Speaker 1: Welcome Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radios How Stuff Works. Hey, welcome to Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow your Mind. My name is Robert Lamb and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And hey, folks, remember last I think it
Speaker 1: was December when we were joined by Katie Golden of
Speaker 1: Creature Feature or another podcast in our network. Well she's
Speaker 1: back today. Say hi Katie, Hey, Hey, how you doing
Speaker 1: pretty great? I'm so excited to be back. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: We're excited to have you on the show again. So
Speaker 1: Creature Feature is back for a second season. That's correct, right, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's right. Uh. And I'm really excited about this season
Speaker 1: because we've got UM. Now, I got somehow managed to
Speaker 1: convince some experts to come on by show and talk
Speaker 1: about stuff. So that's great. I've got a herpetologist who
Speaker 1: I have a series of interviews with. UM. I've found
Speaker 1: a comedian who's also uh, a bio engineer. UM. And
Speaker 1: it's just got. It's like I was worried. I was saying, well,
Speaker 1: how am I I hope I don't run out of
Speaker 1: content for this season, and I'm as I'm researching, I'm
Speaker 1: realizing there's no possible way to ever, like all the
Speaker 1: examples I've been fonding for this season, all the really
Speaker 1: interesting evolutionary biology stories are even more incredible than last season.
Speaker 1: So I'm I'm super excited. I think this is shaping
Speaker 1: up to be really interesting and fun. So season two
Speaker 1: is more incredible than season one? Which season is grosser? Oh?
Speaker 1: You know that's a good question. Um, well, I don't know.
Speaker 1: I think season two is. It's not well, it's not
Speaker 1: gross to me. It's it's certainly stranger though, it's weirder.
Speaker 1: It gets a lot weirder. Uh, there are definitely some
Speaker 1: gross things. Um. We talked about some you know, why
Speaker 1: bends that animals have that are kind of like poop based, um,
Speaker 1: stinky poop bombs. Uh so yeah, there's there's plenty of
Speaker 1: grossness to be had. And uh oh and vomit bombs.
Speaker 1: That's a good one. Animals who explode after eating too much. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's lots of those actually. Um so yeah, it's if
Speaker 1: you're I mean, it's I try to keep things. I
Speaker 1: try to describe things in a way that aren't won't
Speaker 1: make you lose your lunch. But you know, it is
Speaker 1: still it's nature doesn't really care about being polite, you
Speaker 1: know what I mean. So you're trying not to make
Speaker 1: people vomit. I think that's where you're screwing up. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: that's true. I mean, if we've learned anything from evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: throwing up on your enemies as a really good evolutionary strategy.
Speaker 1: So if you do throw up in response to my podcast,
Speaker 1: I'm actually helping you along. Well. Yeah, I think in general,
Speaker 1: like humans have a weird attitude towards vomit, Like if
Speaker 1: you if you have a cat or all right, I
Speaker 1: guess a dog to dogs vomit, right, Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: don't know. I don't have a dog, but but my
Speaker 1: cats certainly vomits. And when when she vomits, like it
Speaker 1: is just it is a natural, shameless act for her,
Speaker 1: and uh, and that's how it is for for for
Speaker 1: for everything, except humans who have all these strange ideas
Speaker 1: about it and get all worked up over the process. Robert,
Speaker 1: I forget that you don't know anything about dogs. Wait here,
Speaker 1: let's do a quiz. True or false, Robert, dogs defensively
Speaker 1: squirt blood out of their eyes. I know that's not true.
Speaker 1: That's more of a particular horn to horn toads though, Yeah,
Speaker 1: that's the one. Yeah. So wait, what what's your favorite
Speaker 1: defensive vomiting um. Well, there's a few species of birds
Speaker 1: who will vomit a sort of orange sticky substance onto
Speaker 1: a predator and it well, it's actually can be really
Speaker 1: dangerous for the predator because it can way down their wings.
Speaker 1: Say it's another avian predator, it'll uh get their wings
Speaker 1: all oily and make it difficult to fly, and it
Speaker 1: can actually cause their downfall. So it's kind of amazing
Speaker 1: that you can flip the script so much where you
Speaker 1: have this cute, innocent, little baby bird um that vomits
Speaker 1: all over it's would be predator, and then that predator
Speaker 1: is now in mortal danger because it's covered in valm.
Speaker 1: So you mentioned h animals that kind of explode as well,
Speaker 1: do you get in you get into termites? Yeah. Termites, Uh,
Speaker 1: when they get old enough, they kind of concoct this
Speaker 1: explosive wine in their bodies. It's not really wine. I
Speaker 1: just it's funny because it gets the explosive juices get
Speaker 1: better with age, um and then in order and they
Speaker 1: once they get old, their mandibles just aren't as good
Speaker 1: at chopping down plant fibers, and uh, they're kind of
Speaker 1: they're kind of useless to a certain extent, except that
Speaker 1: they can use their bodies as a defensive weapon against
Speaker 1: uh invaders or predators. And so they will violently contract
Speaker 1: their abdomens and they'll explode. Uh. So they they it's
Speaker 1: like the sack of blue liquid that can suicidally explode
Speaker 1: onto enemies. Um, and it's it's just like it's so
Speaker 1: they blew themselves. Well, how about the defensive pooping You
Speaker 1: mentioned that too, right, Yeah, Pygmy sperm whales are a
Speaker 1: good example. They it's not really poop, it's like this
Speaker 1: butt syrup. It's the specialized fluid that's this kind of brown, dark,
Speaker 1: uh smelly. I would imagine very smelly fluid that they
Speaker 1: use kind of like squid inc where they will it
Speaker 1: clouds the water, makes it unpalatable for predators and then
Speaker 1: also just like gives them sort of a poopy smoke screen.
Speaker 1: I don't think this one. It's a new one on me. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And then also, um, some songbirds will say a raven
Speaker 1: is trying to eat their young. Uh, the songbirds will
Speaker 1: poop on the ravens, dive bomb them, and uh it's
Speaker 1: similar to the defensive vomiting where it will coat the
Speaker 1: ravens feathers and make it difficult to fly, and it
Speaker 1: can actually cause them to die because if they can't
Speaker 1: fly or escape or you know, it's it's a very
Speaker 1: dangerous situation for the predator. I've never thought about that
Speaker 1: with birds before, but it totally makes sense. Like when
Speaker 1: you see, uh, some of the tragic casualties of oil spills,
Speaker 1: you know, with that affecting birds, you know that it
Speaker 1: soaks into their feathers and makes them unable to to fly.
Speaker 1: But yeah, when I guess when you are a flying organism,
Speaker 1: there are some real downsides to taking on additional weight
Speaker 1: or anything that would screw up the aerodynamic properties of
Speaker 1: your feathers. Yeah, or altars the chemical composition of the
Speaker 1: outside of the feathers and makes them permeable to water.
Speaker 1: And uh, it's a very they're they're very um specialized
Speaker 1: in terms of how they protect the they bird's body
Speaker 1: and allow them to fly, so they're quite easy to
Speaker 1: mess with in a way. So it's very dangerous for
Speaker 1: these ravens to tangle with the with these dive bomber birds.
Speaker 1: But Katie did you have any other like topics from
Speaker 1: season two that you wanted to talk about. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: there's a lot of cool episodes. One of the most
Speaker 1: recent is on tool use. I think a lot of
Speaker 1: people think of tools as a primarily primate and human thing,
Speaker 1: but as we'll discover, a lot of other animals have
Speaker 1: really creative and bizarre ways they use tools. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: one on superhero powers that's a really fun one, UM
Speaker 1: David and Goliath, where we talk about the underdog and
Speaker 1: how they often went out in the natural world and
Speaker 1: how they managed to do that. And you can check
Speaker 1: all this out on our website, Creature Feature pod dot com. Excellent,
Speaker 1: go do that. If you haven't stuff to blow your
Speaker 1: mind listeners, why haven't you checked out Creature Feature yet?
Speaker 1: If you haven't, go go go Now. All right, well,
Speaker 1: and I know we're gonna take a quick break, but
Speaker 1: when we come back, we're gonna talk with Katie about teeth.
Speaker 1: We're gonna spend most of the rest of this episode
Speaker 1: talking about some uh peculiar and and maybe at times
Speaker 1: um intimidating uh chompers in the animal world. Thank thank
Speaker 1: thank Alright, we're back. So Katie, we asked you to
Speaker 1: talk with us about teeth today, maybe to have like
Speaker 1: I realized after I said it, uh, that we should
Speaker 1: do like a like an awards show for nature's weirdest
Speaker 1: or most jacked up teeth. But I think that idea
Speaker 1: came without me realizing it from Your Worst at Sex
Speaker 1: Awards episode on Creature Feature, which I listened to and
Speaker 1: I thought was very funny. Um. But yeah, so I thought, maybe, yeah,
Speaker 1: we we do a little teeth awards show. And I
Speaker 1: know this was on my mind because Robert and I
Speaker 1: just recently did an episode of our other podcast, Invention,
Speaker 1: about chewing gum, and I haven't been able to stop
Speaker 1: thinking about chewing ever since then, which is one of
Speaker 1: those things that you know, like when you're chewing food,
Speaker 1: if you don't think about it, it tastes really good.
Speaker 1: It feels really good, but if you do think about
Speaker 1: it while you're doing it, it becomes disgusting. With like
Speaker 1: candy and chewing gum or any candy where you you
Speaker 1: suck on it or chew on it, you're swallowing flavored saliva,
Speaker 1: and that's what you're eating when you think about it.
Speaker 1: And ever since, I realized that it's made eating candy
Speaker 1: or chewing gum a lot more difficult. Yeah, it's like
Speaker 1: a spit treats. Yeah. Um. So you know, one of
Speaker 1: the interesting things about the human mouth, though, is that
Speaker 1: I think we don't often recognize how much the human
Speaker 1: how much human teeth are reflective of our evolutionary niche
Speaker 1: is omnivores. You know that we have like these these
Speaker 1: sort of like cutting front teeth, and we have these
Speaker 1: sort of like slightly reduced canines that you might see
Speaker 1: in other predators. But then we've also got the grinding
Speaker 1: molars for plant matter. We have teeth that show the
Speaker 1: fact that we eat all kinds of different foods. But
Speaker 1: there are some animals that you you look at their
Speaker 1: teeth and you just realize they have a much more
Speaker 1: specialized way of life. Yeah. I mean one of my
Speaker 1: favorite kinds of animal teeth are beaver teeth. Is it
Speaker 1: okay if I talk about that, let go for it. Um. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they I mean I think they're when you think of teeth,
Speaker 1: that's kind of the primary animal they have that comes
Speaker 1: up in your head. They have those big buck teeth
Speaker 1: and they chew down trees and but what's cool is
Speaker 1: there's so much more to it than just on the surface. Like,
Speaker 1: it's not just that they have these big buck teeth. Um,
Speaker 1: they're really incredibly special teeth. Um. So first of all,
Speaker 1: they will grow continuously, so they never stopped growing. And
Speaker 1: that's because when they chew down would which as as
Speaker 1: we know, beavers are very industrious there they will terraform
Speaker 1: their environment. They're really important, uh in terms of ecological
Speaker 1: um niche bill ding, and like they also feed on
Speaker 1: these hard plant fibers and and the inside of the
Speaker 1: cambium in the tree. It's not true that they like
Speaker 1: they don't eat the bark. They eat the soft tissue
Speaker 1: under the tree bark um, and that's full of nutrients.
Speaker 1: So they need they need really special strong teeth to
Speaker 1: be able to chow down on these trees and do
Speaker 1: all of this work. So um, if their teeth didn't
Speaker 1: constantly grow, they just get worn down. And as soon
Speaker 1: as the teeth wore all the way down, they would
Speaker 1: be unable to function anymore. Uh. So uh, they're also
Speaker 1: if you ever seen a beaver, I don't know, have
Speaker 1: you guys seen a beaver? Oh yeah, yeah, but I
Speaker 1: know what you're about about to to get to because
Speaker 1: every time I see a beaver in real life, I
Speaker 1: have to remind myself, Oh, yes, there's this one key
Speaker 1: coloration difference that is generally not presented in cartoons and
Speaker 1: stuffed animals. It's got like got like toxic of in
Speaker 1: your mouth, doesn't it? Yes, So its teeth look really
Speaker 1: jankie when if you see one, you may think, oh god,
Speaker 1: there's something wrong with this beaver because its teeth are
Speaker 1: bright orange. And now they're perfectly healthy. The orange or
Speaker 1: the better. Um. So it's orange because the front enamel
Speaker 1: of their teeth is actually reinforced with iron that they
Speaker 1: get naturally in their diets. So um, everyone's enamel enamel
Speaker 1: is made out of like these tiny nano wire rods
Speaker 1: that are stacked together, and that's what makes it really hard. Um,
Speaker 1: and that's what protects your teeth. In beavers, each of
Speaker 1: these rows are coated in iron, forming these iron nano
Speaker 1: wires that are especially hard. So that's why they can
Speaker 1: chew through a tree, whereas if one of us tried
Speaker 1: to chew through a tree, you know it wouldn't be
Speaker 1: good news. Wait a minute, wait a minute, so orange
Speaker 1: iron teeth. I would imagine, if I'm not wrong, that
Speaker 1: it's orange because the iron gets oxidized, so the beaver
Speaker 1: would literally have rusty teeth, right, I mean that checks
Speaker 1: out to me. I'm not I'm not a chemist, but
Speaker 1: but I mean I feel like if you want to
Speaker 1: call beavers like like rusty teeth boys, that wouldn't be
Speaker 1: so bad. Yeah, but I have I don't think I've
Speaker 1: ever seen a cartoon beaver or a stuffed animal beaver
Speaker 1: actually have orange teeth. I mean, hopefully there's some some
Speaker 1: more you know, biologically accurate representations out there, but for
Speaker 1: the most part, again, I'm always just shocked when I
Speaker 1: see a beaver in real life, and then I have
Speaker 1: to remind myself that, oh, yeah, this is this is
Speaker 1: what they look like. Well, you know, it's It's interesting
Speaker 1: because there was this TV show on Nickelodeon when I
Speaker 1: was growing up called Angry Beavers Um, and they actually,
Speaker 1: in a weird way, they had some of the more
Speaker 1: accurate representation of beavers because I remember this episod so
Speaker 1: about how if they didn't shoot their teeth down, they'd
Speaker 1: keep growing and growing until they would grow into like
Speaker 1: their brains or something, and that part isn't really true,
Speaker 1: but uh, the the part where they their teeth continuously
Speaker 1: grow is very true, and so that that was interesting.
Speaker 1: I love cartoons like that because I think that kind
Speaker 1: of encourages young people's fascination with animals. Oh yeah, I
Speaker 1: there's I think there's some some better and better um
Speaker 1: cartoons out there these days. My son watches some of
Speaker 1: them where they'll they'll manage to balance, you know, anthropomorphic
Speaker 1: animals that talk to each other with actual realities from
Speaker 1: the natural world. Be it's something like octonauts or um oh,
Speaker 1: what is it? There's a sky, there's a the one
Speaker 1: of the Puffins Puffin rock U does a pretty good job.
Speaker 1: Speaking of cartoons, that kind of they called beaver teeth
Speaker 1: growing continuously just reminds me of the Simpson's Lisa Needs
Speaker 1: Braces eisodes where they show the age progression her teeth
Speaker 1: get more and more. Well, I think that's a that's
Speaker 1: a British joke there and she show they showed her
Speaker 1: the Big Book of British Teeth or the one ends
Speaker 1: up growing through the top of her head in the projection, right, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just like it shows her teeth just getting bigger
Speaker 1: and bigger until one grows through her skull. Yeah, you're right,
Speaker 1: that's two different jokes. Yeah the joke. Yeah, yeah, that's
Speaker 1: why she needs braces so it doesn't stab her brain.
Speaker 1: Dental plan. All right, let's keep going on beavers. So
Speaker 1: what else you got, Katie? Yeah, So the iron in
Speaker 1: their teeth that makes them that beautiful shade of orange
Speaker 1: not only predictably it helps them carve through hard plants
Speaker 1: and woods, but it's also resistant to damage from acid.
Speaker 1: So beaver's pretty much never get cavities. Um. They're like
Speaker 1: a dentist's stream teeth um. And which is very important
Speaker 1: because beaver without his teeth is like, you know, I
Speaker 1: don't know, it's just impossible. You can't. We can't beaver
Speaker 1: without your teeth, right, of course, that's I guess it's
Speaker 1: true for a lot of animals. So that I mean
Speaker 1: you you look at the vital role that teeth have
Speaker 1: in their ability to feed themselves. I mean really for
Speaker 1: for humans, I mean, we're if not for our cooking technology,
Speaker 1: we'd be in largely the same boat. Yeah, I mean, um,
Speaker 1: I remember there was this survival story of this guy
Speaker 1: who was he was stuck I think in that a
Speaker 1: desert somewhere in Australia, like somewhere in the out back
Speaker 1: where he had gotten lost or something, and he found
Speaker 1: some kind of abandoned shack and he was he had
Speaker 1: to stay there because he was miles and miles from
Speaker 1: civilization and he had to conserve his energy. So he
Speaker 1: survived by eating like those witchet eat grubs. And then uh,
Speaker 1: he started to get a tooth abscess. Uh, and so
Speaker 1: he realized he had to rip his own tooth out
Speaker 1: in order to survive, because if the infection spread to
Speaker 1: other teeth or if he couldn't use his mouth, he
Speaker 1: would die. So he hold out his own two like
Speaker 1: did his did dentistry on himself in order to survive,
Speaker 1: and he I think he did end up Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I mean because he was talking about it, So he
Speaker 1: ended up surviving. The original d seven hours before the
Speaker 1: h I don't remember the original guy's name, but the
Speaker 1: James Franco movie, right right. Yeah, although I feel like
Speaker 1: pulling out your own tooth is somehow even worse than
Speaker 1: cutting off your own leg, if that makes sense. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you're breaking your job. It's awful. Um. So back
Speaker 1: to beavers. Um. They also it's it's really interesting because
Speaker 1: so the front part of the tooth is that orange
Speaker 1: color with the reinforced iron, and then the back part
Speaker 1: is actually a softer made of denton, which is a
Speaker 1: little it's still hard, but it's softer and it will
Speaker 1: wear away more quickly than the iron in the front.
Speaker 1: So when they chew, they actually form these natural wedges
Speaker 1: with their teeth, and that makes them even better tools.
Speaker 1: In fact, beaver jaws were used as tools by early humans,
Speaker 1: which is a kind of a little bit of a
Speaker 1: cheating way to have an iron age. You just use
Speaker 1: a beaver jaw. Um, But yeah, because they were so
Speaker 1: their their teeth are just such great specialized tools. So
Speaker 1: it's kind of like a like a single bevel knife, right,
Speaker 1: the kind of knife that, unlike most is just we're
Speaker 1: worn down on one edge. Yeah, yeah, exactly. It's Um,
Speaker 1: it's really utilizing some mechanical advantage and the way it's
Speaker 1: it's just cool to me that one side is softer,
Speaker 1: so it'll create a blade basically with these teeth like
Speaker 1: little little tiny axes. This whole conversation about how you
Speaker 1: never see the orange teeth in cartoons has made me
Speaker 1: think you could do a whole episode, or we could
Speaker 1: somebody could on like animals that are never depicted in
Speaker 1: cartoons in anatomically correct ways because to depict them in
Speaker 1: a comically correctly is disturbing in one way or another.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, that's a great idea. I might steal it.
Speaker 1: I was also going to do UM. Probably this week,
Speaker 1: I'm going to do a little bit of myth busting
Speaker 1: about lions. I advised the Bechdel cast on that, and
Speaker 1: I probably will mention some things on my show because
Speaker 1: of the I'm sure the blatant misinformation coming from the
Speaker 1: new Line King movie that must be corrected. Oh does
Speaker 1: it present like a phallocentric Lion King? Yeah, I don't
Speaker 1: know if the new one. I haven't actually seen the
Speaker 1: new quote unquote live action. It's not live action, it's UM,
Speaker 1: but I haven't seen it. It's I have seen the old,
Speaker 1: the old version, which is very inaccurate UM in terms
Speaker 1: of how it presents lion society. But you know, speak
Speaker 1: about speaking of animals that don't do well when their teeth,
Speaker 1: when stuff happens to their teeth, like a lion with
Speaker 1: teeth problems can definitely die well. I've I believe I've
Speaker 1: read that in cases where you have man eaters um
Speaker 1: with with large feelines like that sometimes occurs due to
Speaker 1: um uh damage to their their teeth, like they're they're
Speaker 1: losing their their dental effectiveness and they that's when they
Speaker 1: turned to eating humans if they're available. Yeah, that's I
Speaker 1: think that was the case with the lines of Savo.
Speaker 1: Is that the ones that were we're eating the people
Speaker 1: who were um it was this group of like two
Speaker 1: or three lions who were stalking these people back in
Speaker 1: the was it in the eighteen hundreds, um, the late
Speaker 1: eighteen hundreds. Maybe they were they building a railroad. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they were building a railroad, I think, and they kept
Speaker 1: eating these poor workers and um, and they would stock them,
Speaker 1: they would follow their camps and wait for one of
Speaker 1: them to let their guard down and eat them. And
Speaker 1: that's because humans were really we're soft serve basically. Um.
Speaker 1: So these lions that were weaker and had these dental problems. Um,
Speaker 1: we're eating people because we were just easier to eat.
Speaker 1: Get tired of chewing through a bunch of hide humans.
Speaker 1: Easy solution, right, We're like little cherry tomatoes on the teeth.
Speaker 1: All right, Well, let's move on to our next animal.
Speaker 1: Katie believe you were gonna you're gonna talk about one
Speaker 1: of our favorites, the corpse whale. Yeah, the the unicorn
Speaker 1: of the sea, the narwall um. And isn't it I
Speaker 1: think it's actually true that, like the concept of the
Speaker 1: unicorn may be related to people who discovered narwhal horns. Yes,
Speaker 1: we talked about this. We actually did a two part
Speaker 1: episode on unicorns, I think sometime last year, or was
Speaker 1: it even the year before, I don't know, it was
Speaker 1: sometime recently, and narwhal horns have been hypothesized as one
Speaker 1: of the things that people sold and traded as unicorn horns.
Speaker 1: Like basically the two main in roads to unicorns are
Speaker 1: rhinos and our wall But we were calling them nor
Speaker 1: whal horns. They're not exactly how horns are they. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm doing a bit of a goof on y'all. They're
Speaker 1: actually tusks because they're big old tooth that grows out
Speaker 1: of their forehead. It's actually an oversized canine tooth. And
Speaker 1: what's interesting to me is there if you ever, when
Speaker 1: you think of a norl kind of similar to how
Speaker 1: you picture of beaver with their pearly white teeth, the
Speaker 1: nor well, you think of it as a symmetrical unicorn
Speaker 1: horn like right down the center. It's actually off center
Speaker 1: because it's usually the upper left canine tooth that is overgrown.
Speaker 1: So if you get a top view of an our wall,
Speaker 1: you can see it actually lists a little bit to
Speaker 1: the left typically um, and they can grow up to
Speaker 1: an impressive tin ft long. It's usually only on males.
Speaker 1: Only about fift of females have a tusk um, and
Speaker 1: then very very rarely uh, a narwhal can have two
Speaker 1: symmetrical tusks, but that's extremely uncommon. Um. And what's really
Speaker 1: cool about this the narwhal tusk is it is kind
Speaker 1: of a scientific mystery and there are a few theories
Speaker 1: on why it exists and has an super weird uh
Speaker 1: kind of it's it's very odd anatomically, which we can
Speaker 1: get into um. So one of the most uh. One
Speaker 1: of the theories is that it's it's just basically am
Speaker 1: mating a sexual uh dimorphism kind of mating display attributes.
Speaker 1: So uh, it's this showy thing that maybe helps with mating,
Speaker 1: maybe helps male narwhal's kind of face off. Um. And
Speaker 1: that would make sense because females don't have it. But
Speaker 1: the weird part about that is that the tusk itself
Speaker 1: is very specialized. So UM. A lot of researchers argue
Speaker 1: that the tusk is actually this big sensory organ because
Speaker 1: it contains millions of nerve endings and it's actually composed
Speaker 1: not of hard enamel not it's not just this insensitive
Speaker 1: kind of uh you know, prong, it's the it's composed
Speaker 1: of like the sensitive parts of the tooth UM. And
Speaker 1: so it's thought that maybe it's collecting information about the water.
Speaker 1: And there's even this theory that, like when you see
Speaker 1: male narwhal's rubbing their tusks together, that instead of fighting,
Speaker 1: their sharing sensory information. UM. So one of the proponents
Speaker 1: of this theory is Martin Nuila. Uh. He's a Harvard
Speaker 1: University marine dental expert UM and UH think his research
Speaker 1: team thinks that this is sharing info about the tusks
Speaker 1: rubbing together, is sharing info about the salinity and other
Speaker 1: characteristics of the water that they've traveled through. And so
Speaker 1: this is this is why they think this may be
Speaker 1: the case. So the narwhale tusk is very different from
Speaker 1: human and even other mammalian teeth. UM. So, I don't
Speaker 1: know have you guys talked about are you guys going
Speaker 1: to talk about the anatomical features of the human teeth
Speaker 1: on the show? Bromin not in today's episode those I'm
Speaker 1: sure it's come up before. I mean, we know that
Speaker 1: teeth aren't the same as bones. They've got these different
Speaker 1: layers of different density and material, right, right, So just
Speaker 1: a just a quick refresher. Then it's there's a hard
Speaker 1: outer layer of an animal um and an inner layer
Speaker 1: of denton, and then inside of that is the pulp
Speaker 1: which contains nerve endings and blood vessels. And hopefully you
Speaker 1: don't really feel that too much. If you do, you
Speaker 1: might have a cavity. Um uh. And then the root
Speaker 1: of the tooth is covered in cementum, which is this
Speaker 1: special calcified substance that contains these little, teeny tiny canals
Speaker 1: that actually help root the teeth to the alviolar bone
Speaker 1: by connecting to what's called the periodontal ligament. Which that's
Speaker 1: a bunch of words that I barely even know what
Speaker 1: they mean. So um, it's um. Basically, your teeth isn't
Speaker 1: just rooted in by sort of those the main pointy roots.
Speaker 1: It doesn't just sit in the bed it's attached by
Speaker 1: all these little tiny fibers um that anchor the tooth
Speaker 1: to the surrounding tissue into the surrounding bone um. That's
Speaker 1: why it's not just easy to pop a tooth out
Speaker 1: um and so, and that's that's a very sin instead
Speaker 1: of part of the tooth, as you can imagine, because
Speaker 1: it's it's permeable, it can all these fibers can go
Speaker 1: through it. In our walls, the entire outside of the
Speaker 1: tusk is covered in this permeable cementum, so like the
Speaker 1: stuff that's really basically only in the root of our
Speaker 1: teeth is the entire nor wall tusk. And instead of
Speaker 1: using those little channels, uh, those little holes that are
Speaker 1: all throughout the cementum to anchor it, they actually seawater
Speaker 1: traverses through it through passages in the inner layer of
Speaker 1: denton and into the pulp where it contacts nerve endings,
Speaker 1: which sounds yeah, which sounds very unpleasant. So it doesn't
Speaker 1: it seems intuitively, it seems that there's got to be
Speaker 1: a reason for this, the fact that seawater can just
Speaker 1: get in touch with nerve endings, because otherwise that just
Speaker 1: seems very uncomfortable, right, like, don't you want some holes
Speaker 1: in your teeth for the ice water to get in? Like,
Speaker 1: imagine if your tooth had a big old hole in
Speaker 1: it and then you dove into some super cold water,
Speaker 1: that would be not not the best feeling. So uh.
Speaker 1: The one of the theories that this may be advantageous
Speaker 1: is that it could be used to detect salinity in
Speaker 1: the water. And the reason this is important is that
Speaker 1: high salt concentration can indicate that ice is forming, and
Speaker 1: narwhals don't want to get trapped in the ice. So
Speaker 1: if there's a real high salinity, uh, they may know
Speaker 1: to leave that area because they don't want to get
Speaker 1: stuck in ice formations. Um. But it's it's really important
Speaker 1: to note that the science on this has been far
Speaker 1: from settled. There's a lot of argument about that if
Speaker 1: this is an important sensory organ, then why isn't this
Speaker 1: present in female narwhal's Uh. That seems like kind of
Speaker 1: a big oversight um. And the fact that a lot
Speaker 1: of times sexual dimorphism of features like a like a
Speaker 1: big tuss usually indicates that it's involved in mating displays.
Speaker 1: But I do think that there must be It seems
Speaker 1: like there's likely some utility to the tusks, So I
Speaker 1: think it could be a kind of rare situation where
Speaker 1: maybe it was initially used in mating and then the
Speaker 1: some of the features of it, like these these channels
Speaker 1: that allow salt water to flow into the nerves could
Speaker 1: now have some utility that the narwhal's use. So it's
Speaker 1: it's hard to say. Uh. And I'm really interested to
Speaker 1: see kind of track that see what researchers come up
Speaker 1: with in the future. So kind of like maybe if
Speaker 1: like a stag's antlers got gained the ability to sense
Speaker 1: the storm has come in or right, yeah, exactly, all right,
Speaker 1: we're gonna take a quick break, but when we come
Speaker 1: back more with Katie Golden than all right, we're back.
Speaker 1: So I have a question, Katie. I have seen images
Speaker 1: all over the internet, often unlabeled and mem ified, of
Speaker 1: a creepy looking fish that has human teeth. Do you
Speaker 1: do you know what that is? Yeah, it's a sheep's
Speaker 1: head fish. Uh. And they do have creepy looking human
Speaker 1: like teeth. Um, that's not it's one of those rare
Speaker 1: images that's actually not photoshopped, because I've seen all sorts
Speaker 1: of photoshop things of like, oh, look at this animal
Speaker 1: with their weird teeth. It's just like, no, you just
Speaker 1: photoshop some human teeth, because there's like some sort of
Speaker 1: a cephalopot image that is maybe not photoshop, but just
Speaker 1: like the way that they the specimen was arranged, it
Speaker 1: makes it look like it has human teeth. Well, this
Speaker 1: tradition goes all the way back to like the tabloid
Speaker 1: newspapers of the nineteen nineties. I remember when I was
Speaker 1: a kid, Uh, there was this thing that would be
Speaker 1: like a cat found with human teeth, and that would
Speaker 1: be on the cover of the weekly World News and
Speaker 1: it's super creepy looking. Things that aren't humans shouldn't have
Speaker 1: human teeth or be able to smile. Yeah, I was
Speaker 1: always thinking about that. What if my cat could smile?
Speaker 1: It would be it would be disturbing. What would a
Speaker 1: cat have to think in order to smile? It wouldn't
Speaker 1: be a good thought. But the sheep said, fish here
Speaker 1: is it's not it's not smiling, to be clear, but
Speaker 1: does have these very human like teeth. So, I mean
Speaker 1: the obvious question is what are what are they eating
Speaker 1: that requires is this these chomp? This is a fish
Speaker 1: that lives on Snickers bars. Yeah, it's it's it's not
Speaker 1: only got these human teeth, but it's got lots of them,
Speaker 1: just rose and rose of them. Um, and it's. Yeah.
Speaker 1: They're used to crush up the shells of their prey,
Speaker 1: so they eat oysters, clams, bivalves, crabs, other crustaceans, you know,
Speaker 1: so on and so forth, all those oh those crunchy,
Speaker 1: delightful things you can eat in the ocean. Um, So
Speaker 1: it can just it just kind of puts it in
Speaker 1: there like it's going through a blender and crushes them
Speaker 1: up with all with their many, many human like teeth. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's well, I've got human like teeth and I can't
Speaker 1: crush up oyster shells. Well do you have tons of teeth?
Speaker 1: You have these guys? I bet this is why I
Speaker 1: have to steal other people's teeth. I finally found a justification.
Speaker 1: I think if you shoved a few rows of denters
Speaker 1: in your mouth, you could crush an oyster. Okay, I'll
Speaker 1: take that under advisement. Uh so this is one of
Speaker 1: your honorable mentions, right that it wasn't a main pick
Speaker 1: for you, But the sheep's had fish. Yeah, I just
Speaker 1: don't know as much about this fish, but I do.
Speaker 1: I think these are ones that I would highly encourage
Speaker 1: you guys to google. Usually I say, don't google this
Speaker 1: because it's disgusting, but these are really interesting, So google
Speaker 1: sheep's head fish. Really cool you see rose and rows
Speaker 1: of teeth. Another one to definitely google image is the
Speaker 1: crab eater seal um. And it's, uh, it's this adorable
Speaker 1: little you know how seals are. They're just these little
Speaker 1: chunky balls of cuteness blubberry water dogs. Yeah, they're they're
Speaker 1: a little they're a little water water boys with like
Speaker 1: little round bodies and they're very cute, you know. They're
Speaker 1: they're found uh in an Antarctica um and they are uh.
Speaker 1: They do eat they are also known as a they're
Speaker 1: called crab eater seals, but they often eat krill. So,
Speaker 1: but what's cool about these guys is if you look
Speaker 1: at their teeth there, they're so trippy. Um. They have
Speaker 1: these like whorls and spirals around uh and it looks
Speaker 1: kind of like, um, almost like a Fibonacci sequence of teeth.
Speaker 1: It's just like or what are those called, like a
Speaker 1: fractal fract like like a psychedelic illustration or like a
Speaker 1: Mandelbrot set edge. Yeah. Yeah, it's like as if you
Speaker 1: took a tooth, Like if you took a tooth and
Speaker 1: then just did the like swirl the what's it called
Speaker 1: the swirl effect and photoshop a bunch of times. Yeah,
Speaker 1: they look like, yeah, they look photoshopped. It's like they're
Speaker 1: really cool. Oh it's a it's also a coke snowflake
Speaker 1: or a cotch snowflake, however you pronounced that, yeah, kinda.
Speaker 1: Or it's like if Alex Gray designed a seal skull.
Speaker 1: I was almost gonna say Alex Gray because I know
Speaker 1: that was where you were going to get out. Yeah,
Speaker 1: these are impressive. I'm looking at some of these images
Speaker 1: right now. Yeah, yeah, these these are amazing. So why
Speaker 1: do they have these fractal teeth. Well, it's they look
Speaker 1: really like they're designed to be these really nasty weapons
Speaker 1: to just like shred things apart. But I think what
Speaker 1: they're actually used for is to uh strain smaller prey
Speaker 1: items like krill out of the water column, so they
Speaker 1: can get like this big gulp of seawater with some
Speaker 1: krill and then they sort of force the water out
Speaker 1: of their mouth and the krill get all caught up
Speaker 1: in their jankie teeth and then they can eat them,
Speaker 1: sort of like the way that whale balein works. It
Speaker 1: was like a alien jaw spider strainer. Yes, yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: like a calendar teeth. Calendar's interesting. And then you have
Speaker 1: one more in your honorable mention here. Um right, yeah,
Speaker 1: So this is ah. This is an extinct species of
Speaker 1: some kind of shark like fish. Um. It lived in
Speaker 1: the early Permian uh era, like round three million years ago,
Speaker 1: um and there uh scientific name is the helicoprion um.
Speaker 1: And they just have a very very funny looking mouth
Speaker 1: because it looks like someone shoved a buzz saw on
Speaker 1: their on their lower jaw. UM. I would definitely google
Speaker 1: image this. It's also really funny to see the different
Speaker 1: because we only have fossil records of this, we don't
Speaker 1: know exactly how this jaw we're like where it fits
Speaker 1: on the animal. So there's a lot of different interpretations
Speaker 1: and illustrations of how this shark was put together. Um.
Speaker 1: There's an drawing where it just super funny. It looks
Speaker 1: like this nose. Um, So they put it on the
Speaker 1: top of the shark where it's just this curly nose
Speaker 1: of teeth um. And then but I think a lot
Speaker 1: more the more accepted kind of place to put this
Speaker 1: buzz saw of teeth is on the lower jaw on
Speaker 1: the outside, and it really it's just like rows and
Speaker 1: rows of many many sharp teeth that are just that
Speaker 1: look like some kind of freaky Tim Burton esque monster.
Speaker 1: One appears, it appears that it sort of spirals out.
Speaker 1: So does it have like new rows of teeth that
Speaker 1: go down in it, like it gets bigger as it
Speaker 1: goes along through the spiral? Right? Yeah, I think And
Speaker 1: you know, I'm not sure that they know exactly because
Speaker 1: obviously we don't, there's not there's limited record of this shark.
Speaker 1: But I would guess it's similar to how um modern
Speaker 1: sharks how they can push out teeth, So when they
Speaker 1: lose teeth, they just have rows of teeth behind that
Speaker 1: they push out progressively, and that's how they solve their
Speaker 1: dental problems, is they just replace them with new new teeth. Um.
Speaker 1: So I would imagine that maybe this is a form
Speaker 1: of that, where you know, it's kind of like a
Speaker 1: you know what, what's that like that bubble gum that
Speaker 1: came in those big coils like uh bubble tape, yeah,
Speaker 1: bubble tape um where you just keep or like a
Speaker 1: pez dispenser, or you just keep on you're able to
Speaker 1: keep pushing out new teeth. Um that I I don't
Speaker 1: know though, It's it's hard to say because this is
Speaker 1: a very weird fossil record. Uh. In all of the
Speaker 1: illustrations I find of it, it's not represented in a
Speaker 1: way that looks like it could actually bite. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm tempted to think that we have not figured out
Speaker 1: where the correct anatomical orientation of this yet or exactly
Speaker 1: how it was just utilized. Yeah, yeah, so it's uh,
Speaker 1: we don't know. I mean, I certainly don't know why
Speaker 1: this would be good, Like because if you can imagine
Speaker 1: just having a buzz soft teeth in your lower jaw,
Speaker 1: how hard that would be to chew things. Doesn't seem
Speaker 1: optimal and maybe that's why they're dead. Um, But there
Speaker 1: there is the proposal of like how this may have
Speaker 1: worked is that um, there was like no teeth in
Speaker 1: the top jaw except the like some crushing teeth, So
Speaker 1: it's like a mortar and pestle kind of design, so
Speaker 1: like the bottom thing could crush things up with this
Speaker 1: like buzz soft teeth, and then the top the top
Speaker 1: part of the jaw would be like the mortar and
Speaker 1: the bottom part would be the pestel and just like
Speaker 1: grind grind, prey up. But it's all doesn't It just
Speaker 1: doesn't look like it worked that good, like a like
Speaker 1: a guillotine mouth, Like it's got a circular guillotine blade
Speaker 1: and it goes into the like catcher, which is the
Speaker 1: upper jaw. Yeah, it's one of those things where it
Speaker 1: looks like a child's idea of a scary monster. So
Speaker 1: when you're thinking, oh, well, you just put a buzz
Speaker 1: saw in its mouth and it looks super awesome and cool.
Speaker 1: But then when you think about it, there's probably a
Speaker 1: reason that this shark did not win out in the
Speaker 1: evolutionary arms race. Yeah, lost to the uh, the recently
Speaker 1: evolved chainsaw whale. Well, it reminds me remember battle Bots,
Speaker 1: the TV show a little fighting robots where it was
Speaker 1: always counterintuitive, like a lot of the ones that seemed
Speaker 1: like they had the best weapons did not always ruin exactly.
Speaker 1: So you have one with big chainsaw on it, You're like, oh,
Speaker 1: this one's gonna just wreck and then some little wedge
Speaker 1: shaped one knocks it over and winds. We had a
Speaker 1: little flippers. There were the ones that excelled. Yeah, it
Speaker 1: was always the wedges, like our like our friend the beaver. Uh,
Speaker 1: that wedge shape is just so good. Yeah, it's hard
Speaker 1: to beat an inclined plane. Now, all right, well, I
Speaker 1: think that that brings us to the end where we
Speaker 1: need to wrap up today. But before we do that,
Speaker 1: first of all, if you are not subscribed to Creature
Speaker 1: Feature yet, subscribe to Creature Feature right now. Subscribe to
Speaker 1: Creature Feature right now, right now. Katie enticed them what
Speaker 1: what is coming up on Creature Feature? What will have
Speaker 1: aired recently when this comes out? Yeah, so the episode
Speaker 1: that's out right now as of this recording is uh
Speaker 1: one on tool use. Um. I have My guest is
Speaker 1: Carmen Angelica. She's a delight and it's it's really fun
Speaker 1: because we talk about tools of the trade, tools of torture,
Speaker 1: and tools of love. So it's kind of runs the
Speaker 1: gamut in terms of what can be used as a tool. Uh,
Speaker 1: and it's there's some surprising twists and turns are um
Speaker 1: and Uh. The one I'm recording for next week is
Speaker 1: going to be on. Animals that you don't think you
Speaker 1: should be afraid of look pretty innocent and harmless, but
Speaker 1: are really actually extremely deadly. Um and I'll probably also
Speaker 1: be correcting the record on the line, king, Wait a minute,
Speaker 1: Animals that you don't think you should be afraid of,
Speaker 1: but you should. Our geese on the list? Is it geese? Hey? Yeah,
Speaker 1: geese is the whole thing. That's That's the only thing
Speaker 1: I'm talking about on that episode. Well, they at least
Speaker 1: deserve a nod. Those things are scary. Yeah, speaking, have
Speaker 1: you seen like the geese that have teeth? No, I
Speaker 1: don't think so. They're not really teeth, they're just deserrated beak.
Speaker 1: But boy do they look unpleasantrated beak sounds very unpleasant. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: thanks so much for joining us today, Katie. It's been
Speaker 1: so much fun. Yeah for sure. Thanks for having me
Speaker 1: again anytime, and one last time. Where can people find
Speaker 1: Creature Feature. Yeah, so, you can find us on our
Speaker 1: website Creature feature pod dot com. We're on Twitter Creature
Speaker 1: feet Pod, and on Instagram Creature Feature Pod. Uh and
Speaker 1: of course we're on Apple, Apple iTunes, We're on the
Speaker 1: I Heart Radio app or pretty much anywhere. You get
Speaker 1: your podcasts anywhere, folks, there's no excuse, no excuse. All right, Well,
Speaker 1: thanks so much and we'll maybe we'll talk to you
Speaker 1: again soon, yeah, I hope so. All right, And if
Speaker 1: you want to check out more Stuff to Blow your Mind,
Speaker 1: we have a website, Stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 1: You can go there. And if you want to support
Speaker 1: our show, the best thing you can do is make
Speaker 1: sure you have subscribed to us, subscribe to our other
Speaker 1: show Invention as well, and wherever you have the power
Speaker 1: to do so, just leave us a nice review, leave
Speaker 1: us a nice assortment of stars that helps out the
Speaker 1: show in the long run. Hughes, thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer, Maya Cole. If you would like
Speaker 1: to get in touch with us with feedback on this
Speaker 1: episode or any other, suggest a topic for the future,
Speaker 1: just to say hello, you can email us at contact
Speaker 1: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is a production of iHeart Radios How
Speaker 1: Stuff Works. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
Speaker 1: the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen
Speaker 1: to your favorite shows.