Speaker 1: Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name
Speaker 1: is Robert Lamb. Again, we are on vacation this week,
Speaker 1: so you've got femail, Part three of three airing right now.
Speaker 1: Originally published five two, twenty twenty five. What more could
Speaker 1: you possibly want new episodes? Well, we'll have this for
Speaker 1: you next week. Hope you enjoy.
Speaker 2: Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 1: Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My
Speaker 1: name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with
Speaker 3: part three in our series on urine based communication in
Speaker 3: the animal Kingdom. Humans, of course have the gift of language,
Speaker 3: which is a wonderful multimodal information sharing tool of infinite versatility,
Speaker 3: and the fact that we possess the capacity for complex lange,
Speaker 3: which is maybe the most unique and amazing thing about
Speaker 3: us as a species. But one mode of communication that
Speaker 3: we don't really use, but which is quite popular throughout
Speaker 3: the animal kingdom is communication through urine. So in the
Speaker 3: last couple of episodes we discussed a whole bunch of examples.
Speaker 3: We started off in part one talking about male Amazon
Speaker 3: river dolphins which have been observed doing this amazing thing
Speaker 3: where they pee on each other's faces using aerial streams
Speaker 3: that project over the top of the water. Still an
Speaker 3: open question as to why they do this, but the
Speaker 3: leading explanation seems to be that it's some kind of
Speaker 3: information sharing about fitness and competitive ability. We also talked
Speaker 3: about why animals with urinary bladders usually have voluntary control
Speaker 3: over urination, as opposed to it just kind of leaking
Speaker 3: out whenever wherever, and we also got into a bit
Speaker 3: about urination as a socially negotiated activity in human culture.
Speaker 3: In the last episode, we talked about the vast, mysterious
Speaker 3: world of scent marking in dogs, including all the different
Speaker 3: kinds of information that we know dogs do share with
Speaker 3: each other through urine, but also about how much there
Speaker 3: is to this olfactory literary scene that we still don't understand.
Speaker 3: One interesting question that came up in the context of
Speaker 3: dogs was whether dogs can actually attempt to lie or
Speaker 3: at least exaggerate with their urine marks, one study finding
Speaker 3: evidence that smaller dogs may try to deceive other dogs
Speaker 3: about their size by way of increasingly obtuse leg angles
Speaker 3: when marking an elevated object. Then we also talked about
Speaker 3: the fascinating example of lobster urine. The simplified version is
Speaker 3: that lobsters pee out of their faces into other lobster's faces,
Speaker 3: and these urine exchanges help lobsters navigate highly variable scenarios,
Speaker 3: including courtship and mating, as well as competition and intimidation.
Speaker 3: And we're back today to talk about more.
Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, Returning first, I believe, to the waters and
Speaker 1: discussing something we teased out a little bit in our
Speaker 1: discussion of lobster.
Speaker 3: That's right, so yes. In the previous episode we talked
Speaker 3: about urine based communication in crustaceans. I wanted to return
Speaker 3: to the aquatic domain to mention pmail in fish. So here,
Speaker 3: I wanted to get into a couple of things from
Speaker 3: a paper called Aggressive Communication in Aquatic Environments. This was
Speaker 3: published in the journal Functional Ecology in twenty twenty. The
Speaker 3: author is Johim Frohman, and Frohman is a behavioral ecologist
Speaker 3: at Manchester Metropolitan University in England. I got interested in
Speaker 3: this guy's work because I saw him quoted in an
Speaker 3: article in Scientific American which was covering the Amazon River dolphins,
Speaker 3: talking about how other aquatic species can use urine for communication.
Speaker 3: One example cited in that article had to do with
Speaker 3: mating among stickleback fish. Apparently, female stickleback fish can get
Speaker 3: information about male stickleback fish from their urine, but in
Speaker 3: this case not just the kind of health, dominance, and
Speaker 3: fitness information we've been mostly talking about so far. Instead,
Speaker 3: the stickleback female is looking for information about the male's
Speaker 3: immune system to see if the male's immune system and
Speaker 3: tissue is compatible with her own. So anyway, I looked
Speaker 3: up this paper in functional ecology. It is focused primarily
Speaker 3: on aggressive communication, communication used to negotiate competition and fighting
Speaker 3: among rivals that live in the water. Now, obviously, using
Speaker 3: urine for information sharing works a little bit differently in
Speaker 3: aquatic environments than it does on land. Now why would
Speaker 3: that be? Well, for one thing in the water, Froeman
Speaker 3: points out that you cannot place long lasting territorial scent marks.
Speaker 3: So a daw will tag its physical environment with territorial
Speaker 3: marks it peas on the world, and in doing so,
Speaker 3: it fills the world with information about itself. And also
Speaker 3: it smells the marks left by others in the same places.
Speaker 3: So for the dog, you can consider space itself kind
Speaker 3: of marked up with socially relevant metadata. It is a
Speaker 3: urine based social augmented reality.
Speaker 1: That's a good way of putting it. Yeah, with all
Speaker 1: of our augmented reality VR innovations that we're working on
Speaker 1: Google Class and all of that, we're essentially trying to
Speaker 1: create a world of dog p and the reading of
Speaker 1: dog p for the human experience.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it would be like if we could walk through
Speaker 3: space and just find objects throughout the physical environment tagged
Speaker 3: with the profiles of people who have touched them more
Speaker 3: pen on them, I guess. So lots of other land
Speaker 3: based mammals that we've talked about do this. You know,
Speaker 3: last time we talked about the dwarf mongooses who leave
Speaker 3: the anogen scent marks by doing handstands. But you can't
Speaker 3: really do this kind of thing in the water because
Speaker 3: you're in the water. Froman mentions a couple of reasons
Speaker 3: for this. First of all, chemical cues tend to be
Speaker 3: soluble in water, so the water will actually just wash
Speaker 3: them away, diffuse them, and get rid of any local
Speaker 3: marks that you leave pretty quickly. Beyond that, there is
Speaker 3: a different microbial environment in the water. Fromen writes, quote
Speaker 3: the ubiquitous bacteria in aquatic environments might rapidly degrade any
Speaker 3: scent mark, So for aquatic species, it's just a lot
Speaker 3: harder to associate a chemical mark with a physical location
Speaker 3: across time. Chemical cues in the water tend to be
Speaker 3: more temporary used for what Froman calls short term interactions,
Speaker 3: and they will also more often be associated spatially with
Speaker 3: your own physical body from which they emerge, rather than
Speaker 3: than a fixed, separate place in the environment. So I
Speaker 3: get the feeling that in the water there's gonna be
Speaker 3: less of what you were talking about rob with this
Speaker 3: sort of the werewolf character that can go into a
Speaker 3: room and see the past in the room. Because of
Speaker 3: all these sense associated with physical locations. In the water,
Speaker 3: everything just kind of gets washed around. So I wonder
Speaker 3: if in the water there may be a more Oh,
Speaker 3: I don't know. Maybe you can get little tiny whiffs
Speaker 3: of things that may have once been nearby, but they're
Speaker 3: gonna be a lot less associated with physical places.
Speaker 1: That's a good point.
Speaker 3: So anyway, what are these short term interactions? They include
Speaker 3: things like mate choice what Froeman calls social decisions, detecting
Speaker 3: predatory threats and sharing information about those threats, with other conspecifics.
Speaker 3: The best research on chemical communication underwater has been focused
Speaker 3: on crustaceans, hence all the lobster research we talked about
Speaker 3: last time. There's a bunch of similar work on crayfish
Speaker 3: as well, and Frohman discusses a lot of the same
Speaker 3: stuff we got into, for example, the finding that the
Speaker 3: presence of aggressor urine during competition between lobsters and crayfish
Speaker 3: can actually reduce fighting. Essentially, the information in the urine
Speaker 3: better allows at least one of these crustaceans to figure
Speaker 3: out that the fight is not in their interest. So,
Speaker 3: in a way, you could think of actual physical fighting
Speaker 3: in nature often being the result of confusion or ambiguity.
Speaker 3: You know, it happens when the competitors don't have enough
Speaker 3: information to figure out in advance who would probably win.
Speaker 1: Yeah, this is something that you can certainly relate to
Speaker 1: human gambling scenarios. In some cases, you could be talking
Speaker 1: about actual gambling for money, or various games and little
Speaker 1: card games and apps in which there is like the
Speaker 1: gambling of some sort of unit but not actual that
Speaker 1: doesn't have an actual monetary value, or at least verb
Speaker 1: monetary value. There is often often comes down to a
Speaker 1: question of should I fold or not, or should I
Speaker 1: you know, up the ante, should I keep playing and
Speaker 1: trying to evaluate do I have a shot at winning?
Speaker 1: And you know, that's very much the same math that's
Speaker 1: going on for these various organisms using the data that
Speaker 1: is available to them, which might be available to them
Speaker 1: in the form of urine.
Speaker 3: That's a good analogy. Yeah, So the sharing of the
Speaker 3: urine could essentially be like the poker players just showing
Speaker 3: each other their cards. You're like not keeping them hidden anymore,
Speaker 3: so one player immediately knows I'm.
Speaker 1: Just going to fold, yeah, Or there's always going to
Speaker 1: be a certain amount of data on the table, right, yeah,
Speaker 1: and that that is often going to be the main
Speaker 1: data you're going to go on in a card game.
Speaker 1: Now there's the added wrinkle, of course in a card game,
Speaker 1: and that your opponent may want you to venture into
Speaker 1: combat that you couldn't win in order to increase the
Speaker 1: spoils of the game. Generally, it's not quite what you're
Speaker 1: looking at when you're dealing with me competition in the wild.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah, that'd be interesting to see if there are
Speaker 3: examples of that in nature, where like the opponent would
Speaker 3: want to keep, you know, getting you to up the
Speaker 3: ante and bluff you along. But yeah, usually I think
Speaker 3: even the stronger party would prefer to avoid a fight.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 3: Anyway, So Froman here mentions a variable called resource holding
Speaker 3: potential or RHP. You might see this referred to in
Speaker 3: some papers like this. Basically, it's a variable that means
Speaker 3: an individual animal's ability to win a fight. So urine
Speaker 3: helps communicate your RHP, making the actual fight unnecessary. So
Speaker 3: after talking about urine and RHP in crustaceans, Froman goes
Speaker 3: on to talk about fish, saying similar uses of chemical
Speaker 3: signals have been observed in several African cichlid species and
Speaker 3: in some tilapia to establish RHP dominance without needing a fight.
Speaker 3: But here we get to something interesting that came up
Speaker 3: in the last episode. In part two, we talked about
Speaker 3: some good reasons for thinking that dogs use urine based
Speaker 3: signals to encode not only the kind of fixed feeling
Speaker 3: information about individual identity, health and fitness, sex, and mating status,
Speaker 3: but much more fleeting momentary things like psychological information. I
Speaker 3: remember the example we talked about last time was that
Speaker 3: domestic dogs have been found to detect biomarkers of stress
Speaker 3: in human urine, and they seem to use that information.
Speaker 3: They use it in cognition and learning. Still to be
Speaker 3: determined to what extent, if any, dogs use that information
Speaker 3: from scent markings urine markings about each other, but it
Speaker 3: seems quite plausible that they do that. They're saying, oh,
Speaker 3: not just this, this is Jeff the dog down the street,
Speaker 3: and not just health status. Does it have parasites and
Speaker 3: all that, but also like Jeff is stressed out or
Speaker 3: Jeff is happy, and that might affect how the dog
Speaker 3: that smells the pea behaves. We don't know for sure,
Speaker 3: but it seems plausible that it does so to some extent.
Speaker 3: This kind of I would say, makes sense to us
Speaker 3: with dogs. It's fascinating, but it's not crazy, because we
Speaker 3: already think of dogs as emotional animals with emotional inner lives.
Speaker 3: Their feelings and motivation states are familiar and meaningful to us.
Speaker 3: But it seems there are some likely equivalents to this
Speaker 3: pea based emotion or at least motivation state sharing, even
Speaker 3: among the colder and less snugly inhabitants of the water.
Speaker 3: I think you could say that lobsters, as we talked
Speaker 3: about last time, and even fish to some extent, pee
Speaker 3: their feelings. Froeman mentions that quote in juvenile nile Telapia
Speaker 3: or Oreochromis nylocticus, the exchange of chemical cues informs about
Speaker 3: the sender's motivation and about individual identity, and then also
Speaker 3: speaking about neolam prologus pulture from and writes quote in
Speaker 3: this species, members of both sexes changed their urination patterns
Speaker 3: during agonistic encounters agonistic meaning aggressive encounters. Competition quote blocking
Speaker 3: olfactory contact between contestants led to an increase in fight
Speaker 3: intensity and to a higher rate of overt aggressive attacks,
Speaker 3: in line with what we've talked about before, but going
Speaker 3: on quote, As larger individuals excreted larger amounts of urine,
Speaker 3: chemical cues might be a reliable proxy of the opponent's
Speaker 3: body size, which might be beneficial, especially under turbid conditions. Furthermore,
Speaker 3: an aggression mediated increase in urination frequency was accompanied by
Speaker 3: an increased amount of conjugated eleven keto testosterone in the water. Thus,
Speaker 3: urine might not only transfer information about the contestants resource
Speaker 3: holding potential, but also about the opponent's motivational state. So again,
Speaker 3: something about what this the urine might communicate, something about
Speaker 3: what is going on essentially in the brain, in the
Speaker 3: nervous system of the other fish, what they want, what
Speaker 3: they intend to do, which I guess it's debatable whether
Speaker 3: you would call that motivational state an emotion, but I
Speaker 3: think the case could be made. Emotions and motivational states
Speaker 3: have significant overlap, at least in humans and in other animals.
Speaker 3: We can think of.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean, from the human standpoint, if there
Speaker 1: is a standoff between two human beings, the broadcasting of
Speaker 1: emotional state, be it an honest broadcast or an attempted deception,
Speaker 1: is going to be an important part of that standoff.
Speaker 1: You know, how mean they looking, how cool are they looking,
Speaker 1: and so forth.
Speaker 3: And of course this squares with what you were talking
Speaker 3: about last time, Rob with the lobster urine. In competition
Speaker 3: between aggressive lobsters, the urine shares state information about, for example,
Speaker 3: prior victory or defeat in these agonistic encounters. Sounds a
Speaker 3: lot like Again, people might people might quibble with the
Speaker 3: use of the word emotion, but that feels something like
Speaker 3: emotion to me, like feeling victorious or feeling defeated.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like like I believe one of the papers was
Speaker 1: I was talking about there being a lot of serotonin
Speaker 1: in the urine of a victorious lobster. You know, it's
Speaker 1: it's that an emotional stay. Maybe not, but it's saying
Speaker 1: something about like where that that creature's physiology is following
Speaker 1: a specific victory.
Speaker 3: So I don't know when we started doing this series
Speaker 3: about about urine based communication, I don't think I realized
Speaker 3: we would come up with so many examples where it
Speaker 3: looked like the urine was not only sharing just the
Speaker 3: more relatively fix I mean, I guess nothing biological is
Speaker 3: really fixed, but the more stable sort of biological health
Speaker 3: information not just that, but sharing something like psychological information,
Speaker 3: sharing something the urine says something about what's going on
Speaker 3: in your nervous system and in your brain, which we
Speaker 3: may call emotions or we may call intentions or motivations.
Speaker 3: That's being communicated through urine as well. And to me,
Speaker 3: that makes it a lot more like what we think
Speaker 3: of with language. I mean, we've made these distinctions before
Speaker 3: about the differences between what you can say with urine
Speaker 3: versus what you can say with language. Obviously, language is
Speaker 3: going to be much much more versatile because you can intentionally,
Speaker 3: voluntarily craft an infinite number of different kinds of messages,
Speaker 3: truthful or deceptive, and urine may not have that level
Speaker 3: of versatility, but it can communicate not just these sort
Speaker 3: of stable facts about the body, but can communicate this
Speaker 3: fleeting information about the mind and if you want to
Speaker 3: get touchy feely the soul. I guess that just causes
Speaker 3: me to think about P based communication as something with
Speaker 3: more potential for kind of meaning and complexity. You know
Speaker 3: that it carries potentially emotional information, that it lends itself
Speaker 3: more to the idea that there could be P based literature.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I think yeah. By and large, all this
Speaker 1: information we're looking at does drive home the fact that
Speaker 1: humans just don't We don't speak urine for the most part.
Speaker 1: We have a very blunt understanding of what urine is
Speaker 1: and what it can convey, and it's just a much
Speaker 1: richer experience for other animals, to the point that it's
Speaker 1: not really urine for them anymore, not in the human sense,
Speaker 1: Like our language for urine is kind of inadequate to
Speaker 1: truly describe what it is for various other species. Now
Speaker 1: I want to bring things back to the mammal world
Speaker 1: here to the surface world, in particular, to talk about
Speaker 1: the flemen response. This may have been on some of
Speaker 1: your minds as we were talking about this topic in
Speaker 1: earlier episodes, because in evaluating the urine communication of another,
Speaker 1: it may prove necessary to assume the fleming response, as
Speaker 1: it was dubbed by German zoologist Karl max Schneider in
Speaker 1: the nineteen thirties, but the expression itself had been known
Speaker 1: to naturalists since at least the eighteenth century. The term
Speaker 1: flemen apparently comes from upper saxon German, where it means
Speaker 1: to curl the upper lip and or to look spiteful.
Speaker 1: It's not just for smelling urine, but that's certainly one
Speaker 1: of the odorous bouquets that it picks upon.
Speaker 3: So the word am I understanding in the human context
Speaker 3: originally refers to an expression like a sneer the curled lip.
Speaker 1: Yeah, a sneer that you know, honestly, I don't know
Speaker 1: that you see, or I don't know, I feel like
Speaker 1: you don't see. People make this face a lot, and
Speaker 1: we'll come back to one of the reasons why. But
Speaker 1: in general, like how often do you see someone do
Speaker 1: like a spiteful sneer in which they expose their upper teeth.
Speaker 1: Like the main example I was finding. I found a
Speaker 1: couple of articles that had a picture of Harrison Ford
Speaker 1: doing the face, you know, maybe accidentally in the midst
Speaker 1: of talking or something. But for the most part, the
Speaker 1: main thing I was reminded of is the snarl that
Speaker 1: Bela Lugosi gives in some of the in some one
Speaker 1: particular scene, but also some production stills for the nineteen
Speaker 1: thirties Dracula.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, you attached a picture in the outline, and
Speaker 3: I can see that he he almost looks not quite
Speaker 3: human here. It looks a bit like a like a
Speaker 3: big cat.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's key because we do see
Speaker 1: this in cats. We see it in big cats, and
Speaker 1: we see it in house cats, and in the world
Speaker 1: of house cats it is sometimes informally referred to as
Speaker 1: the stinky kitty face.
Speaker 3: I didn't know about that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's one of these things where you know, as
Speaker 1: a cat owner it's going to obviously things are going
Speaker 1: to vary depending on the exact nature and personality of
Speaker 1: your cat, but it's something you'll pick up on them
Speaker 1: doing from time to time, they might be checking out
Speaker 1: something that you would associate with a smell, like, I
Speaker 1: don't know, a spot on the couch or a pair
Speaker 1: of shoes, that sort of thing. It might also just
Speaker 1: be a little less clear what they are responding to,
Speaker 1: but generally the idea is that they are assuming this
Speaker 1: kind of a sneer that also looks a little bit goofy,
Speaker 1: and what they are doing is they are heightening their
Speaker 1: exposure to the odor so as to better analyze it. Interesting, So,
Speaker 1: in general, across various animals, you're going to see this
Speaker 1: generally entailing a curling back of the upper lip, exposure
Speaker 1: of the top teeth, and breathing. And then they're going
Speaker 1: to breathe in slowly through the mouth alone. And this
Speaker 1: is all about allowing better access of smells and pheromones
Speaker 1: to the specialized vomber nasal organ, the vn O or
Speaker 1: the Jacobsen's organ. This is a chemoreception organ in the
Speaker 1: roof of the mouth. This occurs in ungulates as well,
Speaker 1: horses and giraftes, which both smell and in the latter
Speaker 1: example of the diraffe's they also taste the urine of
Speaker 1: mares that are in estrus.
Speaker 3: Huh okay, well wait a minute. That makes me wonder
Speaker 3: if all these other mammals have a vombar nasal organ
Speaker 3: do we have one? Can we? Can we smell with
Speaker 3: the roof of our mouth like this?
Speaker 1: Humans do not, so far as anyone can apparently tell,
Speaker 1: have one of these, at least not a functional one.
Speaker 1: Is a According to twenty fourteen's Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences,
Speaker 1: second edition by Moon, at all vomor on nasal organs
Speaker 1: are prominent in the fetus and show up vestigially in adults.
Speaker 1: Though there has apparently been a lot of back and
Speaker 1: forth debate over this, it seems like the majority of view, though,
Speaker 1: is that while some primates have functional vomiting and nasal organs,
Speaker 1: mainly like New World monkeys, chimps, and humans do not.
Speaker 3: Interesting.
Speaker 1: I'd also point out something that I saw referenced in
Speaker 1: an article is that the obviousness of the fleming response
Speaker 1: to humans in another organism, like how pronounced the fleming
Speaker 1: response is, doesn't necessarily correlate to how strong their ability
Speaker 1: to sense things happens to be, which I guess is
Speaker 1: kind of a no brainer. When you're driving home like that.
Speaker 1: But you know, some fleming responses are really wild, like
Speaker 1: included a photo here of a horse's women response where
Speaker 1: they just look like matt demons, whereas certainly a housecat's
Speaker 1: flimen response just looks a little bit funny. You know.
Speaker 1: But our interpretation of it doesn't actually necessarily give us
Speaker 1: any clues into how strong their ability to sense things
Speaker 1: happens to be. But we again, we certainly see it
Speaker 1: again in ungulates and dogs and cats and other mammals.
Speaker 1: I've even seen articles looking at the fleming response in
Speaker 1: things like sea otters and elephants. So it's all over
Speaker 1: the place.
Speaker 3: That's interesting. I'm going to be on the lookout for
Speaker 3: it now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you spend any time with cats, you will
Speaker 1: see the stinky kitty face from time to time. And yeah,
Speaker 1: it's just a sign that there's some sort of smell
Speaker 1: going on. Don't take it personally. It doesn't mean it's
Speaker 1: you or something in your environment. They might just but
Speaker 1: something has occurred or they've noticed something that requires just
Speaker 1: a little more in depth analysis.
Speaker 3: Well, I would like to transition to something else, but
Speaker 3: we're gonna stick with mammals at least for the moment,
Speaker 3: so I want to mention an interesting paper I came
Speaker 3: across about social urination in mammals, which may or may
Speaker 3: not turn out to be communicative in nature. This paper
Speaker 3: was by ana Onishi, James Brooks, Sota Inoe, and Shinya Yamamoto,
Speaker 3: published in Current Biology in twenty twenty five this year,
Speaker 3: and it's called socially contagious urination in Chimpanzees, So I
Speaker 3: hope that title's got your interest piqued. The authors here
Speaker 3: are affiliated with a few different institutions in Japan, such
Speaker 3: as Kyoto University. I was also reading an article about
Speaker 3: this paper in Scientific American that I wanted to flag.
Speaker 3: This was by Megan Bartel's from January twenty twenty five,
Speaker 3: so apparently the lead author on this paper, ana Onishi,
Speaker 3: was inspired in part by the fact that humans often
Speaker 3: seemed to treat urination as a social behavior. This kind
Speaker 3: of came up in our first episode of the series.
Speaker 3: Despite the fact that we often think of urination as
Speaker 3: a solitary activity, an activity where we seek at least
Speaker 3: a visual isolation for the sake of modesty, in reality,
Speaker 3: people often do treat urination or trips to the bathroom
Speaker 3: as social occasions. So think about it like this. You
Speaker 3: are out somewhere and a restaurant or a concert, public event,
Speaker 3: and somebody from the group you're with says they're going
Speaker 3: to go to the bathroom, and then somebody else says, oh,
Speaker 3: wait up, I'll go with you, and then somebody else
Speaker 3: says me too. Hey, it is actually a socially organized
Speaker 3: social trip to the bathroom. People are urinating as a group.
Speaker 1: You know, I hadn't thought about this as much until
Speaker 1: you mentioned it. But you could also factor our social
Speaker 1: technology into this equation and say, well, what even if
Speaker 1: you go to the bathroom by yourself during one of
Speaker 1: these situations, there's a very strong possibility you are going
Speaker 1: to check your phone, and in doing so, you are
Speaker 1: going to engage in some alternate online socialization whilst going
Speaker 1: to the bathroom. I don't know to what extent we
Speaker 1: should factor that into all of this, but maybe you
Speaker 1: could make a case or even solitary urination is social
Speaker 1: given the right technology.
Speaker 3: Socially coordinated, synchronized trips to urinate are actually very common.
Speaker 3: And this is not just part of American culture where
Speaker 3: I'm familiar with it. The author of this scientific American
Speaker 3: article actually mentions there is a word in Japanese. It
Speaker 3: is sura sean t s u r E s h
Speaker 3: o n, which refers to the phenomenon where people get
Speaker 3: up and go to the bathroom as a group.
Speaker 1: That would be interesting to get into. It makes me
Speaker 1: think of the various kai traditions that involve the potential threats,
Speaker 1: or at least that the very scary things that it
Speaker 1: can occur when you go to a dark bathroom at
Speaker 1: night by yourself. Yeah. I can't help but wonder to
Speaker 1: what extent these two things might be connected culturally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, the bathroom stall ghosts. Yeah. And there are other
Speaker 3: examples of biological activities that seem to be socially contagious.
Speaker 3: One example is yawning, and I think we've all experienced this.
Speaker 3: Somebody else yawns, you see them yawn and then you
Speaker 3: yawn yourself, or maybe even inter species contagious yawning. You
Speaker 3: yawn and then your dog yawns, or vice versa. A
Speaker 3: very interesting question about why seeing somebody else yawn makes
Speaker 3: you more likely to yawn. Maybe we could come back
Speaker 3: to that in the future, if we haven't done a
Speaker 3: whole episode on that before.
Speaker 1: Have.
Speaker 3: We actually don't remember.
Speaker 1: I don't think we have. Yawning. Yeah, that would be
Speaker 1: a good one, you know, if only to generate the
Speaker 1: responses that. I can't believe they did an episode on yawning.
Speaker 1: So boring. No, it's probably pretty exciting.
Speaker 3: Also, scratching, Hey, that's exciting. What's more exciting than the scratching?
Speaker 3: Scratching is contagious as well, socially contagious. Scratching. You see
Speaker 3: somebody scratch, you're more likely to scratch.
Speaker 1: Yeah, scratching could be Yeah, it could easily be its
Speaker 1: own episode as well. That one gets pretty intense anyway.
Speaker 3: So, while observing chimpanzees as a doctoral researcher at the
Speaker 3: Kyoto University Wildlife Research Center, the lead author of this paper,
Speaker 3: Onishi thought she observed a similar pattern of socially contagious
Speaker 3: urination among the chimpanzees, so she staged a quantitative experiment
Speaker 3: to measure whether this was really the case. The way
Speaker 3: it worked is researchers studied a group of twenty chimpanzees
Speaker 3: living in captivity at a place called Kumamoto Sanctuary in Japan,
Speaker 3: and they filmed them and reviewed more than six hundred
Speaker 3: hours of footage to meticulously track exactly when each ape urinated,
Speaker 3: where it was at the time, and who was nearby.
Speaker 3: Then they created a computer simulation of randomized chimpanzee urination
Speaker 3: to compare the actual results to and the analysis revealed
Speaker 3: that chimpanzees were not just peeing randomly, there actually was
Speaker 3: social correlation. On average, an ape was significantly more likely
Speaker 3: to pee if another ape had just peed within the
Speaker 3: past sixty seconds, and especially if that ape was very
Speaker 3: close by within ten feet so up ip. Another interesting
Speaker 3: factor beyond time and proximity was social rank. The researchers
Speaker 3: looked into whether the identity and social rank of each
Speaker 3: urinate or mattered in how much how much influence there
Speaker 3: was from one ap peeing to another ap peeing, and
Speaker 3: the identities did matter. So they initially looked to see
Speaker 3: whether the ape equivalent of social friendship was an influence,
Speaker 3: and it seems the answer there was no, but social
Speaker 3: rank was an influence. As quoted in Scientific American Onniche
Speaker 3: said quote, I initially expected that if social influences existed,
Speaker 3: they might resemble those seen in yawning, such as stronger
Speaker 3: contagion between socially close pairs that in itself is an
Speaker 3: interesting thing about yawning that, like social social closeness makes
Speaker 3: the yawn more contagious. But that is not what they found,
Speaker 3: continuing the quote from oneishi. Instead, we observed a clear
Speaker 3: influence of social rank, with lower ranking individuals being more
Speaker 3: likely to follow the urination of others. So if you
Speaker 3: are a lower ranking chimpanzee in the group, it might
Speaker 3: be more like the boss PE's ip, or maybe you
Speaker 3: know the cooler person ps ip. Now some caveats here.
Speaker 3: Obviously this was done in captive chimpanzees, and when a
Speaker 3: behavior is observed in captive animals, it's always worth asking
Speaker 3: whether the same behavior is seen in the wild. Some
Speaker 3: strange traits emerge in zoos or labs or sanctuaries that
Speaker 3: are not seen in wild conspecifics. The researchers here believe
Speaker 3: for a number of reasons that this probably is also
Speaker 3: true in the wild, but that's worth investigating on its
Speaker 3: own and follow up research. But finally we come to
Speaker 3: the question of would this contagious urination count as communication.
Speaker 3: If one ape is getting a signal from another ape
Speaker 3: to do something, I think that is communication. Though It's
Speaker 3: funny because here it's not, as far as we know,
Speaker 3: anything like the smell of my urine will now give
Speaker 3: you updated information about my health that you can use
Speaker 3: in determining how to act. Instead, it's more like the
Speaker 3: fact that I am peeing informs you that it is
Speaker 3: also time for you to pee. Now, what is the
Speaker 3: value of that? Why would it be biologically useful for
Speaker 3: one ape to signal to another that it's time to pee.
Speaker 3: It's possible that it could have some role in maintaining
Speaker 3: general social cohesion in a way that's hard for us
Speaker 3: to understand. So like, when you think about it, a
Speaker 3: lot of synchronized group bonding behaviors among humans would be
Speaker 3: really hard to explain the exact biological utility of except
Speaker 3: to say that we just know because we are humans
Speaker 3: and we know how we feel when we do them.
Speaker 3: We can say that doing these things together at the
Speaker 3: same time makes us feel more bonded and helps motivate
Speaker 3: us to cooperate with each other in other domains. So
Speaker 3: there is clearly some synchronized activities just contribute to social
Speaker 3: cohesion and bonding. Not always easy to say why, but
Speaker 3: they do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I mean this way, you're not splitting the
Speaker 1: party every time, every time this random individual wants to
Speaker 1: pay or needs to pay.
Speaker 3: Beyond establishing and maintaining social cohesion, there are a few
Speaker 3: other ideas the authors mention. One idea is that coordinated
Speaker 3: urination may play, to quote the paper quote, potential roles
Speaker 3: in preparation for collective departure, i e. Avoiding before long
Speaker 3: distance travel. So you know, parents may be familiar with this, Like,
Speaker 3: you know, we're about to go on a car trip.
Speaker 3: You need to go to the bathroom before we leave.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, this is a This is a big one.
Speaker 1: This is a This is a frequent point of discussion
Speaker 1: in my household.
Speaker 3: And even apart from long distance travel. One researcher quoted
Speaker 3: in the Scientific American article just pointed out the idea
Speaker 3: of a daily routine among chimpanzees. So at different times
Speaker 3: throughout the day, chimpanzees will often get up and relocate
Speaker 3: to a different place. These relocations as a group are
Speaker 3: generally controlled by higher ranking chimpanzees in the group, the
Speaker 3: group leaders. So it could be that the group leader pees,
Speaker 3: signaling I am about to initiate a relocation. It is
Speaker 3: time for the bathroom break before we move, and then
Speaker 3: the others notice that the leader is peeing, and they
Speaker 3: follow suit because they know they're about to relocate. Another
Speaker 3: possible explanation that means the authors mentioned could be quote
Speaker 3: territorial scent marking i e. Coordination of chemosensory signals. So
Speaker 3: what's better than you individually doing a territorial scent mark
Speaker 3: with your pe getting all your buds to mark at
Speaker 3: the same time. One can imagine that this does a
Speaker 3: number of things. It increases detectability allah where we were
Speaker 3: talking about elevated scent marking and dogs, It's important to
Speaker 3: make your scent markings in the environment more detectable. But
Speaker 3: also you can think about the amount of information presented
Speaker 3: with a whole group peeing together instead of just one,
Speaker 3: you know, peeing individually, and maybe also more individuals peeing
Speaker 3: would communicate more of a threat level within the collective mark.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Depending on sensitivity to these markers, you might think, Okay, well,
Speaker 1: this is either a whole bunch of chimps and not
Speaker 1: just one individual, or if it is one individual, it's
Speaker 1: one huge chimp. I gets there's no messing with this guy.
Speaker 1: This is not potential prey or some chimp that I
Speaker 1: can possibly best and about just best to keep my distance.
Speaker 3: So anyway, chimpanzee p based communication. They pee to communicate
Speaker 3: about peeing for the purpose of peeing. That's fascinating and
Speaker 3: maybe for other purposes as well. But yeah, I thought
Speaker 3: that was good.
Speaker 1: All right. As we round out this episode, I want
Speaker 1: to come back to a topic that I've teased out
Speaker 1: a couple of times in the previous episodes, and that
Speaker 1: is the idea that even if humans cannot speak urine
Speaker 1: as well as other creatures, and certainly can't read urine
Speaker 1: as well as other creatures, we do have the advantage
Speaker 1: of having technology. And this is where we get into
Speaker 1: the field of your analysis. Your analysis, via lab work,
Speaker 1: automated systems, and now even artificial intelligence, can reveal quite
Speaker 1: a lot about a person. Your analysis is used to
Speaker 1: detect and manage a wide range of disorders, to check
Speaker 1: overall health, to look for particular conditions, and or to
Speaker 1: manage known conditions. Some very general prognosis can be made
Speaker 1: visually with a human urine sample if you know what
Speaker 1: you're doing. But much in your analysis is revealed via
Speaker 1: lab work and via machines and technology. Yeah, uh, that's
Speaker 1: not going to become as a shocker to many of you.
Speaker 1: We've all had to give urine samples that the doctor
Speaker 1: before uh, and they've given us the lab read out
Speaker 1: and or we've you know, we've paid for that that
Speaker 1: uh that that lab v on top of our visit.
Speaker 1: It's worth pointing out, by the way, technically urine does
Speaker 1: contain DNA, but DNA deteriorates quickly in human urine and
Speaker 1: is not the best source of DNA for say, forensic
Speaker 1: analysis and so forth.
Speaker 3: I don't know this is the reason, but I would
Speaker 3: imagine there are other chemicals in the urine that probably
Speaker 3: attack the DNA and break it down.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my understanding. Yeah, so you know, things like
Speaker 1: certainly blood saliva, these are far better sources for DNA. So, like,
Speaker 1: if you were dealing with like a hardcore like TV
Speaker 1: forensics example, I guess there might be a scenario, and
Speaker 1: there may be scenarios where some sort of a like
Speaker 1: like usable DNA information is obtainable via urine sample, but
Speaker 1: for the most part, like it's considered like not a
Speaker 1: great source of DNA. Now, in the last episode, we
Speaker 1: did mention in passing the idea of using someone else's
Speaker 1: urine as a way to dupe a drug test, a
Speaker 1: urinary drug test. This is indeed a well known aspect
Speaker 1: of human urine evaluation. Everyone's familiar with this an eve.
Speaker 1: If you haven't been had your urine tested for work
Speaker 1: or some sort of legal process in the past, you've
Speaker 1: probably seen it on I believe there's a famous episode
Speaker 1: of The Office that I only vaguely remember, but I
Speaker 1: know I've seen it that involves like drug testing of
Speaker 1: the Office because what Dwight found half a joint in
Speaker 1: the parking lot.
Speaker 3: Oh do they have to pee for that? I don't remember.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I was trying to refresh on this. I think
Speaker 1: like Michael Scott, the boss on The Office, ends up
Speaker 1: getting paranoid because he once quote got high accidentally at
Speaker 1: an Alicia Keys concert, and so he's he's like trying
Speaker 1: to pressure Dwight into giving him some clean urine that
Speaker 1: he use.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but though it has played for jokes here, I mean,
Speaker 3: I guess, I guess p fraud is a real thing
Speaker 3: in the world because some people are going to want
Speaker 3: to avoid avoid the implications of a drug test.
Speaker 1: That's right. And while we did mention the idea of
Speaker 1: using someone else's urine, as occurs in this episode of
Speaker 1: the Office or there there's the attempt to do this,
Speaker 1: and I've seen this particular plot point come up in
Speaker 1: other shows as well. We didn't mention another option that
Speaker 1: has certainly entered the market over the past many years,
Speaker 1: and that is the use of synthetic human urine. This
Speaker 1: is indeed apparently a product you can get that at
Speaker 1: least claims. You know, I'm not going to get into
Speaker 1: certainly into individual brands or claims made by these brands,
Speaker 1: but you can go to places and you can buy
Speaker 1: something that claims to be synthetic human urine for the
Speaker 1: express purpose of duping a urinary drug test.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: Now this may be new to many of you, but
Speaker 1: to be clear, we've actually had synthetic human urine for
Speaker 1: a very long time. I was reading about this at
Speaker 1: on the website Maoclinic Proceedings dot org and they point
Speaker 1: out that German chemist Frederick Wohler, who lived eighteen hundred
Speaker 1: to eighteen eighty two, was the first to produce synthetic urine,
Speaker 1: synthetic human urine back in eighteen twenty eight.
Speaker 3: Well, the date on that discovery makes me think that
Speaker 3: that was not intended to fool a drug test, so
Speaker 3: there must be uses for it beyond beyond just the
Speaker 3: p fraud.
Speaker 1: Absolutely, Yeah, this was not for a drug test welder.
Speaker 1: It was a was a prolific and highly influential chemist.
Speaker 1: We may have brought him up on the show before.
Speaker 1: I feel like there's a strong possibility and the main
Speaker 1: tangible benefit of the at the time for the creation
Speaker 1: of synthetic human urine was for testing of medical equipment,
Speaker 1: and this is something it's still used for today. In fact,
Speaker 1: you can easily you can go online. You can find
Speaker 1: like medical grade companies that sell synthetic human urine and
Speaker 1: it will often be calibrated for very specific testing purposes,
Speaker 1: like you want to test this kind of medical equipment
Speaker 1: and you need synthetic urine to do so, Well, here's
Speaker 1: the right kind of urine for that test, okay. And
Speaker 1: so that was kind of like the broad call for
Speaker 1: synthetic urine at the time, but there was this There's
Speaker 1: an entire additional layer to Frederick go Oulder's contribution here
Speaker 1: as well. So his synthesis of human urea without the
Speaker 1: aid of a human kidney proved that organic compounds could
Speaker 1: be synthesized without the aid of the quote unquote vital
Speaker 1: force found in a living organism, getting here into the
Speaker 1: vital force theory or vitalism, which on the whole argue
Speaker 1: that you could not reduce life to a mechanistic or
Speaker 1: certainly a chemical explanation, like you couldn't just create something
Speaker 1: that a human or animal body made, because there is
Speaker 1: something beyond our science in that body that is making
Speaker 1: the substance in question.
Speaker 3: Oh okay, So while I think you could still argue
Speaker 3: today that there might be something in the more ambiguous
Speaker 3: term life that is not quite captured in reproducible chemical experiments,
Speaker 3: basically all of the processes within the body could be
Speaker 3: recreated in the lab.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think getting back into our own blunted
Speaker 1: human understanding of urine, most people today certainly are not
Speaker 1: going to hear this and think, well, that's blasphemous. You
Speaker 1: can't synthesize human urine. Human urine is holy and it
Speaker 1: is made only by a human body. Like nobody's really
Speaker 1: probably feeling that because we don't think about urine as
Speaker 1: having any intrinsic value. It is just waste product that
Speaker 1: on the whole we prefer not to produce. It just
Speaker 1: kind of gets in the way. Of course, as we've
Speaker 1: been discussing dogs, lobsters, so many other animals if they
Speaker 1: could express, if they could, you know, express feelings about urine,
Speaker 1: would disagree with us and they might say no. A
Speaker 1: dog might say no, urine is holy, Urine is information,
Speaker 1: and it comes from a dog, or it comes from
Speaker 1: some other animal. And that is what I'm reading. And
Speaker 1: the idea that you could fake that is just you know,
Speaker 1: abysmal p.
Speaker 3: Is vitalistic poetry. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, So at the time this was actually a big
Speaker 1: deal though, because even though it was quote unquote just
Speaker 1: urine that was synthesized, it paved the way for so
Speaker 1: many world changing advancements in organic chemistry. So again coming
Speaker 1: back to today, Yes, you can buy synthetic urine in
Speaker 1: various places, either or legitimate medical testing purposes, educational purposes,
Speaker 1: but also products that seem to be intended just for
Speaker 1: the duping of drug tests.
Speaker 3: I haven't looked these up. How are they marketed? Do
Speaker 3: they just say like, fool a drug test on them,
Speaker 3: or do they have euphemistic language.
Speaker 1: I'm not going to mention any products by name, but
Speaker 1: some of them have like expectedly kind of goofy product
Speaker 1: names like, you can definitely, or it seems to me,
Speaker 1: you can definitely tell the difference between a product that
Speaker 1: is marketed for clinical usage versus things that are marketed
Speaker 1: for the duping of drug drug tests. I think it's
Speaker 1: pretty obvious. But these products, if I'm understanding this correctly,
Speaker 1: and maybe the literature is a little incomplete on when
Speaker 1: things like this start popping up, but I believe we've
Speaker 1: had products like this on the market of some sort
Speaker 1: since like the late nineties, so they've been around for
Speaker 1: a while. I had not heard of them, so I
Speaker 1: thought this was maybe like a very new thing, But yeah,
Speaker 1: these products have been around. Some of them are banned
Speaker 1: in certain areas, certain states, for example now because of
Speaker 1: their usage to try and you doup at drug test. Now,
Speaker 1: synthetic urine in general, the varieties aimed at drug tests
Speaker 1: but also clinically, they've grown quite advanced, and of course
Speaker 1: this has led to advancements in drug testing. So I
Speaker 1: was reading some sources here that we're talking about how
Speaker 1: drug tests have had to look for new markers in
Speaker 1: synthetic urines that can then be targeted on a drug
Speaker 1: test so that they can figure out like, Okay, well
Speaker 1: this is obvious urine looks clean, but it's also obviously purchased,
Speaker 1: you know, at the local smoke shop.
Speaker 3: This is the evolutionary arms race in the synthetic urine
Speaker 3: and the drug tests.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and of course you can't help but imagine what
Speaker 1: would a dog think of all this? Like they would
Speaker 1: probably like it would be like, you know, because there's
Speaker 1: probably a similar discussion to be made around say, AI
Speaker 1: generated literature, you know, where you know, someone might say, well,
Speaker 1: how could you possibly be fooled by this? Like clearly
Speaker 1: was written by a machine and so forth, Like the
Speaker 1: dogs probably have a very low would have a very
Speaker 1: uh like low estimation of synthetic urines and like what
Speaker 1: it's telling them. Though, I guess that's that's a whole
Speaker 1: topic under unto itself that we're not really going to
Speaker 1: get into today into today, like to what degree does
Speaker 1: synthetic urine fool animals that have these heightened senses to
Speaker 1: understand it?
Speaker 3: Or I wonder would the dog really have the the
Speaker 3: concept of authenticity when reading the urine or would it
Speaker 3: just be like, huh, this is from a strange type
Speaker 3: of creature I've never encountered before that's.
Speaker 1: Right, it would might maybe be more like, this is
Speaker 1: a this is a weird communication that I'm reading, This
Speaker 1: is a very strange dog. More information is required. I
Speaker 1: probably need to see this dog in person now to
Speaker 1: be clear. Outside of the market for synthetic human urine,
Speaker 1: there is also a market for synthetic and animal urines.
Speaker 3: Wait a minute for could this be for scent marking
Speaker 3: fraud essentially carried out by humans?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Yeah, in instances where there is some sort of
Speaker 1: a human interest involved in some sort of communication fraud
Speaker 1: with animal urine. One example of this that you can
Speaker 1: find pretty readily, say online is synthetic deer urine. And
Speaker 1: this is apparently a product that exists because you have
Speaker 1: in the past used actual deer urine to say, you know,
Speaker 1: bait a buck, that sort of a thing. But there
Speaker 1: are a number of states that have banned the use
Speaker 1: of actual deer urine to help prevent the spread of
Speaker 1: chronic wasting disease and deer ah. Okay, yeah, Because to
Speaker 1: come back to urine in general, like urine, healthy human urine,
Speaker 1: for example, is generally thought to be largely sterile. But yes,
Speaker 1: there are various things that can be various contaminants, various
Speaker 1: illnesses that can be contracted through unhealthy urine.
Speaker 3: So this would be using animal urine fraud for the
Speaker 3: purpose of an attractant by hunters. But I've read about
Speaker 3: animal urine fraud being used for the opposite purpose to
Speaker 3: deter animals by using a predator urine. So you you
Speaker 3: synthesize there's not really a cougar in the area, but
Speaker 3: you put cougar pee out there, and it supposedly it
Speaker 3: will keep away the pest animals that you don't want
Speaker 3: in your garden or whatever.
Speaker 1: Exactly, yes, And that is the other major synthetic urine
Speaker 1: product that you see. And this is another case though,
Speaker 1: where there are products that at least claim to use
Speaker 1: actual urine from say fox or a bear, or you know,
Speaker 1: whatever the predator happens to be, and then there are
Speaker 1: cases where they're making a point of it being synthetic
Speaker 1: animal urine. I can't speak to the to how efficient
Speaker 1: these are, but you know, coming back to our dog example,
Speaker 1: if they are a fish enough to raise the specter
Speaker 1: of a potential predator being present, then perhaps it is
Speaker 1: useful enough. We talked about chimpanzees. I want to mention
Speaker 1: that for medical purposes, you can also buy synthetic chimpanzee urine.
Speaker 1: I included a link here for you, Joe. If you
Speaker 1: look around for it, you can find it. There's one
Speaker 1: company in particular that has a website and they have
Speaker 1: various forms of synthetic human urine that is to be
Speaker 1: clear intended for clinical purposes and the testing of like
Speaker 1: medical equipment and tests, and educational purposes as well. But
Speaker 1: you can also buy synthetic chimpanzee urine for the same purpose, because,
Speaker 1: of course the study of chimpanzee physiology and chimpanzee biological
Speaker 1: responses is vitally important for human medicine as well.
Speaker 3: But is it cheaper than the synthetic human urine, And
Speaker 3: if so, with somebody trying to pass the drug tests,
Speaker 3: save a few bucks and get the chimpanzee urine instead.
Speaker 1: Well, let's check real quick. I'll pull up the website. Okay,
Speaker 1: I'm looking at the costs for simulated monkey urine. Okay,
Speaker 1: all right, okay, and then let's see. You know, it
Speaker 1: looks about like it's the same price for humans, so
Speaker 1: there's no there's no need to go cheaper for chimp urine.
Speaker 1: I have a feeling chimp urine would not work. I
Speaker 1: feel like they would catch you if you try to
Speaker 1: use chimp urine to synthetic chimp urine to pass a
Speaker 1: like a work drug test. But also I should add
Speaker 1: that you're probably I'm thinking most of the people trying
Speaker 1: to pass a drug test using the synthetic urine, they're
Speaker 1: probably not buying it from a biomedical company. They're buying
Speaker 1: it a like at the local smoke shop or something
Speaker 1: from some other supplier, which I'm assuming are you know,
Speaker 1: ultimately not the same corporation.
Speaker 3: Listeners, if anybody in the audience has ever tried to
Speaker 3: spoof a drug test by using like cougar urine or something,
Speaker 3: let us know how that went. Did it work?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Or in general, if there are people out there
Speaker 1: who have exp using synthetic animal urines either to attract
Speaker 1: or drive away organisms, write in with your experiences with
Speaker 1: these products. You know, we're not going to mention specific products,
Speaker 1: you know, obviously, but in general, I'd love to hear
Speaker 1: how this has worked, Like maybe get an idea of
Speaker 1: like the where the science is in terms of making
Speaker 1: synthetic urine that can not only be useful for biomedical
Speaker 1: purposes and testing equipment in the human world, but potentially
Speaker 1: in communicating with other animals, even in a very blunt manner.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Oh, and hey, we also we know we've got
Speaker 3: a lot of scientists in the audience. If you use
Speaker 3: synthetic urine in your research, let us know how what
Speaker 3: do you use it for?
Speaker 1: Yeah? Absolutely, all right, on that note, we're going to
Speaker 1: go and close up this episode, but yeah, right in,
Speaker 1: we'd love to hear from everyone, Just to remind that
Speaker 1: The Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
Speaker 1: and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays
Speaker 1: and on Fridays, we set aside most serious concerns to
Speaker 1: just talk about a weird film on weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge things, as always to our excellent to your producer
Speaker 3: JJ Posway. If you would like to get in touch
Speaker 3: with us with feedback on this episode or any other,
Speaker 3: to suggest a topic for the future, or just to
Speaker 3: say hello, you can email us at contact that Stuff
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