speaking people native to the UAE, and

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Speaker 3: their top level findings were that there were patterns of

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Speaker 3: gender association with number parity, but on the implicit association

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Speaker 3: of numbers with faces. The subjects in the UAE were

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Speaker 3: more likely to associate even numbers with their own gender,

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Speaker 3: whichever that was so, men seeing even numbers as more masculine,

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Speaker 3: women seeing even numbers as more feminine, and these findings

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Speaker 3: indicate that it may be cross culturally common to associate

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Speaker 3: even in odd numbers with gender, at least in some

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Speaker 3: weekly held way, to make some kind of weak association

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Speaker 3: of that kind, but that the association can vary from

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Speaker 3: culture to culture, which actually makes a lot of sense

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Speaker 3: to me that I think the idea would sort of

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Speaker 3: be that gender is a category lens that we're very

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Speaker 3: quick to apply to all kinds of phenomena outside of

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Speaker 3: its primary cultural meaning. But exactly how we apply it

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Speaker 3: probably depends on a lot of subtle influences that can

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Speaker 3: easily vary person to person and culture to culture, though

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Speaker 3: apparently within a given language culture, one way of making

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Speaker 3: the association is probably more common than another. So anyway,

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Speaker 3: all the warnings I gave up top about not reading

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Speaker 3: too much into these kinds of findings, but I do

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Speaker 3: think if this is basically on the right track, it's

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Speaker 3: an interesting example of the way that we just kind

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Speaker 3: of recklessly apply category distinctions across every domain of life,

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Speaker 3: whether it really makes direct sense or not. You know,

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Speaker 3: I think we if we ever talked about the idea

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Speaker 3: on the show before. Some people seem to think like

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Speaker 3: dogs or boys, cats or girls.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I have caught myself following into that trap as well,

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Speaker 2: Like I kind of on a default lene assume cats

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Speaker 2: or girls and dogs are boys until I know differently

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Speaker 2: concerning individual cats and dogs, And I don't know. One

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Speaker 2: reason for that is probably that I've only ever had cats,

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Speaker 2: and those cats have always been girls. I don't know, yeah,

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Speaker 2: female cats. Sorry, some of them have been very old ladies.

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Speaker 3: Then again, at least cats and dogs are like animals,

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Speaker 3: you know. It's I guess it's even funnier thinking about

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Speaker 3: the way that we we just wantonly apply these categories,

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Speaker 3: possibly even to things like abstract numbers and uh, symbols

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Speaker 3: that that don't even have like, you know, bodies or

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Speaker 3: minds or anything.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. The only the other prime example that comes to

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Speaker 2: mind is when especially a ship, but sometimes other vehicles

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Speaker 2: or gendered as female.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, that's that always seemed funny to me.

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Speaker 2: All right. Now, for this next little bit, I wanted

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Speaker 2: to talk briefly about the word odd. I was looking

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Speaker 2: at other angles on odd and even, and I came

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Speaker 2: across this excellent write up on Webster's and it points

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Speaker 2: out that the word in English comes from the Old

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Speaker 2: Norse word audie odd i meaning point of land in

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Speaker 2: the geographical sense, so it's like the point of a triangle,

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Speaker 2: and so it eventually came to mean triangle, and it

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Speaker 2: also came to mean odd, as the point of a

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Speaker 2: triangle triangle must always oppose the two other corners, so

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Speaker 2: it's like the two other corners are an even pair,

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Speaker 2: and if they were to leave, then the audi is alone.

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Speaker 3: Wow, that's almost poetic. That's like a beautiful etymology.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. And eventually from here the term transfers over into English,

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Speaker 2: and by the fourteenth century it was written down, so

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Speaker 2: you know, it may have made the journey. It probably

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Speaker 2: it definitely made the journey earlier than that, but that's

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Speaker 2: when we have written evidence of it. And initially the

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Speaker 2: word odd meant without a corresponding mate, so it was

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Speaker 2: still like tied up with this idea of like two

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Speaker 2: leave and leave one. But then it comes to mean

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Speaker 2: irregular or non conformist. And Webster's notes that during the

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Speaker 2: fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this usage of odd in English

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Speaker 2: language was a good thing. It meant you stood out,

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Speaker 2: you know, it's like, oh, look at that odd character there,

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Speaker 2: We've got to go chat him up. He has lots

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Speaker 2: of interesting things to say as he drinketh from his

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Speaker 2: skull and walketh his bear. But then by the seventeenth

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Speaker 2: century it comes to lean more toward the eccentric and

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Speaker 2: even dare we say the weird, in the sense that

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Speaker 2: you might be like, let's stay away from the guy

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Speaker 2: with the bear and the skull. Lord knows what he's

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Speaker 2: going to talk about. Let's keep a distance. Wow.

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Speaker 3: It almost invokes like a story in the sense that

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Speaker 3: if you imagine there were three people and two of

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Speaker 3: them left, and now one is odd. Why did the

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Speaker 3: other two leave? Were they driven away by the behavior

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Speaker 3: of the first one? Or could they just not handle

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Speaker 3: the genius?

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Speaker 2: Yes, and my apologies to Lord Byron Fans since he's

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Speaker 2: barely covered in the centuries reference there. But Webster's also

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Speaker 2: points out that the use of the noun odd for

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Speaker 2: a point of land seems to have crossed over a

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Speaker 2: second time into English during the nineteenth century, though more

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Speaker 2: exclusively to northern England and Scotland. Oh and one more

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Speaker 2: little bit here, that I ran across Audi is also

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Speaker 2: the name of a town in Iceland, and well, I'm

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Speaker 2: not as sure about the direct linguistic connection here. Between

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Speaker 2: what we're talking about and the name of this town,

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Speaker 2: I did run across a picture of a statue of

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Speaker 2: Samon the Wise hitting the Devil and the devil may

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Speaker 2: or may not be in the form of a seal

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Speaker 2: here with a bible. This was I found this a

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Speaker 2: photograph of this on a blog post by eric O.

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Speaker 2: Scott on the website The Wild Hunt. And this ties

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Speaker 2: into a passed up episode because in our series on

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Speaker 2: Shadows from last October that is going to re air

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Speaker 2: this October, we talked a little bit about the shadow

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Speaker 2: wizard and priest Semon Semond or Sevender the Wise, who

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Speaker 2: has various encounters with the Devil. I don't think we

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Speaker 2: talked about him hitting the devil with a bible, but

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Speaker 2: there is an episode where he ends up having his

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Speaker 2: shadow stolen by the devil.

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Speaker 3: Right, doesn't he go to like the Devil's College or

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Speaker 3: the Devil's School to learn the learn the magical arts.

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Speaker 3: But then the devil is supposed to grab one of

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Speaker 3: the students at the end of the semester and keep them.

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Speaker 3: But Seemen. They're various tellings, but Seeman finds some way

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Speaker 3: to kind of trick the devil and escape.

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Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, and he like goes to snatch his soul

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Speaker 2: and gets his shadow instead, and so forth. So I

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Speaker 2: don't know, I'm drifting drifting off topic here, but we're

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Speaker 2: still somewhere in the neighborhood of a lot and even now.

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Speaker 2: Next I would like to turn to evens and odds

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Speaker 2: in biology. This is an area that where you can,

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Speaker 2: you know, I guess with any of this, you have to,

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Speaker 2: especially when you're playing in a biology, you have to

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Speaker 2: think about like the relationship between numbers in reality, and

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Speaker 2: you can get you know, kind of go do a

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Speaker 2: fair amount of navel gazing on that in and of itself.

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Speaker 2: But you know, just as we see a tendency for

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Speaker 2: external symmetry and biological organisms, we at least to some extent,

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Speaker 2: see a tendency toward even numbers. Again, huge caveat here.

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Speaker 2: It kind of it can also depend on exactly how

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Speaker 2: you want to cut it, because you know, you can

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Speaker 2: take a quick survey of your own body and chances

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Speaker 2: are you're going to find some even numbers in play.

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Speaker 2: You know, two arms, two legs, four limbs, total, ten fingers,

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Speaker 2: ten toes, two eyes, two nostrils, and so forth. On

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Speaker 2: the other hand, I mean, yes, you do have one

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Speaker 2: mouth and so forth. But you know, the still of

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Speaker 2: course lines up with the basic idea of bilateral symmetry.

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Speaker 2: Divide a creature down the middle and you have two

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Speaker 2: equal sides, though of course we also have to throw

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Speaker 2: and the other caveat that the average human being is

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Speaker 2: not perfectly symmetrical, and artificially symmetrical faces tend to read

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Speaker 2: as uncanny to us.

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Speaker 3: For this reason, we actually did a series on biological

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Speaker 3: symmetry and asymmetry a couple of years back. I don't

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Speaker 3: recall was that the series called the Lesser of two

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Speaker 3: crab claws, where.

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Speaker 2: I think the fiddler crabs mm hm, yes, because you know,

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Speaker 2: there are plenty of examples too in the biological world

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Speaker 2: which we get into in that series, where there is

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Speaker 2: a glaring asymmetry. So anyway, it would be a gross mistake. Though,

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Speaker 2: coming back to odds and evens, if you were to

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Speaker 2: say that you only see even numbers and organisms, that

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Speaker 2: is absolutely not true, and they're ultimately far more complex

393
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Speaker 2: and satisfying ways to apply numbers more universally to nature,

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Speaker 2: such as say the Fibonacci sequence so forth. But it's

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Speaker 2: still interesting to see cases where there is a there

396
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Speaker 2: seems to be a tendency toward even numbers, and still

397
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Speaker 2: looking at the exceptions to those possible rules and possible tendencies.

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Speaker 2: One place that start is with chromosomes. So a chromosome

399
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Speaker 2: is a DNA package that contains all the genetic material

400
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Speaker 2: of an organism, and the chromosome count for individual species

401
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Speaker 2: varies greatly and it has nothing to do with it

402
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Speaker 2: doesn't correlate with the apparent complexity of an organism. So

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Speaker 2: you know, for example, a jack jumper ant has a

404
00:23:17,640 --> 00:23:21,520
Speaker 2: single pair of chromosomes, while turkey has eighty. A human

405
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Speaker 2: of course has forty six, and then you have a

406
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Speaker 2: case like and to be clear, you can also get

407
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Speaker 2: odd numbers via genetic disorders. But one of the biggest

408
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Speaker 2: examples it's often brought up of an odd number of

409
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Speaker 2: chromosomes in an organism is the mule. This is a

410
00:23:36,920 --> 00:23:40,959
Speaker 2: cross between donkey and a horse, of course, and it

411
00:23:41,520 --> 00:23:45,240
Speaker 2: sends out for having sixty three and they're usually infertile

412
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Speaker 2: because of this. And there's some other interesting outliers as well,

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Speaker 2: like the Indian mutjak, in which males tend to have

414
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Speaker 2: seven to the female six in the swamp Wallaby you

415
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Speaker 2: see eleven for males and ten for females. And there

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Speaker 2: are various other examples of this nature. And but of

417
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Speaker 2: course this is all hidden to the naked eye. Limbs

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Speaker 2: stand out far more in human consideration when we're talking

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Speaker 2: about evens and odds, and so this raises the question,

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Speaker 2: what if anything naturally has an odd number of arms?

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Speaker 2: And basically the answer is nothing except blank. And I'll

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Speaker 2: come back to the blank in just a second. But

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Speaker 2: there's one potential possibility that often comes up if you're

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Speaker 2: just scanning the names of the popular names of organisms,

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Speaker 2: and it's one. There's one that came up on a

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Speaker 2: Monster Fact episode several weeks back. There is a species

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Speaker 2: of octopus known as the seven armed octopus.

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Speaker 3: Now that is an oxymoron, isn't it right?

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Speaker 2: Right? Because if you know anything about oct octopi, it

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Speaker 2: is that, as the name implies, they have eight arms. Yes,

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Speaker 2: so if you had a seven armed octopus, that that

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Speaker 2: would be interesting. Why does it have why does it

433
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Speaker 2: seem to have seven arms? So this octo this is

434
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Speaker 2: also known as the septupus or the blob octopus, and

435
00:25:05,280 --> 00:25:11,080
Speaker 2: it is Halofron atlanticus and here's the thing. It actually

436
00:25:11,119 --> 00:25:14,720
Speaker 2: does have eight arms. It like, do not believe the

437
00:25:15,000 --> 00:25:20,080
Speaker 2: popular name. It's just that the males specialized fertilization arm.

438
00:25:20,440 --> 00:25:25,560
Speaker 2: It's hectocoidalus remains coiled away in a sack beneath the

439
00:25:25,640 --> 00:25:29,000
Speaker 2: rate of the right eye. So this is a specialized arm.

440
00:25:29,280 --> 00:25:34,440
Speaker 2: And various sephalopods have these and there it's the kind

441
00:25:34,480 --> 00:25:36,760
Speaker 2: of arm that will be used to slip in genetic

442
00:25:36,840 --> 00:25:40,119
Speaker 2: material or sometimes it is like left detached and left

443
00:25:40,200 --> 00:25:44,480
Speaker 2: with the mate. So this species has a specialized arm

444
00:25:44,720 --> 00:25:47,919
Speaker 2: for mating, and it keeps it stored away out of

445
00:25:48,000 --> 00:25:50,840
Speaker 2: sight behind the right eye. And so if you're just

446
00:25:50,960 --> 00:25:54,720
Speaker 2: checking out the you know, a specimen, and you don't

447
00:25:54,720 --> 00:25:57,040
Speaker 2: know what to look for, you might see only seven

448
00:25:57,119 --> 00:25:58,960
Speaker 2: arms and assume, well, here we are, all right, it's

449
00:25:58,960 --> 00:26:02,120
Speaker 2: a seven armed doctor. But like I said, there there

450
00:26:02,200 --> 00:26:06,400
Speaker 2: are some examples of animals with an odd number of limbs.

451
00:26:07,200 --> 00:26:09,320
Speaker 2: But to find one we have to look to the

452
00:26:09,359 --> 00:26:13,399
Speaker 2: marine invertebrates known as c stars, which tend to boast

453
00:26:14,040 --> 00:26:17,240
Speaker 2: five arms, though they can't have more depending on the species.

454
00:26:17,800 --> 00:26:21,240
Speaker 2: Five arms in a radial presentation. I mean, everyone knows

455
00:26:21,240 --> 00:26:24,880
Speaker 2: what a starfish looks like. You've seen SpongeBob. You give

456
00:26:24,960 --> 00:26:25,760
Speaker 2: the general idea.

457
00:26:26,359 --> 00:26:28,840
Speaker 3: Oh okay, and here's where we get into the different

458
00:26:29,080 --> 00:26:32,320
Speaker 3: types of symmetry that are found in animal body plans. Right,

459
00:26:32,359 --> 00:26:36,640
Speaker 3: Because while most animals, and especially most animals we're familiar with,

460
00:26:37,200 --> 00:26:41,720
Speaker 3: have a bilaterally symmetrical body plant can be divided down

461
00:26:41,760 --> 00:26:45,040
Speaker 3: the middle and folded in half, there are some animals

462
00:26:45,080 --> 00:26:47,840
Speaker 3: that live, especially in the ocean, that have a radially

463
00:26:47,960 --> 00:26:52,879
Speaker 3: symmetrical body plan, meaning it is symmetrical in that it

464
00:26:52,920 --> 00:26:56,440
Speaker 3: has copied segments, but they are copied by going around

465
00:26:56,520 --> 00:26:59,000
Speaker 3: in a circle instead of folding in half down the middle.

466
00:26:59,400 --> 00:27:03,320
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, uh. And this is a This is especially

467
00:27:03,320 --> 00:27:07,000
Speaker 2: interesting concerning the C star because this comes back to

468
00:27:07,000 --> 00:27:10,240
Speaker 2: something we talked about perhaps last October as well, that,

469
00:27:11,000 --> 00:27:14,840
Speaker 2: according to some analysis, particularly a twenty twenty three study

470
00:27:14,840 --> 00:27:19,000
Speaker 2: published in the journal Nature by Formery at All, the

471
00:27:19,040 --> 00:27:22,919
Speaker 2: C star is really more of a head with five

472
00:27:23,119 --> 00:27:26,240
Speaker 2: or more extensions. They're not really arms. They're more like

473
00:27:26,560 --> 00:27:32,000
Speaker 2: head projections, which is an interesting way of looking at it.

474
00:27:32,720 --> 00:27:35,000
Speaker 2: But another thing that they point out in this article

475
00:27:35,160 --> 00:27:38,920
Speaker 2: is that C stars evolved from an ancestor that had

476
00:27:38,960 --> 00:27:43,199
Speaker 2: twofold or bilateral symmetry, and it develops from larvae that

477
00:27:43,359 --> 00:27:48,159
Speaker 2: also have twofold or bilateral symmetry, but they have a

478
00:27:48,240 --> 00:27:53,920
Speaker 2: typically you know, fivefold radial adult body plan. So yeah,

479
00:27:53,960 --> 00:28:07,440
Speaker 2: another fascinating example. Now, another place to look for even

480
00:28:07,640 --> 00:28:11,200
Speaker 2: numbers in a mammal is, of course, look to the nipples.

481
00:28:11,760 --> 00:28:14,520
Speaker 2: Humans typically have two of these, though to be clear,

482
00:28:14,560 --> 00:28:16,280
Speaker 2: you do have situations where people have, like say, a

483
00:28:16,320 --> 00:28:20,040
Speaker 2: third nipple, but generally speaking you're dealing with the two

484
00:28:20,119 --> 00:28:24,679
Speaker 2: nipple scenario. If you have a cat, you can. I

485
00:28:24,720 --> 00:28:28,280
Speaker 2: don't recommend feeling around because unless you're a professional, because

486
00:28:28,320 --> 00:28:30,879
Speaker 2: you will often get clawed for this. But cats have

487
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:35,280
Speaker 2: six to eight nipples, and indeed most mammals have an

488
00:28:35,320 --> 00:28:40,120
Speaker 2: even number of nipples. But if you turn to the marsupial,

489
00:28:40,240 --> 00:28:45,480
Speaker 2: the American opossum, you will find a famous outlier here

490
00:28:45,760 --> 00:28:48,360
Speaker 2: with an array of thirteen nipples.

491
00:28:48,840 --> 00:28:52,600
Speaker 3: Now, don't start putting your cultural associations on the opossum.

492
00:28:52,720 --> 00:28:55,280
Speaker 3: No one of its nipples is the unlucky one.

493
00:28:56,520 --> 00:28:58,760
Speaker 2: Because when you look at the number of young they

494
00:28:58,800 --> 00:29:01,680
Speaker 2: have like it's it's it's the like the ghost nipples

495
00:29:01,680 --> 00:29:04,640
Speaker 2: past thirteen that are the unlucky ones because they generally have,

496
00:29:04,760 --> 00:29:07,160
Speaker 2: and this is environmentally dependent. They generally have like twenty

497
00:29:07,240 --> 00:29:10,600
Speaker 2: young so not everybody's gonna get a nipple and survive.

498
00:29:12,040 --> 00:29:14,680
Speaker 2: But but yeah, you can. You can look up I

499
00:29:15,000 --> 00:29:20,640
Speaker 2: don't strongly recommend the opossum nipple google image search, but

500
00:29:20,840 --> 00:29:23,000
Speaker 2: you can. You can find some illustrations that I think

501
00:29:23,000 --> 00:29:28,360
Speaker 2: are ultimately more helpful and better for you, know, your sanity,

502
00:29:28,840 --> 00:29:32,360
Speaker 2: than looking up the actual images of bossom nipple arrangements.

503
00:29:32,360 --> 00:29:37,440
Speaker 2: But the illustrations give you the general idea. So I've

504
00:29:37,480 --> 00:29:42,040
Speaker 2: seen this described as two arches of six nipples, with

505
00:29:42,080 --> 00:29:45,600
Speaker 2: one nipple located centrally. I've also seen it talk talked

506
00:29:45,600 --> 00:29:47,560
Speaker 2: about in terms of being like a U shape or

507
00:29:47,600 --> 00:29:53,240
Speaker 2: circular shape inside of the female opossum's pouch. Now, there

508
00:29:53,240 --> 00:29:55,479
Speaker 2: are various other classifications of even and odds we might

509
00:29:55,480 --> 00:30:00,120
Speaker 2: get into there. Of course, odd toad and even toad ungulates. Tapers,

510
00:30:00,120 --> 00:30:03,680
Speaker 2: for example, have four hoofed toes in the front and

511
00:30:03,760 --> 00:30:07,280
Speaker 2: three hoofed toes in the back. Most rhino species have

512
00:30:07,320 --> 00:30:11,200
Speaker 2: three digits on each foot. And in general, though, and

513
00:30:11,240 --> 00:30:13,040
Speaker 2: we've gotten into this a bit in the past, especially

514
00:30:13,040 --> 00:30:16,800
Speaker 2: when we talked about horse hoofs, evolution has resulted in

515
00:30:16,840 --> 00:30:21,560
Speaker 2: digit numbers greater and less than the human five that

516
00:30:21,600 --> 00:30:24,400
Speaker 2: we take for granted, you know, because you can look

517
00:30:24,400 --> 00:30:28,560
Speaker 2: at the horse's hoof and see it as a single toe,

518
00:30:28,640 --> 00:30:31,320
Speaker 2: a single great toe foot. And we see the opposite

519
00:30:31,360 --> 00:30:35,000
Speaker 2: as well in some other organisms, with the development of

520
00:30:35,040 --> 00:30:38,640
Speaker 2: a sixth pseudothomb. This is you can find these in

521
00:30:38,680 --> 00:30:42,160
Speaker 2: the giant panda, for example, where this has evolved. It's

522
00:30:42,160 --> 00:30:45,640
Speaker 2: not truly an additional digit on the hand, but it

523
00:30:45,760 --> 00:30:52,480
Speaker 2: is basically like doing the work of an extra partially

524
00:30:52,520 --> 00:30:57,000
Speaker 2: evolved digit to aid in the nonstock consumption of bamboo.

525
00:30:57,480 --> 00:31:02,200
Speaker 2: And then we also see a remarkable pseudo thumb emerge

526
00:31:02,360 --> 00:31:06,240
Speaker 2: on the hand of the II lemer, so the II

527
00:31:06,440 --> 00:31:09,240
Speaker 2: lemur maybe a lemur that a number of view are

528
00:31:09,240 --> 00:31:12,200
Speaker 2: familiar with various nature documentaries, because it is a very weird,

529
00:31:12,840 --> 00:31:17,160
Speaker 2: goblin esque looking creature. It's it's it's wonderful, I say

530
00:31:17,240 --> 00:31:20,080
Speaker 2: it is. It is weird in all of the great

531
00:31:20,120 --> 00:31:22,400
Speaker 2: ways that an animal can be weird. You know. It

532
00:31:22,440 --> 00:31:25,760
Speaker 2: is nocturnal. Uh. It again looks kind of like a goblin,

533
00:31:26,200 --> 00:31:28,920
Speaker 2: and it has these very specialized hands that feature a

534
00:31:29,040 --> 00:31:33,120
Speaker 2: super long middle finger which it uses. It uses it

535
00:31:33,160 --> 00:31:35,680
Speaker 2: specialized hands to like cap on wood and then uses

536
00:31:35,720 --> 00:31:38,640
Speaker 2: that that super long middle finger to reach in and

537
00:31:38,760 --> 00:31:42,320
Speaker 2: dig out grubs and wood burrowing insects to eat.

538
00:31:42,880 --> 00:31:46,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it sort of has nose faratu hands. But

539
00:31:46,280 --> 00:31:50,760
Speaker 3: I can't emphasize enough that the face in many photos

540
00:31:51,000 --> 00:31:56,360
Speaker 3: is going, oh dude, it's like very big wide eyes

541
00:31:56,520 --> 00:31:59,440
Speaker 3: and the mouth open like it is shouting at you

542
00:31:59,560 --> 00:32:01,080
Speaker 3: incitement and surprise.

543
00:32:01,880 --> 00:32:04,920
Speaker 2: Yeah. So it's the situation, though, seems to be pretty

544
00:32:04,920 --> 00:32:07,920
Speaker 2: fascinating here because they have this super specialized again long

545
00:32:07,920 --> 00:32:10,800
Speaker 2: middle finger. It basically has a single use. It's essentially

546
00:32:10,800 --> 00:32:14,360
Speaker 2: a unit tasker. But that means that they need a

547
00:32:14,360 --> 00:32:16,360
Speaker 2: little more help climbing. So it's like, you know, it's

548
00:32:16,360 --> 00:32:18,480
Speaker 2: like they had a callub evolution and say, look, I

549
00:32:18,520 --> 00:32:21,320
Speaker 2: need to put an order in for an extra digit.

550
00:32:22,400 --> 00:32:26,440
Speaker 2: Why you already have five digits. Well, yes, but I've

551
00:32:26,480 --> 00:32:29,120
Speaker 2: specialized one to the degree that it can no longer

552
00:32:29,160 --> 00:32:33,040
Speaker 2: help me in climbing trees. So do a search for

553
00:32:33,280 --> 00:32:37,000
Speaker 2: II hands II fingers to get a sense of what

554
00:32:37,040 --> 00:32:40,120
Speaker 2: I'm talking about here, And that's exactly what I was

555
00:32:40,160 --> 00:32:44,360
Speaker 2: doing when I found a mention of a study that

556
00:32:44,400 --> 00:32:47,520
Speaker 2: I had not run across before. I thought I knew,

557
00:32:47,640 --> 00:32:50,840
Speaker 2: like all the main cool things about the II. But

558
00:32:51,040 --> 00:32:54,680
Speaker 2: as it turns out that elongated middle finger is proportioned

559
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:56,920
Speaker 2: as such. First of all, that it would be like

560
00:32:57,200 --> 00:33:00,480
Speaker 2: us having a foot long middle finger. But not only

561
00:33:00,520 --> 00:33:03,240
Speaker 2: do they use this to fish out wood boring insects

562
00:33:03,240 --> 00:33:08,760
Speaker 2: and grubs, but according to Anne Claire Fabre and this

563
00:33:08,800 --> 00:33:11,560
Speaker 2: is an evolutionary biologist at the Natural History Museum of

564
00:33:11,600 --> 00:33:14,400
Speaker 2: burn as cited in a Cassidy Ward article for sci

565
00:33:14,440 --> 00:33:17,719
Speaker 2: Fi in twenty twenty two, they also use this finger

566
00:33:18,040 --> 00:33:21,600
Speaker 2: to pick their own noses. And they get the whole

567
00:33:21,680 --> 00:33:23,640
Speaker 2: finger in there to the point that they're able to

568
00:33:23,680 --> 00:33:26,400
Speaker 2: reach all the way back through their sinuses to the

569
00:33:26,400 --> 00:33:30,200
Speaker 2: back of their throats and then back out again. The

570
00:33:30,240 --> 00:33:33,800
Speaker 2: most prodigious nose picking in nature. It has to be

571
00:33:33,960 --> 00:33:38,560
Speaker 2: right certainly with fingers, with digits. You know, there may

572
00:33:38,600 --> 00:33:42,320
Speaker 2: be some other strong candidates. They're involving animals with very

573
00:33:42,360 --> 00:33:44,200
Speaker 2: like prehinsile tongues and so forth.

574
00:33:44,600 --> 00:33:47,720
Speaker 3: But the zoologists right in with better nose picking in

575
00:33:47,760 --> 00:33:48,520
Speaker 3: the animal world.

576
00:33:48,840 --> 00:33:50,080
Speaker 2: I mean, this has got to be one of the

577
00:33:50,080 --> 00:33:52,680
Speaker 2: top cases. So I mean, that's okay. So I'm getting

578
00:33:52,680 --> 00:33:56,440
Speaker 2: off off topic a little bit from the evens and

579
00:33:56,480 --> 00:33:58,920
Speaker 2: the odds here, But that study or and or that

580
00:33:58,960 --> 00:34:01,760
Speaker 2: sci fi articles deaf worth picking up in part because

581
00:34:02,000 --> 00:34:05,640
Speaker 2: they include an illustration of just how far the finger

582
00:34:05,720 --> 00:34:09,120
Speaker 2: is thought to go into the skull. And you get

583
00:34:09,200 --> 00:34:13,319
Speaker 2: like a cutaway of the II's skull to show you,

584
00:34:13,600 --> 00:34:15,000
Speaker 2: like how deep it goes, all the way to the

585
00:34:15,000 --> 00:34:16,799
Speaker 2: back of the throat. Pretty fascinating.

586
00:34:17,200 --> 00:34:19,239
Speaker 3: You really wouldn't want to, like trip and fall while

587
00:34:19,239 --> 00:34:19,799
Speaker 3: you're doing that.

588
00:34:20,360 --> 00:34:24,040
Speaker 2: No, all right, I have one more biological tie in

589
00:34:24,080 --> 00:34:27,040
Speaker 2: here concerning odds and evens and animals, and this has

590
00:34:27,120 --> 00:34:29,520
Speaker 2: nothing to do with the actual biology of the species.

591
00:34:29,560 --> 00:34:33,000
Speaker 2: It's all about the way we categorize them. We have

592
00:34:33,239 --> 00:34:38,480
Speaker 2: what are called tutonyms. This is when you have a

593
00:34:38,520 --> 00:34:43,160
Speaker 2: species like Rattus ratus, in which both parts of the

594
00:34:43,280 --> 00:34:47,400
Speaker 2: name are identical. The genus is Rattus and the species

595
00:34:47,480 --> 00:34:52,560
Speaker 2: is also rattus, So you have Rattus ratus or are rattus. Yes,

596
00:34:52,680 --> 00:34:55,480
Speaker 2: we've discussed a number of these before. But then there's

597
00:34:55,480 --> 00:35:00,120
Speaker 2: a step beyond mere toutonyms. There are triple tops, and

598
00:35:01,080 --> 00:35:05,200
Speaker 2: this is where the scientific names end up. I think,

599
00:35:05,239 --> 00:35:08,760
Speaker 2: being rather hilarious at times and resembling as well magical

600
00:35:08,800 --> 00:35:14,200
Speaker 2: spells of summoning, bringing to mind incantations of beetle juice

601
00:35:14,200 --> 00:35:18,239
Speaker 2: and bloody Mary, where you're saying something three times in

602
00:35:18,239 --> 00:35:20,000
Speaker 2: a row, and anything said three times in a row

603
00:35:20,000 --> 00:35:24,960
Speaker 2: will start sounding silly. For instance, there is a buffo

604
00:35:25,000 --> 00:35:28,600
Speaker 2: bufo bufo, the European toad, so it's genus buffo, and

605
00:35:28,640 --> 00:35:31,560
Speaker 2: then the species is buffo bufo beautiful. We also have

606
00:35:31,680 --> 00:35:34,600
Speaker 2: the black rat that's Ratus ratus ratus, and then we

607
00:35:34,719 --> 00:35:38,640
Speaker 2: have the South African giraffe or giraffa giraffa giraffe.

608
00:35:38,600 --> 00:35:40,080
Speaker 3: That sounds the most like a spell.

609
00:35:40,640 --> 00:35:42,759
Speaker 2: And there are other fun examples as well, like the

610
00:35:42,840 --> 00:35:47,480
Speaker 2: European eagle owl Boobo Boobo Boobo, the Eurasian magpie or

611
00:35:47,520 --> 00:35:51,400
Speaker 2: Pica Pika Pika, and these are all again richly amusing,

612
00:35:51,440 --> 00:35:53,960
Speaker 2: because anything you say three times it's just gonna sound silly.

613
00:35:54,160 --> 00:35:55,880
Speaker 3: Wait, isn't that what Pikachu says?

614
00:35:56,480 --> 00:35:58,879
Speaker 2: Pikachu's definitely says Pika Pika. I don't know if there's

615
00:35:58,880 --> 00:36:04,440
Speaker 2: a third Peka in there for when Pikachu really means it. Yeah.

616
00:36:04,640 --> 00:36:07,759
Speaker 2: Another interesting thing about this is you'll only find these

617
00:36:07,760 --> 00:36:11,799
Speaker 2: in zoology because they are forbidden in botany under the

618
00:36:11,800 --> 00:36:16,279
Speaker 2: International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. So you're not gonna find

619
00:36:16,320 --> 00:36:20,799
Speaker 2: anything like cannabis, cannabis, cannabis because it's just forbidden that

620
00:36:20,920 --> 00:36:24,160
Speaker 2: we don't do that in botany. Leave that to the zoologists.

621
00:36:24,440 --> 00:36:25,440
Speaker 2: They're the silly ones.

622
00:36:25,719 --> 00:36:27,759
Speaker 3: Well, I like this. I think the botanists should do it.

623
00:36:27,760 --> 00:36:29,320
Speaker 3: Maybe they just don't have the guts.

624
00:36:30,040 --> 00:36:32,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, I didn't get in deep enough to find out

625
00:36:32,080 --> 00:36:34,879
Speaker 2: like when this law was laid out and like how

626
00:36:35,760 --> 00:36:37,840
Speaker 2: for what reason? Like why did they really need to

627
00:36:37,880 --> 00:36:40,640
Speaker 2: take a stand on this? But maybe we'll have to

628
00:36:40,640 --> 00:36:41,760
Speaker 2: get into that another time.

629
00:36:42,239 --> 00:36:44,560
Speaker 3: I'm just kidding with you botanists. I know you have

630
00:36:44,560 --> 00:36:47,759
Speaker 3: plenty of courage. All right, Does that do it for

631
00:36:47,880 --> 00:36:50,480
Speaker 3: this series? On even an odd I believe?

632
00:36:50,520 --> 00:36:50,600
Speaker 1: So.

633
00:36:50,719 --> 00:36:53,040
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like you said, we've had our third episode. We

634
00:36:53,080 --> 00:36:56,399
Speaker 2: had a nice odd number of episodes for it, so

635
00:36:56,680 --> 00:36:57,680
Speaker 2: I think we're good to go.

636
00:36:58,080 --> 00:37:02,120
Speaker 3: Obviously, there are even an odd instances of pretty much everything,

637
00:37:02,200 --> 00:37:04,719
Speaker 3: so we could keep going forever, but we got to

638
00:37:04,760 --> 00:37:06,320
Speaker 3: stop somewhere exactly.

639
00:37:06,400 --> 00:37:10,200
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so we'll go ahead and you call it here.

640
00:37:10,440 --> 00:37:12,719
Speaker 2: We want to remind everybody that's stuff to blow your mind.

641
00:37:12,760 --> 00:37:16,040
Speaker 2: Is primarily a science and culture podcast. With core episodes, publishing,

642
00:37:16,040 --> 00:37:18,040
Speaker 2: and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed on

643
00:37:18,120 --> 00:37:23,400
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and Thursdays, short form episodes on Wednesdays. On Fridays,

644
00:37:23,400 --> 00:37:25,479
Speaker 2: we set aside most series concerners to just talk about

645
00:37:25,480 --> 00:37:28,880
Speaker 2: a weird film on Weird House Cinema, and then we

646
00:37:28,920 --> 00:37:32,879
Speaker 2: have some bald episodes or reruns at air on Saturdays

647
00:37:33,040 --> 00:37:33,799
Speaker 2: and Mondays.

648
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:37,960
Speaker 3: Here's thanks, as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

649
00:37:38,200 --> 00:37:39,920
Speaker 3: If you would like to get in touch with us

650
00:37:39,920 --> 00:37:42,760
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

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Speaker 3: a topic for the future, or just to say hello,

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Speaker 3: you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow

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Speaker 3: your Mind dot com.

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Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For

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Speaker 1: more podcasts from iHeart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

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Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. M