Speaker 1: Hey, everybody, this is Chuck with this uh Saturday select
Speaker 1: edition of Stuff you Should Know? And this week I
Speaker 1: picked out a little show called why do Men Have Nipples?
Speaker 1: And that's how you have to say it in your
Speaker 1: head when you read it out loud. This from January,
Speaker 1: and if I remember correctly, Um, it's just kind of
Speaker 1: an interesting episode. I think Josh and I we're looking
Speaker 1: at each other one day with their shirts off. I
Speaker 1: was like, why you have nipples? Why do you have nipples?
Speaker 1: And that's generally how most of our shows get started.
Speaker 1: So give it a listen and I hope you enjoy it.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from House Stuff Works
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh Clark,
Speaker 1: There's Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and we're doing this. We're
Speaker 1: doing it whether you like it or not. Yeah, we're
Speaker 1: recording our podcast Stuff you Should Know. Probably no because
Speaker 1: you tuned in, so welcome and if it was an accident, Hey,
Speaker 1: welcome to the party. Talk about serendipity. You're about to
Speaker 1: learn about male nipples. Yeah you want to talk about
Speaker 1: a party? Yeah? You got him? I got him. We
Speaker 1: all do. Uh, do you want to talk about chromosomes
Speaker 1: for a second. Sure, okay, chuck, uh, you and I
Speaker 1: each have twenty three chromosomes in our body. We talked
Speaker 1: a little bit in Designer Children. I think, yeah about
Speaker 1: little genetics over We're not gonna go into that now.
Speaker 1: But um, the twenty three chromosomes. H if you put
Speaker 1: a man in a woman side by side, or their
Speaker 1: chromosomes side by side, twenty two of the twenty three
Speaker 1: chromosomes are going to be exactly alike. It's that twenty
Speaker 1: three that gets you. The twenty three chromosome either has
Speaker 1: a pair of xes or an X and a Y.
Speaker 1: Pair of xes equals a woman, X Y equals a man. Okay,
Speaker 1: we're not that far apart. We're really not. And that
Speaker 1: becomes very very clear when we're in utero because sexual dimorphism,
Speaker 1: which is the the inward and outward differences between genders
Speaker 1: between male and female, like who who's in ha haas
Speaker 1: and that kind of stuff. Um, those are all uh,
Speaker 1: those are all hammered out in the course of our
Speaker 1: development on the twenty three chrome zone. Right, A lot
Speaker 1: of it you come out with, right, you were born
Speaker 1: with a vagino or a penis, right, Um, but a
Speaker 1: lot of it is also set up to be kicked
Speaker 1: in when puberty happens. That's right, but still there's differences,
Speaker 1: there's changes, and it's all because of this twenty three
Speaker 1: chrome zone. Some of the things though, can go either
Speaker 1: way and depending on what happens when puberty comes along. Um,
Speaker 1: either nothing's going to happen to these to this equipment,
Speaker 1: I guess you could call it yea or um. A
Speaker 1: lot of crazy things happened to it. And one of those, uh,
Speaker 1: the good examples of this are nipples. There's a really
Speaker 1: great question, why do men have nipples? Chuck? Yeah, I
Speaker 1: have a funny little story about this. My sister and
Speaker 1: I were hanging out about about fifteen years ago, and
Speaker 1: I was They had a male dog and I was
Speaker 1: rubbing the belly and the dog had very like just
Speaker 1: pronouncing nipples more so than you you would usually see
Speaker 1: on a male dog. And I guess I never noticed before,
Speaker 1: and I was just like, I was kind of grossed out.
Speaker 1: I was like, what is your dog nipples? And she's like,
Speaker 1: you have nipples? And then it just like it was
Speaker 1: an awakening my mind. Yeah, It's like, wow, you're right,
Speaker 1: I do why And I never really researched things like
Speaker 1: this back then, and uh, now I know why. Now
Speaker 1: we know why. Yeah, and we should say this is
Speaker 1: um the generally accepted explanation. It's not necessarily scientific fact,
Speaker 1: but it is um. This is pretty much why. Ye,
Speaker 1: most mammals, in fact, most male mammals have nipples. I
Speaker 1: think mice, stallions and uh platyppie. Yeah, the male platypus
Speaker 1: is among the handful of animals that of mammals that
Speaker 1: where the boys are born nipple free, which is weird
Speaker 1: because um, as Conger points out Christen Conger from Stuff
Speaker 1: Mom Never told you she wrote this article, and um
Speaker 1: she points out that you can make the case that
Speaker 1: mice are more evolved in that respect than human males. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Ours could be a flaw. Yeah, um, we'll get to that. Well,
Speaker 1: let's talk about this. So they're back in uh nine,
Speaker 1: right before Y two K it's y two K fever,
Speaker 1: Yale University researchers released the study that said, Hey, we've
Speaker 1: gotten to the bottom of this mystery of why or
Speaker 1: how male mice don't grow nipples. They're just completely seriously,
Speaker 1: go out in your yard right now, trap a mouse,
Speaker 1: pick it up by its tail and examine it's some
Speaker 1: little belly, no nipples, Yeah, nothing, or if it's got nipples,
Speaker 1: that means it's a little lady exactly. That's the way
Speaker 1: you tell. That's one of the ways you tell with mice.
Speaker 1: And it's because of a protein pth little r P. Yeah.
Speaker 1: It's always so exciting when they give them names like this. Uh.
Speaker 1: After mice are after their memory tissue starts to form,
Speaker 1: produces this protein. Uh. And in male mice it signals
Speaker 1: the cells to form male hormone receptors and uh, it
Speaker 1: basically destroys the tissue. Yeah, like in utero. Correct, Yes,
Speaker 1: because boy mice and male and female mice are all
Speaker 1: they all develop mammory tissue, which gives you all the
Speaker 1: equipment for nipples and breasts and milk ducks and all
Speaker 1: that stuff. They just destroy theirs before they're born. Yeah,
Speaker 1: that protein signals that for to be destroyed in male mice. Uh,
Speaker 1: prepare for the mind blower. Now, boys and girls as
Speaker 1: humans undergo a very similar process in utero as well. Um,
Speaker 1: before that sexual dimorphism that's really carried out by the
Speaker 1: twenty three chromosome begins. We both both genders start to
Speaker 1: develop um memory tissue, uh, and develop all the equipments
Speaker 1: called milk lines. They're like kind of like calls it
Speaker 1: the plumbing. We have the same plumbing exactly, which is
Speaker 1: kind of funny and true. Yeah, um we and we
Speaker 1: developed this plumbing before it's decided or before we start
Speaker 1: to um develop sexual traits. So it's almost like if
Speaker 1: you look at a timeline of sex sexual development, the
Speaker 1: nipples come first, so that they're not associated as far
Speaker 1: as the I guess nature is concerned with male or
Speaker 1: female humans the same thing. Yeah, So we don't have
Speaker 1: a protein that takes care of this um the nipples
Speaker 1: and males. So men are and boys and girls are
Speaker 1: born with pretty much exactly the same setup until puberty,
Speaker 1: that's right, And that's when the hormones kick in. Estrogen
Speaker 1: and girls is going to cause breast growth and mamory
Speaker 1: gland development, and that's when things diverge. You know what
Speaker 1: It really stood out to me on this um that
Speaker 1: means that our nature's default setting as far as humans
Speaker 1: are concerned, it's female. Uh yeah, I think it's pretty neat.
Speaker 1: It's pretty neat. Well, you know, women are the seed
Speaker 1: of everything, seed of life. Um, so it's what everybody
Speaker 1: calls them, the seed of life. So um. The the
Speaker 1: simple answer then is the reason we have nipples is
Speaker 1: because we've always had nipples. And through the years, evolution
Speaker 1: never said, you know what, you don't need nipples. No,
Speaker 1: And um, the I think the case has been made.
Speaker 1: The reason men still have nipples because nipples are so
Speaker 1: vital to female reproductive success that, um, there's no Conger
Speaker 1: points out, there's no adaptive pressure to select nipples out
Speaker 1: of men. Yeah, it's such a vital function. Right, So
Speaker 1: it's like we don't want to possibly mess with anything,
Speaker 1: So everybody gets nipples. Okay, you just live with it. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that's why men have nipples because nature's default setting
Speaker 1: for humans is girls. Yeah. That's interesting. And um, I
Speaker 1: love my little nipples. I'll just come out and say it.
Speaker 1: Do you do well? I think it would be odd
Speaker 1: to not have them. I don't think so. It's a
Speaker 1: little getting used to, but I think, um, I think
Speaker 1: it would not look on you know, we did our
Speaker 1: our Barbie podcasts that come out already. Yeah, and there
Speaker 1: are web there are people on the web that will
Speaker 1: teach you how to make nipples. For your Barbie dolls.
Speaker 1: I saw their kindles. Yeah, yeah, like very realistic, looking,
Speaker 1: very realistic. But yeah, you look like a kin doll.
Speaker 1: This would just be weird. I don't think ken looks
Speaker 1: abnormal without nipples because it's a doll. It also doesn't
Speaker 1: look at normal without a penis. That's true, you know. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think you would be the little distressed if you
Speaker 1: woke up one day without nipples. Or maybe you'd love it.
Speaker 1: Maybe it's a new lease on life for you. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'd be like, just go bare chested everywhere. Great, I'm
Speaker 1: a freak. Yeah yeah. Um, so we said, Chuck, something
Speaker 1: that's kind of interesting. If you ask me, if you
Speaker 1: take a six year old boy and a six year
Speaker 1: old girl, prep bess boy and pre pubescent girl, and
Speaker 1: you compared their um, their memory glands, the whole memory
Speaker 1: operation they've got going on, they're virtually the same. And
Speaker 1: it's not until estrogen comes along that the the differences
Speaker 1: really change. The fat develops, so the breasts get bigger. Um,
Speaker 1: these milk ducks developed. You've You've got all this this
Speaker 1: process that's that just kind of takes these things that
Speaker 1: are almost latent in turns them into functioning breasts. Right, Um,
Speaker 1: if we've found if you expose a man to estrogen,
Speaker 1: he could conceivably lacktate himself. That's part two of this.
Speaker 1: We didn't even put that in the title because we
Speaker 1: didn't want to just blow your minds right out of
Speaker 1: the gate. But the point is is men have nipples
Speaker 1: because girls have nipples, and men can lack take because
Speaker 1: women can lack take. Yeah, and in fact, as little babies, um,
Speaker 1: you and I might have lactated. Who knows when the
Speaker 1: hormone prolactin is what facilitates breast milk production, and new
Speaker 1: moms um when they can actually pass this along in
Speaker 1: utero to their fetus, and that little baby can come
Speaker 1: out if they get enough of that passed along with
Speaker 1: the ability to lactate both little boys and little girl,
Speaker 1: and it's called witches milk um only last couple of weeks. Usually, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'll bet it's a distressing couple of weeks if you're
Speaker 1: the parent, like, what is going on? Well, I'm sure
Speaker 1: it's explained. There's all sorts of weird things that can
Speaker 1: happen right away that you're like, what and uh, I
Speaker 1: think Usually doctors like, don't worry that a little fun
Speaker 1: thing else the brain will grow together. Are not the brain,
Speaker 1: The skull will grow together at some point. Don't worry
Speaker 1: about this, just don't pat it on ahead an Um,
Speaker 1: So that yeah, which is milk? It occurs, and I
Speaker 1: don't know how rare it is, she didn't say, but
Speaker 1: is it? Yeah? Even rarer? Is um spontaneous lactation in
Speaker 1: adult men. Yes, and that's called galacteria, which does not
Speaker 1: sound very pleasant. No it doesn't. But essentially, if um,
Speaker 1: if you lack enough testosterone that your estrogen levels are
Speaker 1: comparatively high, you can um suffer galacteria, which basically is
Speaker 1: male lactation. Spontaneous elactation. Yeah, but um, Congor points out,
Speaker 1: it could be you know, the cause of alarm though, uh,
Speaker 1: if you're an older man, correct, is that just because
Speaker 1: of the testosterone deficiency? Okay, yeah, but Darwin thinks, hey,
Speaker 1: maybe early man breastfed, like full on breastfed, and who knows,
Speaker 1: maybe they did. Who's to say? Are we to say? No,
Speaker 1: Charles Darwin? Yeah, Um, so you've got galacteria is a possibility,
Speaker 1: which is milk is possibility? Two ways that um human
Speaker 1: males can spontaneously lactate and we're not the only ones
Speaker 1: who do. There's a type of bat that was discovered
Speaker 1: to lactate spontaneously, and a surprising amount of animals over
Speaker 1: the course of the last century or two have been
Speaker 1: exposed to all sorts of different tests to make them
Speaker 1: spontaneously lactate. UM. A steer was made to lactate. Do
Speaker 1: you know how surprised that steer must have been? UM.
Speaker 1: But we've found that if you can, if you can
Speaker 1: increase estrogen levels and trigger the release of prolactin, you
Speaker 1: can make men produce milk. And it happens sometimes. So
Speaker 1: the prolactin is UM is produced by the thyroid gland
Speaker 1: right tuitary gland. Yeah, and women when they have a
Speaker 1: little baby, they it really ramps up like ten times
Speaker 1: as much exactly. So what they found is that UM
Speaker 1: after a baby is born. Dad's suffer, I guess suffer
Speaker 1: it's not the right word. Dad's experience an increase in
Speaker 1: prolactin production too. Normally, it's not it's not enough to
Speaker 1: cause lactation, but they suspect you can make it happen
Speaker 1: if you are okay, So this is really strange. If
Speaker 1: you hold a baby to your breast and your nipple
Speaker 1: and your man and you're the father, so you're already
Speaker 1: kind of like prolactin high. You could conceivably trigger the
Speaker 1: production of milk if you did that repeatedly over the
Speaker 1: over the course of like a couple of weeks. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's like it's a physiological response and biological I guess
Speaker 1: sort of all wrapped up into one, and you can
Speaker 1: have like a sympathy lactation almost. Yeah, and it's happened
Speaker 1: two thousand two in Sri Lanka, right. Yeah. Um. I
Speaker 1: didn't actually get to look this guy up, so I
Speaker 1: don't know a whole lot about him other than the
Speaker 1: fact that he breastfed his daughters after his wife died. Yes,
Speaker 1: his wife died during a childbirth and he took over. Wow,
Speaker 1: that's amazing. But another way to um lactat as if
Speaker 1: you're starving chuck. Yeah. Um, there was this one pow camp,
Speaker 1: Japanese pow camp, and just one there was five cases
Speaker 1: of men lactating, uh, spontaneously for each other. No, you
Speaker 1: would think, Um, actually, what what happens is so your
Speaker 1: your pituitary gland produces prolactin um and your liver is
Speaker 1: typically charged with um eating up excess hormones. Right. Um,
Speaker 1: when you're starving, both of them kind of slow down.
Speaker 1: But when you start to eat normally again, your petuitary
Speaker 1: gland starts functioning quicker than your liver, so you have
Speaker 1: higher levels of hormones, including prolactant. Hence you have starving
Speaker 1: men who lack tate. Wow, that's a reality show some
Speaker 1: sort of island location islands, I don't know. And there
Speaker 1: there's a tribe, the Acca pygmy tribe in Africa. There's
Speaker 1: about out on them and this dude it was documented
Speaker 1: that they men breastfeed their children and this dude went
Speaker 1: and live with them. And uh, not only that, it's amazing.
Speaker 1: They're they're known as the best fathers in the world
Speaker 1: because they spend forty seven percent of their time um
Speaker 1: percent of the time their babies are within arm's reach
Speaker 1: of the father, which is far and away more than
Speaker 1: any other culture in the history of the world. And
Speaker 1: the gender roles in this Accat tribe are completely interchangeable.
Speaker 1: Like sometimes the men go out and hunt, the women
Speaker 1: take care of things. Sometimes the women go out and
Speaker 1: hunt and the men watch the clay pots and take
Speaker 1: care of the children, and it's just they don't know
Speaker 1: gender roles like that. It's just completely interchangeable. It's pretty cool.
Speaker 1: That is very cool. Um. And that's a that was
Speaker 1: a question that kind of Darwin raised, like, well, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, maybe we used to breastfeed. Men used to breastfeed,
Speaker 1: and that's why we have this, which would make it vestigial, right,
Speaker 1: like wisdom teeth appendix. It's something that we used to
Speaker 1: use that we don't anymore. So it's just superfluous um.
Speaker 1: Or it's possible that we can in a pinch do it,
Speaker 1: which would not make a vestigial because we we could
Speaker 1: still conceivably use it like thead in Sri Lanka, the
Speaker 1: aka um the I guess the big question that it
Speaker 1: underlines is like like why if men can do it,
Speaker 1: why aren't we Yeah, why why wouldn't you do that?
Speaker 1: Especially if we live in generally monogamous cultures? Well, I
Speaker 1: think probably because of the evolution, because women did it
Speaker 1: for tens of thousands of years. Only like if we
Speaker 1: had kept doing it, if early man did do that
Speaker 1: and they just kept doing it, then today you and
Speaker 1: I might it might be like, hey, I'll pump and
Speaker 1: dump today honey, exactly, don't worry about it. So let
Speaker 1: me ask you this, if we stopped, if we used
Speaker 1: to do it, even if we didn't used to do it,
Speaker 1: the very fact that we're equipped to do it, like
Speaker 1: under the right conditions, under the right chem coll baths,
Speaker 1: you and I could lac take right now, right, let's
Speaker 1: have a party. As our culture has become more and
Speaker 1: more monogamous, and it's we get further and further away
Speaker 1: from males going around and spreading their DNA with as
Speaker 1: many mates as possible and instead pair up. Then, um,
Speaker 1: it's entirely possible that ten thousand years from now, men
Speaker 1: and women will both breastfeed. We've got the equipment. It's possible.
Speaker 1: It will just get easier and easier for us to
Speaker 1: do it, and then we will breastfeed as well. Interesting
Speaker 1: it is, Well, it's apparently quite a bonding experience between
Speaker 1: mother and child, and so I do it. Jerry just laughed.
Speaker 1: I was not breathfed, however, Oh you weren't, now, man,
Speaker 1: I was the child number three, and um, your mom
Speaker 1: was over it. Yeah, she's just like I can know
Speaker 1: more so, Uh, I've never looked into the ramifications of
Speaker 1: that psychologically if that matters. It seems like you turned
Speaker 1: out Okay, no comment. So before we sign off, I
Speaker 1: guess we should raise the point that because we do
Speaker 1: have a lot of the same anatomy underneath, UH, men
Speaker 1: can get breast cancer. Um, it's not rare, but it's
Speaker 1: not super common. I think in the two thousand twelve
Speaker 1: about American men were diagnosed with breast cancer, and so
Speaker 1: it happens. You never hear about it there. There's nothing
Speaker 1: to be ashamed of guys. And that's that's a high
Speaker 1: enough rate to say for some to say like, well,
Speaker 1: then that means that nipples should be selected out in
Speaker 1: men and probably will eventually while they're in lies. What
Speaker 1: we mentioned earlier is the fact that it could be
Speaker 1: just a flaw, an adaptive flaw over the years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: what about um, third nimples, additional nipples. Did you know
Speaker 1: that they happen most frequently in males and on the
Speaker 1: left side. It's interesting one in forty newborns has an
Speaker 1: extra nipple. Yeah, a lot of I mean, have you
Speaker 1: ever seen these? Yeah, they don't usually look like a
Speaker 1: full on Sometimes it looks like a birth the mark
Speaker 1: or something like that. Um, it has a tooth growing
Speaker 1: in it. But um, yeah, Chandler had the third nipple
Speaker 1: and friends, right, all right, that's superfectly sod crusty the clown. Really,
Speaker 1: I didn't think I knew that. Yeah, one in forty
Speaker 1: that's way more common than I think. That means that
Speaker 1: I know if you dudes have a third nipple. They
Speaker 1: just hadn't told me. I don't think I know forty people.
Speaker 1: You're so weird. Uh you got anything else? Nope? Okay. Well, um,
Speaker 1: if you want to learn more about male nipples, male actation,
Speaker 1: and evolution vestigial stuff, you can type in why do
Speaker 1: men have nipples in the search part how stuff works
Speaker 1: dot Com and it'll bring up this article. And I
Speaker 1: said search bar, which means it's time for listener mail. Uh. Well, whoa, whoa.
Speaker 1: I guess I need to stop myself stop. Uh. We
Speaker 1: have a television show coming out where I played Josh,
Speaker 1: you play Chuck. And the television show is called Stuff
Speaker 1: You Should Know. Um and uh it's coming out on
Speaker 1: Science Channel January nineteenth, Saturday at ten pm two episodes
Speaker 1: for the big debut. That's right, and we are debuting
Speaker 1: after the season three premiere of Idiot Abroad with Ricky
Speaker 1: Jervais and Carl Pilkington. Yes, which we're excited about. That's
Speaker 1: a great lead in for us. And if you don't
Speaker 1: have cable and you don't have Science Channel, or even
Speaker 1: if you do and you're like I love that and
Speaker 1: I want to see it eight hundred times, you can
Speaker 1: get it on iTunes. I'm told now. Uh, they are
Speaker 1: making the shows available on iTunes for purchase the day
Speaker 1: after the episode airs, and episode one is free dudes
Speaker 1: and do deads. Yeah, so every Saturday when we have
Speaker 1: a new episode the following day on iTunes, you'll be
Speaker 1: able to buy it. That's right. Um, So January nine
Speaker 1: is the big premiere. I'm already wearing a dickie and
Speaker 1: a bow tie and little cuffs right now. How do
Speaker 1: I look? You look great? I'm getting ready slowly, but surely.
Speaker 1: That's right. Uh, that's ten pm on Science Channel stuff.
Speaker 1: You should know the television show. It's going to be
Speaker 1: great January, isn't there? Right? All right now, listener mail,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna call this uh mustache woman. Remember during one
Speaker 1: of the November plugs, I think said something about ladies.
Speaker 1: Of course, you don't have a mustache, but blah blah blah,
Speaker 1: it can happen, and this is probably a pretty good
Speaker 1: podcast to mention this. Okay, this from Kayleb guys. I
Speaker 1: was listening to what will Happen When We reach the
Speaker 1: Singularity and Chuck said, men, I guess women, if you
Speaker 1: can grow a mustache, more power to you. Immediately up
Speaker 1: the podcast. What can Email? I suffer from a condition
Speaker 1: known as polycystic ovarian syndrome p c o S, which
Speaker 1: is a leading cause of infertility and effects about twelve
Speaker 1: of women. Many women don't know what it is or
Speaker 1: that they have it, but symptoms include um, infrequent or
Speaker 1: no menstruation cycles, acne, weight gain, diabetes and insulin UH
Speaker 1: insulin resistance and her her sutism her like her which
Speaker 1: is excess hair UH. It can lead to women growing
Speaker 1: hair where no woman should on the face, excessive arm hair, legs,
Speaker 1: and even hair on the nipples. Luckily, I am not
Speaker 1: affected by this particular symptom, but some women report having
Speaker 1: to shave several times a day, including sneaking razors into
Speaker 1: work to shave their faces. UH. Needless to say, this
Speaker 1: is a devastating reality and can have huge impacts on
Speaker 1: a woman's confidence an emotional well being. One lady with
Speaker 1: PCOS is participating in November to raise money for men's
Speaker 1: health awesome and to promote PCOS awareness. That is really awesome,
Speaker 1: very cool. So I'd love if you could read this
Speaker 1: on the air and raise some awareness around this condition.
Speaker 1: You can find more information through the Polycystic Association of
Speaker 1: Australia via Twitter at p O s A A on
Speaker 1: Australian Please don't do an impersonation? Are you going to now?
Speaker 1: That's terrible. I would really appreciate the plug, big fan
Speaker 1: of you guys. Uh, this is Kayla awesome, Kaylea, thank
Speaker 1: you very much for writing in and uh, thank you
Speaker 1: to the woman who grew mustache from November. That's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: Head hats off to you. Um. If you want to
Speaker 1: let us know about something that we obviously don't know
Speaker 1: about um because we made some weird reference to it, who,
Speaker 1: you can tell us all about it on Twitter at
Speaker 1: s Y s K podcast. You can join us on
Speaker 1: Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know, and you
Speaker 1: can send us a good old fashioned email to Stuff
Speaker 1: podcast at disco every dot com for more on this
Speaker 1: and thousands of other topics. Visit how stuff Works dot com,
Speaker 1: m