Speaker 1: Welcome to Creature feature production of iHeartRadio. I'm your host
Speaker 1: of Many Parasites, Katie Golden. I studied psychology and evolutionary biology,
Speaker 1: and today on this show, we are talking about biomimicry.
Speaker 1: It is when humans plagiarized from animals. We are not
Speaker 1: given any royalties to these creatures, and yet we use
Speaker 1: them as inspiration for our inventions. We're talking about shark
Speaker 1: skin suits in a non hannibal elector way, butterfly money.
Speaker 1: We're talking about gecko tape. And I have a guest
Speaker 1: who is bringing up some mystery animals even to me,
Speaker 1: So discover this more as we answer the age old
Speaker 1: question have you ever rubbed a shark? Joining me today
Speaker 1: is host of the Maximum Fun Network podcast Just the
Speaker 1: Zoo of Us. Ellen Weatherford, Welcome woo.
Speaker 2: Nobody listening can see me dancing. I'm dancing.
Speaker 1: Feel the energy.
Speaker 2: Just imagine in your head that I'm dancing and it's
Speaker 2: like really good, like I'm doing a really really like.
Speaker 1: The subtle vibrations of the air waves into the microphone
Speaker 1: as you dance does give an energy to the audio,
Speaker 1: a dance energy. Ellen, have you ever have you ever
Speaker 1: rubbed a shark.
Speaker 2: I have rubbed a shark. It's kind of fun. How
Speaker 2: you ask, because I just told this story like on
Speaker 2: like two weeks ago, maybe on our podcast. So my
Speaker 2: husband and I when we were just friends. This was
Speaker 2: prior to our relationship with a bunch of other friends. Yeah,
Speaker 2: I got shark. Sond We were out with a bunch
Speaker 2: of friends on the beach in the middle of the night.
Speaker 2: We were flying kites at like I don't know, eleven pm.
Speaker 2: It's pitch black dark. I've got my dog out on
Speaker 2: this beach. And she runs up and finds a dead
Speaker 2: bonnet head shark on the beach. Yeah. This is in Florida,
Speaker 2: by the way, I should have said. And Christian, who
Speaker 2: is now my husband, picks it up and he's like,
Speaker 2: you know, checking it out. He's he's looking at he's
Speaker 2: interested in sharks and stuff. Sure, And I was like,
Speaker 2: pleas me but I yeah, He's like, I'll mess with
Speaker 2: it a little bit. And I have historically been absolutely
Speaker 2: terrified of anything that lives in the water. I don't
Speaker 2: want to touch it. If it's in the water, I
Speaker 2: don't want to touch it. And so Christian asks me,
Speaker 2: because he knows I'm I'm also just a perilously curious person.
Speaker 2: And he says, do you know what a shark feels like?
Speaker 2: And I was like, no, I don't. Uh what does
Speaker 2: it feel like? He goes, I'm not gonna tell you.
Speaker 2: I was like why not? And he's like, because I
Speaker 2: think you should get over your fear and touch it.
Speaker 2: It's dead, it can't do anything to you. So if
Speaker 2: you want to find out what it feels like, you
Speaker 2: got to touch it. And he knew that my curiosity
Speaker 2: was going to get the better of me. And I did,
Speaker 2: in fact touch the shark and I.
Speaker 1: Rubbed it how to feel.
Speaker 2: I don't know if you want me to spoil what
Speaker 2: the texture is.
Speaker 1: I've rubbed a shark before, I've rubbed rays, I've rubbed sharks,
Speaker 1: I've rubbed a lot of things. Your fear about touching
Speaker 1: things in the ocean is actually pretty reasonable, because there
Speaker 1: are some things that if you touch, you could die.
Speaker 2: Most things will mess you up.
Speaker 1: A lot of things in the ocean will mess you up.
Speaker 1: Like if you see a little yellow octopus with its
Speaker 1: adorable and it's got bright blue rings, and you know,
Speaker 1: don't touch that one. It'll kill you with a touch
Speaker 1: A toxin, So your instinct is correct. But usually a shark,
Speaker 1: especially dead one, is not going to hurt you if
Speaker 1: you rub it. So, what did it feel like, Ellen,
Speaker 1: when you were rubbing that dead shark.
Speaker 2: So if you were to pet it as one would
Speaker 2: a dog, when you pet it from like head to
Speaker 2: tail in that direction, feels kind of like what you
Speaker 2: would expect it to, like a sort of smooth feeling
Speaker 2: from head to tail. But if you were to go
Speaker 2: in the opposite direction, it is really really rough and
Speaker 2: sand papery and like a like a really coarse grit
Speaker 2: sand paper, like you could you could actually get a
Speaker 2: rash from like rubbing it in the opposite direction.
Speaker 1: In fact, researchers do sometimes get rashes, like when they
Speaker 1: handle sharks gitting too much.
Speaker 2: It seems like the least cool injury you could get
Speaker 2: when working with sharks.
Speaker 1: It sounds like it sounds like you could be easily
Speaker 1: misunderstood if you're like, I got a rash from rubbing
Speaker 1: this shark. But yeah, it's it's not. It's not ideal
Speaker 1: thing to rub in the wrong direction. It's actually kind
Speaker 1: of reminds me a bit of cat tongues, you know,
Speaker 1: like that, Yeah, like they're kind of smooth in one direction,
Speaker 1: but they're super sand papery and rough in the other direction.
Speaker 1: And have you ever liked.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and they don't look that way, like when you
Speaker 2: just look at them, you can't. Yeah.
Speaker 1: When you look at a distance, you're like, that's just
Speaker 1: a little tongue that should feel gross and wet, but
Speaker 1: it's like actually really rough. And when you look at
Speaker 1: it more closely, you see all these like kind of
Speaker 1: tiny like hooks, like it looks a little bit like velcrow.
Speaker 1: And that's what causes that sort of coarse texture with sharks.
Speaker 1: The thing that's causing that coarse texture is denticles, which
Speaker 1: I love the word. It is just such a fun word,
Speaker 1: and dentical.
Speaker 2: You cannot stress enough the d at the beginning delta.
Speaker 2: We're not talking about tentacles. They're not covered in tiny
Speaker 2: little tentacles that would be Lovecraftian.
Speaker 1: I can only assume that denticles comes from the same
Speaker 1: I'm gonna say Latin root as dentin or dental meaning tooth,
Speaker 1: because it is these are tooth like projections, and when
Speaker 1: you look at a shark skin close up, it kind
Speaker 1: of looks like tiny our teeth all lined up kind
Speaker 1: of like dragon scales, I want to say, And so
Speaker 1: it makes sense then, right, like imagine you're petting a dragon,
Speaker 1: as I do all the time, and you're petting it
Speaker 1: in one way where the scales are sort of like
Speaker 1: the direction the scales are facing, then it will be smooth.
Speaker 1: But if you pet against it, it's gonna be really
Speaker 1: rough in sand paper. And so that's why that shark
Speaker 1: feels like you could sort of you know, finish a
Speaker 1: wood project, a table that you've been working on.
Speaker 2: This is my shark lathed.
Speaker 1: Yeah you like you like this banister? I I evened
Speaker 1: it out with shark, so uh yeah. So they have
Speaker 1: these these these denticles and they are really interesting because
Speaker 1: they offer these shark a few cool perks. One is
Speaker 1: obviously kind of some armor, right, Like it makes their
Speaker 1: skin a little harder, a little tougher, And you'd think
Speaker 1: that maybe this is for like shark on shark sort
Speaker 1: of attacks, but like it, which is true. It can
Speaker 1: make them a little more tough endurable like against other
Speaker 1: sharks or whales or large you know fish. But it
Speaker 1: has a lot of use actually for the small things,
Speaker 1: so like barnacles, parasites, bacteria, even algae. It the surface
Speaker 1: makes it harder for them to adhere to, to stick to,
Speaker 1: and so there it's kind of like you know, like
Speaker 1: if you have a section cup and you put it
Speaker 1: on like glass, like that's stuck on there forever and
Speaker 1: it's really hard to get it off. But if you
Speaker 1: put it on like a wall that's kind of bumpy,
Speaker 1: you stick it on there, it doesn't have as much
Speaker 1: like suction. It's harder to like stick on there. Even
Speaker 1: though like bartacles don't necessarily use like section to stick
Speaker 1: on things. It's like a similar concept board. It's like
Speaker 1: their their adherence to the shark is made more difficult
Speaker 1: by the fact that it has this y, like sharp
Speaker 1: bumpy texture.
Speaker 2: Like disrupts the sort of adherence to exactly. It's it's
Speaker 2: funny that you say suction because the like, just two
Speaker 2: weeks ago, I was talking to a researcher named Amani
Speaker 2: Weber Schultz who studies were moras and they do suction
Speaker 2: right on to like the underside or the side of
Speaker 2: a shark. And a lot of the things we talked
Speaker 2: about was that she actually studies denticals on different types
Speaker 2: of sharks and was telling me about how not only
Speaker 2: do like different species of sharks have different shapes of
Speaker 2: the denticals, just like how different sharks have different teeth, right,
Speaker 2: Like you can you can identify, like what shark a
Speaker 2: tooth came from by the shape of it. And it
Speaker 2: goes for the denticals too, that if you really zoom in,
Speaker 2: you could look and like the denticals will have different shapes.
Speaker 2: But then they'd have different shaped denticals on different parts
Speaker 2: of their body, like the ones that the nose would
Speaker 2: be different than the ones at the tail. She was
Speaker 2: telling me about that, my mind was blown, Like she was.
Speaker 2: She had some really amazing research that they did on
Speaker 2: shark scales, because it is so much more complicated than
Speaker 2: you might think. When you just look at a shark,
Speaker 2: like you can't even really tell they have those.
Speaker 1: Now they're tiny. You really can only see them under
Speaker 1: a microscope and you can feel them with your hand
Speaker 1: because of the roughness. But yeah, that's interesting. I mean,
Speaker 1: like remoras are not necessarily bad for sharks. It's a
Speaker 1: debate whether there it's a mutualistic versus like a commensal relationship,
Speaker 1: meaning like the remora might benefit more from the shark
Speaker 1: than the shark benefits from the remorra, but the remorra
Speaker 1: is not hurting the shark. So like the I think
Speaker 1: it's interesting. So like, I think the reason the remort
Speaker 1: can kind of stick to the shark one thing is
Speaker 1: that the remort is probably picking a part of the
Speaker 1: shark that's a little smoother. Also, but also the remorra
Speaker 1: is larger than say a barnacle, so it's like the
Speaker 1: larger it is like if you stick a plunger to
Speaker 1: a wall, you might get some suction where it's like
Speaker 1: a smaller section cup, you might not get it. I
Speaker 1: mean again, I'm not saying that the small animals use
Speaker 1: like section necessarily. It's just like the that surface becomes
Speaker 1: as you zoom out, it becomes smoother, and then as
Speaker 1: you zoom in, like when you're smaller and smaller, that's
Speaker 1: even bumpier for you as a tiny animal trying to
Speaker 1: like stick on to the shark.
Speaker 2: It's funny how like physics works differently when you're just tiny.
Speaker 1: Exactly.
Speaker 2: No, we're going to talk different physics.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about that some more. I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm not like a doctor of physics or of anything.
Speaker 1: Despite what you might think in terms of my you know,
Speaker 1: garage clinic, but no, I don't have any like I
Speaker 1: don't have a great understanding of physics, but yeah, it is.
Speaker 1: It is crazy. So the these denticles, in addition to
Speaker 1: providing a hostile environment for like bacteria, algae, barnacles, also
Speaker 1: reduce drag underwater, so it breaks up the res distance
Speaker 1: from the water and allows them to basically cut more
Speaker 1: through the water. So like you know, just like with air,
Speaker 1: will create drag, if you're a shark under the water,
Speaker 1: you're also gonna encounter some drag, like the resistance of
Speaker 1: the water against your shape and your body that slows
Speaker 1: you down. And so by reducing drag, they also so
Speaker 1: they make themselves more energy efficient, they make themselves faster
Speaker 1: and quieter. All of this is very important for an
Speaker 1: apex predator like a shark that wants to be well,
Speaker 1: not always apex depends on the size of the shark,
Speaker 1: but a shark that wants to be quiet, it's an
Speaker 1: ambush predator generally speaking. And it also is it benefits
Speaker 1: the shark to get to an animal quick more quickly
Speaker 1: than say other sharks or other predators. So all these
Speaker 1: things really benefit the shark, it also benefits Olympic swimmers,
Speaker 1: or at least used to.
Speaker 2: So.
Speaker 1: The most obvious use of shark skin in terms of
Speaker 1: human innovation is like a swimsuit to make us swim
Speaker 1: good and speedo, which is apparently not just a type
Speaker 1: of swimsuit. It's like a company made a swimsuit out
Speaker 1: of basically like manufactured fake shark skin. It's not made
Speaker 1: out of actual shark called fast skin that uses microscopic
Speaker 1: structures that are similar to denticles to reduce drag, and
Speaker 1: it was used by Olympic swimmers and it was so
Speaker 1: good that, like in two thousand and eight, the Olympic
Speaker 1: Committee was like, Okay, stop, you can't use this anymore.
Speaker 1: Guys are going too fast, You're breaking too many records
Speaker 1: and we don't like it, which seems weird to me
Speaker 1: because it seems fun that we're getting people to be
Speaker 1: faster and faster. I don't know, I'm not like an
Speaker 1: Olympics uh expert. I don't really know what the term
Speaker 1: for Olympics fans.
Speaker 2: Is an Olympian Olympia.
Speaker 1: I don't think that's is that like, is that someone
Speaker 1: who's into the Olympics or someone who competes in the Olympics.
Speaker 2: I think it's actually someone who lives in Olympia, Washington.
Speaker 1: Olympus heads, Olympics heads.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so it's I feel like if I was in
Speaker 2: that position where we're like, oh, we got to do
Speaker 2: something about these guys swimming too fast with it. Instead,
Speaker 2: just make the fast skin mandatory for everybody, right level
Speaker 2: the playing playing field, but faster, everybody going as fast
Speaker 2: as they can.
Speaker 1: I think a good compromise is like, you can use
Speaker 1: the fast skin, but you also have to dress like
Speaker 1: a little shark, so you need at dorsh need a
Speaker 1: little shark outfit.
Speaker 2: Like when I was a kid, they sold these like
Speaker 2: goggle like goggles that had the shark fin on and
Speaker 2: also these like flippery sort of maybe this was Shark
Speaker 2: Boy and Lave a Girl tie in merch, but they
Speaker 2: definitely and March for that movie almost certainly.
Speaker 1: That's a deep cut. But no. Yeah, if okay, look
Speaker 1: compromise Merman and women mer people.
Speaker 2: Put everyone in a murrhperson tail.
Speaker 1: Everyone everyone gottaware Mermaid outfit shark, but the shark kind
Speaker 1: the murman, Mrman and Mermaid. Sorry, I feel like we
Speaker 1: should have more inclusive like merh murpholk murfolk. That's it murfolks,
Speaker 1: and they have to be shark based murphfolk.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think there's what everybody do it make it
Speaker 2: mandatory for everybody, then it's equal merfolcification.
Speaker 1: So in addition to turning Olympians into murph folk, there
Speaker 1: are other applications for man made dentacles. You can use
Speaker 1: it to, like in paint to make the holes of
Speaker 1: ships more resistant to barnacle attachment, and in medical settings
Speaker 1: actually to prevent bacteria from growing on surface they're like
Speaker 1: working on sort of they like basically surfaces in a
Speaker 1: hospital make them more resistant to bacteria. One way to
Speaker 1: do that would be to make the service disruptive to
Speaker 1: the growth of bacteria by doing something similar to shirkskin
Speaker 1: with like little projections. And then also to improve aerodynamics,
Speaker 1: right like when turbines airplanes, it's a constant like air,
Speaker 1: obviously different than water, but similar concept supply in terms
Speaker 1: of breaking up wind reserves wind resistance, So like some
Speaker 1: things that work in terms of hydrodynamics might also work
Speaker 1: in aerodynamics. And that is all I know about the
Speaker 1: physics of this situation and nothing more.
Speaker 2: We maybe at a disadvantage here because I also, uh,
Speaker 2: not only do I not know anything about physics, tried
Speaker 2: to learn about physics. I took a physics class in
Speaker 2: college and I immediately failed, like within two weeks. They
Speaker 2: were like I was like, they were, I don't know
Speaker 2: how you have an f already, because I want.
Speaker 1: I once answered a question so bad on a physics
Speaker 1: test in high school. My teacher was like, wait, this
Speaker 1: was you, and I said yes, and he was like,
Speaker 1: this made me so upset, and he was like heartbroken
Speaker 1: that I would answer it so bad. He was like,
Speaker 1: this made me really sad. And I'm like, wow, I've
Speaker 1: broken my teacher. I answered a question so bad.
Speaker 2: I'm a biology person, leave me alone.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I don't even know what I was at that point.
Speaker 1: I was a World of Warcraft person who wasn't studying. No,
Speaker 1: I was very studious. I just sometimes would get very
Speaker 1: much in my own head, like during a test, like
Speaker 1: overthinking it to the point of writing a small paragraph
Speaker 1: that made no sense. Anyways, I traumatized my physics teachers
Speaker 1: the point, so you have some you have some human
Speaker 1: innovations of your own that you wanted to draw attention to.
Speaker 2: I do and Luckily, my first one ties in so
Speaker 2: perfectly to the one that you were just fantastic because
Speaker 2: you were talking about, you know, using animal adaptations for
Speaker 2: increased fluid dynamics, right like better in the case of
Speaker 2: shark skin, this is hydrodynamic, mineus aerodynamic.
Speaker 1: Nice.
Speaker 2: So to kind of set the scene a little bit,
Speaker 2: it's Japan, it's the nineteen nineties.
Speaker 1: I'm already sold.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Evangelian is huge, city pop playing in the background.
Speaker 1: I have a very limited understanding of Japanese culture in
Speaker 1: the nineties outside of anime.
Speaker 2: That's all I got. I'm so sorry, Like.
Speaker 1: I am a rube, I'm not city pop is playing.
Speaker 2: It's a vibe. Now. The original Shinkansen bullet tree had
Speaker 2: a problem. They were way, way, way too loud. So
Speaker 2: these bullet trains had this kind of like blunt, rounded nose,
Speaker 2: and when the bullet train would go through a tunnel,
Speaker 2: which these tunnels were often like around neighborhoods and offices
Speaker 2: and places where people are going to be. So when
Speaker 2: this train with the rounded nose would go through a tunnel,
Speaker 2: they would make a booming sound every single time. It
Speaker 2: would be like a sonic boom that would like wake people.
Speaker 1: Up at night. That sounds bad. I love train it's
Speaker 1: not ideal. Yeah, that would make me turn against trains.
Speaker 2: Like I have lived with a train with train tracks
Speaker 2: literally in our backyard, Like yeah, we have that train
Speaker 2: would go by.
Speaker 1: We have a tram that runs like right outside, and
Speaker 1: it's fine because it's.
Speaker 2: Oh, we had a slight train like great trains going
Speaker 2: through a backyard, where like when the trains would go by,
Speaker 2: our dishes would shake in the cabinets and you kind
Speaker 2: of get used to it after a while. But this
Speaker 2: was like this was a legitimate, like sonic boom that
Speaker 2: was happening every single time of training.
Speaker 1: It's like that's a form of torture to like wake
Speaker 1: people up with loud noises.
Speaker 2: Maybe it was intentional. I don't know. Maybe there was
Speaker 2: some sort of CIA. I don't know.
Speaker 1: Thomas the tank engine gone CIA.
Speaker 2: He's an agent of the state. So this engineer named
Speaker 2: ag Nakatsu had to figure out how to make them
Speaker 2: quieter because this was a menace. Ag Nakatsu was also
Speaker 2: a bird watcher. He spent a lot of time out.
Speaker 1: Watching watch birds. Am I right? What?
Speaker 2: Oh my god? I could never would be so embarrassing
Speaker 2: I'd never do that my binoculars in the background.
Speaker 1: I'd never get excited about gray tits.
Speaker 2: I've never done that. I've never taken pictures from five
Speaker 2: hundred feet away of a grebe that I wanted to
Speaker 2: identify later. So being a birdwatcher, he knew about kingfish, which,
Speaker 2: if you're not totally familiar with what a kingfisher is,
Speaker 2: it's kind of a stout shaped bird with a really
Speaker 2: really long, really really pointy beak. A kuka burra is
Speaker 2: a type of kingfisher. So he was familiar with kingfishers
Speaker 2: with this really long, really pointy beak. Now, the important
Speaker 2: thing is that kingfishers often dive into the water because
Speaker 2: they eat fish. And when they dive into water, they
Speaker 2: do it at really really high speeds, but they don't splash,
Speaker 2: like they just kind of seamlessly like dive into the
Speaker 2: water totally like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is beautiful, it is gorgeous.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like these these guys are they have the game cornered.
Speaker 2: It is beautiful. So the reason they're able to do
Speaker 2: this is because their long, pointy, tapered beaks are pushing
Speaker 2: the water to the side rather than in front, so
Speaker 2: it's making the water go around their head and behind them,
Speaker 2: rather than like bunching all of it up in the
Speaker 2: front and making it splash to the sides. So Nakatsu
Speaker 2: and his team gathered a bunch of data on Kingfisher beaks, right,
Speaker 2: they did like you know, high speed videos and observations,
Speaker 2: and they measured the curvature of the beak and the
Speaker 2: length and the proportions and everything like that. Used all
Speaker 2: of that, use what they learned from Kingfisher beaks and
Speaker 2: tested out simulations of different shapes of trains and settled
Speaker 2: on this long tapered It wasn't completely pointy in the front,
Speaker 2: but it was much less rounded than it had been originally.
Speaker 2: And so in nineteen ninety seven, the West Japan Railway
Speaker 2: Company introduces the five hundred series, which has a long
Speaker 2: pointed nose that mimics the beak of a Kingfisher. And
Speaker 2: not only were the tunnel booms eliminated, so problem solved,
Speaker 2: mission accomplished. We did it, boys, uh. But the trains
Speaker 2: were also so aerodynamic that they ran faster and consumed
Speaker 2: less electricity, so they worked better they did before, and
Speaker 2: they were cheaper to run, so all around, total win.
Speaker 1: I'm looking at these trains and they're pointy. I like it.
Speaker 2: It's a pretty train.
Speaker 1: One. This is beautiful. I love these trains. It's so cool.
Speaker 2: Girly pop train girl.
Speaker 1: It's like she is man, she is ready, she is
Speaker 1: slaying sleigh train. That's fantastic.
Speaker 2: This maybe a kawai train.
Speaker 1: I certainly, yes, it's a Oh there's a Hello kitty train.
Speaker 1: Oh my god, man, that's very cool that. This is
Speaker 1: so cool though, because I love it when it's like
Speaker 1: there's an animal that looks because you look at a
Speaker 1: kingfisher and it's they're adorable. Number one.
Speaker 2: They're also think of gorgeous.
Speaker 1: They are beautiful, right, especially like there's different kinds of species,
Speaker 1: Like you mentioned, some are more color than others, but
Speaker 1: there's ones that are like bright blue and orange, and
Speaker 1: like even their beaks are quite pretty. They can be
Speaker 1: sort of purply orange and they but the funny thing
Speaker 1: about them is like they have proportional with their body.
Speaker 1: Their beak is huge and their head.
Speaker 2: And their head is so big.
Speaker 1: It's big, so they look like kind of like a bobblehead.
Speaker 1: And their tail is really short and stumpy, and so
Speaker 1: they're not really built to be great flyers, like they're
Speaker 1: fine at flying, but it's really the the diving is
Speaker 1: where they shine because otherwise they kind of they have
Speaker 1: a funny looking little body with a little stumptail. And
Speaker 1: so it is interesting because it's like we look at
Speaker 1: things like penguins and it's like, man, why would penguins,
Speaker 1: you know, rid themselves of the ability to fly? That
Speaker 1: flying seems really cool and really great, But then you
Speaker 1: look at them underwater and they're beautiful swimmers, just elegant, amazing.
Speaker 1: Same things with puffins, which actually puffins can fly, but
Speaker 1: they you know, when you look at them underwater, they're
Speaker 1: incredibly graceful. And these birds that look kind of like
Speaker 1: they tend to be very cute as well, like puffins
Speaker 1: Kingfisher's penguins. Somehow being more hydro dynamic makes makes you cute.
Speaker 2: And oh, I didn't mention like why the trains were
Speaker 2: booming when they were going through the tunnel, because apparently
Speaker 2: there's like this is once again getting into like the
Speaker 2: physics of it, but when the train it's specifically when
Speaker 2: the train is going through a tunnel at high speeds,
Speaker 2: because the boom had not been an issue when trains
Speaker 2: were slower, but when the trains are going really fast
Speaker 2: through an enclosed tunnel, basically all of the air that
Speaker 2: the train is pushing up against bunches up at the
Speaker 2: nose of the train and just kind of doesn't have
Speaker 2: enough space around the train to escape, Yeah, because of
Speaker 2: the tunnel.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So it's bunching up all of the air and
Speaker 2: creating this like air cushion up in front of the train,
Speaker 2: so that when all that air gets pushed out of
Speaker 2: the mouth of the tunnel, it just explodes.
Speaker 1: Yeah. It's like it's like you have a like you
Speaker 1: fill a plastic bag with air and then you slap
Speaker 1: it and it pops. It makes a big popping sound,
Speaker 1: but you're doing that with like a train in a tunnel.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So when trains were slower, didn't really have that problem,
Speaker 2: right because you just like it just goes out there,
Speaker 2: you know, it's it's not going that fast.
Speaker 1: Yeah, Like, I mean, I think there's a there's a
Speaker 1: similar reason, although obviously without the tunnel aspect for sonic
Speaker 1: booms for planes, right, Like it's like for super fast planes,
Speaker 1: it's just like it is pushing the air, you know,
Speaker 1: creating that sort of bunching effect. Even though it's like
Speaker 1: it's just going so so fast that it creates that
Speaker 1: kind of like impact of like breaking through this like
Speaker 1: cone of air.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean you look at like jets, you know, like, oh,
Speaker 2: look at fighter jets, and they have the exact same
Speaker 2: like shape of the nose as kingfisher beaks, right, Like
Speaker 2: it's it's nearly exactly the same. You can definitely see
Speaker 2: like a lot. And also you know, you look at
Speaker 2: a fighter jet. I was just at the Boeing Museum
Speaker 2: of Flight. The Museum of Flight is in like Taquila,
Speaker 2: really cool, close to where I live, and I have
Speaker 2: a three year old, so we've gone to the Museum
Speaker 2: of Flight like fifty times. And the jets are weirdly
Speaker 2: shaped almost exactly like a Kingfisher, not just in the
Speaker 2: pointy knows, but the fact that like the wings are
Speaker 2: not super long, the tail is pretty short, like the
Speaker 2: things that you were saying about, Like, yeah, the stumpy
Speaker 2: tail right kind of like in a lot of different
Speaker 2: ways reminds me of the Kingfisher's.
Speaker 1: So cool, it is, really it's it's neat because the
Speaker 1: physics that guide animal evolution is also something that we
Speaker 1: have to pay attention to, and so all these things
Speaker 1: that we develop are going to converge in terms of
Speaker 1: natural shapes, either animals, plants, you know, water droplets, whatever.
Speaker 1: Like we we can't even though we are inventors and
Speaker 1: we can kind of do things like we at the end,
Speaker 1: everything on our planet and in the universe has to
Speaker 1: obey physics, and so we're gonna keep running into these
Speaker 1: parallel structures, which is very cool. And I love that
Speaker 1: there's these King Fisher trains that are sometimes pink and purple.
Speaker 1: The cutter the better, the cuter the better. I think
Speaker 1: that that cuteness may also have some kind of like
Speaker 1: aerodynamic thing. I haven't proven it yet, but I'm going
Speaker 1: to say.
Speaker 2: Health design will always bend towards cuteness.
Speaker 1: I feel like Hello Kitty will just like make the
Speaker 1: air around the train and go like, oh okay, like
Speaker 1: and reduce wind resistance, because who can resist Hello Kitty.
Speaker 2: The air simply steps around like right this way, yeah, right.
Speaker 1: This way, ma'am, Miss miss Hello. I guess is her.
Speaker 2: Name, miss miss Kitty?
Speaker 1: Miss Kitty? Okay, I thought her first name's not Hello.
Speaker 2: Please call me hello Miss Kitty?
Speaker 1: Was my mother? Sorry, Miss Kitty? Yes, Miss Kitty is
Speaker 1: my mother's name. All right, well, where take a quick
Speaker 1: break and wait. When we get back, we are going
Speaker 1: to discuss more inventions inspired or one might say, stolen
Speaker 1: from animals. Okay, so let's talk about gecko feet, right,
Speaker 1: they're weird. Huh.
Speaker 2: Always I'm always game to talk about gecko feet.
Speaker 1: Gecko feet? Have you ever interacted with a gecko?
Speaker 2: Boy? Have I? I have had?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Okay, so I've had pet leopard geckos. But leopard geckos
Speaker 2: kind of don't count for what we're talking about because
Speaker 2: they're actually like ground. They don't climb or stick on things. Yeah,
Speaker 2: the leopard geckos stay on the ground, so not important.
Speaker 2: We'll forget about them.
Speaker 1: No, cute, don't forget about it.
Speaker 2: I'm cute.
Speaker 1: There's stubby little tails. Their cute little face is so good.
Speaker 1: They're so good.
Speaker 2: But I did spend a couple of years working at
Speaker 2: a pet store, and the pet store i worked at
Speaker 2: sold crested geckos, which are the little the ones that
Speaker 2: like it's like those sticky hands that you get at
Speaker 2: the store, like you can just like smack them on
Speaker 2: and they love just jump out on sides of stuff.
Speaker 2: Oh my god, those things scared me so bad because
Speaker 2: I was always so scared to clean their cage because
Speaker 2: I knew they were going to jump on and jump.
Speaker 1: I had one, so like I had one in college
Speaker 1: because we had you are not really technically allowed to
Speaker 1: have pets, and says like, all right, how do I
Speaker 1: smuggle an animal into my room? Because I love them?
Speaker 1: And so I got a crust of gecko. I look,
Speaker 1: I feel like I was not well equipped as a
Speaker 1: college student who has already sleep deprived to give this
Speaker 1: leopard gecko its best life. But I tried. I would
Speaker 1: like feed it because like I would feed it baby
Speaker 1: food mixed with cricket powder, which was nutritionally sufficient. But
Speaker 1: I fear that this poor get go was probably very bored,
Speaker 1: and so like I would take it out quite a
Speaker 1: bit and let it just jump around and then freak
Speaker 1: out when I couldn't find it because it's like, oh God,
Speaker 1: I'm gonna step on it. But then I'd always find it.
Speaker 1: And it had these amazing feet that like when you
Speaker 1: look at them, they're kind of flat and splayed out
Speaker 1: and almost leaflike each toe and each toe would have
Speaker 1: all these ridges and they're so sticky, velvety, very velvety.
Speaker 1: It's very soft, and they are They stick to walls,
Speaker 1: they stick to my shirt, my skin, and yet there's
Speaker 1: no residue left behind. They're not slimy, they're not gooey.
Speaker 1: There's no like glue like secretion that's coming out of
Speaker 1: these guys. So it's like it's still this it's like
Speaker 1: this weird sticky feeling, and yet when unless it poops
Speaker 1: on me, there's no residue left behind, And so what
Speaker 1: is what's going on with those feet? So it's really incredible,
Speaker 1: and it involves physics that it's a little above my
Speaker 1: pay grade, but I'll do my best. So they are
Speaker 1: not covered in slime, but they have a bunch of
Speaker 1: these tiny ridges, and each ridge is covered in hundreds
Speaker 1: of thousands of microscopic hairs. And these microscopic hairs use
Speaker 1: something called weak Vanderval's force that helps them adhere to surfaces,
Speaker 1: which you know Vander's valls you climb up zim so
Speaker 1: the Vandervo force. I think I use that joke the
Speaker 1: last time I talked about these geckos, but you know.
Speaker 2: Well I wasn't here.
Speaker 1: So we're making recycling. Recycling is good for the planet,
Speaker 1: so recycling jokes must also be good. So the Vanderwald's
Speaker 1: force is a weak electrostatic force that occurs when two
Speaker 1: molecules are really close to each other, but not too close,
Speaker 1: so it's like this, there's this like if they're too far,
Speaker 1: you don't have the force at all. If you're too close,
Speaker 1: you actually it's like a slight repair helling force, kind
Speaker 1: of like when you hold two magnets together with the
Speaker 1: same polarity, they kind of repel each other. But if
Speaker 1: you're at this sort of Goldilock zone, there's a slight
Speaker 1: weak attraction between these molecules and it has something to
Speaker 1: do with electron density, and there sort of ends my
Speaker 1: ability to comprehend where it's like there is like you know,
Speaker 1: but the general idea of like electrons or molecules and
Speaker 1: electrons is that they're usually trying to find some kind
Speaker 1: of balance of like the number of electrons, and so
Speaker 1: if you have sort of a lopsided electron density, you
Speaker 1: might have a slight attraction to another molecule because they
Speaker 1: have like electrons that are like, oh, I can sort
Speaker 1: of fill in this space that's less dense, or it
Speaker 1: could repel it, right, like if it's like dense, and
Speaker 1: then it like kind of pushes against the other and.
Speaker 2: It may help people to know that. Like the electrons
Speaker 2: themselves have like a negative electric chart, yes, and the
Speaker 2: protons and the nucleus of the atom have a positive
Speaker 2: electric charge. That's like you can get like just like
Speaker 2: how magnets have like a north and south pole, right,
Speaker 2: Like the positive and negative positively charged areas attract negatively
Speaker 2: charged areas, but if the negatively charged areas are too
Speaker 2: close together, then they be like.
Speaker 1: No no, no, no, no no no exactly exactly so, but
Speaker 1: it's so strange because it's like it's happening on this
Speaker 1: extremely tiny scale, and then it's also like you know,
Speaker 1: on the atomic scale. And then it's it's something that
Speaker 1: the it's not just like a force that is consistent.
Speaker 1: It depends on the position of molecules. Like if they're
Speaker 1: too close, they are somewhat repellent, but then if they're
Speaker 1: like just close enough, there's a slight attraction. Physics is wacky.
Speaker 2: There's a I want to say that, like the don't
Speaker 2: the ridges in it like give it a higher surface area,
Speaker 2: so there's like more attract.
Speaker 1: Too, exactly, yes, and so when you they also each
Speaker 1: hair ends not just like that's the end of the hair,
Speaker 1: but it actually ends in sort of like a bristles
Speaker 1: or like a dandelion puff of things called so the
Speaker 1: hairs themselves are called cite, and then on top of
Speaker 1: the hairs, the like bristles are called spatula. And so
Speaker 1: because there's millions of these hairs, and then on each
Speaker 1: hair there's like hundreds of these spitula, there's hundreds of
Speaker 1: millions of like points of connection to the surface. And
Speaker 1: so even though the van Dervald's force is super super weak,
Speaker 1: when you have a ton of it, right, like a
Speaker 1: ton of hairs and a ton of connections, it's strong
Speaker 1: enough to hold up the little body of a gecko.
Speaker 1: Maybe not a human body, right, we've never invented gecko
Speaker 1: shoes that work. But like, if you're light enough and
Speaker 1: you have enough of these these hairs, these connection points
Speaker 1: that are tiny enough that they can get close enough,
Speaker 1: like they have to be tiny, right, so that they
Speaker 1: can actually get close enough to the molecules on the surface.
Speaker 1: And so like you have all of these teeny tiny
Speaker 1: you know, nano like points of contact that each one
Speaker 1: is like very weakly attracted to the surface. But then
Speaker 1: you add it up times hundreds of millions and then
Speaker 1: you get like an actual force that you can observe.
Speaker 1: You actually can observe this even if you don't have
Speaker 1: a gecko in your life. When you're using microfiber cloths
Speaker 1: to clean your glasses, or you know, to dust or
Speaker 1: something like, you have a sort of dust that has
Speaker 1: like a little bit of you know, microfiber or something,
Speaker 1: and it like like it attracts dust to it just
Speaker 1: like slightly, and that also uses Vandrvald's forces. So you know,
Speaker 1: this is very cool, and obviously we need to exploit
Speaker 1: it for our own human needs for tape that doesn't
Speaker 1: leave residue, because that is like the number one issue
Speaker 1: facing humanity is tape that leaves too much residue.
Speaker 2: So we need everybody we've got on this.
Speaker 1: Every like every mind. Take them away from cancer research
Speaker 1: and get get you on some tape that doesn't leave
Speaker 1: that gross residue on walls.
Speaker 2: Do you think that there's like a lobby against this
Speaker 2: product by big Googon Do you think big like bring
Speaker 2: them down many googon.
Speaker 1: Googn's pockets run deep as all I'm gonna say but
Speaker 1: follow the money, follow the so yeah, it's researchers looked
Speaker 1: into how to recreate this, and they used carbon nanotubes,
Speaker 1: which are like very very very teeny tiny structures that
Speaker 1: you can use with carbon molecules, and uh, you can
Speaker 1: create these like uh, you know, like electron microscope structures essentially,
Speaker 1: and they created kind of like similar to like the
Speaker 1: gecko feet where it's like not just like a uniform
Speaker 1: surface of the carbon nanotubes, but like sort of like
Speaker 1: these this like you know, micro pattern of these things
Speaker 1: making points of contact, and that allowed them to create
Speaker 1: a tape that's like super sticky using these Vandrvold's forces,
Speaker 1: but doesn't actually have like a residue, and it's called
Speaker 1: nanotape and you can actually buy it. It's like been
Speaker 1: out for I don't know, around a decade.
Speaker 2: I have definitely seen people like on TikTok or something
Speaker 2: talking about like hanging up posters with nano tape. It's
Speaker 2: like it's supposed to be a very renter friendly basically
Speaker 2: because it doesn't pull up the tape, it doesn't leave
Speaker 2: a hole behind in the wall. It just it's like
Speaker 2: it never happens. But the drawback is that it's really
Speaker 2: really weak.
Speaker 1: It's carry we don't hang a shell a little bit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: you can't hang a shell with it. You can hang posters,
Speaker 1: maybe a super lightweight picture frame with a bunch of
Speaker 1: the tape. But yeah, it's very weak. But that's because
Speaker 1: Vanderval's forces are weak. But you could probably like tape
Speaker 1: a gecko to your wall with this nano tape, just
Speaker 1: the one gecko, just one gecko. Like if you put
Speaker 1: it on a gecko's back, now the gecko can be
Speaker 1: sticky on both sides.
Speaker 2: Then you drop the gecko and you see which side
Speaker 2: it lands on. And like the cat with a buttered
Speaker 2: toast on its back.
Speaker 1: Don't actually put nanotape on gecko. Be nice to gecko.
Speaker 1: Probably be a better owner to gecko than I was
Speaker 1: in college. Like it wasn't mean to the gecko. I
Speaker 1: just feel like it did not get enough stimulation mentally,
Speaker 1: This poor little gecko.
Speaker 2: The only thing I remember about the crested geckos that
Speaker 2: I took care of in our store. First of all,
Speaker 2: so soft, their whole body, velvety, so soft. You don't
Speaker 2: think of reptiles as being soft, but they're legitimately very soft.
Speaker 2: And pleasant to touch. And also their food which is
Speaker 2: like a powdered food that you'd like mix with like moisture,
Speaker 2: smelled amazing.
Speaker 1: Mingo, Yeah, no, I mixed it. I would mix so
Speaker 1: it was like this powder is like maybe it wasn't
Speaker 1: powdered crickets, but some kind of protein powder mixed with
Speaker 1: baby food.
Speaker 2: I was always so so so tempted to just just
Speaker 2: take a little, just a little.
Speaker 1: Taste to like vitamins. It tasted like kids vitamins.
Speaker 2: It was, you know, so it just makes me want
Speaker 2: it more. I love kidamins.
Speaker 1: I just feel like I should have made like a
Speaker 1: tiny baby Bjorn and taken this gecko out and about
Speaker 1: with me just because like I just feel like this
Speaker 1: geka must have been bored because I would try to
Speaker 1: play with it. But you know, other than it just
Speaker 1: launching itself across the room, like what else is there?
Speaker 1: Like it's like, great, the same futan over and over again.
Speaker 2: So I don't know, and so nice hear geckos. Don't
Speaker 2: drop them or put tape.
Speaker 1: On them exactly, don't, I mean, but let them jump around,
Speaker 1: give them, give them fun stuff, build like.
Speaker 2: It, take them to a trampoline park.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, uh yeah, I'm gonna say, if it's like
Speaker 1: crusted gecko day at the trampoline park where it's only
Speaker 1: crusted geckos play.
Speaker 2: Or indoor skydiving. Man, if you've took they can jump
Speaker 2: around as much as they want.
Speaker 1: If you took a crusted gecko to chuck e cheese,
Speaker 1: you'd never find that thing again.
Speaker 2: That's gone.
Speaker 1: It's gone, it's gone. So Elle, you got you got
Speaker 1: something for me, You got some kind of invention for
Speaker 1: me to hear about.
Speaker 2: I do I have a second invention. So have you
Speaker 2: ever heard of a little fish called the yellow boxes?
Speaker 1: Shoot? Love it.
Speaker 2: They're so cute.
Speaker 1: They're cute and they move so funny. It's like they
Speaker 1: because they got the teeny little itty bitty fins, but
Speaker 1: they beat them real hard, like so kind of like,
Speaker 1: I mean, not the same as hummingbirds because it works
Speaker 1: kind of different underwater, but it's a similar effect where
Speaker 1: they just kind of like boop boop boop move around.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So anybody who's not familiar with the yellow
Speaker 2: box fish will be astonished to learn that it is
Speaker 2: named for the distinct square shape of it's a body.
Speaker 2: And could you do fair boxy which is kind of
Speaker 2: like you have to kind of be looking at them
Speaker 2: from like dead on to see like the box shape,
Speaker 2: because from the side they kind of look like a
Speaker 2: maybe just a chunky fish. But what's really kind of surprising,
Speaker 2: like you said, is that despite their very sort of
Speaker 2: bulky and unwieldy form, they are the opposite of hydrodynamic, right,
Speaker 2: just they're a complete blunt face.
Speaker 1: But they're like a zion shape.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes, like the S and I'm glad you said
Speaker 2: that because that's along a similar vein. But they're surprisingly
Speaker 2: agile swimmers, so they can have these little bursts of
Speaker 2: speed where they can swim forward really really fast, but
Speaker 2: they're really really good at making tight turns, so they
Speaker 2: can turn on a dime. They don't have to, like
Speaker 2: a lot of other fish maybe need to be kind
Speaker 2: of like moving forward while they swim or like while
Speaker 2: they turn.
Speaker 1: I got a dripped a little bit, but these guys, yeah,
Speaker 1: because they.
Speaker 2: Can just ye on a dime. They can kind of
Speaker 2: swivel around, and they're really really agile in the water.
Speaker 2: So because they're such you know, skilled little swimmers, the
Speaker 2: engineers at Mercedes Benz were inspired to try modeling a
Speaker 2: car after the box fish.
Speaker 1: Slap slap on one of these box fish, like, how
Speaker 1: what can I do today to get you inside one
Speaker 1: of these bad boys?
Speaker 2: You slaping the side of it, like this bad boy
Speaker 2: can fish so much planked in it?
Speaker 1: Yeah, making a wet squelching sound every time he hits
Speaker 1: the fish.
Speaker 2: Which I'm already excited about because this is just a
Speaker 2: cute fish and I love a cute car. So I'm like,
Speaker 2: I'm I'm here for it really just visibly, I want
Speaker 2: to just esthetically, I'm down.
Speaker 1: I feel like it should be the same rules as
Speaker 1: the Olympians rules, where if you make a box fish car,
Speaker 1: it has still look like a big box fish.
Speaker 2: It needs to have the spots on it, yeah, and
Speaker 2: make like it would have been great if they have.
Speaker 1: It needs to have bubbles come out of the tailpipe somehow.
Speaker 2: It needs to be as cute as but you got
Speaker 2: to lean into it. They didn't lean into it as
Speaker 2: much as I wanted them to. And this was just
Speaker 2: a concept car. This didn't actually make it to the market.
Speaker 2: This was introduced in two thousand and five and it
Speaker 2: was called the Bionic, which is maybe too cool of
Speaker 2: a name for what the car actually looked like because
Speaker 2: bionic I feel I associate with bionicles, which I don't
Speaker 2: know if they're but it was like robot toys, Yeah,
Speaker 2: little robot toys that were popular when I was a kid.
Speaker 2: I don't know if they're still popular, but it makes
Speaker 2: me think of like a very cool transformer zesque sort
Speaker 2: of robot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm looking at it.
Speaker 2: It's a box.
Speaker 1: The thing I appreciate is they did make it shiny
Speaker 1: and yellow. It's a very pretty color, so it's it's neat.
Speaker 1: I mean, box fish are The cute thing about box
Speaker 1: fish is that they aren't like shiny and yellow, but
Speaker 1: they are bright yellow and they some species at least
Speaker 1: have these like like little black thoughts. They're black polka
Speaker 1: dot and adorable, so cute, So it's it's yeah. I
Speaker 1: can see though that the shape is sort of box
Speaker 1: fish like. It's not nearly as cute as box fish,
Speaker 1: but it is.
Speaker 2: And they did kind of back off on like the
Speaker 2: squareness of it. It does have like still sort of
Speaker 2: an identifiable car shape.
Speaker 1: But what is like, what is the physics concept behind this?
Speaker 1: Like why is this okay? Why is the shape good?
Speaker 2: So the engineers believed like this was the plot process
Speaker 2: was that the square shape of the box fish was
Speaker 2: both reducing drag in the water and stabilizing the body.
Speaker 2: So the thinking was that if the fish tilted in
Speaker 2: one direction, the water swirling around it would push against
Speaker 2: the projecting angles of the body, so like it would
Speaker 2: have these sharp angles on like sort of all sides
Speaker 2: of its body to push against swirling water when it tilted.
Speaker 2: So the idea was that this was keeping it upright
Speaker 2: when it made these sharp turns. But this introduced a paradox.
Speaker 2: So the stabilization from that kind of maneuvering should make
Speaker 2: it more difficult for the fish to make sudden tight turns.
Speaker 2: Right if the if the angles are pushing against the water,
Speaker 2: then that should make it not very good at making
Speaker 2: tight turns. So people were kind of baffled as to
Speaker 2: how the fish's box shape could be both more maneuverable
Speaker 2: and more stable, because those two things should be a
Speaker 2: kind of a trade off from each other. You should
Speaker 2: either be more maneuverable or more stable, not both. So
Speaker 2: in twenty fifteen, this was ten years after the bionic
Speaker 2: was sort of displayed. It like I said, it didn't
Speaker 2: really go anywhere it was just a cool idea. Ten
Speaker 2: years later, researchers printed, not printed, they made no, they
Speaker 2: did print. They made three D printed models of box fish,
Speaker 2: and they ran fluid dynamic simulations where they would like
Speaker 2: put them in, you know, a box full of water
Speaker 2: and like jet water over it basically to see how
Speaker 2: the water flows over their bodies and move them around
Speaker 2: to see like how the water flowed around them. This
Speaker 2: was to test how well they actually reduced drag, and
Speaker 2: it turned out that they were terrible at it. They
Speaker 2: created a ton of drag in the water, so they
Speaker 2: produced twice as much drag as non box shaped fish.
Speaker 2: And they also found that their shape actually destabilized them
Speaker 2: in the water and made them more likely to spin
Speaker 2: out with the flow of water around them. So like
Speaker 2: they were not stable at all, like highly maneuverable, not stable.
Speaker 2: So if they were to kind of continue on with
Speaker 2: this car design, you would have a car that could
Speaker 2: make tight turns, but it was going to be falling over,
Speaker 2: like it was going to be tiling.
Speaker 1: Well, the thing is that like box fish don't use wheels,
Speaker 1: so like the location is different. It's not them like
Speaker 1: on a road encountering wind resistance, it's them under the
Speaker 1: water encounting like water resistance, but also the locomotion is
Speaker 1: from the little the cute, little stubby fence.
Speaker 2: Yes, that was kind of what they came to the
Speaker 2: conclusion of because they had always kind of like the
Speaker 2: paradox was under the assumption that the shape of the
Speaker 2: fish was providing its stability. But after running these simulations
Speaker 2: and finding that it actually wasn't, the scientists were like, well,
Speaker 2: how do they actually swim so well? Because you can
Speaker 2: see the end result they're a good swimmer. So like,
Speaker 2: how are they a good swimmer if they're not? Like,
Speaker 2: how are they not spinning out every time you know,
Speaker 2: a stiff breeze rolls by. I don't know what the
Speaker 2: equivalent oc current? Yeah, So like why why are they
Speaker 2: not spinning out at all times? And the scientists for, like,
Speaker 2: I mean they have fins like they cars don't have fins,
Speaker 2: like they have something cars as.
Speaker 1: And cool Lightning strike.
Speaker 2: And that is of course to make it go faster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, light makes it go fast.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the fish's tiny little fins are actually perfect
Speaker 2: because they're so little and so stubby, they can make
Speaker 2: very very quick, rapid movements in the water. So they
Speaker 2: can make tiny adjustments to fix their tilt and keep
Speaker 2: them stable when they would otherwise be spinning out.
Speaker 1: Likes it's more like a drone and not like a car.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like really great for like staying in one spot
Speaker 2: and like swiveling around, but not super great for going
Speaker 2: forward very fast. Right, And that that research. By the way,
Speaker 2: I found the paper. It was called box fish swimming paradox.
Speaker 2: Resolved forces by the flow of water around the body
Speaker 2: promote maneuverability. And that was by Weasenberg at All in
Speaker 2: the Journal of the Rural Society in February of twenty fifteen.
Speaker 1: Man at All the at All family, Like.
Speaker 2: They're killing it.
Speaker 1: They're killing it so many papers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, So I thought it was kind of funny that
Speaker 2: like all of this, this entire car was designed based
Speaker 2: on like an assumption. But I mean, you know, people
Speaker 2: hadn't checked at that point. It was a pretty reasonable assumption.
Speaker 1: Cry.
Speaker 2: But it's than ten years later scientists were like, yeah,
Speaker 2: isn't that weird. We should check.
Speaker 1: Try to make a car in the shape of a
Speaker 1: box and see what we can see.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Like we can see like cars did hit the
Speaker 2: consumer market that are box shaped. Yeah, my husband had
Speaker 2: one at the time when we got together, one of
Speaker 2: those Scions, Yeah, the Sion box cars.
Speaker 1: We would always it's nice, there's wind.
Speaker 2: Would always there was certainly a lot of that, and
Speaker 2: we would make a joke because sometimes we were little Hellians,
Speaker 2: we were little hooligans, you know, speeding around at night
Speaker 2: and stuff, and we would joke that if we ever
Speaker 2: like spun out or if the car flipped or something,
Speaker 2: it would be like rolling a dike.
Speaker 1: It's just like, there's really windy part when you're driving
Speaker 1: sort of up California, near northern California, there's some of
Speaker 1: this farmland that just gets super windy because there's no
Speaker 1: like mountains around to disrupt the wind. And I like,
Speaker 1: I was like, am I is my car just gonna
Speaker 1: get tipped over because it's shaped like a box and
Speaker 1: this is windy.
Speaker 2: Every time it feels.
Speaker 1: Like, yeah, it feels like I'm just gonna get like
Speaker 1: blown away and then just tumbleweed my way off the road. Well,
Speaker 1: it's good. Try everybody with the box fish car.
Speaker 2: Good, honestly, keep making it. It's a cute car.
Speaker 1: Make a box fish. I want a box fish drone shape.
Speaker 2: Make more cars for purely aesthetic, tell you or cuteness?
Speaker 1: Yeah, the cars are boring now I hate them. So
Speaker 1: they're all this gray, gray or black and shape like
Speaker 1: a turd.
Speaker 2: Bring back the bionics.
Speaker 1: Let's have bionical cars.
Speaker 2: All right.
Speaker 1: Well, we're going to take a quick break and when
Speaker 1: we get back to more inventions that will change your
Speaker 1: life or not, I don't know. But they're inspired by animals.
Speaker 1: All right. So Ellen, what's what's your two favorite things
Speaker 1: in the world?
Speaker 2: My two? I can only pick two. I'm gonna say
Speaker 2: Cappy Baris and the Ben and Jerry's Dirt Cup flavor.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's a good Those are two good things. Mine
Speaker 1: mine is a butterfly wings and money.
Speaker 2: Mmmm, I do those are great things. I love both
Speaker 2: of them.
Speaker 1: But you're kind of like the bin and like if
Speaker 1: I could chill out with a Kappy Barra and have
Speaker 1: Ben and Jerry's Dirt Cup ice cream and hang out
Speaker 1: with the karap bar at the same time, that'd be cool.
Speaker 1: But the thing is I can use the money to
Speaker 1: get the to get the Ben and Jerry's and the
Speaker 1: butter It's.
Speaker 2: True money will unlock all of those experiences and.
Speaker 1: The butterfly wings to fly myself to Kappy Barra World
Speaker 1: where you can hang out with the Kabby Burros. That's
Speaker 1: not a real thing, but I want it like a
Speaker 1: Jurassic Park. But for Cappy barras so.
Speaker 2: Much lower stakes. If they had like a containment breach,
Speaker 2: it would not be an issue.
Speaker 1: Right, And so look, you know what, like why what
Speaker 1: if money was butterfly wings? That would be much prettier
Speaker 1: than stupid old dead presidents. And there is a potential
Speaker 1: to use butterfly wings structure in money for things like
Speaker 1: counterfeit protection. So butterfly wings like that of the morpho butterfly,
Speaker 1: can offer these really amazing iridescined hues. Sometimes butterfly wings
Speaker 1: will have like may actually have some pigment in it,
Speaker 1: but a lot of times butterfly wings actually produce color
Speaker 1: not through pigment but through structural coloration. So we see
Speaker 1: color when light of different wavelengths bounce off a surface
Speaker 1: and then bonk into light sensitive receptors at the back
Speaker 1: of our eye. Pigments work by basically they absorb all
Speaker 1: of the wavelengths of light that you don't see, and
Speaker 1: then only the wavelength of light that it does not
Speaker 1: absorb that bounces off of the pigment into your eyeball
Speaker 1: is what you see. So like jazz is about all
Speaker 1: of the colors that it does not absorb, So like
Speaker 1: an apple absorbs everything except for the red wavelength, and
Speaker 1: so it looks like a red apple. Now, structural coloration
Speaker 1: it's still all about wavelengths of light hitting your eyeball,
Speaker 1: but instead of it being about absorbing light other than
Speaker 1: the one color wavelength that you see, it actually works
Speaker 1: by bending length through tiny structures, usually little tiny ridges
Speaker 1: or kind of hole like structures that kind of act
Speaker 1: like microscopic prisms. So instead of absorbing the light, it
Speaker 1: is refracting and bending and changing the direction in wavelength
Speaker 1: of the light. And so this is one of the
Speaker 1: reasons that structural coloration often results in this like iridescence.
Speaker 1: So colors that like shimmer and shift as you change
Speaker 1: the angle at which you view them or change the
Speaker 1: direction of the light. So the light wavelengths actually can
Speaker 1: interfere with each other, just like you know, like when
Speaker 1: you're looking at a surface of water and you have ripples.
Speaker 1: Sometimes the ripples can be additive and sometimes they can
Speaker 1: be subtractive, like they can interfere with each other. That
Speaker 1: amplifies the ripple effect, and sometimes they can interfere and
Speaker 1: basically cancel each other out. And this can happen with
Speaker 1: light with a surface where it's like one wavelength of
Speaker 1: light is sort of hitting the surface at one angle
Speaker 1: and kind of maybe below or near another wavelength light,
Speaker 1: and then as they're refracted, if they're kind of bonking
Speaker 1: into each other, they can actually either amplify and create
Speaker 1: a stronger brighter wavelength or cancel each other out and
Speaker 1: make it minmals. So like when you're looking at a
Speaker 1: morpho wing, sometimes it shifts can even like kind of
Speaker 1: shift between like bright bright like almost blindingly bright blue
Speaker 1: or like black, like you can't see any of it,
Speaker 1: So it's like that's why you get that weird iridescent
Speaker 1: shift in color.
Speaker 2: Taking pictures of them can be a nightmare, yeah, because
Speaker 2: you have to get it from like the perfect angle.
Speaker 2: And then even when you I feel like when you
Speaker 2: take a picture of one, you don't really get the
Speaker 2: same effect, like it just it doesn't look as good. Yeah,
Speaker 2: you really have to see it in person to really.
Speaker 1: Right, because once you've taken the picture, when you've taken
Speaker 1: the picture, you've there is no longer the actual structural
Speaker 1: coloration of the wing, you have pigment. You've turned the
Speaker 1: structural coloration. The camera has captured the light information from
Speaker 1: the structural coloration, but then it's turned it into what
Speaker 1: is essentially pigment, right or like you know, pixels work
Speaker 1: a little different from pigment because it's actually like emitting
Speaker 1: light directly at you. But you know, if you look
Speaker 1: at a photograph, that's turned it into pigment, or if
Speaker 1: you're looking at it on the screen, it's turned it
Speaker 1: into pixels that are emitting light. So everything from butterfly
Speaker 1: wings to bird feathers, even some species of snakes have
Speaker 1: scales that can do this. There are some types of
Speaker 1: plants that can use structural coloration to create these amazing effects.
Speaker 1: And so what people are working on is turning that
Speaker 1: literally into money. So like there's this company called nanotech Security,
Speaker 1: which is totally not a cyberpunk dystopia money security company
Speaker 1: that's going to steal your soul. It is trying to
Speaker 1: introduce structural coloration to money to help prevent counterfeit dollars.
Speaker 1: So the idea is that if you create a portion
Speaker 1: of the money that has like these microscopic structures that
Speaker 1: offer an iridescent image. It would be so hard and
Speaker 1: expensive to try to counterfeit that that it would be
Speaker 1: a way to prevent counterfeit money, so like it'd be
Speaker 1: super like to create that kind of microscopic nanostructure would
Speaker 1: be quite a challenge for someone who's like, I'm going
Speaker 1: to put this dollar in photoshop a hip print. I
Speaker 1: don't know what how counterfeiting works. I'm sure it's more
Speaker 1: complicated than that, but so far they have not created
Speaker 1: this yet. There's no butterfly wing money. I think it
Speaker 1: would be cool if we just now, I don't want
Speaker 1: to hurt actual butterflies, so not like real butterfly wings,
Speaker 1: but just making money in the shape of butterfly.
Speaker 2: Wings, and that just was the currency.
Speaker 1: Exactly, Like haven't it cool? Because then we could have
Speaker 1: a real sort of like fairy cottage core aesthetic to
Speaker 1: our late stage malignant capitalism that I think would be
Speaker 1: kind of fun. I like that.
Speaker 2: I'm imagining that maybe the different like amounts of currency
Speaker 2: could be like different types of butterfly wings. Maybe like
Speaker 2: a monarch is worth a certain.
Speaker 1: Amount exactly like a mor fo is, maybe like a
Speaker 1: fifty dollar Atlas.
Speaker 2: We've become full circle. We've come full circle as a nation.
Speaker 2: We've looped all the way back around to having monarchs
Speaker 2: on our money again.
Speaker 1: Maybe like a I don't know what would be what
Speaker 1: would be like a one dollar bill? Who would get
Speaker 1: stuck with that? Uh?
Speaker 2: Maybe like a moth?
Speaker 1: Poor, just a normal moth? Yeah?
Speaker 2: Anyone? Who? Okay, have you played Skyrim?
Speaker 1: I have I Skyrim, No, but I know of it.
Speaker 1: I have definitely seen Skyrim. I've seen a Skyrim.
Speaker 2: I've seen aware aware of it. H So, when you're
Speaker 2: playing Skyrim, if you're playing Skyrim for the first time,
Speaker 2: there's an experience, there's like a cannon event, there's like
Speaker 2: an experience when you're playing Skyrim. You know a lot
Speaker 2: of what you're doing is like you can as you're
Speaker 2: walking through the world of Skyrim, you can like forage
Speaker 2: basically you'll pass by like plants. Yeah, yeah, you could
Speaker 2: just when you pass things, that'll say like collect thing,
Speaker 2: and you can just you know, harvest things. And so I,
Speaker 2: like many other people, have had this experience of just
Speaker 2: walking observing, just taking in the beauty of the world
Speaker 2: of Skyrim. And then who comes along but a sweet
Speaker 2: little butterfly, a beautiful, just lovely little butterfly, and the
Speaker 2: thing comes up. The prompt says collect blue butterfly, and
Speaker 2: I'm like, I get to catch butterflies. How blissful? This
Speaker 2: is amazing. I'm gonna just catch it, thinking like in
Speaker 2: a jar. Perhaps I'm just going to catch this little
Speaker 2: butterfly and keep it as my little pet.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 2: So I collect the butterfly and it says added to
Speaker 2: inventory two butterfly wings. I was like, that's not what
Speaker 2: I wanted.
Speaker 1: You just reach out with a big, meaty fist and
Speaker 1: grab it. Yeah, just I was like, grip it apart.
Speaker 2: I was like, I feel like I was just manipulated
Speaker 2: into doing an animal cruelty that I didn't mean to.
Speaker 1: Yeah. There is a mod to Skyrim where it turns
Speaker 1: all the dragons into Thomas the tank Engines and that Yes,
Speaker 1: I saw that video and that's pretty much the only
Speaker 1: thing that Sebber made me want to play Skyrim, because
Speaker 1: otherwise I feel like I would be too scared of
Speaker 1: all the dragons. But if it's Thomas the tank Engines,
Speaker 1: I think I could handle it.
Speaker 2: I'm just thinking that if if butterfly wings were a
Speaker 2: valid currency, in Skyrim that would be great, and that
Speaker 2: you could just collect those money.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, like and then if you can, like uh,
Speaker 1: I don't know, fairies can use them as accessories. I
Speaker 1: don't really know how Skyrim works, but I feel like
Speaker 1: butterfly wing money might make capitalism less lame.
Speaker 2: On the one hand, it would be bad to like
Speaker 2: incentivize people to take wings off of butterflies. On the
Speaker 2: other hand, it would be cool if that would encourage
Speaker 2: people to perhaps make environmental choices that would like increase
Speaker 2: the population of butterflies. Yeah, so like maybe I do
Speaker 2: think the environmental incentive.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I do think these should be like fake butterfly wings.
Speaker 1: I don't think these should be literal like rip the
Speaker 1: wings off of a butterfly and then buy a Snicker's
Speaker 1: bar with it. Situation that might be untenable. But yeah,
Speaker 1: like if we could, if we could like produce sort
Speaker 1: of like artificial butterfly wing currency, that'd be awesome.
Speaker 2: Last thing, what if what if spotted lantern fly wings
Speaker 2: were money? Ah, then we're incentivizing people to go out
Speaker 2: and take the wings and kill the spot of light.
Speaker 1: Butter lantern flies are super invasive, Uh, I think I
Speaker 1: mean they were on the East coast, but I think
Speaker 1: they're spreading out outwards. But yeah, they are.
Speaker 2: They're like reproducing faster than anyone could kill them.
Speaker 1: It's bad because they you know, like when you have
Speaker 1: a super invasive species like that they put shout or
Speaker 1: eat or out compete native species, and that's bad. So
Speaker 1: when you see a spotted lantern fly, which they're kind
Speaker 1: of pretty actually because they have like black and white
Speaker 1: spot wings and like sort of a reddish pink, it's
Speaker 1: it's it's pretty. But where are they there are they
Speaker 1: from a yeah, and so like they are, it's not
Speaker 1: it's not good because as invasive species, they are wreaking
Speaker 1: havoc on the sort of native species, and you are
Speaker 1: supposed to kill them on site. I think, yeah, like
Speaker 1: either as currency or one of those things. Like they
Speaker 1: used to have the like machines where you could put
Speaker 1: bottles in them and then like you get money for
Speaker 1: recycling bottles. Like if we could have a bounty, a bounty,
Speaker 1: if we could have bounty on on uh yeah, these guys,
Speaker 1: like that would be fun and then we could all
Speaker 1: pretend to be like hardcore bounty hunters when we're squishing bugs.
Speaker 2: You could be super cool about it, get like kidded out.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like wear a necklace of their wings.
Speaker 2: Yeah, because now you're an eco warrior.
Speaker 1: Yeah, exactly, you're killing. It's like if all the if
Speaker 1: we could like pay people for it, and so like
Speaker 1: all the trophy hunters who like kill animals that don't
Speaker 1: need to be killed, and then we can get them
Speaker 1: on the case, like, look, this will now people will
Speaker 1: reward you for for draining the life out of an animal.
Speaker 2: I'm just saying, if we've already got like we're already
Speaker 2: having to suffer through capitalism, we might as well like
Speaker 2: make it work for us one.
Speaker 1: Situation, right exactly, Let's get one good use out of it. Yeah,
Speaker 1: let's uh, let's turn our sites towards killing the right
Speaker 1: thing this time. We got it wrong a lot of times,
Speaker 1: but this time I think we'll get it right. Ellen,
Speaker 1: you got one more invention?
Speaker 2: I do. I have one more. And once again, this
Speaker 2: one actually slots pretty well along with what you were
Speaker 2: talking about, because mine is also about it's not a bug,
Speaker 2: but it is an arthropod. And I think if you're
Speaker 2: like a bug chaotic person, like if you're like bug
Speaker 2: inclusive and bugs if it's little guys and it's bug.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my my yea crabs is bugs.
Speaker 2: This is about millipedes.
Speaker 1: Oh, yes, phillipedes is bugs for sure.
Speaker 2: Millipedes gotta be my favorite bug. Like obsessed with these
Speaker 2: little guys. They're so friendly, they're friends shaped, they won't
Speaker 2: like bite you, like, they're so chill and cool.
Speaker 1: And I had one crawl up my leg when I
Speaker 1: was a kid. I think it was trying to just
Speaker 1: make friends with me with its many, many, many tiny
Speaker 1: tickli little legs. I was not into it just to
Speaker 1: have this thing. Yeah, just the startling aspect of this
Speaker 1: thing crawling up my legs saying hello with all those legs. Uh.
Speaker 1: You know, I didn't love that experience. But now I
Speaker 1: feel like that I've got on some distance. I like them.
Speaker 1: I'm a new one.
Speaker 2: Also, I feel like, if you don't if you don't
Speaker 2: confidently know the difference between a millipede and a centipede,
Speaker 2: which centipedes will bite you and they're very mean, I
Speaker 2: could definitely, you know, see, if you didn't know whether
Speaker 2: it was a milliped or somethede, you would just probably
Speaker 2: err on the side of caution.
Speaker 1: Yeah, bite you millipedes are round and shiny and nice,
Speaker 1: and cinipedes like.
Speaker 2: A little sausage.
Speaker 1: Yeah they look, there's fun. Sausage shaped. Centipedes are mean
Speaker 1: and pointy and auchi shaped well.
Speaker 2: So importantly for the millipedes, millipedes have two sets of
Speaker 2: legs per body segment, as opposed to centipedes, which only
Speaker 2: have one pair of legs. Millipedes have way more legs
Speaker 2: many they have tiny, tiny little legs.
Speaker 1: They have a million of the peds.
Speaker 2: A milla of them. So each pair of millipede legs
Speaker 2: moves symmetrically while both legs on eye their side lift
Speaker 2: at the same time, which is different from how like
Speaker 2: vertebrates walk. For example, you don't like, you know, lift
Speaker 2: both of your front legs and both of your back
Speaker 2: legs at the same time. You know, like, vertebrates don't
Speaker 2: typically walk like that, but millipedes do. So the individual
Speaker 2: pairs each move with a wave motion, so that when
Speaker 2: the millipede is walking forwards, the waves ripple from the
Speaker 2: back of the body towards the head. So if you
Speaker 2: were like looking really really closely at a millipede, that
Speaker 2: like kind of like a crowd in a stadium doing
Speaker 2: the wave. How like everyone throws their hands up at
Speaker 2: the same time. That's kind of what their feet are doing.
Speaker 2: But it moves. Yeah, it moved from the back of
Speaker 2: the body towards the head. But millipedes can also walk backwards,
Speaker 2: in which case they just do it in reverse.
Speaker 1: So the wave, that actual wave reversus.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they can do like from from the head
Speaker 2: to the back to move backwards. It is really really cool.
Speaker 2: And importantly, having so many points of contact with the
Speaker 2: surface beneath them makes also their legs are really really
Speaker 2: short and their body is short and round. This makes
Speaker 2: them extremely stable. Like you are not going to knock
Speaker 2: a millipede over unless you're like human sized, you could
Speaker 2: be really big, but.
Speaker 1: Crawling up your leg and you run around a few times, yeah,
Speaker 1: then it takes a little bit of panic to running
Speaker 1: for it to fall off.
Speaker 2: Well, so keep in mind that they're like detritivores, right,
Speaker 2: So they're usually crawling around on things like logs and
Speaker 2: dirt and rocks. They're low on the ground, they have
Speaker 2: to crawl over a lot of uneven terrain. There's a
Speaker 2: lot of obstacles they have to crawl over and around,
Speaker 2: so and they get so incredibly stable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's like they've got such stubby legs and a
Speaker 1: round body, but they are so stable and.
Speaker 2: So able to and really good at like maneuvering around the.
Speaker 1: Obstacles over stuff, like they're good at it.
Speaker 2: So the sort of combination of the flexibility and the
Speaker 2: resilience of this style of walking has inspired designs for robots.
Speaker 2: So the one that I could find when I was
Speaker 2: looking around all about this a little bit is a
Speaker 2: tiny like only like a millimeter or two long. So
Speaker 2: this is tiny, tiny, soft bodied robot that was developed
Speaker 2: by that has been developed by the Max Planck Institute
Speaker 2: for Intelligence Systems, And it may I think, you know,
Speaker 2: I haven't seen them anything about them actually rolling this
Speaker 2: out or like using it. I think it's kind of
Speaker 2: maybe still in development. They're still kind of working with
Speaker 2: it to see if they can use it someday. But
Speaker 2: it may someday be used to move through the human body.
Speaker 1: Ooh, millipedes inside my blood stream.
Speaker 2: Robot millipedes inside your bloodstream.
Speaker 1: I'm into it.
Speaker 2: Uh, not cyberpunk at all. I'm sure get those bod.
Speaker 1: In my body.
Speaker 2: I want bug blood, Get me bug blood, get.
Speaker 1: Them up in there, have them wiggle around and do
Speaker 1: their medicines, medicines on me in there.
Speaker 2: It is what is the idea is that they're meant
Speaker 2: to carry medicines through that's a door. So if you
Speaker 2: have like medicine, I think it's meant to be used
Speaker 2: as maybe like a possible alternative to surgery.
Speaker 1: Yeah, doctor about you have like yeah, it's just a
Speaker 1: little guy.
Speaker 2: You just let him zip and zoom up through your
Speaker 2: bloodstream and just don't think about it too hard, Like,
Speaker 2: don't think about it too much.
Speaker 1: I like thinking about bugs in my blood stream doing
Speaker 1: medicine on my heart.
Speaker 2: The thing is, you've already got little critters in there.
Speaker 1: And they're not doing anything that great, Like you got yeah,
Speaker 1: you got little time, You got little crabs on your
Speaker 1: eyelashes and they're just hanging out there.
Speaker 2: Like yeah, you you definitely have more creatures on you
Speaker 2: than you think you do. So like, what's one more?
Speaker 2: It's not gonna hurt. And this one's a robot, so
Speaker 2: it's fine. It's a doctor to anything.
Speaker 1: This robot didn't go to five years of medical school
Speaker 1: to be called robot. It's a doctor.
Speaker 2: Robot, doctor robot millipede. Yeah, which doctor robot millipede. Great
Speaker 2: band name there, it is, but it is also very cyberpunk,
Speaker 2: you know, like the idea of like putting robots in
Speaker 2: your body. We've had a lot of cyberpunk talk.
Speaker 1: Yeah, right, future and so.
Speaker 2: So this I came across this stuff when I was
Speaker 2: doing notes for an episode on millipedes years ago, and
Speaker 2: then this morning I was kind of refreshing and I
Speaker 2: was like, you know what, I'm gonna look aroun. I'm
Speaker 2: gonna see if anything else has been Because I took
Speaker 2: these notes years ago, I did find a new paper,
Speaker 2: a research article from November of twenty twenty three where
Speaker 2: researchers looked at millipede turning and bending as inspiration to
Speaker 2: develop navigational strategies for robots. So they basically looked at
Speaker 2: the ways that millipedes can use their legs to turn
Speaker 2: their body and get around obstacles and stuff, and are
Speaker 2: like using that to develop strategies for how we can
Speaker 2: get robots to do the same thing. Because you imagine,
Speaker 2: just like scale up a millipede to like a huge size,
Speaker 2: you could you know, you could use that for things
Speaker 2: like Mars like exploration or a moon exploration. Like you're
Speaker 2: gonna need a robot to get around bumpy rocks and stuff.
Speaker 2: And that paper was called leg Body Coordination Strategies for
Speaker 2: Obstacle Avoidance and Narrow Space Navigation of Multi Segmented Legged
Speaker 2: Robots And that was by ming Chinda at All in
Speaker 2: Frontiers in Neurobiotics.
Speaker 1: Very cool, three, very cool. Just one note about the
Speaker 1: paper name a little long. I could call it we
Speaker 1: put we put robot bugs on Mars question mark?
Speaker 2: What if?
Speaker 1: What if? Robot?
Speaker 2: What if bug? Robot?
Speaker 1: Bug? Robot on Mars question mark? I think it's the
Speaker 1: idea cross and a lot fewer words. But now that
Speaker 1: is that is rata tech. I love that. I love
Speaker 1: bug robots. Bring it, sock it to me, like I'll
Speaker 1: allow the singularity to happen if they're all cool bug
Speaker 1: shaped robots. Like if I got to look at like
Speaker 1: a humanoid robot being like we're in charge now, I'm
Speaker 1: president now, it's like, eh, I don't love that. But
Speaker 1: if it's like a robot bug going like I'm president now,
Speaker 1: it's like all right, you know what, Yeah, it's your turn.
Speaker 1: That's fine.
Speaker 2: Maybe you'll do a better job. Probably, maybe you take
Speaker 2: a swing at this. Yeah, sorry about the mess we left.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we didn't do a great job, but you guys
Speaker 1: are And I feel like in the Matrix they kind
Speaker 1: of make the robots all sort of like squiggly and
Speaker 1: bug like, and like if I was a human in
Speaker 1: the Matrix, I'm like, Wow, you guys built us like
Speaker 1: Disneyland for our brains. It's kind of nice.
Speaker 2: The bug robot takes office and he's like, who closed
Speaker 2: last night? This is a mess. This sucks. You guys
Speaker 2: live like.
Speaker 1: This, but that's cool. I also I appreciate that, like
Speaker 1: millipedes have like such tiny brains and tiny nervous systems,
Speaker 1: but they are capable of such complex movement, right, like
Speaker 1: the undulating waves of their legs. Like if I was
Speaker 1: a millipede, I would immediately get confused and fall over.
Speaker 2: To like we're struggling with the two I've got. Yeah,
Speaker 2: Like I'm already, yeah, my life on just the two.
Speaker 1: Like when you're like climb stairs and sneeze at the
Speaker 1: same time and I try it, I fall down and
Speaker 1: almost kill myself. It's an either or yeah, So I man.
Speaker 1: Props to the millipedes and props to tiny doctor bugs
Speaker 1: that are gonna be like crawl up in our body
Speaker 1: fluids and do doctor stuff inside.
Speaker 2: Let him, I don't let him. Well, we can't talk
Speaker 2: about robot bugs without talking about Wild Wild West, of
Speaker 2: course obligatory.
Speaker 1: I've never seen it. That was the one with Will Smith.
Speaker 2: You're not missing anything. Yes, it did have Will Smith
Speaker 2: and it famously he turned down the role as I
Speaker 2: think it was Neo and the Matrix. I think he
Speaker 2: did actually turned down the leading role in the Matrix
Speaker 2: to do Wild Wild West instead, which was notoriously a
Speaker 2: very terrible movie. It was very very bad. But one
Speaker 2: of the sort of most uh intriguing things about the
Speaker 2: movie is that at the end, a giant robot spider
Speaker 2: shows up, a giant It's like a sitty explain it.
Speaker 2: Just keep in mind, keep in mind this is like,
Speaker 2: you know, steampunk West's Steampunk West. This giant steampunk robot
Speaker 2: spider shows up at the s and it's just there's
Speaker 2: kind they kind of like hinted at, like there was
Speaker 2: something like, oh, there's something and then oh, it's a
Speaker 2: giant robot spider.
Speaker 1: It's Jeff, you know, ings around.
Speaker 2: But it is kind of like this, you know, the
Speaker 2: idea being that like this bug body shape is very
Speaker 2: very stable, and yeah, good at getting around, and it's
Speaker 2: already it lends itself to robotics. Yeah, yeah, it feels
Speaker 2: very mechanical. And yeah there's a giant robot spider like
Speaker 2: not to spoil it, sorry.
Speaker 1: Yeah, oh god, now I can never watch. Yeah. No,
Speaker 1: there's hydraulic there's hydraulics. There's pist in action with spider
Speaker 1: legs that lends itself well to like robot you know stuff.
Speaker 1: So I'm into it.
Speaker 2: Scuttling.
Speaker 1: I like a scuttling robot that you know that gets
Speaker 1: in my interstitial body fluids. So that's great. Ellen. Before
Speaker 1: we go, we got play a little game. It's called
Speaker 1: them Yes Squawk and Mystery Animal Sound Game. Every week
Speaker 1: I play Mystery Animals Sound except for last week and
Speaker 1: the week before because I played a Listener Questions episode
Speaker 1: and then a Easter rerun. But from two weeks ago
Speaker 1: we had a Mister animalsone and it the clue was like,
Speaker 1: don't be when I hear this, I'll pack my bag,
Speaker 1: all right, Ellen, who do you think this is good? Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's pretty bad.
Speaker 2: The hint that you gave led me to believe it wasn't.
Speaker 1: I'll packa I think I said it. I think I
Speaker 1: said it a little bit less spoilery. Last time. It's
Speaker 1: like I'm packing my bags when I hear this, But
Speaker 1: this time I couldn't. I couldn't help. But the pun.
Speaker 2: I have to meta game and say that based on
Speaker 2: the hint, I think it was an alpaca, but also
Speaker 2: if it is, if I'm right and it's an alpaca,
Speaker 2: I will be shocked.
Speaker 1: Yeah it's an alpaca, there's no way. Yeah, it's an
Speaker 1: pack alarm call. They make a horrible sound when they
Speaker 1: are alarmed.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that sucks. They should not do that.
Speaker 1: They should stop this.
Speaker 2: You should teach them a different one. Yeah, y'all can't
Speaker 2: be doing this.
Speaker 1: Like the recording device is clearly struggling here, like it
Speaker 1: is peaking.
Speaker 2: Uh, they're clipping.
Speaker 1: It is clipping. I am trying.
Speaker 2: For a second, I legitimately thought, I was like, are
Speaker 2: you having an audio issue? Is this a weird like?
Speaker 2: I thought so the audio get corrupted?
Speaker 1: I thought so too. In fact, I'm gonna like, I'm
Speaker 1: gonna find a different one, just so you can get
Speaker 1: the sense that this is not just a crappy recording.
Speaker 1: It is a terrible sound as well. Yeah, there it is.
Speaker 1: There's that good stuff right, direct that right into my
Speaker 1: ear holes.
Speaker 2: Yeah that sucks, that's awful like that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's fun. But you know, our packas are very
Speaker 1: very defensive, very territorial, and they will use this as
Speaker 1: a warning call for the rest of the I'll paka
Speaker 1: herd to be on high alert and they will. They
Speaker 1: will stomp and they will be aggressive if they feel
Speaker 1: like they are in danger. They are not demure creatures
Speaker 1: much like donkeys. They are not demure. In fact, sometimes
Speaker 1: like llamas or all, packs are used by farmers with
Speaker 1: like other animals to basically protect them and be like
Speaker 1: be their buddies because they're very very protective of their
Speaker 1: territory and their herd.
Speaker 2: They know they're worth they have boundaries. They excellent communication skills. Honestly,
Speaker 2: it's been to therapy.
Speaker 1: So onto the next mystery animals found the hants is this.
Speaker 1: This is a very common sound. So it's not so
Speaker 1: much about the trick, isn't so much about who, but
Speaker 1: the time I mean is there.
Speaker 2: By Yeah, I'm gonna say some kind of groundhog, a
Speaker 2: prairie dog or something.
Speaker 1: Great. Yeah, well we will find out next time on
Speaker 1: Creature feature. If you think you know who is making
Speaker 1: that sound, you can write to me at Creature futurepod
Speaker 1: at gmail dot com. And Ellen, thank you so much
Speaker 1: for joining me today. You're always a delight. Where can
Speaker 1: people find you?
Speaker 2: Of course they can find me on Just the Zoo
Speaker 2: of Us, which is a podcast on the Maximum Fun
Speaker 2: network where we review animals. We alternate between me and
Speaker 2: my husband doing our own notes and reporting our scores
Speaker 2: that we give the animals to each other. And then
Speaker 2: we have guest guest episodes where I bring on really
Speaker 2: cool people like Amani Weber Schultz, so I talked about earlier,
Speaker 2: who is a shark researcher who researches remras and shark
Speaker 2: denticles and stuff. So we have really cool people on.
Speaker 2: You can find it wherever you get podcasts or on
Speaker 2: maximum Fun dot org.
Speaker 1: Nice. I thank you guys so much for listening. If
Speaker 1: you're enjoying the show and you leave a rating or review,
Speaker 1: that absolutely helps the show. I read every single one
Speaker 1: and thanks to the Space Classic score their super awesome
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Speaker 1: gotta steer your own ship. See you next Wednesday,