Speaker 1: Welcome to How Stuff Works. Now. I'm your host, Lauren Vogelbaum,
Speaker 1: a researcher and writer. Here at How Stuff Works. Every week,
Speaker 1: I'm bringing you three stories from our team about the
Speaker 1: weird and wondrous advances we've seen in science, technology, and culture.
Speaker 1: This week, a company has proposed a new ish twist
Speaker 1: on the Fountain of youth, transfusing the aging with the
Speaker 1: blood of the young. Unrelated researchers think they've found all
Speaker 1: existing vertebrates oldest common ancestor and it's basically a tiny
Speaker 1: bag of teeth with no anus. But First Senior writer
Speaker 1: Robert Lamb explores the strange world of crustacean bioweapons. A
Speaker 1: species of boxer crabs seems to purposefully clone the sea
Speaker 1: an enemies that they use like clubs, not like social clubs.
Speaker 1: Clubs and truncheons, nightsticks, bludgeons, Jimmy sticks, billy clubs. Barely
Speaker 1: two cinameters wide and textured like scrumptious tempura. The Libya
Speaker 1: lepto chillis boxer crab would seem rather ill suited for survival,
Speaker 1: and that's why they wield a pair of sea an
Speaker 1: enemy cudgels. But where do they snag these fancy bioweapons?
Speaker 1: Well Barlon University graduate students Israel Schnitzer and Yaniv Gemon
Speaker 1: had the same question and investigated the matter for a
Speaker 1: new study published in the journal Pierre j. The researchers
Speaker 1: collected boxer crabs from the south shore of the Red
Speaker 1: Sea in a Lot, Israel and identified the weaponized and
Speaker 1: enemies as belonging to the genus Elysia, likely a newly
Speaker 1: recorded species. But when they looked around for wild examples
Speaker 1: of the Elyssius sea an enemies, nothing turned up. If
Speaker 1: wild unclaimed weapons are scarce, than how's a boxer crabs
Speaker 1: supposed to arm up theft? Of course, just as an
Speaker 1: unarmed Bruce Lee might swipe a pair of nun Chucks
Speaker 1: from an adversary, so too does an unarmed boxer crab
Speaker 1: wrestle an enemy away from one of its fellow tool users.
Speaker 1: And then things get even more amazing, As Schnitzer and
Speaker 1: Gamon discovered in a pair of experiments, a one weapon
Speaker 1: boxer crab will split its remaining an enemy into two fragments.
Speaker 1: The resulting fragments then regenerate over the course of several
Speaker 1: days into two distinct clones. Let's see Bruce Lee do that.
Speaker 1: Schnitzer and Gamon are no strangers to the mystery of
Speaker 1: crab boxing. The two biologists previously worked on a two
Speaker 1: thousand thirteen study published in the Journal of Experimental Marine
Speaker 1: Biology and Ecology, which revealed the boxer crabs Bond's eye
Speaker 1: like treatment of their claw clutch bioweapons. They use them
Speaker 1: to catch food and defend themselves, but they also starve
Speaker 1: the anenemy enough to regulate the size. Now, the researcher's
Speaker 1: latest study reveals the crabs manipulation goes well beyond mere
Speaker 1: symbient tool use. Molecular fingerprinting of an enemy pairs taken
Speaker 1: from wild crabs revealed even more identical clone weapons, suggesting
Speaker 1: the practice is widespread among the boxer crabs. Given the
Speaker 1: apparent absence of wild Alysias, sea enemies and the boxer
Speaker 1: crabs tent for inducing clonal reproduction were left with a
Speaker 1: tantalizing question. Are there any free living Elysia left or
Speaker 1: does the species continue on as a purely cultivated weapons species.
Speaker 1: This situation would not be unlike the domesticated fungi of
Speaker 1: leaf cutter ants. Schnitzer admits that the cultivation explanation is possible.
Speaker 1: The Elyssa c an enemy could now be extinct in
Speaker 1: the wild, or might live elsewhere a remote species brought
Speaker 1: into a lot by a founding father crab. However, Schnitzer
Speaker 1: believes that the Elysia and enemies probably do exist in
Speaker 1: the wild, but are rare in this experiment, every crab
Speaker 1: the researchers found in the wild held clones supporting the
Speaker 1: theft and splitting behavior they saw in the lab, and
Speaker 1: there were a very limited number of holotypes, and this
Speaker 1: was established with genetic fingerprinting analysis. These clues gave credence
Speaker 1: to the assumption that most of the elysia reproduction is
Speaker 1: a sexual, but not quite all of it. Regardless of
Speaker 1: the searchers findings provide us with a seemingly unique example
Speaker 1: of one animal inducing the a sexual reproduction of another,
Speaker 1: and for two use. Humans may claim the honors to
Speaker 1: bioweapons supremacy for the moment, but the boxer crabs are
Speaker 1: ready to claim the prize just as soon as we
Speaker 1: wipe ourselves out with a misguided plague virus earch here
Speaker 1: Next up staff editor Christopher Hasiotas and our freelance writer
Speaker 1: Chris Opfer bring us the story of a proposed anti
Speaker 1: aging treatment that should absolutely be accompanied by an image
Speaker 1: of the Simpsons. Mr burns elective blood transfusions from younger donors.
Speaker 1: Most people aren't all that excited about growing old. The
Speaker 1: anti aging industry could bring in as much as three
Speaker 1: billion dollars annually in the next few years, as people
Speaker 1: carve out their bank accounts, sit through their wallets, and
Speaker 1: shake out the couch cushions like some sort of modern
Speaker 1: day Ponsta Leon. That's a lot of cash spent on botox,
Speaker 1: hair plugs, chemical peels, and testosterone treatments, among other get
Speaker 1: young quick options, and soon some age avoiders may even
Speaker 1: fill their own fountains of youth with the blood of
Speaker 1: the young. Ambrosia is a California based start up company
Speaker 1: that aims to help people retain a youthful glow by
Speaker 1: pumping them full of young blood plasma. The project is
Speaker 1: still in a clinical trial stage, but Ambrosia points to
Speaker 1: testing results that it says show new young blood may
Speaker 1: help reverse some of the physical and mental wear and
Speaker 1: tear that comes with aging. Now, transfusing the blood of
Speaker 1: the young isn't a new idea. Indeed, it dates back
Speaker 1: to before any successful transfusions ever took place. As Andreas Libavius,
Speaker 1: a sixteenth century German doctor, reportedly said, the hot and
Speaker 1: spirituous blood of the young man will pour into the
Speaker 1: old one as if it were from a fountain of youth,
Speaker 1: and all of his weakness will be dispelled. That was
Speaker 1: right around the time of the first successful blood transfusion
Speaker 1: in sixteen sixty five, when an English researcher transferred blood
Speaker 1: between dogs. Blood transfusions have long been used to help
Speaker 1: accident victims and others who lose a lot of their
Speaker 1: own blood, but Ambrosia believes swapping in new juice from
Speaker 1: younger donors aged about sixteen to twenty five could also
Speaker 1: be helpful. Once and if the company gets up and running,
Speaker 1: it'll cost you about eight thousand dollars to find out
Speaker 1: if they're right. Among other research, Ambrosia points to a
Speaker 1: two thousand fourteen study finding that older mice transfused with
Speaker 1: the blood of younger mice saw improvements in their cognitive functioning,
Speaker 1: and scientists in a separate study two years earlier found
Speaker 1: that a cocktail of young blood also helped old mice
Speaker 1: rejuvenate their central nervous systems. What we don't know is
Speaker 1: how much cheddar of their own the little critters had
Speaker 1: to fork over. So how close are we to a
Speaker 1: mad max future in which you and I are just
Speaker 1: blood bags for the super rich. Well stick around a
Speaker 1: few decades longer and maybe we'll find out. Finally. This week,
Speaker 1: Stuff editor Eaves Jeff Cote has one for us that
Speaker 1: Christopher wrote about the discovery of what may be humanity's
Speaker 1: oldest known ancestor, and it's a tiny starlac. The next
Speaker 1: time someone calls you a microscopic bag of teeth and goo,
Speaker 1: don't get offended. Take a deep breath and respond, I'm sorry.
Speaker 1: I think you must have mistaken me for someone else.
Speaker 1: I believe you're referring to my great great, great, great
Speaker 1: great great, and keep repeating that for a few hours
Speaker 1: as you flip back the pages of the family album.
Speaker 1: Five forty million years or so, scientists have identified what
Speaker 1: may be the earliest verifiable ancestor of humankind, using electron
Speaker 1: microscopes and CT scan technology to analyze tiny fossils. Researchers
Speaker 1: out of China, the UK, and Germany point to Saccharitis
Speaker 1: coronarius as the common ancestor of a group of organisms
Speaker 1: known as deuterous stones. Their findings were recently published in
Speaker 1: a letter in the journal Nature. Okay. The overuse and
Speaker 1: use of medical services is a global healthcare crisis that
Speaker 1: the medical industry is desperately trying to remedy, as described
Speaker 1: in a series of papers published by The Lancet in
Speaker 1: January of seventeen. These problems are happening around the world,
Speaker 1: with both overuse and under use often occurring side by
Speaker 1: side throughout various economies, with both leading to Sacharitis likely
Speaker 1: lived between grains of sand on the sea floor and
Speaker 1: was at most point zero five inches or one point
Speaker 1: two millimeters. The researchers had to process tons of limestone
Speaker 1: to get to the fossils, which were found in the
Speaker 1: shamp Sea province of Central China. Members of the same
Speaker 1: research team have been studying duterous stomes for some time
Speaker 1: and in two thousand nine identified the region as rich
Speaker 1: in deuterous stone fossils. The analysis of saccharitis fossils shows
Speaker 1: a dominant pleated mouth, a skin light covering with numerous openings,
Speaker 1: and small conical structures on a symmetrical body that could
Speaker 1: have allowed water to escape, perhaps acting as a precursor
Speaker 1: to modern gills. The researchers believed this new found organism
Speaker 1: is a common ancestor of all deutalous domes and the
Speaker 1: beginning of a diverse evolutionary lineage that includes humans. Interestingly enough,
Speaker 1: this early proto ancestor show no evidence of having an anus.
Speaker 1: That means waste would have had to exit through its mouth,
Speaker 1: a pretty unappealing method of excretion. That's a show for
Speaker 1: this week. Thank you so much for tuning in. Further
Speaker 1: thanks to our audio producer Dylan Fagan and our editorial
Speaker 1: liaison Alice and Laddermilk. Subscribe to now Now for more
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