Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to you Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert Lamb.
Speaker 3: And I am Joe McCormick. And today on Stuff to
Speaker 3: Blow Your Mind, we are going to begin a series
Speaker 3: of episodes on a weird and interesting medium of communication
Speaker 3: between animals, specifically communication by means of urine. I've said
Speaker 3: this before on the show, but I think humans are
Speaker 3: really a species defined by the power and complexity of
Speaker 3: our communication skills. There is a lot that makes humankind unique,
Speaker 3: but communication, I think is the thing that makes us
Speaker 3: most unique among the animals. When we want to share
Speaker 3: information about the world or about our intentions with another person,
Speaker 3: we've got so many options. We can talk out loud,
Speaker 3: we can use body language or sign language. We can
Speaker 3: draw represent ideas visually. We can use written language, which,
Speaker 3: of course that you know has as a million different
Speaker 3: instantiations and different types of technology today. So you've got
Speaker 3: everything from you know, the handwritten note, to mass media
Speaker 3: like books and magazines, email, text messages, social media posts.
Speaker 3: I guess some people are probably still facts and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but mostly we've got it reduced down to texting.
Speaker 2: I think in general, we can throw all these things
Speaker 2: out the window and we're just going to focus on
Speaker 2: texting from here on out for the duration.
Speaker 3: I only want to read books in SMS format now.
Speaker 3: But I think it's easy, because we have such mastery
Speaker 3: over communication and communication technology to kind of not notice
Speaker 3: media of communication that are not available to us, or
Speaker 3: at least not usually. I love thinking about other media
Speaker 3: of information sharing which do exist in nature, but which
Speaker 3: are not used by humans, at least not consciously. And
Speaker 3: it turns out a huge, pretty much unignorable example used
Speaker 3: throughout the animal kingdom is urine communication through.
Speaker 2: P That's right, And as we get into this topic,
Speaker 2: I'd encourage everyone out there to set aside their narrow
Speaker 2: human understanding of urine as much as possible and open
Speaker 2: your mind to the extent that we can to the
Speaker 2: richer world of informational micturition. Gegling is still permitted, but
Speaker 2: rethink you're in a bed as we proceed here now.
Speaker 3: To get us started, I wanted to mention a recent
Speaker 3: zoology story that first got me thinking about doing this
Speaker 3: topic on the show. It was a paper published this
Speaker 3: year in the journal Behavioral Processes by three researchers named
Speaker 3: Clariana Arujo Wang, Mauricio Kanter, and John Y. Wang, and
Speaker 3: the paper was called aerial Urination suggests an undescribed sensory
Speaker 3: modality and social function in river dolphins. So a bit
Speaker 3: on the authors here. At least one of the authors
Speaker 3: is affiliated with a river dolphin research project in Brazil
Speaker 3: called Botos do dos Serrado, another with the Marine Mammal
Speaker 3: Institute of Oregon State University in the United States, and
Speaker 3: the third with Trent University in Ontario, Canada. I believe
Speaker 3: they were all associated to some extent with a research
Speaker 3: group called Cetasia Cetasia based in Canada, but this study
Speaker 3: concerns individuals of the species Anya Jeffrentsis, also known as
Speaker 3: the Boto or the pink river dolphin or the Amazon
Speaker 3: river dolphin. Rob Have we ever done a long look
Speaker 3: at river dolphins on the show? I don't think so.
Speaker 2: I don't believe we have. I imagine a lot of
Speaker 2: you have seen images of them as we'll describe here.
Speaker 2: Do not just picture any other sort of dolphin and
Speaker 2: just color it pink in your mind, because the reality
Speaker 2: here is a bit different.
Speaker 3: Yeah, these aren't just your bottle nose. This has a
Speaker 3: distinctly alt dolphin feel.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 3: The Amazon river dolphin is the world's largest species of
Speaker 3: freshwater dolphin, with males growing up to two point five
Speaker 3: meters in length and one hundred and eighty five kilograms.
Speaker 3: Adult females are somewhat smaller than that. They look fairly
Speaker 3: distinct from marine dolphins, with long, skinny snouts without a
Speaker 3: pronounced dorsal fin like you would see on bottlenose dolphins.
Speaker 3: You kind of don't appreciate how much the dorsal fin
Speaker 3: really contributes to the animal's profile until you see a
Speaker 3: dolphin without one. It's not that it doesn't have a
Speaker 3: dorsal fin, but it's more of a hump. Bodos have
Speaker 3: kind of a if you're looking at them from the side,
Speaker 3: imagine a kind of plateau silhouette along the back with
Speaker 3: a mid length corner gently sloping down to the tail.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I just find they do just look bizarre.
Speaker 2: They to me, they kind of look like if the
Speaker 2: Cenobyites made a dolphin, you know, like out of a person.
Speaker 2: That's the kind of vibe I get off of a
Speaker 2: pink river dolphin.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I hope this doesn't come off as hostile to
Speaker 3: them because they're wonderful creatures, but there is a there
Speaker 3: is a suggestion of gore in their appearance. There's something
Speaker 3: a little bit, a little bit squicky kind of but
Speaker 3: also they've got a little smile sometimes. Have you seen
Speaker 3: this in different pictures where if you look at the
Speaker 3: head just right, it looks like they're they're giving you
Speaker 3: a grin that's I don't know, it's a little creepy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, it's a little easier to take that
Speaker 2: that grin from a bottle nose dolphin. And part of it,
Speaker 2: I'm just not used to seeing these guys. I guess,
Speaker 2: you know. They're beautiful in their own ride, but they're
Speaker 2: also they're a little bit weird.
Speaker 3: So bodos are found not just in the Amazon River,
Speaker 3: but in rivers throughout northern and central South America. I
Speaker 3: believe they're in the Orinoco Basin as well, and at
Speaker 3: least one other major river system. Bodos tend to be
Speaker 3: more gray in color when they're young, but then adults,
Speaker 3: especially the males, take on this blotchy pink color as
Speaker 3: they mature. I've read in some sources that the pinkness
Speaker 3: might be associated with places on the skin where there
Speaker 3: have been sort of bumps or abrasions or wounds on
Speaker 3: the skin over the years. But I think that's not
Speaker 3: for certain. There seem to be interesting questions about all
Speaker 3: of the environmental factors that determine the Amazon River dolphin's pinkness.
Speaker 3: It might also have to do with the opacity of
Speaker 3: the water they live in, or with water temperature, or
Speaker 3: maybe a few other things. This is not fully settled,
Speaker 3: but anyway, I was just reading a few other things
Speaker 3: about the species, generally in a twenty sixteen feature put
Speaker 3: out by the American Association for the Advancement of Science,
Speaker 3: written by someone named Kirsten Fernley, and this article mentions
Speaker 3: that many other dolphin species have a fused spine, but
Speaker 3: bodos do not, and a bodo's unfused spine allows it
Speaker 3: to actually turn its head from side to side, which
Speaker 3: might not sound remarkable to you until you see a
Speaker 3: picture of a dolphin turning its head to look at you. Yep,
Speaker 3: pretty weird, rob, I've got a picture in the outline
Speaker 3: for you to look at this dolphin. It's it's like saying.
Speaker 2: Hi, Yeah, it's a little bit creepy.
Speaker 3: Like other dolphins, bodos also use echolocation to navigate their
Speaker 3: environment and to hunt, so that means emitting low frequency
Speaker 3: clicks or slaps from a fatty organ on the head
Speaker 3: called the melon, and then listening for the bounce back
Speaker 3: to get information about their surroundings, which they sense with
Speaker 3: sensory organs in their in their lower jaw. Especially, bodos
Speaker 3: apparently eat lots of different kinds of prey fish, crustaceans,
Speaker 3: reptiles which they catch in their long jaws. They apparently
Speaker 3: have different kinds of teeth the front and the back
Speaker 3: of the jaws. So if you see one of them
Speaker 3: with the mouth open toward the front of the jaws
Speaker 3: or this elongated snout, they'll have kind of pointy teeth
Speaker 3: which are the grabber teeth that's for catching you and
Speaker 3: not letting you go. And then they've got grinding teeth
Speaker 3: farther back in the mouth. So that's your destiny if
Speaker 3: you're a crab and one of these things digs you
Speaker 3: up from the river bottom. Level of socialization among botos
Speaker 3: seems variable. Sometimes they will gather in groups, especially if
Speaker 3: feeding there's a lot of feeding resources nearby. Sometimes you
Speaker 3: will see them in mother calf pairs, but it seems
Speaker 3: most often adults live alone. There's solitary species.
Speaker 2: Now, I was curious about the mythology and the legends
Speaker 2: concerning the Boto, so I looked into this a little bit.
Speaker 2: The name Boto is of Portuguese origin, but the indigenous
Speaker 2: peoples of the Amazon and beyond new of them long
Speaker 2: before the arrival of Europeans. Naturally, unfortunately, not much seems
Speaker 2: to have survived concerning exactly how while those people in
Speaker 2: pre Columbian times interpreted them in their folklore and myths.
Speaker 2: But we might reasonably infer that there could be some
Speaker 2: connection between what was believed in those days and more
Speaker 2: modern folkloric beliefs about these river dolphins. But the modern
Speaker 2: stories are pretty alarming, as pointed out in Amazon River
Speaker 2: Dolphin Love Fetishes from Folklore to Molecular Forensics by Gravina
Speaker 2: at All. This is published in Marine Mammal Science two
Speaker 2: thousand and eight. The common folk belief one encounters is
Speaker 2: that the Boto is a shape shifting seducer, or worse,
Speaker 2: at dusk, the Boto can transform itself into a handsome
Speaker 2: Caucasian male to dance boldly and seduce women. They are
Speaker 2: also said to enter homes at night and paralyze the
Speaker 2: occupants with their gaze before having their way with them.
Speaker 2: And then it dawned, the boto must return to the
Speaker 2: water into its natural form. The authors here point out
Speaker 2: that in some regions the Boto legend is use to
Speaker 2: explain certain teenage pregnancies that occur, and more generally, I've
Speaker 2: seen the legend explain as something that was originally a
Speaker 2: warning against the dangers posed by male colonists in potential
Speaker 2: sexual violence. The nib dot com has a really good
Speaker 2: web comic about this, if anyone wants to explore that.
Speaker 2: But associated with these traditions are also sometimes practices of
Speaker 2: using body parts of the boto as fetish items. The
Speaker 2: eye can be held. Some of these traditions hold while
Speaker 2: conversing with a romantic interest, because the power of their
Speaker 2: gaze is irresistible, and so you can get some of
Speaker 2: that power to rub off on you. And then there
Speaker 2: are other traditions where one might take the dried, pulverized
Speaker 2: genitalia of one of these river dolphins and then mix
Speaker 2: it with talcum powder or perfume and then apply that
Speaker 2: to your own genitals as a magic pleasure or fertility
Speaker 2: boosting powder. The authors in that paper I cited, they
Speaker 2: point out there are regional variations, as we've touched on, like,
Speaker 2: there's ultimately a lot of territory covered by the range
Speaker 2: of the Boto, and that range is going to cover
Speaker 2: a lot of variety. There's a lot of variety and active,
Speaker 2: active cultural influences to be found in these regions. And
Speaker 2: so when some areas there are indigenous beliefs that the
Speaker 2: photo is too sacred to kill, while in other areas
Speaker 2: there has traditionally been more of a practice of killing
Speaker 2: them for their body parts and so forth. But the
Speaker 2: bottom line is the Boto possibly a terrifying shape shifting seducer.
Speaker 2: And maybe this has something to do with its coloration
Speaker 2: and it's kind of a kind of fleshy aspect of
Speaker 2: its body. Maybe that's what leads to some of some
Speaker 2: variations of these beliefs that it can take on the
Speaker 2: form of a human being.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the idea that there is something of blood about it,
Speaker 3: or maybe something about it being able to kind of
Speaker 3: turn and look at you, I wonder possibly, yeah, Yeah,
Speaker 3: But anyway, coming to the scientific paper, we're going to
Speaker 3: talk about this will give you another a very different
Speaker 3: way to think about the bodo. So in this paper
Speaker 3: from Behavioral Processes in twenty twenty five, again that's a
Speaker 3: rujo wang at all. The authors describe recent observations are
Speaker 3: actually not that recent. It's from a few years back.
Speaker 3: I'll talk about that in a second. Describe their observations
Speaker 3: of this behavior among bodos, which they call aerial urination.
Speaker 3: Another way to put it would be pea fountains. So
Speaker 3: the pea fountain behaviors documented in this research took place
Speaker 3: among wild bodos in a river in central Brazil called
Speaker 3: the Token Teenes between September twenty fourteen and March twenty eighteen,
Speaker 3: and the observations were recorded from fifteen meters high observation
Speaker 3: platforms at the water's edge. So the pea fountain behavior,
Speaker 3: here's how it goes down. You got one male boto.
Speaker 3: Originally it turns upside down at the surface of the river,
Speaker 3: with its underside facing the sky and its penis sticking
Speaker 3: up above the water line. Then it starts to pee,
Speaker 3: projecting an arc of urine into the air, generally about
Speaker 3: three feet long, which splashes down into the water. Nearby.
Speaker 3: Usually while creating this pea fountain, the boto will continue swimming,
Speaker 3: sometimes in a straight line, sometimes zigzagging back and forth,
Speaker 3: sometimes looping around in a circle. And this by itself
Speaker 3: could be seen as a strange and interesting behavior, like
Speaker 3: why take the trouble to flip upside down and pee
Speaker 3: into the sky? Like why would you try to make
Speaker 3: your urine cross the barrier of worlds into the unswimmable air.
Speaker 3: Why not just do it straight into the water and
Speaker 3: go about your business?
Speaker 2: Humans would never, right, so why would the dolphins?
Speaker 3: I was exactly trying to think about when humans would
Speaker 3: make a point to like submerge, just barely submerge their
Speaker 3: bodies under the water in order to pee. I guess
Speaker 3: the main reason I could the humans would do that
Speaker 3: would be for like various forms of modesty, like in
Speaker 3: order to not be seen peeing or not be heard
Speaker 3: or something.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I think that's that's a fine point. I
Speaker 2: would also argue, and again, we're comparing dolphins with humans,
Speaker 2: which is closer comparison to be made than humans do
Speaker 2: various other animals, but humans. When humans have the ability
Speaker 2: to aim and control their urination streams, they are liable
Speaker 2: to do novel things with their control within the acceptable
Speaker 2: environment that they are urinating. I would bring to mind
Speaker 2: occasionally one might see a target in a urinal that
Speaker 2: sort of thing, sure, and that would encourage one to
Speaker 2: aim for the target. Or maybe one is urinating in
Speaker 2: the wild and there is like one rock that calls
Speaker 2: out more than other rocks.
Speaker 3: Sure, yeah, uh huh, I see what you're saying. So
Speaker 3: it can be a form of play or self amusement
Speaker 3: in a way. And dolphins, you know, dolphins are intelligent animals.
Speaker 3: You think that they might just maybe sometimes they do
Speaker 3: things just to play, just kind of for a novelty
Speaker 3: of the behavior. So there would be interesting questions even
Speaker 3: if it was just the aerial urine stream. But here's
Speaker 3: where it gets even more interesting. The authors of this
Speaker 3: paper observed that two thirds of the time, sixty seven
Speaker 3: percent of the time, one male river dolphin did this.
Speaker 3: It happened to be when there was another male right there,
Speaker 3: right nearby, which the authors called the receiver of the
Speaker 3: aerial urination. And what's more, the receiver dolphin would often
Speaker 3: appear not to avoid the stream. Sometimes it would just
Speaker 3: stay where it was in the water. Basically right under
Speaker 3: where the stream was hitting. But often it would appear
Speaker 3: to deliberately chase the stream of urine and try to
Speaker 3: get under it. So really the dolphins would be going
Speaker 3: out of their way to get peed on, it appears
Speaker 3: to be yes, and not just to get peed on,
Speaker 3: to get peed on in the face. So the other
Speaker 3: male dolphin here will approach the place where the airborne
Speaker 3: stream is splashing down and it will stick its head
Speaker 3: up out of the water to let the urine splash
Speaker 3: down and run over its rostrum, which is what the
Speaker 3: dolphins protruding beak like jaw is called.
Speaker 2: Again, humans would never so what's going on with these
Speaker 2: river dolphins.
Speaker 3: We don't have to make too many analogies to humans
Speaker 3: and the positive or negative. No judgment here, but yes,
Speaker 3: not a common behavior among humans at least we would think, right.
Speaker 2: And as we've been trying to relate here, urine is
Speaker 2: not just urine to animals outside of the human domain.
Speaker 2: Urine can be informational.
Speaker 3: That's right. So that brings us to the question of
Speaker 3: why do they do this? Why would the dolphin pee
Speaker 3: this way, and why would the other dolphins seek the
Speaker 3: urine stream and try to get its face position, its
Speaker 3: own face into the urine stream. To be clear, we
Speaker 3: don't know the answer to this question. It is not
Speaker 3: This is not settled, but the authors do try to
Speaker 3: make an informed guess. They say, the most likely explanation
Speaker 3: is its communication. The dolphin that peas in the air
Speaker 3: is in a sense talking, and the dolphin that seeks
Speaker 3: out the stream of urine is listening. Now, what would
Speaker 3: they be talking about. Possibly it would be the dolphin's
Speaker 3: quote social position and physical condition, which in fact is
Speaker 3: very important information that male dolphins seek about each other
Speaker 3: in order to navigate competition between one another, such as
Speaker 3: competition for food or competition for mates. And this would
Speaker 3: line up with the observation that aerial urination only ever
Speaker 3: took place between males. The urinators were only males and
Speaker 3: the receivers were only males. Now, another question you might
Speaker 3: wonder about is why if this is in fact some
Speaker 3: kind of exchange of information, and we'll get into a
Speaker 3: bit more detail about that in a minute. What's the
Speaker 3: need for the aerial stream Why up in the air
Speaker 3: instead of the dolphin just peeing underwater and letting the
Speaker 3: other dolphin, you know, detect it in the water. And
Speaker 3: get whatever kind of information they need from it. There Again,
Speaker 3: the answer is unknown, but one idea I read here
Speaker 3: is that since dolphins are acoustically sensitive, the splashing of
Speaker 3: the arc could alert nearby males that someone is pee talking. Now,
Speaker 3: it's kind of like the ringing of the telephone. It
Speaker 3: is alerting you to come get the message, which you
Speaker 3: would receive by the p on your face. Again, not known,
Speaker 3: but that's an interesting guess. Because the dolphins they live
Speaker 3: in a world of sound. They are constantly sensing sounds
Speaker 3: that they themselves amid and bounce back, and other types
Speaker 3: of sounds in the water. So the splashing could be
Speaker 3: that that's a ring tone.
Speaker 2: Ah, Now that is fascinating.
Speaker 3: Another interesting fact I came across. This is actually unconnected
Speaker 3: to the research about aerial urination, but I just wanted
Speaker 3: to connect it because I read them both separately. In
Speaker 3: that general article about bodos that I was reading from
Speaker 3: the Triple As twenty sixteen, it mentions that bodos are
Speaker 3: sometimes seen swimming upside down, but the author in this
Speaker 3: case connects it to the fact that bodos tend to
Speaker 3: have kind of chubby cheeks, like small eyes and chubby cheeks,
Speaker 3: which some researchers think might give them trouble looking down
Speaker 3: below them in the water, Like I can't see down there.
Speaker 3: My cute chubby cheeks are in the way. Thus, maybe
Speaker 3: swim upside down helps them see what's below them.
Speaker 2: M Okay.
Speaker 3: Again, that may be totally unconnected to the aerial urination behavior,
Speaker 3: but that's another observation of them sometimes just inverting for
Speaker 3: some reason, and this is another possible reason for it. Now,
Speaker 3: coming back to the aerial urination paper, there's the question
Speaker 3: of how the receiver dolphin would be getting information from
Speaker 3: the urine stream if that is in fact what's happening. Well,
Speaker 3: the authors point out that bodos have special sensitive bristles
Speaker 3: in the rostrum that have already been documented to help
Speaker 3: them search for prey in murky opaque water near river bottoms.
Speaker 3: Rob I tried to find a picture where you could
Speaker 3: see these bristles. I did attach one here in the outline.
Speaker 3: They're very small, and most pictures of the Amazon River
Speaker 3: dolphin's mouth or not from real close. But here's one
Speaker 3: where you might kind of be able to see them.
Speaker 3: You see these little tiny white bristles along the edge
Speaker 3: of the mouth.
Speaker 2: Yeah, stubble, a little bit of stubble. I will reiterate
Speaker 2: that in this picture too. It looks kind of like
Speaker 2: some sort of a twisted cinebite. Yes. And this is
Speaker 2: fascinating as well, because in talking about one animal weeding
Speaker 2: the urine of another, we're often talking about the sense
Speaker 2: of smell being involved. And we'll get more into that later,
Speaker 2: but one of the things about dolphins is that dolphins
Speaker 2: have a somewhat reduced sense of smell. We've talked about
Speaker 2: that before on the show, talking about the evolution of
Speaker 2: various aquatic mammals, and so it makes sense that they
Speaker 2: would have to have some other capabilities in.
Speaker 3: Play, that's right, And so that's what the authors hypothesize here.
Speaker 3: They say that maybe hunting and foraging in river mud
Speaker 3: is not the only thing these bristles are used for.
Speaker 2: Quote.
Speaker 3: We hypothesize that the bristles on Bodo's rostrums can serve
Speaker 3: a chemical sensory role in detecting urine streams, and that
Speaker 3: aerial urination, often occurring in the presence of other males,
Speaker 3: serves social or communicative functions beyond the physiological need for
Speaker 3: waste elimination. So again, we don't know for sure about this.
Speaker 3: It's just sort of in the early stages of documenting
Speaker 3: this behavior in an organized way and then trying to
Speaker 3: see what we can figure out about it. I think
Speaker 3: you need to do more controlled experiments to try to
Speaker 3: isolate the variables and figure out what it's really doing.
Speaker 3: But if this communication interpretation is correct, it could be
Speaker 3: an important exchange of information that helps male bodos make
Speaker 3: decisions about, say, whether it's worth it or probably more
Speaker 3: often not worth it to fight with this other male
Speaker 3: for access to food resources and mating with nearby females.
Speaker 3: Like it's kind of like, here is my medical chart
Speaker 3: through the taste of my urine. This confirms that I
Speaker 3: am healthy, i am free of parasites, I've got plenty
Speaker 3: of muscle mass, and I could put up a good fight.
Speaker 3: So you know, you don't want to fight me. You
Speaker 3: probably get hurt.
Speaker 2: That's a great way of explaining it, because I think
Speaker 2: it's no surprise to any of us that urine contains
Speaker 2: a great deal of information. There's a lot of that
Speaker 2: information that we can discern medically, but to an animal
Speaker 2: that has a heightened sense of one sort or another,
Speaker 2: they're able to read the urine to some degree and
Speaker 2: get information out of it, like who is this guy?
Speaker 2: Who do they think they are? Well, I can't check
Speaker 2: their like LinkedIn profile or their their social media page,
Speaker 2: but I can test their urine and read that for
Speaker 2: more information.
Speaker 3: Yes, and as we've talked about on the show before,
Speaker 3: it's easy to think about this kind of competition based
Speaker 3: information exchange about about fitness and capacity for fighting, to
Speaker 3: think about that as aggressive, which in a way it is.
Speaker 3: But the other way to think about it is that
Speaker 3: this is a good evolutionary compromise that allows animals to
Speaker 3: avoid violence and unnecessary aggression. It's kind of like allowing
Speaker 3: animals to get sense of like, it's not worth fighting here,
Speaker 3: we can avoid a fight.
Speaker 2: That's a very good point.
Speaker 3: Yes, So if it is indeed the case that the
Speaker 3: aerial urination of these river dolphins is not just about
Speaker 3: eliminating waste, and it's not just a kind of a
Speaker 3: play behavior or a way of seeking novelty, but it
Speaker 3: is actually about communicating information that is used to make
Speaker 3: judgments about intraspecific competition, competition between these members of the
Speaker 3: same species. This would be far from the only example
Speaker 3: in the animal world, lots of animals use urination to
Speaker 3: convey information. I was reading an article covering this river
Speaker 3: dolphin paper in Scientific American by Gennaro Tauma that came
Speaker 3: out April eleventh, twenty twenty five. And this article quotes
Speaker 3: a researcher and ecologist at the University of Hull in
Speaker 3: England named Thomas Brethout, and Bretheout says, quote, animals in
Speaker 3: general want to learn as much as they can in
Speaker 3: about other animals, such as their sex, dominance, species, and
Speaker 3: so on. And a lot of information is in the urine.
Speaker 3: In other words, like your urine can really serve as
Speaker 3: a kind of fact sheet about you, which may prove
Speaker 3: useful to both you and to the other animal that's
Speaker 3: reading it. It's not just a one way benefit, Like
Speaker 3: it's useful to both parties to have more accurate information
Speaker 3: about each other. And so it can say what species
Speaker 3: am I? What sex am I? What health am I?
Speaker 1: In?
Speaker 3: What is my social status within my group? Am I
Speaker 3: socially dominant? It kind of conveys a lot of the
Speaker 3: same information that people would get about another person by
Speaker 3: first by like looking at them, but also watching their
Speaker 3: behavior in a social situation. Or looking at their profile
Speaker 3: online or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, to your point, it's like, this is the
Speaker 2: kind of reading that even subconsciously we're giving strangers every
Speaker 2: day as we sort of take them in and you know,
Speaker 2: we're not actually preparing to potentially fight them. But it's
Speaker 2: just the way we're wired, right, right.
Speaker 3: There is a lot of i think, kind of instinctual
Speaker 3: assessing that we still do, even if we are successfully
Speaker 3: like suppressing aggressive impulses and things like this. There's a
Speaker 3: lot of looking at people and there's some subconscious level
Speaker 3: of like reading their fitness to fight. You you know,
Speaker 3: you're not, hopefully nobody's going to start a fight.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Yeah, And sometimes you get a little conscious of
Speaker 2: it and it can feel a little creepy. And that's
Speaker 2: when you just turn it on its head and imagine
Speaker 2: that lightsabers were involved. Yeah, and then you get a
Speaker 2: little a little bit removed from the reality of the situation. Yeah.
Speaker 2: But it's still helpful. It's still helpful. It's still let
Speaker 2: you know where you rank.
Speaker 3: But another thing that's interesting about thinking about urine based
Speaker 3: communication is about, you know, about the hypothesized mechanism of
Speaker 3: the bristles on the rowstrums somehow detecting chemical signatures within
Speaker 3: the urine that would be useful information to the dolphin.
Speaker 3: I love this because it causes us to question our
Speaker 3: assumptions about what the different senses are for. Like we
Speaker 3: think of sight as a general purpose site based on
Speaker 3: light provides us with all kinds of information relevant to
Speaker 3: basically every kind of situation in life. It's not limited
Speaker 3: to one type of judgment or assessment you're making. However,
Speaker 3: I think we think of taste in a much narrower way.
Speaker 3: We think of taste as a sense almost entirely confined
Speaker 3: to assessing one the nutritional value and two the toxic
Speaker 3: threat potential of foods. So taste tells you, once you
Speaker 3: have something in your mouth, is it a good idea
Speaker 3: to chew it up and swallow it? And then after
Speaker 3: that is it a good idea to eat some more
Speaker 3: of the same thing. But there's no reason taste needs
Speaker 3: to be limited to that narrow band of questions. I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess you could say a reason in a reason
Speaker 3: based around questions of practicality, like how practical is it
Speaker 3: to get other types of information by taste? I don't
Speaker 3: know if you're like a land based mammal maybe not
Speaker 3: very but I don't know. Maybe if you're, say, living
Speaker 3: in the water and trying to get some information about
Speaker 3: things floating around you, maybe it is more practical.
Speaker 2: Or if you're a human geologist, right, we've talked about.
Speaker 3: That, yes, or yeah, so it tastes at least could
Speaker 3: potentially give us all kinds of information having nothing to
Speaker 3: do with the palatability or threat of potential foods. It
Speaker 3: could even potentially give us social information, though of course
Speaker 3: I'm not recommending you lick people. It's just interesting to
Speaker 3: sometimes stop and think about how contingent the way we
Speaker 3: apply different senses to different kinds of information or situations is.
Speaker 3: It's evolutionarily contingent. It's just based on sort of like
Speaker 3: how our bodies evolved in the kind of environment we
Speaker 3: live in, and it didn't have to be that way.
Speaker 3: So you can imagine, you know, aliens that talk by
Speaker 3: taste and stuff, and there's no there's no contradiction in that.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And the more you think too about the close
Speaker 2: relationship between human smell and human taste, the lines get
Speaker 2: even more blurred, because, of course, our sense of smell
Speaker 2: is a big part of our sense of taste, but
Speaker 2: we tend to not think about them being so closely
Speaker 2: aligned when we think about the difference between say, the
Speaker 2: tasting menu at the restaurant and the smells on the
Speaker 2: subway ride to get to that restaurant, where on on
Speaker 2: some level, you were kind of tasting the subway car,
Speaker 2: you know, And that's I mean, the senses are just
Speaker 2: closely linked in that regard. So yeah, and there's also
Speaker 2: a strong case to be made that the sense of
Speaker 2: smell is even a more intimate sensory experience compared to taste.
Speaker 2: So your relationship to the subway car is perhaps in
Speaker 2: some ways closer than that little chocolate morsel was that
Speaker 2: you finally got to at the restaurant. Now, coming back
Speaker 2: to urination, I thought it would be kind of insightful
Speaker 2: to discuss volunteery urination in general, which is something we're
Speaker 2: talking about here, you know, with this example of the
Speaker 2: dolphins deciding to pee and then peeing, providing that information,
Speaker 2: and then another dolphin decides to go and taste and
Speaker 2: interpret it. Yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's a good question itself. Why do animals have
Speaker 3: voluntary control over when they do it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, this is one of those things, you know, Obviously,
Speaker 2: humans urinate regularly. It's just a normal part of our
Speaker 2: daily life, and you're probably not giving it much thought
Speaker 2: unless there's something interfering with normal operating procedure for you
Speaker 2: in one way or another.
Speaker 3: Right, and then of course, if there is something interfering
Speaker 3: with your ability to pee, it's kind of all you
Speaker 3: can think about.
Speaker 2: Right, it becomes highly important. So let's break this down. So,
Speaker 2: first of all, what does it mean to urinate? Naturally?
Speaker 2: It means to discharge urine from the body. Now do
Speaker 2: all animals urinate? Well, I was digging into this bit,
Speaker 2: and it kind of depends how strictly you define everything.
Speaker 2: So birds, to be clear, like monitor lizards, like less lizards, Snakes,
Speaker 2: alligators and crocodiles do not have urinary bladders. Birds don't
Speaker 2: have a urethra and instead excrete everything through the cloaca.
Speaker 2: And as Lewis Bilozon explained in a BBC Science Focus
Speaker 2: shorty quote, mammals remove excess nitrogen from their bodies by
Speaker 2: converting it to a dilute solution of urrea stored in
Speaker 2: the bladder. Birds convert nitrogen to uric acid instead. This
Speaker 2: is metabolically more costly, but saves water and weight as
Speaker 2: it is less toxic and doesn't need to be diluted
Speaker 2: so much.
Speaker 3: Ah, that's interesting. So the bird's method of ejecting nitrogenist
Speaker 3: nitrogenous waste from the body just has less to do
Speaker 3: with water reserves than it does for us. You know,
Speaker 3: we think of pea as a very water based activity,
Speaker 3: like you know, you need to drink more so that
Speaker 3: you can you can flush everything out correctly. And the
Speaker 3: birds are less reliant on how much water they've got
Speaker 3: in their system, and probably they're probably therefore need to
Speaker 3: fluctuate their body weight less and that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but one on one level, you could make an
Speaker 2: argument that birds don't urinate. And I was looking around
Speaker 2: and even in peer reviewed articles by scientists who are
Speaker 2: studying birds, you see it both ways. Some say birds
Speaker 2: absolutely do not pee because of the aforementioned caveats, while
Speaker 2: others freely use the term urine because I mean, at
Speaker 2: the end of the day, we need to call it something.
Speaker 2: What is the stuff flowing down the legs of the vulture,
Speaker 2: They'll just call it urine? Why not?
Speaker 3: I recall this came up a bit in our episode
Speaker 3: on eurohedrosis, which was the thing about birds pooping on
Speaker 3: their own legs in order to gain the benefits of
Speaker 3: evaporative cooling.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, so yeah, you see it like also insects
Speaker 2: Excrete uric acid. But sometimes you'll just see it called urine,
Speaker 2: you know, informally you have to call it something in
Speaker 2: these papers. However, on occasion you will see it referred
Speaker 2: to as urate instead of urine. So I mean there
Speaker 2: is some additional terminology out there. At any rate, agree
Speaker 2: to disagree on what urine is or isn't. But control,
Speaker 2: I think is the more fascinating aspect of all of this.
Speaker 2: If you have a urinary bladder to store your waste
Speaker 2: liquids in, you can store quite a bit of it,
Speaker 2: and then you can release it to an extent at
Speaker 2: your leisure. It becomes rather unleisurely after a while, but
Speaker 2: you have a fair amount of control about when and
Speaker 2: where you're going to release said urine. And this seems
Speaker 2: to be essentially true of all bladder equipped animals. Animals
Speaker 2: without a bladder, however, it's interesting they can't store as much,
Speaker 2: but they apparently do tend to have some degree of
Speaker 2: control over timing by storing small amounts of it. In
Speaker 2: the cloaca and so forth. Now, the degree to which
Speaker 2: we exercise control over our urine is quite fascinating when
Speaker 2: you get past how mundane and to a certain extent
Speaker 2: taboo it is. To break all this down. I was
Speaker 2: reading a twenty nineteen article titled Choosing to Urinate Circuits
Speaker 2: and Mechanisms Underlying Voluntary Urination by Mokopadhey and Stowers. And
Speaker 2: as the title suggests it, really this paper really gets
Speaker 2: into the underlying mechanisms of peeing. But I loved the
Speaker 2: way they initially present urination in general, and they lead
Speaker 2: with the following sentence, which I thought was splendid quote.
Speaker 2: Urination is one of the most commonly and routinely performed
Speaker 2: social behaviors. Yeah, isn't that neat, But we often don't
Speaker 2: think about it a social behavior. You tend to think
Speaker 2: of your a nation as anything but social. Right. You
Speaker 2: you leave everyone else's company generally to go do it.
Speaker 2: You want to be out of sight of everyone else,
Speaker 2: you know, even if you know you're on a hike
Speaker 2: or the movie theater wherever you want to. You generally
Speaker 2: want some privacy, even if it's sort of the artificial
Speaker 2: privacy of you know, like little walls at the urnal
Speaker 2: stalls and so forth.
Speaker 3: It's one of the most anti social things we do.
Speaker 2: I would think, Yeah, unless you're a small child, of course,
Speaker 2: and they do whatever, and that's something we tend to
Speaker 2: celebrate in art and humor as adults. There's you know,
Speaker 2: you can cultures all over like, there's nothing more amusing
Speaker 2: than a child just peeing whenever and wherever they want,
Speaker 2: and they get away with it.
Speaker 3: The bumper stickers are dedicated to that's true.
Speaker 2: But yeah, the point they make is that even in
Speaker 2: making that choice to go off and pee behind a
Speaker 2: tree or in a bush, or or or certainly to
Speaker 2: use the restroom as opposed to the core owner of
Speaker 2: the movie theater, you are carefully fitting your urination into
Speaker 2: your social environment. The authors point out that humans are
Speaker 2: regularly consciously checking in on the fullness of their bladder
Speaker 2: and then calculating their own urination urgency, and then figuring
Speaker 2: out the social appropriateness of relieving themselves. And I think
Speaker 2: that makes even more sense when you think about not
Speaker 2: only the physical act of urination, but excusing yourself to
Speaker 2: go urinate the way that you're going to present it
Speaker 2: with language, what you were going to how much detail
Speaker 2: you're going to go into, how much detail you're not
Speaker 2: going to go into about what you need to go.
Speaker 3: To That's right. I don't know if I've ever thought
Speaker 3: about it that way, but yes, there is a ton
Speaker 3: of social calculation and social negotiation in the timing and
Speaker 3: location and all that kind of thing about going to
Speaker 3: the bathroom.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, like there are a million ways to essentially say,
Speaker 2: excuse me, I need to go pee, and you would
Speaker 2: use different versions of this potential depending on your exact
Speaker 2: social environment. Now, this next bit that the authors point
Speaker 2: out this is kind of an overstatement of the obvious,
Speaker 2: but one of those I think overstatements backed up by
Speaker 2: some findings that I think drives home the point really well.
Speaker 2: They point out that for the majority of individuals living
Speaker 2: with spinal cord injuries that end up preventing voluntary control
Speaker 2: over urination, among other functions, it's that lack of urination
Speaker 2: control that is generally rated as the factor that impacts
Speaker 2: their life the most. You know, again, we don't think
Speaker 2: of it, think about our ability to control our urination
Speaker 2: until something gets in the way of our ability to
Speaker 2: control it, and then we realize just how socially important
Speaker 2: that control really is. And all of this, they note,
Speaker 2: is on top of the primary animal concerns of the
Speaker 2: urination decision, which add the additional questions is it physically
Speaker 2: safe right now for me to relieve myself? Or can
Speaker 2: I relieve myself right now in a manner that's not
Speaker 2: going to foul my environment and or negatively impact my health?
Speaker 2: And then for some animals, there again there is that
Speaker 2: added domain of communication. What sort of information am I
Speaker 2: putting out there by urinating? Why here? Why now? And
Speaker 2: this factor too gives us all the more reason for
Speaker 2: an animal to be able to hold on to a
Speaker 2: supply of urine, because if you're going to potentially need
Speaker 2: that to communicate, then you don't want to just get
Speaker 2: rid of all of it. You might need to have
Speaker 2: some of it with you because what if you need
Speaker 2: to speak and you have no voice.
Speaker 3: Yeah, this is really interesting because it raises ways in
Speaker 3: which urine is and is not like language for communication.
Speaker 3: One way that it is not like language is that
Speaker 3: with language, you have voluntary control over what you say
Speaker 3: with your urine. I think there's probably a lot less control,
Speaker 3: maybe no control for most species, over what you say
Speaker 3: with your ear, and instead it's a question of when
Speaker 3: and how and where.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, for the most part, there's a raw honesty
Speaker 2: to the statement made with urine. But we may come
Speaker 2: back to that a little later.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, now this is good teaser. Yeah, you may
Speaker 3: in fact be able to lie even with p but
Speaker 3: we'll explore that.
Speaker 2: As we go on. For the most part, though, yeah,
Speaker 2: humans don't engage in this. One major factor is that
Speaker 2: while humans can certainly smell urine, as we all know, again,
Speaker 2: we cannot process it and read it in the way
Speaker 2: that so many animals with heightened senses of smell can.
Speaker 3: This is something I was wondering about. Certainly, there's not
Speaker 3: a whole lot of conscious information conveyed or gleaned by
Speaker 3: the smell of urine. I would wonder to what extent
Speaker 3: there may be some subconscious information transmitted, But even then
Speaker 3: I would be skeptical of anything that claims too strong
Speaker 3: of an effect based on that. A lot of I
Speaker 3: don't know. I feel like a lot of those studies
Speaker 3: about sort of like the unconscious kind of smell based
Speaker 3: judgments made about people, some of that stuff was kind
Speaker 3: of overstated. I think.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and then you get into a lot of these,
Speaker 2: at times heated disagreements over pheromones and humans, which I'll
Speaker 2: touch on here in a bit. But but yet not
Speaker 2: to imply that humans, you know, I mean, we do
Speaker 2: not have the same sense of smell. We don do
Speaker 2: not live in the same sense universe as a dog
Speaker 2: or even a cat. But you know, we can still
Speaker 2: smell an impressive number of different sense I've read as
Speaker 2: high as like one trillion different sense And certainly, you know,
Speaker 2: I can say that I can tell the difference between
Speaker 2: the odor of cat urine and the odor of human urine.
Speaker 2: They're distinct, and I can point them out. But being
Speaker 2: able to smell one trillion sense that's not the same
Speaker 2: thing as being able to actually make sense of all
Speaker 2: the data. An imperfect analogy came to my mind as
Speaker 2: I was reading about this. So if you were to
Speaker 2: venture into a movie theater with quite poor eyesight no sound,
Speaker 2: based on your limited side alone, what could you make
Speaker 2: out about the movie? Could you determine its genre, it's
Speaker 2: a decade of release, anything at all about its stars,
Speaker 2: its director, its country of origin, or plot. Like there's
Speaker 2: a lot of infort you might be able to make
Speaker 2: some very broad judgments about it based on what you
Speaker 2: could see, but what you couldn't see would be like
Speaker 2: all the really important details that make it not just
Speaker 2: you know, an array of colors that speak to a
Speaker 2: certain decade maybe, but would actually make it a story. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you know, it's a fool's errand I think in the end,
Speaker 2: to try and fully put ourselves in the mindset or
Speaker 2: the since universe of another organism. We've talked about this before.
Speaker 2: Much has been written about this, but I get the
Speaker 2: feeling that this is the sort of gulf between what
Speaker 2: happens when a human smells a splash of urine and
Speaker 2: a dog. Does you know it is the dog is
Speaker 2: just going to since things with so much more clarity.
Speaker 3: And you could probably tell that just in two by
Speaker 3: watching the behavior of a dog by like how important
Speaker 3: it is to them, how much attention they pay to
Speaker 3: the urine of other dogs and to marking with urine
Speaker 3: of their own, that you can tell even before the
Speaker 3: experiments are done, that something very significant is being exchanged here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, like this is this is not just a
Speaker 2: dog being dumb. This is a dog knowing that there
Speaker 2: is important information here that can be gleaned and therefore
Speaker 2: it deserves another sniff or two. I have to I
Speaker 2: have to bring this back to were wolves for just
Speaker 2: a second. Here I was reading a nineteen ninety six
Speaker 2: Discworld novel titled Feet of Clay by the late great
Speaker 2: Terry Pratchett, who, if you're not familiar Terry Pratchett, you know,
Speaker 2: writes these wonderful wrote these wonderful novels set in the
Speaker 2: fantasy world of Discworld, full of Monty Pythonesque humor, lots
Speaker 2: of silly stuff. But he also had a real gift
Speaker 2: for insightful commentary as well. And and yeah, so you know,
Speaker 2: be just mad cap goofy one second. But then it
Speaker 2: gets really interesting. And in particular, there's a there's a
Speaker 2: character in this member of the Night's Watch whose whose
Speaker 2: name is ongo Of von Uberwald, and she is a werewolf,
Speaker 2: and he describes her ability to smell several times in
Speaker 2: the book. She's investigating things and leaning on her werewolf
Speaker 2: senses to smell the environment, and pointing out that she
Speaker 2: can smell a room and she can know like who
Speaker 2: or what has been present in that room for perhaps
Speaker 2: as long as a month prior, which I think I
Speaker 2: thought was an interesting way of looking at it, Like
Speaker 2: it's challenging to describe this sort of thing, something that's
Speaker 2: really foreign to our smell, dull, visually focused existence. But
Speaker 2: the closest way you might be able to describe something
Speaker 2: like this is that this were wolf character she can
Speaker 2: see through time with her sense of smell. She can
Speaker 2: like look back through time with smell. And I think
Speaker 2: that's maybe scratching at a way that we might understand
Speaker 2: what a dog is doing, or various other animals that
Speaker 2: have heightened senses of smells when they are picking up
Speaker 2: on odors like this.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Now again, you do see arguments about pheromones, and I mean,
Speaker 2: pheromones are of course real, but to what degree or
Speaker 2: of it all are humans able to pick up on pheromones.
Speaker 2: I was reading a twenty fourteen article for Scientific American
Speaker 2: by Daisy Juhus, and the author points out that there's
Speaker 2: quote no evidence of a consistent and strong behavioral response
Speaker 2: to any human produced chemical cue, So it's possible, She
Speaker 2: points out that we might have once had capabilities along
Speaker 2: these lines, but what we're left with now or just
Speaker 2: it's far blunt instrumentation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that lines up with what I've read generally, you
Speaker 3: couldn't rule out that humans are to some small degree
Speaker 3: influenced subconsciously by the smells of each other. But it
Speaker 3: doesn't seem it doesn't seem like we're at that sort
Speaker 3: of animal pheromone level like some people thought maybe, I
Speaker 3: don't know, a few decades ago, there was kind of
Speaker 3: a buzz about this. I think that, like, are we
Speaker 3: actually secretly being controlled? But you know, are we subject
Speaker 3: to pheromone mind control? I think the answer is no.
Speaker 3: To whatever extent such influences there, they seem to be
Speaker 3: rather mild.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean not to say that that smell data
Speaker 2: is not in the mix when we're evaluating other people.
Speaker 2: I mean, some people have nice smells about them and
Speaker 2: we pick up on that, or they have bad smells
Speaker 2: about them that we don't like and we pick up
Speaker 2: on that as well, you know, and in either case
Speaker 2: either organic smells or smells that have been applied through perfumes
Speaker 2: and deodorance and whatnot. But yeah, the idea that there
Speaker 2: there's actually a lot of pheromonal communication going on probably
Speaker 2: not even in confusing this matter too. You have various
Speaker 2: trends that pick up on this, you know, like dating
Speaker 2: trends we've seen in the past where it's like, do
Speaker 2: some what is it flash dating based on smell? I
Speaker 2: don't know if that's still a fad, but for a
Speaker 2: little while I remember that being in the news.
Speaker 3: I'm not going to comment on that.
Speaker 2: Now here's one more interesting question. Humans therefore can't really
Speaker 2: read urine, but might we be able to communicate with
Speaker 2: our urine with another species that can read urine?
Speaker 3: So like, could we talk urine even if we can't
Speaker 3: really understand urine?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, and I mean largely no, but sort of
Speaker 2: yes too, according to some, in a very one directional way.
Speaker 2: Never cry Wolf author and environmentalist Farley Mowatt wrote about
Speaker 2: this in his book Never Cry Wolf, talking about marking
Speaker 2: his territory in the wilderness while studying wolves, and claimed
Speaker 2: that they honored his mark territory and marked like their
Speaker 2: side of the mark Stones. Film fans might remember watching
Speaker 2: Charles Martin Smith do this the nineteen eighty three film adaptation.
Speaker 2: Dogs furthermore, can be trained to pick up on specific
Speaker 2: notes in human urine that can be helpful in the
Speaker 2: detection of illnesses. So you know, that's kind of a
Speaker 2: one way urine communication. Oh yeah, I can see that,
Speaker 2: and I'm not sure it may come back to this later,
Speaker 2: but you could also eventually add the medical and technological
Speaker 2: layer to all of this and say that, well, through
Speaker 2: our medicine and through our technology, humans absolutely can read urine,
Speaker 2: and you know, to a certain extent, you could imagine
Speaker 2: some scenario where we could speak with our urine as well,
Speaker 2: if we were using our technology on like both ends
Speaker 2: of the conversation. I'm not sure what that would look like,
Speaker 2: what why that would be, but maybe we'll get into
Speaker 2: that later.
Speaker 3: Okay, well, I think we need to wrap up part
Speaker 3: one of this series there, but we're going to be
Speaker 3: back in at least one more part, maybe maybe multiple
Speaker 3: parts with more fascinating examples of urine based communication. What
Speaker 3: can the p say and what can what can we hear?
Speaker 2: That's right, so tune in for that. In the meantime,
Speaker 2: we will just remind you that Stuff to Blow Your
Speaker 2: Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast, with core
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