WEBVTT - You’ve Got Pee-Mail, Part 3 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:06.760 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:12.640 --> 0:00:14.560 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My 0:00:14.640 --> 0:00:15.400 name is Robert. 0:00:15.240 --> 0:00:18.040 Lenn and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with 0:00:18.079 --> 0:00:22.319 Part three in our series on urine based communication in 0:00:22.360 --> 0:00:26.720 the animal Kingdom. Humans, of course, have the gift of language, 0:00:26.760 --> 0:00:31.920 which is a wonderful multimodal information sharing tool of infinite versatility, 0:00:32.440 --> 0:00:35.479 and the fact that we possess the capacity for complex 0:00:35.560 --> 0:00:38.519 language is maybe the most unique and amazing thing about 0:00:38.600 --> 0:00:42.159 us as a species. But one mode of communication that 0:00:42.240 --> 0:00:45.960 we don't really use but which is quite popular throughout 0:00:46.000 --> 0:00:50.960 the animal kingdom is communication through urine. So in the 0:00:51.040 --> 0:00:54.480 last couple of episodes we discussed a whole bunch of examples. 0:00:55.080 --> 0:00:58.600 We started off in part one talking about male Amazon 0:00:58.720 --> 0:01:02.600 river dolphins, which have been observed doing this amazing thing 0:01:02.640 --> 0:01:06.720 where they pee on each other's faces using aerial streams 0:01:06.760 --> 0:01:09.520 that project over the top of the water. Still an 0:01:09.520 --> 0:01:11.679 open question as to why they do this, but the 0:01:11.800 --> 0:01:15.160 leading explanation seems to be that it's some kind of 0:01:15.200 --> 0:01:20.200 information sharing about fitness and competitive ability. We also talked 0:01:20.240 --> 0:01:24.400 about why animals with urinary bladders usually have voluntary control 0:01:24.440 --> 0:01:26.839 over urination as opposed to it just kind of leaking 0:01:26.920 --> 0:01:30.039 out whenever, wherever, And we also got into a bit 0:01:30.080 --> 0:01:34.240 about urination as a socially negotiated activity in human culture. 0:01:35.200 --> 0:01:38.880 In the last episode, we talked about the vast, mysterious 0:01:38.920 --> 0:01:43.240 world of scent marking in dogs, including all the different 0:01:43.319 --> 0:01:46.200 kinds of information that we know dogs do share with 0:01:46.240 --> 0:01:49.440 each other through urine, but also about how much there 0:01:49.560 --> 0:01:53.480 is to this olfactory literary scene that we still don't understand. 0:01:53.840 --> 0:01:56.880 One interesting question that came up in the context of 0:01:56.960 --> 0:02:00.960 dogs was whether dogs can actually attempt to lie or 0:02:01.000 --> 0:02:04.960 at least exaggerate with their urine Marx one study finding 0:02:05.000 --> 0:02:09.040 evidence that smaller dogs may try to deceive other dogs 0:02:09.040 --> 0:02:13.040 about their size by way of increasingly obtuse leg angles 0:02:13.080 --> 0:02:16.760 when marking an elevated object. Then we also talked about 0:02:16.760 --> 0:02:21.320 the fascinating example of lobster urine. The simplified version is 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:25.919 that lobsters pee out of their faces into other lobsters faces, 0:02:26.360 --> 0:02:31.080 and these urine exchanges help lobsters navigate highly variable scenarios, 0:02:31.120 --> 0:02:35.200 including courtship and mating, as well as competition and intimidation. 0:02:35.919 --> 0:02:37.760 And we're back today to talk about more. 0:02:38.120 --> 0:02:42.520 Yeah. Yeah, returning first, I believe, to the waters and 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:45.079 discussing something we teased out a little bit in our 0:02:45.080 --> 0:02:46.000 discussion of lobster. 0:02:46.280 --> 0:02:49.040 That's right, so yes. In the previous episode we talked 0:02:49.040 --> 0:02:52.960 about urine based communication in crustaceans. I wanted to return 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:57.360 to the aquatic domain to mention p mail in fish. 0:02:57.400 --> 0:02:59.160 So here I wanted to get into a couple of 0:02:59.200 --> 0:03:04.480 things from a paper called Aggressive Communication in Aquatic Environments. 0:03:04.560 --> 0:03:08.240 This was published in the journal Functional Ecology in twenty twenty. 0:03:08.800 --> 0:03:12.960 The author is Johim Frohman, and Frohman is a behavioral 0:03:12.960 --> 0:03:17.919 ecologist at Manchester Metropolitan University in England. I got interested 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:20.080 in this guy's work because I saw him quoted in 0:03:20.120 --> 0:03:23.600 an article in Scientific American, which was covering the Amazon 0:03:23.680 --> 0:03:27.160 River dolphins, talking about how other aquatic species can use 0:03:27.280 --> 0:03:31.640 urine for communication. One example cited in that article had 0:03:31.680 --> 0:03:37.720 to do with mating among sticklebackfish. Apparently, female sticklebackfish can 0:03:37.760 --> 0:03:42.320 get information about male stickleback fish from their urine, but 0:03:42.440 --> 0:03:46.200 in this case not just the kind of health, dominance 0:03:46.240 --> 0:03:50.320 and fitness information we've been mostly talking about so far. Instead, 0:03:50.560 --> 0:03:54.040 the stickleback female is looking for information about the male's 0:03:54.120 --> 0:03:57.920 immune system to see if the male's immune system and 0:03:57.960 --> 0:04:01.760 tissue is compatible with her own. So anyway, I looked 0:04:01.800 --> 0:04:05.800 up this paper in functional ecology. It is focused primarily 0:04:05.840 --> 0:04:10.880 on aggressive communication, a communication used to negotiate competition and 0:04:10.960 --> 0:04:15.720 fighting among rivals that live in the water. Now, obviously, 0:04:16.760 --> 0:04:20.560 using urine for information sharing works a little bit differently 0:04:20.920 --> 0:04:24.800 in aquatic environments than it does on land. Now, why 0:04:24.800 --> 0:04:27.559 would that be? Well, for one thing in the water 0:04:27.960 --> 0:04:33.160 froman points out that you cannot place long lasting territorial 0:04:33.279 --> 0:04:38.120 scent marks. So a dog will tag its physical environment 0:04:38.160 --> 0:04:41.560 with territorial marks it peas on the world, and in 0:04:41.640 --> 0:04:45.320 doing so, it fills the world with information about itself. 0:04:45.800 --> 0:04:48.279 And also it smells the marks left by others in 0:04:48.320 --> 0:04:51.280 the same places. So for the dog, you can consider 0:04:51.560 --> 0:04:56.000 space itself kind of marked up with socially relevant metadata. 0:04:56.400 --> 0:05:00.120 It is a urine based social augmented reality. 0:05:00.760 --> 0:05:03.120 That's a good way of putting it. Yeah, with all 0:05:03.160 --> 0:05:07.760 of our augmented reality VR innovations that we're working on 0:05:07.880 --> 0:05:10.640 Google Class and all of that, we're essentially trying to 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:14.120 create a world of dog pe and the reading of 0:05:14.160 --> 0:05:16.040 dog pe for the human experience. 0:05:16.160 --> 0:05:18.719 Yeah, it would be like if we could walk through 0:05:18.720 --> 0:05:22.400 space and just find objects throughout the physical environment tagged 0:05:22.440 --> 0:05:25.560 with the profiles of people who have touched them more 0:05:25.600 --> 0:05:26.560 peen on them, I guess. 0:05:27.720 --> 0:05:27.800 So. 0:05:28.240 --> 0:05:31.200 Lots of other land based mammals that we've talked about 0:05:31.240 --> 0:05:33.200 do this. You know, last time we talked about the 0:05:33.279 --> 0:05:37.800 dwarf mongooses who leave the antogenital scent marks by doing handstands. 0:05:39.000 --> 0:05:41.400 But you can't really do this kind of thing in 0:05:41.440 --> 0:05:44.919 the water because you're in the water. Froman mentions a 0:05:44.920 --> 0:05:48.440 couple of reasons for this. First of all, chemical cues 0:05:48.480 --> 0:05:50.920 tend to be soluble in water, so the water will 0:05:50.960 --> 0:05:55.080 actually just wash them away, diffuse them, and get rid 0:05:55.080 --> 0:05:59.240 of any local marks that you leave pretty quickly. Beyond that, 0:06:00.160 --> 0:06:03.640 there is a different microbial environment in the water. Fromen writes, 0:06:03.720 --> 0:06:09.240 quote the ubiquitous bacteria in aquatic environments might rapidly degrade 0:06:09.360 --> 0:06:13.839 any scent mark. So for aquatic species, it's just a 0:06:13.839 --> 0:06:17.640 lot harder to associate a chemical mark with a physical 0:06:17.720 --> 0:06:22.120 location across time. Chemical cues in the water tend to 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:27.480 be more temporary, used for what Fromann calls short term interactions, 0:06:27.920 --> 0:06:31.760 and they will also more often be associated spatially with 0:06:32.080 --> 0:06:35.880 your own physical body from which they emerge, rather than 0:06:36.400 --> 0:06:40.520 a fixed, separate place in the environment. So I get 0:06:40.520 --> 0:06:42.760 the feeling that in the water there's going to be 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:44.919 less of what you were talking about rob with this 0:06:44.960 --> 0:06:47.080 sort of the werewolf character that can go into a 0:06:47.200 --> 0:06:50.919 room and see the past in the room. Because of 0:06:50.960 --> 0:06:54.520 all these scents associated with physical locations. In the water, 0:06:54.600 --> 0:06:57.000 everything just kind of gets washed around. So I wonder 0:06:57.480 --> 0:07:00.640 if in the water there may be a more Oh, 0:07:00.680 --> 0:07:03.360 I don't know. Maybe you can get little tiny whiffs 0:07:03.400 --> 0:07:05.920 of things that may have once been nearby, but they're 0:07:05.920 --> 0:07:09.320 going to be a lot less associated with physical places. 0:07:10.400 --> 0:07:11.280 That's a good point. 0:07:11.640 --> 0:07:14.800 So anyway, what are these short term interactions. They include 0:07:14.800 --> 0:07:20.200 things like mate choice what Froeman calls social decisions, detecting 0:07:20.240 --> 0:07:24.760 predatory threats, and sharing information about those threats with other conspecifics. 0:07:25.640 --> 0:07:29.760 The best research on chemical communication underwater has been focused 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:32.840 on crustaceans, hence all the lobster research we talked about 0:07:32.880 --> 0:07:35.240 last time. There's a bunch of similar work on crayfish 0:07:35.240 --> 0:07:38.800 as well, and Frohman discusses a lot of the same 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:41.280 stuff we got into. For example, the finding that the 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:47.480 presence of aggressor urine during competition between lobsters and crayfish 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:51.760 can actually reduce fighting. Essentially, the information in the urine 0:07:52.360 --> 0:07:56.240 better allows at least one of these crustaceans to figure 0:07:56.240 --> 0:07:58.640 out that the fight is not in their interest. So, 0:07:58.960 --> 0:08:01.840 in a way, you could think of actual physical fighting 0:08:01.880 --> 0:08:06.680 in nature often being the result of confusion or ambiguity. 0:08:07.080 --> 0:08:10.440 You know, it happens when the competitors don't have enough 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:14.080 information to figure out in advance who would probably win. 0:08:15.080 --> 0:08:18.360 Yeah, this is something that that you can you can 0:08:18.400 --> 0:08:22.360 certainly relate to human gambling scenarios. In some cases, you 0:08:22.400 --> 0:08:25.640 could be talking about actual gambling for money or various 0:08:26.640 --> 0:08:29.680 games and little card games and apps in which there 0:08:29.720 --> 0:08:32.320 is like the gambling of some sort of unit but 0:08:32.480 --> 0:08:35.240 not actual that doesn't have an actual monetary value or 0:08:35.240 --> 0:08:40.240 at least an avert monetary value. There is often often 0:08:40.240 --> 0:08:42.360 comes down to a question of should I fold or not, 0:08:42.640 --> 0:08:44.480 or should I you know, up the ante, should I 0:08:44.600 --> 0:08:47.680 keep playing and trying to evaluate do I have a 0:08:47.720 --> 0:08:51.120 shot at winning? And you know, that's very much the 0:08:51.600 --> 0:08:56.600 same math that's going on for these various organisms using 0:08:56.679 --> 0:08:58.600 the data that is available to them, which might be 0:08:58.640 --> 0:09:00.520 available to them in the form of urine. 0:09:00.679 --> 0:09:02.640 That's a good analogy. Yeah, so the sharing of the 0:09:02.760 --> 0:09:05.559 urine could essentially be like the poker players just showing 0:09:05.600 --> 0:09:09.120 each other their cards. You're like not keeping them hidden anymore, 0:09:09.200 --> 0:09:11.880 so one player immediately knows I'm just going to fold. 0:09:12.080 --> 0:09:13.800 Yeah, Or there's always going to be a certain amount 0:09:13.800 --> 0:09:17.160 of data on the table, right yea, and that that 0:09:17.280 --> 0:09:18.800 is often going to be the main data you're going 0:09:18.840 --> 0:09:20.760 to go on in a card game. Now there's the 0:09:20.800 --> 0:09:22.560 added wrinkle, of course in a card game, and that 0:09:22.600 --> 0:09:26.480 your opponent may want you to venture into combat that 0:09:26.520 --> 0:09:30.000 you couldn't win in order to increase the spoils of 0:09:30.040 --> 0:09:34.720 the game. Generally, it's not quite what you're looking at 0:09:34.760 --> 0:09:36.960 when you're dealing with mate competition in the wild. 0:09:37.080 --> 0:09:40.439 Oh yeah, that'd be interesting to see if there are 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:43.920 examples of that in nature, where like the opponent would 0:09:43.960 --> 0:09:46.360 want to keep, you know, getting you to up the 0:09:46.400 --> 0:09:50.240 ante and bluff you along. But yeah, usually I think 0:09:50.280 --> 0:09:53.160 even the stronger party would prefer to avoid a fight. 0:09:53.440 --> 0:09:54.000 Yeah. 0:09:54.040 --> 0:09:58.440 Anyway, so froman here mentions a variable called resource holding 0:09:58.520 --> 0:10:01.680 potential RH. You might see this referred to in some 0:10:02.679 --> 0:10:05.640 papers like this. Basically it's a variable that means an 0:10:05.720 --> 0:10:09.960 individual animal's ability to win a fight. So urine helps 0:10:10.080 --> 0:10:16.400 communicate your RHP, making the actual fight unnecessary. So after 0:10:16.600 --> 0:10:19.680 talking about urine and RHP in crustaceans, Fromann goes on 0:10:19.760 --> 0:10:24.120 to talk about fish, saying similar uses of chemical signals 0:10:24.440 --> 0:10:29.120 have been observed in several African cichlid species and in 0:10:29.160 --> 0:10:34.120 some tilapia to establish RHP dominance without needing a fight. 0:10:35.080 --> 0:10:37.960 But here we get to something interesting that came up 0:10:37.960 --> 0:10:42.160 in the last episode. In part two, we talked about 0:10:42.440 --> 0:10:47.360 some good reasons for thinking that dogs use urine based 0:10:47.440 --> 0:10:52.240 signals to encode not only the kind of fixed feeling 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:58.000 information about individual identity, health and fitness, sex, and mating status, 0:10:58.480 --> 0:11:03.880 but much more flat leading momentary things like psychological information. 0:11:04.760 --> 0:11:07.800 Remember the example we talked about last time was that 0:11:07.960 --> 0:11:14.079 domestic dogs have been found to detect biomarkers of stress 0:11:14.080 --> 0:11:18.160 in human urine, and they seem to use that information 0:11:18.360 --> 0:11:21.520 they use it in cognition and learning. Still to be 0:11:21.600 --> 0:11:25.840 determined to what extent, if any, dogs use that information 0:11:26.480 --> 0:11:29.480 from scent markings urine markings about each other, but it 0:11:29.480 --> 0:11:32.520 seems quite plausible that they do that they're saying, oh, 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:35.720 not just this is Jeff the dog down the street, 0:11:35.800 --> 0:11:38.800 and not just health status, does it have parasites and 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:42.600 all that, but also like Jeff is stressed out or 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:45.360 Jeff is happy, and that might affect how the dog 0:11:45.400 --> 0:11:48.560 that smells the pee behaves. We don't know for sure, 0:11:48.600 --> 0:11:52.280 but it seems plausible that it does so to some extent. 0:11:52.520 --> 0:11:55.160 This kind of I would say, makes sense to us 0:11:55.160 --> 0:11:59.560 with dogs. It's fascinating, but it's not crazy, because we 0:11:59.600 --> 0:12:04.280 already think of dogs as emotional animals with emotional inner lives. 0:12:04.320 --> 0:12:08.920 Their feelings and motivation states are familiar and meaningful to us. 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:13.240 But it seems there are some likely equivalents to this 0:12:13.800 --> 0:12:18.320 pea based emotion or at least motivation state sharing, even 0:12:18.360 --> 0:12:21.959 among the colder and less snugly inhabitants of the water. 0:12:22.800 --> 0:12:25.000 I think you could say that lobsters, as we talked 0:12:25.000 --> 0:12:28.280 about last time, and even fish, to some extent, pee 0:12:28.320 --> 0:12:33.599 their feelings. Frohman mentions that quote in juvenile nile telapia 0:12:33.880 --> 0:12:40.720 or Oreochromis nylocticus, the exchange of chemical cues informs about 0:12:40.760 --> 0:12:46.960 the sender's motivation and about individual identity, and then also 0:12:47.000 --> 0:12:52.640 speaking about neolam prologus pulture froman rites quote. In this species, 0:12:52.720 --> 0:12:57.199 members of both sexes change their urination patterns during agonistic 0:12:57.320 --> 0:13:04.480 encounters agonistic meaning aggressive encounters. Competition quote blocking olfactory contact 0:13:04.520 --> 0:13:09.080 between contestants led to an increase in fight intensity and 0:13:09.240 --> 0:13:12.200 to a higher rate of overt aggressive attacks, in line 0:13:12.240 --> 0:13:15.440 with what we've talked about before, but going on quote, 0:13:15.559 --> 0:13:20.480 As larger individuals excreted, larger amounts of urine, chemical cues 0:13:20.600 --> 0:13:24.240 might be a reliable proxy of the opponent's body size, 0:13:24.320 --> 0:13:28.640 which might be beneficial, especially under turbid conditions. Furthermore, an 0:13:28.679 --> 0:13:33.440 aggression mediated increase in urination frequency was accompanied by an 0:13:33.679 --> 0:13:39.320 increased amount of conjugated eleven ketotestosterone in the water. Thus, 0:13:39.559 --> 0:13:44.280 urine might not only transfer information about the contestants resource 0:13:44.320 --> 0:13:50.240 holding potential, but also about the opponent's motivational state. So again, 0:13:50.360 --> 0:13:54.679 something about what this the urine might communicate, something about 0:13:54.679 --> 0:13:57.480 what is going on essentially in the brain, in the 0:13:57.520 --> 0:14:01.680 nervous system of the other fish, what they want, what 0:14:01.720 --> 0:14:05.959 they intend to do, which I guess it's debatable whether 0:14:06.160 --> 0:14:10.120 you would call that motivational state an emotion, but I 0:14:10.120 --> 0:14:13.320 think the case could be made emotions and motivational states 0:14:13.320 --> 0:14:16.640 have significant overlap, at least in humans and in other animals. 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:19.360 We can think of yeah, yeah, I mean from the 0:14:19.400 --> 0:14:24.560 human standpoint, if there is a standoff between two human beings, 0:14:24.720 --> 0:14:29.359 the broadcasting of emotional state, be it an honest broadcast 0:14:29.560 --> 0:14:32.760 or an attempted deception, is going to be an important 0:14:32.800 --> 0:14:36.200 part of that standoff. You know, how mean are they looking, 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:39.520 how cool are they looking, and so forth. 0:14:39.880 --> 0:14:42.080 And of course this squares with what you were talking 0:14:42.120 --> 0:14:45.960 about last time, rob with the lobster urine in competition 0:14:46.040 --> 0:14:52.080 between aggressive lobsters. The urine shares state information about, for example, 0:14:52.120 --> 0:14:56.680 prior victory or defeat in these agonistic encounters. Sounds a 0:14:56.720 --> 0:15:00.960 lot like again people, people might quibble with the use 0:15:01.000 --> 0:15:04.120 of the word emotion, but that feels something like emotion 0:15:04.240 --> 0:15:07.080 to me, like feeling victorious or feeling defeated. 0:15:07.320 --> 0:15:09.680 Yeah, Like I believe one of the papers was I 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:12.480 was talking about there being a lot of serotonin in 0:15:12.520 --> 0:15:16.600 the urine of a victorious lobster. You know, it's is 0:15:16.640 --> 0:15:19.880 that an emotional stay Maybe not, but it's saying something 0:15:20.080 --> 0:15:26.320 about like where that that creature's physiology is following a 0:15:26.400 --> 0:15:28.000 specific victory. 0:15:28.120 --> 0:15:31.480 So I don't know. When we started doing this series 0:15:32.800 --> 0:15:35.800 about urine based communication, I don't think I realized we 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:37.960 would come up with so many examples where it looked 0:15:38.040 --> 0:15:42.640 like the urine was not only sharing just the more 0:15:42.920 --> 0:15:45.800 relatively fig I mean, I guess nothing biological is really fixed, 0:15:45.840 --> 0:15:51.520 but the more stable sort of biological health information, not 0:15:51.680 --> 0:15:56.000 just that, but sharing something like psychological information, sharing something 0:15:56.080 --> 0:15:59.000 the urine says something about what's going on in your 0:15:59.120 --> 0:16:02.480 nervous system and in your brain, which we may call 0:16:02.520 --> 0:16:06.520 emotions or we may call intentions or motivations. That's being 0:16:06.560 --> 0:16:10.440 communicated through urine as well. And to me, that makes 0:16:10.440 --> 0:16:13.400 it a lot more like what we think of with language. 0:16:13.400 --> 0:16:17.040 I mean, we've made these distinctions before about the differences 0:16:17.080 --> 0:16:19.480 between what you can say with urine versus what you 0:16:19.480 --> 0:16:22.400 can say with language. Obviously, language is going to be 0:16:22.680 --> 0:16:28.040 much much more versatile because you can intentionally, voluntarily craft 0:16:28.080 --> 0:16:32.160 an infinite number of different kinds of messages, truthful or deceptive, 0:16:33.480 --> 0:16:36.440 and urine may not have that level of versatility, but 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:41.080 it can communicate not just these sort of stable facts 0:16:41.160 --> 0:16:45.600 about the body, but can communicate this fleeting information about 0:16:45.680 --> 0:16:48.200 the mind. And if you want to get touchy feely 0:16:48.240 --> 0:16:51.880 the soul. I guess that just causes me to think 0:16:51.920 --> 0:16:57.200 about P based communication as something with more potential for 0:16:57.320 --> 0:17:01.360 kind of meaning and complexity. You know that it carries 0:17:01.400 --> 0:17:04.879 potentially emotional information that it lends itself more to the 0:17:04.920 --> 0:17:07.159 idea that there could be P based literature. 0:17:07.800 --> 0:17:10.439 Yeah, yeah, I think yeah. By and large, all this 0:17:10.520 --> 0:17:14.480 information we're looking at does drive home the fact that 0:17:14.600 --> 0:17:18.320 humans just don't don't speak urine. For the most part, 0:17:18.400 --> 0:17:23.399 we have a very blunt understanding of what urine is 0:17:23.440 --> 0:17:25.480 and what it can convey, and it's just a much 0:17:25.560 --> 0:17:28.480 richer experience for other animals, to the point that it's 0:17:28.520 --> 0:17:32.320 not really urine for them anymore, not in the human sense, 0:17:33.119 --> 0:17:35.840 like our language for urine is kind of inadequate to 0:17:36.040 --> 0:17:49.280 truly describe what it is for various other species. Now, 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:52.440 I want to bring things back to the mammal world here, 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:56.760 to the surface world, in particular, to talk about the 0:17:56.840 --> 0:17:59.760 fleming response. This may have been on some of your 0:17:59.760 --> 0:18:04.080 mind as we were talking about this topic in earlier episodes, 0:18:04.520 --> 0:18:08.800 because in evaluating the urine communication of another it may 0:18:08.840 --> 0:18:12.240 prove necessary to assume the fleming response, as it was 0:18:12.280 --> 0:18:17.480 dubbed by German zoologist Carl Max Schneider in the nineteen thirties, 0:18:17.480 --> 0:18:20.240 but the expression itself had been known to naturalists since 0:18:20.280 --> 0:18:23.680 at least the eighteenth century. The term flemen apparently comes 0:18:23.680 --> 0:18:27.280 from upper saxon German, where it means to curl the 0:18:27.359 --> 0:18:31.119 upper lip and or to look spiteful. It's not just 0:18:31.200 --> 0:18:34.320 for smelling urine, but that's certainly one of the odorous 0:18:34.359 --> 0:18:35.960 bouquets that it picks up on. 0:18:36.480 --> 0:18:40.160 So the word am I understanding in the human context 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:44.280 originally refers to an expression like a sneer, the curled lip. 0:18:44.640 --> 0:18:48.400 Yeah, a sneer that you know, honestly, I don't know 0:18:48.480 --> 0:18:52.399 that you see. I don't know. I feel like you 0:18:52.400 --> 0:18:56.000 don't see people make this face a lot, and we'll 0:18:56.000 --> 0:18:58.680 come back to one of the reasons why. But in general, 0:18:58.800 --> 0:19:00.760 like how often do you see someone do like a 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:04.439 spiteful sneer in which they expose their upper teeth? Like 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:07.640 the main example I was finding. I found a couple 0:19:07.640 --> 0:19:09.880 of articles that had a picture of Harrison Ford doing 0:19:09.920 --> 0:19:13.240 the face, you know, maybe accidentally in the midst of 0:19:13.280 --> 0:19:15.840 talking or something. But for the most part, the main 0:19:15.840 --> 0:19:18.600 thing I was reminded of is the snarl that Bella 0:19:18.680 --> 0:19:23.320 Lagosi gives in some of the in some one particular scene, 0:19:23.359 --> 0:19:27.080 but also some production stills for the nineteen thirties Dracula. 0:19:27.359 --> 0:19:29.479 Oh okay, you attached a picture in the outline, and 0:19:29.520 --> 0:19:32.520 I can see that he he almost looks not quite 0:19:32.600 --> 0:19:34.560 human here. It looks a bit like a like a 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:35.200 big cat. 0:19:35.680 --> 0:19:38.800 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's key because we do see 0:19:38.840 --> 0:19:42.280 this in cats. We see it in big cats, and 0:19:42.320 --> 0:19:44.960 we see it in house cats, and in the world 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:48.400 of house cats it is sometimes informally referred to as 0:19:48.680 --> 0:19:50.159 the stinky kitty face. 0:19:52.800 --> 0:19:53.639 I didn't know about this. 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:56.040 Yeah, it's one of these things where you know, as 0:19:56.040 --> 0:19:58.520 a cat owner, it's gonna obviously things are going to 0:19:58.640 --> 0:20:02.399 vary depending on the exact nature and personality of your cat, 0:20:02.840 --> 0:20:05.600 but it's something you'll pick up on them doing from 0:20:05.600 --> 0:20:07.919 time to time. They might be checking out something that 0:20:08.000 --> 0:20:11.440 you would associate with a smell, like, I don't know, 0:20:11.480 --> 0:20:14.520 a spot on the couch or a pair of shoes, 0:20:14.560 --> 0:20:17.359 that sort of thing. It might also just be a 0:20:17.440 --> 0:20:21.200 little less clear what they are responding to, but generally 0:20:21.280 --> 0:20:24.439 the idea is that they are assuming this kind of 0:20:24.480 --> 0:20:28.040 a sneer that also looks a little bit goofy. And 0:20:29.640 --> 0:20:33.640 what they are doing is they are heightening their exposure 0:20:33.880 --> 0:20:38.359 to the odor so is to better analyze it. Interesting, So, 0:20:38.560 --> 0:20:42.560 in general, across various animals, you're going to see this 0:20:42.760 --> 0:20:45.480 generally entailing a curling back of the upper lip, exposure 0:20:45.520 --> 0:20:48.639 of the top teeth, and breathing. And then they're going 0:20:48.720 --> 0:20:51.720 to breathe in slowly through the mouth alone. And this 0:20:51.880 --> 0:20:55.480 is all about allowing better access of smells and pheromones 0:20:55.520 --> 0:20:59.119 to the specialized vomer nasal organ, the vino or the 0:20:59.200 --> 0:21:05.040 Jacobsen's or this is a chemoreception organ in the roof 0:21:05.119 --> 0:21:09.600 of the mouth. This occurs in ungulates as well horses 0:21:09.600 --> 0:21:13.600 and girafts, which both smell and in the latter example 0:21:13.640 --> 0:21:17.440 of the diraffe, they also taste the urine of mares 0:21:17.560 --> 0:21:18.480 that are in estrus. 0:21:18.680 --> 0:21:21.320 Huh okay, well wait a minute. That makes me wonder 0:21:21.359 --> 0:21:24.960 if all these other mammals have a vomor nasal organ. 0:21:25.160 --> 0:21:28.199 Do we have one? Can we can we smell with 0:21:28.240 --> 0:21:29.439 the roof of our mouth like this? 0:21:30.040 --> 0:21:32.960 Humans do not, so far as anyone can apparently tell, 0:21:33.000 --> 0:21:35.320 have one of these, at least not a functional one 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:41.160 as adults. According to twenty fourteen's Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences, 0:21:41.200 --> 0:21:45.000 second edition by Moon. At all vomor nasal organs are 0:21:45.080 --> 0:21:49.359 prominent in the fetus and show up vestigially in adults. 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:52.479 Though there has apparently been a lot of back and 0:21:52.520 --> 0:21:55.400 forth debate over this, it seems like the majority of view, though, 0:21:55.480 --> 0:21:59.440 is that while some primates have functional vomit nasal organs, 0:21:59.760 --> 0:22:03.000 main like New World monkeys, chimps, and humans do not. 0:22:03.640 --> 0:22:06.879 Interesting I'd also point out something that I saw reference 0:22:06.960 --> 0:22:12.040 in an article is that the obviousness of the fleming 0:22:12.119 --> 0:22:18.240 response to humans in another organism, like how pronounced the 0:22:18.640 --> 0:22:23.720 fleming response is, doesn't necessarily correlate to how strong their 0:22:23.760 --> 0:22:27.440 ability to sense things happens to be, which I guess 0:22:27.480 --> 0:22:29.840 is kind of a no brainer when you're driving home 0:22:29.960 --> 0:22:33.320 like that. But you know, some fleming responses are really wild, 0:22:33.480 --> 0:22:36.480 like included a photo here of a horse's fleming response 0:22:36.800 --> 0:22:40.320 where they just look like mad demons, whereas certainly a 0:22:40.400 --> 0:22:44.200 housecat's fleming response just looks a little bit funny, you know, 0:22:44.359 --> 0:22:49.719 But our interpretation of it doesn't actually necessarily give us 0:22:49.720 --> 0:22:52.640 any clues into how strong their ability to sense things 0:22:52.720 --> 0:22:55.520 happens to be. But we again. We certainly see it 0:22:55.600 --> 0:22:58.360 again in ungulates and dogs and cats and other mammals. 0:22:58.560 --> 0:23:01.159 I've even seen articles looking at the fleming response in 0:23:01.520 --> 0:23:04.600 things like sea otters and elephants. So it's it's all 0:23:04.680 --> 0:23:05.280 over the place. 0:23:06.320 --> 0:23:08.159 That's interesting. I'm going to be on the lookout for 0:23:08.240 --> 0:23:08.560 it now. 0:23:09.440 --> 0:23:12.400 Yeah, if you spend any time with cats, you will 0:23:12.440 --> 0:23:16.120 see the stinky kitty face from time to time. And yeah, 0:23:16.160 --> 0:23:18.160 it's just a sign that there's some sort of smell 0:23:18.240 --> 0:23:20.200 going on. Don't take it personally. It doesn't mean it's 0:23:20.280 --> 0:23:23.399 you or something in your environment. They might just but 0:23:23.560 --> 0:23:26.560 something has occurred or they've noticed something that requires just 0:23:26.640 --> 0:23:28.520 a little more in depth analysis. 0:23:29.280 --> 0:23:31.720 Well, I would like to transition to something else, but 0:23:31.760 --> 0:23:34.120 we're gonna stick with mammals at least for the moment. 0:23:34.200 --> 0:23:36.600 So I want to mention an interesting paper I came 0:23:36.640 --> 0:23:41.800 across about social urination in mammals, which may or may 0:23:41.920 --> 0:23:46.080 not turn out to be communicative in nature. This paper 0:23:46.200 --> 0:23:51.119 was by Ana Onishi, James Brooks, Sota Inoe, and Shinya Yamamoto, 0:23:52.119 --> 0:23:55.400 published in Current Biology in twenty twenty five this year, 0:23:55.920 --> 0:24:01.440 and it's called socially contagious urination in Panzees, So I 0:24:01.520 --> 0:24:05.240 hope that title's got your interests peaked. The authors here 0:24:05.400 --> 0:24:09.040 are affiliated with a few different institutions in Japan, such 0:24:09.040 --> 0:24:12.760 as Kyoto University. I was also reading an article about 0:24:12.800 --> 0:24:15.320 this paper in Scientific American that I wanted to flag. 0:24:15.440 --> 0:24:18.960 This was by Megan Bartel's from January twenty twenty five, 0:24:19.800 --> 0:24:25.160 so apparently the lead author on this paper, ana Onishi, 0:24:25.560 --> 0:24:30.520 was inspired in part by the fact that humans often 0:24:30.640 --> 0:24:34.560 seem to treat urination as a social behavior. This kind 0:24:34.600 --> 0:24:36.840 of came up in our first episode of the series. 0:24:37.400 --> 0:24:41.000 Despite the fact that we often think of urination as 0:24:41.040 --> 0:24:44.000 a solitary activity, an activity where we seek at least 0:24:44.119 --> 0:24:48.400 a visual isolation for the sake of modesty, in reality, 0:24:48.600 --> 0:24:52.600 people often do treat urination or trips to the bathroom 0:24:52.720 --> 0:24:55.680