Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. This is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. I've you been listening this week. You know
Speaker 1: the deal. We're on vacation, we're re airing. You've got femail.
Speaker 1: This is going to be part two of three and
Speaker 1: it originally published five twenty five. Let's happen.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with part two
Speaker 3: in our series on urine based communication in animals. In
Speaker 3: Part one, we introduced the idea that while humans have
Speaker 3: an almost infinitely expanding arsenal of tools and skills and
Speaker 3: tricks for sharing information with one another, one medium that
Speaker 3: we don't use, or at least don't use very much,
Speaker 3: but which is used throughout the animal kingdom is urine.
Speaker 3: So in part one we also talked about a story
Speaker 3: that the story that initially got me interested in covering
Speaker 3: this on the show, which was a recent paper documenting
Speaker 3: a behavior in Amazon river dolphins called aerial urination, which
Speaker 3: goes like this. One male dolphin floats upside down and
Speaker 3: urinates in a stream up in the air over the water,
Speaker 3: and then usually another male dolphin seeks out the stream,
Speaker 3: swims over and puts its face right into the pea fountain.
Speaker 3: It's not yet known why the dolphins do this, but
Speaker 3: the researchers who wrote the paper propose that it is
Speaker 3: a form of communication. It's information sharing between male dolphins
Speaker 3: to sort of give a fact sheet about the originator
Speaker 3: of the urine stream, kind of have a look at
Speaker 3: my medical chart. Here you can sense my urine with
Speaker 3: the whiskers on your snout and get a sense of me.
Speaker 3: And of course we talked also about how urine can
Speaker 3: convey lots of different kinds of information about physical health,
Speaker 3: social dominance and things like that, and those pieces of
Speaker 3: information are useful for male dolphins to share with one
Speaker 3: another because it helps them make decisions about whether to
Speaker 3: challenge each other for access to food resources or mates.
Speaker 3: We also talked more generally about what urine is and
Speaker 3: is not, and what kind of information it contains to
Speaker 3: a fluent reader. We also went on some other interesting tangents,
Speaker 3: for example, about why so many animals actually have voluntary
Speaker 3: control over urination in the first place, why can they
Speaker 3: actually decide when they want to release the urine. We
Speaker 3: talked about how urination actually can be thought of as
Speaker 3: a kind of social behavior in humans, and a bunch
Speaker 3: of other things, and we're back today to talk more
Speaker 3: about pe based communication.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, Like, in general, there's just a lot of
Speaker 1: information in urine, but as humans we cannot pick up
Speaker 1: on most of it via our own senses. We can
Speaker 1: turn to technology. May come back to some of that
Speaker 1: later on, but basically in this episode, we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about the various ways that some animals can
Speaker 1: read the urine of others and perhaps communicate through their
Speaker 1: own urine.
Speaker 3: Yes, now, I'm sure the subject of trading information through
Speaker 3: urine has had all of the dog owners in the
Speaker 3: audience like desperately raising their hands and saying ooh ooh,
Speaker 3: I know one. And yes, we briefly touched on this
Speaker 3: last time. But domestic dogs are a great example. They
Speaker 3: are well known for being prolific scent markers and for
Speaker 3: being very concerned with gathering information from the markings left
Speaker 3: by other dogs. And while urine is actually not the
Speaker 3: only method domestic dogs use in scent marking, it is
Speaker 3: you can probably think of it as the primary one.
Speaker 3: Now some dog lovers out there might be thinking, huh
Speaker 3: that there are other methods beyond urine. Yes, there actually are.
Speaker 3: I don't know if I would have said this before
Speaker 3: I started research for this episode, but there are other
Speaker 3: ways that dogs leave scent marks. One thing, of course,
Speaker 3: is the dreaded anal glands, which produce a pungent, foul
Speaker 3: smelling fluid that gets expressed and deposited naturally in small
Speaker 3: quantities when a dog defecates, but it can be expressed
Speaker 3: and rubbed off in other situations as well, and these
Speaker 3: secretions contain identifying information about the dog. Another interesting example
Speaker 3: is that dogs have scent producing apocrine glands in their paws.
Speaker 3: Apocrine glands are glands that produce a kind of oily sweat.
Speaker 3: Humans have them in parts of their bodies too, like
Speaker 3: you've got them in your armpits and stuff. But dogs
Speaker 3: have apocrine glands in their paws and the regions in
Speaker 3: between their digits, meaning that a dog can leave a
Speaker 3: scent mark by scratching at the ground or sometimes even
Speaker 3: just by walking on the footpaths leave a little scent
Speaker 3: trail through time.
Speaker 1: Many are the stinks of the dog, beautiful.
Speaker 3: Stinks, but yes, scent marking by urine is the most
Speaker 3: overt and visible, certainly of the dog's marking behaviors. You
Speaker 3: see it most frequently in male dogs who have not
Speaker 3: been neutered, but it is also done by female dogs
Speaker 3: and neutered males.
Speaker 1: Here's a potentially dumb dog question. Never had an indoor
Speaker 1: dog and never had a dog as an adult, How
Speaker 1: does one keep an indoor dog or an indoor outdoor
Speaker 1: dog from marking territory within the household.
Speaker 3: Well, that's a good question.
Speaker 1: Rob.
Speaker 3: It varies from dog to dogs. Some dogs it's just
Speaker 3: going to be a struggle keeping them from doing it.
Speaker 3: Some dogs that have been living inside for years will
Speaker 3: still continue to mark the chair, you know, like here
Speaker 3: I am, I'm marking the chair once again. But no,
Speaker 3: most of the time, a dog will respond to training.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not a dog behavior expert, know what
Speaker 3: all the training the best training methods are these days.
Speaker 3: But yeah, dogs will respond to training that to get
Speaker 3: them to save it for outside.
Speaker 1: Okay, gotcha.
Speaker 3: But it often does mean that when you know, especially
Speaker 3: with some dogs, you take them outside and maybe you
Speaker 3: want to get the get their business done quickly. Maybe
Speaker 3: you're on a timeline, you've got to do something else.
Speaker 3: But it's kind of hard to get them to like
Speaker 3: pee all the pee that they need to pee at once. Instead,
Speaker 3: they want to go all around the neighborhood and leave
Speaker 3: little marks here and there and just dole it out
Speaker 3: a little bit at a time.
Speaker 1: Because coming back to what we've been talking about, the
Speaker 1: dog is not just going out to relieve itself and
Speaker 1: then come back. It has messages to leave messages to
Speaker 1: and to interpret and so forth.
Speaker 3: Yes, it's it's business time when it's time for the walk. Yeah,
Speaker 3: time to time to check and send some emails. And
Speaker 3: it is very worth noting, I think we said this
Speaker 3: last time, but worth really stressing that we do not
Speaker 3: know all of the different kinds of information that are
Speaker 3: conveyed when a dog leaves a urine mark and another
Speaker 3: dog smells it. But we do know some things. There
Speaker 3: are reasons to suspect a lot of different kinds of
Speaker 3: information might be shared, and I can go through some
Speaker 3: examples here. One thing is a dog's unique identity. There
Speaker 3: is evidence that dogs can identify other individual dogs by
Speaker 3: urine smell useful for knowing who's around right, So the
Speaker 3: same way that a human might be able to recognize
Speaker 3: another person by seeing a picture of them, like, oh,
Speaker 3: that's you know, that's Harry, I know Harry. A dog
Speaker 3: can uniquely identify another individual dog by the smell of
Speaker 3: their urine. Another thing, similar to what we talked about
Speaker 3: in the dolphin example is health information. Urine probably reveals
Speaker 3: a lot about how healthy the dog is, whether they
Speaker 3: have diseases or parasites, what kind of shape or fitness
Speaker 3: they're in, probably age. Urine certainly reveals sex and reproductive information.
Speaker 3: It reveals the sex of the dog, but also hormonal
Speaker 3: content can reveal how receptive the dog currently will be
Speaker 3: to mating. Urine can reveal dominance within the dog's social
Speaker 3: group that could be revealed through marking behavior. And then
Speaker 3: it gets in There are even like weirder, more interesting things.
Speaker 3: One is that dogs may possibly even communicate momentary emotional
Speaker 3: information through urine. This is less certain than some of
Speaker 3: the other ones. Some of the other ones I was
Speaker 3: just naming are pretty well known. This is less certain,
Speaker 3: but it seems likely. Like for example, it has been
Speaker 3: found that dogs can tell the difference between the smell
Speaker 3: of a stressed out humans urine versus human urine at baseline,
Speaker 3: they actually can smell your fear. They can smell your
Speaker 3: stress and anxiety at least in your pee. Now do
Speaker 3: they actively seek this information about other dogs? And if so,
Speaker 3: does this information change their behavior? Like how do they
Speaker 3: react to getting that information? The answers to these questions
Speaker 3: are not known for sure. But regarding that second question,
Speaker 3: I did find an interesting study by par Cortes at
Speaker 3: All published in the journal Scientific Reports in twenty twenty
Speaker 3: four called the odor of an unfamiliar, stressed or relaxed
Speaker 3: person affects Dog's responses to a cognitive bias test, and
Speaker 3: this study found that dogs would preferentially avoid food bowls
Speaker 3: in locations that had been previously associated with the smell
Speaker 3: of urine from a stressed out human, suggesting that the
Speaker 3: smell of stress, at least human stress, could play a
Speaker 3: role in cognition and learning for dogs.
Speaker 1: That is fascinating.
Speaker 3: Again, we don't know if dogs use this information about
Speaker 3: other dogs, though it seems quite plausible. You can imagine
Speaker 3: maybe dogs I don't know, the like if there is
Speaker 3: an area where there are a lot of scent markings
Speaker 3: that have high stress. I don't know, that could signal
Speaker 3: to the dog, They're like, uh, oh, there's something to
Speaker 3: be concerned about here. I need to you know, be
Speaker 3: more on guard or something.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, I mean, as we've discussed before, dogs very
Speaker 1: social animals, and via domestication, we are their social group,
Speaker 1: we are their pack, and therefore, you know, the importance
Speaker 1: of this information, like to the wolf concerning other wolves,
Speaker 1: is also potentially important concerning the human members of their
Speaker 1: domesticated pack. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I wonder if for a dog, like going down the
Speaker 3: sidewalk smelling a bunch of urine marks from other dogs
Speaker 3: that all have like stress in them, is like the
Speaker 3: human equivalent of doom scrolling.
Speaker 1: It could be yeah, going to a community meeting where
Speaker 1: people get to volunteer their opinions, hair, their fears.
Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly. But it really is interesting to imagine, Like
Speaker 3: I don't know what kinds of complexity are there in
Speaker 3: like if momentary kind of emotional states even can be
Speaker 3: communicated across time in these chemical signatures. This is probably overinterpreting.
Speaker 3: I don't know when analogies like this are warranted or not,
Speaker 3: but I'm imagining a kind of p based literature almost,
Speaker 3: you know, the same way that poetry contains emotions and
Speaker 3: so forth, Like, what is the kind of richness of
Speaker 3: the experience that a dog has when smelling all these
Speaker 3: different health states and sexual information and threat information and
Speaker 3: emotional information all at the same time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, their sense of smell is just so
Speaker 1: ratcheted up above anything that we can truly even relate to,
Speaker 1: you know, outside of our human use of comparisons and
Speaker 1: metaphors and so forth, that I mean, I don't know
Speaker 1: that it's it's really out of bounds to say something
Speaker 1: like that. It seems like that's the best we can
Speaker 1: get at in trying to understand like how a dog
Speaker 1: experiences the world.
Speaker 3: I think we probably only have the barest kind of
Speaker 3: idea of what really is happening in this information exchange.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I keep coming back to that Terry Pratchett comment
Speaker 1: about a werewolf character being essentially able to smell through
Speaker 1: time to like know the interpersonal history of a space
Speaker 1: going back like a month. And that's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing that like, as humans highly visual that we are, like,
Speaker 1: we don't really have something like that unless you're dealing
Speaker 1: with some like very obvious physical signs of passage, such
Speaker 1: as you know, muddy bootprints and so forth. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: the smell left by something, I mean, at least to us,
Speaker 1: that's far more subtle to the dogs, I guess, far
Speaker 1: more overt, but in a way that it's really hard
Speaker 1: for us to compare, you know, like, what is is
Speaker 1: there anything like that in our own actual sensory environment
Speaker 1: that compares to it? I guess the closest you could
Speaker 1: come would be something that is electronic or literature based.
Speaker 3: Or actually I think maybe the more core equivalent would
Speaker 3: be language that, like with language, humans create for ourselves.
Speaker 3: It's like our core technology. It's the thing we use
Speaker 3: to create this like rich layer on top of reality
Speaker 3: where we can recall past and project future and imagine counterfactuals,
Speaker 3: and it's all there in constructs that we build out
Speaker 3: of words. Yeah, coming back to dogs in the female,
Speaker 3: we also know that dogs use urine based scent marking
Speaker 3: in expressions of territoriality. Though this is something that I
Speaker 3: think we have to be a little cautious about because
Speaker 3: it seems to me this is something that easily gets oversimplified.
Speaker 3: Like a common thing you'll hear people say, is that
Speaker 3: when a dog does a p mark out there somewhere
Speaker 3: they're like marking the boundary of the territory, like here's
Speaker 3: my property line, no crossing, no trespassing on my turf.
Speaker 3: From what I can tell the current research actually paints,
Speaker 3: it's a more complicated picture of how urine marking and
Speaker 3: territoriality interact. However, it does seem that at least one
Speaker 3: major aspect of urine marking is related to territoriality and dominance.
Speaker 3: It is to both signal your own ability as a
Speaker 3: competitor and possible threat to other competing dogs in the area,
Speaker 3: especially to other dogs of the same sex as you,
Speaker 3: and then also to gain information about possible rivals and
Speaker 3: to understand how much of a threat they represent. I
Speaker 3: found one study from twenty twelve that looked into this especially.
Speaker 3: It was looking at the territorial and dominance threat aspects
Speaker 3: of urine scent marking, and this was in free ranging
Speaker 3: domestic dogs. The study was by Cafaso, Natali and Valseki
Speaker 3: in the journal Ethology, and it was called Scent marking
Speaker 3: behavior in a pack of free ranging domestic Dogs in
Speaker 3: their abstract to the author's right quote, we found evidence
Speaker 3: that markings are used by dogs to form a property
Speaker 3: line and to threaten rivals. During agonistic conflicts, both males
Speaker 3: and females utilized scent marking to assert dominance and probably
Speaker 3: to relocate food or maintain possession over it. Raised leg
Speaker 3: urination and ground scratching probably play a role in olfactory
Speaker 3: and visual communication in both males and females. Urinations released
Speaker 3: by females, especially through flexed leg posture, may also convey
Speaker 3: information about their reproductive state. All right, so there are
Speaker 3: a range of different things there, but one of the
Speaker 3: main things they mention is about territoriality. However, this does
Speaker 3: not mean that a dog only places a urine mark
Speaker 3: on ground that they expect will never be crossed by
Speaker 3: an unfamiliar dog. It's not so much a balance line
Speaker 3: that cannot be violated. Instead, it's more kind of a
Speaker 3: an announcing of your presence within an occupied space.
Speaker 1: Uh.
Speaker 3: And so like we're trying, we're trading information about one another.
Speaker 3: And uh, you you know, with this information about me,
Speaker 3: you might want to go somewhere else or you might not.
Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, saying this is who I am, this is
Speaker 1: what I'm all about. And we touched that. We touched
Speaker 1: on this in the last episode and it's gonna continue
Speaker 1: to be important. We need to remind ourselves. One of
Speaker 1: the important things about communication between especially competing males UH,
Speaker 1: but also competing females, is that the more information that
Speaker 1: is exchanged and that is visible, the less actual physical
Speaker 1: violence is needed to to to solve these various interactions. Yes,
Speaker 1: and of course that benefits all of the organisms involved,
Speaker 1: because every fight UH brings with it a cost, a
Speaker 1: potential injury, and with every potential injury, you know, possibility
Speaker 1: to be weakened, to become sick, and so forth. If
Speaker 1: any of that can be avoided through communication, all the better.
Speaker 3: Exactly, honest information benefits both parties. However, that's honest information.
Speaker 3: It's different to ask the question could information represented through
Speaker 3: urine possibly be dishonest? And that brings me to a
Speaker 3: paper that I came across that I wanted to talk
Speaker 3: about here can urine based communication involve lying? So there
Speaker 3: was a study published in the year twenty eighteen in
Speaker 3: the Journal of Zoology by McGuire, Olsen Bemis, and Oraantes
Speaker 3: called urine marking in male domestic dogs Honest or Dishonest.
Speaker 3: The lead author here, Betty maguire, is a behavioral ecologist
Speaker 3: at Cornell University. So the study got me thinking about
Speaker 3: an interesting question. Of course, when we're talking about human communication,
Speaker 3: there are actually two completely different modes of information shearing,
Speaker 3: which have different goals and rely on different skills. You've
Speaker 3: got normal, truthful communication, and then you've got deceptive communication
Speaker 3: aka lying. Both modes can be useful in life. Both
Speaker 3: can be useful for gaining advantage and forgetting what we want,
Speaker 3: but they rely on different mechanisms and skill sets. For example,
Speaker 3: to communicate truthfully, if you want to communicate the truth successfully,
Speaker 3: you need to know what the truth is, so like
Speaker 3: your various powers of perception and logical reasoning are implicated
Speaker 3: in truthful communication, also like your ability to translate that
Speaker 3: knowledge into the medium of communication you're using with minimal
Speaker 3: loss of informational fidelity. On the other hand, to lie successfully,
Speaker 3: you need to have other skills, like a good ability
Speaker 3: to simulate the minds of other people to know what
Speaker 3: kinds of false beliefs would get them to act the
Speaker 3: way you want and what kinds of lies would be
Speaker 3: believable to them. And of course, lying also comes with
Speaker 3: major risks If you get caught lying at the very
Speaker 3: least people will stop believing you, they'll stop trusting and
Speaker 3: cooperating with you, or worse, they may actively punish you.
Speaker 3: Humans can switch easily between truthful and deceptive communication because
Speaker 3: we communicate with language, which is able to represent an
Speaker 3: infinite array of both factual and counterfactual statements. But you
Speaker 3: might think, you know, urine is not like that, urine
Speaker 3: is honest. We sort of put it this way last time.
Speaker 3: Like with language, you can have near total control over
Speaker 3: what you say. With urine, it seems usually you cannot
Speaker 3: control what you say, only where, how, when, and whether
Speaker 3: you're going to say something at all. If you say
Speaker 3: something with urine, usually it's going to be honest or
Speaker 3: least we would assume.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's the human experience with it, right. If you
Speaker 1: are worried about your urine saying something you don't want
Speaker 1: to say, in certain specific circumstances, you may get someone
Speaker 1: else's urine to stand in for your own, with perhaps
Speaker 1: limited success. But but yeah, there's this idea that like
Speaker 1: the urine is just a readout. It's just straight up information.
Speaker 1: It's not something that can be manipulated outside of manipulating
Speaker 1: like the system that produces said urine which again we
Speaker 1: still only have like a limited ability to do that
Speaker 1: to ourselves.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: It's like we can change what we eat, what we consume,
Speaker 1: but the urine is going to tell us who we are.
Speaker 3: Right, you can maybe think of lying with human urine.
Speaker 3: I don't even know if this is possible, but maybe
Speaker 3: you could take some kind of pill that like changes
Speaker 3: your urine profile to something else.
Speaker 1: Or if you're like I don't want this drug to
Speaker 1: show up in my urine, I'm going to get them.
Speaker 1: I'm going to stop taking that drug. Yeah, boom, I
Speaker 1: tricked them. Well you didn't really trick them. You just
Speaker 1: change the truth will read out of your system in
Speaker 1: that scenario.
Speaker 3: Well this is good because actually I think there will
Speaker 3: be a question when I'm done talking about the study
Speaker 3: about whether this should count as deception or lying or not.
Speaker 3: But anyway, yes, So the researchers here in this paper
Speaker 3: observed an interesting pattern that might be a counterexample to
Speaker 3: the assumed honesty of urine, which is dogs potentially being
Speaker 3: deceptive with their urine scent markings. So how would a
Speaker 3: dog send a deceptive scam message over the seemingly honest
Speaker 3: medium of pemil let's go to the paper. So the
Speaker 3: authors begin by noting that a bunch of different mammals
Speaker 3: leave scent marks, and lots of the mammals that do
Speaker 3: tend to elevate them, meaning they place the mark not
Speaker 3: on the ground, but up higher, often on some kind
Speaker 3: of vertical surface. Dog walkers are probably going to be
Speaker 3: familiar with this. A dog, they will usually like to
Speaker 3: pee on landmarks, the telephone pole, the fire hydrant, the
Speaker 3: mailbox posts, the tree trunk, the flower, the clump of
Speaker 3: tall grass, or some times, let's be real, the furniture.
Speaker 3: Why is this? Why do they like to pee on
Speaker 3: the raised thing and not just wherever? Why not just
Speaker 3: on the ground. The authors say that this could be
Speaker 3: because elevated marks are easier for other dogs to detect
Speaker 3: via both site and smell. So they cite a bunch
Speaker 3: of different research here. One thing is researched by Alberts
Speaker 3: from ninety two, about which they write, quote the ground
Speaker 3: physically restricts diffusion, meaning the spreading out of the urine
Speaker 3: physically restricts diffusion. So both size of mark and likelihood
Speaker 3: of detection by olfaction are increased when the scent marks
Speaker 3: are elevated. So when you pee on an elevated vertical
Speaker 3: object on the fire hydrant instead of just on the ground,
Speaker 3: it tends to increase the size of the splatter area
Speaker 3: and thus how easy it is to both see and
Speaker 3: smell the mark in the future. The other interesting things
Speaker 3: worth noting the ground has more other smells already within it,
Speaker 3: so peeing on an elevated object helps isolate the message
Speaker 3: of your pemail in order to increase the signal to
Speaker 3: noise ratio. Kind of like how if you're going to
Speaker 3: write a message on something with a magic marker, you
Speaker 3: would look for a blank, relatively blank space to write on,
Speaker 3: not something that already had tons of different markings and
Speaker 3: color variations on it. Also, two more things. Elevated marks
Speaker 3: are closer to the nose height of other dogs. That's
Speaker 3: just courtesy, you know. But then finally, elevated marks are
Speaker 3: visually conspicuous and can be seen at great distance, So
Speaker 3: you kind of have a biological you can imagine like
Speaker 3: a communication culture among dogs where they can be wandering
Speaker 3: around around in an area wondering if there are any
Speaker 3: good pe mail messages to read, and they see a
Speaker 3: stump or a fire hydrant at a distance and they know, ah,
Speaker 3: that's a good place to check for messages. I'll go
Speaker 3: sniff and see. So these are previously accepted reasons why
Speaker 3: dog might might try to elevate their urine mark. It
Speaker 3: helps get the message out there, It makes it easier
Speaker 3: to find, and makes it easier to decipher upon being found. However,
Speaker 3: increased detectability should benefit all animals that scent mark. And
Speaker 3: something that's kind of interesting that the author's note is
Speaker 3: that in lots of mammal species, on average, males elevate
Speaker 3: their scent markings much more often than females do. The
Speaker 3: motivations for scint marking are somewhat variable according to sex.
Speaker 3: Like we were talking about earlier, dogs are more likely
Speaker 3: to view dogs of the same sex as competitors and
Speaker 3: thus as threats. Male dogs especially will more often react
Speaker 3: to other males as competitors and threats, and this is
Speaker 3: given as a possible reason for why male dogs are
Speaker 3: more likely to use the raised leg posture when elevating
Speaker 3: their scent marks. They might be doing this so that
Speaker 3: they can leave the mark higher on the tree trunk
Speaker 3: and thus appear to a dog that comes along later
Speaker 3: to have been bigger and thus a more formidable competitor.
Speaker 3: You know, So the other dog comes along and smells it,
Speaker 3: they can't the dog's not here anymore. They can't see
Speaker 3: them and evaluate them. So they're getting some information just
Speaker 3: through the smell of the urine about health and maybe
Speaker 3: even emotions and sex and dominant status and stuff like that.
Speaker 3: But they can't see the dog, and they might smell
Speaker 3: a higher up urine mark and think, oh, don't want
Speaker 3: to mess around with this guy. His urine is above
Speaker 3: the chain on the fire hydrant. That's a big boy.
Speaker 1: Yeah. He definitely smells anxious but also enormous.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so interesting possibility. Maybe that contributes to the desire
Speaker 3: to place the urine mark higher. And this brings us
Speaker 3: to the experimental finding by Maguire at all. So in
Speaker 3: this experiment, the author is like walked around with a
Speaker 3: bunch of adult male shelter dogs and just took measurements
Speaker 3: about their urine marks. They were like apparently filming them
Speaker 3: and trying to measure everything, and they found something funny
Speaker 3: and interesting. The smaller the dog, the higher it would
Speaker 3: lift its leg to p The angles of leg lifts
Speaker 3: observed in this study varied between eighty five degrees and
Speaker 3: one hundred and forty seven degrees. That's a stretch that's
Speaker 3: really good. Eighty five degrees is not even a right angle, though.
Speaker 3: But on average, the smaller the dog, the greater the angle.
Speaker 3: The little dogs would lift their legs the highest. And
Speaker 3: so there are a number of different things that could
Speaker 3: explain this, some more mundane and some more interesting. In
Speaker 3: terms of the more mundane possibilities, it's very important to
Speaker 3: consider these as well. One could just be anatomy. I
Speaker 3: was reading a write up of this research in Science magazine.
Speaker 3: In this article quoted another researcher in the field, an
Speaker 3: ethologist at the University of Pennsylvania School of Veterinary Medicine
Speaker 3: named James Sirple, who said, you know, there are a
Speaker 3: couple of possibilities apart from the main interpretation of the authors.
Speaker 3: One of those is anatomy. Maybe small dogs are more
Speaker 3: flexible or limber on average. This is not like an
Speaker 3: established finding, but it's just possible. Maybe all dogs like
Speaker 3: lift their legs as high as they can. What if
Speaker 3: smaller dogs can achieve a greater angle on average. Another
Speaker 3: explanation could be going on here is over marking dogs
Speaker 3: like to write over another dog's female message. You know,
Speaker 3: they like to pee on top of it and be like,
Speaker 3: I'm marking this now, and so they do that. And
Speaker 3: it could be that a smaller dog, by virtue of
Speaker 3: being smaller, has to really angle up to aim higher
Speaker 3: to over mark the mark left by a larger dog. Okay,
Speaker 3: so on average you'll get them trying to angle higher.
Speaker 3: But a third possible explanation is that this is basically
Speaker 3: animal behavior that is attempting to lie or be deceptive
Speaker 3: about the dog's the author's right quote. Assuming body size
Speaker 3: is a proxy for competitive ability, small adult male dogs
Speaker 3: may place urinmarks higher relative to their own body size
Speaker 3: than larger adult male dogs to exaggerate their competitive ability.
Speaker 3: So like, I am huge, Look how high I can pee,
Speaker 3: while they're like bending over backwards basically to pee way
Speaker 3: up there as high as they can. So that's the
Speaker 3: idea about how dogs might be attempting to lie with
Speaker 3: their pe even if the p itself is honest, how
Speaker 3: you pee isn't necessarily honest. But then again, I was
Speaker 3: kind of thinking about this, is this really a lie?
Speaker 3: I don't know. We'll come back to that in just
Speaker 3: a minute. But before we do, I wanted to mention
Speaker 3: one more thing. So there was a study in support
Speaker 3: of the lying or at least the body size exaggeration interpretation,
Speaker 3: and that was that the same dynamic has been observed
Speaker 3: in other mammals that use in environmental scent marking. A
Speaker 3: paper I was looking at here is called handstand scent
Speaker 3: marking in the dwarf mongoose. This was in the journal
Speaker 3: Ethology in twenty twelve by Sharp, Juiced and Cherry, and
Speaker 3: the lead author here, Linda Sharp, is an ecologist at
Speaker 3: Australian National University in Canberra, and this study was looking
Speaker 3: at scent marking behaviors by the dwarf mongoose, which is
Speaker 3: known to use what is called handstand scent marking. To
Speaker 3: quote the author's description here quote. In this flamboyant marking posture,
Speaker 3: the individual balances bipedally on its fore paws while flinging
Speaker 3: its hind legs up into the air and depositing its
Speaker 3: scent urine feces and or anogenital secretions one full body
Speaker 3: length above the ground. So the animals that do this
Speaker 3: they literally stand up on their hands to reach us
Speaker 3: high up on like say the tree trunk or whatever
Speaker 3: it is, as they can to maybe rub their anal
Speaker 3: glands on it, or to rub whatever part of their
Speaker 3: body they need to, or to pee on it, to
Speaker 3: get up there as high as they can by fully
Speaker 3: inverting and going upside down.
Speaker 1: Wow. Yeah, you see a behavior just like this in
Speaker 1: giant pandas. I don't know if this came up in
Speaker 1: the paper as well.
Speaker 3: Oh, this wasn't about giant pandas, but I have read
Speaker 3: that pandas do this as well. Yeah, so anyway, the
Speaker 3: authors of this paper say that it was widely assumed
Speaker 3: that this type of marking is useful because it gives
Speaker 3: other mammals an idea of how big you are. You
Speaker 3: know when you do it, because you're flipping up your
Speaker 3: whole body length, and that's sort of like measuring your
Speaker 3: body essentially, so it's like you're leaving body measurements along
Speaker 3: with your scent marking. But interestingly, the authors say quote,
Speaker 3: this study investigated the relationship between body size and handstand
Speaker 3: mark height in a wild population of dwarf mongooses in
Speaker 3: South Africa. We found that although body size and marking
Speaker 3: height were correlated positively, for female dwarf mongoose uses, they
Speaker 3: were not for males. Male dwarf mongooses, who are subject
Speaker 3: to intersexual competition from outside their group, invested more heavily
Speaker 3: in anogenital range marking, marking at three times the female
Speaker 3: frequency and placing their deposits significantly higher than females, although
Speaker 3: they were not dimorphics I Meaning they're not actually bigger
Speaker 3: than the females. They're just like finding ways to get
Speaker 3: the mark higher. Males that were particularly vulnerable to rivals
Speaker 3: i e. Those that were small for their age tended
Speaker 3: to mark higher than more robust age mates. And then
Speaker 3: they refer to a particular model of deceptive threat communication
Speaker 3: called the Atoms and Mesterson Gibbons model. But they say
Speaker 3: quote these findings suggest strongly that the height of anogenital
Speaker 3: scent deposits is of social significance to dwarf mongooses. Now,
Speaker 3: on one hand, I was thinking, Okay, if this is
Speaker 3: true that in multiple mammal species, possibly including domestic dogs,
Speaker 3: there is in a tempt by smaller individuals to exaggerate
Speaker 3: their size by leaving their markings higher, should that be
Speaker 3: thought of as lying or should that actually just be
Speaker 3: thought of as well. They're competing to place the mark
Speaker 3: as high as they can, and thus their ability to
Speaker 3: place the mark higher is signaling something like ability to
Speaker 3: place the mark. But I guess it's a question of
Speaker 3: like how widely that could or would be interpreted by
Speaker 3: other dogs as actually just reflecting them being bigger.
Speaker 1: Hmm. Yeah, it's it's difficult to like really put ourselves
Speaker 1: once more in the mind of the animal. Like I
Speaker 1: guess it's it's kind of hard not to think about
Speaker 1: graffiti in comparison to this. And certainly if you see
Speaker 1: graffiti placed in a very hard to reach spot, you.
Speaker 3: Know, oh, that's impressive.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, it can be quite impressive. We of
Speaker 1: course don't think, wow, that person was really tall. That
Speaker 1: person is like thirty feet tall to do that, but
Speaker 1: we might think that looks like a really dangerous and
Speaker 1: daring place to put a tag up.
Speaker 3: Exactly right, Yes, we do think it's impressive, but not
Speaker 3: because we think they're giants. It's because of the imagining
Speaker 3: the feet that got them there.
Speaker 1: But then again, with dogs, it's interesting, right with domestic dogs,
Speaker 1: you have such differing sizes in the species among the
Speaker 1: different breeds. Yeah, it kind of open like humans are
Speaker 1: only going to be so tall. But what if we
Speaker 1: did have a range of, say, you know, three to
Speaker 1: four feet to twenty to thirty feet, then perhaps we
Speaker 1: would have to consider these factors in looking at tags
Speaker 1: or many other things in life.
Speaker 3: Yes, that's right. If cloud giants existed, you wouldn't necessarily
Speaker 3: assume somebody had like daringly climbed out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and for dogs, cloud giants kind of do exist. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they're just big breeds of dogs.
Speaker 3: But this also makes me wonder could there be other ways?
Speaker 3: Since this is this one thing where it's possible, we
Speaker 3: don't know for sure, but it's possible dogs and other
Speaker 3: mammals are maybe trying to at least exaggerate their body
Speaker 3: size through these markings. You could maybe call this deceptive communication.
Speaker 3: What other kinds of things are we not even imagining
Speaker 3: that could be deception? Through chemical signals and stuff that
Speaker 3: we would normally think of as by definition almost honest signals.
Speaker 3: I mean, could animals have kind of internal mechanisms for
Speaker 3: voluntarily regulating the presence of hormones or other things in
Speaker 3: their signals the same way that we can voluntarily control
Speaker 3: when we urinate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is a fascinating question, Like I mean, one
Speaker 1: could imagine a scenario where a human could artificially ratchet
Speaker 1: up there, I don't know their stress response in order
Speaker 1: to create more stressful urine or the reverse. Like, to
Speaker 1: the extent that we can actually control these things, it
Speaker 1: seems possible that these levers could be in place to
Speaker 1: some degree or another in various organisms.
Speaker 3: But then again, would that be kind of evolutionarily unstable,
Speaker 3: like if you you know, if you have enough dogs
Speaker 3: that are able to lie through their scent markings, with
Speaker 3: scent markings cease to be useful information. Yeah, I don't
Speaker 3: really know how the math of all that works out,
Speaker 3: but the.
Speaker 1: Does that work out for humans? We see some olar
Speaker 1: problems with our ability to communicate. What happens when when
Speaker 1: truth erodes? What does that do to our trust in
Speaker 1: each other and in our ability to communicate?
Speaker 3: Well, I'd say that's a hugely significant part of human life,
Speaker 3: Like a big part of what all culture is is
Speaker 3: just trying to separate truth from lies.
Speaker 1: Perhaps you're in is better, that's what we're getting at all? Right, Well,
Speaker 1: I want to turn at this point to the world
Speaker 1: of the lobster, So not to be outdone, lobster not
Speaker 1: only pe on each other's faces. They pee out of
Speaker 1: their own faces to do this. That's great, and I
Speaker 1: love this fact in and of itself. It kind of
Speaker 1: turns the very idea of urine upside down, and I
Speaker 1: think kind of humbles the human reader or listener, because
Speaker 1: I feel like, you know, your initial reaction to something
Speaker 1: like this might be something like, oh, well, that's weird
Speaker 1: and or funny that they do this with their urine.
Speaker 1: But I think it's the fact settles in, it evolves
Speaker 1: into a different realization and you realize, truly, these creatures
Speaker 1: stand apart from us, and while they do not understand
Speaker 1: human complexity, ours is the greater deficiency because we clearly
Speaker 1: do not understand and have never understood the very nature
Speaker 1: of urine outside of our narrow human perspective.
Speaker 3: Well said, I mean, I think that's shaping up to
Speaker 3: be the main takeaway of this whole series of it.
Speaker 1: And I find this is also interesting because yeah, they're
Speaker 1: literally peeing out of their faces into other faces, and
Speaker 1: you could compare that on some level to the way
Speaker 1: words come out of our face, out of our head
Speaker 1: and then are interpreted by the censor ray on another
Speaker 1: into the individual's head. Yeah.
Speaker 3: I mean, if you're just some kind of like alien
Speaker 3: metazoan coming in like studying human anatomy, you look at us,
Speaker 3: you're like, wait. They use one hole on their faces
Speaker 3: to mash up and swallow food. But then they also
Speaker 3: like flap things in that hole to make sounds at
Speaker 3: each other, which is how they share information. And then
Speaker 3: they can also sometimes attack one another with like teeth,
Speaker 3: with little sharp things in that hole and like bite.
Speaker 3: And they also use that hole in like mating rituals
Speaker 3: with each other. And they also use that hole to breathe,
Speaker 3: to take it into oxygen and the vomit and to vomit. Yeah,
Speaker 3: from a sufficiently alien perspective, I think the single mouth
Speaker 3: hole issue is about as weird as the lobsters peeing
Speaker 3: in each other's faces. But the lobsters are no less
Speaker 3: weird for that.
Speaker 1: Right now, I want to note that lobster here covers
Speaker 1: a lot of ground. Lobster tends to refer to various
Speaker 1: deck of pot odds with comparable body plans. Several papers
Speaker 1: I looked at concerned claude lobsters or true lobsters of
Speaker 1: the Nephropodias superfamily, but other papers I looked at, were
Speaker 1: looking at spiny lobsters or ling ghostas of the Pollinuridae family.
Speaker 1: I'm to understand that the power of urine is strong
Speaker 1: in both of these and that both in essence pee
Speaker 1: through their faces. We also see this to some degree
Speaker 1: in crabs as well, but specifically dealing with lobsters, spiny
Speaker 1: or claude and peeing out of the face. I feel
Speaker 1: like we got to we got to sort of take
Speaker 1: this revelation in phases. First of all, how you're in
Speaker 1: from face, and we'll momentarily set aside whether this constitutes
Speaker 1: a face or front of head with the lobster. The
Speaker 1: lobster is not a creature that I look at and
Speaker 1: I'm like, oh, look at look at its face. It's
Speaker 1: more just like it looks at the frontal array of
Speaker 1: sensory organs.
Speaker 3: As lee we established in the past, I'm much more
Speaker 3: of a sucker when ruling things into the face category.
Speaker 3: I think if I see at least two eyes above
Speaker 3: the mouth parts, that's a face.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, you know, fair enough. So with these lobsters,
Speaker 1: urine is excreted through the antennel glands. These are thought
Speaker 1: to be versions of the coxaile glands or maxillary glands.
Speaker 1: These are the excretory openings found in some arthropods and
Speaker 1: most erachnts. But while the glands are further down on
Speaker 1: other organisms, lobsters in their kin feature them much further up,
Speaker 1: essentially on the face if we're going to call it
Speaker 1: a face, under the base of each antenna. Thus the
Speaker 1: name and the opening of the antennel gland is called
Speaker 1: the nephropore. Now the urine, which, as we'll discuss, is
Speaker 1: both excretory and communicative in purpose. I guess that's worth
Speaker 1: driving home is that like the dog, it's still excreting
Speaker 1: waste when it urinates, but it also has this.
Speaker 3: Other why not both?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, But with the lobsters, it's still emerging from bladders,
Speaker 1: and the bladders are adjacent to the creature's brain.
Speaker 3: That's funny too, Like when your bladder's full, it's like
Speaker 3: you can feel it pressing on your brain. Just can't
Speaker 3: imagine that.
Speaker 1: But I mean, look at us where our pie hole
Speaker 1: is right up here next to our brain as well,
Speaker 1: And yeah, you can make a case for that being weird.
Speaker 1: Uh huh. Now, let us consider why you're in from
Speaker 1: face and I think our number one answer should be,
Speaker 1: of course, why not? You know, does it matter? Sharks
Speaker 1: and some amphibians excrete liquid waste through their skin. Sharks
Speaker 1: also excrete through their gills. The Chinese soft shell turtle
Speaker 1: can apparently excrete you're in through the mouth, you know.
Speaker 1: If anything, consider how much easier it would be if
Speaker 1: we in fact urinated through our faces instead of having
Speaker 1: to use our other parts.
Speaker 3: Having trouble assessing whether that would be an upgrade or
Speaker 3: a downgrade.
Speaker 1: I mean it would change a lot of things. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you could make a case that if would then mean well,
Speaker 1: then we'd wear pants on our heads as well, But
Speaker 1: maybe it would mean that you could you not use
Speaker 1: those other parts for urination and just set those aside
Speaker 1: for other purposes. Sure. On top of this, though, there
Speaker 1: are basically two main reasons that I was reading about
Speaker 1: for why have urine come out of your face or
Speaker 1: the front of your head. First of all, as we've
Speaker 1: been getting at, urine is highly important for communication for
Speaker 1: the lobsters. We'll come back to how and it simply
Speaker 1: makes sense for all of this to be front loaded
Speaker 1: onto the head and adjacent to this because you might
Speaker 1: because I imagine you're instantly thinking, well, my dog doesn't pee
Speaker 1: out of its head and it p is important for it. Well,
Speaker 1: but your dog isn't a din dweller. That's the other
Speaker 1: argument made with the lobsters is that they'll spend a
Speaker 1: large portion of their life in little dens. Communicating to
Speaker 1: others to come into your den or to stay away
Speaker 1: from your den is important, and it makes sense to
Speaker 1: front load your urine excretion systems in order to broadcast
Speaker 1: outside of the den, you know, outside of the rocks,
Speaker 1: outside of the corals, wherever you happen to be held
Speaker 1: up at a given moment.
Speaker 3: That makes sense, okay, Yeah.
Speaker 1: And they can apparently excrete the you know, sometimes it's
Speaker 1: hard for us to imagine, like what is it like
Speaker 1: to like squirt urine underwater? And I think we'll probably
Speaker 1: get into more of this in a subsequent episode. We
Speaker 1: can get into fish, but with the lobster, apparently they
Speaker 1: can really push the urine out like multiple multiple body
Speaker 1: lengths all right. Now, the next level is to consider
Speaker 1: what is communicated through the urine pheromones and other chemical
Speaker 1: signatures that feature intomate selection and competition. These are apparently
Speaker 1: some of the big ones and the ones that have
Speaker 1: been studied the most. Females will use their urine to
Speaker 1: indicate that they are ready to mate, and following competition
Speaker 1: between males, the winner of those competitions will then broadcast
Speaker 1: their serotonin rich urine to declare their victory. I was
Speaker 1: thinking about this when we were talking about lying and urine, like,
Speaker 1: I think this would be a case where it would
Speaker 1: be impossible or unlikely that you would be able to lie,
Speaker 1: because the contents all the year are kind of like
Speaker 1: signaling your victory. Like there, it's an seemingly authentic chemical
Speaker 1: signature of the way you feel after defeating another lobster
Speaker 1: or scaring off intimidating another lobster. On top of this,
Speaker 1: the female you're in apparently is thought to calm the
Speaker 1: male and will also keep other females away and say like, Okay,
Speaker 1: this den is now claimed, I am shacking up with
Speaker 1: this male lobster. Go your own ways. I was reading
Speaker 1: a bit about this in a Snoop's article actually by
Speaker 1: Madison Dapkovich, and two other sources that I looked at
Speaker 1: were Chemical Communication and Crustaceans Lobsters from twenty ten by
Speaker 1: Aggio and Derby. And a novel tegmental gland in the
Speaker 1: nephropoor of the lobster Homarus americanas by Bushman and Attema
Speaker 1: from nineteen ninety three, this latter being I think a
Speaker 1: commonly cited source over the years. Now, I want to
Speaker 1: add that lobster reproduction is pretty fascinating in and of itself,
Speaker 1: you know, talking about like the males and female talking
Speaker 1: to each other, the males competing well, the male and
Speaker 1: the female apparently form quite a bond, and then the
Speaker 1: female molts, sheds her exoskeleton in order to mate with
Speaker 1: the male. Now, as with pretty much any exoskeleton equipped organism,
Speaker 1: molting is part of your continual development process. You're always
Speaker 1: growing out of and then growing new armor, and you'll
Speaker 1: see this in the lobsters, of course, but it's essential
Speaker 1: here for the reproduction. The female has to shed the
Speaker 1: exoskeleton in order to reproduce, and during this time she's vulnerable,
Speaker 1: but she's also protected by the male. The eggs that result,
Speaker 1: up to like one hundred thousand of these will then
Speaker 1: remain attached to her swimmerettes under her tail for nine
Speaker 1: to twelve months, and of course she eats, she builds
Speaker 1: up her strength and gets that exoskeleton back as she recovers, You've.
Speaker 3: Never seen a lobster with all the eggs under the
Speaker 3: tail is pretty cool looking. It's where they've got sometimes
Speaker 3: it's called caviare I guess looks kind of like that.
Speaker 3: It's like a million little balls. They're curled up on
Speaker 3: the underside of the body.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're fascinating and we're only just dipping our toes
Speaker 1: really into the lobster waters. They're the fascinating organisms now.
Speaker 1: I also looked at a couple of articles dealing specifically
Speaker 1: with the urine of the spiny lobster. A two thousand
Speaker 1: and nine study from Shabini at All published in the
Speaker 1: Journal of Experimental Biology, points out that urine factors into
Speaker 1: aggressive behaviors between male spiny lobsters, and along with physical aggression,
Speaker 1: the urine helps to broadcast social status and reduces overall
Speaker 1: physical aggressive behaviors. So they cited some experiments that involved
Speaker 1: like removing the ability from a studied lobster to urinate
Speaker 1: and actually like spread it's into this necessary information and
Speaker 1: then what happens when you then pump that urine into
Speaker 1: a given conflict zone for spiny lobsters, And basically this
Speaker 1: is a great example of what we were talking about earlier,
Speaker 1: like the more urine, like urine gives information, it broadcasts information,
Speaker 1: and the more information that is out there, the less
Speaker 1: absolute violence has to occur between these competing males piece
Speaker 1: through p Yeah exactly, yeah yeah. On top of this,
Speaker 1: spiny lobsters may apparently sometimes seek each other out to
Speaker 1: sort of like aggregate and shelter, and they'll find each
Speaker 1: other via their urine. And finally, another interesting finding that
Speaker 1: I came across this is coverage in The Guardian authored
Speaker 1: by Richard Luscom from twenty twenty four pointing out that
Speaker 1: the urine of the spiny lobster can also serve as
Speaker 1: a kind of accidental warning to various prey species that
Speaker 1: the spiny lobsters of course feast on in their coral
Speaker 1: reef habitats, and the smell of this urine can actually
Speaker 1: scare off various organisms that feast on vulnerable and degraded coral,
Speaker 1: offering them some amount of protection. And this can be
Speaker 1: especially be helpful in cases where you have nursery grown
Speaker 1: coral restoration projects. So like this nub of nursery grown
Speaker 1: coral that you're trying to like establish and re establish
Speaker 1: in a given area. You know, it's a highly delectable
Speaker 1: meal to these organisms such as the coral, liverous snails,
Speaker 1: and fireworms. So the presence of the spiny lobster urine
Speaker 1: can actually like drive them away and keep them away.
Speaker 1: And it's just I guess part of this just comes
Speaker 1: back like, as far as I could tell, there's not
Speaker 1: actually like anybody's saying, well, we need to pump spiny
Speaker 1: lobster urine into an area. It's more like, well, you
Speaker 1: need a balanced ecosystem, and spiny lobsters are part of
Speaker 1: that balanced ecosystem, and so their presence can help protect
Speaker 1: these vulnerable corals.
Speaker 3: So, from the lobster's evolutionary perspective, the urine is sending
Speaker 3: both intended and unintended messages. It's both the communication that you're,
Speaker 3: the conversation you're having with somebody at the table with you,
Speaker 3: and also the person eavesdropping on you from next door.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, it's like between lobsters of the same species,
Speaker 1: urine is language, and it's it's negotiating these various scenarios.
Speaker 1: And then in the case of these coral eating creatures
Speaker 1: and the spiny lobster. It's like essentially like hearing the
Speaker 1: howl of the spiny lobster a terrifying announcement that predators
Speaker 1: are near. And yeah, spiny lobsters eat a lot of
Speaker 1: a lot of critters in their choral environments. Like they're
Speaker 1: they're they're important predators. It's easy to focus on something
Speaker 1: like this as food since it is on the menu
Speaker 1: for human beings, but yeah, they eat a lot of critters,
Speaker 1: including these critters that are dangerous to to to endangered corals.
Speaker 3: Well, I found this section about lobster face peas strangely heartwarming.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, they're they're complex organisms. It's it, you know,
Speaker 1: the lobster. You know, it really kind of goes back
Speaker 1: to to David Foster Wallace is considered the lobster from
Speaker 1: two thousand and four. There's, you know, we often just
Speaker 1: take them for granted because we just think of them
Speaker 1: as food and really only you know, to the content
Speaker 1: of his article only recently as kind of like upper
Speaker 1: class food. And it's easy to assume that they're just
Speaker 1: simple creatures that do not have these complex interactions, but
Speaker 1: that they do. Yeah, they're fascinating.
Speaker 3: All right, Well, do we want to wrap up part
Speaker 3: two there and come back next time for more about
Speaker 3: urine based communication?
Speaker 1: Sounds like a plan in the meantime. Yeah, we'd love
Speaker 1: to hear from everyone out there if you have thoughts
Speaker 1: on either of these two episodes regarding urine. I'm sure
Speaker 1: you dog owners have some tales to share with us.
Speaker 1: Ride in certainly, and maybe we'll feature those on an
Speaker 1: upcoming listener mail episode. A reminder that Stuff to Blow
Speaker 1: Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with
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