Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My
Speaker 2: name is.
Speaker 3: Robert Lamb, and I am Joe McCormick. And today on
Speaker 3: Stuff to Blow Your Mind, we're going to begin a
Speaker 3: series of episodes talking about microbial organisms called diatoms, focusing
Speaker 3: both on their living biology and on the way that
Speaker 3: their fossilized remains in mineral form have pervaded human techno,
Speaker 3: history and culture. Rob I don't remember if I told
Speaker 3: you this, but I actually got the idea to do
Speaker 3: this episode jumping off of a sort of research tangent
Speaker 3: that I ended up not going down. When we did
Speaker 3: an episode on sand a few weeks back. I was
Speaker 3: looking at weird different kinds of you know, sand and
Speaker 3: soil on Earth, and I started thinking, actually, diatamacious earth
Speaker 3: is so much weirder than people think about when they
Speaker 3: go buy a canister a food grade dietamacious Earth or
Speaker 3: get some for their garden.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, and I don't think i'd really ever
Speaker 2: encountered it on the commercial end of things before, Like,
Speaker 2: I don't think I've ever purchased a canister of this
Speaker 2: stuff before, or anything like that, but I do find it.
Speaker 2: I think it's great that it's a spin off of
Speaker 2: our Sand episode, which I think everyone was excited for
Speaker 2: and so were we. It is also, in a weird way,
Speaker 2: kind of a continuation of our Dust series from years back. Yes,
Speaker 2: a series that some people were like, how are they?
Speaker 2: When are they doing episodes on Dust? Makes me so angry,
Speaker 2: But people love those episodes as well. We loved researching
Speaker 2: them and recording them. We're getting into that same area,
Speaker 2: and I think it's a fascinating world, especially when we
Speaker 2: leave behind the human perspective and we start really zeroing
Speaker 2: in on what's going on at a much smaller scale.
Speaker 3: So I thought we should start with the organisms before
Speaker 3: we get to dietamacious earth. We talked about dietoms themselves.
Speaker 3: So diatoms are microscopic, single celled, photosynthetic algae that are
Speaker 3: notable for living inside strange, beautiful geometric cell walls that
Speaker 3: they manufacture for themselves out of what's called opaline silica.
Speaker 3: So essentially, these are microscopic algal life forms, photosynthesizing single
Speaker 3: celled organisms that live in transparent or translucent silicon based solids.
Speaker 3: These little houses made out of a substance very similar
Speaker 3: to glass, and these glass like shells they make are
Speaker 3: called frustules. The weird and sometimes dazzling shapes of these
Speaker 3: frustules are a major reason historically that diatoms have been
Speaker 3: so interesting to people since they were first observed through
Speaker 3: microscopes over three hundred years ago. But diatoms are not
Speaker 3: just some obscure biological curiosity that's pretty to look at.
Speaker 3: Diatoms are everywhere, and in a sense they are tied
Speaker 3: up in the life of everything on Earth. So diatoms
Speaker 3: are found in nearly every aquatic habitat on the planet, seawater,
Speaker 3: fresh water, icy oceans, lakes and rivers, puddles, even damp soil.
Speaker 3: You can find them stuck between layers of seasonal ice
Speaker 3: that accumulates in Antarctica. Like anywhere there's water, you're going
Speaker 3: to find them. And so if you put a drop
Speaker 3: of water from any natural water source under a microscope,
Speaker 3: there'll be some exceptions, but very likely, very high odds
Speaker 3: you're going to find diatoms in that water.
Speaker 2: To a certain depth. That's where its nottings were.
Speaker 3: Yes, exactly. Yeah, So some of them live as free
Speaker 3: floating plankton, so they'll be floating in the water, carried
Speaker 3: about by currents in the water, and others live by
Speaker 3: attaching themselves to surfaces in the water, like the outer
Speaker 3: surface of aquatic plant tissues. Some of the earliest images
Speaker 3: of diatoms people ever recorded seeing up close through microscopes
Speaker 3: were attached to plant roots, or sometimes they will just
Speaker 3: stick to inorganic surfaces, the surfaces of rocks, or even
Speaker 3: the surface of ice. That's a strange place to find
Speaker 3: things living, but there are interesting research about thriving diatom
Speaker 3: communities that live on the surface of ice or even
Speaker 3: in between layers of ice. So individually, most diatoms I'll
Speaker 3: mention a couple of exceptions, but most diatoms are too
Speaker 3: small to see with the naked eye. They live on
Speaker 3: the scale of micrometers, with the smallest being only a
Speaker 3: few micrometers wide, which is much too small to see
Speaker 3: without magnification, and the largest growing to a few hundred micrometers,
Speaker 3: which is roughly the width of a human hair. There
Speaker 3: appears to be one extreme outline, a species that came
Speaker 3: across called Ethmodiscus rex, which can grow up to two
Speaker 3: or three millimeters in width while still being only a
Speaker 3: single cell, which is pretty crazy to think about. Obviously,
Speaker 3: that one is visible with the naked eye, but most
Speaker 3: of them are not. And while almost all of them
Speaker 3: are too small to see without a microscope, together they
Speaker 3: have a massive impact on the planet. So in satellite
Speaker 3: photography you can see them as blooms of color in
Speaker 3: the ocean from orbit, and they are major atmospheric engineers.
Speaker 3: Diatoms by themselves are responsible for producing somewhere between twenty
Speaker 3: and thirty percent of the oxygen we breathe. They are
Speaker 3: also a major primary producer of organic material and thus
Speaker 3: a base of the food web in the ocean. According
Speaker 3: to a twenty eighteen paper by Agira at All in
Speaker 3: scientific Reports, which I'll come back to later, diatoms by
Speaker 3: themselves a count for quote, forty five percent of total
Speaker 3: primary production of organic material in the sea. So diatoms
Speaker 3: are just going to be making up a huge portion
Speaker 3: of the base layer of the food web in the
Speaker 3: world's oceans, with other major primary producers in the oceans
Speaker 3: including cyanobacteria and dinoflagellates. According to Agira and co authors,
Speaker 3: there are actually there are more than one hundred thousand
Speaker 3: species of diatoms I think those are not all documented.
Speaker 3: I think those would be you know, there's some estimation
Speaker 3: involved in there, because I've seen other estimates saying that
Speaker 3: there are you know, somewhere between tens of thousands and
Speaker 3: millions of species of diatoms. I think we don't really
Speaker 3: know exactly how many species there are, and they tend
Speaker 3: to be classified according to the shapes of their frustules,
Speaker 3: these these glass cases that they build for themselves and
Speaker 3: live within. So some of these frustules, and we'll do
Speaker 3: much more intricate description as we move on, because that's
Speaker 3: a big part of the series, is just looking at
Speaker 3: these shells, looking at the frustuls. But some of them
Speaker 3: are roughly shaped, like zigzagging chains of squares and rectangles.
Speaker 3: Some of them kind of look like pistol, like piston
Speaker 3: cylinders or tubes with these perforations in them. Some look
Speaker 3: like little coin purses or glass lips. Others look like colosseums,
Speaker 3: weird little Roman colosseums.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's amazing how they can feel like this weird
Speaker 2: mix of organic and technological and psychedelic, and it really
Speaker 2: feels at times when you're looking at images of these,
Speaker 2: like the machine elves have like opened up the walls
Speaker 2: and allowed you to see inside reality.
Speaker 3: Absolutely. There's one micrograph image I saw that looked like
Speaker 3: a stone hair brush, and that shook me. I don't know,
Speaker 3: It's like, what's going on with this hair brush? But anyway,
Speaker 3: one of the really interesting things is that these hard
Speaker 3: silicon based cell walls have a life beyond the algal
Speaker 3: organism that lives inside them. So when diatoms die, their
Speaker 3: frustules do not just disappear. They usually sink down to
Speaker 3: the sediment layer below the body of water where they live,
Speaker 3: and in some cases, before they can be broken apart
Speaker 3: and dissolved, they pile up and accumulate and form a
Speaker 3: kind of silica based ooze which can become fossilized together
Speaker 3: to create a porous, low density sedimentary material called diatamite,
Speaker 3: which you can think of as a soft sponge like
Speaker 3: sort of chalky fossil rock made out of compressed layers
Speaker 3: of these microscopic glass shells. And if millions of years
Speaker 3: later you dig up layers of this mineral diatamite, you
Speaker 3: grind it up into a powder, you get a well
Speaker 3: known and extremely common utility material called diatomaceous earth.
Speaker 2: Which a misleading name. I think, like I think so,
Speaker 2: I think we can already say just this, this far
Speaker 2: into the episode, you could more readily call this like
Speaker 2: necro dust or something like it's yeah, it's a lot grizzly,
Speaker 2: or you know, this is like the mass graves of
Speaker 2: a of a of a billion billion prehistoric creatures or
Speaker 2: life forms. Rather this is this is so it's so fascinating. Again,
Speaker 2: you just take it for granted and you're just like, yeah,
Speaker 2: I bought that, sprinkled it, don't inhale it. That's the
Speaker 2: most most people think about it, usually.
Speaker 3: The trillions of razor hippodromes of death. Yeah. Yeah. But
Speaker 3: so this stuff, dietamacious earth, despite having this strange you know,
Speaker 3: organic fossil history, has all kinds of mundane, industrial and
Speaker 3: practical uses throughout history and still today. And we'll cut
Speaker 3: we'll definitely come back and discuss some of these uses,
Speaker 3: both historical and today, in more detail later, but just
Speaker 3: to run through a few of them. Dietamacious earth is
Speaker 3: commonly used as a filtration medium for liquids like oils
Speaker 3: and oil water emulsions like it's used in food filtration
Speaker 3: food and beverage filtration. It's used in pool cleaning devices
Speaker 3: for filtration and making beverages like beer and wine. It's
Speaker 3: a used as a toiletry product in like some shampoos
Speaker 3: and toothpastes. I think sometimes just generally used as an abrasive.
Speaker 3: It's used in some types of cat litter. I think
Speaker 3: you've got something about that, Rob.
Speaker 2: And worth noting too at this point that like they're
Speaker 2: broadly you'll find there, you know, different classifications of it,
Speaker 2: including food grade dietamacious.
Speaker 3: Earth, which I don't know. I don't know if we're
Speaker 3: going to vouch for that yet. I don't want to
Speaker 3: cast too much doubt on it either. I just I
Speaker 3: haven't made up my mind. When I think about so
Speaker 3: called food grade dietamacious.
Speaker 2: Earth, well, I mean that's the technical classification, I believe,
Speaker 2: the industry classification for it. I don't know. Yeah, I
Speaker 2: don't know how much we're going to go into some
Speaker 2: of the more human bodied centered uses and proposed uses
Speaker 2: for this stuff. As always, we'll just refer to a
Speaker 2: standard caveat of check with your doctor, check with an
Speaker 2: action action doctor on any questions like that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I have not researched for this episode a lot
Speaker 3: of these so called these medical claims about diatamacious earth.
Speaker 3: But just be aware that out there there are some
Speaker 3: health and wellness claims about diatamacious earth that appear at
Speaker 3: first glance to me to be not super well founded.
Speaker 3: But maybe we can come back and look at that
Speaker 3: in more detail later.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because at the same time, again, it is everywhere
Speaker 2: and in all sorts of products, right, and not in
Speaker 2: a way that should alarm.
Speaker 3: You, right, totally. I don't want to be alarmist about
Speaker 3: it either. I just don't want to say that all
Speaker 3: alleged uses of it are legitimate obviously, so anyway, so
Speaker 3: it's in all that stuff. But also it's commonly used
Speaker 3: as an insecticide. I think we'll have some stuff on
Speaker 3: this later, like a crawling insect repellent. It's used as
Speaker 3: an additive in paints and varnishes, and it even played
Speaker 3: a key role in the invention of dynamite. Strange story there.
Speaker 3: So I think it's so interesting that this stuff that
Speaker 3: you can buy in bulk at the tractor supply store
Speaker 3: and and like has all of these mundane roles in
Speaker 3: human industry. If you zoom in on the particles of
Speaker 3: this stuff with a high powered microscope. You can still
Speaker 3: see fragments of these insane xenomorphic geometric structures. Like it's
Speaker 3: like you go to the tractor supply and you buy
Speaker 3: a bag of smashed up microbial cathedrals and these gears
Speaker 3: of alien machines. It's kind of wild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, I was looking at various images of these things,
Speaker 2: and and and again I encourage everyone out there just,
Speaker 2: you know, do your standard image start to bring up
Speaker 2: some some some some some images of these different diatoms
Speaker 2: and diatamacious service close ups, and you're going to be astounded.
Speaker 2: And I was thinking, like, what do these look like?
Speaker 2: What are the different vibes that I'm getting off of these?
Speaker 2: And so this is just a short list. I would
Speaker 2: say I definitely get a sense of uncooked romulin pasta
Speaker 2: of exploded components of a high end Swiss watch, totally
Speaker 2: defective components from a mechanical pencil factory. Okay, some of them,
Speaker 2: especially the more colorful presentations of different diatoms that you'll find.
Speaker 2: I get a nineteen seventies bathroom tyle mosaic at your
Speaker 2: Aunt Helen's house, sort of feeling.
Speaker 3: In just a minute. I wanted to get into some
Speaker 3: reasons for some of these different colorful versus more machine
Speaker 3: looking ones, but yeah, totally, I see that too.
Speaker 2: I get a sense of checks mixed prototypes for the
Speaker 2: International Space Station ended up not being deployed, they sent
Speaker 2: ramen instead of something. And then also especially with some
Speaker 2: of the colorful images rejected Dead Can Dance album covers.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, I like all of those descriptions. I think
Speaker 3: they're all valid. One of the things I noticed is
Speaker 3: that two different descriptions of yours mentioned sort of printed
Speaker 3: or human made, but like mass manufactured food products. So
Speaker 3: one I think when you said like romul and pasta
Speaker 3: uncooked pasta, you're thinking of like cut pasta shapes, like
Speaker 3: you know, those curly cues or tubes you get rigatonies
Speaker 3: and things. And then you also mentioned checks like checks mix,
Speaker 3: and I do see both of those things. I don't
Speaker 3: know what's significant about that, but maybe it's because you
Speaker 3: get these at once kind of organic looking, so it's
Speaker 3: kind of food, but also mass manufactured and tool and
Speaker 3: component looking, so it's like you know, printed foods, these
Speaker 3: kind of like mass made foods that are all the same.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, definitely, I mean definitely, you're looking at something
Speaker 2: that is like a lattice work, and yeah, and you know,
Speaker 2: we can't help but compare it to some of these
Speaker 2: various food products.
Speaker 3: So one thing that is interesting, if you look up
Speaker 3: micrograph images of diatoms and of diete maacious earth, even
Speaker 3: the ones that are similarly shaped will look pretty different
Speaker 3: depending on whether the image is produced using visible light
Speaker 3: microscopy or by a scanning electron microscope. And I didn't
Speaker 3: put this together until I read it mentioned in one
Speaker 3: of the explainer pages by an ecologist and dietom researcher
Speaker 3: named Sarah Spalding on diatoms dot org, which is actually
Speaker 3: that's a great website maintained by a group called Diatoms
Speaker 3: of North America. It seems like most of the articles
Speaker 3: on here are by this researcher, Sarah Spalding. But the
Speaker 3: author here points out that under light microscopy, most diatom frustules,
Speaker 3: the glass like shells on the outside of the dietom.
Speaker 3: Most of these are going to be transparent under light microscopes,
Speaker 3: They're going to be like glass, So this gives them
Speaker 3: the appearance of fine crystal glassware and jewelry. Dietoms are
Speaker 3: often compared to jewels, and so that's one sort of
Speaker 3: genre of diatom imagery. Whereas under a scanning electron microscope,
Speaker 3: the frustule is not transparent but opaque. And I think
Speaker 3: there could be different reasons for this. This may be
Speaker 3: wholly or partially do not to inherent properties of the
Speaker 3: frustul but to how samples are pre treated for the
Speaker 3: electron microscope. Like I think they might get some sort
Speaker 3: of metallic coating to make them visible under this method.
Speaker 3: I'm not totally sure about that, but whatever the cause,
Speaker 3: the result is that the electron microscope highlights the shape
Speaker 3: and the texture of the frustule itself, producing these images
Speaker 3: that look less elegant and subtle and transparent. There's less
Speaker 3: of a less light and color about them, so you
Speaker 3: don't get that glowing gem appearance you get with the
Speaker 3: light microscope images. These are the ones that look more
Speaker 3: like the gray alien gears and machinery. And so I
Speaker 3: think it's interesting that you, of course have different kinds
Speaker 3: of diatoms that on their own, you know, because of
Speaker 3: their natural biodiversity, contribute to all these different types of
Speaker 3: shapes and colors and structures you get, but also the
Speaker 3: different microscope methods give you very different feelings when you
Speaker 3: look at them. Yeah, yeah, so I know, we want
Speaker 3: to talk about a couple of interesting and surprising uses
Speaker 3: of diatomacious earth made from these these fossil diatoms today,
Speaker 3: But before we do that, I wanted to talk a
Speaker 3: bit more about the biology of diatom frustules and these
Speaker 3: glass like structures that the diatoms live inside. So to
Speaker 3: picture a diatom as a living organism, you have to
Speaker 3: think about a soft inner cell that looks in some
Speaker 3: ways like a typical cell of algae. Though if you
Speaker 3: think algae, you may be thinking green. Your brain just
Speaker 3: naturally goes there because masses of algae we see, especially
Speaker 3: in like freshwater sources, are often green. A lot of diatoms,
Speaker 3: I think, are going to be more like. They vary,
Speaker 3: but a lot of them tend to be more gold
Speaker 3: or golden brown in color. And technically, historically, dietoms have
Speaker 3: been thought of as what we're We're called protists, so
Speaker 3: that was kind of a cash all group for single
Speaker 3: celled eukaryotic organisms with a cell nucleus housing their main
Speaker 3: genetic material, but which were not plants, and we're not animals,
Speaker 3: and we're not fungi, and it's like that. It is
Speaker 3: not any of those things. It is a photosynthesizing and
Speaker 3: makes its energy from the sunlight, photosynthesizing, single celled organism.
Speaker 3: It does have a cell nucleus, but it's not a plant,
Speaker 3: it's not an animal, not a fungus. And as we've
Speaker 3: been talking about, one of the main things that really
Speaker 3: makes a diatom unique as an organism is that this
Speaker 3: soft inner cell is protected by the mortified cell wall,
Speaker 3: this rigid glass like material made out of silica that
Speaker 3: goes all the way around the frustuel Frustules are often
Speaker 3: compared to pill boxes in design, and I was trying
Speaker 3: to unders make sure I understood this right. I think
Speaker 3: I finally landed on an analogy that makes sense of
Speaker 3: it for me. So Rob, we'll see if this gets
Speaker 3: you there. So they're often described as pillboxes because die
Speaker 3: tomshells are typically made of two interlocking halves, which are
Speaker 3: known as the epitheca and the hypotheca. So think of
Speaker 3: a box or a container with two differently sized halves,
Speaker 3: a base and a lid. Where you close them together
Speaker 3: by sliding the lid down over the top of the base.
Speaker 3: A common comparison used in a lot of sources to
Speaker 3: describe this is a Petrie dish, But I think that's
Speaker 3: probably an easier point of reference for people who work
Speaker 3: in labs a lot. So the best comparison I could
Speaker 3: think of for just regular people would be the boxes
Speaker 3: that board games come in. So you've got two halves,
Speaker 3: one is slightly bigger than the other, and the lid
Speaker 3: fits over the base by closing over it tightly.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that makes sense to me.
Speaker 3: Okay, so there's an interesting fact about the interaction between
Speaker 3: the rigid frustule which exists in these two halves and
Speaker 3: diatom reproduction, and shout out that again. I came across this,
Speaker 3: I think, originally by reading explainers by the researcher Sarah
Speaker 3: Spaulding on diatoms dot org, but I was reading about
Speaker 3: this in a few other places. So the way it
Speaker 3: works is like this, Diatoms reproduce both sexually and asexually,
Speaker 3: but a lot of the reproduction is asexual reproduction. Asexual
Speaker 3: reproduction happens when a single diatom parent cell divides in
Speaker 3: two and makes a copy of itself. So each new cell,
Speaker 3: now you've got two cells where there once was one.
Speaker 3: Each new cell gets to take one half of the frustul.
Speaker 3: So each new diatom then treats its half frustule as
Speaker 3: the big half and makes a smaller half of a
Speaker 3: frustul to close inside of it. So, to follow from
Speaker 3: the board game box analogy, imagine that the board game
Speaker 3: clones itself. You know, you've got your your Monopoly game
Speaker 3: inside that makes a copy of itself, and each copy
Speaker 3: of the Monopoly game takes one half of the original
Speaker 3: box with it. So one new one game takes the lid,
Speaker 3: one game takes the base.
Speaker 2: Might this also be like if a human were too
Speaker 2: spontaneously clone, and then one clone got to keep like
Speaker 2: the shirt and the other clone got to keep the pants, right.
Speaker 3: Sure, yes, putting aside structural differences between the rigid case
Speaker 3: and the clothes. Yeah, it's much like that if a
Speaker 3: human reproduced by just splitting in two and making two humans.
Speaker 3: One would take the shirt, one would take the pants.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's a long shirt in my mind, so
Speaker 2: you know it's still functional.
Speaker 3: They're fine, okay, But now imagine Following that analogy, I
Speaker 3: was going to say that for the board game, now
Speaker 3: you've got the two new Monopoly games, and each one
Speaker 3: takes the half of the box that it took as
Speaker 3: the lid, and it makes a new base.
Speaker 2: Okay.
Speaker 3: In your analogy, I think it would be that you've
Speaker 3: got the two humans, and one takes the shirt, one
Speaker 3: takes the pants, but they both use that article of
Speaker 3: clothing as the shirt, and so now they both need
Speaker 3: to make a new pair of pants. Okay, but let's
Speaker 3: just stick with a board game analogy for a second,
Speaker 3: so I don't get confused. So, since the lid of
Speaker 3: the box always has to fit over the base of
Speaker 3: the box, you know, and they each took half, so
Speaker 3: one of them took away a base to make into
Speaker 3: a new lid. This means that the dietm that originally
Speaker 3: took the base and treated it as the lid will
Speaker 3: have a smaller shell overall than the original parent. And
Speaker 3: if that dietm divides again, one of its offspring will
Speaker 3: have to be even smaller, and so on and so on. Now,
Speaker 3: obviously this cannot go on forever. Over the course of
Speaker 3: a few months, diatom reproduction can result in generations dramatically
Speaker 3: smaller than the original ancestor. I think this varies somewhat
Speaker 3: by species, Like I think there are some species maybe
Speaker 3: that don't really shrink like this, and others that do,
Speaker 3: and they might shrink to different extents. But anyway, some sources,
Speaker 3: at least talking about some species, said that you can
Speaker 3: get more than fifty or sixty percent reductions in size
Speaker 3: in just a few months.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, Yeah, so I think the board game box
Speaker 2: analogy actually works really well here, because, yeah, if the
Speaker 2: top of the box becomes the new bottom of the
Speaker 2: box and this process keeps going, eventually normal monopoly becomes
Speaker 2: travel Monopoly, and then eventually you have a monopoly set
Speaker 2: inside of a matchbox or something it's too.
Speaker 3: Small to play with eventually, Yeah, exactly. So this brings
Speaker 3: us to a question, how does a diatom reproductive line
Speaker 3: get big again? Well, according Dispalding, diatoms get back to
Speaker 3: their original size by entering a specialized life phase where
Speaker 3: they create a structure called an oxospore. So, instead of
Speaker 3: a rigid silica shell surrounding the entire cell like you
Speaker 3: get with regular diatoms, the oxospore only has these bands
Speaker 3: of silica which go around it. These bands are called perizonia,
Speaker 3: and because the oxospore lacks the full shell, the oxospore
Speaker 3: can grow to its ideal size before kicking off the
Speaker 3: reproductive line again through cell division, which results in full
Speaker 3: size diatoms with full size frustules. So diatom species that
Speaker 3: shrink like this usually use sexual reproduction to reach the
Speaker 3: oxospore phase. Highly shrunken diatoms are are triggered to produce
Speaker 3: game meats, and these game meats come buying to become
Speaker 3: the full sized oxospore. So it's like the shrinking process
Speaker 3: that triggers the sexual reproduction. Once they get shrunken down enough,
Speaker 3: it's like time to reproduce sexually. So you could say
Speaker 3: that in some cases diatoms are sexually frustulated. Hey, I
Speaker 3: think I'm probably not the first person to make that one. Now,
Speaker 3: there are some other really interesting things about diatom biology
Speaker 3: that I want to get into, but I think I'm
Speaker 3: want to save them for the next episode because I
Speaker 3: also want us to talk today about some of the
Speaker 3: bizarre properties of diatamacious earth. The fossil remnants of these organisms,
Speaker 3: as they are often sold in bags and were in
Speaker 3: places all around the world.
Speaker 2: That's right. Yeah, So we're going to get into into
Speaker 2: some of these topics concerning diatamacious earth. Here. We're going
Speaker 2: to start talking a bit about diatamacious earth as an insecticide,
Speaker 2: as a mechanical insecticide, or as a opponent in other insecticides.
Speaker 2: And in order to get into this, I thought we
Speaker 2: might sci fi it up a little bit, which is,
Speaker 2: you know, an exercise we sometimes do on the podcast
Speaker 2: and also often what happens in my own mind when
Speaker 2: I'm trying to understand something or sort of picture it.
Speaker 2: So bear with me. Here. It is the year ten
Speaker 2: sixty aee, Okay, you are part of the human exploration
Speaker 2: mission to the exoplanet let's see Blout sixteen oh six B.
Speaker 2: It's a dry world, not altogether lifeless, but no longer
Speaker 2: harboring intelligent life as you know it. Initial scans reveal
Speaker 2: vast deserts and gaping canyons, but also isolated valleys that
Speaker 2: could provide protection for landed modules. So you descend into
Speaker 2: just such a valley where ancient black pyramids whisper of
Speaker 2: a bygone age when the world's last civilization sought refuge
Speaker 2: in these valleys, probably doing some sort of impending catacory
Speaker 2: that eventually destroyed them. But whatever lived here once your
Speaker 2: bioscans indicate are no longer present. This valley is now lifeless,
Speaker 2: and tech scans also show no evidence of the machines
Speaker 2: that your civilization purged itself off North machine descendants of
Speaker 2: other alien civilizations. So everything seems good to go. Time
Speaker 2: to land. You're going to keep your suit on, of course,
Speaker 2: but you're going to land and check it out. So
Speaker 2: that's what you do. You set out on foot, you
Speaker 2: and your team, your clad and your protective armored spacesuits
Speaker 2: complete with powered exoskeletons and all the human enhancing technology
Speaker 2: that is currently permitted by the ecclesiastical authority. You scan
Speaker 2: again for pathogens and the scans read negative. Emboldened, you
Speaker 2: and the team descend into the largest of the Black pyramids.
Speaker 2: The inscriptions on the walls are indecipherable, composed in an
Speaker 2: alien text, and then on top of that degraded by
Speaker 2: untold ians of neglect. But you can't help but try.
Speaker 2: As you're staring at them, and as you're staring at
Speaker 2: these inscriptions, you hardly notice that the finely etched floor
Speaker 2: of black stone has steadily given away to some sort
Speaker 2: of fine sand or dust. And as you encounter various
Speaker 2: statues and are captivated by these hauntingly humanoid yet drastically
Speaker 2: supernumerary figures with various limbs and appendages, you also fail
Speaker 2: to notice how your footfalls are stirring up all of
Speaker 2: this fine dust around you. In no time, this dust
Speaker 2: adheres to your suit in each grain of the strange
Speaker 2: dust simultaneously slices into your armor and also somehow begins
Speaker 2: to absorb it. Suddenly, a whole host of warning lights
Speaker 2: are blinking in your helmets heads up display. You have
Speaker 2: indicators of multiple suit apertures. You have failures going out
Speaker 2: on throughout the system. Your powered exoskeletal movement is completely down.
Speaker 2: Biocontainment is each and then you begin to lose moisture
Speaker 2: and an alarming rate to the dry environment outside of
Speaker 2: your suit and to the dust particles in themselves. So
Speaker 2: live drains from each of you, leaving behind only desiccated
Speaker 2: corpses within perforated technological shells, which soon splinter and collapse
Speaker 2: into shards as well.
Speaker 3: Sounds rough don't want to go to that planet and
Speaker 3: actually it kind of reminds me. I don't know, I
Speaker 3: haven't read recently to what extent this is still a concern,
Speaker 3: but I remember years ago reading about proposed you know,
Speaker 3: crude missions for longer habitation on the Moon or maybe
Speaker 3: in other places as well. Particularly this was with reference
Speaker 3: to the Moon, the idea that the that the lunar
Speaker 3: regolith had some abrasive qualities that actually would make it
Speaker 3: rather hard to deal with that it's like sticky and
Speaker 3: abrasive at the same time, and would be harmful to
Speaker 3: spacesuits and you.
Speaker 2: Know, oh yeah, yeah things. There's certainly a lot of
Speaker 2: dust related concerns in in space exploration, including things like
Speaker 2: you know, dark what happens of dark matter or not
Speaker 2: dark matter, but you know, dark dust of some sort
Speaker 2: adheres to your suit and then is hit with solar energy,
Speaker 2: you know, is it heat up and so forth. So, yeah,
Speaker 2: there's there's a lot we could discuss on that matter.
Speaker 2: But for this, for our purposes here, yeah, this is
Speaker 2: a little sci fi indulgence. But this is also somewhat
Speaker 2: how diatamacious Earth acts on insects and iracnids as a
Speaker 2: mechanical pesticide, which is to say it's not a poison,
Speaker 2: it's not a toxin, it's not a pathogen. It kills
Speaker 2: insects via largely physical interaction with them. For starters, what's
Speaker 2: going on here is, as we've been discussing, ditamacious, earth
Speaker 2: is abrasive and at the scale of insects and arachnids,
Speaker 2: the particles slice into exoskeletal plates like and I've seen
Speaker 2: various comparisons online, like the teeth of a roaring chainsaw,
Speaker 2: like yards of glass and a tornado. I mean, you
Speaker 2: pick the the comparison that sounds the grizzliest to you.
Speaker 2: And this is the This is all caused by the edges,
Speaker 2: the sharp edges of the fossil eyed diatoms.
Speaker 3: Well, actually, I was about to think about what is
Speaker 3: it like crawling through and I was thinking is it
Speaker 3: like razor blades or whatever? But I wonder to what
Speaker 3: extent it sort of would be like crawling through glass
Speaker 3: because in the sense this material is kind of like glass.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, coming back to sand a
Speaker 2: little bit. One of the we talked about different types
Speaker 2: of sand, different uh smoothness levels of sand in our
Speaker 2: episode on sand, and there are certain beaches that, you know,
Speaker 2: I always dig in the sand of them at a beach,
Speaker 2: and some of the rougher beaches I've been to, the
Speaker 2: ones that are you know, where the sand is composed
Speaker 2: of like hard invisible pieces of shells, like some of those.
Speaker 2: Your your hands definitely begin to feel raw after a
Speaker 2: certain amount of digging, you know. So you know, I
Speaker 2: can't I can't help but compare it to that. But yeah,
Speaker 2: that's what's going on here. On one level, Yes, the
Speaker 2: little particles of the diatamacious earth, the fossilized diatoms, are
Speaker 2: like cutting into the exoskeletal layer of the insects and arachnids.
Speaker 2: But on top of that, the particles are also absorptive,
Speaker 2: and they are leeching away lipids from the waxy outer
Speaker 2: layer of the creature's exoskeleton, and this essentially unseals the
Speaker 2: containment suit of the insect, allowing its inner moisture to
Speaker 2: be drawn out of the body as well, killing the
Speaker 2: organism via dehydration sometimes referred to as enhanced dehydration. And
Speaker 2: so this also works to varying degrees on snail, slugs
Speaker 2: and other creatures, but it's particularly hard on exoskeleton bound arthropods,
Speaker 2: and as such, diatamacious earth is widely used as an insecticide,
Speaker 2: the one that functions in a different way compared to
Speaker 2: what we might think of concerning like you know, more
Speaker 2: chemical insecticie. So again, it requires external contact with the
Speaker 2: organism to work, So it has to be applied in
Speaker 2: a way that will coat the organism, cause it to
Speaker 2: be coated, or work as a barrier to prevent the
Speaker 2: organism from crossing it like almost like a magical magic
Speaker 2: circle spelled out in salt to keep a demon at bay.
Speaker 2: And indeed, salt is also used as a mechanical pesticide.
Speaker 2: You know, it draws the moisture out of bodies of
Speaker 2: certain pests or perceived pests. And also again it's mechanical
Speaker 2: and therefore widely regarded as safe for humans and animals
Speaker 2: that don't have exoskeletons. Again, even coming in food grade forms,
Speaker 2: so you know it can be used. It's often used
Speaker 2: in agricultural settings and so forth. Now that's not to
Speaker 2: say dietamatious earth can't hurt you it. You know, it
Speaker 2: certainly can be harmful if inhaled, it can irritate the
Speaker 2: eyes and other tissues. Obviously the large quantities rule is
Speaker 2: in place for this as well, but it's not going
Speaker 2: to eat through your skin and turn you into a
Speaker 2: money right, And so yeah, on one level, ditamatious earth
Speaker 2: can work like this is an insecticide on its own,
Speaker 2: but it also is apparently sometimes added to pesticide mixtures
Speaker 2: as well. And I've also read that it's it's very
Speaker 2: versatile in the ways you can use it as an
Speaker 2: as an insecticide or an insect barrier, you know, sprinkling
Speaker 2: it here, putting it in hard to reach places, and
Speaker 2: so forth.
Speaker 3: Trying to imagine up close, the magnified view of it
Speaker 3: working as a mechanical insecticide, I think is made especially
Speaker 3: grizzly if you're looking at the like scanning electron microscope
Speaker 3: images of it, and you're seeing all these little sharp
Speaker 3: looking shards of these fossil shells, you.
Speaker 2: Know, Yeah, pieces looks like shrapnel exactly.
Speaker 3: Yeah, These pieces of the colosseums, these pieces of the
Speaker 3: old fences, and all this mechanical looking It's like the
Speaker 3: world the terminators come from. It's just like piled up
Speaker 3: scraps of things that look mechanical and things that look
Speaker 3: organic all mixed together, but it all looks sharp, it
Speaker 3: all looks like it would hurt.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Now we've already touched a little bit on the
Speaker 2: history of diatoms and anti diatamacious earth in terms of
Speaker 2: our understanding of diatoms, and we're going to come back
Speaker 2: to that in the next episode as well. But I
Speaker 2: was curious about just how far back the use of
Speaker 2: diatamacious earth, particularly as a pesticide, really goes. And one
Speaker 2: source I was looking at is Diatamacious Earth for Pest
Speaker 2: Control by William Quarrels. This was published in The IPM
Speaker 2: Practitioner back in nineteen ninety two and citing a nineteen
Speaker 2: seventy two work by one F. Allen. The author here
Speaker 2: mentions the possibility that the use of diatamatious earth as
Speaker 2: an insecticide might date back some four thousand years to
Speaker 2: late Neolithic or early Bronze Age China.
Speaker 3: Wow, I had no idea. I hadn't read anything about this. Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it wasn't able to uncover a ton here.
Speaker 2: So I'd definitely take this with a grain of fossilized
Speaker 2: diatom because this is not I don't know that this
Speaker 2: is something one can really put any hard numbers behind.
Speaker 2: But supposedly humans may have picked up on this. Ancient
Speaker 2: humans may have picked up on this practice by observing
Speaker 2: birds engaging in dust baths.
Speaker 3: Huh.
Speaker 2: So I believe we've all observed birds taking a dust
Speaker 2: bath before. Certainly, if you have chickens, or you just
Speaker 2: do a lot of bird watching, you may have observed this.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you've seen this, Joe. There used
Speaker 2: to be a dusty place in my backyard and I
Speaker 2: would sometimes catch birds in there. I'd see movement flapping.
Speaker 2: I'm like, what's going on? And it's just a bird
Speaker 2: in there, just flapping around in the dust, just flinging
Speaker 2: dust everywhere and then flying away when I get too close.
Speaker 3: Interesting. Well, I mean I would immediately start thinking, what's
Speaker 3: that for? Why is it doing that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, because it seems it seems ridiculous, right, like a bath,
Speaker 2: you don't take it in dust. You take a bath
Speaker 2: to get rid of dust. What possible good comes of
Speaker 2: taking a bath in dust? And basically it comes down
Speaker 2: to individual pest control. And it's interesting because it does
Speaker 2: seem to play a little bit. It seems like dietamacious
Speaker 2: earth and the function of diatamatious earth does play a
Speaker 2: little bit into what's happening with particularly avian dust baths.
Speaker 2: There are non birds that do something like a dust bath.
Speaker 2: But for purposes here, we're going to be looking at
Speaker 2: the birds. I look to a paper and this is
Speaker 2: a really recent one. This came out March of twenty
Speaker 2: twenty six in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences
Speaker 2: USA by Kuo at All, titled Mechanics of Dust Bathing
Speaker 2: and Birds. One of the things that they point out
Speaker 2: is that this is an area the actual mechanics of
Speaker 2: what's going on here has long been kind of poorly understood.
Speaker 2: We see birds doing it, but do we really know
Speaker 2: what's actually happening. I've read elsewhere that dust baths may
Speaker 2: actually mechanically impact parasites such as mites via dehydration, along
Speaker 2: the same lines as what we're talking about with ditamacious earth.
Speaker 2: But Kuo it All focused mostly on wing flapping powered
Speaker 2: substrate interaction. Now what does that mean. I'm just going
Speaker 2: to read a quote from the paper here because I
Speaker 2: think this sums it up nicely.
Speaker 3: Quote.
Speaker 2: Collision modeling indicates that the impact force from sand particles
Speaker 2: exceeds MTE adhesion forces. Thus collision is the dominant removal mechanism.
Speaker 2: Mites are removed within seconds when sand is present, suggesting
Speaker 2: that sand plays an active mechanical role in parasite dislodgments.
Speaker 2: So a bird gets in the dust, starts just whipping
Speaker 2: that dust all around themselves, and what is happening is
Speaker 2: those little particles, particularly if its stand like apparently there's
Speaker 2: like boulders smashing into mites and knocking them physically, mechanically
Speaker 2: knocking them off of the feathers of the birds. So
Speaker 2: that's pretty crazy. Now, did humans use dietamacious earth in
Speaker 2: ancient times based on the observation of avian dust baths? Again,
Speaker 2: I don't know that we really know an answer to this.
Speaker 2: I suppose it's possible, maybe even likely, But as the
Speaker 2: researchers point out, again, the mechanics of what's going on
Speaker 2: have been at best poorly understood. But there's all sorts
Speaker 2: of things about the natural world that humans picked up
Speaker 2: on because we observed our animal relatives doing something, and
Speaker 2: you know, on some level we understood that they had
Speaker 2: developed those methods and those acts and those practices and
Speaker 2: those habits because they did something that it was useful
Speaker 2: to them.
Speaker 3: I mean, I guess one thing to think about is
Speaker 3: that dietamacious earth has a different anti insect or anti
Speaker 3: arachnid mechanism than the sand, and this example does like
Speaker 3: it's knocking off the external parasites, whereas if it was
Speaker 3: dietamacious Earth, what you would probably be thinking it was
Speaker 3: doing was like eventually killing them so that they die
Speaker 3: and fall off right.
Speaker 2: And it's possible given I think it's possible, given different
Speaker 2: components in different dust or sands, that you could have
Speaker 2: some combination of things going on in a dust bath.
Speaker 2: But again, I don't know that we really have everything
Speaker 2: completely squared away on what's going on with an avy
Speaker 2: and dust bath. But when it comes to say, chickens
Speaker 2: chicken farmers, I was reading online. I saw some various
Speaker 2: threads about this. Chicken farmers seem to go back and
Speaker 2: forth on whether you should add iotamacious earth to like
Speaker 2: the to like the dust bath portion of a chickens
Speaker 2: living area. Some people are like, yeah, do it, Others
Speaker 2: are like no, no, no, don't do it. They go
Speaker 2: back and forth on it. But there's some some people
Speaker 2: argue that it helps them get rid of their own mites.
Speaker 3: But we're not making a call on that.
Speaker 2: I'm not making a call on I'm just saying there
Speaker 2: there is discussion out there on this topic. Now, coming
Speaker 2: back to that paper by Quarrels, he also points to
Speaker 2: some of the more recent history in the US regarding
Speaker 2: the use of diatamacious earth and things like It. Points
Speaker 2: out that road dust was just was observed killing cotton
Speaker 2: worms as early as eighteen eighty, points out that until
Speaker 2: the nineteen fifties, clay dust, sand, and silica jel were
Speaker 2: more popular test materials than diatamite, and then insects he
Speaker 2: lists controlled by different dusts up to nineteen fifteen included
Speaker 2: the oriental fruit moth, the coddling moth, larva, flea beetles,
Speaker 2: cucumber beetles, cockroaches, Mexican bean beetle larva, and stored grain pests.
Speaker 3: So there is a even before targeted use by diatamacious earth,
Speaker 3: there was a more general practice of using various types
Speaker 3: of dust or other mineral grains, even sand in some cases,
Speaker 3: to repel or harm insects that were considered pests.
Speaker 2: Right right. He writes that quote dusts in general are
Speaker 2: repellent to insects, and he provides an overview of some
Speaker 2: of the different findings that existed at this time. Basically,
Speaker 2: different experimentations entailed different types of diatamacious earth, for instance,
Speaker 2: looking at ditamacious earth of marine origin and freshwater origin.
Speaker 2: Also different experiments with silica gel grain size sometimes factors
Speaker 2: into how effective or ineffective it's seem to be. But
Speaker 2: also different insects seem to have different vulnerability levels to
Speaker 2: dietamacious earth.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, and.
Speaker 2: This makes sense because again we're talking about a physical
Speaker 2: interaction here between these little tiny shards and some sort
Speaker 2: of surface. So more vulnerable include large surface area to
Speaker 2: volume ratio insects, and this generally means smaller insects.
Speaker 3: Because as you scale up, your volume increases cubically.
Speaker 2: Right, Plus insects that have lots of he calls it
Speaker 2: body here. We know it's not quite here, but you know,
Speaker 2: if an insect has lots of little things on it,
Speaker 2: like hair that can pick up particles, that can grab
Speaker 2: onto particles, that also makes them more vulnerable. Thinner layers
Speaker 2: as well can play into this. You know, again we're
Speaker 2: talking about physical interaction. The thinner the armor, the more susceptible,
Speaker 2: the easier it's going to be for something to breach it.
Speaker 2: And he also writes, quote insects such as the cockroach
Speaker 2: that is protected by a low melting grease are more
Speaker 2: susceptible than insects with hardened, waxy cuticles. Now less vulnerable
Speaker 2: include smoother beetles like the confused flower beetle. Insects that's
Speaker 2: that's a type of beetle. Yeah, yeah, I didn't. I
Speaker 2: didn't do a deep dive on this, but that is
Speaker 2: at least the common name for it. Insects with thick cuticles,
Speaker 2: and they are also less vulnerable likewise, and then also
Speaker 2: sucking insects that are constantly obtaining water by feeding on vegetation,
Speaker 2: they're just going to be my understanding, they're moister compared
Speaker 2: to say, dry grain feeding insects. Again, these are going
Speaker 2: to be less vulnerable. So yeah, you can have a
Speaker 2: lot of variability in exactly what kind of dietamacious earth
Speaker 2: you're you're using, and then what kind of insect is
Speaker 2: on the receiving end of it, what kind of insect
Speaker 2: or i racnet exoskeleton bound organism is on the receiving
Speaker 2: end of your sand.
Speaker 3: There is such a honey, I shrunk the kid's quality
Speaker 3: to this of the you know, the horrors that you
Speaker 3: don't even really think about because of the scale on
Speaker 3: which you exist, and trying to imagine all of the
Speaker 3: different ways the world is threatening. This reminds me of
Speaker 3: I feel like I've mentioned it on the show a
Speaker 3: million times. At this point, I'm always thinking about it.
Speaker 3: But the classic JBS Halliday and essay on being the
Speaker 3: right size, which has to do in part with the
Speaker 3: different physical forces that act on you most and represent
Speaker 3: the most threat to you when you are different sizes,
Speaker 3: so that like we at the size we are do
Speaker 3: not really have to worry that much about the surface
Speaker 3: tension of water as a physical force that can destroy us.
Speaker 3: But like you know, a small insect that can get
Speaker 3: overwhelmed by a droplet of waters, like the surface tension
Speaker 3: of water is a much more threatening physical force to
Speaker 3: very small creatures, whereas we really have to worry about gravity,
Speaker 3: and tiny insects don't have to, you know, like falling
Speaker 3: for a tiny insect is not nearly as threatening. And
Speaker 3: that essay also includes, I think the part about how
Speaker 3: you know if a mouse falls down a mind shaft,
Speaker 3: it bounces, a human is broken, a horse splashes. Yeah,
Speaker 3: but you know the counterpoint to that is like dietamacious
Speaker 3: earth could maybe be like a lung or eye irritant
Speaker 3: to us, Like you wouldn't want to get it on
Speaker 3: your sensitive mucous membranes in certain ways. And you know,
Speaker 3: it's not like completely harmless.
Speaker 2: But you wouldn't want to swim in at Scrooge McDuck
Speaker 2: style or riding.
Speaker 3: Yeah, so it's not like completely harmless, but you mostly
Speaker 3: don't have to worry about these these tiny razor gears
Speaker 3: from the ancient diatoms. But for if the wrong kind
Speaker 3: of insect, this is just a valley of thorns. It
Speaker 3: is just this terror.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for the wrong sort of insect, like a line,
Speaker 2: like a sprinkled line of this stuff is just a
Speaker 2: barrier of death that they either will die in attempting
Speaker 2: to cross, or they just cannot cross. They just will
Speaker 2: say no, I want none of it. All right, Well
Speaker 2: I'm gonna leave it off there. But you know, as
Speaker 2: with any of this, I'd love to hear from anyone
Speaker 2: out there who has experience using dietamacious earth, particularly as
Speaker 2: a pesticide or chicken farmers right in. I want your
Speaker 2: opinion on all of this that the chicken farming world
Speaker 2: is mostly new to me. I had some chicken stay
Speaker 2: in my backyard once, like over the course of a weekend.
Speaker 2: They were guests. I don't know what they were up
Speaker 2: to aside from just pooping everywhere, but yeah, I didn't
Speaker 2: get a lot of insight into what they wanted when
Speaker 2: it came to a dust bath.
Speaker 3: Man. You know, just last night I had an interesting
Speaker 3: experience with some overwhelming bird poops and aarreos. I was
Speaker 3: about to go out paddling on the river last night
Speaker 3: after work, and I just happened to be standing in
Speaker 3: a place right under a part of the bridge where
Speaker 3: there are many many swallow nests up above, and I
Speaker 3: was just noticing, noticing, like, man, I just put my
Speaker 3: kayak down, and suddenly there's bird poop on it. Oh
Speaker 3: there's more, Oh there's more. What's going on? And then
Speaker 3: I realized all around me it was just a it
Speaker 3: was just a yeah, a frenzy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it can be quite overwhelming at times.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't know if they all try to poop
Speaker 3: on purpose at the same time. Is that a thing?
Speaker 2: I had similar thoughts. In the last week, I was,
Speaker 2: you know, I was up in Denver with with my
Speaker 2: family and we did some walks, and you know it,
Speaker 2: I encountered this pretty much wherever I go, wherever there
Speaker 2: are you know, geese, But geese will just poop everywhere.
Speaker 2: And I was wondering, It's like, do they prefer to
Speaker 2: poop on human walkways? And at first I was I
Speaker 2: was entertaining that idea, and then I was really noticed, like, no,
Speaker 2: they're just pooping everywhere. I don't think they really have
Speaker 2: a preference, but but I don't know this would be
Speaker 2: this This kind of gets an to something we're going
Speaker 2: to be talking about in the next episode when we
Speaker 2: get into a little bit into cat litter and talk
Speaker 2: about dietamatious or within cat litter. But it's possible sometime
Speaker 2: down the line we should do an episode on where
Speaker 2: to poop and where to urinate and how animals decide
Speaker 2: what is the approximate place to do this, Like what
Speaker 2: sort of material or environment should I do it in?
Speaker 2: Where should I do it in terms of like you know,
Speaker 2: top or bottom of a tree, that sort of thing.
Speaker 2: There are a number of just a number of examples
Speaker 2: that come to mind that are that are pretty fascinating.
Speaker 2: You know, even in a captive environment. You know, we'll
Speaker 2: see in situations where the animal will choose, like a
Speaker 2: gecko will always have one particular corner in which it
Speaker 2: does its business. And I'm sure everyone out here, you know,
Speaker 2: certainly pet owners and people who raise animals can can
Speaker 2: think of various examples of this as well. But anyway,
Speaker 2: it might be something we could come back to in
Speaker 2: a future episode.
Speaker 3: Yeah, cross species investigation of bathroom strategies, I think would
Speaker 3: would be good. Okay, Well, as we've said, next time,
Speaker 3: we're going to get into more. We'll talk about cat letter,
Speaker 3: probably talk about dynamite, probably talk about more dietm biology,
Speaker 3: and plenty more. So join us again next time.
Speaker 2: All right. Just a reminder to everyone out there that
Speaker 2: Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and
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Speaker 2: you know, a huge backlog of episodes in there, huge
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Speaker 3: as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway. If
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