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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.

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Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to you Stuff to Blow Your Mind.

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Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb.

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Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff to

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Speaker 3: Blow Your Mind, we are going to begin a series

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Speaker 3: of episodes on a weird and interesting medium of communication

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Speaker 3: between animals, specifically communication by means of urine. I've said

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Speaker 3: this before on the show, but I think humans are

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Speaker 3: really a species defined by the power and complexity of

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Speaker 3: our communication skills. There is a lot that makes humankind unique,

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Speaker 3: but communication, I think is the thing that makes us

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Speaker 3: most unique among the animals. When we want to share

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Speaker 3: information about the world or about our intentions with another person,

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Speaker 3: we've got so many options. We can talk out loud,

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Speaker 3: we can use body language or sign language. We can

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Speaker 3: draw represent ideas visually. We can use written language, which,

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Speaker 3: of course that you know has as a million different

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Speaker 3: instantiations and different types of technology today. So you've got

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Speaker 3: everything from you know, the handwritten note, to mass media

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Speaker 3: like books and magazines, email, text messages, social media posts.

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Speaker 3: I guess some people are probably still facts and.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, but mostly we've got it reduced down to texting.

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Speaker 2: I think in general, we can throw all these things

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Speaker 2: out the window and we're just going to focus on

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Speaker 2: texting from here on out for the duration.

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Speaker 3: I only want to read books in SMS format now.

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Speaker 3: But I think it's easy, because we have such mastery

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Speaker 3: over communication and communication technology to kind of not notice

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Speaker 3: media of communication that are not available to us, or

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Speaker 3: at least not usually. I love thinking about other media

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Speaker 3: of information sharing which do exist in nature, but which

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Speaker 3: are not used by humans, at least not consciously. And

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Speaker 3: it turns out a huge, pretty much unignorable example used

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Speaker 3: throughout the animal kingdom is urine communication through.

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Speaker 2: P That's right, And as we get into this topic,

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Speaker 2: I'd encourage everyone out there to set aside their narrow

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Speaker 2: human understanding of urine as much as possible and open

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Speaker 2: your mind to the extent that we can to the

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Speaker 2: richer world of informational micturition. Gegling is still permitted, but

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Speaker 2: rethink you're in a bed as we proceed here now.

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Speaker 3: To get us started, I wanted to mention a recent

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Speaker 3: zoology story that first got me thinking about doing this

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Speaker 3: topic on the show. It was a paper published this

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Speaker 3: year in the journal Behavioral Processes by three researchers named

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Speaker 3: Clariana Arujo Wang, Mauricio Kanter, and John Y. Wang, and

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Speaker 3: the paper was called aerial Urination suggests an undescribed sensory

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Speaker 3: modality and social function in river dolphins. So a bit

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Speaker 3: on the authors here. At least one of the authors

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Speaker 3: is affiliated with a river dolphin research project in Brazil

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Speaker 3: called Botos do dos Serrado, another with the Marine Mammal

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Speaker 3: Institute of Oregon State University in the United States, and

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Speaker 3: the third with Trent University in Ontario, Canada. I believe

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Speaker 3: they were all associated to some extent with a research

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Speaker 3: group called Cetasia Cetasia based in Canada, but this study

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Speaker 3: concerns individuals of the species Anya Jeffrentsis, also known as

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Speaker 3: the Boto or the pink river dolphin or the Amazon

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Speaker 3: river dolphin. Rob Have we ever done a long look

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Speaker 3: at river dolphins on the show? I don't think so.

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Speaker 2: I don't believe we have. I imagine a lot of

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Speaker 2: you have seen images of them as we'll describe here.

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Speaker 2: Do not just picture any other sort of dolphin and

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Speaker 2: just color it pink in your mind, because the reality

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Speaker 2: here is a bit different.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, these aren't just your bottle nose. This has a

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Speaker 3: distinctly alt dolphin feel.

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Speaker 2: So.

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Speaker 3: The Amazon river dolphin is the world's largest species of

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Speaker 3: freshwater dolphin, with males growing up to two point five

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Speaker 3: meters in length and one hundred and eighty five kilograms.

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Speaker 3: Adult females are somewhat smaller than that. They look fairly

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Speaker 3: distinct from marine dolphins, with long, skinny snouts without a

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Speaker 3: pronounced dorsal fin like you would see on bottlenose dolphins.

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Speaker 3: You kind of don't appreciate how much the dorsal fin

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Speaker 3: really contributes to the animal's profile until you see a

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Speaker 3: dolphin without one. It's not that it doesn't have a

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Speaker 3: dorsal fin, but it's more of a hump. Bodos have

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Speaker 3: kind of a if you're looking at them from the side,

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Speaker 3: imagine a kind of plateau silhouette along the back with

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Speaker 3: a mid length corner gently sloping down to the tail.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, And I just find they do just look bizarre.

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Speaker 2: They to me, they kind of look like if the

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Speaker 2: Cenobyites made a dolphin, you know, like out of a person.

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Speaker 2: That's the kind of vibe I get off of a

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Speaker 2: pink river dolphin.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I hope this doesn't come off as hostile to

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Speaker 3: them because they're wonderful creatures, but there is a there

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Speaker 3: is a suggestion of gore in their appearance. There's something

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Speaker 3: a little bit, a little bit squicky kind of but

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Speaker 3: also they've got a little smile sometimes. Have you seen

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Speaker 3: this in different pictures where if you look at the

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Speaker 3: head just right, it looks like they're they're giving you

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Speaker 3: a grin that's I don't know, it's a little creepy.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's a little easier to take that

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Speaker 2: that grin from a bottle nose dolphin. And part of it,

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Speaker 2: I'm just not used to seeing these guys. I guess,

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Speaker 2: you know. They're beautiful in their own ride, but they're

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Speaker 2: also they're a little bit weird.

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Speaker 3: So bodos are found not just in the Amazon River,

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Speaker 3: but in rivers throughout northern and central South America. I

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Speaker 3: believe they're in the Orinoco Basin as well, and at

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Speaker 3: least one other major river system. Bodos tend to be

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Speaker 3: more gray in color when they're young, but then adults,

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Speaker 3: especially the males, take on this blotchy pink color as

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Speaker 3: they mature. I've read in some sources that the pinkness

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Speaker 3: might be associated with places on the skin where there

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Speaker 3: have been sort of bumps or abrasions or wounds on

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Speaker 3: the skin over the years. But I think that's not

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Speaker 3: for certain. There seem to be interesting questions about all

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Speaker 3: of the environmental factors that determine the Amazon River dolphin's pinkness.

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Speaker 3: It might also have to do with the opacity of

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Speaker 3: the water they live in, or with water temperature, or

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Speaker 3: maybe a few other things. This is not fully settled,

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Speaker 3: but anyway, I was just reading a few other things

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Speaker 3: about the species, generally in a twenty sixteen feature put

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Speaker 3: out by the American Association for the Advancement of Science,

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Speaker 3: written by someone named Kirsten Fernley, and this article mentions

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Speaker 3: that many other dolphin species have a fused spine, but

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Speaker 3: bodos do not, and a bodo's unfused spine allows it

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Speaker 3: to actually turn its head from side to side, which

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Speaker 3: might not sound remarkable to you until you see a

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Speaker 3: picture of a dolphin turning its head to look at you. Yep,

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Speaker 3: pretty weird, rob, I've got a picture in the outline

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Speaker 3: for you to look at this dolphin. It's it's like saying.

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Speaker 2: Hi, Yeah, it's a little bit creepy.

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Speaker 3: Like other dolphins, bodos also use echolocation to navigate their

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Speaker 3: environment and to hunt, so that means emitting low frequency

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Speaker 3: clicks or slaps from a fatty organ on the head

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Speaker 3: called the melon, and then listening for the bounce back

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Speaker 3: to get information about their surroundings, which they sense with

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Speaker 3: sensory organs in their in their lower jaw. Especially, bodos

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Speaker 3: apparently eat lots of different kinds of prey fish, crustaceans,

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Speaker 3: reptiles which they catch in their long jaws. They apparently

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Speaker 3: have different kinds of teeth the front and the back

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Speaker 3: of the jaws. So if you see one of them

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Speaker 3: with the mouth open toward the front of the jaws

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Speaker 3: or this elongated snout, they'll have kind of pointy teeth

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Speaker 3: which are the grabber teeth that's for catching you and

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Speaker 3: not letting you go. And then they've got grinding teeth

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Speaker 3: farther back in the mouth. So that's your destiny if

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Speaker 3: you're a crab and one of these things digs you

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Speaker 3: up from the river bottom. Level of socialization among botos

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Speaker 3: seems variable. Sometimes they will gather in groups, especially if

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Speaker 3: feeding there's a lot of feeding resources nearby. Sometimes you

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Speaker 3: will see them in mother calf pairs, but it seems

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Speaker 3: most often adults live alone. There's solitary species.

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Speaker 2: Now, I was curious about the mythology and the legends

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Speaker 2: concerning the Boto, so I looked into this a little bit.

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Speaker 2: The name Boto is of Portuguese origin, but the indigenous

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Speaker 2: peoples of the Amazon and beyond new of them long

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Speaker 2: before the arrival of Europeans. Naturally, unfortunately, not much seems

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Speaker 2: to have survived concerning exactly how while those people in

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Speaker 2: pre Columbian times interpreted them in their folklore and myths.

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Speaker 2: But we might reasonably infer that there could be some

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Speaker 2: connection between what was believed in those days and more

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Speaker 2: modern folkloric beliefs about these river dolphins. But the modern

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Speaker 2: stories are pretty alarming, as pointed out in Amazon River

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Speaker 2: Dolphin Love Fetishes from Folklore to Molecular Forensics by Gravina

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Speaker 2: at All. This is published in Marine Mammal Science two

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Speaker 2: thousand and eight. The common folk belief one encounters is

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Speaker 2: that the Boto is a shape shifting seducer, or worse,

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Speaker 2: at dusk, the Boto can transform itself into a handsome

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Speaker 2: Caucasian male to dance boldly and seduce women. They are

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Speaker 2: also said to enter homes at night and paralyze the

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Speaker 2: occupants with their gaze before having their way with them.

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Speaker 2: And then it dawned, the boto must return to the

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Speaker 2: water into its natural form. The authors here point out

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Speaker 2: that in some regions the Boto legend is use to

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Speaker 2: explain certain teenage pregnancies that occur, and more generally, I've

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Speaker 2: seen the legend explain as something that was originally a

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Speaker 2: warning against the dangers posed by male colonists in potential

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Speaker 2: sexual violence. The nib dot com has a really good

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Speaker 2: web comic about this, if anyone wants to explore that.

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Speaker 2: But associated with these traditions are also sometimes practices of

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Speaker 2: using body parts of the boto as fetish items. The

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Speaker 2: eye can be held. Some of these traditions hold while

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Speaker 2: conversing with a romantic interest, because the power of their

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Speaker 2: gaze is irresistible, and so you can get some of

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Speaker 2: that power to rub off on you. And then there

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Speaker 2: are other traditions where one might take the dried, pulverized

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Speaker 2: genitalia of one of these river dolphins and then mix

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Speaker 2: it with talcum powder or perfume and then apply that

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Speaker 2: to your own genitals as a magic pleasure or fertility

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Speaker 2: boosting powder. The authors in that paper I cited, they

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Speaker 2: point out there are regional variations, as we've touched on, like,

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Speaker 2: there's ultimately a lot of territory covered by the range

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Speaker 2: of the Boto, and that range is going to cover

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Speaker 2: a lot of variety. There's a lot of variety and active,

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Speaker 2: active cultural influences to be found in these regions. And

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Speaker 2: so when some areas there are indigenous beliefs that the

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Speaker 2: photo is too sacred to kill, while in other areas

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Speaker 2: there has traditionally been more of a practice of killing

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Speaker 2: them for their body parts and so forth. But the

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Speaker 2: bottom line is the Boto possibly a terrifying shape shifting seducer.

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Speaker 2: And maybe this has something to do with its coloration

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Speaker 2: and it's kind of a kind of fleshy aspect of

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Speaker 2: its body. Maybe that's what leads to some of some

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Speaker 2: variations of these beliefs that it can take on the

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Speaker 2: form of a human being.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, the idea that there is something of blood about it,

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Speaker 3: or maybe something about it being able to kind of

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Speaker 3: turn and look at you, I wonder possibly, yeah, Yeah,

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Speaker 3: But anyway, coming to the scientific paper, we're going to

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Speaker 3: talk about this will give you another a very different

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Speaker 3: way to think about the bodo. So in this paper

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Speaker 3: from Behavioral Processes in twenty twenty five, again that's a

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Speaker 3: rujo wang at all. The authors describe recent observations are

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Speaker 3: actually not that recent. It's from a few years back.

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Speaker 3: I'll talk about that in a second. Describe their observations

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Speaker 3: of this behavior among bodos, which they call aerial urination.

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Speaker 3: Another way to put it would be pea fountains. So

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Speaker 3: the pea fountain behaviors documented in this research took place

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Speaker 3: among wild bodos in a river in central Brazil called

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Speaker 3: the Token Teenes between September twenty fourteen and March twenty eighteen,

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Speaker 3: and the observations were recorded from fifteen meters high observation

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Speaker 3: platforms at the water's edge. So the pea fountain behavior,

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Speaker 3: here's how it goes down. You got one male boto.

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Speaker 3: Originally it turns upside down at the surface of the river,

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Speaker 3: with its underside facing the sky and its penis sticking

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Speaker 3: up above the water line. Then it starts to pee,

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Speaker 3: projecting an arc of urine into the air, generally about

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Speaker 3: three feet long, which splashes down into the water. Nearby.

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Speaker 3: Usually while creating this pea fountain, the boto will continue swimming,

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Speaker 3: sometimes in a straight line, sometimes zigzagging back and forth,

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Speaker 3: sometimes looping around in a circle. And this by itself

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Speaker 3: could be seen as a strange and interesting behavior, like

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Speaker 3: why take the trouble to flip upside down and pee

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Speaker 3: into the sky? Like why would you try to make

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Speaker 3: your urine cross the barrier of worlds into the unswimmable air.

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Speaker 3: Why not just do it straight into the water and

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Speaker 3: go about your business?

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Speaker 2: Humans would never, right, so why would the dolphins?

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Speaker 3: I was exactly trying to think about when humans would

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Speaker 3: make a point to like submerge, just barely submerge their

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Speaker 3: bodies under the water in order to pee. I guess

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Speaker 3: the main reason I could the humans would do that

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Speaker 3: would be for like various forms of modesty, like in

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Speaker 3: order to not be seen peeing or not be heard

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Speaker 3: or something.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's a fine point. I

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Speaker 2: would also argue, and again, we're comparing dolphins with humans,

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Speaker 2: which is closer comparison to be made than humans do

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Speaker 2: various other animals, but humans. When humans have the ability

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Speaker 2: to aim and control their urination streams, they are liable

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Speaker 2: to do novel things with their control within the acceptable

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Speaker 2: environment that they are urinating. I would bring to mind

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Speaker 2: occasionally one might see a target in a urinal that

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Speaker 2: sort of thing, sure, and that would encourage one to

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Speaker 2: aim for the target. Or maybe one is urinating in

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Speaker 2: the wild and there is like one rock that calls

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Speaker 2: out more than other rocks.

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Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, uh huh, I see what you're saying. So

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Speaker 3: it can be a form of play or self amusement

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Speaker 3: in a way. And dolphins, you know, dolphins are intelligent animals.

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Speaker 3: You think that they might just maybe sometimes they do

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Speaker 3: things just to play, just kind of for a novelty

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Speaker 3: of the behavior. So there would be interesting questions even

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Speaker 3: if it was just the aerial urine stream. But here's

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Speaker 3: where it gets even more interesting. The authors of this

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Speaker 3: paper observed that two thirds of the time, sixty seven

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Speaker 3: percent of the time, one male river dolphin did this.

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Speaker 3: It happened to be when there was another male right there,

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Speaker 3: right nearby, which the authors called the receiver of the

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Speaker 3: aerial urination. And what's more, the receiver dolphin would often

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Speaker 3: appear not to avoid the stream. Sometimes it would just

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Speaker 3: stay where it was in the water. Basically right under

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Speaker 3: where the stream was hitting. But often it would appear

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Speaker 3: to deliberately chase the stream of urine and try to

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Speaker 3: get under it. So really the dolphins would be going

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Speaker 3: out of their way to get peed on, it appears

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Speaker 3: to be yes, and not just to get peed on,

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Speaker 3: to get peed on in the face. So the other

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Speaker 3: male dolphin here will approach the place where the airborne

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Speaker 3: stream is splashing down and it will stick its head

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Speaker 3: up out of the water to let the urine splash

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Speaker 3: down and run over its rostrum, which is what the

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Speaker 3: dolphins protruding beak like jaw is called.

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Speaker 2: Again, humans would never so what's going on with these

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Speaker 2: river dolphins.

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Speaker 3: We don't have to make too many analogies to humans

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Speaker 3: and the positive or negative. No judgment here, but yes,

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Speaker 3: not a common behavior among humans at least we would think, right.

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Speaker 2: And as we've been trying to relate here, urine is

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Speaker 2: not just urine to animals outside of the human domain.

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Speaker 2: Urine can be informational.

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Speaker 3: That's right. So that brings us to the question of

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Speaker 3: why do they do this? Why would the dolphin pee

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Speaker 3: this way, and why would the other dolphins seek the

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Speaker 3: urine stream and try to get its face position, its

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Speaker 3: own face into the urine stream. To be clear, we

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Speaker 3: don't know the answer to this question. It is not

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Speaker 3: This is not settled, but the authors do try to

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Speaker 3: make an informed guess. They say, the most likely explanation

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Speaker 3: is its communication. The dolphin that peas in the air

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Speaker 3: is in a sense talking, and the dolphin that seeks

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Speaker 3: out the stream of urine is listening. Now, what would

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Speaker 3: they be talking about. Possibly it would be the dolphin's

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Speaker 3: quote social position and physical condition, which in fact is

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Speaker 3: very important information that male dolphins seek about each other

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Speaker 3: in order to navigate competition between one another, such as

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Speaker 3: competition for food or competition for mates. And this would

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Speaker 3: line up with the observation that aerial urination only ever

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Speaker 3: took place between males. The urinators were only males and

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Speaker 3: the receivers were only males. Now, another question you might

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Speaker 3: wonder about is why if this is in fact some

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Speaker 3: kind of exchange of information, and we'll get into a

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Speaker 3: bit more detail about that in a minute. What's the

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Speaker 3: need for the aerial stream Why up in the air

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Speaker 3: instead of the dolphin just peeing underwater and letting the

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Speaker 3: other dolphin, you know, detect it in the water. And

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Speaker 3: get whatever kind of information they need from it. There Again,

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Speaker 3: the answer is unknown, but one idea I read here

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Speaker 3: is that since dolphins are acoustically sensitive, the splashing of

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Speaker 3: the arc could alert nearby males that someone is pee talking. Now,

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Speaker 3: it's kind of like the ringing of the telephone. It

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Speaker 3: is alerting you to come get the message, which you

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Speaker 3: would receive by the p on your face. Again, not known,

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Speaker 3: but that's an interesting guess. Because the dolphins they live

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Speaker 3: in a world of sound. They are constantly sensing sounds

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Speaker 3: that they themselves amid and bounce back, and other types

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Speaker 3: of sounds in the water. So the splashing could be

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Speaker 3: that that's a ring tone.

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Speaker 2: Ah, Now that is fascinating.

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Speaker 3: Another interesting fact I came across. This is actually unconnected

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Speaker 3: to the research about aerial urination, but I just wanted

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Speaker 3: to connect it because I read them both separately. In

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Speaker 3: that general article about bodos that I was reading from

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Speaker 3: the Triple As twenty sixteen, it mentions that bodos are

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Speaker 3: sometimes seen swimming upside down, but the author in this

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Speaker 3: case connects it to the fact that bodos tend to

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Speaker 3: have kind of chubby cheeks, like small eyes and chubby cheeks,

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Speaker 3: which some researchers think might give them trouble looking down

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Speaker 3: below them in the water, Like I can't see down there.

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Speaker 3: My cute chubby cheeks are in the way. Thus, maybe

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Speaker 3: swim upside down helps them see what's below them.

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Speaker 2: M Okay.

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Speaker 3: Again, that may be totally unconnected to the aerial urination behavior,

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Speaker 3: but that's another observation of them sometimes just inverting for

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Speaker 3: some reason, and this is another possible reason for it. Now,

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Speaker 3: coming back to the aerial urination paper, there's the question

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Speaker 3: of how the receiver dolphin would be getting information from

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Speaker 3: the urine stream if that is in fact what's happening. Well,

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Speaker 3: the authors point out that bodos have special sensitive bristles

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Speaker 3: in the rostrum that have already been documented to help

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Speaker 3: them search for prey in murky opaque water near river bottoms.

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Speaker 3: Rob I tried to find a picture where you could

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Speaker 3: see these bristles. I did attach one here in the outline.

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Speaker 3: They're very small, and most pictures of the Amazon River

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Speaker 3: dolphin's mouth or not from real close. But here's one

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Speaker 3: where you might kind of be able to see them.

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Speaker 3: You see these little tiny white bristles along the edge

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Speaker 3: of the mouth.

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Speaker 2: Yeah, stubble, a little bit of stubble. I will reiterate

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Speaker 2: that in this picture too. It looks kind of like

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Speaker 2: some sort of a twisted cinebite. Yes. And this is

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Speaker 2: fascinating as well, because in talking about one animal weeding

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Speaker 2: the urine of another, we're often talking about the sense

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Speaker 2: of smell being involved. And we'll get more into that later,

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Speaker 2: but one of the things about dolphins is that dolphins

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Speaker 2: have a somewhat reduced sense of smell. We've talked about

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Speaker 2: that before on the show, talking about the evolution of

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Speaker 2: various aquatic mammals, and so it makes sense that they

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Speaker 2: would have to have some other capabilities in.

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Speaker 3: Play, that's right, And so that's what the authors hypothesize here.

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Speaker 3: They say that maybe hunting and foraging in river mud

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Speaker 3: is not the only thing these bristles are used for.

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Speaker 2: Quote.

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Speaker 3: We hypothesize that the bristles on Bodo's rostrums can serve

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Speaker 3: a chemical sensory role in detecting urine streams, and that

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Speaker 3: aerial urination, often occurring in the presence of other males,

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Speaker 3: serves social or communicative functions beyond the physiological need for

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Speaker 3: waste elimination. So again, we don't know for sure about this.

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Speaker 3: It's just sort of in the early stages of documenting

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Speaker 3: this behavior in an organized way and then trying to

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Speaker 3: see what we can figure out about it. I think

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Speaker 3: you need to do more controlled experiments to try to

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Speaker 3: isolate the variables and figure out what it's really doing.

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Speaker 3: But if this communication interpretation is correct, it could be

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Speaker 3: an important exchange of information that helps male bodos make

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Speaker 3: decisions about, say, whether it's worth it or probably more

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Speaker 3: often not worth it to fight with this other male

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Speaker 3: for access to food resources and mating with nearby females.

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Speaker 3: Like it's kind of like, here is my medical chart

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Speaker 3: through the taste of my urine. This confirms that I

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Speaker 3: am healthy, i am free of parasites, I've got plenty

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Speaker 3: of muscle mass, and I could put up a good fight.

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Speaker 3: So you know, you don't want to fight me. You

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Speaker 3: probably get hurt.

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Speaker 2: That's a great way of explaining it, because I think

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Speaker 2: it's no surprise to any of us that urine contains

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Speaker 2: a great deal of information. There's a lot of that

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Speaker 2: information that we can discern medically, but to an animal

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Speaker 2: that has a heightened sense of one sort or another,

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Speaker 2: they're able to read the urine to some degree and

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Speaker 2: get information out of it, like who is this guy?

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Speaker 2: Who do they think they are? Well, I can't check

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Speaker 2: their like LinkedIn profile or their their social media page,

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Speaker 2: but I can test their urine and read that for

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Speaker 2: more information.

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Speaker 3: Yes, and as we've talked about on the show before,

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Speaker 3: it's easy to think about this kind of competition based

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Speaker 3: information exchange about about fitness and capacity for fighting, to

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Speaker 3: think about that as aggressive, which in a way it is.

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Speaker 3: But the other way to think about it is that

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Speaker 3: this is a good evolutionary compromise that allows animals to

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Speaker 3: avoid violence and unnecessary aggression. It's kind of like allowing

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Speaker 3: animals to get sense of like, it's not worth fighting here,

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Speaker 3: we can avoid a fight.

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Speaker 2: That's a very good point.

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Speaker 3: Yes, So if it is indeed the case that the

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Speaker 3: aerial urination of these river dolphins is not just about

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Speaker 3: eliminating waste, and it's not just a kind of a

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Speaker 3: play behavior or a way of seeking novelty, but it

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Speaker 3: is actually about communicating information that is used to make

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Speaker 3: judgments about intraspecific competition, competition between these members of the

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Speaker 3: same species. This would be far from the only example

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Speaker 3: in the animal world, lots of animals use urination to

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Speaker 3: convey information. I was reading an article covering this river

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Speaker 3: dolphin paper in Scientific American by Gennaro Tauma that came

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Speaker 3: out April eleventh, twenty twenty five. And this article quotes

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Speaker 3: a researcher and ecologist at the University of Hull in

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Speaker 3: England named Thomas Brethout, and Bretheout says, quote, animals in

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Speaker 3: general want to learn as much as they can in

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Speaker 3: about other animals, such as their sex, dominance, species, and

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Speaker 3: so on. And a lot of information is in the urine.

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Speaker 3: In other words, like your urine can really serve as

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Speaker 3: a kind of fact sheet about you, which may prove

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Speaker 3: useful to both you and to the other animal that's

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Speaker 3: reading it. It's not just a one way benefit, Like

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Speaker 3: it's useful to both parties to have more accurate information

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Speaker 3: about each other. And so it can say what species

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Speaker 3: am I? What sex am I? What health am I?

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Speaker 1: In?

433
00:25:31,960 --> 00:25:34,600
Speaker 3: What is my social status within my group? Am I

434
00:25:34,640 --> 00:25:37,560
Speaker 3: socially dominant? It kind of conveys a lot of the

435
00:25:37,600 --> 00:25:40,920
Speaker 3: same information that people would get about another person by

436
00:25:41,760 --> 00:25:44,600
Speaker 3: first by like looking at them, but also watching their

437
00:25:44,600 --> 00:25:48,119
Speaker 3: behavior in a social situation. Or looking at their profile

438
00:25:48,240 --> 00:25:49,480
Speaker 3: online or whatever.

439
00:25:49,720 --> 00:25:51,720
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, to your point, it's like, this is the

440
00:25:51,800 --> 00:25:56,880
Speaker 2: kind of reading that even subconsciously we're giving strangers every

441
00:25:56,960 --> 00:25:59,439
Speaker 2: day as we sort of take them in and you know,

442
00:25:59,520 --> 00:26:02,880
Speaker 2: we're not actually preparing to potentially fight them. But it's

443
00:26:02,920 --> 00:26:05,360
Speaker 2: just the way we're wired, right, right.

444
00:26:05,480 --> 00:26:07,840
Speaker 3: There is a lot of i think, kind of instinctual

445
00:26:08,040 --> 00:26:12,560
Speaker 3: assessing that we still do, even if we are successfully

446
00:26:12,680 --> 00:26:16,119
Speaker 3: like suppressing aggressive impulses and things like this. There's a

447
00:26:16,119 --> 00:26:19,680
Speaker 3: lot of looking at people and there's some subconscious level

448
00:26:19,720 --> 00:26:22,760
Speaker 3: of like reading their fitness to fight. You you know,

449
00:26:22,880 --> 00:26:25,280
Speaker 3: you're not, hopefully nobody's going to start a fight.

450
00:26:25,560 --> 00:26:27,800
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, And sometimes you get a little conscious of

451
00:26:27,840 --> 00:26:29,360
Speaker 2: it and it can feel a little creepy. And that's

452
00:26:29,359 --> 00:26:31,640
Speaker 2: when you just turn it on its head and imagine

453
00:26:31,680 --> 00:26:34,480
Speaker 2: that lightsabers were involved. Yeah, and then you get a

454
00:26:34,480 --> 00:26:38,000
Speaker 2: little a little bit removed from the reality of the situation. Yeah.

455
00:26:38,040 --> 00:26:40,320
Speaker 2: But it's still helpful. It's still helpful. It's still let

456
00:26:40,359 --> 00:26:41,440
Speaker 2: you know where you rank.

457
00:26:42,680 --> 00:26:46,119
Speaker 3: But another thing that's interesting about thinking about urine based

458
00:26:46,160 --> 00:26:51,720
Speaker 3: communication is about, you know, about the hypothesized mechanism of

459
00:26:51,800 --> 00:26:57,160
Speaker 3: the bristles on the rowstrums somehow detecting chemical signatures within

460
00:26:57,200 --> 00:26:59,560
Speaker 3: the urine that would be useful information to the dolphin.

461
00:27:00,400 --> 00:27:03,400
Speaker 3: I love this because it causes us to question our

462
00:27:03,440 --> 00:27:08,240
Speaker 3: assumptions about what the different senses are for. Like we

463
00:27:08,280 --> 00:27:14,040
Speaker 3: think of sight as a general purpose site based on

464
00:27:14,200 --> 00:27:18,679
Speaker 3: light provides us with all kinds of information relevant to

465
00:27:18,800 --> 00:27:22,720
Speaker 3: basically every kind of situation in life. It's not limited

466
00:27:22,720 --> 00:27:26,880
Speaker 3: to one type of judgment or assessment you're making. However,

467
00:27:27,000 --> 00:27:31,520
Speaker 3: I think we think of taste in a much narrower way.

468
00:27:31,960 --> 00:27:35,440
Speaker 3: We think of taste as a sense almost entirely confined

469
00:27:35,480 --> 00:27:40,280
Speaker 3: to assessing one the nutritional value and two the toxic

470
00:27:40,359 --> 00:27:44,639
Speaker 3: threat potential of foods. So taste tells you, once you

471
00:27:44,720 --> 00:27:47,119
Speaker 3: have something in your mouth, is it a good idea

472
00:27:47,160 --> 00:27:49,440
Speaker 3: to chew it up and swallow it? And then after

473
00:27:49,480 --> 00:27:51,280
Speaker 3: that is it a good idea to eat some more

474
00:27:51,320 --> 00:27:55,360
Speaker 3: of the same thing. But there's no reason taste needs

475
00:27:55,440 --> 00:27:58,719
Speaker 3: to be limited to that narrow band of questions. I mean,

476
00:27:58,760 --> 00:28:01,680
Speaker 3: I guess you could say a reason in a reason

477
00:28:01,680 --> 00:28:05,080
Speaker 3: based around questions of practicality, like how practical is it

478
00:28:05,119 --> 00:28:08,000
Speaker 3: to get other types of information by taste? I don't

479
00:28:08,000 --> 00:28:10,679
Speaker 3: know if you're like a land based mammal maybe not

480
00:28:11,000 --> 00:28:14,919
Speaker 3: very but I don't know. Maybe if you're, say, living

481
00:28:14,960 --> 00:28:18,240
Speaker 3: in the water and trying to get some information about

482
00:28:18,240 --> 00:28:20,960
Speaker 3: things floating around you, maybe it is more practical.

483
00:28:21,480 --> 00:28:24,080
Speaker 2: Or if you're a human geologist, right, we've talked about.

484
00:28:23,920 --> 00:28:27,720
Speaker 3: That, yes, or yeah, so it tastes at least could

485
00:28:27,720 --> 00:28:30,919
Speaker 3: potentially give us all kinds of information having nothing to

486
00:28:31,000 --> 00:28:36,240
Speaker 3: do with the palatability or threat of potential foods. It

487
00:28:36,320 --> 00:28:39,160
Speaker 3: could even potentially give us social information, though of course

488
00:28:39,200 --> 00:28:42,440
Speaker 3: I'm not recommending you lick people. It's just interesting to

489
00:28:43,920 --> 00:28:47,760
Speaker 3: sometimes stop and think about how contingent the way we

490
00:28:47,800 --> 00:28:52,800
Speaker 3: apply different senses to different kinds of information or situations is.

491
00:28:52,920 --> 00:28:56,239
Speaker 3: It's evolutionarily contingent. It's just based on sort of like

492
00:28:56,560 --> 00:28:59,200
Speaker 3: how our bodies evolved in the kind of environment we

493
00:28:59,280 --> 00:29:02,120
Speaker 3: live in, and it didn't have to be that way.

494
00:29:02,200 --> 00:29:04,720
Speaker 3: So you can imagine, you know, aliens that talk by

495
00:29:04,800 --> 00:29:07,640
Speaker 3: taste and stuff, and there's no there's no contradiction in that.

496
00:29:08,240 --> 00:29:10,880
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the more you think too about the close

497
00:29:10,960 --> 00:29:16,680
Speaker 2: relationship between human smell and human taste, the lines get

498
00:29:16,720 --> 00:29:19,160
Speaker 2: even more blurred, because, of course, our sense of smell

499
00:29:19,240 --> 00:29:21,600
Speaker 2: is a big part of our sense of taste, but

500
00:29:21,800 --> 00:29:24,320
Speaker 2: we tend to not think about them being so closely

501
00:29:24,360 --> 00:29:27,280
Speaker 2: aligned when we think about the difference between say, the

502
00:29:27,360 --> 00:29:30,800
Speaker 2: tasting menu at the restaurant and the smells on the

503
00:29:30,840 --> 00:29:34,520
Speaker 2: subway ride to get to that restaurant, where on on

504
00:29:34,560 --> 00:29:37,400
Speaker 2: some level, you were kind of tasting the subway car,

505
00:29:38,760 --> 00:29:41,200
Speaker 2: you know, And that's I mean, the senses are just

506
00:29:41,240 --> 00:29:46,400
Speaker 2: closely linked in that regard. So yeah, and there's also

507
00:29:46,440 --> 00:29:48,240
Speaker 2: a strong case to be made that the sense of

508
00:29:48,280 --> 00:29:52,560
Speaker 2: smell is even a more intimate sensory experience compared to taste.

509
00:29:52,840 --> 00:29:56,120
Speaker 2: So your relationship to the subway car is perhaps in

510
00:29:56,160 --> 00:29:59,840
Speaker 2: some ways closer than that little chocolate morsel was that

511
00:29:59,840 --> 00:30:14,080
Speaker 2: you finally got to at the restaurant. Now, coming back

512
00:30:14,640 --> 00:30:18,680
Speaker 2: to urination, I thought it would be kind of insightful

513
00:30:18,760 --> 00:30:23,240
Speaker 2: to discuss volunteery urination in general, which is something we're

514
00:30:23,280 --> 00:30:25,960
Speaker 2: talking about here, you know, with this example of the

515
00:30:26,960 --> 00:30:31,600
Speaker 2: dolphins deciding to pee and then peeing, providing that information,

516
00:30:31,720 --> 00:30:35,480
Speaker 2: and then another dolphin decides to go and taste and

517
00:30:35,560 --> 00:30:36,600
Speaker 2: interpret it. Yeah.

518
00:30:36,680 --> 00:30:39,400
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good question itself. Why do animals have

519
00:30:39,800 --> 00:30:42,240
Speaker 3: voluntary control over when they do it?

520
00:30:42,640 --> 00:30:44,880
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of those things, you know, Obviously,

521
00:30:45,400 --> 00:30:49,800
Speaker 2: humans urinate regularly. It's just a normal part of our

522
00:30:49,840 --> 00:30:51,960
Speaker 2: daily life, and you're probably not giving it much thought

523
00:30:52,040 --> 00:30:55,520
Speaker 2: unless there's something interfering with normal operating procedure for you

524
00:30:55,560 --> 00:30:56,600
Speaker 2: in one way or another.

525
00:30:57,200 --> 00:30:59,160
Speaker 3: Right, and then of course, if there is something interfering

526
00:30:59,160 --> 00:31:00,800
Speaker 3: with your ability to pee, it's kind of all you

527
00:31:00,840 --> 00:31:01,680
Speaker 3: can think about.

528
00:31:01,960 --> 00:31:07,160
Speaker 2: Right, it becomes highly important. So let's break this down. So,

529
00:31:07,200 --> 00:31:09,680
Speaker 2: first of all, what does it mean to urinate? Naturally?

530
00:31:09,760 --> 00:31:13,080
Speaker 2: It means to discharge urine from the body. Now do

531
00:31:13,160 --> 00:31:16,880
Speaker 2: all animals urinate? Well, I was digging into this bit,

532
00:31:16,920 --> 00:31:19,440
Speaker 2: and it kind of depends how strictly you define everything.

533
00:31:19,800 --> 00:31:23,720
Speaker 2: So birds, to be clear, like monitor lizards, like less lizards, Snakes,

534
00:31:23,760 --> 00:31:29,000
Speaker 2: alligators and crocodiles do not have urinary bladders. Birds don't

535
00:31:29,000 --> 00:31:32,600
Speaker 2: have a urethra and instead excrete everything through the cloaca.

536
00:31:33,400 --> 00:31:37,200
Speaker 2: And as Lewis Bilozon explained in a BBC Science Focus

537
00:31:37,520 --> 00:31:42,160
Speaker 2: shorty quote, mammals remove excess nitrogen from their bodies by

538
00:31:42,200 --> 00:31:45,440
Speaker 2: converting it to a dilute solution of urrea stored in

539
00:31:45,480 --> 00:31:49,680
Speaker 2: the bladder. Birds convert nitrogen to uric acid instead. This

540
00:31:49,840 --> 00:31:53,560
Speaker 2: is metabolically more costly, but saves water and weight as

541
00:31:53,560 --> 00:31:56,160
Speaker 2: it is less toxic and doesn't need to be diluted

542
00:31:56,240 --> 00:31:56,680
Speaker 2: so much.

543
00:31:57,640 --> 00:32:01,800
Speaker 3: Ah, that's interesting. So the bird's method of ejecting nitrogenist

544
00:32:02,200 --> 00:32:06,000
Speaker 3: nitrogenous waste from the body just has less to do

545
00:32:06,120 --> 00:32:09,360
Speaker 3: with water reserves than it does for us. You know,

546
00:32:09,400 --> 00:32:12,240
Speaker 3: we think of pea as a very water based activity,

547
00:32:12,320 --> 00:32:14,760
Speaker 3: like you know, you need to drink more so that

548
00:32:14,840 --> 00:32:18,200
Speaker 3: you can you can flush everything out correctly. And the

549
00:32:18,240 --> 00:32:21,000
Speaker 3: birds are less reliant on how much water they've got

550
00:32:21,040 --> 00:32:24,320
Speaker 3: in their system, and probably they're probably therefore need to

551
00:32:24,640 --> 00:32:27,400
Speaker 3: fluctuate their body weight less and that kind of thing.

552
00:32:27,760 --> 00:32:31,120
Speaker 2: Yeah, but one on one level, you could make an

553
00:32:31,200 --> 00:32:35,000
Speaker 2: argument that birds don't urinate. And I was looking around

554
00:32:35,040 --> 00:32:38,240
Speaker 2: and even in peer reviewed articles by scientists who are

555
00:32:38,240 --> 00:32:41,920
Speaker 2: studying birds, you see it both ways. Some say birds

556
00:32:41,920 --> 00:32:45,560
Speaker 2: absolutely do not pee because of the aforementioned caveats, while

557
00:32:45,600 --> 00:32:48,800
Speaker 2: others freely use the term urine because I mean, at

558
00:32:48,800 --> 00:32:50,800
Speaker 2: the end of the day, we need to call it something.

559
00:32:51,680 --> 00:32:54,240
Speaker 2: What is the stuff flowing down the legs of the vulture,

560
00:32:55,320 --> 00:32:56,680
Speaker 2: They'll just call it urine? Why not?

561
00:32:57,560 --> 00:33:00,000
Speaker 3: I recall this came up a bit in our episode

562
00:33:00,240 --> 00:33:04,760
Speaker 3: on eurohedrosis, which was the thing about birds pooping on

563
00:33:04,800 --> 00:33:08,360
Speaker 3: their own legs in order to gain the benefits of

564
00:33:08,360 --> 00:33:09,320
Speaker 3: evaporative cooling.

565
00:33:09,680 --> 00:33:13,680
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so yeah, you see it like also insects

566
00:33:14,080 --> 00:33:17,840
Speaker 2: Excrete uric acid. But sometimes you'll just see it called urine,

567
00:33:18,000 --> 00:33:19,760
Speaker 2: you know, informally you have to call it something in

568
00:33:19,800 --> 00:33:24,479
Speaker 2: these papers. However, on occasion you will see it referred

569
00:33:24,520 --> 00:33:27,640
Speaker 2: to as urate instead of urine. So I mean there

570
00:33:27,720 --> 00:33:31,080
Speaker 2: is some additional terminology out there. At any rate, agree

571
00:33:31,120 --> 00:33:34,840
Speaker 2: to disagree on what urine is or isn't. But control,

572
00:33:34,960 --> 00:33:37,640
Speaker 2: I think is the more fascinating aspect of all of this.

573
00:33:38,240 --> 00:33:40,840
Speaker 2: If you have a urinary bladder to store your waste

574
00:33:40,920 --> 00:33:43,200
Speaker 2: liquids in, you can store quite a bit of it,

575
00:33:43,560 --> 00:33:46,240
Speaker 2: and then you can release it to an extent at

576
00:33:46,240 --> 00:33:49,200
Speaker 2: your leisure. It becomes rather unleisurely after a while, but

577
00:33:49,600 --> 00:33:52,200
Speaker 2: you have a fair amount of control about when and

578
00:33:52,240 --> 00:33:55,840
Speaker 2: where you're going to release said urine. And this seems

579
00:33:55,880 --> 00:34:00,400
Speaker 2: to be essentially true of all bladder equipped animals. Animals

580
00:34:00,400 --> 00:34:04,160
Speaker 2: without a bladder, however, it's interesting they can't store as much,

581
00:34:04,400 --> 00:34:07,600
Speaker 2: but they apparently do tend to have some degree of

582
00:34:07,600 --> 00:34:11,080
Speaker 2: control over timing by storing small amounts of it. In

583
00:34:11,120 --> 00:34:14,600
Speaker 2: the cloaca and so forth. Now, the degree to which

584
00:34:14,600 --> 00:34:18,200
Speaker 2: we exercise control over our urine is quite fascinating when

585
00:34:18,239 --> 00:34:21,040
Speaker 2: you get past how mundane and to a certain extent

586
00:34:21,120 --> 00:34:24,719
Speaker 2: taboo it is. To break all this down. I was

587
00:34:24,760 --> 00:34:29,680
Speaker 2: reading a twenty nineteen article titled Choosing to Urinate Circuits

588
00:34:29,680 --> 00:34:36,359
Speaker 2: and Mechanisms Underlying Voluntary Urination by Mokopadhey and Stowers. And

589
00:34:36,400 --> 00:34:39,600
Speaker 2: as the title suggests it, really this paper really gets

590
00:34:39,600 --> 00:34:43,200
Speaker 2: into the underlying mechanisms of peeing. But I loved the

591
00:34:43,239 --> 00:34:47,120
Speaker 2: way they initially present urination in general, and they lead

592
00:34:47,120 --> 00:34:50,160
Speaker 2: with the following sentence, which I thought was splendid quote.

593
00:34:50,280 --> 00:34:54,440
Speaker 2: Urination is one of the most commonly and routinely performed

594
00:34:54,760 --> 00:34:59,239
Speaker 2: social behaviors. Yeah, isn't that neat, But we often don't

595
00:34:59,239 --> 00:35:02,759
Speaker 2: think about it a social behavior. You tend to think

596
00:35:02,800 --> 00:35:06,120
Speaker 2: of your a nation as anything but social. Right. You

597
00:35:06,120 --> 00:35:09,000
Speaker 2: you leave everyone else's company generally to go do it.

598
00:35:09,280 --> 00:35:11,440
Speaker 2: You want to be out of sight of everyone else,

599
00:35:12,320 --> 00:35:14,000
Speaker 2: you know, even if you know you're on a hike

600
00:35:14,120 --> 00:35:17,640
Speaker 2: or the movie theater wherever you want to. You generally

601
00:35:17,680 --> 00:35:20,840
Speaker 2: want some privacy, even if it's sort of the artificial

602
00:35:20,880 --> 00:35:23,960
Speaker 2: privacy of you know, like little walls at the urnal

603
00:35:24,040 --> 00:35:25,040
Speaker 2: stalls and so forth.

604
00:35:25,280 --> 00:35:27,359
Speaker 3: It's one of the most anti social things we do.

605
00:35:27,480 --> 00:35:30,600
Speaker 2: I would think, Yeah, unless you're a small child, of course,

606
00:35:30,680 --> 00:35:34,000
Speaker 2: and they do whatever, and that's something we tend to

607
00:35:34,040 --> 00:35:36,680
Speaker 2: celebrate in art and humor as adults. There's you know,

608
00:35:36,719 --> 00:35:40,400
Speaker 2: you can cultures all over like, there's nothing more amusing

609
00:35:40,680 --> 00:35:43,200
Speaker 2: than a child just peeing whenever and wherever they want,

610
00:35:43,239 --> 00:35:44,080
Speaker 2: and they get away with it.

611
00:35:44,120 --> 00:35:47,400
Speaker 3: The bumper stickers are dedicated to that's true.

612
00:35:48,600 --> 00:35:50,840
Speaker 2: But yeah, the point they make is that even in

613
00:35:51,640 --> 00:35:54,920
Speaker 2: making that choice to go off and pee behind a

614
00:35:54,960 --> 00:35:57,920
Speaker 2: tree or in a bush, or or or certainly to

615
00:35:58,040 --> 00:36:00,360
Speaker 2: use the restroom as opposed to the core owner of

616
00:36:00,400 --> 00:36:04,560
Speaker 2: the movie theater, you are carefully fitting your urination into

617
00:36:04,560 --> 00:36:08,120
Speaker 2: your social environment. The authors point out that humans are

618
00:36:08,320 --> 00:36:11,520
Speaker 2: regularly consciously checking in on the fullness of their bladder

619
00:36:11,880 --> 00:36:15,680
Speaker 2: and then calculating their own urination urgency, and then figuring

620
00:36:15,760 --> 00:36:19,920
Speaker 2: out the social appropriateness of relieving themselves. And I think

621
00:36:19,960 --> 00:36:21,799
Speaker 2: that makes even more sense when you think about not

622
00:36:21,960 --> 00:36:25,640
Speaker 2: only the physical act of urination, but excusing yourself to

623
00:36:25,680 --> 00:36:29,319
Speaker 2: go urinate the way that you're going to present it

624
00:36:29,680 --> 00:36:32,360
Speaker 2: with language, what you were going to how much detail

625
00:36:32,360 --> 00:36:34,000
Speaker 2: you're going to go into, how much detail you're not

626
00:36:34,040 --> 00:36:36,080
Speaker 2: going to go into about what you need to go.

627
00:36:36,120 --> 00:36:38,399
Speaker 3: To That's right. I don't know if I've ever thought

628
00:36:38,440 --> 00:36:40,960
Speaker 3: about it that way, but yes, there is a ton

629
00:36:41,120 --> 00:36:46,279
Speaker 3: of social calculation and social negotiation in the timing and

630
00:36:46,360 --> 00:36:50,799
Speaker 3: location and all that kind of thing about going to

631
00:36:50,840 --> 00:36:51,400
Speaker 3: the bathroom.

632
00:36:51,480 --> 00:36:54,640
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like there are a million ways to essentially say,

633
00:36:55,040 --> 00:36:57,680
Speaker 2: excuse me, I need to go pee, and you would

634
00:36:58,040 --> 00:37:01,560
Speaker 2: use different versions of this potential depending on your exact

635
00:37:01,560 --> 00:37:05,160
Speaker 2: social environment. Now, this next bit that the authors point

636
00:37:05,200 --> 00:37:07,040
Speaker 2: out this is kind of an overstatement of the obvious,

637
00:37:07,080 --> 00:37:09,160
Speaker 2: but one of those I think overstatements backed up by

638
00:37:09,920 --> 00:37:12,640
Speaker 2: some findings that I think drives home the point really well.

639
00:37:12,640 --> 00:37:15,640
Speaker 2: They point out that for the majority of individuals living

640
00:37:15,640 --> 00:37:19,840
Speaker 2: with spinal cord injuries that end up preventing voluntary control

641
00:37:19,880 --> 00:37:23,840
Speaker 2: over urination, among other functions, it's that lack of urination

642
00:37:24,000 --> 00:37:27,400
Speaker 2: control that is generally rated as the factor that impacts

643
00:37:27,440 --> 00:37:30,359
Speaker 2: their life the most. You know, again, we don't think

644
00:37:30,400 --> 00:37:34,040
Speaker 2: of it, think about our ability to control our urination

645
00:37:34,520 --> 00:37:36,960
Speaker 2: until something gets in the way of our ability to

646
00:37:37,000 --> 00:37:39,440
Speaker 2: control it, and then we realize just how socially important

647
00:37:39,480 --> 00:37:42,760
Speaker 2: that control really is. And all of this, they note,

648
00:37:42,840 --> 00:37:46,360
Speaker 2: is on top of the primary animal concerns of the

649
00:37:46,480 --> 00:37:51,280
Speaker 2: urination decision, which add the additional questions is it physically

650
00:37:51,360 --> 00:37:54,879
Speaker 2: safe right now for me to relieve myself? Or can

651
00:37:54,960 --> 00:37:57,400
Speaker 2: I relieve myself right now in a manner that's not

652
00:37:57,520 --> 00:38:02,200
Speaker 2: going to foul my environment and or negatively impact my health?

653
00:38:02,680 --> 00:38:05,120
Speaker 2: And then for some animals, there again there is that

654
00:38:05,239 --> 00:38:09,000
Speaker 2: added domain of communication. What sort of information am I

655
00:38:09,080 --> 00:38:13,440
Speaker 2: putting out there by urinating? Why here? Why now? And

656
00:38:13,840 --> 00:38:17,239
Speaker 2: this factor too gives us all the more reason for

657
00:38:17,320 --> 00:38:19,120
Speaker 2: an animal to be able to hold on to a

658
00:38:19,160 --> 00:38:21,959
Speaker 2: supply of urine, because if you're going to potentially need

659
00:38:21,960 --> 00:38:25,480
Speaker 2: that to communicate, then you don't want to just get

660
00:38:25,560 --> 00:38:27,040
Speaker 2: rid of all of it. You might need to have

661
00:38:27,080 --> 00:38:28,920
Speaker 2: some of it with you because what if you need

662
00:38:28,960 --> 00:38:30,640
Speaker 2: to speak and you have no voice.

663
00:38:31,560 --> 00:38:35,080
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is really interesting because it raises ways in

664
00:38:35,120 --> 00:38:41,600
Speaker 3: which urine is and is not like language for communication.

665
00:38:42,680 --> 00:38:46,200
Speaker 3: One way that it is not like language is that

666
00:38:46,280 --> 00:38:50,720
Speaker 3: with language, you have voluntary control over what you say

667
00:38:51,840 --> 00:38:55,560
Speaker 3: with your urine. I think there's probably a lot less control,

668
00:38:55,680 --> 00:38:59,439
Speaker 3: maybe no control for most species, over what you say

669
00:38:59,480 --> 00:39:02,640
Speaker 3: with your ear, and instead it's a question of when

670
00:39:02,840 --> 00:39:04,000
Speaker 3: and how and where.

671
00:39:05,200 --> 00:39:08,040
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, for the most part, there's a raw honesty

672
00:39:08,400 --> 00:39:11,719
Speaker 2: to the statement made with urine. But we may come

673
00:39:11,760 --> 00:39:13,239
Speaker 2: back to that a little later.

674
00:39:13,440 --> 00:39:17,279
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, now this is good teaser. Yeah, you may

675
00:39:17,440 --> 00:39:20,040
Speaker 3: in fact be able to lie even with p but

676
00:39:20,239 --> 00:39:21,080
Speaker 3: we'll explore that.

677
00:39:21,040 --> 00:39:23,359
Speaker 2: As we go on. For the most part, though, yeah,

678
00:39:23,400 --> 00:39:26,840
Speaker 2: humans don't engage in this. One major factor is that

679
00:39:26,880 --> 00:39:30,479
Speaker 2: while humans can certainly smell urine, as we all know, again,

680
00:39:30,520 --> 00:39:32,799
Speaker 2: we cannot process it and read it in the way

681
00:39:32,960 --> 00:39:36,040
Speaker 2: that so many animals with heightened senses of smell can.

682
00:39:36,520 --> 00:39:39,600
Speaker 3: This is something I was wondering about. Certainly, there's not

683
00:39:39,719 --> 00:39:43,719
Speaker 3: a whole lot of conscious information conveyed or gleaned by

684
00:39:43,760 --> 00:39:46,720
Speaker 3: the smell of urine. I would wonder to what extent

685
00:39:46,760 --> 00:39:52,319
Speaker 3: there may be some subconscious information transmitted, But even then

686
00:39:52,360 --> 00:39:55,160
Speaker 3: I would be skeptical of anything that claims too strong

687
00:39:55,239 --> 00:39:58,120
Speaker 3: of an effect based on that. A lot of I

688
00:39:58,160 --> 00:39:59,760
Speaker 3: don't know. I feel like a lot of those studies

689
00:39:59,760 --> 00:40:03,040
Speaker 3: about sort of like the unconscious kind of smell based

690
00:40:03,160 --> 00:40:05,839
Speaker 3: judgments made about people, some of that stuff was kind

691
00:40:05,840 --> 00:40:07,000
Speaker 3: of overstated. I think.

692
00:40:07,239 --> 00:40:09,000
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you get into a lot of these,

693
00:40:09,440 --> 00:40:14,879
Speaker 2: at times heated disagreements over pheromones and humans, which I'll

694
00:40:14,880 --> 00:40:16,600
Speaker 2: touch on here in a bit. But but yet not

695
00:40:16,920 --> 00:40:19,640
Speaker 2: to imply that humans, you know, I mean, we do

696
00:40:19,719 --> 00:40:21,640
Speaker 2: not have the same sense of smell. We don do

697
00:40:21,719 --> 00:40:24,480
Speaker 2: not live in the same sense universe as a dog

698
00:40:25,040 --> 00:40:27,800
Speaker 2: or even a cat. But you know, we can still

699
00:40:27,800 --> 00:40:30,200
Speaker 2: smell an impressive number of different sense I've read as

700
00:40:30,239 --> 00:40:34,440
Speaker 2: high as like one trillion different sense And certainly, you know,

701
00:40:34,560 --> 00:40:38,240
Speaker 2: I can say that I can tell the difference between

702
00:40:38,760 --> 00:40:41,279
Speaker 2: the odor of cat urine and the odor of human urine.

703
00:40:41,840 --> 00:40:45,520
Speaker 2: They're distinct, and I can point them out. But being

704
00:40:45,520 --> 00:40:48,759
Speaker 2: able to smell one trillion sense that's not the same

705
00:40:48,760 --> 00:40:51,160
Speaker 2: thing as being able to actually make sense of all

706
00:40:51,200 --> 00:40:53,880
Speaker 2: the data. An imperfect analogy came to my mind as

707
00:40:53,880 --> 00:40:55,799
Speaker 2: I was reading about this. So if you were to

708
00:40:55,840 --> 00:41:00,680
Speaker 2: venture into a movie theater with quite poor eyesight no sound,

709
00:41:01,360 --> 00:41:04,839
Speaker 2: based on your limited side alone, what could you make

710
00:41:04,880 --> 00:41:07,960
Speaker 2: out about the movie? Could you determine its genre, it's

711
00:41:07,960 --> 00:41:11,320
Speaker 2: a decade of release, anything at all about its stars,

712
00:41:11,400 --> 00:41:14,839
Speaker 2: its director, its country of origin, or plot. Like there's

713
00:41:14,880 --> 00:41:16,279
Speaker 2: a lot of infort you might be able to make

714
00:41:16,320 --> 00:41:20,000
Speaker 2: some very broad judgments about it based on what you

715
00:41:20,040 --> 00:41:23,000
Speaker 2: could see, but what you couldn't see would be like

716
00:41:23,120 --> 00:41:26,560
Speaker 2: all the really important details that make it not just

717
00:41:27,719 --> 00:41:30,440
Speaker 2: you know, an array of colors that speak to a

718
00:41:30,480 --> 00:41:35,280
Speaker 2: certain decade maybe, but would actually make it a story. Yeah,

719
00:41:35,320 --> 00:41:37,200
Speaker 2: you know, it's a fool's errand I think in the end,

720
00:41:37,239 --> 00:41:39,200
Speaker 2: to try and fully put ourselves in the mindset or

721
00:41:39,239 --> 00:41:41,920
Speaker 2: the since universe of another organism. We've talked about this before.

722
00:41:42,640 --> 00:41:45,560
Speaker 2: Much has been written about this, but I get the

723
00:41:45,600 --> 00:41:48,520
Speaker 2: feeling that this is the sort of gulf between what

724
00:41:48,960 --> 00:41:51,840
Speaker 2: happens when a human smells a splash of urine and

725
00:41:51,880 --> 00:41:54,920
Speaker 2: a dog. Does you know it is the dog is

726
00:41:54,960 --> 00:41:58,400
Speaker 2: just going to since things with so much more clarity.

727
00:41:58,160 --> 00:42:00,520
Speaker 3: And you could probably tell that just in two by

728
00:42:00,560 --> 00:42:03,480
Speaker 3: watching the behavior of a dog by like how important

729
00:42:03,520 --> 00:42:06,000
Speaker 3: it is to them, how much attention they pay to

730
00:42:06,040 --> 00:42:08,520
Speaker 3: the urine of other dogs and to marking with urine

731
00:42:08,560 --> 00:42:12,640
Speaker 3: of their own, that you can tell even before the

732
00:42:12,719 --> 00:42:17,000
Speaker 3: experiments are done, that something very significant is being exchanged here.

733
00:42:17,320 --> 00:42:19,799
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like this is this is not just a

734
00:42:19,920 --> 00:42:22,200
Speaker 2: dog being dumb. This is a dog knowing that there

735
00:42:22,239 --> 00:42:25,520
Speaker 2: is important information here that can be gleaned and therefore

736
00:42:25,560 --> 00:42:28,400
Speaker 2: it deserves another sniff or two. I have to I

737
00:42:28,400 --> 00:42:30,200
Speaker 2: have to bring this back to were wolves for just

738
00:42:30,239 --> 00:42:33,879
Speaker 2: a second. Here I was reading a nineteen ninety six

739
00:42:34,360 --> 00:42:37,399
Speaker 2: Discworld novel titled Feet of Clay by the late great

740
00:42:37,480 --> 00:42:41,080
Speaker 2: Terry Pratchett, who, if you're not familiar Terry Pratchett, you know,

741
00:42:41,120 --> 00:42:43,680
Speaker 2: writes these wonderful wrote these wonderful novels set in the

742
00:42:43,719 --> 00:42:48,720
Speaker 2: fantasy world of Discworld, full of Monty Pythonesque humor, lots

743
00:42:48,719 --> 00:42:51,440
Speaker 2: of silly stuff. But he also had a real gift

744
00:42:51,760 --> 00:42:58,759
Speaker 2: for insightful commentary as well. And and yeah, so you know,

745
00:42:58,840 --> 00:43:01,279
Speaker 2: be just mad cap goofy one second. But then it

746
00:43:01,320 --> 00:43:04,719
Speaker 2: gets really interesting. And in particular, there's a there's a

747
00:43:04,800 --> 00:43:08,319
Speaker 2: character in this member of the Night's Watch whose whose

748
00:43:08,400 --> 00:43:12,480
Speaker 2: name is ongo Of von Uberwald, and she is a werewolf,

749
00:43:13,520 --> 00:43:18,600
Speaker 2: and he describes her ability to smell several times in

750
00:43:18,600 --> 00:43:22,200
Speaker 2: the book. She's investigating things and leaning on her werewolf

751
00:43:22,280 --> 00:43:28,360
Speaker 2: senses to smell the environment, and pointing out that she

752
00:43:28,480 --> 00:43:30,799
Speaker 2: can smell a room and she can know like who

753
00:43:30,920 --> 00:43:33,360
Speaker 2: or what has been present in that room for perhaps

754
00:43:33,400 --> 00:43:36,200
Speaker 2: as long as a month prior, which I think I

755
00:43:36,200 --> 00:43:38,719
Speaker 2: thought was an interesting way of looking at it, Like

756
00:43:38,719 --> 00:43:41,600
Speaker 2: it's challenging to describe this sort of thing, something that's

757
00:43:41,640 --> 00:43:46,440
Speaker 2: really foreign to our smell, dull, visually focused existence. But

758
00:43:46,760 --> 00:43:49,160
Speaker 2: the closest way you might be able to describe something

759
00:43:49,280 --> 00:43:52,160
Speaker 2: like this is that this were wolf character she can

760
00:43:52,520 --> 00:43:54,960
Speaker 2: see through time with her sense of smell. She can

761
00:43:55,040 --> 00:43:59,319
Speaker 2: like look back through time with smell. And I think

762
00:43:59,320 --> 00:44:03,640
Speaker 2: that's maybe scratching at a way that we might understand

763
00:44:03,880 --> 00:44:06,200
Speaker 2: what a dog is doing, or various other animals that

764
00:44:06,200 --> 00:44:08,840
Speaker 2: have heightened senses of smells when they are picking up

765
00:44:08,880 --> 00:44:09,759
Speaker 2: on odors like this.

766
00:44:10,880 --> 00:44:11,440
Speaker 3: Yeah.

767
00:44:11,719 --> 00:44:15,040
Speaker 2: Now again, you do see arguments about pheromones, and I mean,

768
00:44:15,040 --> 00:44:18,680
Speaker 2: pheromones are of course real, but to what degree or

769
00:44:18,719 --> 00:44:22,359
Speaker 2: of it all are humans able to pick up on pheromones.

770
00:44:23,000 --> 00:44:25,840
Speaker 2: I was reading a twenty fourteen article for Scientific American

771
00:44:26,000 --> 00:44:29,760
Speaker 2: by Daisy Juhus, and the author points out that there's

772
00:44:30,239 --> 00:44:33,520
Speaker 2: quote no evidence of a consistent and strong behavioral response

773
00:44:33,640 --> 00:44:37,480
Speaker 2: to any human produced chemical cue, So it's possible, She

774
00:44:37,560 --> 00:44:41,960
Speaker 2: points out that we might have once had capabilities along

775
00:44:42,000 --> 00:44:44,640
Speaker 2: these lines, but what we're left with now or just

776
00:44:44,760 --> 00:44:46,560
Speaker 2: it's far blunt instrumentation.

777
00:44:47,760 --> 00:44:52,000
Speaker 3: Yeah, that lines up with what I've read generally, you

778
00:44:52,040 --> 00:44:55,520
Speaker 3: couldn't rule out that humans are to some small degree

779
00:44:55,719 --> 00:45:00,040
Speaker 3: influenced subconsciously by the smells of each other. But it

780
00:45:00,120 --> 00:45:02,560
Speaker 3: doesn't seem it doesn't seem like we're at that sort

781
00:45:02,560 --> 00:45:06,480
Speaker 3: of animal pheromone level like some people thought maybe, I

782
00:45:06,480 --> 00:45:08,520
Speaker 3: don't know, a few decades ago, there was kind of

783
00:45:08,560 --> 00:45:10,279
Speaker 3: a buzz about this. I think that, like, are we

784
00:45:10,400 --> 00:45:14,200
Speaker 3: actually secretly being controlled? But you know, are we subject

785
00:45:14,239 --> 00:45:16,759
Speaker 3: to pheromone mind control? I think the answer is no.

786
00:45:17,000 --> 00:45:20,640
Speaker 3: To whatever extent such influences there, they seem to be

787
00:45:20,760 --> 00:45:21,440
Speaker 3: rather mild.

788
00:45:21,680 --> 00:45:23,640
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean not to say that that smell data

789
00:45:23,719 --> 00:45:25,839
Speaker 2: is not in the mix when we're evaluating other people.

790
00:45:25,920 --> 00:45:27,960
Speaker 2: I mean, some people have nice smells about them and

791
00:45:28,040 --> 00:45:30,320
Speaker 2: we pick up on that, or they have bad smells

792
00:45:30,320 --> 00:45:31,960
Speaker 2: about them that we don't like and we pick up

793
00:45:31,960 --> 00:45:35,560
Speaker 2: on that as well, you know, and in either case

794
00:45:35,640 --> 00:45:39,000
Speaker 2: either organic smells or smells that have been applied through perfumes

795
00:45:39,040 --> 00:45:42,400
Speaker 2: and deodorance and whatnot. But yeah, the idea that there

796
00:45:42,440 --> 00:45:48,120
Speaker 2: there's actually a lot of pheromonal communication going on probably

797
00:45:48,160 --> 00:45:52,760
Speaker 2: not even in confusing this matter too. You have various

798
00:45:53,480 --> 00:45:55,600
Speaker 2: trends that pick up on this, you know, like dating

799
00:45:55,640 --> 00:45:57,840
Speaker 2: trends we've seen in the past where it's like, do

800
00:45:57,960 --> 00:46:01,480
Speaker 2: some what is it flash dating based on smell? I

801
00:46:01,480 --> 00:46:03,440
Speaker 2: don't know if that's still a fad, but for a

802
00:46:03,480 --> 00:46:05,400
Speaker 2: little while I remember that being in the news.

803
00:46:05,880 --> 00:46:07,160
Speaker 3: I'm not going to comment on that.

804
00:46:08,920 --> 00:46:14,600
Speaker 2: Now here's one more interesting question. Humans therefore can't really

805
00:46:14,640 --> 00:46:18,120
Speaker 2: read urine, but might we be able to communicate with

806
00:46:18,280 --> 00:46:22,520
Speaker 2: our urine with another species that can read urine?

807
00:46:23,880 --> 00:46:26,959
Speaker 3: So like, could we talk urine even if we can't

808
00:46:26,960 --> 00:46:28,360
Speaker 3: really understand urine?

809
00:46:28,880 --> 00:46:32,719
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, and I mean largely no, but sort of

810
00:46:32,840 --> 00:46:37,839
Speaker 2: yes too, according to some, in a very one directional way.

811
00:46:38,640 --> 00:46:43,320
Speaker 2: Never cry Wolf author and environmentalist Farley Mowatt wrote about

812
00:46:43,320 --> 00:46:46,560
Speaker 2: this in his book Never Cry Wolf, talking about marking

813
00:46:46,600 --> 00:46:49,960
Speaker 2: his territory in the wilderness while studying wolves, and claimed

814
00:46:50,080 --> 00:46:53,279
Speaker 2: that they honored his mark territory and marked like their

815
00:46:53,360 --> 00:46:57,280
Speaker 2: side of the mark Stones. Film fans might remember watching

816
00:46:57,320 --> 00:47:00,600
Speaker 2: Charles Martin Smith do this the nineteen eighty three film adaptation.

817
00:47:01,880 --> 00:47:04,840
Speaker 2: Dogs furthermore, can be trained to pick up on specific

818
00:47:04,920 --> 00:47:07,400
Speaker 2: notes in human urine that can be helpful in the

819
00:47:07,440 --> 00:47:10,719
Speaker 2: detection of illnesses. So you know, that's kind of a

820
00:47:10,800 --> 00:47:14,560
Speaker 2: one way urine communication. Oh yeah, I can see that,

821
00:47:15,120 --> 00:47:16,959
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure it may come back to this later,

822
00:47:17,000 --> 00:47:21,640
Speaker 2: but you could also eventually add the medical and technological

823
00:47:21,719 --> 00:47:23,840
Speaker 2: layer to all of this and say that, well, through

824
00:47:23,920 --> 00:47:28,800
Speaker 2: our medicine and through our technology, humans absolutely can read urine,

825
00:47:29,560 --> 00:47:32,800
Speaker 2: and you know, to a certain extent, you could imagine

826
00:47:32,800 --> 00:47:35,680
Speaker 2: some scenario where we could speak with our urine as well,

827
00:47:35,920 --> 00:47:39,399
Speaker 2: if we were using our technology on like both ends

828
00:47:39,440 --> 00:47:42,040
Speaker 2: of the conversation. I'm not sure what that would look like,

829
00:47:42,320 --> 00:47:45,359
Speaker 2: what why that would be, but maybe we'll get into

830
00:47:45,400 --> 00:47:45,759
Speaker 2: that later.

831
00:47:46,280 --> 00:47:48,160
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I think we need to wrap up part

832
00:47:48,200 --> 00:47:50,400
Speaker 3: one of this series there, but we're going to be

833
00:47:50,480 --> 00:47:53,240
Speaker 3: back in at least one more part, maybe maybe multiple

834
00:47:53,320 --> 00:47:57,959
Speaker 3: parts with more fascinating examples of urine based communication. What

835
00:47:58,080 --> 00:48:00,719
Speaker 3: can the p say and what can what can we hear?

836
00:48:01,480 --> 00:48:04,480
Speaker 2: That's right, so tune in for that. In the meantime,

837
00:48:04,520 --> 00:48:06,160
Speaker 2: we will just remind you that Stuff to Blow Your

838
00:48:06,200 --> 00:48:09,080
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core

839
00:48:09,120 --> 00:48:12,480
Speaker 2: episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays we have a

840
00:48:12,480 --> 00:48:14,919
Speaker 2: short form episode, and on Fridays we set aside most

841
00:48:14,960 --> 00:48:17,239
Speaker 2: serious concerns to just talk about a weird film. On

842
00:48:17,320 --> 00:48:20,799
Speaker 2: Weird House Cinema. You can get the podcast pretty much

843
00:48:20,800 --> 00:48:23,840
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844
00:48:23,840 --> 00:48:26,239
Speaker 2: haven't asked in a little bit on this front, but

845
00:48:26,600 --> 00:48:28,640
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846
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847
00:48:31,719 --> 00:48:34,560
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848
00:48:34,880 --> 00:48:36,640
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849
00:48:36,680 --> 00:48:39,319
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850
00:48:39,360 --> 00:48:41,680
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851
00:48:41,640 --> 00:48:45,960
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.

852
00:48:46,239 --> 00:48:47,879
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853
00:48:47,880 --> 00:48:50,440
Speaker 3: with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest

854
00:48:50,440 --> 00:48:52,480
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855
00:48:52,680 --> 00:48:55,360
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856
00:48:55,360 --> 00:49:04,680
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857
00:49:04,800 --> 00:49:07,719
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858
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