Speaker 1: Welcome to has To Works Now. I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum,
Speaker 1: a researcher and writer. Here it has To Works. Every week,
Speaker 1: I'm bringing you three stories from our team about the
Speaker 1: weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology and culture.
Speaker 1: This week, it turns out that underground critters called naked
Speaker 1: mole rats can switch their biochemistry to survive when oxygen
Speaker 1: supplies run low. And unrelated, the researchers have cracked the
Speaker 1: mystery of the pigmentation responsible for blood falls, A waterfall
Speaker 1: with an aptly dramatic name, but first, Senior editor Katherine
Speaker 1: Born and our freelance writer Alia Hoyt explore new research
Speaker 1: into how our brains control our movements. The results run
Speaker 1: counter to what we thought we knew about motor function,
Speaker 1: and it's all thanks to patients with missing limbs. Recent
Speaker 1: research published in the journal Current Biology is poised to
Speaker 1: transform whole scientists understand the brain, specifically which section control
Speaker 1: which body parts. Researchers from University College London looked at
Speaker 1: seventeen people born without a hand, along with twenty four
Speaker 1: people born with two hands as a control group. The
Speaker 1: participants were all video recorded doing five everyday tasks such
Speaker 1: as wrapping presents, while their brains were scanned using functional
Speaker 1: m r A. Science has generally posited that a certain
Speaker 1: area of the brain was in charge of hand function,
Speaker 1: but the researchers learned that when other body parts were
Speaker 1: compensating for a missing hand, like the foot, mouth, or arm,
Speaker 1: that hand area of the brain just as effectively lit up,
Speaker 1: so instead of that section of the brain being hands specific,
Speaker 1: it appears to be actually functioned specific, although this is
Speaker 1: just a working theory. The concept is illustrated by six
Speaker 1: year old Zian Lee Aguila Valle of Kennesaw, Georgia, who
Speaker 1: was born without arms. Zian mostly uses his feet to bathe, dress,
Speaker 1: and eat, as well as to write, paint, play with legos,
Speaker 1: or help his mom cook dinner. He carries around small
Speaker 1: packages of cleansing wipes to d german his feet before eating.
Speaker 1: He also loves skateboarding, swimming, and baseball. Interestingly, Zan's brain
Speaker 1: is better equipped to adapt his missing limbs than that
Speaker 1: of a person who loses a hand later in life.
Speaker 1: James Giordano, a neurology and biochemistry professor at Georgetown University,
Speaker 1: says the brain is very adaptive, so if a function
Speaker 1: needs to be done, another part can be recruited to
Speaker 1: fill in for the one that's missing. If the limb
Speaker 1: loss occurs later in life, Jordana says, another appendage can
Speaker 1: be trained to fill in, but it's much more difficult
Speaker 1: because the brain has to basically rewire its connections. Neurophysical
Speaker 1: rehabilitation and high tech approaches like magnetic stimulation can encourage
Speaker 1: the brain to adapt. The study we mentioned earlier demonstrates
Speaker 1: the brain is more plastic than we had imagined. The
Speaker 1: study could help scientists determine how the brain could control,
Speaker 1: for instance, a prosthetic arm using the brain area that
Speaker 1: would have controlled that missing arm. Next step, steph it
Speaker 1: aor Christopher Hassiotus and our freelancer Jesceline Shields bring us
Speaker 1: into the bizarre world of the naked mole rat, which
Speaker 1: can run its body basically like a plant when it
Speaker 1: doesn't have enough oxygen to live like a mammal. Learning
Speaker 1: interesting facts about animals is like reading evolution celebrity gossip rag.
Speaker 1: There's a delightfully voyeuristic thrill that comes with learning that
Speaker 1: a star nosed mole can smell underwater by blowing bubbles
Speaker 1: and then sucking them back in its nose, or that
Speaker 1: a sea otter has so much hair and has the
Speaker 1: approximate surface area of a hockey rink. But have you
Speaker 1: heard about the naked mole rat. You're gonna want to
Speaker 1: sit down. So the naked mole rat heterocephalous glaber looks
Speaker 1: about like you'd expect a hairless mole crossed with a
Speaker 1: hairless rat crossed with a chest bursting creature from alien.
Speaker 1: But this subterranean African mammal is by far the longest
Speaker 1: living rodent. It's cold blooded, and it's immune to cancer.
Speaker 1: It's practically pervious to most types of pain, and shows
Speaker 1: very few signs of aging during its life. Like some insects,
Speaker 1: naked mole rats are use social, meaning a group of
Speaker 1: them has a queen that takes on all the reproductive
Speaker 1: responsibilities for the group, while other females are sterile and
Speaker 1: have jobs like finding food or fending off predators. A
Speaker 1: single queen naked mole rat might live thirty years and
Speaker 1: have nine hundred babies in her lifetime. And finally, these
Speaker 1: little animals can survive for long periods without oxygen by
Speaker 1: basically turning into plants wait seriously under normal oxygen rich conditions.
Speaker 1: The naked mole rat runs itself on glucose like every
Speaker 1: other self respecting mammal on the planet, and mammals need
Speaker 1: oxygen to fuel this process. But in the absence of oxygen,
Speaker 1: according to a new study published in the journal Science,
Speaker 1: it turns out naked mole rats can switch over to
Speaker 1: a different biochemical process using fructose, the same sugar that
Speaker 1: powers plants. Now, scientists have known for a while that
Speaker 1: because they live in large groups in tight underground space
Speaker 1: is where plentiful oxygen supplies aren't given like they are
Speaker 1: here above ground, naked mole rats have evolved to withstand
Speaker 1: shockingly low oxygen situations. Until now, however, nobody has quantified
Speaker 1: the extent to which these hideous little wizards can abstain
Speaker 1: from breathing air. The team of international researchers discovered the
Speaker 1: little animals can chill for five or more hours at
Speaker 1: a time in extremely low oxygen environments, and for up
Speaker 1: to eighteen minutes with absolutely no oxygen whatsoever. To figure
Speaker 1: this out, the team put both naked mole rats and
Speaker 1: regular mice in a chamber with no oxygen. As you
Speaker 1: might expect the mice died immediately, But although the naked
Speaker 1: morats quickly lost consciousness and their heartbeats slowed from two
Speaker 1: hundred to only fifty beats per minute, after being introduced
Speaker 1: back into the air, a full eighteen minutes later, they
Speaker 1: completely recovered and went about their naked mole rat business.
Speaker 1: So exactly how do the animals manage this? According to
Speaker 1: the studies lead author Thomas Park, who's a professor of
Speaker 1: biological sciences at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the
Speaker 1: naked mole rat has simply rearranged some basic building blocks
Speaker 1: of metabolism to make it super tolerant to low oxygen conditions.
Speaker 1: There are other animals who can metabolize fructose in the
Speaker 1: absence of oxygen, but only in limited parts of the body,
Speaker 1: like the gut. It's naked mole rats that have emergency
Speaker 1: fruito services set up in all of their organs, even
Speaker 1: their brain and their heart, making them unique among mammals
Speaker 1: in that regard, at least as far as we know
Speaker 1: right now. Finally, this week, managing editor Alison louder Milk
Speaker 1: and our freelancer Kate Kirshner explain how researchers solved the
Speaker 1: mysteries of a blood red waterfall flowing out of the
Speaker 1: middle of a glacier. If you were to say that
Speaker 1: the blood red color of an Antarctic waterfall was only
Speaker 1: the second most interesting thing about it, it might be
Speaker 1: hard to take you seriously. After all, one look at
Speaker 1: blood falls and you're probably pretty focused on the horrifying
Speaker 1: carry prom scene nestled in the ice of Taylor Glacier.
Speaker 1: You're not looking for much else to catch your eye.
Speaker 1: But while that horror seene hue undoubtedly pulls you in,
Speaker 1: scientists have now figured out the source of the blood,
Speaker 1: so to speak, and it's arguably more fascinating than the
Speaker 1: ghoulish falls itself. When geologist and all around adventure Thomas
Speaker 1: Griffith discovered the geological wonder back in nineteen eleven, the
Speaker 1: prevailing idea was that a type of algae was causing
Speaker 1: the distinctive red bloom, sort of like the harmful algal
Speaker 1: blooms or red tides that have been known to plague
Speaker 1: Florida's Gulf coast. But a two thousand three analysis found
Speaker 1: that it was actually high levels of iron that tinged
Speaker 1: the water, so distinctively the iron turns to rust in
Speaker 1: the water. But this presented another mystery. So I just
Speaker 1: weren't sure where the salty in laden liquid water was
Speaker 1: coming from that's been feeding the waterfall. So they decided
Speaker 1: to investigate the subsurface of the glacier with radar signals,
Speaker 1: and when they did, researchers found a subsurface lake, complete
Speaker 1: with a flowing path of water that supplied the briny,
Speaker 1: iron rich water to the falls. Second mystery solved. This
Speaker 1: discovery is particularly interesting because it confirms that flowing water
Speaker 1: can persist inside a glacier as cold as tailor, something
Speaker 1: researchers weren't quite sure was possible. And in case you're
Speaker 1: wondering how liquid water can exist in a clearly freezing glacier,
Speaker 1: it's actually the process of freezing that keeps it moving.
Speaker 1: As water freezes, it releases heat that can melt the
Speaker 1: ice around it. Add in some salty water that freezes
Speaker 1: at a lower tempt and you have flowing water in
Speaker 1: a glacier. That's our show for this week. Thank you
Speaker 1: so much for tuning in further thanks to our audio
Speaker 1: technical brown, our producer Dylan Fagan, and our editorial liaison
Speaker 1: Alice in louder Milk. Subscribed to out Now for more
Speaker 1: of the latest science news, and send us links to
Speaker 1: anything else you'd like to hear his cover, plus what
Speaker 1: historical figure do you find endlessly fascinating? Let us know?
Speaker 1: You can send us an email at Now podcast at
Speaker 1: how stuff works dot com, and of course, for lots
Speaker 1: more stories like these, head on over to our home
Speaker 1: planet Now dot how stuff works dot com.