Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind from how Stuff
Speaker 1: Works dot com. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb, I'm Christian Say, and I'm
Speaker 1: Joe McCormick. And here we are with part three of
Speaker 1: our seventeen ig No Bells Prize Ignoble Prizes series, where
Speaker 1: we're discussing the recipients of the seen ig Noo Bells.
Speaker 1: If you haven't heard the first two episodes, you might
Speaker 1: want to go check those out first. If you're unfamiliar
Speaker 1: with the prizes, we introduced them in the first episode.
Speaker 1: But hey, if you're here you just want to jump
Speaker 1: right in. That's okay too, guys. We have already covered
Speaker 1: liquid cats, cave bugs with swapped genitals, digeri do therapy,
Speaker 1: crocodile gamblers, weird effects of twins taking selfies or just
Speaker 1: looking at their own faces, and then whether old man
Speaker 1: ears are big. I don't know if you can get
Speaker 1: any weirder than that. And you know, before we get
Speaker 1: into the categories, they do want to again point out
Speaker 1: that the Ignoble Prizes, they come out every year, they
Speaker 1: put on by the publication the annals have been probable research.
Speaker 1: I will include a link to their website on the
Speaker 1: landing page for this episode Stuff to Blow your Mind
Speaker 1: dot com. Be sure to check them out. They are
Speaker 1: a publication. They put out a lot of great content
Speaker 1: about cool, weird, and occasionally hilarious, well frequently hilarious uh
Speaker 1: scientific studies. Uh. They're worth checking out. And we have
Speaker 1: to thank them, uh for putting out this content every year,
Speaker 1: drawing everyone's attention to these unique studies so that we
Speaker 1: can highlight them. Yeah. Actually, and if you're really loving
Speaker 1: these episodes and you want to know more, you can
Speaker 1: watch their ceremony online when they gave the awards to
Speaker 1: all these people for the articles we're talking about. You're
Speaker 1: a big fan, right. We're thinking of putting together a
Speaker 1: Christian singer commentary track. And as people know from past
Speaker 1: Ignoble episodes, I've watched them all the way through. I
Speaker 1: didn't do it this time. It's a little bit painful.
Speaker 1: It's it's not my cup of tea when it comes
Speaker 1: to sense of humor. But I love the research that
Speaker 1: they pulled together. Yeah, alright, So what do we have
Speaker 1: for day? We have three left, one each to round
Speaker 1: out the twenty seven Igno Bells. What's what's first, I think, Joe,
Speaker 1: we have you first with the nutrition prize. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about vampire bats. Are they nutritious? They sure are delicious, delicious. Yeah.
Speaker 1: So there are three species of bats that are completely hematophagus,
Speaker 1: meaning they can survive on blood as their only food.
Speaker 1: And these three species are des Modus rotundus, which is
Speaker 1: the common vampire bat. You'll find it all over Central
Speaker 1: and South America. Uh Diamus yungi, which is the white
Speaker 1: winged vampire bat, and Diphila eco data, the hairy legged
Speaker 1: vampire bat. Now, all three of these actually you'll find
Speaker 1: in different parts of Central and South America. To survive
Speaker 1: on a diet of blood, these bats are equipped with
Speaker 1: some pretty amazing equipment. They've got these razor sharp incisors
Speaker 1: and canines. And first what they do is they tend
Speaker 1: to clip away the feathers or hair of their hosts.
Speaker 1: You get like a free hair cut out of it,
Speaker 1: and then puncture the flesh. So they get the sort
Speaker 1: of scissor like teeth to clip away feathers or hair.
Speaker 1: They get a hole in you. And then they've also
Speaker 1: got this saliva laced with anticoagulants. So when they get
Speaker 1: it in the blood, it helps keep the blood flowing
Speaker 1: instead of clotting. They're basically surgeons, really, I mean they're
Speaker 1: they're shaving the surface and then they're making the incision
Speaker 1: and using in Uh, they're basically drugging you so that
Speaker 1: you don't feel anything. We have a whole episode about
Speaker 1: this actually about the physics of blood drinking as it
Speaker 1: relates to vampire bats and you know, also fictional vampires. Well,
Speaker 1: since you know that, you you guys probably know that
Speaker 1: they don't actually suck blood, but they sort of lap
Speaker 1: it up. Yeah, they let the blood pool and they
Speaker 1: lap it up, or they let it flow into the
Speaker 1: blood funnels. The blood funnels on the tongue or the
Speaker 1: roof of the mouth. So a blood based diet is
Speaker 1: a rare and highly specialized way for a mammal to
Speaker 1: make a living. I would say it's like it's a
Speaker 1: terrible way for a mamm living, Like it is a
Speaker 1: difficult life. There is a reason you don't see a
Speaker 1: whole lot of blood sucking mammals. It requires weird specific
Speaker 1: behavioral and physiological adaptations that are not easily turned toward
Speaker 1: other survival strategies. Basically, it's an extreme lifestyle. And and
Speaker 1: I'm just imagining that like these bats at the X Games, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: that's extreme, bro right, Like I went all in on
Speaker 1: learning how to rocket skateboard and I can't do anything else.
Speaker 1: I never learned math, and now now I'm stuck with
Speaker 1: this is my career. Um so Hemata fagus bats are
Speaker 1: not able to store body fat and generally can't survive
Speaker 1: fasting more than a couple of days. And their bodies
Speaker 1: are also incredibly incredibly efficient at eliminating waste products from
Speaker 1: their blood diets, such as urea and excess water. But
Speaker 1: because of this elimination efficiency, they're also highly susceptible to dehydration.
Speaker 1: It's hard being a vampire bat. Yeah. I remember in
Speaker 1: the episode of The Christian and I did we talked
Speaker 1: which we extrapolated this to a humanoid vampire, and we're
Speaker 1: basically describing this nos ferato like creature that would have
Speaker 1: to like barely drag itself into your room while you
Speaker 1: were asleep and start feeding on you, and it would
Speaker 1: be urinating at the same time. Uh and and and
Speaker 1: basically in a state of constant dehydration because the bathroom
Speaker 1: breaks everywhere. If I remember, I don't have the time
Speaker 1: quantities in my head, but they can only do it
Speaker 1: for a certain amount of time on specific animals before
Speaker 1: they're discovered, before you notice you've got one chomping on you,
Speaker 1: and so they have to like be real quick about it.
Speaker 1: And they only get like a little bit of blood
Speaker 1: plasma with each feeding, so they could feed a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah that with a lot of these. It's typical that
Speaker 1: they can only get one host per night. So I
Speaker 1: mean it's a it's a it's a rough way to
Speaker 1: make a living. That's why they're also skinny and harry legged. Yeah,
Speaker 1: always on the cover of magazines. Uh So, the first
Speaker 1: two species I mentioned before are they find their blood
Speaker 1: in more diverse quarters, but the hairy legged vampire bat.
Speaker 1: The third one I mentioned, Diphila eco data is known
Speaker 1: as a bird specialist. That means it makes its foraging
Speaker 1: niche even tighter by surviving almost entirely or entirely on
Speaker 1: the blood of wild birds, unless maybe that is it
Speaker 1: has to adapt. We'll see. So in the in this
Speaker 1: study that got the ig Nobell from the journal Acta
Speaker 1: chiropter A Logica Bats, Yeah, authors Ferdinanda Ito Enrico Bernard
Speaker 1: and Rodrigo A. Torres set out to study the diet
Speaker 1: of diphila. This third bat I mentioned the wild bird
Speaker 1: blood lapper in the habitat of the Katinga dry forest. Now.
Speaker 1: The Katinga is an ecoregion found in eastern Brazil, very
Speaker 1: different from the wet tropical rainforest of the Amazon Basin.
Speaker 1: The Katinga is this desert like region filled with dry,
Speaker 1: thorny trees and scrub vegetation. It's often referred to as
Speaker 1: like thorn forest, and some parts of this region have
Speaker 1: been strongly disturbed in recent years by human activity, especially agriculture.
Speaker 1: As always, human presence in and uh and and human
Speaker 1: agriculture in an ecosystem can mess up local wildlife. So
Speaker 1: the researchers reasoned that you would be able to see
Speaker 1: this disturbance of wildlife through changes in the diet of
Speaker 1: local vampire bats. If you move a bunch of farmers
Speaker 1: into a patch of Katinga, driving out and hunting many
Speaker 1: of the wild birds native to the area, would the
Speaker 1: local diphila change their lifestyle or to praying on domestic mammals,
Speaker 1: maybe in farms like cattle, goats, or pigs. Now here's
Speaker 1: a question for you guys. Let's say you want to
Speaker 1: study what a bad eats. How do you figure that out?
Speaker 1: Follow bats around? Well, that's kind of hard to do,
Speaker 1: and that maybe you made bat drones to chase something.
Speaker 1: You go off the grid, man, I mean, I've seen
Speaker 1: studies that that look at that behavior, and it generally
Speaker 1: means you have to go where the prey hangs out
Speaker 1: and you have to just videotape the prey all night
Speaker 1: and then track what happens. But that would be assuming
Speaker 1: what the prey is. What if you want to find
Speaker 1: out what the pray I imagine that you go through guano. Yep,
Speaker 1: there you go. So a common method of studying the
Speaker 1: diet of a bat would be to study the shapes
Speaker 1: that appear in its poop. So, if it's a fruit
Speaker 1: eating bat, you can look at the feces and see
Speaker 1: what kind of seeds and stuff like that you see.
Speaker 1: If it's an insectivorous bat, you can look for insect
Speaker 1: body parts. But if you want to study the diet
Speaker 1: of a blood lapping bat, how do you do it? Yeah?
Speaker 1: What is a vampire blood poop consist of? Well, I
Speaker 1: mean it looks like soft poop. Yeah, it's soft poop.
Speaker 1: But like you can't identify what animal, Uh, some blood
Speaker 1: came from just by looking at it in poop. So
Speaker 1: enter DNA testing of guano. So you can use polymerase
Speaker 1: chain reaction, which is known as PCR, the PCR technique
Speaker 1: on vampire bat feces to amplify fragments of degraded hosts
Speaker 1: DNA in the feces and to turn rman what animal
Speaker 1: the digested blood came from. So that's what the researchers
Speaker 1: did here. They collected fecal samples monthly from to January
Speaker 1: fifteen from a cave occupied by a colony of Diphila ecadata,
Speaker 1: which is the hairy legged vampire bat. The blood the
Speaker 1: bird blood lappers, which was surrounded by many cattle ranches
Speaker 1: and subsistence farms with a lot of goats in particular
Speaker 1: in the area. So it's the situation where their natural prey,
Speaker 1: the wild birds, have largely been driven out. You've got
Speaker 1: a lot of agriculture and they're wondering, Okay, are these
Speaker 1: things feeding on domestic mammals instead of the birds they
Speaker 1: prefer in the wild. So they preserved all these fecal samples.
Speaker 1: Then they did their molecular analysis to look for d
Speaker 1: NA ques as to what species these bats have been
Speaker 1: gorging themselves on. Researchers found DNA from two species, Gallus gallus,
Speaker 1: the domestic chicken, and Homo sapetans, the domestic human being.
Speaker 1: These bats had been drinking human lud and this is
Speaker 1: significant because while people have gotten bat bites before, this
Speaker 1: is the first known evidence of vampire bats consuming human
Speaker 1: blood under natural conditions in the wild, and it contradicts
Speaker 1: the previous assumption that di Fila ecuadata would only drink
Speaker 1: the blood of wild birds. In previous experiments, this had
Speaker 1: gone pretty far. For example, these bats have even refused
Speaker 1: to drink mammal blood when it was their only option
Speaker 1: in lab conditions. Given the choice between pig blood, goat blood,
Speaker 1: and nothing, they chose nothing. So the idea here was
Speaker 1: that they were birds specialists to the point that there
Speaker 1: was no going back, which is kind of the whole niche.
Speaker 1: You know, the character of the vampire bat itself is
Speaker 1: that it's a creature that has chosen or chosen it is.
Speaker 1: It has gone down a very difficult road and it's
Speaker 1: just making the best it can out of that to
Speaker 1: have those difficult circumstances. Yeah, and they can, and they
Speaker 1: can specialize in different ways, Like rotundas drinks mammal blood,
Speaker 1: but but ecudata does not drink mammal blood even when
Speaker 1: it's got no other choice, except apparently when their habitat
Speaker 1: is disrupted and food sources are depleted, they'll make an exception.
Speaker 1: Apparently not so much for goats or pigs, but for us.
Speaker 1: So this is a consequence of our actions affecting their
Speaker 1: ecological area. Yeah, and I think it's interesting to wonder,
Speaker 1: like why these would generally not go for other mammals,
Speaker 1: but they would find human blood acceptable. Probably got a
Speaker 1: lot of more plasma in it. It's all fat or
Speaker 1: chicken chicken farmers taste taste like chicken. It could be. Now.
Speaker 1: One thing they found is that it looks like these
Speaker 1: bats cannot survive on mammal blood alone. So they can't
Speaker 1: just drink human blood and survive their diet, right, so
Speaker 1: they can survive on a mix of chicken blood and
Speaker 1: human blood. Uh. And so that's pretty weird. But it
Speaker 1: makes me wonder what other animals might decide we are
Speaker 1: worth eating once we destroy their natural habitat and drive
Speaker 1: out their natural prey, hippos. I think it's hippos that
Speaker 1: we need to worry about the most. I believe you
Speaker 1: guys brought up hippos recently, right first monsters, Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: watch out, they're gonna get you. It's harder to imagine, certainly,
Speaker 1: the hippo switching over like that. But I remember when
Speaker 1: our in our episode on bats like that was part
Speaker 1: of the part of the really cool scientific theorizing is
Speaker 1: how did vampire bats come to drink blood? And you
Speaker 1: get into this situation of well, perhaps they were they
Speaker 1: were cleaning up wounds of mega fauna, or they were
Speaker 1: praying on parasites of megafauna. So you kind of get
Speaker 1: into this position where the the the organism eventually just
Speaker 1: cuts out the middleman. Why am I? Why am I
Speaker 1: eating these these blood inflated ticks when I could just
Speaker 1: drink the blood of the of the of the mammoth
Speaker 1: or what have you. A. Right, it's big enough, it
Speaker 1: won't notice. Yeah, that's interesting. So we ask our questions,
Speaker 1: why is it funny? Why is it important? Things are
Speaker 1: always funnier when you explain why they're funny. Uh, this
Speaker 1: is funny because human blood is hilarious and why why
Speaker 1: is it important? Obviously, human incursion and into natural habitats
Speaker 1: has consequences. We should think about what those consequences are.
Speaker 1: I think it's interesting that, as far as I know,
Speaker 1: the people this blood came from have not been identified, Like,
Speaker 1: I don't know who this who the humans supplying these
Speaker 1: bats with meals are, But these bats are drinking human blood.
Speaker 1: Someone very anemic chicken farmer? Yeah? Um. I mean. The
Speaker 1: other thing is it's funny because it's it's a hairy
Speaker 1: legged bat. The hairy legged bat just sounds hilarious, harry
Speaker 1: legged bat in the Henderson's all right, well, we're gonna
Speaker 1: take a quick break, drink some blood, and then we'll
Speaker 1: be right back for more ignobles. Thank alright, we're back.
Speaker 1: So we're just talking about devouring blood, which sounds I mean,
Speaker 1: somewhat appetizing. Maybe not the best as are you guys
Speaker 1: disgusted by the idea of drinking blood? I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean, if you have a blood funnel, why not
Speaker 1: use it? Well, yeah, I mean it's certainly find for
Speaker 1: a vampire bat. I find that you Yeah, I find
Speaker 1: that the prospect kind of disgusting. I mean in the past,
Speaker 1: I'm not I haven't been opposed to having pretty red meat,
Speaker 1: and I think once a year I'll have have some
Speaker 1: sort of like a steak that it has a fair
Speaker 1: amount of blood in it, but the idea of like
Speaker 1: drinking it like scenes in movies where human drinks blood,
Speaker 1: like I'm thinking of. I think the movie Chronos and
Speaker 1: also the vampire movie Habit both had scenes in which
Speaker 1: someone drinks the juice out of a out of a
Speaker 1: steak from the grocery store, you know where they like
Speaker 1: they drink, just drink the red liquid. We should clarify,
Speaker 1: that's not blood, that's myoglobin, that's right. So they're not
Speaker 1: even doing it right, these poor vampires. So then related
Speaker 1: to how disgusting that is to you, how do you
Speaker 1: feel about cheese? Oh, cheese is awesome. Is there any
Speaker 1: cheese you guys won't eat? Um? Neither. I'm not a
Speaker 1: big fan of cheese. Whiz well that's the products. I love.
Speaker 1: All cheese, even the really stinky cheese, blue cheese, goat cheese, feta,
Speaker 1: you name it. I love cheese. It's part of my
Speaker 1: I'm a cheese addict. My favorite is the smoked accept
Speaker 1: pic cheese that comes from sheep milk and zacapona poland
Speaker 1: it's so good, It's really good. This next study is
Speaker 1: all about people being disgusted by cheese and it is
Speaker 1: called the Neural Bases of Disgust for Cheese and F
Speaker 1: M R I study. Well, that does make me think
Speaker 1: about how cheese is a is a largely cultural thing.
Speaker 1: Like there are cultural cuisines that really do not include
Speaker 1: cheese at all. Indeed, I mean you go to a
Speaker 1: Chinese restaurant, you're not going to find a lot of
Speaker 1: cheese on the menu. Now that being said, I believe
Speaker 1: there are there are some regional Chinese cuisines that have
Speaker 1: dairy products in them, some form of cheese. But about
Speaker 1: if you wanted to put some shredded cheese on my
Speaker 1: low mane, I wouldn't mind. It does sound kind of gross. Somehow,
Speaker 1: you can do anything Greeno style exactly everything. Well, I'd
Speaker 1: ask Chinese listeners out there, do you find cheese revolting?
Speaker 1: Let us know, so that actually comes into play here,
Speaker 1: not specifically China, but regional you know, cultural tastes for cheese. Okay,
Speaker 1: and it's coming up. But the researchers on this paper
Speaker 1: were specifically interested in studying disgusted and discussed, as defined
Speaker 1: by Charles Darwin in eighteen seventy two as a basic
Speaker 1: emotion that's characterized by peculiar facial expressions, action of distancing
Speaker 1: oneself from the offending object, and distinctive physiological manifestations like
Speaker 1: nausea or revulsion. You know, I have to say that
Speaker 1: when it comes to the cheese smell, and I'm I'm
Speaker 1: very picky about this, Like I don't like people talking
Speaker 1: about stinky cheeses, I because I think you're you're putting
Speaker 1: a label on it that is that is daring everyone
Speaker 1: to find other people. I mean, yeah, I like fragrant cheeses.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I realized that a lot of
Speaker 1: people use the term stinky cheese um in a positive way,
Speaker 1: like that's a term of endearment for them. So I
Speaker 1: don't mean to judge your your language. No, it's just
Speaker 1: I don't really call them that either. It's just kind
Speaker 1: of what I've heard people who are disgusted by cheese
Speaker 1: or first but but I have heard it used lovingly. Now.
Speaker 1: At the same time, I feel like that the specific
Speaker 1: aroma of cheese. It is very contextual. So and I'm
Speaker 1: even participated in sort of like mild studies of this,
Speaker 1: you know, you know, the kind of thing that they'll
Speaker 1: do it like World Science Festival where everybody smells a
Speaker 1: tab of something. If you if you smell the cheese
Speaker 1: smell while eating cheese, it feels perfectly natural. If you
Speaker 1: smell the cheese smell while changing like your son's shoes,
Speaker 1: of which I have encountered this, it's revolting because that's
Speaker 1: not where it should be, right. Yeah, I think you
Speaker 1: could even use just linguistic priming, Like if you smell
Speaker 1: blue cheese while you're thinking about blue cheese and that's all,
Speaker 1: it probably smells good. If you smell blue cheese and
Speaker 1: somebody calls it armpit cheese, I think that will probably
Speaker 1: cause you to recoil. Now, another case where I see
Speaker 1: something like this is with dury and fruit. Your fruit
Speaker 1: kind of smells like cheese, but a lot of people
Speaker 1: are really turned off by durian fruit because it is
Speaker 1: a fruit and it does not seem like it should
Speaker 1: have this aroma. Yeah, I, as many of our listeners know,
Speaker 1: and you guys know, I grew up in Singapore Durian
Speaker 1: is quite popular the candy out of dry. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: when I was living over there, you could get dury
Speaker 1: and milkshakes from the McDonald's over there. No, I find
Speaker 1: dury and gross multiple levels. It smells like you're into me.
Speaker 1: But then also, have you ever like cut dury in before?
Speaker 1: It's a strange object. It's like this big spiny object
Speaker 1: and globes sort of. Yeah, when you open it up,
Speaker 1: the insides of it look like the insides of a
Speaker 1: of a not a plant. It looks like a cow's
Speaker 1: organs just spilled out of this thing. Well, I think
Speaker 1: it should be classified as an outdoor cheese fruit because
Speaker 1: you don't eat it indoors necessarily. And this is from me.
Speaker 1: This is from a Western perspective that someone who hasn't
Speaker 1: grown up with it and have a cultural appreciation for it.
Speaker 1: But I think I'm perfectly okay with it at an
Speaker 1: outdoor scenario where I know that it is during Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I think so too. And if you want to experiment,
Speaker 1: I think it's worth checking out as well. Try it.
Speaker 1: But here's the thing is, you guys actually just like
Speaker 1: anecdotally talking about your your cheese experiences, just now hit
Speaker 1: on a couple of the points that we're going to
Speaker 1: find in this study, because these researchers focused on sensory
Speaker 1: factors and not just smell, and they also considered how
Speaker 1: discussed can be a conditioned a version, So specifically, they
Speaker 1: were looking at disgust of food and that was interesting
Speaker 1: to them because studies on food aversion are apparently rare,
Speaker 1: and the reason why is because there's ethical issues associated
Speaker 1: with experimental induction of the gastro intestinal system. So if
Speaker 1: you cause somebody gastro intestinal pain as part of a
Speaker 1: study and then you're trying to figure out if they're
Speaker 1: a you know, they have an aversion to that food,
Speaker 1: there's some ethical issues, so it's hard to get approval
Speaker 1: for studies that are designed to make people feel nausea. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: So they turned to cheese. Their first task was to
Speaker 1: estimate what proportion of individuals are actually disgusted by cheese,
Speaker 1: and then they aimed to compare the brain activities of
Speaker 1: people with aversion to cheese with those who commonly eat cheese.
Speaker 1: And they used functional magnetic resonance imaging to do this
Speaker 1: and from now and I'll refer to that as f
Speaker 1: m R. I their hypothesis was that several areas of
Speaker 1: the brain would be activated depending on if the participant
Speaker 1: was either pro cheese or anti cheese. And these people,
Speaker 1: these people were talking about here, whether they're pro or anti.
Speaker 1: They claim to be able to detect cheese in a
Speaker 1: room solely based on its odor. So they gathered a
Speaker 1: hundred and forty five French men and a hundred and
Speaker 1: eighty seven French women using newspaper ads and flyers. Then
Speaker 1: they asked these people to complete a questionnaire evaluating just
Speaker 1: general food items, and they broke them up into multiple
Speaker 1: groups of fifteen which were either pro cheese or anti
Speaker 1: cheese groups. There were anti cheese French people. It really
Speaker 1: breaks the stereotype. This is important to this study and
Speaker 1: surprising right. The groups were matched in age, and the
Speaker 1: participants were checked for ola factory impairments and detection ability.
Speaker 1: So for stimuli, they used six cheese varieties blue cheddar goat,
Speaker 1: gre air, parmesan, and then is it pronounced tomay? I'm
Speaker 1: not I don't know this one. Actually don't know that cheese.
Speaker 1: I don't know it either, but it's t O M
Speaker 1: m e, so maybe that's a French cheese. Were unaware
Speaker 1: of over here, they diluted these cheeses the odorance of
Speaker 1: them in mineral oil down to ten percent in volume,
Speaker 1: and then five million liters of that solution was absorbed
Speaker 1: into a squeeze bottle with a dropper. Then they used
Speaker 1: an airflow old factometer to deliver a continuous stimuli that
Speaker 1: was synchronized with the person's breathing through a standard oxygen mask.
Speaker 1: These participants could provide five logic signals with their hands,
Speaker 1: so they had like a little like controller uh and
Speaker 1: it basically indicated how pleasant or unpleasant their experience was.
Speaker 1: And they also had their behavioral responses measured, their stimulation
Speaker 1: onset measured, and then the trigger signals were measured from
Speaker 1: the m r I that was recording them. They first
Speaker 1: tested this out while these people were in what they
Speaker 1: called the hunger state with normal food odors, not just cheese,
Speaker 1: and then again with odor, and then pictures followed up
Speaker 1: by them. So they wanted to see if like is
Speaker 1: the odor accompanied by visual going to make a difference
Speaker 1: here the hunger state. What they meant here was that
Speaker 1: these people had only had a light breakfast of either
Speaker 1: tear coffee and just one single slice of bread, and
Speaker 1: the researchers hypothesized that the anti cheese subjects would answer
Speaker 1: far more quickly than the pro cheese subject because they
Speaker 1: knew they disliked cheese. Okay, here's what their findings were.
Speaker 1: That a higher proportion of people who disliked cheese existed
Speaker 1: than other food categories. It was thirty six point nine
Speaker 1: percent of the people they studied disliked cheese. Some of
Speaker 1: these people reported that they had family particularity with cheese.
Speaker 1: In fact, that meant that up to six family members
Speaker 1: related to them also disliked cheese. The other foods that
Speaker 1: received low scores were mainly because of dietary habits, and
Speaker 1: this is interesting like vegetarianism. So for instance, back to
Speaker 1: our thing, if you're a vegetarian and they missed a
Speaker 1: steak ooze into your face, you might have had a
Speaker 1: bad reaction to that in the same way some of
Speaker 1: these people did with cheese. Okay, But there was no
Speaker 1: significant difference observed between the two groups, the pro cheese
Speaker 1: and the anti cheese when they were just stimulated by
Speaker 1: odors only. So if they had cheese blasted in their face,
Speaker 1: there wasn't a difference. But if they had cheese blaster
Speaker 1: in their face and they saw pictures of the cheese,
Speaker 1: then there was a difference. So visual reference seems to
Speaker 1: be really important here, and that kind of ties back
Speaker 1: to what you guys were talking about earlier, right, like
Speaker 1: what you're seeing. If it's your son's shoe and it
Speaker 1: smells like cheese, that's gonna make a big difference. Right.
Speaker 1: So what's interesting here is this goes against reports that
Speaker 1: odor has an emotional impact on memory, and it actually
Speaker 1: suggests that odor on its own is insufficient to trigger
Speaker 1: disgust reactions. Perhaps what's going on here is it's the
Speaker 1: subject conception of cheese rather than the actual sensory properties
Speaker 1: of cheese that give it a disgusting value. That's odd, yeah,
Speaker 1: isn't it. It's kind of you know, I have to
Speaker 1: say when when I am smelling my sun's shoe and
Speaker 1: it smells like cheese, I mean, I'm kind of giving
Speaker 1: it away right there. I am interpreting the smell is
Speaker 1: that of cheese in a place where cheese should not be.
Speaker 1: That's the thing that should not be the monster. Whereas
Speaker 1: if I was thinking of it more appropriately, you know,
Speaker 1: what if I was thinking of what I am actually
Speaker 1: smelling Without bringing cheese into the scenario, it would be
Speaker 1: perhaps it would be a different experience altogether. Yeah, yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: I know what you're talking about. So that was just
Speaker 1: like their behavioral observations. Then they looked at these f
Speaker 1: m R eyes and they showed that there was a
Speaker 1: stronger activation of the g P I slash GPE and
Speaker 1: s N areas of the brain in people who dislike cheese.
Speaker 1: So okay, that kind of went along with it. They
Speaker 1: thought that they would you some you know, reactions there.
Speaker 1: They also found that a lack of desire to eat
Speaker 1: cheese was associated with a lack of activation in the
Speaker 1: VP area, which is a core brain structure in incentive motivation.
Speaker 1: So subsequently they proposed that the motivation related activation in
Speaker 1: our brains is suppressed in people who are anti cheese
Speaker 1: because of their disgust for cheese, that just in general,
Speaker 1: they won't be motivated, so your brain doesn't get turned on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: don't get it now. And it's not just about the cheese,
Speaker 1: it's about anything else that's around you. Yeah, so here, okay,
Speaker 1: you guys were talking about France and how this is
Speaker 1: kind of weird, right, Yeah, their survey showed six percent
Speaker 1: of the French population dislikes cheese more than any other
Speaker 1: food category. That's way lower than their finding of thirty
Speaker 1: six point nine percent in the lab. So they're like,
Speaker 1: wait a minute, what's going on. This especially interesting because
Speaker 1: here in France, the country has the greatest variety of
Speaker 1: cheeses in the world and has the highest level of
Speaker 1: cheese consumption in the world. I think of France's cheese
Speaker 1: cheese City, USA, like, I've never visited France, but I
Speaker 1: know that if I get to one day, I will
Speaker 1: eat a lot of cheese. Yeah, the world. So this
Speaker 1: is fascinating. It seems that like more people actually are
Speaker 1: repulsed by the smell and visuals of cheese than report
Speaker 1: they are. There's something going on here. They also found
Speaker 1: sixty of the people who said they dislike cheese dislike
Speaker 1: cheese in all of its forms. It's not like they're
Speaker 1: just like I don't like blue cheese. These sixty just
Speaker 1: don't like any cheese. Eighteen percent of the people who
Speaker 1: said that they had a milk intolerance, so that makes sense.
Speaker 1: So in conclusion, they found that a higher than expected
Speaker 1: proportion of individuals are disgusted by cheese to the point
Speaker 1: that they can't eat it. So this is interesting. There's
Speaker 1: way more people at least in this study and in France.
Speaker 1: We have to obviously do this culturally in different areas,
Speaker 1: but the disgust seems to be actually encoded into the
Speaker 1: brain and can subsequently suppress an individual's other motivations. You know,
Speaker 1: I wonder how smelling cheese affects gambling behavior. There you go, right,
Speaker 1: you make people inhale the smell of blue cheese while
Speaker 1: they're gambling. You see what happens. So okay, why why
Speaker 1: is this ignoble funny? Well, of course the idea of
Speaker 1: people breathing in cheese and other smells they hate is
Speaker 1: kind of amusing, right, especially like they've got these oxygen
Speaker 1: masks on. Right, it's the d natured version of it.
Speaker 1: That's even funnier that they like had to extract cheese
Speaker 1: odor and pump it into their faces. Yeah, they could
Speaker 1: have just put them in a mascot cost him and
Speaker 1: they would have had the same effect. But but it
Speaker 1: also cheese is inherently funny. The word cheese has that, Like,
Speaker 1: I feel like there have been studies that have pointed
Speaker 1: this out that or at least there. It has been
Speaker 1: pointed out that the funnier words, uh, the most humorous
Speaker 1: words in the English language, you're going to have the
Speaker 1: chu uh kind of a sound of the sound is
Speaker 1: gonna be like clown cheese, clown cheese. That's innately. I
Speaker 1: wonder what pennymizes cheese smells like, Yeah, I wouldn't want
Speaker 1: that cheese Texas chainsaw mask or nine clown cheese. Well,
Speaker 1: they had cheese. It plays into that a lot. That's
Speaker 1: probably so. But why is this study important? Well, it's
Speaker 1: what I said earlier, because it's really rare to find
Speaker 1: individuals who have the same type of food discussed. So
Speaker 1: to find that like thirty basically thirty seven percent of
Speaker 1: the population dislikes this one specific food is important. But
Speaker 1: also it's really difficult to study this without triggering gastro
Speaker 1: and testinal problems. So they found a way to do
Speaker 1: this without like actually inflicting harm on these people. So
Speaker 1: that's my cheese report. Why don't we take one more
Speaker 1: break and then when we get back, Robert's got our
Speaker 1: last ig Nobel study for us. All right, we're back,
Speaker 1: So we have one left, and it is the obstetrics Prize.
Speaker 1: He guys, ready for this, bring it forth into the world. Alright,
Speaker 1: So I'm going to read you the title of the paper,
Speaker 1: and in doing so, I'm going to answer the question
Speaker 1: why the the Ignoble Prize committee found this funny. The
Speaker 1: title is fetal facial expression in response to intro vaginal
Speaker 1: music in mission. Oh music, emission, Yes, that is. I
Speaker 1: don't think emission should be the verb for music. Shouldn't
Speaker 1: it be like playing or well, wait, let's see if
Speaker 1: we can guess what this is about without having so Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm going to guess that this is looking at the
Speaker 1: faces of fetus in utero. As you're I don't know,
Speaker 1: you put like a bluetooth speaker up against like the
Speaker 1: belly of the mother or something like that. Well, let's
Speaker 1: you are not taking the premise far enough. Okay. Yeah,
Speaker 1: this sounds like a speaker is inserted through the vagina
Speaker 1: to play for the fetus in utero and then they
Speaker 1: measure the fetus is face all expressions somehow exactly. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean, the basic idea here is that if music
Speaker 1: has an effect on the fetus, then and this is
Speaker 1: just like playing music outside of the body or touching
Speaker 1: the speaker to the belly. Uh, then wouldn't it make
Speaker 1: more sense to get the speaker closer to baby and
Speaker 1: then baby will react even more. Sounds like somebody's trying
Speaker 1: to sell a product. I was gonna say, is there
Speaker 1: a specific speaker that is built for this? Am I
Speaker 1: just woefully unaware of this? Yeah, as the as the
Speaker 1: Ignoble Prices point out, there was, there was a patent
Speaker 1: filed in and you can currently buy a product called
Speaker 1: baby Pod if you look them up, go to the
Speaker 1: baby Pod website. They even proudly have their Ignoble Prize
Speaker 1: like stamp of approval there to sell the product. I
Speaker 1: have a look on my face right now that thirties
Speaker 1: seven percent of people in France have when they sent paches. Well, well,
Speaker 1: let's get into the into the study, let's get into
Speaker 1: the science, and maybe it'll it'll change your mind a
Speaker 1: little bit. So studies have found that fetuses can hear
Speaker 1: sounds from the side world while in the womb. They
Speaker 1: can even learn to recognize words in the in the womb,
Speaker 1: and they can retain memories from this time after birth.
Speaker 1: So into a two thousand thirteen University of Helsinki study
Speaker 1: published in p os one found it playing music while
Speaker 1: you're pregnant may influence your child's auditory system. It's just
Speaker 1: that's just this this one study. But but building up here.
Speaker 1: According to a two thousand fourteen Max Playing Institute study,
Speaker 1: from twenty eight weeks that's the start of the third
Speaker 1: trimester and pregnancy onward, the heart rate of the fetus
Speaker 1: changes when it hears a familiar song, and from thirty
Speaker 1: five weeks on there is, uh, there's even a change
Speaker 1: in its movement patterns. So the fetus is dancing in
Speaker 1: in a way. And if yeah, basically you're you're stimulating
Speaker 1: the fetus, you're providing auditories, uh stimuli, and it is reacting.
Speaker 1: Based on you know, my conversations with my friends who
Speaker 1: have been pregnant, this doesn't sound surprising to me, Like
Speaker 1: people believe that there the fetus in utero can hear
Speaker 1: music like while they'red that Like we react to music too, yeah,
Speaker 1: at that stage, I mean, yeah, obviously, yeah, yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean you see a lot of this book playing music
Speaker 1: for the fetus and then of course playing music for
Speaker 1: the baby, for the infant. Once four friends who are
Speaker 1: very specific about like what the playlists were that they
Speaker 1: played for their kids, and like, like Brian Eno, I
Speaker 1: think was like a really big thing. Well, okay, I
Speaker 1: mean a lot of this relates to the parents, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: if if you're having to deal with the newborn baby
Speaker 1: or the stress of paranacy, imagined some soothing ambient music
Speaker 1: is great. I thought you were going to say a
Speaker 1: lot of black flag so that's why I'm not allowed
Speaker 1: to have kids now, I imagined a number of you
Speaker 1: were thinking about the so called Mozart effect here. Uh
Speaker 1: to remind everyone, this was proposed, and this was proposed
Speaker 1: in a science journal paper. Um, and the ideas they
Speaker 1: play classical music, specifically Mozart for a child, and it's
Speaker 1: going to have give them cognitive benefits. I remember hearing
Speaker 1: that people were questioning the mot There has been a
Speaker 1: lot of questioning. Uh. So, first of all, everyone has
Speaker 1: to remember that the effect in question in the original paper,
Speaker 1: it's stemmed from the study of teen students, not babies,
Speaker 1: not fetuses. And plus the effect in question was merely
Speaker 1: an increase in performance on a specific spatial imagery task
Speaker 1: and it only lasted for a few minutes. So for
Speaker 1: the most part, the Mozart effect is largely dismissed as
Speaker 1: a myth. That being said, again, if you were to
Speaker 1: play music for a fetus, which undoubtedly, again it's audio
Speaker 1: audio stimuli that generates a response, and uh, and there
Speaker 1: are situations where that is certainly beneficial. Wouldn't they hear
Speaker 1: it better if you put the speaker closer to the fetus.
Speaker 1: And that's where this study comes in. I'm going to
Speaker 1: read from you this is the the what I think
Speaker 1: is a pretty straightforward approach. Quote. The main aim of
Speaker 1: this study was to analyze fetal response to an acoustic
Speaker 1: stimulus emitted by a device which, due to its location
Speaker 1: and characteristics, might provide better sound intensity and quality. To
Speaker 1: that end, we used a device specifically designed to emit
Speaker 1: a melody or vibration from inside the mother's vagina. This
Speaker 1: location is closest to the fetus, so there are fewer
Speaker 1: obstacles to attenuate the acoustic waves. The secondary objective was
Speaker 1: to identify quantifiable fetal movements that could be associated with
Speaker 1: the acoustic stimulus. So you know, they're not getting into
Speaker 1: any situation here. You know, Can we pipe music into
Speaker 1: the womb and make babies smarter, et cetera. This is
Speaker 1: very much based on just stimulating the fetus with sound
Speaker 1: and or vibration. This is not a prelude to super
Speaker 1: babies baby genuses too well, in a way, it's maybe
Speaker 1: a prelude to that, but but it's not intentionally a
Speaker 1: prelead to that in thing. So these are the findings
Speaker 1: quote at present, our data appears to suggest to interpretations
Speaker 1: that intravaginal application with fewer obstacles could be more effective
Speaker 1: and transmitting music to the fetus, and that the feet
Speaker 1: might perceive these higher frequencies at an earlier age than
Speaker 1: reported to date. Now, Robert, you mentioned a product earlier.
Speaker 1: I assume we're getting to that here. Yes, I mentioned
Speaker 1: the baby Pod, which I've seen with a price tag
Speaker 1: of around a hundred and thirty three dollars, And it
Speaker 1: is essentially a speaker device you can plug into any
Speaker 1: musical device. You can plug it into your phone, MP
Speaker 1: three player speaker with the appropriate jack, turn table, yeah, turntable,
Speaker 1: what you can get a DJ out there. It's a
Speaker 1: an an FDA approved device. Uh, and it's sold with
Speaker 1: the idea that will quote stimulate vocalization for babies with music.
Speaker 1: So oh interesting, Okay, Yeah, so it's it's going beyond
Speaker 1: this study and picking up on some of the results
Speaker 1: of other studies that it made the argument that exposing
Speaker 1: the unborn child to music will help in the the
Speaker 1: development of vocalization. Got it so that they'll try to
Speaker 1: like make accompanying noises? Yeah, okay. One of the things
Speaker 1: here is that we are getting into the realm if
Speaker 1: not only like parenting science, but parenting advice. And I mean,
Speaker 1: even when something has a scientific has a scientific basis
Speaker 1: to it, uh, it's often hard to really sort through
Speaker 1: it all. I get the feeling that in parenting advice
Speaker 1: and parenting in general, there is a whole lot of
Speaker 1: overinterpretation of tenuous scientific results. That that is the that
Speaker 1: is what I get from my experience with it. And
Speaker 1: then of course, on top of that, there are a
Speaker 1: lot of people with very firm ideas of like what
Speaker 1: is good parenting and what is bad parenting? And um,
Speaker 1: you know it's not always it's generally not as simple
Speaker 1: as that for the most part. That being said, you know,
Speaker 1: regardless of what may or may not be the benefits,
Speaker 1: I can definitely see, you know, there's a benefit of
Speaker 1: connecting with one's growing child like this. You know that
Speaker 1: you're that you're you're playing music and you can see
Speaker 1: a response. You know, there's something kind of magical about that.
Speaker 1: UM as far as cognitive benefits go, I think that's
Speaker 1: that's something that if we were to talk about it here,
Speaker 1: we need to discuss it in more detail and draw
Speaker 1: in more studies. But there have been a lot of
Speaker 1: studies conducted about this. Uh, it's just difficult to really
Speaker 1: boil it down to you know, just a few minutes now.
Speaker 1: I would do want to drive already hit on why
Speaker 1: this is funny obviously, but as to why it's important, well,
Speaker 1: there is one one potential takeaway here that has nothing
Speaker 1: to do with playing baby a song or you know,
Speaker 1: Mozart music for babies and so so forth, and that
Speaker 1: is that the researchers argue that the technology could also
Speaker 1: be used to evoke arousal responses of the fet is,
Speaker 1: to stimulate movements, to facilitate and shorten obstetric ultrasound examinations.
Speaker 1: So the idea here is you're you're you're trying to
Speaker 1: evoke responses and the feet is to determine its health.
Speaker 1: And if you could reach the baby, you know, more
Speaker 1: easily and perhaps earlier, through this method, then there there
Speaker 1: would there might be a reason to just to use
Speaker 1: it across the board. Yeah, well that's definitely got some
Speaker 1: applications that are very important. Uh, you know what, Like now,
Speaker 1: now I'm thinking of all these kinds of like ways
Speaker 1: in which like further research needs to be done. Like
Speaker 1: I wonder what midwives would have to say about this,
Speaker 1: given their like, you know, experience and matters. And I
Speaker 1: would be very interested to hear from anyone who's tried
Speaker 1: out the baby pot or or if there's another similar device,
Speaker 1: and just hear from you what your experiences were. Yeah. Well,
Speaker 1: the best way to do that, although if you want
Speaker 1: to do it privately, this might not be the best way.
Speaker 1: But one way to do that is to reach out
Speaker 1: to us on social media and you could do that
Speaker 1: on Facebook, Twitter, Tumbler, or Instagram. What you could do
Speaker 1: is also go to our website where there's lots of
Speaker 1: potential music to play for babies on their why because
Speaker 1: Robert blog posts all the time about space music. Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's some eto in there. Yeah, definitely some good ambience
Speaker 1: selections for baby. DJ food for the unborn. Yeah, um,
Speaker 1: you know there was what's the name there was an
Speaker 1: early synth guy that I've covered on there before that
Speaker 1: actually they did. There's like a compilation of his work
Speaker 1: for babies and well like or at least I can't
Speaker 1: recall the artist stuff hand. I'm sure it'll come to
Speaker 1: me later. Hey, and Enforced. If you'd like to get
Speaker 1: in touch with us directly, as always, you can email
Speaker 1: us at blow the Mind at how stuff works dot
Speaker 1: com for more on this and thousands of other topics.
Speaker 1: Does it how stuff works dot com