WEBVTT - Ig Nobels 2017: Vampires, Vaginal Music & Cheese 0:00:03.040 --> 0:00:05.840 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff 0:00:05.880 --> 0:00:14.840 Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:17.640 My name is Robert Lamb, I'm Christian Say, and I'm 0:00:17.720 --> 0:00:19.800 Joe McCormick. And here we are with part three of 0:00:19.840 --> 0:00:25.840 our seventeen ig No Bells Prize Ignoble Prizes series, where 0:00:25.840 --> 0:00:29.040 we're discussing the recipients of the seen ig Noo Bells. 0:00:29.080 --> 0:00:31.040 If you haven't heard the first two episodes, you might 0:00:31.080 --> 0:00:33.640 want to go check those out first. If you're unfamiliar 0:00:33.680 --> 0:00:35.839 with the prizes, we introduced them in the first episode. 0:00:35.880 --> 0:00:37.880 But hey, if you're here you just want to jump 0:00:38.000 --> 0:00:41.159 right in. That's okay too, guys. We have already covered 0:00:41.600 --> 0:00:47.280 liquid cats, cave bugs with swapped genitals, digeri do therapy, 0:00:47.600 --> 0:00:52.440 crocodile gamblers, weird effects of twins taking selfies or just 0:00:52.520 --> 0:00:55.400 looking at their own faces, and then whether old man 0:00:55.440 --> 0:00:57.319 ears are big. I don't know if you can get 0:00:57.320 --> 0:01:00.560 any weirder than that. And you know, before we get 0:01:00.600 --> 0:01:02.480 into the categories, they do want to again point out 0:01:02.680 --> 0:01:04.880 that the Ignoble Prizes, they come out every year, they 0:01:04.880 --> 0:01:08.480 put on by the publication the annals have been probable research. 0:01:09.080 --> 0:01:12.280 I will include a link to their website on the 0:01:12.360 --> 0:01:14.319 landing page for this episode Stuff to Blow your Mind 0:01:14.360 --> 0:01:16.560 dot com. Be sure to check them out. They are 0:01:16.600 --> 0:01:18.760 a publication. They put out a lot of great content 0:01:19.000 --> 0:01:24.800 about cool, weird, and occasionally hilarious, well frequently hilarious uh 0:01:24.840 --> 0:01:27.679 scientific studies. Uh. They're worth checking out. And we have 0:01:27.840 --> 0:01:31.160 to thank them, uh for putting out this content every year, 0:01:31.400 --> 0:01:35.000 drawing everyone's attention to these unique studies so that we 0:01:35.040 --> 0:01:38.440 can highlight them. Yeah. Actually, and if you're really loving 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:40.680 these episodes and you want to know more, you can 0:01:40.800 --> 0:01:43.960 watch their ceremony online when they gave the awards to 0:01:44.000 --> 0:01:46.080 all these people for the articles we're talking about. You're 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:49.080 a big fan, right. We're thinking of putting together a 0:01:49.120 --> 0:01:52.920 Christian singer commentary track. And as people know from past 0:01:53.000 --> 0:01:55.760 Ignoble episodes, I've watched them all the way through. I 0:01:55.800 --> 0:01:58.400 didn't do it this time. It's a little bit painful. 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:00.400 It's it's not my cup of tea when it comes 0:02:00.400 --> 0:02:02.440 to sense of humor. But I love the research that 0:02:02.480 --> 0:02:06.160 they pulled together. Yeah, alright, So what do we have 0:02:06.200 --> 0:02:09.640 for day? We have three left, one each to round 0:02:09.639 --> 0:02:12.400 out the twenty seven Igno Bells. What's what's first, I think, Joe, 0:02:12.600 --> 0:02:15.680 we have you first with the nutrition prize. Let's talk 0:02:15.720 --> 0:02:21.480 about vampire bats. Are they nutritious? They sure are delicious, delicious. Yeah. 0:02:21.680 --> 0:02:25.800 So there are three species of bats that are completely hematophagus, 0:02:25.880 --> 0:02:29.519 meaning they can survive on blood as their only food. 0:02:29.639 --> 0:02:33.200 And these three species are des Modus rotundus, which is 0:02:33.240 --> 0:02:35.680 the common vampire bat. You'll find it all over Central 0:02:35.720 --> 0:02:40.200 and South America. Uh Diamus yungi, which is the white 0:02:40.200 --> 0:02:45.280 winged vampire bat, and Diphila eco data, the hairy legged 0:02:45.360 --> 0:02:48.839 vampire bat. Now, all three of these actually you'll find 0:02:48.840 --> 0:02:52.320 in different parts of Central and South America. To survive 0:02:52.480 --> 0:02:55.480 on a diet of blood, these bats are equipped with 0:02:55.560 --> 0:02:59.120 some pretty amazing equipment. They've got these razor sharp incisors 0:02:59.120 --> 0:03:02.040 and canines. And first what they do is they tend 0:03:02.120 --> 0:03:06.639 to clip away the feathers or hair of their hosts. 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:08.280 You get like a free hair cut out of it, 0:03:08.639 --> 0:03:10.919 and then puncture the flesh. So they get the sort 0:03:10.960 --> 0:03:13.240 of scissor like teeth to clip away feathers or hair. 0:03:13.600 --> 0:03:15.800 They get a hole in you. And then they've also 0:03:15.840 --> 0:03:19.320 got this saliva laced with anticoagulants. So when they get 0:03:19.360 --> 0:03:21.600 it in the blood, it helps keep the blood flowing 0:03:21.680 --> 0:03:24.720 instead of clotting. They're basically surgeons, really, I mean they're 0:03:24.800 --> 0:03:28.960 they're shaving the surface and then they're making the incision 0:03:28.960 --> 0:03:32.440 and using in Uh, they're basically drugging you so that 0:03:32.440 --> 0:03:34.920 you don't feel anything. We have a whole episode about 0:03:34.960 --> 0:03:37.280 this actually about the physics of blood drinking as it 0:03:37.320 --> 0:03:40.839 relates to vampire bats and you know, also fictional vampires. Well, 0:03:40.920 --> 0:03:43.280 since you know that, you you guys probably know that 0:03:43.320 --> 0:03:46.840 they don't actually suck blood, but they sort of lap 0:03:46.880 --> 0:03:49.120 it up. Yeah, they let the blood pool and they 0:03:49.200 --> 0:03:51.200 lap it up, or they let it flow into the 0:03:51.200 --> 0:03:54.000 blood funnels. The blood funnels on the tongue or the 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:57.360 roof of the mouth. So a blood based diet is 0:03:57.400 --> 0:04:00.800 a rare and highly specialized way for a mammal to 0:04:00.840 --> 0:04:02.920 make a living. I would say it's like it's a 0:04:03.040 --> 0:04:05.160 terrible way for a mamm living, Like it is a 0:04:05.400 --> 0:04:08.000 difficult life. There is a reason you don't see a 0:04:08.000 --> 0:04:12.360 whole lot of blood sucking mammals. It requires weird specific 0:04:12.480 --> 0:04:16.960 behavioral and physiological adaptations that are not easily turned toward 0:04:17.080 --> 0:04:21.960 other survival strategies. Basically, it's an extreme lifestyle. And and 0:04:22.080 --> 0:04:25.840 I'm just imagining that like these bats at the X Games, Like, yeah, 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:29.080 that's extreme, bro right, Like I went all in on 0:04:29.200 --> 0:04:32.080 learning how to rocket skateboard and I can't do anything else. 0:04:32.160 --> 0:04:34.760 I never learned math, and now now I'm stuck with 0:04:34.800 --> 0:04:38.640 this is my career. Um so Hemata fagus bats are 0:04:38.720 --> 0:04:42.200 not able to store body fat and generally can't survive 0:04:42.279 --> 0:04:45.039 fasting more than a couple of days. And their bodies 0:04:45.080 --> 0:04:48.920 are also incredibly incredibly efficient at eliminating waste products from 0:04:48.960 --> 0:04:51.880 their blood diets, such as urea and excess water. But 0:04:52.440 --> 0:04:57.440 because of this elimination efficiency, they're also highly susceptible to dehydration. 0:04:58.000 --> 0:05:01.160 It's hard being a vampire bat. Yeah. I remember in 0:05:01.200 --> 0:05:02.680 the episode of The Christian and I did we talked 0:05:02.760 --> 0:05:07.039 which we extrapolated this to a humanoid vampire, and we're 0:05:07.080 --> 0:05:10.359 basically describing this nos ferato like creature that would have 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:13.320 to like barely drag itself into your room while you 0:05:13.320 --> 0:05:16.560 were asleep and start feeding on you, and it would 0:05:16.600 --> 0:05:19.800 be urinating at the same time. Uh and and and 0:05:19.960 --> 0:05:24.200 basically in a state of constant dehydration because the bathroom 0:05:24.200 --> 0:05:26.880 breaks everywhere. If I remember, I don't have the time 0:05:27.839 --> 0:05:30.000 quantities in my head, but they can only do it 0:05:30.040 --> 0:05:33.279 for a certain amount of time on specific animals before 0:05:33.320 --> 0:05:36.680 they're discovered, before you notice you've got one chomping on you, 0:05:37.120 --> 0:05:39.400 and so they have to like be real quick about it. 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:41.760 And they only get like a little bit of blood 0:05:41.800 --> 0:05:44.080 plasma with each feeding, so they could feed a lot. 0:05:44.279 --> 0:05:46.080 Yeah that with a lot of these. It's typical that 0:05:46.120 --> 0:05:48.680 they can only get one host per night. So I 0:05:48.680 --> 0:05:51.240 mean it's a it's a it's a rough way to 0:05:51.279 --> 0:05:54.960 make a living. That's why they're also skinny and harry legged. Yeah, 0:05:55.240 --> 0:05:58.520 always on the cover of magazines. Uh So, the first 0:05:58.560 --> 0:06:01.599 two species I mentioned before are they find their blood 0:06:01.600 --> 0:06:04.600 in more diverse quarters, but the hairy legged vampire bat. 0:06:04.600 --> 0:06:07.680 The third one I mentioned, Diphila eco data is known 0:06:07.720 --> 0:06:11.120 as a bird specialist. That means it makes its foraging 0:06:11.240 --> 0:06:16.080 niche even tighter by surviving almost entirely or entirely on 0:06:16.160 --> 0:06:19.880 the blood of wild birds, unless maybe that is it 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:22.719 has to adapt. We'll see. So in the in this 0:06:23.240 --> 0:06:27.040 study that got the ig Nobell from the journal Acta 0:06:27.200 --> 0:06:33.880 chiropter A Logica Bats, Yeah, authors Ferdinanda Ito Enrico Bernard 0:06:34.000 --> 0:06:37.159 and Rodrigo A. Torres set out to study the diet 0:06:37.240 --> 0:06:40.320 of diphila. This third bat I mentioned the wild bird 0:06:40.360 --> 0:06:44.840 blood lapper in the habitat of the Katinga dry forest. Now. 0:06:44.839 --> 0:06:48.719 The Katinga is an ecoregion found in eastern Brazil, very 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:52.120 different from the wet tropical rainforest of the Amazon Basin. 0:06:52.360 --> 0:06:55.760 The Katinga is this desert like region filled with dry, 0:06:55.800 --> 0:06:59.280 thorny trees and scrub vegetation. It's often referred to as 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:02.880 like thorn forest, and some parts of this region have 0:07:03.000 --> 0:07:07.320 been strongly disturbed in recent years by human activity, especially agriculture. 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:10.760 As always, human presence in and uh and and human 0:07:10.800 --> 0:07:14.400 agriculture in an ecosystem can mess up local wildlife. So 0:07:14.720 --> 0:07:17.320 the researchers reasoned that you would be able to see 0:07:17.320 --> 0:07:20.920 this disturbance of wildlife through changes in the diet of 0:07:21.000 --> 0:07:24.280 local vampire bats. If you move a bunch of farmers 0:07:24.320 --> 0:07:27.520 into a patch of Katinga, driving out and hunting many 0:07:27.560 --> 0:07:30.400 of the wild birds native to the area, would the 0:07:30.440 --> 0:07:35.680 local diphila change their lifestyle or to praying on domestic mammals, 0:07:35.720 --> 0:07:38.800 maybe in farms like cattle, goats, or pigs. Now here's 0:07:38.840 --> 0:07:40.520 a question for you guys. Let's say you want to 0:07:40.560 --> 0:07:43.080 study what a bad eats. How do you figure that out? 0:07:43.560 --> 0:07:46.680 Follow bats around? Well, that's kind of hard to do, 0:07:46.760 --> 0:07:49.040 and that maybe you made bat drones to chase something. 0:07:50.840 --> 0:07:54.080 You go off the grid, man, I mean, I've seen 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:57.560 studies that that look at that behavior, and it generally 0:07:57.600 --> 0:08:00.360 means you have to go where the prey hangs out 0:08:00.800 --> 0:08:03.360 and you have to just videotape the prey all night 0:08:03.440 --> 0:08:05.760 and then track what happens. But that would be assuming 0:08:05.800 --> 0:08:07.480 what the prey is. What if you want to find 0:08:07.480 --> 0:08:10.800 out what the pray I imagine that you go through guano. Yep, 0:08:10.960 --> 0:08:13.520 there you go. So a common method of studying the 0:08:13.560 --> 0:08:15.720 diet of a bat would be to study the shapes 0:08:15.760 --> 0:08:18.320 that appear in its poop. So, if it's a fruit 0:08:18.360 --> 0:08:20.400 eating bat, you can look at the feces and see 0:08:20.400 --> 0:08:22.520 what kind of seeds and stuff like that you see. 0:08:22.720 --> 0:08:25.320 If it's an insectivorous bat, you can look for insect 0:08:25.360 --> 0:08:28.320 body parts. But if you want to study the diet 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:31.520 of a blood lapping bat, how do you do it? Yeah? 0:08:31.520 --> 0:08:34.640 What is a vampire blood poop consist of? Well, I 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:37.439 mean it looks like soft poop. Yeah, it's soft poop. 0:08:37.480 --> 0:08:41.520 But like you can't identify what animal, Uh, some blood 0:08:41.559 --> 0:08:44.120 came from just by looking at it in poop. So 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:48.800 enter DNA testing of guano. So you can use polymerase 0:08:48.920 --> 0:08:52.680 chain reaction, which is known as PCR, the PCR technique 0:08:52.720 --> 0:08:57.480 on vampire bat feces to amplify fragments of degraded hosts 0:08:57.600 --> 0:09:01.079 DNA in the feces and to turn rman what animal 0:09:01.160 --> 0:09:04.640 the digested blood came from. So that's what the researchers 0:09:04.679 --> 0:09:09.959 did here. They collected fecal samples monthly from to January 0:09:10.000 --> 0:09:14.000 fifteen from a cave occupied by a colony of Diphila ecadata, 0:09:14.120 --> 0:09:16.920 which is the hairy legged vampire bat. The blood the 0:09:16.960 --> 0:09:21.480 bird blood lappers, which was surrounded by many cattle ranches 0:09:21.520 --> 0:09:24.720 and subsistence farms with a lot of goats in particular 0:09:24.760 --> 0:09:28.000 in the area. So it's the situation where their natural prey, 0:09:28.080 --> 0:09:30.920 the wild birds, have largely been driven out. You've got 0:09:30.960 --> 0:09:33.760 a lot of agriculture and they're wondering, Okay, are these 0:09:33.800 --> 0:09:37.000 things feeding on domestic mammals instead of the birds they 0:09:37.040 --> 0:09:40.640 prefer in the wild. So they preserved all these fecal samples. 0:09:40.640 --> 0:09:43.000 Then they did their molecular analysis to look for d 0:09:43.120 --> 0:09:45.480 NA ques as to what species these bats have been 0:09:45.480 --> 0:09:51.040 gorging themselves on. Researchers found DNA from two species, Gallus gallus, 0:09:51.080 --> 0:09:56.680 the domestic chicken, and Homo sapetans, the domestic human being. 0:09:57.960 --> 0:10:01.000 These bats had been drinking human lud and this is 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:05.280 significant because while people have gotten bat bites before, this 0:10:05.360 --> 0:10:09.160 is the first known evidence of vampire bats consuming human 0:10:09.240 --> 0:10:13.800 blood under natural conditions in the wild, and it contradicts 0:10:13.800 --> 0:10:17.120 the previous assumption that di Fila ecuadata would only drink 0:10:17.200 --> 0:10:20.199 the blood of wild birds. In previous experiments, this had 0:10:20.240 --> 0:10:23.559 gone pretty far. For example, these bats have even refused 0:10:23.559 --> 0:10:26.680 to drink mammal blood when it was their only option 0:10:26.840 --> 0:10:30.520 in lab conditions. Given the choice between pig blood, goat blood, 0:10:30.520 --> 0:10:34.120 and nothing, they chose nothing. So the idea here was 0:10:34.160 --> 0:10:36.520 that they were birds specialists to the point that there 0:10:36.559 --> 0:10:39.560 was no going back, which is kind of the whole niche. 0:10:40.240 --> 0:10:43.520 You know, the character of the vampire bat itself is 0:10:43.559 --> 0:10:46.560 that it's a creature that has chosen or chosen it is. 0:10:46.760 --> 0:10:49.680 It has gone down a very difficult road and it's 0:10:49.760 --> 0:10:52.199 just making the best it can out of that to 0:10:52.320 --> 0:10:55.040 have those difficult circumstances. Yeah, and they can, and they 0:10:55.040 --> 0:10:57.840 can specialize in different ways, Like rotundas drinks mammal blood, 0:10:58.080 --> 0:11:01.680 but but ecudata does not drink mammal blood even when 0:11:01.800 --> 0:11:05.840 it's got no other choice, except apparently when their habitat 0:11:05.960 --> 0:11:09.560 is disrupted and food sources are depleted, they'll make an exception. 0:11:09.600 --> 0:11:12.840 Apparently not so much for goats or pigs, but for us. 0:11:13.520 --> 0:11:17.320 So this is a consequence of our actions affecting their 0:11:17.440 --> 0:11:22.000 ecological area. Yeah, and I think it's interesting to wonder, 0:11:22.120 --> 0:11:25.360 like why these would generally not go for other mammals, 0:11:25.360 --> 0:11:29.120 but they would find human blood acceptable. Probably got a 0:11:29.120 --> 0:11:31.520 lot of more plasma in it. It's all fat or 0:11:31.600 --> 0:11:34.839 chicken chicken farmers taste taste like chicken. It could be. Now. 0:11:34.880 --> 0:11:36.800 One thing they found is that it looks like these 0:11:36.840 --> 0:11:40.480 bats cannot survive on mammal blood alone. So they can't 0:11:40.679 --> 0:11:45.120 just drink human blood and survive their diet, right, so 0:11:45.160 --> 0:11:47.719 they can survive on a mix of chicken blood and 0:11:47.840 --> 0:11:51.960 human blood. Uh. And so that's pretty weird. But it 0:11:52.040 --> 0:11:55.160 makes me wonder what other animals might decide we are 0:11:55.200 --> 0:11:58.240 worth eating once we destroy their natural habitat and drive 0:11:58.240 --> 0:12:02.760 out their natural prey, hippos. I think it's hippos that 0:12:02.800 --> 0:12:05.839 we need to worry about the most. I believe you 0:12:05.880 --> 0:12:09.439 guys brought up hippos recently, right first monsters, Yeah, yeah, 0:12:10.320 --> 0:12:13.559 watch out, they're gonna get you. It's harder to imagine, certainly, 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:16.440 the hippo switching over like that. But I remember when 0:12:16.440 --> 0:12:18.520 our in our episode on bats like that was part 0:12:18.559 --> 0:12:22.880 of the part of the really cool scientific theorizing is 0:12:22.920 --> 0:12:26.040 how did vampire bats come to drink blood? And you 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:29.760 get into this situation of well, perhaps they were they 0:12:29.760 --> 0:12:32.480 were cleaning up wounds of mega fauna, or they were 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:35.319 praying on parasites of megafauna. So you kind of get 0:12:35.320 --> 0:12:39.200 into this position where the the the organism eventually just 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:41.720 cuts out the middleman. Why am I? Why am I 0:12:41.840 --> 0:12:45.840 eating these these blood inflated ticks when I could just 0:12:45.920 --> 0:12:49.319 drink the blood of the of the of the mammoth 0:12:49.720 --> 0:12:51.760 or what have you. A. Right, it's big enough, it 0:12:51.760 --> 0:12:55.960 won't notice. Yeah, that's interesting. So we ask our questions, 0:12:56.000 --> 0:12:58.000 why is it funny? Why is it important? Things are 0:12:58.040 --> 0:13:01.640 always funnier when you explain why they're funny. Uh, this 0:13:01.679 --> 0:13:06.120 is funny because human blood is hilarious and why why 0:13:06.200 --> 0:13:10.400 is it important? Obviously, human incursion and into natural habitats 0:13:10.440 --> 0:13:13.679 has consequences. We should think about what those consequences are. 0:13:13.960 --> 0:13:15.880 I think it's interesting that, as far as I know, 0:13:16.040 --> 0:13:19.360 the people this blood came from have not been identified, Like, 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:22.720 I don't know who this who the humans supplying these 0:13:22.720 --> 0:13:26.559 bats with meals are, But these bats are drinking human blood. 0:13:26.679 --> 0:13:31.080 Someone very anemic chicken farmer? Yeah? Um. I mean. The 0:13:31.080 --> 0:13:33.080 other thing is it's funny because it's it's a hairy 0:13:33.120 --> 0:13:38.199 legged bat. The hairy legged bat just sounds hilarious, harry 0:13:38.240 --> 0:13:41.800 legged bat in the Henderson's all right, well, we're gonna 0:13:41.840 --> 0:13:44.120 take a quick break, drink some blood, and then we'll 0:13:44.160 --> 0:13:49.680 be right back for more ignobles. Thank alright, we're back. 0:13:50.120 --> 0:13:55.360 So we're just talking about devouring blood, which sounds I mean, 0:13:56.440 --> 0:14:00.480 somewhat appetizing. Maybe not the best as are you guys 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:02.880 disgusted by the idea of drinking blood? I don't know. 0:14:02.960 --> 0:14:04.560 I mean, if you have a blood funnel, why not 0:14:04.640 --> 0:14:07.360 use it? Well, yeah, I mean it's certainly find for 0:14:07.360 --> 0:14:10.080 a vampire bat. I find that you Yeah, I find 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:13.800 that the prospect kind of disgusting. I mean in the past, 0:14:14.240 --> 0:14:17.960 I'm not I haven't been opposed to having pretty red meat, 0:14:18.520 --> 0:14:21.520 and I think once a year I'll have have some 0:14:21.560 --> 0:14:24.240 sort of like a steak that it has a fair 0:14:24.280 --> 0:14:26.320 amount of blood in it, but the idea of like 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:29.680 drinking it like scenes in movies where human drinks blood, 0:14:29.720 --> 0:14:33.320 like I'm thinking of. I think the movie Chronos and 0:14:33.360 --> 0:14:36.360 also the vampire movie Habit both had scenes in which 0:14:36.360 --> 0:14:38.800 someone drinks the juice out of a out of a 0:14:38.920 --> 0:14:40.960 steak from the grocery store, you know where they like 0:14:41.040 --> 0:14:43.840 they drink, just drink the red liquid. We should clarify, 0:14:44.000 --> 0:14:46.600 that's not blood, that's myoglobin, that's right. So they're not 0:14:46.640 --> 0:14:49.960 even doing it right, these poor vampires. So then related 0:14:50.160 --> 0:14:52.760 to how disgusting that is to you, how do you 0:14:52.800 --> 0:14:57.040 feel about cheese? Oh, cheese is awesome. Is there any 0:14:57.120 --> 0:15:02.080 cheese you guys won't eat? Um? Neither. I'm not a 0:15:02.080 --> 0:15:07.920 big fan of cheese. Whiz well that's the products. I love. 0:15:08.480 --> 0:15:12.520 All cheese, even the really stinky cheese, blue cheese, goat cheese, feta, 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:15.200 you name it. I love cheese. It's part of my 0:15:15.360 --> 0:15:19.360 I'm a cheese addict. My favorite is the smoked accept 0:15:19.440 --> 0:15:23.040 pic cheese that comes from sheep milk and zacapona poland 0:15:23.120 --> 0:15:27.440 it's so good, It's really good. This next study is 0:15:27.560 --> 0:15:31.960 all about people being disgusted by cheese and it is 0:15:32.000 --> 0:15:36.000 called the Neural Bases of Disgust for Cheese and F 0:15:36.200 --> 0:15:39.640 M R I study. Well, that does make me think 0:15:39.640 --> 0:15:42.760 about how cheese is a is a largely cultural thing. 0:15:42.880 --> 0:15:46.440 Like there are cultural cuisines that really do not include 0:15:46.520 --> 0:15:48.400 cheese at all. Indeed, I mean you go to a 0:15:48.480 --> 0:15:50.680 Chinese restaurant, you're not going to find a lot of 0:15:50.760 --> 0:15:53.080 cheese on the menu. Now that being said, I believe 0:15:53.120 --> 0:15:56.000 there are there are some regional Chinese cuisines that have 0:15:57.200 --> 0:16:00.280 dairy products in them, some form of cheese. But about 0:16:00.320 --> 0:16:02.200 if you wanted to put some shredded cheese on my 0:16:02.240 --> 0:16:06.040 low mane, I wouldn't mind. It does sound kind of gross. Somehow, 0:16:06.120 --> 0:16:09.480 you can do anything Greeno style exactly everything. Well, I'd 0:16:09.480 --> 0:16:12.520 ask Chinese listeners out there, do you find cheese revolting? 0:16:12.680 --> 0:16:15.000 Let us know, so that actually comes into play here, 0:16:15.080 --> 0:16:21.320 not specifically China, but regional you know, cultural tastes for cheese. Okay, 0:16:21.360 --> 0:16:23.840 and it's coming up. But the researchers on this paper 0:16:23.880 --> 0:16:28.800 were specifically interested in studying disgusted and discussed, as defined 0:16:28.880 --> 0:16:32.560 by Charles Darwin in eighteen seventy two as a basic 0:16:32.600 --> 0:16:38.080 emotion that's characterized by peculiar facial expressions, action of distancing 0:16:38.080 --> 0:16:44.320 oneself from the offending object, and distinctive physiological manifestations like 0:16:45.000 --> 0:16:49.160 nausea or revulsion. You know, I have to say that 0:16:49.160 --> 0:16:51.880 when it comes to the cheese smell, and I'm I'm 0:16:51.960 --> 0:16:54.400 very picky about this, Like I don't like people talking 0:16:54.440 --> 0:16:58.240 about stinky cheeses, I because I think you're you're putting 0:16:58.240 --> 0:17:01.840 a label on it that is that is daring everyone 0:17:01.880 --> 0:17:08.320 to find other people. I mean, yeah, I like fragrant cheeses. 0:17:08.600 --> 0:17:09.879 At the same time, I realized that a lot of 0:17:09.880 --> 0:17:13.360 people use the term stinky cheese um in a positive way, 0:17:13.400 --> 0:17:15.199 like that's a term of endearment for them. So I 0:17:15.200 --> 0:17:17.840 don't mean to judge your your language. No, it's just 0:17:17.920 --> 0:17:20.040 I don't really call them that either. It's just kind 0:17:20.040 --> 0:17:22.480 of what I've heard people who are disgusted by cheese 0:17:22.560 --> 0:17:24.840 or first but but I have heard it used lovingly. Now. 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:27.600 At the same time, I feel like that the specific 0:17:27.640 --> 0:17:31.800 aroma of cheese. It is very contextual. So and I'm 0:17:31.800 --> 0:17:35.639 even participated in sort of like mild studies of this, 0:17:35.760 --> 0:17:37.440 you know, you know, the kind of thing that they'll 0:17:37.440 --> 0:17:39.560 do it like World Science Festival where everybody smells a 0:17:39.680 --> 0:17:42.440 tab of something. If you if you smell the cheese 0:17:42.480 --> 0:17:46.359 smell while eating cheese, it feels perfectly natural. If you 0:17:46.400 --> 0:17:49.640 smell the cheese smell while changing like your son's shoes, 0:17:50.080 --> 0:17:53.680 of which I have encountered this, it's revolting because that's 0:17:53.720 --> 0:17:56.720 not where it should be, right. Yeah, I think you 0:17:56.720 --> 0:17:59.640 could even use just linguistic priming, Like if you smell 0:17:59.720 --> 0:18:03.440 blue cheese while you're thinking about blue cheese and that's all, 0:18:03.520 --> 0:18:06.240 it probably smells good. If you smell blue cheese and 0:18:06.280 --> 0:18:09.520 somebody calls it armpit cheese, I think that will probably 0:18:09.560 --> 0:18:12.520 cause you to recoil. Now, another case where I see 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:15.440 something like this is with dury and fruit. Your fruit 0:18:15.600 --> 0:18:18.760 kind of smells like cheese, but a lot of people 0:18:18.760 --> 0:18:20.840 are really turned off by durian fruit because it is 0:18:20.880 --> 0:18:22.879 a fruit and it does not seem like it should 0:18:22.880 --> 0:18:26.680 have this aroma. Yeah, I, as many of our listeners know, 0:18:26.800 --> 0:18:29.000 and you guys know, I grew up in Singapore Durian 0:18:29.080 --> 0:18:32.680 is quite popular the candy out of dry. Yeah, and 0:18:33.160 --> 0:18:35.040 when I was living over there, you could get dury 0:18:35.040 --> 0:18:41.159 and milkshakes from the McDonald's over there. No, I find 0:18:41.359 --> 0:18:44.879 dury and gross multiple levels. It smells like you're into me. 0:18:45.240 --> 0:18:48.760 But then also, have you ever like cut dury in before? 0:18:48.800 --> 0:18:52.560 It's a strange object. It's like this big spiny object 0:18:52.600 --> 0:18:55.440 and globes sort of. Yeah, when you open it up, 0:18:55.480 --> 0:18:57.720 the insides of it look like the insides of a 0:18:57.960 --> 0:19:01.280 of a not a plant. It looks like a cow's 0:19:01.400 --> 0:19:04.040 organs just spilled out of this thing. Well, I think 0:19:04.080 --> 0:19:08.800 it should be classified as an outdoor cheese fruit because 0:19:09.119 --> 0:19:11.719 you don't eat it indoors necessarily. And this is from me. 0:19:11.960 --> 0:19:14.359 This is from a Western perspective that someone who hasn't 0:19:14.359 --> 0:19:16.720 grown up with it and have a cultural appreciation for it. 0:19:17.000 --> 0:19:19.640 But I think I'm perfectly okay with it at an 0:19:19.640 --> 0:19:23.600 outdoor scenario where I know that it is during Yeah, yeah, 0:19:23.720 --> 0:19:25.600 I think so too. And if you want to experiment, 0:19:25.640 --> 0:19:27.840 I think it's worth checking out as well. Try it. 0:19:28.280 --> 0:19:30.800 But here's the thing is, you guys actually just like 0:19:30.840 --> 0:19:34.600 anecdotally talking about your your cheese experiences, just now hit 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:36.320 on a couple of the points that we're going to 0:19:36.400 --> 0:19:40.359 find in this study, because these researchers focused on sensory 0:19:40.440 --> 0:19:44.880 factors and not just smell, and they also considered how 0:19:45.000 --> 0:19:49.760 discussed can be a conditioned a version, So specifically, they 0:19:49.800 --> 0:19:52.600 were looking at disgust of food and that was interesting 0:19:52.640 --> 0:19:56.480 to them because studies on food aversion are apparently rare, 0:19:57.359 --> 0:20:01.320 and the reason why is because there's ethical issues associated 0:20:01.400 --> 0:20:06.080 with experimental induction of the gastro intestinal system. So if 0:20:06.119 --> 0:20:09.520 you cause somebody gastro intestinal pain as part of a 0:20:09.600 --> 0:20:12.000 study and then you're trying to figure out if they're 0:20:12.040 --> 0:20:14.600 a you know, they have an aversion to that food, 0:20:14.840 --> 0:20:17.440 there's some ethical issues, so it's hard to get approval 0:20:17.480 --> 0:20:21.200 for studies that are designed to make people feel nausea. Yeah. Yeah, 0:20:21.440 --> 0:20:25.960 So they turned to cheese. Their first task was to 0:20:26.080 --> 0:20:30.200 estimate what proportion of individuals are actually disgusted by cheese, 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:33.159 and then they aimed to compare the brain activities of 0:20:33.240 --> 0:20:37.080 people with aversion to cheese with those who commonly eat cheese. 0:20:37.560 --> 0:20:41.760 And they used functional magnetic resonance imaging to do this 0:20:41.840 --> 0:20:43.440 and from now and I'll refer to that as f 0:20:43.560 --> 0:20:47.439 m R. I their hypothesis was that several areas of 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:51.600 the brain would be activated depending on if the participant 0:20:51.600 --> 0:20:54.760 was either pro cheese or anti cheese. And these people, 0:20:55.440 --> 0:20:58.280 these people were talking about here, whether they're pro or anti. 0:20:58.359 --> 0:21:01.240 They claim to be able to detect cheese in a 0:21:01.400 --> 0:21:05.359 room solely based on its odor. So they gathered a 0:21:05.480 --> 0:21:08.840 hundred and forty five French men and a hundred and 0:21:08.840 --> 0:21:13.560 eighty seven French women using newspaper ads and flyers. Then 0:21:13.560 --> 0:21:16.800 they asked these people to complete a questionnaire evaluating just 0:21:17.040 --> 0:21:20.879 general food items, and they broke them up into multiple 0:21:20.920 --> 0:21:24.320 groups of fifteen which were either pro cheese or anti 0:21:24.400 --> 0:21:27.920 cheese groups. There were anti cheese French people. It really 0:21:27.920 --> 0:21:31.040 breaks the stereotype. This is important to this study and 0:21:31.280 --> 0:21:35.280 surprising right. The groups were matched in age, and the 0:21:35.320 --> 0:21:40.000 participants were checked for ola factory impairments and detection ability. 0:21:40.080 --> 0:21:47.840 So for stimuli, they used six cheese varieties blue cheddar goat, 0:21:48.480 --> 0:21:53.480 gre air, parmesan, and then is it pronounced tomay? I'm 0:21:53.480 --> 0:21:56.080 not I don't know this one. Actually don't know that cheese. 0:21:56.119 --> 0:21:57.840 I don't know it either, but it's t O M 0:21:58.080 --> 0:22:00.679 m e, so maybe that's a French cheese. Were unaware 0:22:00.680 --> 0:22:05.240 of over here, they diluted these cheeses the odorance of 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:08.920 them in mineral oil down to ten percent in volume, 0:22:09.400 --> 0:22:12.720 and then five million liters of that solution was absorbed 0:22:12.760 --> 0:22:16.480 into a squeeze bottle with a dropper. Then they used 0:22:16.600 --> 0:22:22.439 an airflow old factometer to deliver a continuous stimuli that 0:22:22.560 --> 0:22:27.119 was synchronized with the person's breathing through a standard oxygen mask. 0:22:27.720 --> 0:22:32.119 These participants could provide five logic signals with their hands, 0:22:32.119 --> 0:22:34.800 so they had like a little like controller uh and 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:38.159 it basically indicated how pleasant or unpleasant their experience was. 0:22:38.800 --> 0:22:43.520 And they also had their behavioral responses measured, their stimulation 0:22:43.600 --> 0:22:47.160 onset measured, and then the trigger signals were measured from 0:22:47.280 --> 0:22:51.240 the m r I that was recording them. They first 0:22:51.359 --> 0:22:53.919 tested this out while these people were in what they 0:22:53.920 --> 0:22:57.400