WEBVTT - From the Vault: You’ve Got Pee-Mail, Part 3 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:08.440 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:08.480 --> 0:00:11.200 is Robert Lamb. Again, we are on vacation this week, 0:00:11.440 --> 0:00:15.640 so you've got femail, Part three of three airing right now. 0:00:15.760 --> 0:00:19.319 Originally published five two, twenty twenty five. What more could 0:00:19.320 --> 0:00:21.960 you possibly want new episodes? Well, we'll have this for 0:00:22.000 --> 0:00:24.680 you next week. Hope you enjoy. 0:00:27.360 --> 0:00:31.120 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:36.960 --> 0:00:38.879 Hey you welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:39.760 name is Robert. 0:00:39.600 --> 0:00:42.320 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with 0:00:42.400 --> 0:00:46.640 part three in our series on urine based communication in 0:00:46.680 --> 0:00:51.040 the animal Kingdom. Humans, of course have the gift of language, 0:00:51.080 --> 0:00:56.240 which is a wonderful multimodal information sharing tool of infinite versatility, 0:00:56.760 --> 0:00:59.960 and the fact that we possess the capacity for complex lange, 0:01:00.040 --> 0:01:02.840 which is maybe the most unique and amazing thing about 0:01:02.920 --> 0:01:06.480 us as a species. But one mode of communication that 0:01:06.560 --> 0:01:10.279 we don't really use, but which is quite popular throughout 0:01:10.319 --> 0:01:15.280 the animal kingdom is communication through urine. So in the 0:01:15.360 --> 0:01:18.800 last couple of episodes we discussed a whole bunch of examples. 0:01:19.400 --> 0:01:22.920 We started off in part one talking about male Amazon 0:01:23.040 --> 0:01:26.920 river dolphins which have been observed doing this amazing thing 0:01:26.959 --> 0:01:31.039 where they pee on each other's faces using aerial streams 0:01:31.080 --> 0:01:33.840 that project over the top of the water. Still an 0:01:33.840 --> 0:01:36.000 open question as to why they do this, but the 0:01:36.120 --> 0:01:39.479 leading explanation seems to be that it's some kind of 0:01:39.520 --> 0:01:44.520 information sharing about fitness and competitive ability. We also talked 0:01:44.560 --> 0:01:48.720 about why animals with urinary bladders usually have voluntary control 0:01:48.760 --> 0:01:51.160 over urination, as opposed to it just kind of leaking 0:01:51.200 --> 0:01:54.360 out whenever wherever, and we also got into a bit 0:01:54.400 --> 0:01:58.560 about urination as a socially negotiated activity in human culture. 0:01:59.480 --> 0:02:03.200 In the last episode, we talked about the vast, mysterious 0:02:03.240 --> 0:02:07.560 world of scent marking in dogs, including all the different 0:02:07.640 --> 0:02:10.520 kinds of information that we know dogs do share with 0:02:10.560 --> 0:02:13.760 each other through urine, but also about how much there 0:02:13.880 --> 0:02:17.760 is to this olfactory literary scene that we still don't understand. 0:02:18.160 --> 0:02:21.200 One interesting question that came up in the context of 0:02:21.280 --> 0:02:25.280 dogs was whether dogs can actually attempt to lie or 0:02:25.280 --> 0:02:29.240 at least exaggerate with their urine marks, one study finding 0:02:29.320 --> 0:02:33.360 evidence that smaller dogs may try to deceive other dogs 0:02:33.360 --> 0:02:37.320 about their size by way of increasingly obtuse leg angles 0:02:37.400 --> 0:02:41.080 when marking an elevated object. Then we also talked about 0:02:41.080 --> 0:02:45.600 the fascinating example of lobster urine. The simplified version is 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:50.239 that lobsters pee out of their faces into other lobster's faces, 0:02:50.680 --> 0:02:55.400 and these urine exchanges help lobsters navigate highly variable scenarios, 0:02:55.440 --> 0:02:59.480 including courtship and mating, as well as competition and intimidation. 0:03:00.240 --> 0:03:02.080 And we're back today to talk about more. 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:06.840 Yeah yeah, Returning first, I believe, to the waters and 0:03:07.080 --> 0:03:09.360 discussing something we teased out a little bit in our 0:03:09.400 --> 0:03:10.320 discussion of lobster. 0:03:10.600 --> 0:03:13.359 That's right, so yes. In the previous episode we talked 0:03:13.360 --> 0:03:17.280 about urine based communication in crustaceans. I wanted to return 0:03:17.320 --> 0:03:22.079 to the aquatic domain to mention pmail in fish. So here, 0:03:22.120 --> 0:03:24.079 I wanted to get into a couple of things from 0:03:24.160 --> 0:03:29.200 a paper called Aggressive Communication in Aquatic Environments. This was 0:03:29.200 --> 0:03:33.240 published in the journal Functional Ecology in twenty twenty. The 0:03:33.280 --> 0:03:37.920 author is Johim Frohman, and Frohman is a behavioral ecologist 0:03:37.920 --> 0:03:42.360 at Manchester Metropolitan University in England. I got interested in 0:03:42.400 --> 0:03:44.560 this guy's work because I saw him quoted in an 0:03:44.680 --> 0:03:48.760 article in Scientific American which was covering the Amazon River dolphins, 0:03:48.800 --> 0:03:52.680 talking about how other aquatic species can use urine for communication. 0:03:53.280 --> 0:03:56.520 One example cited in that article had to do with 0:03:56.760 --> 0:04:02.280 mating among stickleback fish. Apparently, female stickleback fish can get 0:04:02.360 --> 0:04:06.880 information about male stickleback fish from their urine, but in 0:04:06.920 --> 0:04:10.640 this case not just the kind of health, dominance, and 0:04:10.680 --> 0:04:14.640 fitness information we've been mostly talking about so far. Instead, 0:04:14.840 --> 0:04:18.359 the stickleback female is looking for information about the male's 0:04:18.440 --> 0:04:22.240 immune system to see if the male's immune system and 0:04:22.279 --> 0:04:26.080 tissue is compatible with her own. So anyway, I looked 0:04:26.120 --> 0:04:30.120 up this paper in functional ecology. It is focused primarily 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:35.760 on aggressive communication, communication used to negotiate competition and fighting 0:04:35.880 --> 0:04:41.400 among rivals that live in the water. Now, obviously, using 0:04:41.560 --> 0:04:45.640 urine for information sharing works a little bit differently in 0:04:45.760 --> 0:04:49.360 aquatic environments than it does on land. Now why would 0:04:49.400 --> 0:04:52.640 that be? Well, for one thing in the water, Froeman 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:58.359 points out that you cannot place long lasting territorial scent marks. 0:04:58.920 --> 0:05:03.320 So a daw will tag its physical environment with territorial 0:05:03.360 --> 0:05:06.440 marks it peas on the world, and in doing so, 0:05:06.480 --> 0:05:10.599 it fills the world with information about itself. And also 0:05:10.680 --> 0:05:13.440 it smells the marks left by others in the same places. 0:05:13.680 --> 0:05:17.159 So for the dog, you can consider space itself kind 0:05:17.160 --> 0:05:21.080 of marked up with socially relevant metadata. It is a 0:05:21.600 --> 0:05:24.320 urine based social augmented reality. 0:05:25.080 --> 0:05:27.440 That's a good way of putting it. Yeah, with all 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:32.080 of our augmented reality VR innovations that we're working on 0:05:32.200 --> 0:05:34.960 Google Class and all of that, we're essentially trying to 0:05:35.000 --> 0:05:38.440 create a world of dog p and the reading of 0:05:38.480 --> 0:05:40.360 dog p for the human experience. 0:05:40.480 --> 0:05:43.039 Yeah, it would be like if we could walk through 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:46.719 space and just find objects throughout the physical environment tagged 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:49.840 with the profiles of people who have touched them more 0:05:49.920 --> 0:05:53.880 pen on them, I guess. So lots of other land 0:05:53.920 --> 0:05:56.520 based mammals that we've talked about do this. You know, 0:05:56.640 --> 0:05:59.000 last time we talked about the dwarf mongooses who leave 0:05:59.040 --> 0:06:04.080 the anogen scent marks by doing handstands. But you can't 0:06:04.160 --> 0:06:06.799 really do this kind of thing in the water because 0:06:07.000 --> 0:06:10.080 you're in the water. Froman mentions a couple of reasons 0:06:10.080 --> 0:06:13.240 for this. First of all, chemical cues tend to be 0:06:13.320 --> 0:06:16.120 soluble in water, so the water will actually just wash 0:06:16.200 --> 0:06:20.159 them away, diffuse them, and get rid of any local 0:06:20.200 --> 0:06:24.720 marks that you leave pretty quickly. Beyond that, there is 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:28.320 a different microbial environment in the water. Fromen writes, quote 0:06:28.640 --> 0:06:33.960 the ubiquitous bacteria in aquatic environments might rapidly degrade any 0:06:34.040 --> 0:06:38.400 scent mark, So for aquatic species, it's just a lot 0:06:38.440 --> 0:06:42.520 harder to associate a chemical mark with a physical location 0:06:42.839 --> 0:06:46.600 across time. Chemical cues in the water tend to be 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:51.800 more temporary used for what Froman calls short term interactions, 0:06:52.240 --> 0:06:56.080 and they will also more often be associated spatially with 0:06:56.400 --> 0:07:00.000 your own physical body from which they emerge, rather than 0:07:00.080 --> 0:07:04.599 than a fixed, separate place in the environment. So I 0:07:04.640 --> 0:07:07.080 get the feeling that in the water there's gonna be 0:07:07.160 --> 0:07:09.240 less of what you were talking about rob with this 0:07:09.279 --> 0:07:11.400 sort of the werewolf character that can go into a 0:07:11.520 --> 0:07:15.240 room and see the past in the room. Because of 0:07:15.280 --> 0:07:18.840 all these sense associated with physical locations. In the water, 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:21.320 everything just kind of gets washed around. So I wonder 0:07:21.800 --> 0:07:24.960 if in the water there may be a more Oh, 0:07:25.000 --> 0:07:27.680 I don't know. Maybe you can get little tiny whiffs 0:07:27.720 --> 0:07:30.240 of things that may have once been nearby, but they're 0:07:30.240 --> 0:07:33.640 gonna be a lot less associated with physical places. 0:07:34.720 --> 0:07:35.560 That's a good point. 0:07:35.960 --> 0:07:39.120 So anyway, what are these short term interactions? They include 0:07:39.120 --> 0:07:44.520 things like mate choice what Froeman calls social decisions, detecting 0:07:44.560 --> 0:07:49.080 predatory threats and sharing information about those threats, with other conspecifics. 0:07:49.960 --> 0:07:54.120 The best research on chemical communication underwater has been focused 0:07:54.120 --> 0:07:57.160 on crustaceans, hence all the lobster research we talked about 0:07:57.200 --> 0:07:59.520 last time. There's a bunch of similar work on crayfish 0:07:59.560 --> 0:08:03.120 as well, and Frohman discusses a lot of the same 0:08:03.160 --> 0:08:05.600 stuff we got into, for example, the finding that the 0:08:05.960 --> 0:08:11.800 presence of aggressor urine during competition between lobsters and crayfish 0:08:11.800 --> 0:08:16.080 can actually reduce fighting. Essentially, the information in the urine 0:08:16.680 --> 0:08:20.560 better allows at least one of these crustaceans to figure 0:08:20.560 --> 0:08:22.960 out that the fight is not in their interest. So, 0:08:23.280 --> 0:08:26.160 in a way, you could think of actual physical fighting 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:31.000 in nature often being the result of confusion or ambiguity. 0:08:31.360 --> 0:08:34.840 You know, it happens when the competitors don't have enough 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:38.400 information to figure out in advance who would probably win. 0:08:39.400 --> 0:08:43.640 Yeah, this is something that you can certainly relate to 0:08:44.080 --> 0:08:47.280 human gambling scenarios. In some cases, you could be talking 0:08:47.280 --> 0:08:52.040 about actual gambling for money, or various games and little 0:08:52.080 --> 0:08:54.720 card games and apps in which there is like the 0:08:54.720 --> 0:08:57.560 gambling of some sort of unit but not actual that 0:08:57.760 --> 0:09:00.320 doesn't have an actual monetary value, or at least verb 0:09:00.360 --> 0:09:05.120 monetary value. There is often often comes down to a 0:09:05.200 --> 0:09:07.440 question of should I fold or not, or should I 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:10.199 you know, up the ante, should I keep playing and 0:09:10.240 --> 0:09:12.800 trying to evaluate do I have a shot at winning? 0:09:13.600 --> 0:09:16.960 And you know, that's very much the same math that's 0:09:17.000 --> 0:09:21.520 going on for these various organisms using the data that 0:09:21.600 --> 0:09:23.679 is available to them, which might be available to them 0:09:23.720 --> 0:09:24.840 in the form of urine. 0:09:25.000 --> 0:09:26.920 That's a good analogy. Yeah, So the sharing of the 0:09:27.080 --> 0:09:29.880 urine could essentially be like the poker players just showing 0:09:29.920 --> 0:09:33.439 each other their cards. You're like not keeping them hidden anymore, 0:09:33.520 --> 0:09:35.760 so one player immediately knows I'm. 0:09:35.600 --> 0:09:37.480 Just going to fold, yeah, Or there's always going to 0:09:37.480 --> 0:09:40.280 be a certain amount of data on the table, right, yeah, 0:09:40.520 --> 0:09:42.520 and that that is often going to be the main 0:09:42.600 --> 0:09:44.200 data you're going to go on in a card game. 0:09:44.520 --> 0:09:46.680 Now there's the added wrinkle, of course in a card game, 0:09:46.720 --> 0:09:49.839 and that your opponent may want you to venture into 0:09:50.200 --> 0:09:52.920 combat that you couldn't win in order to increase the 0:09:52.960 --> 0:09:58.480 spoils of the game. Generally, it's not quite what you're 0:09:58.480 --> 0:10:01.280 looking at when you're dealing with me competition in the wild. 0:10:01.400 --> 0:10:04.760 Oh yeah, that'd be interesting to see if there are 0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:08.240 examples of that in nature, where like the opponent would 0:10:08.280 --> 0:10:10.680 want to keep, you know, getting you to up the 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:14.520 ante and bluff you along. But yeah, usually I think 0:10:14.600 --> 0:10:17.480 even the stronger party would prefer to avoid a fight. 0:10:17.760 --> 0:10:18.319 Yeah. 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:22.760 Anyway, So Froman here mentions a variable called resource holding 0:10:22.840 --> 0:10:25.880 potential or RHP. You might see this referred to in 0:10:25.920 --> 0:10:29.800 some papers like this. Basically, it's a variable that means 0:10:29.840 --> 0:10:33.800 an individual animal's ability to win a fight. So urine 0:10:33.920 --> 0:10:40.280 helps communicate your RHP, making the actual fight unnecessary. So 0:10:40.400 --> 0:10:43.880 after talking about urine and RHP in crustaceans, Froman goes 0:10:43.920 --> 0:10:47.880 on to talk about fish, saying similar uses of chemical 0:10:47.960 --> 0:10:52.960 signals have been observed in several African cichlid species and 0:10:53.240 --> 0:10:58.439 in some tilapia to establish RHP dominance without needing a fight. 0:10:59.400 --> 0:11:02.280 But here we get to something interesting that came up 0:11:02.280 --> 0:11:06.480 in the last episode. In part two, we talked about 0:11:06.760 --> 0:11:11.680 some good reasons for thinking that dogs use urine based 0:11:11.760 --> 0:11:16.560 signals to encode not only the kind of fixed feeling 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:22.319 information about individual identity, health and fitness, sex, and mating status, 0:11:22.800 --> 0:11:28.959 but much more fleeting momentary things like psychological information. I 0:11:29.080 --> 0:11:32.120 remember the example we talked about last time was that 0:11:32.280 --> 0:11:38.160 domestic dogs have been found to detect biomarkers of stress 0:11:38.400 --> 0:11:42.479 in human urine, and they seem to use that information. 0:11:42.679 --> 0:11:45.840 They use it in cognition and learning. Still to be 0:11:45.920 --> 0:11:50.160 determined to what extent, if any, dogs use that information 0:11:50.800 --> 0:11:53.800 from scent markings urine markings about each other, but it 0:11:53.800 --> 0:11:56.800 seems quite plausible that they do that. They're saying, oh, 0:11:56.920 --> 0:11:59.920 not just this, this is Jeff the dog down the street, 0:12:00.160 --> 0:12:03.120 and not just health status. Does it have parasites and 0:12:03.160 --> 0:12:06.920 all that, but also like Jeff is stressed out or 0:12:07.000 --> 0:12:09.680 Jeff is happy, and that might affect how the dog 0:12:09.720 --> 0:12:12.880 that smells the pea behaves. We don't know for sure, 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:16.600 but it seems plausible that it does so to some extent. 0:12:16.840 --> 0:12:19.480 This kind of I would say, makes sense to us 0:12:19.480 --> 0:12:23.880 with dogs. It's fascinating, but it's not crazy, because we 0:12:23.920 --> 0:12:28.559 already think of dogs as emotional animals with emotional inner lives. 0:12:28.640 --> 0:12:33.240 Their feelings and motivation states are familiar and meaningful to us. 0:12:34.040 --> 0:12:37.560 But it seems there are some likely equivalents to this 0:12:38.120 --> 0:12:42.640 pea based emotion or at least motivation state sharing, even 0:12:42.679 --> 0:12:46.280 among the colder and less snugly inhabitants of the water. 0:12:47.120 --> 0:12:49.320 I think you could say that lobsters, as we talked 0:12:49.320 --> 0:12:52.600 about last time, and even fish to some extent, pee 0:12:52.600 --> 0:12:57.920 their feelings. Froeman mentions that quote in juvenile nile Telapia 0:12:58.200 --> 0:13:05.040 or Oreochromis nylocticus, the exchange of chemical cues informs about 0:13:05.080 --> 0:13:11.200 the sender's motivation and about individual identity, and then also 0:13:11.320 --> 0:13:16.280 speaking about neolam prologus pulture from and writes quote in 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:20.520 this species, members of both sexes changed their urination patterns 0:13:20.559 --> 0:13:27.560 during agonistic encounters agonistic meaning aggressive encounters. Competition quote blocking 0:13:27.600 --> 0:13:32.200 olfactory contact between contestants led to an increase in fight 0:13:32.320 --> 0:13:36.079 intensity and to a higher rate of overt aggressive attacks, 0:13:36.120 --> 0:13:38.920 in line with what we've talked about before, but going 0:13:38.960 --> 0:13:43.640 on quote, As larger individuals excreted larger amounts of urine, 0:13:44.000 --> 0:13:47.640 chemical cues might be a reliable proxy of the opponent's 0:13:47.640 --> 0:13:52.800 body size, which might be beneficial, especially under turbid conditions. Furthermore, 0:13:52.840 --> 0:13:57.600 an aggression mediated increase in urination frequency was accompanied by 0:13:57.640 --> 0:14:03.640 an increased amount of conjugated eleven keto testosterone in the water. Thus, 0:14:03.880 --> 0:14:08.600 urine might not only transfer information about the contestants resource 0:14:08.640 --> 0:14:14.559 holding potential, but also about the opponent's motivational state. So again, 0:14:14.679 --> 0:14:18.960 something about what this the urine might communicate, something about 0:14:19.000 --> 0:14:21.800 what is going on essentially in the brain, in the 0:14:21.840 --> 0:14:25.960 nervous system of the other fish, what they want, what 0:14:26.040 --> 0:14:30.280 they intend to do, which I guess it's debatable whether 0:14:30.480 --> 0:14:34.440 you would call that motivational state an emotion, but I 0:14:34.440 --> 0:14:37.640 think the case could be made. Emotions and motivational states 0:14:37.640 --> 0:14:40.960 have significant overlap, at least in humans and in other animals. 0:14:40.960 --> 0:14:41.680 We can think of. 0:14:42.280 --> 0:14:45.280 Yeah, yeah, I mean, from the human standpoint, if there 0:14:45.360 --> 0:14:51.160 is a standoff between two human beings, the broadcasting of 0:14:51.200 --> 0:14:55.720 emotional state, be it an honest broadcast or an attempted deception, 0:14:55.920 --> 0:14:58.280 is going to be an important part of that standoff. 0:14:58.760 --> 0:15:02.240 You know, how mean they looking, how cool are they looking, 0:15:03.120 --> 0:15:03.840 and so forth. 0:15:04.200 --> 0:15:06.440 And of course this squares with what you were talking 0:15:06.440 --> 0:15:10.239 about last time, Rob with the lobster urine. In competition 0:15:10.360 --> 0:15:16.320 between aggressive lobsters, the urine shares state information about, for example, 0:15:16.440 --> 0:15:21.000 prior victory or defeat in these agonistic encounters. Sounds a 0:15:21.040 --> 0:15:25.040 lot like Again, people might people might quibble with the 0:15:25.120 --> 0:15:28.040 use of the word emotion, but that feels something like 0:15:28.080 --> 0:15:31.400 emotion to me, like feeling victorious or feeling defeated. 0:15:31.640 --> 0:15:33.760 Yeah, like like I believe one of the papers was 0:15:33.920 --> 0:15:36.040 I was talking about there being a lot of serotonin 0:15:36.680 --> 0:15:39.320 in the urine of a victorious lobster. You know, it's 0:15:40.720 --> 0:15:43.760 it's that an emotional stay. Maybe not, but it's saying 0:15:43.840 --> 0:15:50.520 something about like where that that creature's physiology is following 0:15:50.560 --> 0:15:52.320 a specific victory. 0:15:52.440 --> 0:15:55.800 So I don't know when we started doing this series 0:15:55.960 --> 0:15:59.960 about about urine based communication, I don't think I realized 0:16:00.080 --> 0:16:02.000 we would come up with so many examples where it 0:16:02.000 --> 0:16:06.560 looked like the urine was not only sharing just the 0:16:06.680 --> 0:16:09.560 more relatively fix I mean, I guess nothing biological is 0:16:09.560 --> 0:16:13.840 really fixed, but the more stable sort of biological health 0:16:13.960 --> 0:16:19.360 information not just that, but sharing something like psychological information, 0:16:19.520 --> 0:16:22.520 sharing something the urine says something about what's going on 0:16:22.960 --> 0:16:26.320 in your nervous system and in your brain, which we 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:29.960 may call emotions or we may call intentions or motivations. 0:16:30.280 --> 0:16:34.160 That's being communicated through urine as well. And to me, 0:16:34.280 --> 0:16:36.960 that makes it a lot more like what we think 0:16:37.000 --> 0:16:39.640 of with language. I mean, we've made these distinctions before 0:16:39.760 --> 0:16:43.200 about the differences between what you can say with urine 0:16:43.320 --> 0:16:46.320 versus what you can say with language. Obviously, language is 0:16:46.360 --> 0:16:50.760 going to be much much more versatile because you can intentionally, 0:16:50.840 --> 0:16:54.840 voluntarily craft an infinite number of different kinds of messages, 0:16:55.240 --> 0:16:59.800 truthful or deceptive, and urine may not have that level 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:04.360 of versatility, but it can communicate not just these sort 0:17:04.400 --> 0:17:08.080 of stable facts about the body, but can communicate this 0:17:08.160 --> 0:17:11.680 fleeting information about the mind and if you want to 0:17:11.680 --> 0:17:15.600 get touchy feely the soul. I guess that just causes 0:17:15.640 --> 0:17:18.399 me to think about P based communication as something with 0:17:18.480 --> 0:17:24.720 more potential for kind of meaning and complexity. You know 0:17:24.880 --> 0:17:28.719 that it carries potentially emotional information, that it lends itself 0:17:28.760 --> 0:17:31.480 more to the idea that there could be P based literature. 0:17:32.119 --> 0:17:34.760 Yeah, yeah, I think yeah. By and large, all this 0:17:34.840 --> 0:17:38.800 information we're looking at does drive home the fact that 0:17:38.920 --> 0:17:42.640 humans just don't We don't speak urine for the most part. 0:17:42.720 --> 0:17:47.720 We have a very blunt understanding of what urine is 0:17:47.760 --> 0:17:49.800 and what it can convey, and it's just a much 0:17:49.880 --> 0:17:52.800 richer experience for other animals, to the point that it's 0:17:52.840 --> 0:17:56.639 not really urine for them anymore, not in the human sense, 0:17:57.440 --> 0:18:00.159 Like our language for urine is kind of inadequate to 0:18:00.359 --> 0:18:13.600 truly describe what it is for various other species. Now 0:18:13.640 --> 0:18:16.520 I want to bring things back to the mammal world 0:18:16.600 --> 0:18:20.439 here to the surface world, in particular, to talk about 0:18:21.000 --> 0:18:23.919 the flemen response. This may have been on some of 0:18:23.960 --> 0:18:27.159 your minds as we were talking about this topic in 0:18:27.200 --> 0:18:32.240 earlier episodes, because in evaluating the urine communication of another, 0:18:32.760 --> 0:18:36.360 it may prove necessary to assume the fleming response, as 0:18:36.359 --> 0:18:40.720 it was dubbed by German zoologist Karl max Schneider in 0:18:40.760 --> 0:18:43.520 the nineteen thirties, but the expression itself had been known 0:18:43.560 --> 0:18:46.720 to naturalists since at least the eighteenth century. The term 0:18:46.800 --> 0:18:51.000 flemen apparently comes from upper saxon German, where it means 0:18:51.080 --> 0:18:53.959 to curl the upper lip and or to look spiteful. 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:57.760 It's not just for smelling urine, but that's certainly one 0:18:57.840 --> 0:19:00.280 of the odorous bouquets that it picks upon. 0:19:00.800 --> 0:19:04.480 So the word am I understanding in the human context 0:19:04.480 --> 0:19:08.560 originally refers to an expression like a sneer the curled lip. 0:19:08.960 --> 0:19:12.720 Yeah, a sneer that you know, honestly, I don't know 0:19:12.800 --> 0:19:16.639 that you see, or I don't know, I feel like 0:19:16.640 --> 0:19:20.040 you don't see. People make this face a lot, and 0:19:20.119 --> 0:19:21.760 we'll come back to one of the reasons why. But 0:19:22.280 --> 0:19:24.720 in general, like how often do you see someone do 0:19:24.840 --> 0:19:28.200 like a spiteful sneer in which they expose their upper teeth. 0:19:28.640 --> 0:19:31.680 Like the main example I was finding. I found a 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:33.840 couple of articles that had a picture of Harrison Ford 0:19:34.000 --> 0:19:37.480 doing the face, you know, maybe accidentally in the midst 0:19:37.480 --> 0:19:39.960 of talking or something. But for the most part, the 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:42.600 main thing I was reminded of is the snarl that 0:19:42.640 --> 0:19:46.560 Bela Lugosi gives in some of the in some one 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:50.439 particular scene, but also some production stills for the nineteen 0:19:50.480 --> 0:19:51.400 thirties Dracula. 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:53.760 Oh okay, you attached a picture in the outline, and 0:19:53.840 --> 0:19:56.800 I can see that he he almost looks not quite 0:19:56.920 --> 0:19:58.879 human here. It looks a bit like a like a 0:19:58.920 --> 0:19:59.520 big cat. 0:20:00.119 --> 0:20:03.119 Yeah, yeah, exactly. And that's key because we do see 0:20:03.160 --> 0:20:06.600 this in cats. We see it in big cats, and 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:09.280 we see it in house cats, and in the world 0:20:09.320 --> 0:20:12.720 of house cats it is sometimes informally referred to as 0:20:13.000 --> 0:20:14.480 the stinky kitty face. 0:20:17.119 --> 0:20:17.920 I didn't know about that. 0:20:18.320 --> 0:20:20.360 Yeah, it's one of these things where you know, as 0:20:20.359 --> 0:20:22.760 a cat owner it's going to obviously things are going 0:20:22.800 --> 0:20:26.119 to vary depending on the exact nature and personality of 0:20:26.160 --> 0:20:29.440 your cat, but it's something you'll pick up on them 0:20:29.480 --> 0:20:31.679 doing from time to time, they might be checking out 0:20:31.760 --> 0:20:35.480 something that you would associate with a smell, like, I 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:38.280 don't know, a spot on the couch or a pair 0:20:38.280 --> 0:20:41.480 of shoes, that sort of thing. It might also just 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:44.560 be a little less clear what they are responding to, 0:20:44.880 --> 0:20:47.840 but generally the idea is that they are assuming this 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:51.400 kind of a sneer that also looks a little bit goofy, 0:20:52.320 --> 0:20:57.040 and what they are doing is they are heightening their 0:20:57.240 --> 0:21:02.679 exposure to the odor so as to better analyze it. Interesting, So, 0:21:02.880 --> 0:21:06.880 in general, across various animals, you're going to see this 0:21:07.080 --> 0:21:09.800 generally entailing a curling back of the upper lip, exposure 0:21:09.840 --> 0:21:12.960 of the top teeth, and breathing. And then they're going 0:21:13.040 --> 0:21:16.040 to breathe in slowly through the mouth alone. And this 0:21:16.200 --> 0:21:19.800 is all about allowing better access of smells and pheromones 0:21:19.840 --> 0:21:23.320 to the specialized vomber nasal organ, the vn O or 0:21:23.359 --> 0:21:29.040 the Jacobsen's organ. This is a chemoreception organ in the 0:21:29.119 --> 0:21:33.160 roof of the mouth. This occurs in ungulates as well, 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:37.440 horses and giraftes, which both smell and in the latter 0:21:37.520 --> 0:21:41.199 example of the diraffe's they also taste the urine of 0:21:41.320 --> 0:21:42.800 mares that are in estrus. 0:21:43.000 --> 0:21:45.640 Huh okay, well wait a minute. That makes me wonder 0:21:45.680 --> 0:21:49.240 if all these other mammals have a vombar nasal organ 0:21:49.720 --> 0:21:52.520 do we have one? Can we? Can we smell with 0:21:52.560 --> 0:21:53.760 the roof of our mouth like this? 0:21:54.359 --> 0:21:57.280 Humans do not, so far as anyone can apparently tell, 0:21:57.320 --> 0:21:59.600 have one of these, at least not a functional one. 0:21:59.680 --> 0:22:05.480 Is a According to twenty fourteen's Encyclopedia of the Neurological Sciences, 0:22:05.520 --> 0:22:08.960 second edition by Moon, at all vomor on nasal organs 0:22:09.080 --> 0:22:13.680 are prominent in the fetus and show up vestigially in adults. 0:22:14.280 --> 0:22:16.800 Though there has apparently been a lot of back and 0:22:16.840 --> 0:22:19.720 forth debate over this, it seems like the majority of view, though, 0:22:19.800 --> 0:22:23.760 is that while some primates have functional vomiting and nasal organs, 0:22:24.119 --> 0:22:27.320 mainly like New World monkeys, chimps, and humans do not. 0:22:27.960 --> 0:22:28.520 Interesting. 0:22:28.880 --> 0:22:31.359 I'd also point out something that I saw referenced in 0:22:31.400 --> 0:22:36.960 an article is that the obviousness of the fleming response 0:22:37.200 --> 0:22:43.280 to humans in another organism, like how pronounced the fleming 0:22:43.359 --> 0:22:48.560 response is, doesn't necessarily correlate to how strong their ability 0:22:48.600 --> 0:22:51.840 to sense things happens to be, which I guess is 0:22:51.920 --> 0:22:54.480 kind of a no brainer. When you're driving home like that. 0:22:54.680 --> 0:22:57.879 But you know, some fleming responses are really wild, like 0:22:58.080 --> 0:23:01.320 included a photo here of a horse's women response where 0:23:01.359 --> 0:23:05.240 they just look like matt demons, whereas certainly a housecat's 0:23:05.240 --> 0:23:08.560 flimen response just looks a little bit funny. You know. 0:23:08.680 --> 0:23:14.040 But our interpretation of it doesn't actually necessarily give us 0:23:14.040 --> 0:23:17.000 any clues into how strong their ability to sense things 0:23:17.040 --> 0:23:19.879 happens to be. But we again, we certainly see it 0:23:19.920 --> 0:23:22.720 again in ungulates and dogs and cats and other mammals. 0:23:22.920 --> 0:23:25.640 I've even seen articles looking at the fleming response in 0:23:25.840 --> 0:23:29.200 things like sea otters and elephants. So it's all over 0:23:29.240 --> 0:23:29.639 the place. 0:23:30.600 --> 0:23:32.520 That's interesting. I'm going to be on the lookout for 0:23:32.560 --> 0:23:32.960 it now. 0:23:33.760 --> 0:23:36.760 Yeah, if you spend any time with cats, you will 0:23:36.760 --> 0:23:40.440 see the stinky kitty face from time to time. And yeah, 0:23:40.480 --> 0:23:42.520 it's just a sign that there's some sort of smell 0:23:42.560 --> 0:23:44.560 going on. Don't take it personally. It doesn't mean it's 0:23:44.600 --> 0:23:47.800 you or something in your environment. They might just but 0:23:47.880 --> 0:23:50.919 something has occurred or they've noticed something that requires just 0:23:50.960 --> 0:23:52.920 a little more in depth analysis. 0:23:53.600 --> 0:23:56.080 Well, I would like to transition to something else, but 0:23:56.080 --> 0:23:58.440 we're gonna stick with mammals at least for the moment, 0:23:58.520 --> 0:24:00.920 so I want to mention an interesting paper I came 0:24:00.960 --> 0:24:06.200 across about social urination in mammals, which may or may 0:24:06.240 --> 0:24:10.479 not turn out to be communicative in nature. This paper 0:24:10.520 --> 0:24:15.800 was by ana Onishi, James Brooks, Sota Inoe, and Shinya Yamamoto, 0:24:16.440 --> 0:24:19.800 published in Current Biology in twenty twenty five this year, 0:24:20.240 --> 0:24:25.800 and it's called socially contagious urination in Chimpanzees, So I 0:24:25.840 --> 0:24:29.600 hope that title's got your interest piqued. The authors here 0:24:29.720 --> 0:24:33.360 are affiliated with a few different institutions in Japan, such 0:24:33.359 --> 0:24:37.119 as Kyoto University. I was also reading an article about 0:24:37.119 --> 0:24:39.679 this paper in Scientific American that I wanted to flag. 0:24:39.760 --> 0:24:43.320 This was by Megan Bartel's from January twenty twenty five, 0:24:44.119 --> 0:24:49.520