Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of My
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind.
Speaker 1: My name is Robert Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick, and
Speaker 1: we're back with part two of this year's talk about
Speaker 1: the ig Nobel Prize winners. If you haven't heard part one,
Speaker 1: you can go back and check that one out. First,
Speaker 1: long story short, we're talking about the ig Nobel Prizes
Speaker 1: again this year. We're not going to cover every prize,
Speaker 1: but just pick out a few of the highlights that
Speaker 1: we wanted to discuss. And Rob I think you're going
Speaker 1: to kick us off today with the Biology Prize if
Speaker 1: I'm not wrong, Yes, this is the Biology Prize. It
Speaker 1: went to Suzanne Shots Robert Ecklund and used fond of
Speaker 1: aga for analyzing variations in purring, chirping, chattering, trilling, tweeting, murmuring,
Speaker 1: me owing, moaning, squeaking, hissing, yowling, howling, growling, and other
Speaker 1: modes of cat human communication. Those are all cat human communication. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: so this is so one the couple of questions I
Speaker 1: tend to ask myself about any Ignoble prize winning study
Speaker 1: or paper right up, is first of all, why is
Speaker 1: it funny? And then then secondly, why is it important?
Speaker 1: Why does it matter? And of course it's pretty obvious
Speaker 1: why this one. It's funny. It's cats. Anything cats do
Speaker 1: has the potential to be hilarious because they are. They
Speaker 1: are amusing, They are are strange fur babies, are are
Speaker 1: the weird desert goblins that live in so many of
Speaker 1: our houses or haunt our yards. I think in many ways,
Speaker 1: cats are funny, almost exactly to the extent that they
Speaker 1: appear to take themselves very seriously. Yeah, well so they
Speaker 1: that's true. But they're also some very silly looking cats.
Speaker 1: But yeah, they they do often have this kind of
Speaker 1: serious demeanor and they it's easy too for us to
Speaker 1: apply human motivations to their behavior and thinking, oh, well,
Speaker 1: they're they're covering for a mistake here, they're they're they're
Speaker 1: trying to, uh, you know, uphold their dignity. Uh. There's
Speaker 1: a lot we can read into the behaviors of cats,
Speaker 1: but the the actual scenario with cat, I mean, any
Speaker 1: human domestication of another animal species is inherently interesting. That
Speaker 1: the cat model may be one of the most interesting
Speaker 1: of all because it is this kind of at times
Speaker 1: arguably a self domestication. It's this uh this interesting um
Speaker 1: you know, um balance that is struck between what the
Speaker 1: cat wants and what the human wants. Um. And you
Speaker 1: know so many of us live that every day, that
Speaker 1: that uneasy truce with the feline kind. You're always wondering
Speaker 1: if your cat really respects you. This is less a
Speaker 1: problem for dog owners. Oh I don't know. I mean
Speaker 1: I I never wonder and I know my cat doesn't
Speaker 1: respect me. It's but but well we'll get into that.
Speaker 1: So this this uh, this study or actually it's really
Speaker 1: a series of studies. Um. You know, they deal with
Speaker 1: the vocalization of cats. And uh, if if you're not
Speaker 1: that familiar with cats, if you're not around the much,
Speaker 1: you might be surprised by this because cats are often
Speaker 1: pretty quiet. Um, they can be very quiet, very stealthy.
Speaker 1: And while the meal is the most famous cat noise
Speaker 1: and one that is sometimes treated it as kind of
Speaker 1: kind of a monolithic vocalization, there's actually quite a diversity
Speaker 1: to the sounds you're liable to hear come out of
Speaker 1: a cat if you listen enough. So everyone everyone's cat
Speaker 1: is different. I mean cats have have can have amazingly
Speaker 1: different personalities but concerning my own current cat, Mochi, here
Speaker 1: are some of her most common utterances, so that I
Speaker 1: might mention these before getting into some of the researchers findings.
Speaker 1: So first of all, uh, there's there is of course purring. Uh.
Speaker 1: Mochi will do this while seated close to or on
Speaker 1: a human uh, you know, whilst relaxing. There's also the
Speaker 1: hiss she will generally she'll hiss in other situations, like
Speaker 1: if she's surprised or something, but uh, straight antually enough,
Speaker 1: she most commonly hisses after she has just randomly attacked
Speaker 1: my foot. She'll be near my foot, she will like
Speaker 1: play by my toe, and then she will recoil and
Speaker 1: hiss at me like I did something. One of my
Speaker 1: most vivid memories of a cat hissing is when I
Speaker 1: was in college, a friend of mine called me to
Speaker 1: come over and help deal with an incredibly large spider
Speaker 1: discovered in the apartment, and the cat in the apartment
Speaker 1: there was just was just hissing at it, just violently
Speaker 1: hissing at a at a huge black spider. Interesting again,
Speaker 1: cats are so so different than they have such such
Speaker 1: an interesting personalities. I don't think I've ever heard my
Speaker 1: cat hiss at a non human entity, but then again,
Speaker 1: she's she's an indoor cat and it's kind of cut
Speaker 1: off from most non human entities. My cat Mochi will
Speaker 1: also do something that we affectionately refer to as the
Speaker 1: midnight baby parade, sometimes not affectionately, depending on the circumstances.
Speaker 1: But this is when she carries a toy or small
Speaker 1: stuffed animal around the house, generally after we've all gone
Speaker 1: to bed, and as a kind of repetitive, mournful howling
Speaker 1: about it about you, like something about the toy has
Speaker 1: made her sad. Now, based on some of the readings
Speaker 1: I'll get into, um, I believe it is a communication
Speaker 1: aimed at us, at us humans, uh, saying hey, I
Speaker 1: have I have caught you something I have provided, I
Speaker 1: have a treat for you, or and or I'm teaching
Speaker 1: you how to hunt something to that effect. So um,
Speaker 1: so it's not actually mournful. That's just our read of it.
Speaker 1: It sounds kind of weird and pathetic, but see it is,
Speaker 1: but it is a vocal communication of sorts. Finally, Mochi
Speaker 1: will use what I think of as the bossy mew,
Speaker 1: a kind of sharp, truncated meal that feels bossy and
Speaker 1: is often administered when she is ready to be fed
Speaker 1: and we're being too slow about it. Oh, from Charlie
Speaker 1: in that same situation, we get the huffs where he
Speaker 1: doesn't fully bark, but it's them. Yeah, yeah, I mean,
Speaker 1: it's it's It's really remarkable when you when you think
Speaker 1: about it, you know, all these these various communications that
Speaker 1: are going on between us and these these non human
Speaker 1: beings in our homes. Now, there are probably some other
Speaker 1: sounds from Mochi that I'm forgetting, and there's still others
Speaker 1: that our old cat would make, such as the chirping
Speaker 1: at birds, which I'll definitely get into. But those are
Speaker 1: the main ones that are in my life that I
Speaker 1: carried into reading about this research. And and again, one
Speaker 1: of the crazy things about all this is that we
Speaker 1: can we can anthropomorphize our cats all day, but we're
Speaker 1: left with with very real questions regarding what these sounds
Speaker 1: are and what purpose they serve. And on top of that,
Speaker 1: we're looking at it within the context of domesticated cohabitation
Speaker 1: with human beings. Right, so are these sounds that are
Speaker 1: naturally part of the part of the cat's behavioral repertoire
Speaker 1: in their ancestral environment, or do they somehow emerge from
Speaker 1: being domesticated and being partnered with humans. Yeah, so it
Speaker 1: gets it gets very complicated. So um, the lead author
Speaker 1: on I think all what five studies that were referenced
Speaker 1: in the the Ignoble Prize being awarded here, the lead
Speaker 1: author and all of them was Susan Shots. And if
Speaker 1: you're interested in Shots's work, she actually has a book
Speaker 1: aimed at general readers and cat owners titled The Secret
Speaker 1: Language of Cats. Um, and I actually picked this up
Speaker 1: and kind of focused on this more than the individual studies, uh.
Speaker 1: In it, she details seventeen different cats sounds, and I'm
Speaker 1: not going to go through all of them, but it's
Speaker 1: fascinating how these include sounds that are targeted at seemingly
Speaker 1: targeted at prey, but also targeted at other cats and
Speaker 1: targeted at humans. Which ones are we closer to the
Speaker 1: when they're talking to humans. Is it more like their
Speaker 1: interactions with prey or more like other cats? It seems
Speaker 1: to be like other cats. And I've I've read other
Speaker 1: research that that that summarizes it, you know, in the
Speaker 1: same way saying like, well, your cat basically thinks of
Speaker 1: you as a giant cat, or your cat basically thinks
Speaker 1: of you as a giant kitten, that sort of thing. So,
Speaker 1: just rolling through some of the sounds here and what
Speaker 1: shots have to say about them. For instance, purring, uh
Speaker 1: is complex because while it is largely associated with with
Speaker 1: the cat feeling content, you can also mean that the
Speaker 1: cat is hungry, that it is pain, that the cat
Speaker 1: is anxious, or that the cat is giving birth or dying.
Speaker 1: Oh wow, well that's a range. Yeah. So she writes
Speaker 1: that purring probably would translate in human language, and she
Speaker 1: she does a lot of this, like like, if you
Speaker 1: were to translate this into human language, what is the
Speaker 1: cat saying? It probably means something like I am no threat,
Speaker 1: or please leave everything as it is, or keep doing
Speaker 1: Oh I can see that. Okay, So whether the cat
Speaker 1: is happy with what's going on right now and doesn't
Speaker 1: want to be disturbed, or is in a vulnerable state
Speaker 1: of some kind and doesn't want to be disturbed, it's
Speaker 1: basically just kind of like, hey, things are fine. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Now I've heard that tidbit about the dying before, and
Speaker 1: I was was having to think back where i'd heard it,
Speaker 1: and I think I actually heard about it the first
Speaker 1: time in a poem titled Purring by Coleman Barks, who
Speaker 1: uh incidentally, I think we've brought up on the podcast before,
Speaker 1: because in addition to being a poet of his own work,
Speaker 1: he is also the the Roomy interpreter, who has sometimes
Speaker 1: criticized for not being an actual translator in the true
Speaker 1: sense of the word. He neither reads nor writes Persian,
Speaker 1: but rather sort of rephrases the poems of roomi um
Speaker 1: as English language poems. But anyway, the poem in question
Speaker 1: is is rather good and has nothing to do with
Speaker 1: the poetry of of of Roomy or Persia. It's all
Speaker 1: about cat purring. And this is the key part. Quote
Speaker 1: here is something I have never heard. A feline purrs
Speaker 1: and two conditions when deeply content and when mortally wounded
Speaker 1: to calm themselves reading for the death opening. Oh that's
Speaker 1: kind of chilling. Yeah. I've aways found this part of
Speaker 1: the poem very spot on regarding cats and death, because
Speaker 1: I feel like Mochi if she gets too cold or
Speaker 1: if she has some sort of health flare up, she
Speaker 1: basically says to us, I must now settle down and
Speaker 1: await the death opening, and we're usually like, no, there's
Speaker 1: no there's no reason to just accept death. You should
Speaker 1: maybe you should drink some water instead, You're probably dehydrated.
Speaker 1: And she's like, no, I would prefer death. Oh yeah yeah.
Speaker 1: So is is that in general that cats are likely
Speaker 1: to have kind of strange relationships with water or is
Speaker 1: that more specifically your cat? I mean, I've heard that.
Speaker 1: You know, if you if you look back to where
Speaker 1: cats come to us from, that you know they have
Speaker 1: ties to desert environments where they wouldn't have access to
Speaker 1: a lot of water. But you spend any amount of
Speaker 1: time on the internet and you see that the cats
Speaker 1: are kind of all over the place. There are cats
Speaker 1: that habitually drink water from faucets and toilets, you know,
Speaker 1: there are cats that that actually use their fountains. Uh.
Speaker 1: And there then their households like ours, where I feel
Speaker 1: like we have we put out various fountains and and
Speaker 1: bowls of water as kind of a spiritual offering, so
Speaker 1: that the idea of water is present. So in the end,
Speaker 1: she gets I think all of her moisture through her
Speaker 1: wet food, and otherwise I think she would just dry up. Strange, Now,
Speaker 1: when it comes to the meals. Shots points out that
Speaker 1: meals are very often about getting the attention of humans,
Speaker 1: and there are really a whole suite of mews. Uh.
Speaker 1: For instance, there's the mew, which is a very high
Speaker 1: pitched meal probably generally something that translates as a call
Speaker 1: to attention or help. And then outside of cat human relations,
Speaker 1: this is also the sound a kitten makes to its mother.
Speaker 1: So this is a situation where we're we're kind of
Speaker 1: a giant cat mother to our cats, at least in
Speaker 1: some circumstances. Oh, you can almost look at that as
Speaker 1: a kind of counterpoint to the purring. So if the
Speaker 1: purring is could sort of be understood as an expression
Speaker 1: of no need to change what's going on, uh, the
Speaker 1: meal could be a sort of request for change. Yeah.
Speaker 1: The squeak, however, is like a shorter, truncated version of this.
Speaker 1: And I think this is what Mochi is doing when
Speaker 1: she is demanding to be fed. Uh. So um, so
Speaker 1: it's it's not just a general call for attention or help,
Speaker 1: but a specific one like hey, I am standing next
Speaker 1: to the food bowl and there is no food. Now.
Speaker 1: As for the hiss, uh, it's still confounds me. Because
Speaker 1: uh in shots is writing here. She mostly writes that
Speaker 1: it is exactly what it sounds like, a warning that
Speaker 1: says enough, do not come any closer or I will
Speaker 1: attack you. But again, Mochi regularly does this to me
Speaker 1: after she bites me. Uh and and I should stress
Speaker 1: after I do not retaliate. It's not like I I
Speaker 1: come at her at that point then she has to
Speaker 1: hiss at me. I'm just standing there, dumbfound at the
Speaker 1: whole time. But but who knows. It's also a situation
Speaker 1: where sometimes they hiss when they're startled. Um. I think
Speaker 1: there are a lot of videos online of cats hissing
Speaker 1: at cucumbers that have been secreted behind them, that sort
Speaker 1: of thing. Oh, now, the chirp and the chatter. This,
Speaker 1: this is where it gets really interesting. And now this
Speaker 1: is something I don't see Mochi doing much. But I
Speaker 1: had a former cat named Biscuit who would do this
Speaker 1: a lot while watching birds. Um. I think if you've
Speaker 1: certainly a lot of cat owners out there are people
Speaker 1: that have been around cats, especially indoor cats, can relate
Speaker 1: to this. You know, your cat is watching birds or
Speaker 1: maybe even some rodents outside the window, and they're very
Speaker 1: like drawn into it. They're they're they're enticed by they're
Speaker 1: kind of hypnotized by the display, and then they kind
Speaker 1: of they kind of go ch ch chat or a
Speaker 1: church of church chirp kind of a sound, and kind
Speaker 1: of kind of like moving their mouths in a weird way,
Speaker 1: and it does seem like it's almost like they're trying
Speaker 1: to talk to the bird. I don't know if I've
Speaker 1: ever ever seen this happen. It's very interesting. And now
Speaker 1: shots describes them as as quote these sounds as quote
Speaker 1: a hunting instinct where the cat attempts to imitate the
Speaker 1: calls of the prey or the killing bite for example,
Speaker 1: when a bird or an insect catches the attention of
Speaker 1: the cat. Wow, I feel like I need to look
Speaker 1: up video of this. Yeah, it's either interpretation. I find
Speaker 1: interesting because first of all, the idea of your cat
Speaker 1: is sort of trying to speak to the prey or
Speaker 1: to sound like it, and you know, they're trying to
Speaker 1: speak to an its own tongue, Like that's inherently weird
Speaker 1: and interesting. But also this idea that like they're literally
Speaker 1: chomping at the bit to deliver a killing bite to
Speaker 1: the neck of that organism out there. It's like, oh,
Speaker 1: I can't get to you, but if I could, oh,
Speaker 1: I would just right into your neck. Okay, Rob, I
Speaker 1: take it back. I was totally wrong. I just looked
Speaker 1: up a video of the chattering, and I have seen
Speaker 1: this before. For some reason, I just didn't connect to
Speaker 1: what you were saying. Yes, the the chat well, it's
Speaker 1: like the chattering cinnabite almost. It's just the yeah, the
Speaker 1: teeth going up and down and the little noise there.
Speaker 1: I have seen this, and and it is it is
Speaker 1: quite strange. I never knew what to make of it. Uh,
Speaker 1: this is this is what shots also adds inner quote.
Speaker 1: A cat who sees an unreachable bird chatters and imitates
Speaker 1: a killing bite in a stereotypical way. The action could
Speaker 1: serve as a means of stress relief. Some cats also
Speaker 1: chatter as a means of protest, for example, when they
Speaker 1: feel they have been mistreated by their humans, or when
Speaker 1: they are annoyed. It's kind of like punching the air. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's kind of like, oh, I want to eat you
Speaker 1: and I can't expression, which again especially makes sense for
Speaker 1: indoor cats who are looking out through the glass at
Speaker 1: a delicious bird. So anyway, if you want to dive
Speaker 1: deeper into uh in the actual research. Again, the the
Speaker 1: Ignoble Prize website has links to all of these all
Speaker 1: five of these studies that are mentioned in the awards.
Speaker 1: But I have to say, The Secret Language of Cats
Speaker 1: Is is a very interesting book, very readable, and it's
Speaker 1: not just about like you know, uh, direct one to
Speaker 1: one sort of you know, translations. It's about like, what
Speaker 1: are these strange creatures that we live with? Um, you know,
Speaker 1: how are we supposed to think about them? Uh? And uh?
Speaker 1: And she also shares some like personal experience with cats,
Speaker 1: um about you know, her desire to have a cat
Speaker 1: as a child and how she didn't get to have one,
Speaker 1: but then later I believe as an adult that's when
Speaker 1: cats actually entered her life and her home and uh
Speaker 1: ended up being a part of her work. Bravo, thank you,
Speaker 1: thank you. All right, Joe, what what do you have
Speaker 1: for us next? Well? I figured, since in the last
Speaker 1: episode I talked about people slamming their faces into each
Speaker 1: other while colliding on a on a sidewalk, I should
Speaker 1: continue the face slamming theme and UH and talk about
Speaker 1: the Peace Prize, for which was given to Ethan Bisserah,
Speaker 1: Stephen Nailway, and David Carrier quote for testing the hypothesis
Speaker 1: that humans evolved beards to protect themselves from punches to
Speaker 1: the face. This is fun because we've we've discussed David
Speaker 1: Carrier's research on the show before, not only related to beards,
Speaker 1: but to particularly remember the evolution of human fists and
Speaker 1: the possible connection into punching. Right. So, yeah, Carrier has
Speaker 1: got this research is part of an arc. Uh, and
Speaker 1: we've talked about other parts of this arc on the
Speaker 1: show before. Um So, David Carrier is a University of
Speaker 1: Utah biologist and one of his big projects that seems
Speaker 1: for a few years is the pursuit of a broader
Speaker 1: theory of human evolution that places a big emphasis on
Speaker 1: punching people in the face. Uh. Basically the idea that
Speaker 1: much of the way that human bodies are today was
Speaker 1: a result of pressure that arose from male fist fighting
Speaker 1: and punching to the jaw. So before the beard thing,
Speaker 1: yeah you mentioned there was he did a study about
Speaker 1: human hands and try to argue that the current shape
Speaker 1: of the human hand could be an adaptation for better
Speaker 1: fist fighting. UM. I think the more common understanding is
Speaker 1: that the primary evolutionary pressure on the morphology of the
Speaker 1: human hand is that it was built for dexterity, for
Speaker 1: gripping and manipulating object and little fine motor tasks. But
Speaker 1: I think a lot of carriers research, if I remember
Speaker 1: it correctly, and this is that it's also getting into
Speaker 1: the fact that, yes, you need to do all that stuff,
Speaker 1: but you also need to be able to deliver a
Speaker 1: punch without robbing yourself of the ability to use that
Speaker 1: fine dexterity later. Right, Yeah, So, in in support of
Speaker 1: his broader argument, Carrier has done experiments to show back
Speaker 1: with the example to hand. He did some research showing
Speaker 1: that the shape of the human hand allows for the
Speaker 1: formation of a tight fist. I think it's the form
Speaker 1: that he calls the butt trest fist, where the thumb
Speaker 1: is curled under to protect the fingers and tuck them
Speaker 1: into the palm um. And this allows the fist to
Speaker 1: serve as a club which can deliver heavy blows with
Speaker 1: reduced risk of injury to the hand as compared to
Speaker 1: a more open handed punch where the fingers and the
Speaker 1: thumb are not curled tightly like that. And so I
Speaker 1: want to say, this may be true that the human
Speaker 1: hand happen to be good at forming a fist, and
Speaker 1: I have no reason to doubt their findings that that
Speaker 1: can help deliver blows with reduced risk of injury to
Speaker 1: the hand, though I still think it wouldn't necessarily prove
Speaker 1: that punching behaviors were were the main or even a
Speaker 1: major part of what the hand evolved for, because I mean,
Speaker 1: if you want to think about analogies, see if the
Speaker 1: same logic holds up. Um, you could find that certain
Speaker 1: characteristics of the human skull helped protect the brain during headbutting,
Speaker 1: but that wouldn't necessarily prove that the need to deliver
Speaker 1: headbuts was a decisive factor in shaping how human skulls
Speaker 1: are today. So in the past, along these lines, I
Speaker 1: think I've expressed some skepticism about the idea of of
Speaker 1: carriers punching focused view of human evolution. I certainly don't
Speaker 1: want to be dismissive. I just I just feel a
Speaker 1: lot of doubts, like it raises a lot of questions
Speaker 1: for me. One, I was trying if I maybe He's
Speaker 1: addressed this somewhere, but I was trying to find if
Speaker 1: there's actually even any evidence that closed fist punching is
Speaker 1: a natural instinctual behavior in humans, as opposed to a
Speaker 1: relatively rare modern convention that has to be learned and
Speaker 1: enforced by social norms. Because like you you can go
Speaker 1: if you read, um, you know, like boxing coaches and
Speaker 1: people say, you know, they talk about how you like
Speaker 1: have to learn how to make the right kind of
Speaker 1: fist and if you don't, you could injure your hand.
Speaker 1: So that's not something that people just do by instinct.
Speaker 1: It's something that has to be taught. But but maybe
Speaker 1: that has been addressed somewhere, And I want to be fair,
Speaker 1: but I also just think about how, like you know,
Speaker 1: you can obviously do even more damage in a fight
Speaker 1: with less risk of injury to yourself by holding a
Speaker 1: stick or a rock in your hand, uh than by
Speaker 1: punching with a closed fist. Um. But you know, all
Speaker 1: of those questions aside, I would of course remain open
Speaker 1: minded too good evidence in this vein, even though I
Speaker 1: got my doubts so uh. In this study, the authors
Speaker 1: extend the the fist punch morephology question to beards, and
Speaker 1: the question here would be why do human males tend
Speaker 1: to grow beards. UM, So the evolutionary pressures driving sexual
Speaker 1: dimorphism and facial hair are still up for debate, So
Speaker 1: this is not in any way considered a settled question
Speaker 1: that you know, it's perfectly good arena for people to
Speaker 1: h to advance different hypotheses and try to test them.
Speaker 1: I think the main hypotheses in this area in the
Speaker 1: past have been based on social signaling, right, that beards
Speaker 1: exist primarily to make some kind of impression on other
Speaker 1: people in the minds of other humans, rather than to
Speaker 1: serve any kind of mechanical function. So maybe beards are
Speaker 1: supposed to make you more sexually attractive, though there is
Speaker 1: some doubt about that one, because I think modern studies
Speaker 1: do not find that women consistently find beards more attractive.
Speaker 1: The prevalence of preferences for beards among heterosexual women tends
Speaker 1: to be dependent on a lot factors on social context like.
Speaker 1: For example, one thing I recall reading at some point
Speaker 1: UM was that average female preferences for facial hair and
Speaker 1: men tend to follow what's known as a negative frequency
Speaker 1: dependence model, so that basically, if if your society has
Speaker 1: more people with beards, more people will find clean shaven
Speaker 1: men attractive, and if more people are clean shaven, more
Speaker 1: people will find bearded men attractive. So it's just whatever
Speaker 1: is less common but within reason though, right, because you
Speaker 1: don't want to be too much of an outlier. Um,
Speaker 1: we can all imagine various facial hair choices that are
Speaker 1: either you know, just's just too problematic or just too strange.
Speaker 1: Like if you're just going to decide to grow like
Speaker 1: U two uh, like two globs of hair on either side,
Speaker 1: on either cheek, you know, one cut in the shape
Speaker 1: of the planet Saturn and the other cutting the shape
Speaker 1: of of Jupiter like that would that would be kind
Speaker 1: of strange. I don't know if anyone would really go
Speaker 1: for that, Robert, I'm finding you incredibly closed minded about
Speaker 1: cosmic beard sculpting. But anyway, okay, So it's it seems
Speaker 1: like maybe maybe sexual attraction is not the best signaling hypothesis.
Speaker 1: Another possibility is that beards evolved for intra sexual competition
Speaker 1: among males. Maybe they're supposed to make you look more
Speaker 1: formidable and dominant and encourage respect and deference. So they're
Speaker 1: they're supposed to encourage people to think, you know, I
Speaker 1: am no mere boy. Look at my beard. I am
Speaker 1: a wise and powerful, full grown man. Listen to me.
Speaker 1: But it's still an open question. People don't know why
Speaker 1: beards evolved. But this research from argues as follows. They say, quote,
Speaker 1: we hypothesize that beards protect the skin and bones of
Speaker 1: the face when human males fight by absorbing and dispersing
Speaker 1: the energy of a blunt impact. Um. So okay. So
Speaker 1: the points the authors make are uh. They say, you know,
Speaker 1: there are other cases where hair appears to serve some
Speaker 1: kind of defensive function. Uh. For example, the long hair
Speaker 1: of Alliance, Maine is sometimes thought by biologists who have
Speaker 1: evolved to protect vulnerable spots like the throat and the
Speaker 1: jaw from damage during violent encounters. Um. And they point
Speaker 1: out quote the mandible meaning the jaw. The lower jaw,
Speaker 1: which is superficially covered by the beard, is one of
Speaker 1: the most commonly fractured facial bones in interpersonal violence. So
Speaker 1: they went on to perform some physical tests. They ran
Speaker 1: tests to simulate the extent to which a beard would
Speaker 1: protect a jaw from blunt trauma. And so they described
Speaker 1: their method as follows. Quote, we tested this hypothesis by
Speaker 1: measuring impact force and energy absorbed by a fiber epoxy
Speaker 1: composite which served as a bone analog when it was
Speaker 1: covered with skin that had thick hair referred to here
Speaker 1: as furred, versus skin with no hair referred to here
Speaker 1: as sheared and plucked. We covered the epoxy compile as
Speaker 1: it with segments of skin dissected from domestic sheep and
Speaker 1: used a drop weight impact tester affixed with a load
Speaker 1: cell to collect force versus time data. Tissue samples were
Speaker 1: prepared in three conditions, furred, plucked, and sheared. Okay, so
Speaker 1: they do this experiment and what do they find? Well,
Speaker 1: in fact, they find that simulated jaws covered in fur
Speaker 1: were indeed able to absorb more energy than the ones
Speaker 1: that were plucked or sheared. They say that peak force
Speaker 1: was six greater in the plucked versus the furred conditions,
Speaker 1: and total force was thirty seven percent greater. So what's
Speaker 1: the difference there, Well, they say that fur provides some
Speaker 1: degree of padding, it increases the time over which the
Speaker 1: blow is absorbed, and finally they say quote these data
Speaker 1: support the hypothesis that human beards protect vulnerable regions of
Speaker 1: the facial skeleton from damaging strikes. So I feel like, uh,
Speaker 1: I thought this was this was interesting. I'm still kind
Speaker 1: of doubtful about the overall theory, um, just for example,
Speaker 1: using my analogy from earlier. And by the way, I
Speaker 1: mean the researchers are aware of this, you know. They
Speaker 1: say like that many of these traits could have evolved
Speaker 1: for other reasons, but they're trying to build a cumulative
Speaker 1: case that sees fist fighting and male physical aggression as
Speaker 1: a major factor shaping human morphology. So I guess I
Speaker 1: have some doubts that it it's as big as they
Speaker 1: might be suggesting, But I don't know. Um. But to
Speaker 1: use the analogy from earlier, it could be true that
Speaker 1: a beard makes it slightly easier to absorb punches to
Speaker 1: the jaw, And it looks like, based on their experiment,
Speaker 1: that probably is to to some degree true at least
Speaker 1: slightly true. And yet that still wouldn't necessarily prove that
Speaker 1: the need to shield against punches to the jaw is
Speaker 1: the primary reason our species has beards. This would be
Speaker 1: an interesting one to hear from our our various martial
Speaker 1: arts listeners about because the direction my mind goes in
Speaker 1: on this and I instantly think about, uh, though the
Speaker 1: world of like mixed martial arts, which today is like
Speaker 1: this this highly um uh you know, it's it's a
Speaker 1: it's a top you know sport. It's it's a situation
Speaker 1: where people devote their lives to reaching like peak uh skill,
Speaker 1: peak conditioning, and it becomes like, um, you know, it
Speaker 1: comes a game of degrees, right, like what what whatever?
Speaker 1: You know, little thing you can do to give you
Speaker 1: an edge. It seems like you would do that thing,
Speaker 1: including grow a beard. Uh. And yet when you look
Speaker 1: at at mixed martial artists, yes, some have beards, some
Speaker 1: have have I guess pretty robust beards, but you don't
Speaker 1: see like a universal shift to beards like you might
Speaker 1: see and say, uh, you know certain evolutionaries situations, but
Speaker 1: also in certain warfare situations where there's some sort of
Speaker 1: a design, uh, some sort of an adaptation that gives
Speaker 1: a clear advantage and then it becomes ubiquitous suddenly everyone
Speaker 1: who can adopt it does. Yeah. So that's where my
Speaker 1: main question would be. But but then again I have
Speaker 1: to remind myself that by virtue of being this kind
Speaker 1: of over engineered interpersonal combat sport, perhaps like it's gone
Speaker 1: beyond the level at which a beard could be at
Speaker 1: all helpful, Like it just doesn't matter. Maybe like maybe
Speaker 1: like a beard adaptation. Evolutionarily, you're dealing with with something
Speaker 1: less than you know, a punch that or or a
Speaker 1: kick or what have you that has like, uh, you know,
Speaker 1: decades of training behind it aimed at just this one thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1: Another thing that I'm just curious about is is there
Speaker 1: any kind of evidence that if you actually go back
Speaker 1: a million years or so, that our ancestors would have
Speaker 1: been practicing a lot of consistent closed fist punching or
Speaker 1: is that a more modern convention of human culture. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And then once you start using weapons, um, you know,
Speaker 1: I think you you quickly reach a point where are
Speaker 1: the technology vastly outweighs any kind of natural armoring we
Speaker 1: might have via beards. You know, once you get to
Speaker 1: like the level of the mace like we discussed before,
Speaker 1: I mean, that's just instant skull putting. Unless there's some
Speaker 1: sort of a helmet involved. It doesn't matter what kind
Speaker 1: of hair you have or what kind of beards you're packing.
Speaker 1: But I guess the counter argument there is, once you're
Speaker 1: to the point where you have maces, um, any kind
Speaker 1: of selection that would have been involved, would have already
Speaker 1: taken place. So yeah, of course that'd be among anatomically
Speaker 1: modern humans. Yeah. Well, anyway, though, I do want to
Speaker 1: come back and say, despite the fact that I am,
Speaker 1: I still feel some some pretty strong doubts and skepticism
Speaker 1: about the fist punch theory. Overall, I do appreciate the
Speaker 1: research because, of course it's always good to explore alternative explanations,
Speaker 1: and maybe they will pay out. Maybe a lot of
Speaker 1: more research will pile up in these columns, um and uh.
Speaker 1: And then of course also the actual physical findings of
Speaker 1: the experiment, like show the force absorbing properties of hair
Speaker 1: or fur, could be useful to future researchers, even if
Speaker 1: the fist punch hypothesis itself eventually turns out to be
Speaker 1: universally ruled incorrect. Absolutely, thank you, thank you, thank you.
Speaker 1: All right for our final selection here, I thought we
Speaker 1: might talk about the winner of the Transportation Prize, and
Speaker 1: this went to Robin Radcliffe at All for determining by experiment,
Speaker 1: whether it is safer to transport an airborne rhinoceros upside down. Okay,
Speaker 1: this is a good one. Yeah, yeah, this this was
Speaker 1: so this one puzzled me at first, because yes, there's
Speaker 1: something about an upside down rhino suspended from a helicopter
Speaker 1: that is initially funny. But then I struggled to explain
Speaker 1: why it was initially funny. I guess it's just maybe
Speaker 1: because the rhino is such a grounded animal and the
Speaker 1: idea of it being upside down in the sky is
Speaker 1: is is worth a giggle, I guess though, So just
Speaker 1: to go ahead and get this part out there, like
Speaker 1: this concerns conservation efforts in Namibia, in Africa UM and
Speaker 1: the reason the various researchers were tied to Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Brazil,
Speaker 1: the UK and the USA UM and it has to
Speaker 1: do quite simply with moving, with translocation, moving one rhinoceros
Speaker 1: from here to there, from one point to another. How
Speaker 1: do you do that? And what is the best way
Speaker 1: to do that, not only for the humans doing the moving,
Speaker 1: but also the technology involved and the animal itself. What
Speaker 1: is the least stressful method of carrying this out? Okay,
Speaker 1: so is somebody with no expertise at all in this area.
Speaker 1: My mind immediately goes to scenes from Jurassic Park where
Speaker 1: they're transporting dinosaurs in what looked like giant, giant metal
Speaker 1: shoe boxes with their holes in the right and uh.
Speaker 1: And apparently that used to be the way. That was
Speaker 1: just how you moved a large animal like a rhino around.
Speaker 1: You would trink it and then as it woke up,
Speaker 1: you would groggy lee sort of push it into a crate,
Speaker 1: and then you would close up the crate and then
Speaker 1: you could transport that crate generally by truck uh to
Speaker 1: wherever you needed to take it. But you could of
Speaker 1: course also air to lift that crate um via helicopter
Speaker 1: or something, you know, loaded into a cargo plane something
Speaker 1: of that nature. Okay, So the paper here in question,
Speaker 1: it was titled the Pulmonary and metabolic effects of suspension
Speaker 1: by the feet compared with lateral recumbency in immobilized black
Speaker 1: Rhinoceros captured by aerial darting um and this came out
Speaker 1: in the Journal of wild Life Diseases. Now, the paper
Speaker 1: itself here is pretty technical, getting into you know, a lot. Basically,
Speaker 1: it focuses a lot on the breathing of the rhinoceros.
Speaker 1: But I found a lot of wonderful clarity on the
Speaker 1: topic in a Manga Bay article by Malavica via Waharre
Speaker 1: in which the author interviews Robin Radcliffe, UM, the lead
Speaker 1: author and one of the key researchers involved in this
Speaker 1: award winning paper. So essentially what happened is the researchers
Speaker 1: were asked to weigh in on a new practice of
Speaker 1: translocating rhinos that was being pioneered by UM animal relocation
Speaker 1: efforts in Namibia and Cornell University veterinarian Robin Radcliffe is
Speaker 1: rhino expert, so he's exactly the right person to bring
Speaker 1: in on this question. So, uh, like we we just mentioned, Yeah,
Speaker 1: the crate was the the old way of doing it,
Speaker 1: and uh, interestingly enough, I was looking for pictures of
Speaker 1: rhinos and crates and one of the top things that
Speaker 1: came up was a matchbox toy set that features a
Speaker 1: toy rhino, a toy crate, and then a helicopter for
Speaker 1: lifting said crate off the ground. The way does the
Speaker 1: helicopter powered? Uh no, I think it's just like a
Speaker 1: matchbox thing. But you know this is the use your imagination.
Speaker 1: It looks it's a fun kid. You know, it's not
Speaker 1: a matchbox kid. I'm just only you know, in my household.
Speaker 1: So my son is not super into vehicles, but like,
Speaker 1: this toy tells a story. Here's the helicopter, here's the
Speaker 1: here's the the crate. Here is the rhino. Fly the
Speaker 1: rhino to safety, says the matchbox label. Wait, Rob, I
Speaker 1: think maybe the blades do spin. It looks like it's
Speaker 1: got a handle on the top of the rotor, and
Speaker 1: I think it's one of those where you can like
Speaker 1: spin it by manual force. Either maybe you spin it
Speaker 1: with just by spinning it with your hand, or you
Speaker 1: you you pull a cord or something. Okay, yeah, it
Speaker 1: looks like you do get some spinning action. It's not
Speaker 1: gonna fly by itself. It's not a drune but um,
Speaker 1: but it does look fun. Um. But I think the
Speaker 1: toy here relays some of the challenges involved in this method.
Speaker 1: And so you know, you look at it. Okay, you
Speaker 1: have a huge helicopter or you know, you can imagine
Speaker 1: if it was just using a truck. You still need
Speaker 1: a pretty sizeable truck. It's a pretty huge crate, it's
Speaker 1: a pretty huge animal. Uh. And if you're transporting the
Speaker 1: rhino by truck, then you need roads to take you
Speaker 1: where you're going. And if you're going by helicopter. Well,
Speaker 1: you've got to transport this big grate out there to
Speaker 1: the location where you're acquiring the animal, and you're gonna
Speaker 1: need a secondary, smaller copter to trink the rhino and
Speaker 1: carry the capture team. So so it's a big operation. Yeah,
Speaker 1: big operation any way to shake it. But wildlife teams
Speaker 1: in the video were interested in trying some different methods.
Speaker 1: They were interested in fine tuning the chopper tactic as
Speaker 1: well as expediting the whole process. Uh and uh. You
Speaker 1: know one of the key advantages again if of using
Speaker 1: a helicopter is it it allows you to move the
Speaker 1: animal to more remote locations and to do so in
Speaker 1: a faster manner. Um, you don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: what can a road take me there? And do I
Speaker 1: have to how how far do I have to wind
Speaker 1: around with this? Uh? This this poor rhino in the
Speaker 1: trunk right how bumpy is it? Right now? One of
Speaker 1: the things that that Radcliffe points out, and that has
Speaker 1: pointed out in that Manga Bay article, is that translocation
Speaker 1: efforts have something of a checkered history in the past,
Speaker 1: and there are a lot of factors to consider, um
Speaker 1: and uh. And therefore you could even consider these Namibia
Speaker 1: efforts as being kind of a leap of faith, uh
Speaker 1: that you know, we've got to do something from a
Speaker 1: conservation standpoint. Let's try and move the animals to a
Speaker 1: more secure location, a place where they can they can
Speaker 1: live and um. But again, there's a lot of stuff
Speaker 1: you have to consider, and this paper deals with one
Speaker 1: of them. Because to streamline the translocation by helicopter, Uh,
Speaker 1: one of the big things you can do is dispense
Speaker 1: with that crate and try to get them into the
Speaker 1: air while they're still under you know, they're they're still tranquilized.
Speaker 1: Let's try and you know, harness them up in something
Speaker 1: carrying them in the sky and make a bee line
Speaker 1: for wherever we're going. Um, hopefully as the animal never
Speaker 1: even wakes up. Uh. And you know this gonna make
Speaker 1: it easier not only on the animal itself, but also
Speaker 1: on the people that have to do the carrying. Okay,
Speaker 1: makes sense. So one tactic that has been used is
Speaker 1: to force a sledge underneath the animal once it's laying
Speaker 1: on the side, so it's been tranked, it's laying on
Speaker 1: its side, force a sledge underneath its body, then secure
Speaker 1: it to the sledge and you airlift that sledge um
Speaker 1: uh you know, up into the air, take it to
Speaker 1: another location. I included a photograph of what this looks
Speaker 1: like for you, Joe. Okay, this already looks strange enough.
Speaker 1: This is a sideways rhino with four feet hanging out
Speaker 1: over the sky. Yep, it looks pretty good, looks stable.
Speaker 1: It makes a lot of sense. You see, you see
Speaker 1: exactly how they got there. But but Ratcliffe new from
Speaker 1: previous studies that this position for the rhino increases what's
Speaker 1: known as dead space, the volume of ventilated air that
Speaker 1: does not participate in gas exchange. An extended time in
Speaker 1: this position means the animal is getting less out of
Speaker 1: each breath. Okay, so the rhino is not grad at
Speaker 1: breathing in this position, right. So this brings us to
Speaker 1: this this new idea, this this new way of carrying
Speaker 1: the rhino that was being that's been UH was that
Speaker 1: was brought up by Annidian conservationist that they brought in
Speaker 1: Radcliff Radcliffe into UH to study. And that is, while
Speaker 1: the the rhino is out, you secure all of its
Speaker 1: legs to harness and you lift it up into the
Speaker 1: air in an inverted posture. And carry it that way. Okay,
Speaker 1: so we've gone from upright rhino to sideways rhino to
Speaker 1: completely upside down rhino. You're just doing the ninety degree
Speaker 1: rotate command repeatedly, right, Um, And you know it's it's
Speaker 1: interesting right because like the rhino normally is standing up
Speaker 1: and it could you know, it's sometimes going to be
Speaker 1: on its side, but it's never going to be inverted
Speaker 1: in the natural world. Like this is a new position
Speaker 1: for the living rhinoceros. Uh. So that's why they wanted
Speaker 1: to study, well what does this do to the rhino's breathing? Um?
Speaker 1: Is there anything you know essential that we need to
Speaker 1: know about this before we really roll this out as
Speaker 1: our chief means of carrying rhinos from one place to another? Okay,
Speaker 1: well I want to know does it work? Um? The
Speaker 1: short answer is yes, it does seem to work. Um.
Speaker 1: Now there's still it still requires a lot of work.
Speaker 1: That's one thing they really drive home here is that, Um,
Speaker 1: you know, you're still gonna have to have that second chopper.
Speaker 1: You're still gonna have to have somebody in there to
Speaker 1: to drink the rhino. It's gonna involve a whole team.
Speaker 1: So it's not like, we've perfectly streamlined this to to
Speaker 1: something that is not hard. It's still difficult. Um, it's
Speaker 1: in it's still a stressful situation. Um. But uh so.
Speaker 1: But Radcliffe was was mainly looking at breathing with the rhino.
Speaker 1: Here they used a crane instead of a chopper um,
Speaker 1: and their findings, while not final and all inclusive and
Speaker 1: also utilizing a small sample size, they stressed, we're certainly encouraging.
Speaker 1: So first of all, you don't encounter that increase of
Speaker 1: dead air. In fact, it might actually improve oxygen intake.
Speaker 1: But apparently that's that's an issue where the authors are like, well,
Speaker 1: we didn't have a huge sample size here, so we
Speaker 1: shouldn't put as much emphasis on bad aspect of it. Okay,
Speaker 1: but they at least know that in this small group
Speaker 1: of animals, hanging upside down was no worse for breathing
Speaker 1: than lying sideways on a sledge, and it might possibly
Speaker 1: improve oxygen saturation a little bit, but that's not clear, right,
Speaker 1: that seems to be the case. And secondly, while some
Speaker 1: animals would be worse off being transported in an inverted position,
Speaker 1: the rhino does really well. And in fact, here's a
Speaker 1: quote from Vala Bajara's interview with Radcliffe. This is a
Speaker 1: quote from Radcliffe quote. If you look at the anatomy
Speaker 1: of the rhino, it has a very heavy, a very
Speaker 1: large neck and head. When you hang them upside down,
Speaker 1: the head hangs really low. That does two things. It
Speaker 1: straightens out the spine and it also straightens out the airway.
Speaker 1: From a strictly anatomical perspective, it's actually an ideal position
Speaker 1: for a rhino to be in. It's an ideal endpoint
Speaker 1: for rhino evolution in in in a million years, the
Speaker 1: rhinos will all move around upside down. Yeah, so I
Speaker 1: love that. It's like, not only is the upside down rhino? Um, Okay,
Speaker 1: it is? It is in some sense optimal. This is
Speaker 1: optimal rhinoceros. Here, don't some people have contraptions for flipping
Speaker 1: themselves upside down for I have no idea if there's
Speaker 1: anything to this but for some perceived medical benefit or
Speaker 1: physicotherapy at least or something. Yeah, inversions, you you do.
Speaker 1: I feel like this is probably something we'd have to
Speaker 1: come back to in a full episode. But m yeah,
Speaker 1: I think there are some studies about it, and there's
Speaker 1: certainly a lot of claims about it um both uh,
Speaker 1: you know, certainly within like say the yoga community, but
Speaker 1: also yeah, you see people who have just advocated being
Speaker 1: upside down as a as as an effective life choice.
Speaker 1: Not full time, I guess, but no, no, that'd be
Speaker 1: interesting to look into. Maybe maybe we should come back
Speaker 1: to that now with the rhinos here there there's more
Speaker 1: work to be done here, uh, such as looking at
Speaker 1: the circulation of the animal, which I don't think was
Speaker 1: really a focal point of this particular study, but still
Speaker 1: it's it's insightful and it's an important study into the
Speaker 1: effects of transporting. Uh these animals by Chopper and conservation
Speaker 1: groups are already using the same technique with giant sable
Speaker 1: antelope and with the African elephant. Wow. Yeah, So with
Speaker 1: an upside down rhinoceros, this means when it finally gets
Speaker 1: set down, makes gentle contact with the ground, does it
Speaker 1: go horn first? Uh? Well, they have to be very
Speaker 1: gentle setting it down, you know. Then then then you
Speaker 1: you don't just drop it. Uh. It's it's like a
Speaker 1: very very careful game of the claw machine, right right.
Speaker 1: I should add that another important note about this is
Speaker 1: that you can't just have any helicopter do this, Like
Speaker 1: the rhino is a very heavy animal. So one of
Speaker 1: the things that Raticlo stresses is that, yeah, you still
Speaker 1: need two helicopters. You need the smaller helicopter for the
Speaker 1: trank team, but you need a pretty sizeable helicopter to
Speaker 1: actually lift this creature, even if there's no crate involved.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, but that's not cheap. Okay, here's how to
Speaker 1: make the image funnier the upside down. Right now, sir
Speaker 1: is dangling from not a helicopter but a Harrier jet.
Speaker 1: I don't like that idea. That doesn't sound good. Some
Speaker 1: kind of vertical takeoff airplane. Yeah that does somehow, that
Speaker 1: doesn't sound like it would work. All right, Well, I
Speaker 1: guess that's it for this episode. Um uh. Like we
Speaker 1: said before, we're not covering all the winners this this year,
Speaker 1: but we just looked at four of them. But if
Speaker 1: you want to find the rest of them, head on
Speaker 1: over to the Ignobile Prizes website. Uh and they have
Speaker 1: a full listing of them, along with links to the
Speaker 1: individual studies. And also there was a webcast of the ceremony.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, they're usually high jinks of some sort.
Speaker 1: All love to them, but often some kind of cringe
Speaker 1: e humor. All right, well, we're gonna go and close
Speaker 1: it out here in the meantime, If you would like
Speaker 1: to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind,
Speaker 1: head on over to wherever you get your podcasts, because
Speaker 1: wherever that is you'll find this Have to Blow Your
Speaker 1: Mind podcast feed. We run core episodes of the show
Speaker 1: on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Artifact on Wednesdays, listener mail on Mondays,
Speaker 1: and on Fridays we do a little weird ou cinema.
Speaker 1: That's our time to set aside most serious considerations and
Speaker 1: just focus in on a strange film. Huge thanks as
Speaker 1: always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If
Speaker 1: you would like to get in touch with us with
Speaker 1: feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a
Speaker 1: topic for the future, just to say hello, you can
Speaker 1: email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind
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