Speaker 1: Hey, you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert Lamb. Joe is out sick today, and
Speaker 1: normally we would have a new core episode of Stuff
Speaker 1: to Blow Your Mind for you, but we're going to
Speaker 1: go ahead and bust out the next Vault episode a
Speaker 1: little early to just to give us a little more
Speaker 1: breathing room here. So this is going to be the
Speaker 1: Beast War and Apron Part two. Originally published on March
Speaker 1: twenty fourth, twenty twenty two. We hope you enjoy Welcome
Speaker 1: to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb, and I'm Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 1: part two of our series on animals cooking non human
Speaker 1: animals and cooking in the sense of doing things to
Speaker 1: food before they eat it other than applying heat. Because
Speaker 1: in the last episode we talked about how humans are
Speaker 1: the only animals that regularly apply heat to their food
Speaker 1: on purpose to cook it, but animals do all kinds
Speaker 1: of other interesting things to their food before eating it.
Speaker 1: For example, we talked about birds that that sort of
Speaker 1: butcher and smash up and process their their their animal
Speaker 1: parts before they consume them in various ways, like the
Speaker 1: shrike making shish kebabs out of crickets and other critters.
Speaker 1: And uh, was it the lambur guyer that would would
Speaker 1: smash the bones or the turtles? Yeah? And you know,
Speaker 1: I realized after a record of that episode that there's
Speaker 1: another animal that cooks that is a part of my
Speaker 1: weekly life that I forgot to mention. It's that little
Speaker 1: puff on Instagram account in which a cat is made
Speaker 1: to appear to cook various items to try to replicate
Speaker 1: various sort of like TikTok cooking trends and crafting trends
Speaker 1: um sometimes to great success, sometimes it results in disappointing failure.
Speaker 1: Oh if if you're familiar with TikTok cooking trends, there's
Speaker 1: one that I've seen by image alone. Do you can
Speaker 1: you explain the thing to me where somebody takes a
Speaker 1: big old wad of hamburger meat and they wrap it
Speaker 1: around dry pasta. What is that? Do you know what
Speaker 1: I'm talking about? Well, I am only familiar with TikTok
Speaker 1: cooking trends that have been featured on that little puff,
Speaker 1: so I don't think I've seen the cat doing this
Speaker 1: to hamburger made yet So I'm not the one to
Speaker 1: answer that question. Well, I mean it sounds like a
Speaker 1: cat's idea. Well, to be clear, this cat is not
Speaker 1: actually has not been trained to do anything. It's it's
Speaker 1: just the appearance of a cat cooking that they have
Speaker 1: created here trick photography. Yeah, cats lousy cooks. They're not,
Speaker 1: they're not interested in cooking. But to tie it into
Speaker 1: our first segment here, you know, one thing that is
Speaker 1: great about cats is cats are very clean. You know,
Speaker 1: they enjoy it. They groom themselves, they clean themselves. They
Speaker 1: lick all over to get the dirt out of the fur. Actually,
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's why they lick. They lick themselves.
Speaker 1: It appears to be for some kind of hygienic purpose.
Speaker 1: I have no idea what it's actually for, but that
Speaker 1: mirrors some of the behaviors were about to talk about
Speaker 1: in the category of animals washing their food before they
Speaker 1: eat it. And Robert, I don't know about your house,
Speaker 1: but I tend to be pretty fastidious about washing fresh produce.
Speaker 1: Do you do the same, Well, you know, I don't
Speaker 1: want any grit in whatever I'm cooking, And certainly, depending
Speaker 1: on the produce in question, you might get some grit
Speaker 1: if you don't wash it off. Well, if I'm make
Speaker 1: an ants on a log, I want to make sure
Speaker 1: that I have a scrub my celery sticks off before
Speaker 1: and then dry them, you know, before I actually start
Speaker 1: applying the peanut butter, and said ants. Well, it turns
Speaker 1: out this is one of the food preprocessing behaviors that
Speaker 1: is not unique to humans. All kinds of animals exhibit
Speaker 1: various washing behaviors. And I'm want to say washing with
Speaker 1: scare quotes because in some cases this may actually be
Speaker 1: related to cleaning dirt or other materials off of the food,
Speaker 1: and in other cases it may have a completely different purpose.
Speaker 1: But in any case, it is taking a piece of
Speaker 1: food and washing it, or doing something that looks like
Speaker 1: washing with the help of water, that's right. I was
Speaker 1: reading about some of this in a paper titled food
Speaker 1: dunking Behavior by an Eurasian Jay by Dearborn and Gager,
Speaker 1: published in the Ornithological Society of the Middle East. They
Speaker 1: point out that crows and ravens have been observed to
Speaker 1: quote unquote wash their food and fountains before eating it,
Speaker 1: and they talk a little bit about how generally we
Speaker 1: see examples of this washing behavior in primates and birds
Speaker 1: washing or dunking, and in both birds and primates, the
Speaker 1: two main theories seem to be that it's about washing
Speaker 1: or removing a thin coating from the exterior the food,
Speaker 1: which generally that what we're doing, or it's about making
Speaker 1: the food easier to eat, which is not something we're
Speaker 1: usually doing if we're just washing our produce in the sink,
Speaker 1: but it is what we're doing if we're say, dipping
Speaker 1: a particularly tough biscuit into a cup of tea or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this the old hardtack tradition, you know, armies of old
Speaker 1: marching around or sailing around with hard tack biscuits a
Speaker 1: lot of times. Like, you can't even eat these things straight.
Speaker 1: You can't just bite into them. You got to like
Speaker 1: dip them into your gravy or some other kind of
Speaker 1: liquid and then soften them up before you can consume. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So some of the examples that they mentioned in this
Speaker 1: paper from other creatures are carrion crows eating dry bread.
Speaker 1: This would be a situation where dry bread has been
Speaker 1: provided for them and they dip it before they eat it.
Speaker 1: Kill deer have been observed washing muddy frogs off before
Speaker 1: they eat them. The cacs have been observed doing the
Speaker 1: same thing with sandy crabs. Captive monkeys have been a
Speaker 1: deserve doing this with dry monkey chow. And then the
Speaker 1: Eurasian jay example studied in the paper I cited. It
Speaker 1: involves the bird in question dunking an egg in water
Speaker 1: and then eating it, though the researchers ultimately remained they
Speaker 1: remained unclear about what that was all about. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: in a lot of cases, it seems like these washing, dunking,
Speaker 1: or dousing behaviors are still they're still unknown, and we
Speaker 1: still don't know exactly what the cause is that we
Speaker 1: have better ideas in some cases than in others. But
Speaker 1: one thing I was thinking about is that, you know,
Speaker 1: it may depend on your anatomy how important it is
Speaker 1: to douse something in external water before you eat it,
Speaker 1: depending on how strong your salivary glands are, because we're
Speaker 1: doing the same thing, but it happens in our mouths,
Speaker 1: I mean, all the foods you eat. It gets kind
Speaker 1: of like coated in saliva and moistened that way, and
Speaker 1: it helps lubricate the swallowing process. Doesn't that sound so appetizing. Yeah, well,
Speaker 1: I think we've we've touched on this before, but actually
Speaker 1: quite recently, I think talking about food and digestion. But
Speaker 1: like the digestive process begins in the mouth, like this
Speaker 1: is where food is initially masticated, broken up, broken down,
Speaker 1: partially liquefied, and then formed into that bolus that will
Speaker 1: then have been be swallowed and continue the journey. You
Speaker 1: don't want to be swallowing a dry bolus. No, no,
Speaker 1: But next, I wanted to think about one of the
Speaker 1: most famous examples of animals that appear at least to
Speaker 1: wash their food before eating it, and that is raccoons.
Speaker 1: This has got to be one of the cutest examples.
Speaker 1: I'm sure everybody out there on the Internet at this
Speaker 1: point has seen the heartbreaking video of the raccoon with
Speaker 1: a piece of cotton candy going to the water's edge
Speaker 1: to wash it and then it dissolving, and the raccoon
Speaker 1: looks just so sad. I don't think I've seen that one,
Speaker 1: but I'm picturing it. I can imagine it. So I
Speaker 1: found something out I didn't know before. You you know,
Speaker 1: the word raccoon. The English word raccoon is derived from
Speaker 1: a word originally in the Algonquian languages. But do you
Speaker 1: know what the raccoon is called in German? No, what
Speaker 1: is it called? It is the vah bear, the wash bear,
Speaker 1: the bear, the washes oh nice. And the same principle
Speaker 1: shows up in its scientific name, which is procyon lowtour,
Speaker 1: which means something like pre dog washer. So a raccoon
Speaker 1: is something that's maybe not quite a dog, not quite
Speaker 1: a dog yet, but it is associated with washing. And
Speaker 1: this etymology carries over multiple languages where the raccoon is
Speaker 1: known as something like the washing bear or the washing
Speaker 1: dog or something like that, and it reflects one of
Speaker 1: the most notable characteristic behaviors of the raccoon, which is
Speaker 1: the fact that when they acquire a piece of food
Speaker 1: and there is water nearby, they will often dunk that
Speaker 1: piece of food in the water and then manipulate it,
Speaker 1: kind of put it in the water and swish it
Speaker 1: around a bit, maybe feel at it, paw at it,
Speaker 1: rub on it, and then retrieve it from the water
Speaker 1: and eat it. And it gives rise to the idea
Speaker 1: that raccoons are meticulous, little neat freaks that they're I
Speaker 1: don't know, hyper hygienic or germophobes or something washing every
Speaker 1: bit of dirt and grime from food before consuming it,
Speaker 1: which is kind of funny when you think about other
Speaker 1: feeding habits of raccoons you might be familiar with, such
Speaker 1: as like getting into your garbage can and just eating
Speaker 1: the food in there, and they're not washing that food.
Speaker 1: They don't seem to be concerned about the dirt in
Speaker 1: that case. No, no, this is of course what it
Speaker 1: has earned them the nickname trash pandas before, because they yeah,
Speaker 1: there's straight up in the garbage can, or certainly they will.
Speaker 1: They don't need to be by a stream to eat.
Speaker 1: You can find poluty of evidence of raccoons eating without
Speaker 1: a handy washing station nearby. Right, So it's an activity
Speaker 1: that they do often enough that it's in the name,
Speaker 1: like they're clearly known for it, But they don't always
Speaker 1: do it. It appears to be optional, occasional, but again
Speaker 1: common enough that it has become a characteristic feature of
Speaker 1: the species. And so there's a big question like what
Speaker 1: are they doing. Are they actually trying to get dirt
Speaker 1: off of the food, or are they doing something else?
Speaker 1: And there have been experiments that looked into this. So
Speaker 1: one study I wanted to look at was by Malcolm
Speaker 1: Lyle Watson, published in Proceedings of the Zoological Society of
Speaker 1: London in nineteen sixty three, called a Critical Reexamination of
Speaker 1: food washing behavior in the Raccoon or procyon lowtour. Now,
Speaker 1: one thing this article says that I found alleged elsewhere
Speaker 1: on the internet is that raccoon food dowsing behavior, and
Speaker 1: it calls the behavior dowsing instead of washing to avoid
Speaker 1: prejudging the issue of the purpose of the dowsing. Raccoons
Speaker 1: put their food in water very often, but we don't
Speaker 1: know exactly why they're doing it yet, so they say
Speaker 1: dowsing instead of washing. So dowsing behavior is something that
Speaker 1: the author here says is only seen in raccoons in captivity.
Speaker 1: But I kind of doubt that. I've just browsing around.
Speaker 1: I've read plenty of reports of people saying they observed
Speaker 1: this behavior in raccoons in the wild, so I don't
Speaker 1: know about the only in captivity part. I guess the
Speaker 1: detail here would be that in captivity one generally has
Speaker 1: a readily available supply of water. There is like a
Speaker 1: dish of water, or I did just watch that cotton
Speaker 1: candy video in the background. You know, this is a
Speaker 1: case where it looks like it is a raccoon in
Speaker 1: a captive environment and there is the water for it
Speaker 1: to drink from, so it makes use of set water. Right,
Speaker 1: That's a good point. I mean, so captivity clearly provides
Speaker 1: the right setting and opportunities for this behavior to be observed.
Speaker 1: So maybe if it does occur in nature or if
Speaker 1: it doesn't, either way, we can at least admit that
Speaker 1: the majority of the times humans are witnessing this behavior
Speaker 1: it is in raccoons in captivity. But Lyle Watson says
Speaker 1: before this study, opinion was divided into roughly two camps
Speaker 1: about what the purpose of raccoon food dousing was. He
Speaker 1: says that some researchers thought that raccoons were actually washing
Speaker 1: their food, actively getting dirt off of it, and others
Speaker 1: thought that they were moistening it to make it easier
Speaker 1: to eat, you know, to essentially lubricate it for the mouth,
Speaker 1: like we were talking about with the birds. And before
Speaker 1: we go on to the actual experiments, I just wanted
Speaker 1: to note something from the paper that I thought was interesting.
Speaker 1: The author actually makes a table of observations of raccoons
Speaker 1: eating different kinds of foods and ranks them by which
Speaker 1: foods were doused the most often to the least often. So,
Speaker 1: if you look at this list, the foods that were
Speaker 1: doused the least often were things like corn oats and earthworms,
Speaker 1: and the foods that were doused the most often were crayfish, shrimp,
Speaker 1: water snails, land snails, crabs, locusts, cockroaches, muscles, clams, cherries, grapes, eggs,
Speaker 1: And I'm reading down the list now, so I'm getting
Speaker 1: to about the middle. But one thing I thought was
Speaker 1: interesting is that a lot of the food items that
Speaker 1: are the most doused are animals that naturally live in
Speaker 1: the water. So I think they're being given to the raccoon,
Speaker 1: probably already dead or out of the water when the
Speaker 1: raccoon receives them, But the raccoon is taking them to
Speaker 1: the water and dousing them and then eating them. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: that is notable on this this hierarchy here, though of
Speaker 1: course you know you look at it too, and you're
Speaker 1: thrown for a curve on why the cherries are ranked
Speaker 1: so high, why the earthworm is ranked so low? Other
Speaker 1: things seem to make you know a certain amount of sense,
Speaker 1: like okay, yeah, corn is more or less good to go,
Speaker 1: same with a pair. But so this study tried a
Speaker 1: couple of experiments to test the reigning hypotheses, the food
Speaker 1: moistening hypothesis, and the active cleansing hypothesis. So as far
Speaker 1: as the cleansing hypothesis, they said, okay, what if we
Speaker 1: try giving raccoons food that is dirty and then food
Speaker 1: that we've already cleaned off, to see what the raccoons
Speaker 1: do with it. Will that make a difference, like will
Speaker 1: they clean? Will they douse dirty food more than clean food?
Speaker 1: So this was tried with quote, small mud crabs, so
Speaker 1: they might forge for these in the wild and you
Speaker 1: might expect them to have mud on them. And so
Speaker 1: raccoons in captivity were tested with clean crabs and dirty crabs,
Speaker 1: and what do you know, it made no difference at all.
Speaker 1: In fact, this was not a significant difference. But they
Speaker 1: doused the clean crabs more than the muddy crabs. Yeah yeah, So,
Speaker 1: like if you're going to be desperate with findings from
Speaker 1: this study, like this wouldn't even back up the idea
Speaker 1: that they're washing anything exactly. So, according to this experiment,
Speaker 1: it makes no difference at all, just sometimes they dunk
Speaker 1: and sometimes they don't, and it appears to have no
Speaker 1: relationship whatsoever to the amount of mud. So that's taken
Speaker 1: as a hit against the act of cleansing hypothesis. But
Speaker 1: what about the moistening action idea? So what if the
Speaker 1: point of dowsing is too is that wet food is
Speaker 1: easier to eat? Well, they tested this with an experiment
Speaker 1: as well. So Lyle Watson says there was a series
Speaker 1: of three trials with the choices between dry dog biscuits,
Speaker 1: dried shrim and similar objects which had been soaked in water,
Speaker 1: and the result was again the raccoons showed no significant
Speaker 1: difference at all. They were just as likely to duncan
Speaker 1: dous wet food objects as they were to douse dry ones.
Speaker 1: So both of the active hypotheses at the time of
Speaker 1: the study in nineteen sixty three were disconfirmed by the
Speaker 1: experiments that Lyle Watson did. So what does the author
Speaker 1: here think that the dowsing is actually for Well, he
Speaker 1: has an interesting idea. Of course this is not conclusive,
Speaker 1: but this is his interpretation. He says that the best
Speaker 1: explanation is that raccoon dowsing of food is quote, an
Speaker 1: artificial creation of a natural situation whose function is to
Speaker 1: allow the expression of a thwarted independent feeding mechanism. So
Speaker 1: I think what he means by this is that a raccoon,
Speaker 1: when dousing food, is going through the motions of an
Speaker 1: instinctual water based foraging or hunting strategy. That is, that
Speaker 1: is naturally rewarding, you know, in the same way that
Speaker 1: that hunting or foraging behaviors are to all kinds of animals.
Speaker 1: You know, we're motivated to do them, and it's rewarding
Speaker 1: to the raccoon's brain and associated with the acquisition of food,
Speaker 1: even though in these captive scenarios it's not actually doing anything.
Speaker 1: Now that's interest, because that would mean it's not adaptive. Well,
Speaker 1: it would be it would be adaptive that a raccoon
Speaker 1: has a natural desire to like fish around in the
Speaker 1: water for food items, but that maybe this urge is
Speaker 1: so strong it's coming through even in moments where it
Speaker 1: doesn't actually need to forage. It's just satisfying and overwhelming desire.
Speaker 1: And he gives a comparison. So what Watson says his quote,
Speaker 1: the raccoon's behavior is perhaps most closely related to what
Speaker 1: may be called the quote revitalizing behavior of certain feliday cats.
Speaker 1: A captive cat whose hunting patterns of behavior are starved
Speaker 1: by virtue of the fact that all food is presented
Speaker 1: dead will artificially create the opportunity to satisfy these responses
Speaker 1: by throwing a dead bird into the air and quote
Speaker 1: giving it life in order that it may be hunted
Speaker 1: down and caught before being eaten. This has been particularly
Speaker 1: well observed in the Golden Cat or feel us Taminki
Speaker 1: at the London Zoo and so yeah, in the same
Speaker 1: way that you might see a cat that doesn't actually
Speaker 1: need to hunt, kind of batting a food item or
Speaker 1: even like a dead mouse around as if like it's
Speaker 1: still alive, and maybe the cat is trying to satisfy
Speaker 1: some need for hunting behaviors just because the hunting behaviors
Speaker 1: are instinctually rewarding. Perhaps the raccoon is doing something similar
Speaker 1: by fishing around for a food item that it actually
Speaker 1: already has in possession in the water m okay, and
Speaker 1: so in this it would be comparable to like the
Speaker 1: play we observe in cats. We think of it as play.
Speaker 1: They're playing with a toy, But it's of course hunting
Speaker 1: instinct that you know that they've they're highly evolved to
Speaker 1: partake in. And if it's even though there's nothing live
Speaker 1: running around your living room, they need to engage in
Speaker 1: that kind of activity anyway, right, They have an instinctual
Speaker 1: drive for hunting behaviors. They can't actually hunt in their
Speaker 1: environment because there's nothing to hunt, so they kind of
Speaker 1: hunt in superfluous ways, hunt in ways that are not
Speaker 1: really necessary and so and so. Lyle Watson links this
Speaker 1: to the idea that this behavior is primarily observed or
Speaker 1: in his in his belief, only observed in raccoons in captivity.
Speaker 1: You know, normally they'd be out fishing around for crayfish
Speaker 1: and crabs and stuff in the water. In captivity, they
Speaker 1: don't have to do that, so they satisfy this drive
Speaker 1: by swishing their food items around in the water. I've
Speaker 1: I remember hearing before that the like the hands of
Speaker 1: the raccoon are extremely subtle, yes, and that they're not
Speaker 1: affected by the like they can reach into cold water
Speaker 1: and feel around in cold waters with a tolerance that
Speaker 1: humans are completely incapable of, and that their feeling of
Speaker 1: things in the water is more in line with like
Speaker 1: human sight, Like that's how sensitive their little hands are.
Speaker 1: So yeah, the sense experience of this, it makes sense
Speaker 1: when you think about like this, this sort of advanced
Speaker 1: grasping that's going on, this advanced sense of touch. Well,
Speaker 1: that's actually the next thing I was going to get
Speaker 1: to that. That is the The other hypothesis that seems
Speaker 1: to be live about why raccoons douse their food is
Speaker 1: the idea that somehow it hyper charges the sensory abilities
Speaker 1: of their paws. And exactly like you're saying, raccoons are
Speaker 1: known in the animal world for having incredibly sensitive fore paws.
Speaker 1: Apparently they gather a large proportion of their sensations of
Speaker 1: the world through touch, and of course this is very
Speaker 1: useful if you're an animal that's like rooting around in
Speaker 1: muddy water for for prey. You know, you want to
Speaker 1: be able to get a lot of information by the
Speaker 1: pads on your forepaws, on your hands and fingers, and
Speaker 1: so it has been argued that maybe the dowsing behavior
Speaker 1: is related to the hypersensitivity of their fore paws and
Speaker 1: the importance of the sensory information they get there. So
Speaker 1: perhaps moistening of the fore paws actually makes them more
Speaker 1: sensitive to textual information about the food in hand. So
Speaker 1: if this hypothesis were correct, it would be that dousing
Speaker 1: serves the purpose of letting the raccoon get better sensory
Speaker 1: information about the food they are about to eat in
Speaker 1: the type of since realm that is most relevant to them,
Speaker 1: which is touch. So it would be sort of similar
Speaker 1: to a human looking at a morsel of food by
Speaker 1: holding it up to the light so they could get
Speaker 1: a better look at it. Or you know, a dog
Speaker 1: really going to town sniffing a piece of food before
Speaker 1: they eat it. That it would be a specialized sense
Speaker 1: heightening behavior that is particular to the sense regime of
Speaker 1: the raccoon. Oh now this yeah, this makes a lot
Speaker 1: of sense, and at the same time, it also makes
Speaker 1: that cotton candy video all the more heartbreaking because it
Speaker 1: really wanted to understand this. This uh, this sugary concoction.
Speaker 1: What is this thing? Well, let me douse it in
Speaker 1: the water and feel it a little bit more. What
Speaker 1: now it is completely gone? Now I have I know
Speaker 1: even less about it than I did before. But anyway,
Speaker 1: I'm intrigued by both of these hypotheses. I don't know
Speaker 1: which one I would lean more toward the sort of
Speaker 1: the hypercharging sensory data from the from the hands or
Speaker 1: the thwarted natural foraging behavior. Both seem possible to me
Speaker 1: based on what I've read. The interesting thing about the
Speaker 1: idea of a thwarted foraging behavior is that it would
Speaker 1: seem to connect to that list of foods that are
Speaker 1: doused most often, that the top of the list was
Speaker 1: all like aquatic animals that the raccoon would naturally forage
Speaker 1: for in the creeks and in the mud. But Rob,
Speaker 1: if you're ready, I would actually like to turn to
Speaker 1: another example of animals doing something to their food that
Speaker 1: looks like washing but has been hypothesized to have a
Speaker 1: different purpose altogether. And this is related to seasoning. So
Speaker 1: in the last episode we spoken whispers of horror about
Speaker 1: the idea of eating an unseasoned potato. You know, potatoes
Speaker 1: are great, They really need some salt and pepper, hopefully
Speaker 1: some fat of some kind, butter oil or something to
Speaker 1: take them to their full potential. Just the thought of
Speaker 1: a completely unseasoned cooked potato is very unappetizing. Yeah, even
Speaker 1: if you have one of those those really good potatoes,
Speaker 1: you know, like those fingerlings, and the purple potatoes, and
Speaker 1: of course sweet potatoes. Even then they need a little something.
Speaker 1: And if you get into the realm of the Russets
Speaker 1: all the more. Now, as always, of course, you know,
Speaker 1: our food preferences could be just cultural preferences. But I
Speaker 1: think it's clear that a really important part of human
Speaker 1: cuisine in general is seasoning. Maybe not to the same
Speaker 1: extent in every single culture in the world, but broadly
Speaker 1: all over the planet. People like to season their food,
Speaker 1: and seasoning amounts to augmenting the natural flavors of bulk
Speaker 1: food stuffs in our diet with highly flavor relevant little
Speaker 1: little bits of ingredients, usually things like herbs, spices, and
Speaker 1: probably most importantly of all, salt. Now there's a reason
Speaker 1: humans have a taste for salt. Salt is not just
Speaker 1: a nice to have. It is biologically essential, not in
Speaker 1: the quantities that we Americans eat it. You know that
Speaker 1: we weigh more salt than we need. But you've got
Speaker 1: to have some salt. Without any salt, you would be
Speaker 1: in a bad place. And we talked about this to
Speaker 1: some extent in our episodes about the science of thirst. Remember,
Speaker 1: you know the things about how you've got to have
Speaker 1: the right balance of osmala in your blood. Like the
Speaker 1: amount of substances, especially salt, dissolved in the blood is
Speaker 1: relevant to the functioning of cells. Without salt, your body
Speaker 1: just doesn't really work. You need some salt. Yeah, And likewise,
Speaker 1: you're cooking a stew or a soup or just about anything,
Speaker 1: you often find yourself in that situation where you're adding
Speaker 1: salt to taste, and you know it's like, oh, it's
Speaker 1: not quite there yet a little more salt, not quite there,
Speaker 1: a little bit more salt. But the closer you get,
Speaker 1: the more stressful it can become, because you know that
Speaker 1: if you oversalt it, there's not an easy way back.
Speaker 1: There may not be a way back. That is a
Speaker 1: very good point. Especially, Yeah, if it's like one homogeneous
Speaker 1: mass of food, like like a soup or something, it's
Speaker 1: it's really hard to take the take the salt out,
Speaker 1: I guess, unless you just dilute it by adding more
Speaker 1: water or something, but then you screw up the other
Speaker 1: flavor ratios. Yeah, it's just you don't want to over salt.
Speaker 1: That's that's hard to fix. Yeah, baby steps. Now, lots
Speaker 1: of foods that we would find in the natural environment
Speaker 1: already have some salt content. You know, vegetables already have
Speaker 1: salt to them. If you you know, like a like
Speaker 1: a stalk of celery actually is, you can almost taste
Speaker 1: that celery is naturally a little bit salty. You can
Speaker 1: sort of taste the sodium in there. Of course, meat
Speaker 1: already has salt in it naturally. Most people would add
Speaker 1: more salt to season it, but it has some sodium
Speaker 1: content there already, But we want more. And why is
Speaker 1: it that we want more as well? It's because the
Speaker 1: concentrations of salt that we naturally find in meat and
Speaker 1: plants in the environment, it's fairly low, and salt is
Speaker 1: necessary for survival, so our bodies are shaped by evolution
Speaker 1: to seek out extra salt. However, we can get it,
Speaker 1: and lots of animals acquire salt not just from food,
Speaker 1: but from mineral reservoirs known as salt licks or more accurately,
Speaker 1: mineral licks. Again, because salt can, in the neurosense, be
Speaker 1: taken to imply just sodium chloride, and sodium is not
Speaker 1: the only electrolyte or mineral that animals need to supplement
Speaker 1: in this way. Animals are also looking for calcium, iron,
Speaker 1: zinc foss for us and so forth. But the idea
Speaker 1: of a salt lick is interesting to me because I
Speaker 1: was reading about them, and what I had always pictured
Speaker 1: for a salt lick when I was growing up was
Speaker 1: that there's a deer, specifically a deer, and it's licking
Speaker 1: a white rock that has the desired minerals on its surface.
Speaker 1: And while this scenario does happen, apparently a lot of times,
Speaker 1: a mineral lick can also consist of a place where
Speaker 1: animals come to sort of eat dirt or mud or
Speaker 1: clay that has the molecules they're looking for. But of
Speaker 1: course humans do something pretty interesting, which is that we
Speaker 1: combine the quest for supplemental salt with the broader quest
Speaker 1: for nutrition by salting food directly. The result is clearly
Speaker 1: more than the sum of its parts, because, after all,
Speaker 1: salt doesn't just make food taste saltier. I think humans
Speaker 1: mostly know from experience that it makes food taste more
Speaker 1: like itself. A little bit of salt seems to magnify
Speaker 1: the natural flavors present in whatever you're eating, So salt
Speaker 1: makes chocolate taste more like chocolate, and salt makes broccoli
Speaker 1: taste more like broccoli. It's just a general flavor intensifier. Yeah,
Speaker 1: even things that don't need salt at all, Like a
Speaker 1: really good slice of watermelon is perfect on its own,
Speaker 1: and yet sprinkle a little salt on there, and you've
Speaker 1: managed to intensify even that. Yeah, it becomes hyper watermelon.
Speaker 1: And because of these obvious you know, sensory and pleasure benefits.
Speaker 1: The complement of supplemental salt to food. You might wonder
Speaker 1: we'll do any non human animals season their food like
Speaker 1: we do? Do they combine the quest for food with
Speaker 1: the quest for supplemental salt into a single consumption activity.
Speaker 1: And you might assume no, But I came across a
Speaker 1: really interesting surprise here. So I want to turn to
Speaker 1: a actually rather famous episode in the history of primatology,
Speaker 1: but famous for a different reason than we're going to
Speaker 1: be talking about it, and that is the potato washing
Speaker 1: monkeys of Koshima Eye and in Japan. Rob, Have you
Speaker 1: ever heard about these before? I don't believe I had.
Speaker 1: Some of this came up in my research, but I
Speaker 1: knew that you had the primates firmly in your side here. Well,
Speaker 1: I want to briefly mention side a couple of papers
Speaker 1: as sources here for what I'm about to talk about.
Speaker 1: One is by Massau Kawai called Newly Acquired pre Cultural
Speaker 1: Behavior in the Natural Troop of Japanese Monkeys of on
Speaker 1: Koshima inlet in the journal Primates in nineteen sixty five.
Speaker 1: And then the other one is a book chapter called
Speaker 1: Sweet Potato Washing revisited by Satoshi Hirada, Kunio Watanabe, and
Speaker 1: Kawai Massau. The last author is the same as the
Speaker 1: author of the paper from the sixties. This was published
Speaker 1: in Primate Origins of Human Cognition and Behavior in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight. So, first of all, one thing we
Speaker 1: should say is that everything we're about to describe is
Speaker 1: not a behavior observed purely spontaneously in the wild, one
Speaker 1: that is, at least in part a result of human intervention.
Speaker 1: So the entire story here comes with that caveat, but
Speaker 1: it's very interesting nonetheless. So on the island of Koshima
Speaker 1: in Japan, there are native populations of a monkey called
Speaker 1: the scientific name is Macaca fuscata, also known as the
Speaker 1: Japanese macaque or the snow monkey. You never seen one
Speaker 1: of these, you should look them up. I think they're
Speaker 1: very cute they are. They're quite cute. They're very soft
Speaker 1: looking fur. I know one shouldn't feel this way about
Speaker 1: wild animals, but I want to pet them. But anyway,
Speaker 1: Beginning with some papers published by a scientist named Shunzo
Speaker 1: Kawamura in the nineteen fifties, researchers began to document an
Speaker 1: interesting behavior among a single troop of monkeys on Koshima Island,
Speaker 1: and it was washing their food. So the history went
Speaker 1: like this. In the early nineteen fifties, several Japanese researchers
Speaker 1: began providing food in the form of sweet potato pieces
Speaker 1: to the monkeys on the island, and I read in
Speaker 1: a book passage elsewhere that the original purpose of giving
Speaker 1: them the food like this was to lure the monkeys
Speaker 1: out into an open space near the waterfront where it
Speaker 1: would be easier for the researchers to watch them to
Speaker 1: observe their behavior. And I think part of the intended
Speaker 1: significance of this study was that the scientists would end
Speaker 1: up making long, multigenerational observations of the same monkey troop,
Speaker 1: with individuals in the troop named and differentiated so that
Speaker 1: their individual behaviors could be documented. But of course, the
Speaker 1: monkeys liked the extra food. They liked the sweet potato pieces.
Speaker 1: But the real twist came in September of nineteen fifty
Speaker 1: three when a young monkey, a one and a half
Speaker 1: year old female named Emo, appeared to have invented a
Speaker 1: new behavior. She washed her potato. And now washing was
Speaker 1: not previously part of the behavioral repertoire of these monkeys,
Speaker 1: but apparently Emo was reacting to the fact that these
Speaker 1: sweet potato pieces left out on the ground, they would
Speaker 1: get covered in sand and dirt, which, even if you're
Speaker 1: a monkey, is apparently not the best thing to eat.
Speaker 1: So in September nineteen fifty three, Emo started washing the
Speaker 1: sweet potatoes. So the standard sweet potato washing behavior is
Speaker 1: described as the monkey taking a sweet potato piece to
Speaker 1: the edge of the water and then dipping the potato
Speaker 1: into the water, holding it in one hand, and then
Speaker 1: removing the sand or grit by brushing the potato under
Speaker 1: the water with the other hand. This potato washing behavior
Speaker 1: became famous because it was taken as evidence of the
Speaker 1: existence of quote culture in non human animals. Because, again
Speaker 1: according to mess El Kawai in the paper from sixty five,
Speaker 1: by nineteen fifty six eleven monkeys in the troop had
Speaker 1: acquired the behavior and had themselves become potato washers, and
Speaker 1: across subsequent research periods after that, the behavior continued to
Speaker 1: spread to more and more of the troop. Now, we
Speaker 1: could probably come back into a whole episode on the
Speaker 1: idea of whether this should be viewed as analogous to
Speaker 1: human culture. But on its face, it seems to have
Speaker 1: a lot of properties that look like culture. It's a
Speaker 1: behavior that is not instinctual to the animal, but is
Speaker 1: learned and then is spread apparently from one individual to
Speaker 1: the other in the troop through a process of copying,
Speaker 1: eventually becoming the norm for the entire animal troop. But then,
Speaker 1: on the other hand, they're interesting questions about this and
Speaker 1: indifferences from how we normally think of culture. For one
Speaker 1: thing I thought was kind of interesting in this instance,
Speaker 1: the learning process seemed to work backwards from the way
Speaker 1: human culture is presumed to pass across generations, because it
Speaker 1: looks like sweet potato washing started with younger monkeys and
Speaker 1: gradually spread to the older ones. Like they said that
Speaker 1: Emo's mother apparently learned the potato washing behavior from Emo. Oh, well,
Speaker 1: I mean we mentioned TikTok trends earlier. Oh yeah, okay,
Speaker 1: and you know, TikTok trends are often associated with youth culture,
Speaker 1: so that could be a case, there could be a
Speaker 1: case to be made. Well, yeah, you do have things
Speaker 1: that originate with the young people, with the youth, and
Speaker 1: then they are passed upward to older members of a
Speaker 1: population of a culture. I guess. So, yeah, maybe it's
Speaker 1: the youth innovate and then the elders educate. But then
Speaker 1: certainly it does. It does run counter to the sort
Speaker 1: of idea of elders in a given group saying this
Speaker 1: is the way, this is the way we handle potatoes,
Speaker 1: this is the way we wash potatoes. Obey me, younglings.
Speaker 1: But but here's where we're about to get to the
Speaker 1: part that's relevant to the idea of animals seasoning food.
Speaker 1: So I wanted to read a passage from that paper
Speaker 1: by Kawai in nineteen sixty five. The background of this
Speaker 1: section is that the author is describing two distinct variants
Speaker 1: of sweet potato washing behavior, one in which the sweet
Speaker 1: potato is like I described a minute ago, dipped into
Speaker 1: the water with one hand and then brushed with the
Speaker 1: other hand to remove sand. The other variant is known
Speaker 1: as quote rolling, and it consists of letting the sweet
Speaker 1: potato drop into the shallow part of the water and
Speaker 1: then rolling it back and forth with one hand before
Speaker 1: retrieving and eating it. But now, to read from massau
Speaker 1: Kawai quote but during the second period, a third type appeared.
Speaker 1: It consisted in dipping the potato into the water every
Speaker 1: time after knowing it once or twice. This behavior seems
Speaker 1: quite different from brushing the sand off from the potato.
Speaker 1: They collect potatoes and take them to the seashore. But
Speaker 1: if this is not for the purpose of washing, what
Speaker 1: reason is there in this behavior except for seasoning the
Speaker 1: potatoes with saltwater. Therefore, I will call this behavior the
Speaker 1: seasoning behavior. Huh So, obviously the behavior of repeatedly dipping
Speaker 1: the sweet potato into saltwater every time the monkey takes
Speaker 1: a bite. That could have other interpretations, but the seasoning
Speaker 1: interpretation seems to be a pretty good one. Like why
Speaker 1: else would they be dipping it again every time they
Speaker 1: take a bite off off of the piece of food. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can see this as something that emerges out of purely,
Speaker 1: you know, the washing behavior. But then they grow to realize. Yeah,
Speaker 1: if the potato has been dipped in salt water, it
Speaker 1: is more satisfying, and it of course is not only
Speaker 1: enhancing taste it is it is also supplying something that
Speaker 1: the monkey's body needs exactly. So I would say that
Speaker 1: I think the seasoning interpretation of this behavior is not conclusive.
Speaker 1: We don't know for sure that's what they're doing, but
Speaker 1: it seems pretty valid, like it seems certainly on the table.
Speaker 1: Of course, as we talked about before, a potato tastes
Speaker 1: so much better with some seasoning. The same goes for
Speaker 1: a sweet potato. So yeah, could it be that this
Speaker 1: is not only an example of cultural transmission in non
Speaker 1: human animals monkeys learning a non instinctual behavior from one
Speaker 1: monkey to another within the troop, but also an example
Speaker 1: of cookery ulture, cuisine emerging. Yeah, yeah, I think that's
Speaker 1: a fascinating example. Now, in putting together these episodes, you
Speaker 1: assembled a list of different things that were part of
Speaker 1: human food culture culinary practices that we were using a
Speaker 1: sort of a guide to try and look for behaviors
Speaker 1: in the animal world that yeah, more or less line
Speaker 1: up with them. Like, for instance, we talked about the
Speaker 1: processing of food, the butchery practices of course, of the
Speaker 1: butcher board, the shrike, the lambaguey er, you know, and
Speaker 1: to a certain extent, you could make an argument that
Speaker 1: any kind of predator that doesn't eat its prey hole
Speaker 1: is engaging in some sort of butchery, right. It's if
Speaker 1: it's selectively eating parts of the corpse of the cadaver,
Speaker 1: then you could make it a week case for this. Yes, though,
Speaker 1: when when I start thinking about human butchery, you know,
Speaker 1: one thing my mind goes to is like the classic
Speaker 1: butcher's tools, the tools you see next to the big
Speaker 1: old wooden block that the animal would be taken apart in.
Speaker 1: Of course you've got your knives, and that would be
Speaker 1: related to, you know, the things we've already been talking about.
Speaker 1: But another butcher tool you often see is that big
Speaker 1: old hammer. What's that hammer for? For tenderizing the meat?
Speaker 1: So for many of our tougher foods, the material must
Speaker 1: be made tender prior to cooking and or consumption. The
Speaker 1: tenderization of meat with a hammer or mallet or masher
Speaker 1: is a great physical example of this, you know, and
Speaker 1: you know it also essentially busts out some extra chewing
Speaker 1: prior to cooking. You know, you don't want to spend
Speaker 1: x amount of extra time chewing that meat, or in
Speaker 1: any cases, like chewing that potato or whatever it happens
Speaker 1: to be. Let's break it down a bit physically before
Speaker 1: it goes into our mouth. But of course we don't
Speaker 1: just tenderize foods with hammers and mallets. We also tenderize
Speaker 1: them chemically via special enzymes as well as via mixtures
Speaker 1: like vinegar and broth. And when we apply a marinade,
Speaker 1: we're not only flavoring the matter we intend to cook
Speaker 1: and or eat, but also we're softening it up. And again,
Speaker 1: this is a chemical breakdown that occurs inside the body
Speaker 1: as well, beginning in the mouth. Now, we've discussed some
Speaker 1: methods of externalizing this process before, and they bear at
Speaker 1: least equipment mentioned here. Houseflies consume their food is a
Speaker 1: liquid diet. So first a housefly scrubs food that it
Speaker 1: finds with bristles on the end of its proboscis, freeing
Speaker 1: up food particles. So think of these like dusty food
Speaker 1: particles that the housefly has found, and then it vomits
Speaker 1: up a slurry of saliva and digestive juices, and in
Speaker 1: doing this It's kind of like adding hot water to
Speaker 1: an oatmeal mix, you know. So if you're being very
Speaker 1: generous with the term, you could say a housefly is
Speaker 1: cooking sort of, and then of course it slurps all
Speaker 1: of it up. I love that. Yeah, So it's it's
Speaker 1: cooking right from its own gut. Yeah. Spiders are also
Speaker 1: ane of the great example. They'll inject digestive juices into
Speaker 1: the bodies of their prey to break down the insides,
Speaker 1: you know, particularly prey that's been paralyzed or wrapped up
Speaker 1: in webbing. And then after this these juices have had
Speaker 1: time to work, they can simply drink the insides of
Speaker 1: the prey that they have captured. I believe we did
Speaker 1: a whole episode on what this would be like, What
Speaker 1: would it would be like to be eaten by a spider?
Speaker 1: It was called I Was Eaten by a Giant spider. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was a fun one. Yeah. Yeah. Now, it's also
Speaker 1: worth noting that these various means of tenderizing organic material,
Speaker 1: you know, it's it's also comparable to the process of decomposition,
Speaker 1: So we might well loop in natural decomposition into this category,
Speaker 1: especially for scavenger creatures who take advantage of such conditions.
Speaker 1: They can take advantage of food material that has been
Speaker 1: softened by decomposition, and they have evolved to tolerate levels
Speaker 1: of decomposition that other animals would not be able to handle.
Speaker 1: Now that that brings up another question, how about fermentation?
Speaker 1: That was another one we had on the list. Are
Speaker 1: you know there are plenty of examples of animals that
Speaker 1: consume fermenting fruit, for example, but are there examples of
Speaker 1: animals that are more actively involved in the fermentation process.
Speaker 1: I couldn't really find any good examples, but again we
Speaker 1: could roughly file fermentation under the category of decomposition. So
Speaker 1: animals like elephants, birds and monkeys that eat fermented fruit
Speaker 1: are also taking advantage of this process. And on that note,
Speaker 1: I'd like to touch on just a few examples of
Speaker 1: animals that get involved with a couple of other activities
Speaker 1: that are that are highly important to human food culture,
Speaker 1: the storing of food, but then all of agriculture itself.
Speaker 1: So first on the the just on the topic of
Speaker 1: of hoarding food, of creating a cash of food that
Speaker 1: one can can turn to, especially during the winter. There
Speaker 1: are numerous examples of this and we could easily talk
Speaker 1: about chipmunks and squirrels and whatnot. But I wanted to
Speaker 1: talk just a little bit about a superpredator of note
Speaker 1: um and that is the mole. Superspredator mole. Yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: if you're if you're an earthworm, the mole is the
Speaker 1: the ultimate destroyer. It is the superpredator of the earthworm world.
Speaker 1: It eats nearly its weight in worms and similar subterranean
Speaker 1: creatures every day. Uh and uh, it's it's impressive, but
Speaker 1: of course this is standard hunt and eat behavior, right,
Speaker 1: nobody's going to accuse the mole of engaging in uh,
Speaker 1: you know, culinary activities here by gobbling it's it's weight
Speaker 1: in earthworms every day. But where it begins to mirror
Speaker 1: some aspects of human food culture is that, like many
Speaker 1: other animals, moles also stockpile food for leaner times. While
Speaker 1: various rodents famously stockpile nuts and human stockpile all sorts
Speaker 1: of foods, the mole creates a horrifying subterranean dungeon of
Speaker 1: living worms. And this is an example of larger hoarding.
Speaker 1: Whoa living worms, yeah, or in some cases you might
Speaker 1: say sort of half living worms. I guess it creates
Speaker 1: a limbo of worms. A limbo of worms. Yeah. So
Speaker 1: I was reading about this in a Tree Hugger article
Speaker 1: by Russell McClendon citing a Mammal Society a Species Overview article,
Speaker 1: and it points out that the moles have a worm
Speaker 1: paralyzing toxin in their bite, but they also will just
Speaker 1: bite the heads of an earthworm to ensure a debilitating
Speaker 1: but non fatal injury to said worm. And then you know,
Speaker 1: they'll eat a lot of worms obviously, but then they'll
Speaker 1: start dragging them away and they'll create these chambers full
Speaker 1: of still living worms that they can munch on through
Speaker 1: the leaner months. Single mole chambers have been found to
Speaker 1: contain as many as four hundred and seventy live earthworms,
Speaker 1: So that's about eight hundred and twenty grams or one
Speaker 1: point eight pounds of still living, still writhing earthworms for
Speaker 1: them to eat. Wow. This one, like I said, I
Speaker 1: feel like it's a more grizzly and alarming example of
Speaker 1: the sort of thing we're used to. You know, it's like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: it's the storing nuts for the winter. Now this is
Speaker 1: storing live earthworms and a big dungeon for the winter.
Speaker 1: Now we would be remiss if we didn't at least
Speaker 1: touch on a topic that, of course I think we've
Speaker 1: we've discussed in greater length before in the past. But
Speaker 1: bee honey. You know, this is the sweet food stuff
Speaker 1: produced by the honey bee as well as some other
Speaker 1: bee species, and honey is basically yes bee vomit. We
Speaker 1: have enzyme activity playing a role in this, as well
Speaker 1: as water evaporation transforming mere sugary organic secretions of usually
Speaker 1: plants into an ideal storable food. So in this example
Speaker 1: we see both food production and storage. So it's one
Speaker 1: we're all familiar with. We all know where honey comes from.
Speaker 1: We know the miracle of honey. It's one of the
Speaker 1: great achievements of the animal world, certainly the insect world.
Speaker 1: But it's also when we're so familiar with we kind
Speaker 1: of it's easy to forget the wonder of it, to
Speaker 1: overlook the wonder of what is being achieved here. And
Speaker 1: then another prime example from the insect world concerns the
Speaker 1: marvel of the leaf cutter ants, of which there are
Speaker 1: around I think forty seven identified species. They cultivate their
Speaker 1: own crop of fungus, growing it on harvested leaf clippings.
Speaker 1: In some cases, these fungus species are entirely dependent on
Speaker 1: their ant masters. You know, we're talking like extinct in
Speaker 1: the wild situations, but it is I mean, these are
Speaker 1: these are and complex societies of these leaf cutter ants.
Speaker 1: But what they are practicing here is agriculture in a nutshell,
Speaker 1: and they've been practicing it for a period of time
Speaker 1: that dwarfs human agricultural practice. They got a stew going
Speaker 1: they do. Yeah, So, I mean, I think it's neat
Speaker 1: to kind of look at some of those examples, especially
Speaker 1: because they kind of forecast what humans would come to do.
Speaker 1: Like what humans are doing with their food is certainly
Speaker 1: an advanced model compared to anything going on in the
Speaker 1: human world. But it's not unconnected. It's it's not an island.
Speaker 1: You know, you see shadows of what we are doing
Speaker 1: in these other practices, in these other approaches to life,
Speaker 1: and so yeah, what we're doing is just kind of
Speaker 1: the the human complication of that. All right, we're gonna
Speaker 1: go and close out this episode, but you know, we
Speaker 1: would love to come back in the future and discuss
Speaker 1: the cuisine of non animals a bit more so if
Speaker 1: you have particular favorite examples of this, or if there's
Speaker 1: something in the animal world that you would like to
Speaker 1: personally make a case for, or is just something you've
Speaker 1: observed right in and let us know, we'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you. And you know, we were just chatting
Speaker 1: a few minutes ago off Mike that you know, there
Speaker 1: are a number of different leads for this episode that
Speaker 1: we didn't have time to look into. So yeah, we
Speaker 1: could easily come back in the future and do a
Speaker 1: third episode if you the listener desires it. In the meantime,
Speaker 1: if you would like to check out other episodes of
Speaker 1: Stuff to Blow Your Mind Core episodes on Tuesdays and
Speaker 1: Thursdays and the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed
Speaker 1: Listener Mail on Monday, Artifact or Monster Fact on Wednesday,
Speaker 1: and on Fridays we do Weird House Cinema. That's our
Speaker 1: time to set aside most serious matters and just focus
Speaker 1: in on a strange film. Huge thanks as always to
Speaker 1: our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would
Speaker 1: like to get in touch with us with feedback on
Speaker 1: this episode or any other to suggest a topic for
Speaker 1: the future, just to say hello, you can email us
Speaker 1: at contact at Stuff to Blow Your Mind. Stuff to
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: from my heart Radio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows.