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Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of iHeartRadio. Hey,

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Speaker 1: welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind. My name is

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Speaker 1: Robert Lamb. And I am Joe McCormick. And it's that

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Speaker 1: time again, the post-October coverage of the Ig Nobel Prizes.

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Speaker 1: If you've been listening to the show for a while,

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Speaker 1: you know this is generally how we do it. The

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Speaker 1: Ig Nobel's are generally awarded what late September or early October,

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Speaker 1: generally earlier in the fall, just in time for us

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Speaker 1: to do a bunch of October content. And then we

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Speaker 1: come back around to them after we're done with the

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Speaker 1: spooky season stuff. And so that's what we're doing here again.

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Speaker 1: A reminder, if you're not familiar, the Ig Nobel's are

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Speaker 1: a series of awards given out once a year. This

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Speaker 1: is obviously in parody of the Nobel Prize. by a

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Speaker 1: scientific humor journal called The Annals of Improbable Research, edited

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Speaker 1: for many years now by Mark Abrahams. Their stated purpose

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Speaker 1: is to, quote, honor achievements that first make people laugh

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Speaker 1: and then make people think. If you want to learn

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Speaker 1: more about them, check out improbable.com. That will tell you

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Speaker 1: everything you need to know and include a list of

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Speaker 1: everybody whose every study, every paper that has ever won

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Speaker 1: an Ig Nobel Prize over the many years of its life.

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Speaker 2: Also, as some background, if you're not familiar, like what

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Speaker 2: kinds of papers actually win these prizes? Occasionally, it's stuff

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Speaker 2: that is supposed to be funny, like a satirical paper

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Speaker 2: that's kind of making a point or making a joke.

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Speaker 2: I often point to the Rayology of Cats paper that

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Speaker 2: we talked about, which is about, you know, are cats

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Speaker 2: a liquid or a solid? That's clearly supposed to be funny,

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Speaker 2: though it kind of gets at some interesting scientific points

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Speaker 2: as it goes. But most of the papers that are

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Speaker 2: awarded Ig Nobel prizes are just straightforward research. But often

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Speaker 2: there's just something goofy about them, like they're exploring a

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Speaker 2: topic in a way that strikes people as funny or

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Speaker 2: the topic is itself funny. So either the paper is

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Speaker 2: about underpants or something like Or it is taking a

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Speaker 2: kind of strangely scientific look at something that it feels

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Speaker 2: wrong to look at that way.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. The comedic bar is sometimes maybe quite low and

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Speaker 1: juvenile in a delightful way. And you mentioned underpants. One

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Speaker 1: of them this year is the Soil Science Prize. And

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Speaker 1: it actually directly concerns underpants, the bearing of a thousand

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Speaker 1: identical pairs of underpants in more than 25 countries and

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Speaker 1: then digging them up and getting Getting a data set

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Speaker 1: off of the findings, the soil findings and the condition

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Speaker 1: of the underpants. But that in particular was also kind

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Speaker 1: of like a citizen science outreach program. So kind of

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Speaker 1: like a third category, I guess, where, yeah, it's not

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Speaker 1: your hardcore, like tightly focused academic work. It's something else.

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Speaker 1: It's about realizing, hey, we get people to bury underpants.

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Speaker 1: That's novel. That's going to get people into the soil

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Speaker 1: sciences in a way they might otherwise not get into

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Speaker 1: the soil sciences.

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Speaker 2: So we're not going to focus on that award in

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Speaker 2: today's episode. We might come back to that in part two.

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Speaker 2: Are we going to do two parts this year?

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Speaker 1: I don't know that we've decided yet. As of this recording,

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Speaker 1: because that's the thing. There have been years in the

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Speaker 1: past where we're like, we're doing them all. We're covering

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Speaker 1: them all, however many episodes it takes. We haven't done

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Speaker 1: that in a bit. We tend to just sort of

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Speaker 1: look at the list and go after the ones that

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Speaker 1: kind of interest us. So we'll see. We'll see. If

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Speaker 1: there's a part one on the title, For this, then

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Speaker 1: that's a pretty good sign that we decided to do

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Speaker 1: a part two.

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Speaker 2: Well, Rob, do you want to kick things off today

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Speaker 2: with a bit of grave flesh technology?

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Speaker 1: Oh, yes, yes. This one's fun. This is the technology prize.

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Speaker 1: And I'm normally not one to go straight to the

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Speaker 1: technology heading, especially these days. But when the technology prize

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Speaker 1: is for something called necroprinting, and we're recording the week

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Speaker 1: of Halloween... Well, I'm all in because what what could

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Speaker 1: necro printing even possibly consist of? Right. I don't know.

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Speaker 1: I want to find out. I had a few just

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Speaker 1: sort of like the gut feelings, you know, gut ideas

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Speaker 1: that came to mind. I was thinking, OK, maybe it's

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Speaker 1: about refining the living dead into some sort of homogenous

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Speaker 1: undead sludge that is then like put into molds and

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Speaker 1: 3D or and or 3D printed into like foul human duplicates.

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Speaker 1: I see.

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Speaker 2: You reduce death in corpse flesh into raw material and

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Speaker 2: then you just make stuff with it. Make a make

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Speaker 2: a tchotchkes.

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Speaker 1: Why not? Why not? I was thinking that's possible. Necro printing.

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Speaker 1: I was thinking also this could be like the publication

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Speaker 1: of the works of history's greatest writers through necromancy. You know,

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Speaker 1: we want some William Shakespeare plays. Well, let's get zombie

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Speaker 1: Shakespeare on this. Let's get him writing some some some plays.

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Speaker 2: Speaking of evil technology, there are a lot of people

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Speaker 2: out there who think they're doing that with AI right now.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And it's not. No, you've got to use necromancy,

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Speaker 1: not AI. Necromancy over AI any day of the week.

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Speaker 1: And then finally, I was like, what if necro printing

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Speaker 1: is just the literary arm of the necromonger empire? You know,

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Speaker 1: like they're not just conquering worlds and battling Riddick. They're

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Speaker 1: also making sure that they're producing great literature.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: It is none of these things, necroprinting, but the truth

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Speaker 1: does not fail to impress. I think if you're not

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Speaker 1: familiar with this already, because as is always the case,

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Speaker 1: the Ig Nobel Prizes, they create excitement around some of

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Speaker 1: these papers, some of which I don't think we touched

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Speaker 1: on this as well. Some of them are very current

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Speaker 1: and recent. Some of them can be quite old, a

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Speaker 1: decade or more. So sometimes it's about reigniting interest in

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Speaker 1: a particular study. or a particular topic area, or highlighting

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Speaker 1: something that maybe had not received a lot of attention otherwise.

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Speaker 1: So the study in question for necroprinting was published just

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Speaker 1: last year in Science Advances, Volume 12, authored by a

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Speaker 1: team of researchers from China, Canada, the U.S., and Egypt.

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Speaker 1: Head author Justin Puma attended the ceremony in Zurich, along

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Speaker 1: with Cheng Hong-Kao and Megan Crichton. And the paper is

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Speaker 1: available in full. Go to improbable.com and pull it up

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Speaker 1: in the list. You can go straight to it. So

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Speaker 1: the paper starts out along your traditional biomimetic lines, pointing

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Speaker 1: out that nature has long inspired engineering solutions. As we've

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Speaker 1: discussed on the show many times, talking about biomimicry, engineers

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Speaker 1: often find themselves trying to solve a problem that evolution

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Speaker 1: effectively solved already. Not that evolution is conscious, And, you know,

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Speaker 1: not that evolution is consciously tackling individual problems, but adaptations

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Speaker 1: emerge that later present ideal answers for humans solving related problems. Right.

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Speaker 2: Yeah.

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Speaker 1: So anyway, we're all used to reading about biomimicry at

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Speaker 1: this point. You know, wetsuits inspired by shark fins or

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Speaker 1: certainly the way Japanese scientists, Japanese engineers looked to the

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Speaker 1: kingfisher in designing a boom free bullet train. You know,

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Speaker 1: looking at where the Kingfisher enters the water and then

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Speaker 1: using that to figure out how to redesign the front

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Speaker 1: of a bullet train so that it doesn't create this

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Speaker 1: boom from the built-up air, you know, from coming in

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Speaker 1: and out of the tunnel. But what the authors of

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Speaker 1: this paper proposed is something a little more direct, making

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Speaker 1: use of, quote, integrated biotic materials in engineered systems, a, quote,

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Speaker 1: bio-hybrid manufacturing technique. So you can maybe guess where this

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Speaker 1: is going. Yeah. Okay.

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Speaker 2: So not so much stealing ideas from nature, but stealing

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Speaker 2: material from nature.

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Speaker 1: Right. Which, you know, we're going to have, we're all

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Speaker 1: having fun with the idea. But of course, this is

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Speaker 1: something that in essence, humans have done for a very

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Speaker 1: long time. Like anyone who ever like turned a shark

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Speaker 1: tooth into a weapon or part of a weapon was

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Speaker 1: doing exactly the same thing.

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Speaker 2: And in a, in a simpler sense, anytime you cut

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Speaker 2: down a tree and build something out of it, you're

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Speaker 2: doing that too. I mean, like wood is an amazing

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Speaker 2: bio material that we, you know, have found as all

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Speaker 2: these incredible uses throughout human technology. Though, I guess this

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Speaker 2: is probably not just taking raw materials that are useful

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Speaker 2: because of their static properties, but rather if, if I'm correct,

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Speaker 2: correct me if I'm wrong. It's going to be taking

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Speaker 2: more mechanisms from nature, things with more complex, maybe moving

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Speaker 2: parts or properties.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, taking something out of nature and then making that

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Speaker 1: a part of a complex machine. So not the synthesis

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Speaker 1: of flesh and machine imagined in so many sci-fi cyborg visions,

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Speaker 1: such as with Star Trek's The Borg, which we recently

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Speaker 1: talked about, but something a little different. So the term

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Speaker 1: integrated biotic materials is, implies that the material in question

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Speaker 1: may not even still be living tissue. It could entail, say,

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Speaker 1: the use of organic muscle tissue in a robot. I

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Speaker 1: think we've looked at cases like that before on the show.

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Speaker 1: But in this case, we're dealing with formerly living tissue and,

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Speaker 1: in fact, part of a dead mosquito, a dead female

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Speaker 1: mosquito to be specific. Because the paper is titled 3D Necroprinting, colon,

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Speaker 1: leveraging biotic material as the nozzle for 3D printing. Oh,

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Speaker 1: that's sick. Are we talking about a, what's it called?

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Speaker 2: Would it be the proboscis or the poking, the thing

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Speaker 2: that you get stuck with?

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Speaker 1: It is. It is the mosquito proboscis, reutilized for 3D printing. Beautiful.

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Speaker 1: They list other necrotissues that are used by researchers of late,

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Speaker 1: by the way, including rat heart muscles, mud eel corpses.

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Speaker 1: Madagascar hissing cockroaches and beetle legs. And they don't just

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Speaker 1: this is not one of those papers where they're just like,

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Speaker 1: you could do this. We think, you know, we argue

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Speaker 1: that it is possible. They also test it out. They

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Speaker 1: end up using a necro printer to print an example

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Speaker 1: of a honeycomb print. A cell-embedded scaffold, which is, you know,

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Speaker 1: getting into some of the actual real-world possibilities for this,

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Speaker 1: using it in the biomedical industry, you know, printing of

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Speaker 1: tissue onto scaffolding. They also make just a Canadian maple leaf,

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Speaker 1: just a little bit of Canadian national pride infused into

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Speaker 1: the study, into the paper. But yeah, this is the

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Speaker 1: printing part of the NECRO is the reuse of the

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Speaker 1: mosquito proboscis.

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Speaker 2: Sorry if we just lost the thread, folks. We just

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Speaker 2: had to go aside because we weren't sure if we

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Speaker 2: were saying the word proboscis or proboscis right. It turns

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Speaker 2: out both are acceptable.

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Speaker 1: Both are correct. I'll try and fit in a third

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Speaker 1: incorrect way before we're done here. But proboscis, yes. Mosquito

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Speaker 1: proboscis as a nozzle for 3D printing. They write, quote,

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Speaker 1: the mosquito proboscis with its unique geometry, structure, and mechanics

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Speaker 1: enables printed line widths as fine as 20 micrometers. surpassing

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Speaker 1: commercially available 36-gauge dispense tips by 100%. So to be clear,

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Speaker 1: even though the mosquitoes are not printing anything in the

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Speaker 1: natural world, they seem to have a fine 3D printing

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Speaker 1: nozzle just as part of their anatomy. And all we're

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Speaker 1: doing here is saying, well, if you're not using it anymore,

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Speaker 1: we would like to incorporate that into our machine. It's beautiful.

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Speaker 2: You know, this would be a lot more disturbing if

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Speaker 2: it were not the mosquito. Yeah, if it were like

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Speaker 2: almost any other animal and we're talking about like turning

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Speaker 2: its body parts into machines, it would be a little

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Speaker 2: more troubling. The mosquito, it's an oddly jolly proposition.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, the mosquito, which does have a number of important

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Speaker 1: ecological purposes. You know, the mosquito larvae feed a lot

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Speaker 1: of animals. But they are, of course, disease-spreading parasites that...

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Speaker 1: that we generally don't like, and we put a lot

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Speaker 1: of effort into preventing them from getting us. But yeah,

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Speaker 1: it seems all right in this case, right? It's like

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Speaker 1: this is an enemy of man. We'll use parts of

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Speaker 1: their body to print things that help us. And the

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Speaker 1: demonstrated applications, again, they include the printing of delicate bioscaffolds,

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Speaker 1: among other things. And, yeah, we're talking about the female mosquito.

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Speaker 1: And the female mosquito, because to remind everyone, the female

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Speaker 1: mosquito is the only one that is drinking your blood,

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Speaker 1: is taking your blood, because she needs it in order to,

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Speaker 1: I think it varies depending on the species of mosquito.

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Speaker 1: But basically, the blood is either a necessary or highly

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Speaker 1: advantageous nutritional stream to enable her to reproduce the production

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Speaker 1: of eggs and larvae and so forth. Yeah.

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Speaker 2: So the blood meal facilitates the next generation of mosquitoes.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, the blood meal. And to get that blood meal,

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Speaker 1: she has to obtain some of your blood. And of course,

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Speaker 1: the thing is, mosquitoes don't need much. They just need

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Speaker 1: so little. We normally wouldn't miss it. But it is

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Speaker 1: the fact that they end up carrying various diseases and

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Speaker 1: can spread those diseases via their feeding. That's where the

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Speaker 1: real problem comes. Yeah, there's also the itching and the scratching,

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Speaker 1: but That's the primary concern with mosquito bites. So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: I was researching this a little bit earlier this year, actually.

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Speaker 1: I was looking into the hardware of the mosquito. And,

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Speaker 1: you know, I'm guilty of this as well. I think

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Speaker 1: we often tend to think of the female mosquito in

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Speaker 1: terms of a cartoon bug that just sinks a straw

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Speaker 1: through our skin to drink out our blood, right? Just

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Speaker 1: like one milkshake straw straight through the skin into the

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Speaker 1: blood vein and then just getting a little bit and

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Speaker 1: then flying off.

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Speaker 2: Do you ever have one of those plastic tubes that's

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Speaker 2: serrated on the end as a kid where you plug

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Speaker 2: it into an orange and then suck the juice out?

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Speaker 1: I had one of those. I don't remember that. No, no. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: I remember just the plastic straw that you have to

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Speaker 1: stab several times to get into the box or the

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Speaker 1: Capri Sun with disastrous results. Similar, similar idea. Okay. So, yeah,

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Speaker 1: but I think that's the kind of technology, like you

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Speaker 1: just kind of loosely think, oh, it's just like a

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Speaker 1: sharp straw. That's all it is. But, The reality is

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Speaker 1: that they really have kind of like a microsurgery suite.

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Speaker 1: You can think of them as some sort of tiny

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Speaker 1: mechanical horror that has to perform secretive microsurgery on the

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Speaker 1: surface of your skin without you becoming aware. And so

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Speaker 1: they have a whole varied apparatus here that they bust

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Speaker 1: out when they go to feed. Six needle-like stylettes that

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Speaker 1: work together to, first of all, they have to saw

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Speaker 1: through your skin. is a sawing that takes place. Then

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Speaker 1: they have to hold open the incision. So like multiple

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Speaker 1: arms doing the work of a whole surgical team. They

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Speaker 1: have to administer this salival cocktail that is going to

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Speaker 1: block immune response. It's going to block the clotting. And

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Speaker 1: then they want to drink that blood through a gutter-shaped

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Speaker 1: stylet called the labrum within the protective sheath of the labium.

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Speaker 1: And there also may be an odor detector there as well.

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Speaker 1: Like there's a lot going on with the with the

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Speaker 1: feeding apparatus of the female mosquito. But yeah, she's having

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Speaker 1: to do a lot of these things, do them very quickly,

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Speaker 1: get that blood, and then take off and leave. Yeah.

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Speaker 1: And so, you know, we're not even talking about using

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Speaker 1: all of the feeding apparatus for this nozzle. It's just

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Speaker 1: part of it here. And, you know, obviously this is funny.

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Speaker 1: Maybe not laugh out loud funny, but I guess it

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Speaker 1: just maybe seems... almost counterproductive to think it's like at

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Speaker 1: the bleeding edge of 3d printing and sort of like

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Speaker 1: micro technology, we're just considering using the mouth parts of

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Speaker 1: a dead insect instead of just making something. Because I

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Speaker 1: think it's easy to think about that. Like when you,

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Speaker 1: when you reach a certain level with technology that you're

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Speaker 1: not going to, you may be inspired by nature, but

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Speaker 1: you're not going to just take a piece of nature

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Speaker 1: and like screw it onto the end of your printing hose.

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Speaker 2: Right.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, totally.

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Speaker 2: It's an outside-the-box solution, as they might say, and it's

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Speaker 2: weird enough. It's weird in the direction of not just comedy,

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Speaker 2: but I would say horror comedy.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. Yeah, yeah. So obviously, yeah, the humor is pretty

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Speaker 1: baked in there, and it's a nice, morbid comedy to

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Speaker 1: be had with it. But as for why it matters, well,

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Speaker 1: study authors Cal and Puma wrote a nice article post-Igno

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Speaker 1: Bells for The Conversation. And they do a great job

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Speaker 1: in that piece. You know, they cite the biomimetic principle.

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Speaker 1: But then they point out the following. I just want

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Speaker 1: to read a direct quote from their write-up here. They say, quote,

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Speaker 1: The mosquito proboscis is a tiny, naturally evolved microneedle, about

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Speaker 1: half the width of a human hair. From a manufacturing perspective,

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Speaker 1: fabricating such small needles to use as 3D printing nozzles

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Speaker 1: has its challenges. Commercial micronozles below 100 microns in size

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Speaker 1: are expensive. at around $ 80 each. One micron, they point out,

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Speaker 1: is 0.001 millimeters. Pretty small scale we're talking about. They

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Speaker 1: point out that, quote, glass-based needles, while they can reach

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Speaker 1: these small diameters, are difficult to manufacture consistently and are

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Speaker 1: extremely brittle. Another concern with traditionally engineered alternatives is that

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Speaker 1: these nozzles are made of non-organic, non-biodegradable materials. The mosquito proboscis, however,

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Speaker 1: is 100% organic material. It's also cheaper and consistent in size. Interesting.

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Speaker 1: You think of technology like this, you think, well, we

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Speaker 1: can just make everything we need. And it sounds like, yeah,

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Speaker 1: to a certain extent we can, but not with the

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Speaker 1: level of consistency, durability, and certainly biodegradable aspects as just

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Speaker 1: taking something right off nature's shelf. And yeah, it makes

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Speaker 1: a lot of sense, especially as we're dipping into this

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Speaker 1: micro world where even at our current level of technology,

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Speaker 1: naturally evolved materials and systems are just going to be

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Speaker 1: better honed than a lot of what we can do,

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Speaker 1: three to four powers of 10 removed from our much

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Speaker 1: larger world. Like the mosquito is already in there at

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Speaker 1: the scale we're talking about, and they've evolved to thrive there,

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Speaker 1: to conduct secretive complex surgeries while you're staring at your

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Speaker 1: smartphone and then getting out of there before you can

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Speaker 1: swat where they landed. Oh, by the way, one more

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Speaker 1: little bit. They mentioned that they were actually inspired to

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Speaker 1: look into this mosquito topic when they were developing a

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Speaker 1: mosquito skin barrier, something they called Skinbaric with an X

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Speaker 1: at the end. So I think, you know, in trying

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Speaker 1: to figure out, like, how do you stop the mosquito

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Speaker 1: from performing microsurgery? They really got interested in, well, look

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Speaker 1: at this. Look at what they're actually doing. Look at

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Speaker 1: the machinery they're using. And then this led to this project.

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Speaker 1: to this research and to just taking that and using

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Speaker 1: it for ourselves. Right.

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Speaker 2: So first you encounter it as an enemy, but then

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Speaker 2: as you begin to study it, you admire its purity.

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Speaker 1: Yeah. And you realize, you know, we could use that.

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Speaker 1: We have uses for such a needle. And there you go.

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Speaker 2: I am picturing Ian Holm, of course.

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Speaker 1: Yes. Admiring their purity. Yeah. And really, I mean, that

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Speaker 1: does get down to a lot of what you know, larger,

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Speaker 1: you know, big tent biomimetics is about, you know, realizing

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Speaker 1: that there is like a very well-defined, you know, pure

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Speaker 1: solution to be found in many of nature's designs. Totally.

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Speaker 2: Well are you ready to talk about my first prize

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Speaker 2: yeah what do you got not my prize it's not

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Speaker 2: like i got a prize the first one i'm going

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Speaker 2: to talk about yeah yeah So the research that won

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Speaker 2: this year's Ig Nobel Biomechanics Prize was in part aimed

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Speaker 2: at answering a surprisingly interesting question. That question is, what

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Speaker 2: is a kiss? You might not think this is a

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Speaker 2: question that needs a lot of careful thought. Kissing is

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Speaker 2: a very common practice in our culture, at least. Everybody

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Speaker 2: knows it when they see it. So a lot of

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Speaker 2: times people have a reaction to questions like this one

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Speaker 2: posed in science is like, why do we need to

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Speaker 2: study that? Isn't the answer obvious? Like, do we need

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Speaker 2: to spend time delineating the boundaries of this activity?

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Speaker 1: But step back.

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Speaker 2: And imagine that you were not a member of a

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Speaker 2: mouth-kissing human culture, but rather an alien biologist from Mars,

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Speaker 2: and you were trying to study human behavior and understand

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Speaker 2: when and why humans kiss. So you might do a

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Speaker 2: survey of human activity and you look for instances when

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Speaker 2: humans touch their mouths together. And you might notice that

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Speaker 2: humans in some cultures touch their mouths when they're engaging

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Speaker 2: in romantic or sexual activity. Other times, especially in some cultures,

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Speaker 2: you'll notice humans touching their mouths or near each other's

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Speaker 2: mouths as a greeting between friends or family. And in

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Speaker 2: other instances, you will see what looks like humans touching

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Speaker 2: mouths with somebody who's lying on the ground unconscious, having

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Speaker 2: some kind of medical emergency. And then maybe you survey

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Speaker 2: some human media and you watch some movies. You watch

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Speaker 2: movies like Silence of the Lambs or Wes Craven's Shocker.

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Speaker 2: And you will see scenes of mouth-to-mouth contact between humans

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Speaker 2: that look like a form of violence where one party

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Speaker 2: is killed or left bloody and mutilated. Uh, so if

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Speaker 2: you want to understand what kissing means in human culture,

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Speaker 2: you've got to figure out which of these situations are

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Speaker 2: and are not actually examples of kissing, which ones are

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Speaker 2: the same kind of thing and which are actually just

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Speaker 2: incidentally mouth contact of some other nature. And it turns

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Speaker 2: out biologists have to do the same thing. If they

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Speaker 2: want to study kissing as a broader animal behavior, something

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Speaker 2: that is not just limited to humans. But if they

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Speaker 2: want to study how the behavior evolved and what adaptive purpose,

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Speaker 2: if any, it might serve. Because we kind of like

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Speaker 2: you can see these examples of mouth to mouth touching

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Speaker 2: in humans that are not kissing, like people giving CPR,

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Speaker 2: biting each other in the mouth in a horror movie.

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Speaker 2: You can see examples in nature of animals touching their

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Speaker 2: mouths together. But it really seems like something other than

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Speaker 2: kissing is going on, like. birds sometimes join mouths when

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Speaker 2: they want to feed something to their young. This might

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Speaker 2: be regurgitating partially predigested food to them or delivering what's

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Speaker 2: called crop milk. By the way, if you, uh, if

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Speaker 2: you want to learn more about that, you can look

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Speaker 2: up our older episode called, I think strange milk. That's

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Speaker 2: all about non mammal forms of milk or milk like substances.

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Speaker 2: There's a surprising amount of weird stuff out there. Yeah. Uh, And, uh, but,

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Speaker 2: and other examples too, uh, I made some notes like, uh,

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Speaker 2: bears often touch their mouths or jaws together in more

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Speaker 2: aggressive ways in cases of fighting or threat displays or

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Speaker 2: during play fighting. Uh, there are the kissing fish or helostoma, uh, uh,

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Speaker 2: to minky eye. These are, they look like they're kissing

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Speaker 2: on the mouth, but they lock lips to fight. It's

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Speaker 2: like a contest of physical dominance. Even ants actually press

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Speaker 2: their mouths together in a behavior known as trophallaxis, in

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Speaker 2: which one ant can share stored liquid food resources with another.

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Speaker 2: So it's kind of kissing to feed, but also they

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Speaker 2: can share chemical signals or hormonal regulators, like kissing to

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Speaker 2: communicate and regulate. And none of these examples really seems

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Speaker 2: comparable to the biological meaning of a human kiss, even

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Speaker 2: though it is mouth-to-mouth touching. So if you're going to

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Speaker 2: take this step back and look at it from a

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Speaker 2: biologist's point of view, what is a kiss? That's where

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Speaker 2: this Ig Nobel Prize winning research comes in. So the

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Speaker 2: award went to Matilda Brindle, who is affiliated with the

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Speaker 2: University of Oxford, also University College London, Catherine Talbot of

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Speaker 2: the Florida Institute of Technology, and Stuart West, also of Oxford.

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Speaker 2: I'm going to quote from the prize language, quote, for

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Speaker 2: devising a more precise definition of kissing. Non-agonistic interactions involving

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Speaker 2: directed intraspecific oral-oral contact with some movement of the lip-slash-mouth

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Speaker 2: parts and no food transfer.

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Speaker 1: No food transfer? None at all?

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Speaker 2: No food transfer at all.

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Speaker 1: Keep that in mind.

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Speaker 2: That's right. So if you're, you know, spitting food back

427
00:25:00,609 --> 00:25:03,270
Speaker 2: and forth on your kisses, you probably don't meet this definition.

428
00:25:04,030 --> 00:25:07,190
Speaker 1: Yeah, or I guess if you're passing like a capsule

429
00:25:07,250 --> 00:25:10,449
Speaker 1: that has like some microfilm in it, also that's no

430
00:25:10,490 --> 00:25:11,010
Speaker 1: longer a kiss.

431
00:25:11,390 --> 00:25:13,290
Speaker 2: Very good point. Well, you know, that wouldn't be if

432
00:25:14,290 --> 00:25:16,190
Speaker 2: you're doing that as a spy or something, it might

433
00:25:16,230 --> 00:25:18,229
Speaker 2: look like a kiss to the other people. But what

434
00:25:18,280 --> 00:25:22,219
Speaker 2: you're doing, it has another function, doesn't it? And also

435
00:25:22,240 --> 00:25:25,880
Speaker 2: the prize language notes that this type of kissing has

436
00:25:25,920 --> 00:25:29,669
Speaker 2: been observed in animals as diverse as ants, birds, polar

437
00:25:29,710 --> 00:25:32,810
Speaker 2: bears and humans. So it's always nice to get a

438
00:25:33,030 --> 00:25:37,520
Speaker 2: really clinical, overly granular definition of something that we usually

439
00:25:37,560 --> 00:25:41,460
Speaker 2: talk about through metaphor or poetics. So buckle up because

440
00:25:41,500 --> 00:25:43,340
Speaker 2: there's going to be a lot of that in this segment.

441
00:25:43,380 --> 00:25:46,520
Speaker 2: Maybe we will manage to actually ruin kissing for you

442
00:25:46,560 --> 00:25:50,250
Speaker 2: by the end of it. But the authors emphasize that

443
00:25:50,369 --> 00:25:53,410
Speaker 2: this definition was created for a good reason. It was

444
00:25:53,470 --> 00:25:58,389
Speaker 2: to foster a non-anthropocentric approach that could be looked at

445
00:25:58,450 --> 00:26:01,669
Speaker 2: across different animal taxa because animals If you look at

446
00:26:01,869 --> 00:26:06,909
Speaker 2: even more clinical descriptions of human kissing that already exist

447
00:26:06,970 --> 00:26:12,290
Speaker 2: in the literature, they're very focused on human anatomy, talking

448
00:26:12,350 --> 00:26:16,020
Speaker 2: about sucking with the lips or something that not all

449
00:26:16,140 --> 00:26:20,900
Speaker 2: animals could do. So they wanted to create this definition

450
00:26:20,920 --> 00:26:24,500
Speaker 2: that works across different animal taxa, which could be used

451
00:26:24,680 --> 00:26:28,400
Speaker 2: to create, quote, a useful starting point for further research

452
00:26:28,520 --> 00:26:33,040
Speaker 2: into the adaptive function of kissing, that highlights hypothesis generation

453
00:26:33,140 --> 00:26:37,280
Speaker 2: and testing within a phylogenetic framework. So they're trying to

454
00:26:37,440 --> 00:26:40,659
Speaker 2: set the table for an emerging area of research. This

455
00:26:40,720 --> 00:26:43,479
Speaker 2: paper is by no means intended to be the last

456
00:26:43,560 --> 00:26:46,400
Speaker 2: work on this subject, but rather to kind of open

457
00:26:46,460 --> 00:26:49,450
Speaker 2: up a new area of study by standardizing what we're

458
00:26:49,490 --> 00:26:53,290
Speaker 2: looking for and raising the questions of how to investigate it.

459
00:26:54,730 --> 00:26:57,540
Speaker 2: And this area is, of course, looking into kissing as

460
00:26:57,600 --> 00:27:01,780
Speaker 2: an evolved behavior in animals other than humans. The paper

461
00:27:01,820 --> 00:27:05,160
Speaker 2: itself was called A Comparative Approach to the Evolution of Kissing.

462
00:27:05,220 --> 00:27:07,859
Speaker 2: It was published in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior.

463
00:27:08,920 --> 00:27:11,520
Speaker 2: And so to come back to that definition and look

464
00:27:11,540 --> 00:27:15,609
Speaker 2: at exactly what it's saying, things that should count as

465
00:27:15,700 --> 00:27:20,830
Speaker 2: true kissing, according to this definition, consist of oral-oral contact,

466
00:27:20,910 --> 00:27:27,060
Speaker 2: so mouth-to-mouth, kissing that is mouth-to-mouth that is intraspecific, meaning

467
00:27:27,140 --> 00:27:31,060
Speaker 2: between members of the same species, directed, so I think

468
00:27:31,440 --> 00:27:34,639
Speaker 2: not accidental bumping of mouths, but what appears to be

469
00:27:34,720 --> 00:27:42,600
Speaker 2: targeted mouth-to-mouth touching, non-agonistic, meaning not associated with conflict or aggression,

470
00:27:42,619 --> 00:27:46,300
Speaker 2: so like bears or fish that lock mouths while they're fighting,

471
00:27:46,359 --> 00:27:50,300
Speaker 2: that's obviously not kissing, quote, with some movement of the

472
00:27:50,359 --> 00:27:56,570
Speaker 2: lips slash mouth parts, self-explanatory and no food transfer, no

473
00:27:56,670 --> 00:28:01,610
Speaker 2: feeding of one animal by another. An interesting irony with

474
00:28:01,730 --> 00:28:04,889
Speaker 2: this subject is, and the authors point this out, is

475
00:28:04,970 --> 00:28:09,659
Speaker 2: that while mouth-to-mouth contact occurs in many species across the

476
00:28:09,760 --> 00:28:14,180
Speaker 2: animal kingdom, some of which may constitute true kissing, there

477
00:28:14,200 --> 00:28:19,700
Speaker 2: can be wide variability within species. For example, even though

478
00:28:19,900 --> 00:28:22,900
Speaker 2: humans you might think of as animals that clearly kiss,

479
00:28:22,980 --> 00:28:28,260
Speaker 2: and we clearly do, not all human cultures kiss mouth-to-mouth.

480
00:28:29,200 --> 00:28:32,050
Speaker 2: I couldn't find a good statistic on the estimated number

481
00:28:32,070 --> 00:28:37,450
Speaker 2: of cultures where kissing mouth-to-mouth is completely absent across all contexts,

482
00:28:38,310 --> 00:28:42,050
Speaker 2: but at least for the subset of romantic kissing, I

483
00:28:42,090 --> 00:28:45,230
Speaker 2: found a 2025 article citing a Texas A & M

484
00:28:45,310 --> 00:28:49,690
Speaker 2: anthropology professor named Katharina Laporte who said there was research

485
00:28:49,790 --> 00:28:55,610
Speaker 2: indicating that only 46% of studied societies in one piece

486
00:28:55,630 --> 00:29:02,180
Speaker 2: of research practice romantic mouth-to-mouth kissing. And note that that's 46%

487
00:29:02,180 --> 00:29:06,300
Speaker 2: of studied cultures, counting each culture as one, not 46%

488
00:29:06,300 --> 00:29:12,200
Speaker 2: of people worldwide. But by that count, a huge amount

489
00:29:12,440 --> 00:29:16,610
Speaker 2: of cultures on Earth actually don't do romantic or sexual

490
00:29:16,650 --> 00:29:17,530
Speaker 2: mouth-to-mouth kissing.

491
00:29:18,520 --> 00:29:21,100
Speaker 1: That's that's that's interesting. I never really thought about all

492
00:29:21,140 --> 00:29:23,070
Speaker 1: this before. But now that now that I am thinking

493
00:29:23,120 --> 00:29:26,330
Speaker 1: about it, it's like you would think that it makes

494
00:29:26,370 --> 00:29:29,370
Speaker 1: me wonder to what extent that percentage has shifted or

495
00:29:29,470 --> 00:29:32,610
Speaker 1: could shift due to media. You know, because you have

496
00:29:32,650 --> 00:29:36,910
Speaker 1: a lot of say, you know, just focusing on like

497
00:29:36,950 --> 00:29:40,100
Speaker 1: a lot of like blockbusters, you know, American films. in

498
00:29:40,120 --> 00:29:42,480
Speaker 1: which there is mouth to mouth kissing. You can imagine

499
00:29:42,520 --> 00:29:46,640
Speaker 1: that having an influence on expectations and ideas, you know,

500
00:29:46,840 --> 00:29:49,080
Speaker 1: concerning physical romance. Right.

501
00:29:49,120 --> 00:29:52,160
Speaker 2: Because obviously, and you can see this by the variability

502
00:29:52,200 --> 00:29:56,030
Speaker 2: that's already present within human culture, kissing is not like

503
00:29:56,050 --> 00:30:00,209
Speaker 2: a a species level deterministic on off thing, you know,

504
00:30:00,330 --> 00:30:03,390
Speaker 2: clearly like a species members of a species can do

505
00:30:03,470 --> 00:30:05,800
Speaker 2: it or not. And so what you would instead be

506
00:30:05,840 --> 00:30:09,420
Speaker 2: looking for is species in which it is, you know,

507
00:30:09,680 --> 00:30:12,460
Speaker 2: observed at least to some extent, some members of a

508
00:30:12,480 --> 00:30:16,080
Speaker 2: species are doing it at least. But anyway, we should

509
00:30:16,100 --> 00:30:17,860
Speaker 2: keep that in mind as we go forward, because it

510
00:30:17,920 --> 00:30:22,060
Speaker 2: shows that there is strong environmental and cultural variability in the,

511
00:30:22,290 --> 00:30:25,750
Speaker 2: the tend and how the tendency to kiss is expressed.

512
00:30:26,670 --> 00:30:29,450
Speaker 2: You know, you might have species that clearly show potential

513
00:30:29,490 --> 00:30:31,430
Speaker 2: for kissing because some of them do it, but that

514
00:30:31,470 --> 00:30:35,510
Speaker 2: doesn't mean all of them do it. However, it also

515
00:30:35,550 --> 00:30:40,270
Speaker 2: seems like the potential tendency to engage in kissing probably

516
00:30:40,330 --> 00:30:44,530
Speaker 2: does predate human beings. And one reason for thinking this

517
00:30:45,090 --> 00:30:48,690
Speaker 2: is that so many of our closest genetic relatives in

518
00:30:48,730 --> 00:30:53,480
Speaker 2: the animal kingdom also engage in kissing. Though, as within humans,

519
00:30:53,540 --> 00:30:56,320
Speaker 2: this can manifest to a greater or lesser degree. More

520
00:30:56,380 --> 00:30:59,030
Speaker 2: on that in just a minute. And the authors do

521
00:30:59,110 --> 00:31:02,330
Speaker 2: also note and explore somewhat the possibility that kissing might

522
00:31:02,370 --> 00:31:06,890
Speaker 2: not be as strongly genetically determined as you might be

523
00:31:06,910 --> 00:31:10,130
Speaker 2: assuming from this. It might also be a culturally learned

524
00:31:10,190 --> 00:31:13,650
Speaker 2: or transmitted trait, though it would probably be building on

525
00:31:13,730 --> 00:31:17,640
Speaker 2: some kind of instinctual genetic basis. Maybe there's some kind of...

526
00:31:18,960 --> 00:31:22,719
Speaker 2: underlying trait or instinct that we have that can, in

527
00:31:22,940 --> 00:31:26,250
Speaker 2: some cases, culturally be accepted into kissing. Maybe that's how

528
00:31:26,270 --> 00:31:30,810
Speaker 2: it works. But from the paper's abstract, the authors write, quote,

529
00:31:31,210 --> 00:31:34,590
Speaker 2: using this definition, that very clinical definition we talked about,

530
00:31:35,390 --> 00:31:39,310
Speaker 2: using this definition, we collate basic observational data across the

531
00:31:39,470 --> 00:31:44,500
Speaker 2: Afro-Eurasian primates and employ Bayesian phylogenetic methods to reconstruct the

532
00:31:44,640 --> 00:31:49,730
Speaker 2: evolutionary history of kissing. So what they do in this paper,

533
00:31:50,050 --> 00:31:52,690
Speaker 2: and they're very careful to note that, you know, they're

534
00:31:52,710 --> 00:31:55,990
Speaker 2: not able to create an exhaustive catalog of like which

535
00:31:56,350 --> 00:31:58,830
Speaker 2: primates do and do not kiss. But to the best

536
00:31:58,870 --> 00:32:02,219
Speaker 2: of their ability, they look at the existing literature and

537
00:32:02,280 --> 00:32:06,580
Speaker 2: documentary evidence like videos on the Internet on the behavior

538
00:32:06,600 --> 00:32:09,160
Speaker 2: of a bunch of different ape and monkey species to

539
00:32:09,260 --> 00:32:12,350
Speaker 2: see which of them show instances of what they consider

540
00:32:12,430 --> 00:32:16,790
Speaker 2: true kissing behavior by this new definition. Then the authors

541
00:32:16,990 --> 00:32:20,670
Speaker 2: use that information about which species they can find showing

542
00:32:20,990 --> 00:32:24,750
Speaker 2: evidence of kissing. They use that information paired with Bayesian

543
00:32:24,790 --> 00:32:28,920
Speaker 2: phylogenetic analysis to come up with an estimate of how

544
00:32:29,000 --> 00:32:32,620
Speaker 2: far back in the primate lineage kissing behavior goes and

545
00:32:32,720 --> 00:32:36,400
Speaker 2: where it may have been gained and lost. So the

546
00:32:36,460 --> 00:32:39,040
Speaker 2: main findings of the paper are, first of all, they

547
00:32:39,080 --> 00:32:43,900
Speaker 2: say that true kissing occurs in At least sometimes in most,

548
00:32:44,000 --> 00:32:48,540
Speaker 2: but possibly not all, large ape species. And they include

549
00:32:48,560 --> 00:32:52,300
Speaker 2: some examples here, once again flagging that absence of evidence

550
00:32:52,340 --> 00:32:54,600
Speaker 2: doesn't mean the species never kissed, but there were a

551
00:32:54,620 --> 00:32:58,710
Speaker 2: few where they couldn't find any evidence. So in some gorillas,

552
00:32:58,790 --> 00:33:02,050
Speaker 2: kissing is documented. It appears to be kind of rare,

553
00:33:02,130 --> 00:33:06,210
Speaker 2: but data vary by species. There were no documented instances

554
00:33:06,250 --> 00:33:09,220
Speaker 2: they could find of kissing by the mountain gorilla. But

555
00:33:09,290 --> 00:33:12,530
Speaker 2: there were observations of kissing in the western lowland gorilla.

556
00:33:13,050 --> 00:33:15,670
Speaker 2: Of course, kissing is somewhat common among homo sapiens.

557
00:33:15,730 --> 00:33:16,230
Speaker 1: We know that.

558
00:33:16,970 --> 00:33:20,250
Speaker 2: Kissing appears to be quite common among bonobos, especially in

559
00:33:20,270 --> 00:33:23,390
Speaker 2: the sexual context. And there is a funny quote here from,

560
00:33:23,410 --> 00:33:25,880
Speaker 2: or at least I thought it was funny. The quote,

561
00:33:25,920 --> 00:33:28,240
Speaker 2: the author Franz De Waal, who we interviewed on the

562
00:33:28,260 --> 00:33:30,620
Speaker 2: show years ago, you know, who did a lot of

563
00:33:30,660 --> 00:33:34,380
Speaker 2: research on primates. But talking about bonobo kissing specifically, De

564
00:33:34,800 --> 00:33:39,070
Speaker 2: Waal wrote, quote, The mouth-to-mouth kiss has a strikingly sensual

565
00:33:39,130 --> 00:33:46,650
Speaker 2: character because of prolonged tongue-tongue interaction. Kissing also appears to

566
00:33:46,670 --> 00:33:50,210
Speaker 2: be somewhat common in chimpanzees, but it's more often observed

567
00:33:50,370 --> 00:33:54,450
Speaker 2: in what looks like a platonic context, with sexual kissing

568
00:33:54,540 --> 00:33:59,560
Speaker 2: in chimpanzees present but more rare. Interestingly, the authors say

569
00:33:59,620 --> 00:34:03,640
Speaker 2: that it is frequently noted in chimpanzees as a reconciliatory behavior.

570
00:34:04,340 --> 00:34:07,440
Speaker 2: So like you might get an instance where chimpanzees fight,

571
00:34:07,540 --> 00:34:10,049
Speaker 2: like one of them hits another one or something. And

572
00:34:10,120 --> 00:34:13,890
Speaker 2: then later there is a reconciliation between those two chimpanzees

573
00:34:14,050 --> 00:34:16,490
Speaker 2: that will involve kissing on the mouth or maybe kissing

574
00:34:16,530 --> 00:34:19,649
Speaker 2: on the hand and then kissing on the mouth. Both

575
00:34:19,850 --> 00:34:24,290
Speaker 2: sexual and platonic kissing have been observed in orangutans, in

576
00:34:24,410 --> 00:34:28,650
Speaker 2: Bornean orangutans. Sometimes males kiss each other on the mouth

577
00:34:29,190 --> 00:34:33,029
Speaker 2: in what appears to be a platonic way. In Sumatran orangutans,

578
00:34:33,380 --> 00:34:36,920
Speaker 2: mouth kissing seems to be an affectionate gesture between family members.

579
00:34:37,620 --> 00:34:41,340
Speaker 2: In both species, again, it seems somewhat rare. And the

580
00:34:41,380 --> 00:34:44,480
Speaker 2: paper also documents what appear to be instances of kissing

581
00:34:44,620 --> 00:34:47,900
Speaker 2: in related primates, like some species of baboons and macaques.

582
00:34:49,550 --> 00:34:53,490
Speaker 2: So the authors estimate, based on their modeling, that kissing

583
00:34:53,530 --> 00:34:57,210
Speaker 2: in the primate lineage probably traces back to the last

584
00:34:57,290 --> 00:35:00,690
Speaker 2: common ancestor of the great apes. This ancestor would have

585
00:35:00,750 --> 00:35:06,430
Speaker 2: existed between 16.9 and 21.5 million years ago. And again,

586
00:35:06,550 --> 00:35:09,460
Speaker 2: it's not possible to know this for sure, but that's

587
00:35:09,520 --> 00:35:13,440
Speaker 2: what their Bayesian phylogenetic analysis says is most likely. They

588
00:35:13,460 --> 00:35:17,160
Speaker 2: also infer from the same method that Neanderthals probably had

589
00:35:17,200 --> 00:35:21,160
Speaker 2: the kissing trait, probably kissed. Interestingly, at one point in

590
00:35:21,180 --> 00:35:24,170
Speaker 2: the paper, they note that there is some evidence, though

591
00:35:24,190 --> 00:35:28,470
Speaker 2: it's far from conclusive, but some weak evidence that Homo

592
00:35:28,510 --> 00:35:33,030
Speaker 2: sapiens and Neanderthals may have kissed each other on the mouth.

593
00:35:33,570 --> 00:35:34,340
Speaker 1: Oh, OK.

594
00:35:34,680 --> 00:35:37,759
Speaker 2: OK, so what would the evidence for this be? So

595
00:35:37,820 --> 00:35:41,719
Speaker 2: Homo sapiens and Neanderthals diverged genetically sometime between 450 and

596
00:35:41,719 --> 00:35:48,660
Speaker 2: 740,000 years ago. And yet we have evidence that for

597
00:35:48,860 --> 00:35:54,330
Speaker 2: several hundred thousand years after this divergence, we continued to

598
00:35:54,430 --> 00:36:00,930
Speaker 2: share a pool of common oral microbes, including methanobrevibacter oralis.

599
00:36:01,489 --> 00:36:05,550
Speaker 2: And these oral microbes didn't appear to diverge genetically until

600
00:36:05,610 --> 00:36:07,069
Speaker 2: between 112 and 143 thousand years ago. So what could

601
00:36:07,090 --> 00:36:16,680
Speaker 2: explain that? Well, one possibility is continuous kissing within and

602
00:36:16,719 --> 00:36:20,100
Speaker 2: between both species. That's one way it could have happened,

603
00:36:20,140 --> 00:36:23,060
Speaker 2: though it's important to flag there are other behaviors that

604
00:36:23,080 --> 00:36:27,040
Speaker 2: could explain that as well, maybe sharing foods in certain

605
00:36:27,080 --> 00:36:31,359
Speaker 2: ways that would encourage continuous exchange of, you know, mouth bacteria,

606
00:36:32,160 --> 00:36:35,150
Speaker 2: you know, if they're double dipping or whatever, but chewing

607
00:36:35,190 --> 00:36:38,310
Speaker 2: on the same piece of whatever, or I guess anything

608
00:36:38,370 --> 00:36:41,110
Speaker 2: else where material is being swapped between their mouths.

609
00:36:41,510 --> 00:36:43,050
Speaker 1: What I want to know, and this is probably a

610
00:36:43,469 --> 00:36:47,050
Speaker 1: beyond the scope of this particular paper or anything they're citing,

611
00:36:47,090 --> 00:36:50,100
Speaker 1: but I wonder which species was the better kisser on Hull.

612
00:36:50,420 --> 00:36:53,420
Speaker 1: Were the Neanderthals better kissers or were the Homo sapiens

613
00:36:53,460 --> 00:36:57,660
Speaker 1: better kissers? What was each species bringing to the table here?

614
00:36:58,980 --> 00:37:02,680
Speaker 2: It is beneath us to get into that kind of evaluation,

615
00:37:02,800 --> 00:37:06,190
Speaker 2: but you really get a sense from the ethology literature

616
00:37:06,250 --> 00:37:07,910
Speaker 2: that bonobos are really good kissers.

617
00:37:07,930 --> 00:37:08,310
Speaker 1: Yeah.

618
00:37:18,920 --> 00:37:23,779
Speaker 2: So anyway, the authors analyzed life history variables for the

619
00:37:23,820 --> 00:37:26,259
Speaker 2: species that do kiss to see if there are any

620
00:37:26,320 --> 00:37:30,280
Speaker 2: other features in common. The answer in one way is no,

621
00:37:30,380 --> 00:37:34,279
Speaker 2: there are no variables that correlate perfectly with kissing. But

622
00:37:34,320 --> 00:37:37,500
Speaker 2: they also said, yes, there are some that correlate partially

623
00:37:37,540 --> 00:37:41,160
Speaker 2: with kissing. There's some overlap with kissing more than would

624
00:37:41,200 --> 00:37:45,180
Speaker 2: be expected by chance. And caveat on the section that

625
00:37:45,219 --> 00:37:48,259
Speaker 2: the data available were limited, so we should not draw

626
00:37:48,320 --> 00:37:52,360
Speaker 2: too many conclusions based on this. But they said that

627
00:37:52,380 --> 00:37:58,330
Speaker 2: there were links between kissing possibly and multi-male mating systems.

628
00:37:58,350 --> 00:38:01,049
Speaker 2: So this would be systems where the females would mate

629
00:38:01,090 --> 00:38:04,009
Speaker 2: with multiple males. And I think they linked this in

630
00:38:04,090 --> 00:38:07,709
Speaker 2: the end to the idea that kissing could have some

631
00:38:07,790 --> 00:38:11,040
Speaker 2: kind of role in post-copulatory sexual selection.

632
00:38:11,060 --> 00:38:11,130
Speaker 1: Hmm.

633
00:38:12,390 --> 00:38:17,460
Speaker 2: They also linked it somewhat to non-folivorous diets, meaning kissing

634
00:38:17,540 --> 00:38:22,440
Speaker 2: is maybe a little bit more common in diets consisting

635
00:38:22,460 --> 00:38:24,799
Speaker 2: of things like fruit and meat and a little less

636
00:38:24,860 --> 00:38:28,440
Speaker 2: common if the diet is mostly leaves. And you could

637
00:38:28,540 --> 00:38:31,570
Speaker 2: note the way this relates to the different feeding behaviors

638
00:38:31,620 --> 00:38:35,350
Speaker 2: based on different foods. So fruit and meat are, in

639
00:38:35,370 --> 00:38:40,440
Speaker 2: the author's words, quote, spatially and temporally lump. Whereas leaves

640
00:38:40,580 --> 00:38:43,180
Speaker 2: are abundant all over and you might feed on just

641
00:38:43,219 --> 00:38:45,989
Speaker 2: by kind of grazing on the total environment. Yeah.

642
00:38:46,010 --> 00:38:49,750
Speaker 1: The difference between grazing and essentially under gathering. Yeah. Yeah.

643
00:38:50,450 --> 00:38:53,810
Speaker 2: And also a possible link, they say, with pre mastication,

644
00:38:53,969 --> 00:38:59,500
Speaker 2: usually meaning like mothers pre chewing food for offspring. So

645
00:38:59,960 --> 00:39:02,420
Speaker 2: I thought this was all really interesting, but there were

646
00:39:02,440 --> 00:39:04,500
Speaker 2: a few other notes from the paper I thought might

647
00:39:04,540 --> 00:39:05,399
Speaker 2: be worth getting into.

648
00:39:05,460 --> 00:39:06,040
Speaker 1: One thing is just.

649
00:39:08,380 --> 00:39:12,320
Speaker 2: The broader question of what is the adaptive value of kissing,

650
00:39:12,340 --> 00:39:14,430
Speaker 2: you know, that's sort of they don't they're not able

651
00:39:14,469 --> 00:39:17,250
Speaker 2: to answer that in this paper. But this is one

652
00:39:17,270 --> 00:39:19,730
Speaker 2: of the questions that they want to provide a better

653
00:39:19,810 --> 00:39:22,230
Speaker 2: framework for exploring so that we can get to the

654
00:39:22,270 --> 00:39:26,830
Speaker 2: bottom of this. Like, why would species evolve the behavior

655
00:39:26,870 --> 00:39:29,930
Speaker 2: of kissing? It's an interesting question because kissing seems to come.

656
00:39:30,120 --> 00:39:34,899
Speaker 2: with some very obvious downsides, mainly disease transfer. Like, what

657
00:39:34,940 --> 00:39:38,340
Speaker 2: an amazingly potent way to just share infectious diseases is

658
00:39:38,420 --> 00:39:40,500
Speaker 2: let's be, you know, putting our mouths on each other.

659
00:39:40,530 --> 00:39:45,250
Speaker 2: But it seems there must probably be some kind of

660
00:39:45,390 --> 00:39:49,580
Speaker 2: offsetting benefit to survival and reproduction. It would probably be

661
00:39:49,620 --> 00:39:52,460
Speaker 2: a benefit great enough to offset the risk that comes

662
00:39:52,500 --> 00:39:56,430
Speaker 2: from swapping saliva and thus swapping germs part of the

663
00:39:56,469 --> 00:40:01,009
Speaker 2: difficulty in investigating this is that kissing seems to serve

664
00:40:01,030 --> 00:40:04,029
Speaker 2: all these different functions it's like not always doing the

665
00:40:04,110 --> 00:40:08,460
Speaker 2: same thing it seems as we've already seen there is

666
00:40:08,500 --> 00:40:11,680
Speaker 2: of course like sexual and romantic kissing but there's also

667
00:40:11,739 --> 00:40:16,900
Speaker 2: platonic friendship kissing There's kissing that serves specific social functions,

668
00:40:17,000 --> 00:40:19,840
Speaker 2: like what it appears to have to do with reconciliation

669
00:40:21,140 --> 00:40:26,580
Speaker 2: kissing in chimpanzees. There's affectionate family kissing. So all these

670
00:40:26,620 --> 00:40:30,550
Speaker 2: different kisses probably don't all provide the same evolutionary benefit.

671
00:40:31,640 --> 00:40:33,509
Speaker 2: So we might have to think about kissing as a

672
00:40:33,590 --> 00:40:37,989
Speaker 2: multifunction behavior that can serve different biological purposes depending on

673
00:40:38,050 --> 00:40:42,050
Speaker 2: what it's used for. And some species seem to show

674
00:40:42,160 --> 00:40:45,690
Speaker 2: more of one kind of kissing than the other. The

675
00:40:45,750 --> 00:40:49,470
Speaker 2: authors also share some of the hypotheses that already exist

676
00:40:49,530 --> 00:40:52,770
Speaker 2: in the literature about what kissing might be for. Again,

677
00:40:52,890 --> 00:40:55,189
Speaker 2: none of these is certain, of course. These are just hypotheses.

678
00:40:56,230 --> 00:41:00,780
Speaker 2: Regarding sexual kissing specifically, they say that kissing might help

679
00:41:00,840 --> 00:41:05,279
Speaker 2: with sexual selection, for example, by allowing an animal to

680
00:41:05,420 --> 00:41:10,460
Speaker 2: evaluate a potential mate for suitability, given like giving information

681
00:41:10,560 --> 00:41:14,200
Speaker 2: about things as diverse as, quote, general health, genetic fitness,

682
00:41:14,680 --> 00:41:20,080
Speaker 2: major histocompatibility complex, oral microbiome, and menstrual cycle phase. So

683
00:41:20,140 --> 00:41:22,609
Speaker 2: it might be one way for an ape to get

684
00:41:22,640 --> 00:41:27,950
Speaker 2: some additional information about a potential mate. Another idea is

685
00:41:28,130 --> 00:41:31,730
Speaker 2: that it may increase arousal and thus increase the chance

686
00:41:31,770 --> 00:41:35,730
Speaker 2: of fertilization during reproduction. And then there are a few

687
00:41:35,810 --> 00:41:39,540
Speaker 2: ideas that kind of span different categories. The authors write,

688
00:41:39,760 --> 00:41:43,140
Speaker 2: I thought this one was really interesting, quote, Close physical

689
00:41:43,200 --> 00:41:48,469
Speaker 2: proximity to another individual's mouth makes kissing a vulnerable act,

690
00:41:48,570 --> 00:41:52,969
Speaker 2: requiring some degree of trust between actors. Both sexual and

691
00:41:53,050 --> 00:41:56,990
Speaker 2: platonic kissing have therefore been argued to serve an affiliative

692
00:41:57,130 --> 00:42:02,330
Speaker 2: purpose in social species that could help navigate relationships, mitigate tension,

693
00:42:02,750 --> 00:42:04,030
Speaker 2: or increase bonding.

694
00:42:04,810 --> 00:42:07,129
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. Like you can't be too bitey if you

695
00:42:07,170 --> 00:42:11,390
Speaker 1: have each other's like mouth tissue or tongues in each

696
00:42:11,410 --> 00:42:16,510
Speaker 1: other's mouths. So that makes sense. And, you know, there's

697
00:42:17,070 --> 00:42:20,040
Speaker 1: the idea about information about a potential mate that also works.

698
00:42:20,100 --> 00:42:24,060
Speaker 1: I mean, even in human circles, you often hear like, oh, well,

699
00:42:24,080 --> 00:42:26,780
Speaker 1: so-and-so is a bad kisser or they're a good kisser.

700
00:42:26,820 --> 00:42:29,160
Speaker 1: And this information is generally presented, not necessarily with a

701
00:42:29,180 --> 00:42:32,220
Speaker 1: whole thesis behind it or a whole argument for how

702
00:42:32,489 --> 00:42:34,469
Speaker 1: courtship should proceed based on that.

703
00:42:35,040 --> 00:42:36,919
Speaker 2: You might not know what that means, but it gives

704
00:42:36,940 --> 00:42:37,759
Speaker 2: you a feeling.

705
00:42:37,940 --> 00:42:40,280
Speaker 1: Yeah, there's some sort of feeling attached to it. There's

706
00:42:40,300 --> 00:42:42,710
Speaker 1: an idea that there's some sort of information. And it

707
00:42:42,750 --> 00:42:45,930
Speaker 1: might not be a deal breaker, but it's being computed

708
00:42:46,010 --> 00:42:46,609
Speaker 1: on some level.

709
00:42:47,170 --> 00:42:51,589
Speaker 2: Yeah. Oh, one more that's really good. The authors also

710
00:42:51,650 --> 00:42:56,760
Speaker 2: note the hypothesis that mouth-to-mouth kissing could facilitate microbial transfer

711
00:42:56,940 --> 00:43:00,219
Speaker 2: in a good way. So, of course, there's risk of

712
00:43:00,300 --> 00:43:03,110
Speaker 2: disease transfer there. But they say, you know, there's the

713
00:43:03,170 --> 00:43:05,910
Speaker 2: idea that it could transmit microbes that benefit immunity.

714
00:43:06,850 --> 00:43:07,069
Speaker 1: Maybe.

715
00:43:08,090 --> 00:43:10,810
Speaker 2: And again, this paper doesn't come to a conclusion about which,

716
00:43:10,890 --> 00:43:13,989
Speaker 2: if any of these hypotheses are the best explanation for

717
00:43:14,030 --> 00:43:16,510
Speaker 2: the adaptive value of kissing. They do say at the end,

718
00:43:16,610 --> 00:43:18,940
Speaker 2: maybe maybe there's a little bit of evidence in support

719
00:43:18,980 --> 00:43:25,490
Speaker 2: of the idea of of sexual selection being favored. But again,

720
00:43:25,930 --> 00:43:28,509
Speaker 2: that would be a more narrow aspect of kissing, which

721
00:43:28,590 --> 00:43:31,819
Speaker 2: obviously has a broader function throughout the lives of these

722
00:43:31,860 --> 00:43:35,180
Speaker 2: different animals. And then they also talk about how kissing

723
00:43:35,200 --> 00:43:39,100
Speaker 2: could be a culturally learned and transmitted behavior among wild primates.

724
00:43:39,300 --> 00:43:42,600
Speaker 2: And in explaining this as a possibility, they talk about

725
00:43:42,760 --> 00:43:48,089
Speaker 2: other culturally transmitted trends or traits, behaviors observed in primates,

726
00:43:48,160 --> 00:43:51,810
Speaker 2: like the grass-in-ear behavior seen in some chimpanzees. Have you

727
00:43:51,830 --> 00:43:52,430
Speaker 2: seen this, Robb?

728
00:43:53,190 --> 00:43:55,930
Speaker 1: Hmm. I don't know if I've seen the grass in ear.

729
00:43:55,989 --> 00:44:01,470
Speaker 1: I've seen various examples of other great apes, like putting

730
00:44:02,030 --> 00:44:03,930
Speaker 1: straw in their head and grass on their head and

731
00:44:03,969 --> 00:44:05,410
Speaker 1: things like that.

732
00:44:06,130 --> 00:44:10,549
Speaker 2: There's a specific example in chimpanzees that seems to be

733
00:44:10,890 --> 00:44:14,379
Speaker 2: what amounts to a fashion trend where chimpanzees started putting

734
00:44:14,410 --> 00:44:16,390
Speaker 2: a piece of grass in their ear. I think there

735
00:44:16,430 --> 00:44:18,960
Speaker 2: are also chimpanzees who put grass in their butts.

736
00:44:19,400 --> 00:44:19,640
Speaker 1: Okay.

737
00:44:20,560 --> 00:44:23,190
Speaker 2: But the grass in ear trait, I've read more about

738
00:44:23,210 --> 00:44:24,850
Speaker 2: the grass in ear trait where it just seems like

739
00:44:24,890 --> 00:44:27,790
Speaker 2: it's a thing that seems to have culturally caught on

740
00:44:27,969 --> 00:44:31,469
Speaker 2: and been transmitted, you know, among groups of chimpanzees. And

741
00:44:31,510 --> 00:44:34,110
Speaker 2: so like they will adorn their ear by putting a

742
00:44:34,160 --> 00:44:35,779
Speaker 2: piece of grass in it that hangs out.

743
00:44:36,200 --> 00:44:37,239
Speaker 1: Oh, wow. Yeah.

744
00:44:38,830 --> 00:44:41,589
Speaker 2: So anyway, you know, apes, we think the great apes

745
00:44:41,650 --> 00:44:44,230
Speaker 2: do to some degree have culture of their own. They

746
00:44:44,250 --> 00:44:47,830
Speaker 2: can sort of transmit practices and ideas from one generation

747
00:44:47,890 --> 00:44:50,890
Speaker 2: to the next and memes can spread among the apes.

748
00:44:52,690 --> 00:44:56,870
Speaker 2: So another question that the authors look into here that

749
00:44:56,910 --> 00:45:00,570
Speaker 2: I think is interesting is, was the evolutionary origin of

750
00:45:00,630 --> 00:45:05,570
Speaker 2: kissing an exaptation, meaning love? a trait or behavior initially

751
00:45:05,640 --> 00:45:09,400
Speaker 2: selected for one purpose that gets repurposed to do something else.

752
00:45:10,980 --> 00:45:14,920
Speaker 2: So one candidate here that has been offered in the literature,

753
00:45:14,960 --> 00:45:18,730
Speaker 2: but which the authors ultimately argue against is the idea

754
00:45:18,810 --> 00:45:23,410
Speaker 2: of oral aloe grooming, meaning one animal engaging in social

755
00:45:23,469 --> 00:45:27,220
Speaker 2: cleaning of another involving its mouth. So, you know, aloe

756
00:45:27,260 --> 00:45:30,439
Speaker 2: grooming is something apes do. They, bond in some ways,

757
00:45:30,500 --> 00:45:32,640
Speaker 2: or it's a social activity that they groom each other

758
00:45:32,660 --> 00:45:35,900
Speaker 2: and remove ectoparasites, taking parasites out of each other's fur.

759
00:45:36,580 --> 00:45:39,500
Speaker 2: Oral allogrooming would be involving the mouth here. And the

760
00:45:39,540 --> 00:45:42,400
Speaker 2: authors say that this has been given as a candidate,

761
00:45:42,440 --> 00:45:44,819
Speaker 2: but they argued that it is not well supported by

762
00:45:44,860 --> 00:45:50,589
Speaker 2: the observed behavior of living non-human apes. They argued that

763
00:45:51,270 --> 00:45:56,910
Speaker 2: more compelling candidates for exaptation would be oral food transfer,

764
00:45:56,969 --> 00:46:01,530
Speaker 2: such as pre-mastication. So one animal pre-chewing food for another,

765
00:46:01,670 --> 00:46:05,450
Speaker 2: as a parent often does for their offspring, or just nursing,

766
00:46:06,130 --> 00:46:10,710
Speaker 2: both of which may have been accepted into mother-offspring kissing

767
00:46:10,790 --> 00:46:14,430
Speaker 2: in primates. So kissing could be a thing that grows

768
00:46:14,510 --> 00:46:17,310
Speaker 2: out of some kind of food transfer behavior into a

769
00:46:17,370 --> 00:46:22,149
Speaker 2: culturally transmitted maybe behavior between mothers and offspring that then

770
00:46:22,190 --> 00:46:24,250
Speaker 2: maybe gets generalized out from there.

771
00:46:24,850 --> 00:46:27,230
Speaker 1: Kind of the bio-Freudian answer here.

772
00:46:29,400 --> 00:46:32,640
Speaker 2: Well, I'm sure Freud would have found that idea intensely interesting,

773
00:46:32,700 --> 00:46:35,660
Speaker 2: though I don't want to attribute Freudianism to these authors.

774
00:46:35,719 --> 00:46:38,980
Speaker 2: I mean, I think they're not reading that much into

775
00:46:39,080 --> 00:46:41,380
Speaker 2: it in terms of like, this would not begin as

776
00:46:41,420 --> 00:46:44,720
Speaker 2: a sexual thing, obviously. That would just be like one

777
00:46:44,890 --> 00:46:48,989
Speaker 2: of its possible end points there. Uh, though, uh, though

778
00:46:49,010 --> 00:46:52,610
Speaker 2: of course, uh, exaptation could explain how kissing evolved. It

779
00:46:52,680 --> 00:46:54,940
Speaker 2: still wouldn't explain why that brings us back to the

780
00:46:54,960 --> 00:46:57,860
Speaker 2: question of like, why, what is the adaptive function that

781
00:46:57,940 --> 00:47:01,460
Speaker 2: serves in order to be preserved across evolutionary time and

782
00:47:01,480 --> 00:47:05,140
Speaker 2: across all these different species, it needs to do something

783
00:47:05,219 --> 00:47:09,459
Speaker 2: to be preserved that well. Um, and one more thing

784
00:47:09,640 --> 00:47:11,219
Speaker 2: I just wanted to note, cause I know a lot

785
00:47:11,239 --> 00:47:14,040
Speaker 2: of people out there thinking, you know, in that definition,

786
00:47:14,450 --> 00:47:16,900
Speaker 2: It said it's got to be intra-species. And I want

787
00:47:16,920 --> 00:47:19,739
Speaker 2: to hear about, you know, my dog kisses me on

788
00:47:19,760 --> 00:47:21,800
Speaker 2: the mouth. I want to know. I want validation.

789
00:47:21,820 --> 00:47:23,540
Speaker 1: I was thinking of this as well, yeah.

790
00:47:23,719 --> 00:47:28,550
Speaker 2: They excluded between-species kissing from their research and not out

791
00:47:28,570 --> 00:47:32,270
Speaker 2: of prejudice against it, not because it carries no interest, but,

792
00:47:32,310 --> 00:47:34,969
Speaker 2: you know, because they wanted to focus more on behaviors

793
00:47:35,010 --> 00:47:38,730
Speaker 2: that are more easily reproduced and understood. And I think

794
00:47:38,770 --> 00:47:41,640
Speaker 2: it's less relevant to their core project about the adaptive

795
00:47:41,700 --> 00:47:45,020
Speaker 2: function in primates and It's also probably harder to figure

796
00:47:45,080 --> 00:47:48,460
Speaker 2: out whether like animals kissing humans, whether that is something

797
00:47:48,480 --> 00:47:50,760
Speaker 2: that would occur, quote, in nature, so to speak.

798
00:47:51,180 --> 00:47:53,950
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we've obviously with a domesticated animal like a

799
00:47:54,030 --> 00:47:56,950
Speaker 1: dog or cat or anything like that. I mean, there

800
00:47:56,969 --> 00:47:59,029
Speaker 1: are a number of factors. Things have gone off the

801
00:47:59,070 --> 00:47:59,890
Speaker 1: rails a little bit.

802
00:48:00,989 --> 00:48:03,770
Speaker 2: I would say it is still a phenomenon worth studying.

803
00:48:03,790 --> 00:48:06,480
Speaker 2: It's like interesting, but I would say it's probably a

804
00:48:06,560 --> 00:48:08,279
Speaker 2: different kind of thing to look at. There are probably

805
00:48:08,320 --> 00:48:10,640
Speaker 2: different mechanisms involved, at least to some extent.

806
00:48:11,340 --> 00:48:13,049
Speaker 1: We may have to come back to this, like the

807
00:48:13,270 --> 00:48:15,730
Speaker 1: doggy kisses. There have to be papers on this. Maybe

808
00:48:15,770 --> 00:48:19,149
Speaker 1: we can come back in a later episode. But yeah,

809
00:48:19,170 --> 00:48:22,390
Speaker 1: thinking about the evolution of kissing is fascinating, especially like

810
00:48:22,469 --> 00:48:25,320
Speaker 1: even if you're just devoting it to human mouth parts,

811
00:48:25,920 --> 00:48:30,239
Speaker 1: like obviously human mouth parts have evolved to do a

812
00:48:30,320 --> 00:48:35,610
Speaker 1: great number of other things. And a lot of the

813
00:48:35,660 --> 00:48:39,640
Speaker 1: reasons that human mouths make for great kissing are It

814
00:48:39,660 --> 00:48:41,370
Speaker 1: has to do with everything else that we're doing with them,

815
00:48:41,410 --> 00:48:46,549
Speaker 1: from food consumption to the generation of language. And then

816
00:48:46,610 --> 00:48:48,930
Speaker 1: how do you factor kissing into all of that as well?

817
00:48:48,989 --> 00:48:55,040
Speaker 1: You know, obviously not the primary driver of evolution in

818
00:48:55,060 --> 00:48:58,239
Speaker 1: the mouth region, but I don't know. Maybe you can't

819
00:48:58,280 --> 00:48:59,520
Speaker 1: completely discount it, right?

820
00:49:00,880 --> 00:49:03,040
Speaker 2: Oh, well, this actually reminds me of something that the

821
00:49:03,120 --> 00:49:05,239
Speaker 2: authors cite in the conclusion of their paper. I didn't

822
00:49:05,260 --> 00:49:10,700
Speaker 2: mention it earlier, but they quote Ingrid Bergman. who said

823
00:49:10,719 --> 00:49:13,590
Speaker 2: something to the effect that a kiss is, quote, a

824
00:49:13,650 --> 00:49:17,060
Speaker 2: lovely trick designed by nature to stop speech when words

825
00:49:17,120 --> 00:49:18,200
Speaker 2: become superfluous.

826
00:49:18,620 --> 00:49:20,600
Speaker 1: Ah, very nice. Very nice.

827
00:49:21,660 --> 00:49:22,160
Speaker 2: Say no more.

828
00:49:33,660 --> 00:49:35,819
Speaker 1: All right. Well, for this episode, I think we have

829
00:49:35,860 --> 00:49:37,910
Speaker 1: at least one more. I think just one more we're

830
00:49:37,930 --> 00:49:41,250
Speaker 1: going to briefly talk about. And weirdly enough, it is

831
00:49:41,310 --> 00:49:47,250
Speaker 1: another study and another topic that we specifically explored in

832
00:49:47,330 --> 00:49:52,850
Speaker 1: our 2018 episode on strange milk. Oh, what a weird confluence. Yeah, yeah.

833
00:49:52,890 --> 00:49:56,049
Speaker 1: This one is the Chemistry Prize, and it calls back

834
00:49:56,110 --> 00:49:59,509
Speaker 1: to a 2016 study that I think many of you

835
00:49:59,530 --> 00:50:01,630
Speaker 1: probably heard about, even if you weren't listening to our

836
00:50:01,670 --> 00:50:04,660
Speaker 1: show back then. because they've got a fair amount of coverage,

837
00:50:04,719 --> 00:50:08,880
Speaker 1: because the basic take-home is that certain cockroaches produce something

838
00:50:08,960 --> 00:50:12,930
Speaker 1: like milk. And that quote-unquote milk might be the most

839
00:50:13,030 --> 00:50:20,069
Speaker 1: nutritious milk on the planet. And yeah, we talked about

840
00:50:20,110 --> 00:50:23,690
Speaker 1: this in greater length back in that strange milk episode.

841
00:50:24,170 --> 00:50:26,890
Speaker 1: But basically, there's only one known case of a true

842
00:50:27,130 --> 00:50:33,040
Speaker 1: viviparous or live-birthing cockroach. And that is the Pacific beetle cockroach.

843
00:50:33,120 --> 00:50:38,839
Speaker 1: This is, let's see, Diploptera punctata. I believe I got

844
00:50:38,880 --> 00:50:42,390
Speaker 1: that more or less right. Found in Hawaii. The female

845
00:50:42,489 --> 00:50:45,450
Speaker 1: doesn't lay eggs. Instead, she develops the embryos in a

846
00:50:45,489 --> 00:50:49,110
Speaker 1: special brood sack that we might very loosely compare to

847
00:50:49,150 --> 00:50:54,570
Speaker 1: a marsupial's pouch. Okay. And in that pouch, they drink

848
00:50:54,630 --> 00:50:58,310
Speaker 1: a liquid secreted by the mother for their nourishment. which

849
00:50:58,370 --> 00:51:02,910
Speaker 1: then turns into like a crystalline form inside the gut

850
00:51:02,969 --> 00:51:07,900
Speaker 1: of the developing embryos. And the researchers, including Barbara Stay,

851
00:51:08,160 --> 00:51:10,260
Speaker 1: this is one of the authors of the 2016 paper,

852
00:51:10,360 --> 00:51:14,500
Speaker 1: honored here. She was not president of the awards ceremony,

853
00:51:14,540 --> 00:51:18,009
Speaker 1: but she did the rounds back in like 2016 when

854
00:51:18,030 --> 00:51:20,390
Speaker 1: this was covered on NPR's The Salt and so forth.

855
00:51:21,610 --> 00:51:25,370
Speaker 1: But she found that you could actually harvest the milk

856
00:51:25,770 --> 00:51:29,989
Speaker 1: in either its liquid or crystal form from these cockroaches.

857
00:51:30,710 --> 00:51:33,790
Speaker 1: And also mentions in passing that, yeah, someone involved in

858
00:51:33,810 --> 00:51:38,050
Speaker 1: the study tasted it, didn't think it tasted like anything special.

859
00:51:38,350 --> 00:51:40,590
Speaker 1: So I guess it wasn't particularly good, nor was it

860
00:51:41,070 --> 00:51:44,260
Speaker 1: as nasty as we might be imagining cockroach milk to be.

861
00:51:45,030 --> 00:51:47,660
Speaker 1: Because obviously that's the comedic factor here, right? Almost like

862
00:51:47,700 --> 00:51:52,040
Speaker 1: a Cronenbergian level of disgusting, the idea that cockroaches could

863
00:51:52,080 --> 00:51:56,180
Speaker 1: produce a delicious milk or nutritious milk that we might

864
00:51:56,239 --> 00:51:56,839
Speaker 1: guzzle down.

865
00:51:57,650 --> 00:52:03,170
Speaker 2: I'm imagining the next generation of those weightlifting shakes or.

866
00:52:02,690 --> 00:52:03,730
Speaker 1: Whatever you buy at the store.

867
00:52:03,770 --> 00:52:05,750
Speaker 2: It's got a picture of a roach on the front.

868
00:52:06,290 --> 00:52:08,319
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's the interesting thing to think about.

869
00:52:08,360 --> 00:52:11,779
Speaker 1: Because on one level, it is funny because, as we

870
00:52:11,820 --> 00:52:13,980
Speaker 1: discussed in the Strange Milk episode, a lot of the

871
00:52:14,040 --> 00:52:17,180
Speaker 1: reporting at the time framed this as a potential future

872
00:52:17,260 --> 00:52:22,509
Speaker 1: superfood for humans. And, of course, we who reside in

873
00:52:22,550 --> 00:52:25,169
Speaker 1: that future can say that this, along with a great

874
00:52:25,210 --> 00:52:27,750
Speaker 1: many other things, didn't quite pan out for us or

875
00:52:27,830 --> 00:52:30,969
Speaker 1: at least hasn't panned out yet whoops yeah yeah but

876
00:52:31,010 --> 00:52:33,670
Speaker 1: at the same time like we know how weird trends

877
00:52:33,710 --> 00:52:36,710
Speaker 1: can be um so i mean really are we that

878
00:52:36,790 --> 00:52:39,210
Speaker 1: far removed from a day when suddenly like if the

879
00:52:39,290 --> 00:52:42,860
Speaker 1: right the right people of the right influencers were suddenly

880
00:52:42,950 --> 00:52:48,080
Speaker 1: championing uh cockroach milk that that might take off um

881
00:52:48,239 --> 00:52:50,200
Speaker 1: not to say that this is ready to go on

882
00:52:50,320 --> 00:52:53,180
Speaker 1: any level and we talked about that back when we

883
00:52:53,219 --> 00:52:55,560
Speaker 1: originally covered it like there are some I think some

884
00:52:55,600 --> 00:53:00,219
Speaker 1: reasonable health questions that arise and so forth. And I

885
00:53:00,239 --> 00:53:04,780
Speaker 1: don't think anyone is necessarily looking at a direct milking

886
00:53:04,800 --> 00:53:07,170
Speaker 1: of cockroaches and then bottling that up and selling it.

887
00:53:08,550 --> 00:53:16,650
Speaker 1: More excitement about the possibilities with synthetic biology, hypothetical space exploration, nutrition,

888
00:53:16,770 --> 00:53:21,550
Speaker 1: and medical biotechnologies that might exploit the particular protein structures

889
00:53:21,590 --> 00:53:23,190
Speaker 1: that are created here. Okay.

890
00:53:24,040 --> 00:53:26,640
Speaker 2: I mean, even not knowing everything about it, not knowing

891
00:53:26,680 --> 00:53:30,799
Speaker 2: all the potential downsides, it can't be the worst of

892
00:53:30,820 --> 00:53:32,859
Speaker 2: the health and nutrition trends that have.

893
00:53:34,340 --> 00:53:36,120
Speaker 1: Come out.

894
00:53:36,160 --> 00:53:38,960
Speaker 2: There have got to be ones that actually happen that

895
00:53:39,000 --> 00:53:40,040
Speaker 2: are already worse.

896
00:53:40,540 --> 00:53:42,299
Speaker 1: That being said, I'm just going to go ahead and

897
00:53:42,320 --> 00:53:45,469
Speaker 1: give you a warning that if some rando on social

898
00:53:45,489 --> 00:53:49,850
Speaker 1: media suddenly says, hey, start drinking that cockroach milk, do

899
00:53:50,050 --> 00:53:53,500
Speaker 1: some follow-up questions. Do some Do some additional research. Ask

900
00:53:53,520 --> 00:53:56,759
Speaker 1: your doctor or dietician if this is truly the way

901
00:53:56,780 --> 00:53:57,080
Speaker 1: to go.

902
00:53:57,500 --> 00:53:59,140
Speaker 2: Raw cockroach milk only.

903
00:54:01,400 --> 00:54:04,860
Speaker 1: Of course, I think one of the reasons that the

904
00:54:04,950 --> 00:54:07,650
Speaker 1: idea is funny and also got a lot of traction,

905
00:54:08,090 --> 00:54:09,630
Speaker 1: certainly at the time, is that it does seem to

906
00:54:09,670 --> 00:54:12,629
Speaker 1: line up with what scientists and food specialists have been

907
00:54:12,670 --> 00:54:16,609
Speaker 1: saying for a long time about insect-based foods, that they

908
00:54:16,690 --> 00:54:20,200
Speaker 1: could be an important, sustainable part of our food future.

909
00:54:21,200 --> 00:54:23,660
Speaker 1: Here in the U.S., everything is, of course, still very

910
00:54:23,700 --> 00:54:27,709
Speaker 1: much based on corn and petroleum, the factory farming of beef, pork,

911
00:54:27,750 --> 00:54:31,810
Speaker 1: and chicken. And even with inflation, cheap bird and mammal

912
00:54:31,830 --> 00:54:34,670
Speaker 1: meat continues to just ride at the top of the menu,

913
00:54:35,210 --> 00:54:38,810
Speaker 1: exacting a hefty environmental price in the process. So maybe

914
00:54:38,830 --> 00:54:42,810
Speaker 1: there's an alternative timeline where we explore these possibilities more.

915
00:54:43,530 --> 00:54:46,129
Speaker 1: Maybe there's a future where we have no choice but

916
00:54:46,190 --> 00:54:48,709
Speaker 1: to do so. But for the time being, at least—

917
00:54:50,190 --> 00:54:52,989
Speaker 1: I will say that you can't buy your cockroach milk

918
00:54:53,050 --> 00:54:57,299
Speaker 1: at the store, but this particular species continues to get

919
00:54:57,340 --> 00:55:02,359
Speaker 1: a fair amount of traction in academic research papers. So

920
00:55:02,620 --> 00:55:05,299
Speaker 1: I think a lot of work continues. Sometimes it's hard

921
00:55:05,340 --> 00:55:07,120
Speaker 1: to tell how these things will shake out. You know,

922
00:55:07,180 --> 00:55:09,000
Speaker 1: is it going to be kind of a flash in

923
00:55:09,020 --> 00:55:11,339
Speaker 1: the pan and then it's not really followed up on?

924
00:55:11,360 --> 00:55:13,779
Speaker 1: But I think these guys continue to get a fair

925
00:55:13,800 --> 00:55:16,529
Speaker 1: amount of attention. I think that the work continues with

926
00:55:16,570 --> 00:55:17,130
Speaker 1: cockroach milk.

927
00:55:17,800 --> 00:55:21,149
Speaker 2: This really makes me think about the different criteria we

928
00:55:21,370 --> 00:55:27,129
Speaker 2: use to think about the value or desirability of different foods. Now,

929
00:55:28,090 --> 00:55:32,390
Speaker 2: there is obviously the objective nutritional value of a food.

930
00:55:32,430 --> 00:55:36,109
Speaker 2: You can list its actual macronutrients and vitamins and stuff

931
00:55:36,150 --> 00:55:40,450
Speaker 2: like that. And people, to some extent, are interested in that.

932
00:55:40,550 --> 00:55:44,520
Speaker 2: There is, of course, taste and texture. The the subjective

933
00:55:44,660 --> 00:55:47,060
Speaker 2: pleasure experience of eating the food. But then there is

934
00:55:47,120 --> 00:55:50,580
Speaker 2: another category that's pretty powerful, which is like the kind

935
00:55:50,620 --> 00:55:58,240
Speaker 2: of sanctity or spiritual wholesomeness of food. Does that make sense?

936
00:55:58,320 --> 00:56:00,739
Speaker 2: Like there are certain foods that we think of as like,

937
00:56:01,239 --> 00:56:03,890
Speaker 2: that is soulfully good in a way. And that's, I

938
00:56:03,930 --> 00:56:06,219
Speaker 2: think the thing that people like would, would be resistant

939
00:56:06,239 --> 00:56:08,350
Speaker 2: to cockroach stuff. I mean, it sounds like it's actually,

940
00:56:08,370 --> 00:56:12,650
Speaker 2: at least according to this preexisting research, it is probably,

941
00:56:13,090 --> 00:56:15,930
Speaker 2: pretty high in the nutrients people are looking for, especially

942
00:56:15,950 --> 00:56:18,969
Speaker 2: if they're actually trying to maximize for, you know, protein

943
00:56:19,030 --> 00:56:23,569
Speaker 2: and nutritional value in an objective sense. But something just

944
00:56:23,610 --> 00:56:25,910
Speaker 2: seems wrong to them about it being bug milk.

945
00:56:26,310 --> 00:56:28,890
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that is the thing that holds people back.

946
00:56:29,030 --> 00:56:33,310
Speaker 1: I mean, it's weird, though, right? Because you might think of, say,

947
00:56:33,350 --> 00:56:35,950
Speaker 1: a cow or a chicken or certainly, you know, corn,

948
00:56:36,010 --> 00:56:40,390
Speaker 1: any of these things as being perfectly spiritually pure food source. And,

949
00:56:40,730 --> 00:56:44,540
Speaker 1: you know, We can all disagree, you know, determining, depending

950
00:56:44,580 --> 00:56:47,200
Speaker 1: on whether, you know, vegetarian, vegan, and so forth, or

951
00:56:47,239 --> 00:56:52,330
Speaker 1: just pure omnivore, as we've evolved to be. But I

952
00:56:52,370 --> 00:56:52,910
Speaker 1: think the.

953
00:56:52,870 --> 00:56:55,229
Speaker 2: Problem— People are feeling these things out individually.

954
00:56:55,290 --> 00:56:58,770
Speaker 1: It's universal. Right, right. Yeah. Whether the food source is

955
00:56:58,810 --> 00:57:00,910
Speaker 1: spiritually pure or not. But I think there's a strong

956
00:57:00,989 --> 00:57:04,270
Speaker 1: argument to be made that a lot of the spiritual

957
00:57:04,310 --> 00:57:07,600
Speaker 1: purity of that source is lost. in the food chain

958
00:57:07,620 --> 00:57:10,080
Speaker 1: and the process that gets us to it, right. Gets

959
00:57:10,160 --> 00:57:13,140
Speaker 1: it to us. And then that process is often invisible

960
00:57:13,200 --> 00:57:15,880
Speaker 1: to us. Yeah. And the, you know, so we don't, we, the,

961
00:57:15,920 --> 00:57:18,990
Speaker 1: the cows seem spiritually pure, but we either don't know

962
00:57:19,090 --> 00:57:21,130
Speaker 1: or choose not to think about the things that happened

963
00:57:21,150 --> 00:57:24,550
Speaker 1: to the cow between, uh, between the, the, the, the

964
00:57:24,590 --> 00:57:28,430
Speaker 1: pasture and the plate. Uh, and likewise with various plant

965
00:57:28,450 --> 00:57:30,520
Speaker 1: products as well. It's not just a matter of, uh,

966
00:57:30,610 --> 00:57:34,480
Speaker 1: of meat, but, um, So, yeah, I think we can

967
00:57:34,500 --> 00:57:37,220
Speaker 1: be a bit unfair with our bug based proteins and

968
00:57:37,280 --> 00:57:40,939
Speaker 1: bug based nutrients for sure. But it's also undeniably part

969
00:57:40,960 --> 00:57:43,160
Speaker 1: of the process. Like there's a PR problem there.

970
00:57:43,760 --> 00:57:45,620
Speaker 2: Interesting what you said a second ago, though, because I

971
00:57:45,840 --> 00:57:48,440
Speaker 2: think actually a lot of things, not just foods, are

972
00:57:48,460 --> 00:57:54,180
Speaker 2: deemed spiritually pure because of the maintenance of a mystery. Like, yeah,

973
00:57:54,260 --> 00:57:58,080
Speaker 2: spiritual purity often comes because we are able to exist

974
00:57:58,160 --> 00:58:00,550
Speaker 2: in a relationship with the thing without asking too many

975
00:58:00,590 --> 00:58:02,200
Speaker 2: questions about it. Yeah.

976
00:58:02,930 --> 00:58:06,450
Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. I honestly don't know if they still do this,

977
00:58:06,490 --> 00:58:09,090
Speaker 1: but in the past, it's been years, I visited the

978
00:58:09,140 --> 00:58:14,460
Speaker 1: insectarium in New Orleans, which has since changed locations. It's

979
00:58:14,480 --> 00:58:17,900
Speaker 1: still there, though. And but in the past, they would

980
00:58:17,940 --> 00:58:20,600
Speaker 1: have like this little area where you could try different

981
00:58:20,970 --> 00:58:22,990
Speaker 1: bug based foods, you know, very, very simple things like

982
00:58:23,030 --> 00:58:25,610
Speaker 1: a cookie made with some sort of bug based flour,

983
00:58:25,650 --> 00:58:28,470
Speaker 1: that sort of thing. And I thought it was a

984
00:58:28,550 --> 00:58:31,070
Speaker 1: neat little outreach program where you could try it and

985
00:58:31,090 --> 00:58:32,630
Speaker 1: you could be like, oh, that tastes fine. You know,

986
00:58:32,650 --> 00:58:36,150
Speaker 1: it doesn't matter that it's made from bugs. So, you know,

987
00:58:36,430 --> 00:58:39,590
Speaker 1: maybe there's some sort of answer to be found there. Yeah.

988
00:58:41,030 --> 00:58:43,640
Speaker 1: New Orleans listeners and New Orleans visitors, write in. Let

989
00:58:43,660 --> 00:58:44,580
Speaker 1: me know if they're still doing that.

990
00:58:45,420 --> 00:58:47,640
Speaker 2: Okay, well, does that do it for our first Ig

991
00:58:47,660 --> 00:58:48,500
Speaker 2: Nobel episode?

992
00:58:49,140 --> 00:58:52,780
Speaker 1: I believe so. And in that, yes, we have decided

993
00:58:52,820 --> 00:58:54,440
Speaker 1: we'll do a second one where we'll talk about some

994
00:58:54,480 --> 00:58:58,180
Speaker 1: more of the studies and and write-ups and papers that

995
00:58:58,220 --> 00:59:02,500
Speaker 1: were honored this year at the Ig Nobel Prizes. We'll

996
00:59:02,520 --> 00:59:04,990
Speaker 1: do a part two, so tune in for that. In

997
00:59:05,030 --> 00:59:07,250
Speaker 1: the meantime, if you have anything you'd like to add

998
00:59:07,310 --> 00:59:09,750
Speaker 1: on all of this, or if you have, in just

999
00:59:09,790 --> 00:59:13,200
Speaker 1: general feedback on the show, recent episodes of the Core

1000
00:59:13,220 --> 00:59:16,940
Speaker 1: episodes or Weird House Cinema, write in. We would love

1001
00:59:16,980 --> 00:59:19,240
Speaker 1: to hear from you. Just a reminder that Stuff to

1002
00:59:19,260 --> 00:59:21,160
Speaker 1: Blow Your Mind is primarily a science and culture podcast

1003
00:59:21,180 --> 00:59:23,910
Speaker 1: with Core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays. On Wednesdays, we

1004
00:59:23,930 --> 00:59:26,090
Speaker 1: do a short-form episode, and on Fridays, we set aside

1005
00:59:26,130 --> 00:59:28,050
Speaker 1: most serious concerns to just talk about a weird film

1006
00:59:28,210 --> 00:59:30,610
Speaker 1: on Weird House Cinema. Get us wherever you get your

1007
00:59:30,690 --> 00:59:32,950
Speaker 1: audio podcasts. If you want to check out the video version,

1008
00:59:32,990 --> 00:59:36,390
Speaker 1: go on to Netflix and watch us there. And wherever

1009
00:59:36,410 --> 00:59:39,390
Speaker 1: you're getting us, just rate, review, subscribe, pull whatever levers

1010
00:59:39,450 --> 00:59:41,650
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1011
00:59:41,670 --> 00:59:43,970
Speaker 1: to be reminded about new episodes if you're on Netflix.

1012
00:59:44,810 --> 00:59:47,710
Speaker 2: Huge thanks, as always, to our excellent audio producer, J.J.

1013
00:59:47,750 --> 00:59:48,190
Speaker 1: Posway.

1014
00:59:48,410 --> 00:59:49,790
Speaker 2: If you would like to get in touch with us

1015
00:59:49,850 --> 00:59:52,430
Speaker 2: with feedback on this episode or any other... To suggest

1016
00:59:52,490 --> 00:59:54,350
Speaker 2: a topic for the future or just to say hello,

1017
00:59:54,470 --> 00:59:57,910
Speaker 2: you can email us at contact at stufftoblowyourmind.com.

1018
01:00:06,250 --> 01:00:08,709
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1019
01:00:09,050 --> 01:00:12,390
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1020
01:00:12,410 --> 01:00:21,240
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