Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio.
Speaker 2: Hey you welcome to each Stuff to Blow your Mind.
Speaker 2: My name is Robert.
Speaker 3: Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick.
Speaker 2: And it's that time of year again. The exact time
Speaker 2: of year again has shifts for us anyway. Sometimes it's
Speaker 2: late September, other times it's early November. But this is
Speaker 2: generally the window in which we aim to discuss the
Speaker 2: latest winners of the Ignobel Prizes, the ig Nobels. For
Speaker 2: anyone who has forgotten, or maybe you're new to the show,
Speaker 2: you don't know what I'm talking about. It's a series
Speaker 2: of awards given out once a year by a scientific
Speaker 2: humor journal called the Annals of Improbable Research, edited for
Speaker 2: many years now by Mark Abraham's. The publication's stated purpose
Speaker 2: is to quote honor achievements that first make people laugh
Speaker 2: and then make them think. You can learn much more
Speaker 2: about them at improbable dot com. They have a wonderful
Speaker 2: list where you can just you can scroll through all
Speaker 2: the winners over the years, different peer reviewed papers, scientific papers,
Speaker 2: and sometimes just individual researchers that are singled out for
Speaker 2: these different studies that are in one way or another
Speaker 2: comedic and hilarious, but also deep down our legitimate science
Speaker 2: that it is often answering very important questions or things
Speaker 2: on the borders of very important questions, things that are
Speaker 2: still part of the ever growing expanse of scientific curiosity.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I would say usually are legitimate science. Occasionally something
Speaker 3: will get highlighted that is itself intended to be satirical.
Speaker 3: But I almost think of that as kind of like
Speaker 3: remember in the days of America's Funniest Tone videos, when
Speaker 3: there would be the occasional video that was funny on purpose.
Speaker 3: I never liked that. Even as a kid. I would
Speaker 3: watch that be like, uhh, that's not acceptable. You can
Speaker 3: only this has to be an accident or it doesn't work.
Speaker 2: I remember watching America's Funniest to videos with a skeptical
Speaker 2: eye too, and thinking that looks set up. Yea, they
Speaker 2: intended for that sled to roll right into the house.
Speaker 2: Clearly this was maybe the third or fourth take. I
Speaker 2: can see the sled marks now. I kind of got
Speaker 2: sidetracked there because I didn't intend for you to draw
Speaker 2: the same conclusion about that, Like I hate the satirical
Speaker 2: papers that get featured or something. I mean, the reology
Speaker 2: of cats. One was funny, yeah when done right, but
Speaker 2: it's perfect.
Speaker 3: Yeah right. But the point being that occasionally it is
Speaker 3: something that is just supposed to be silly from the
Speaker 3: get go. But most of what gets featured on the
Speaker 3: Ignobels is just actual research of one kind or another
Speaker 3: that people end up finding funny. Maybe it's because the
Speaker 3: subject matter is farts or something. Maybe it's because the
Speaker 3: the conclusion that the paper comes to seems blindingly obvious
Speaker 3: or weirdly counterintuitive. I guess there are a lot of
Speaker 3: different ways that a scientific paper can end up being funny.
Speaker 3: But one thing I always really enjoy about doing these
Speaker 3: episodes is that usually even when something seems really silly
Speaker 3: at first glance, once you actually read into it, there's
Speaker 3: kind of some interesting stuff going on underneath the hood.
Speaker 2: Yeah, absolutely, and I think that. I mean that's one
Speaker 2: of the reasons we keep coming back to covering the
Speaker 2: IGNO bells is, Yeah, it's genuinely laughter inducing, but once
Speaker 2: you dig into them, there's something fascinating there, and it's
Speaker 2: not always something that we would necessarily devote an entire
Speaker 2: episode too. Though we should also note that sometimes the
Speaker 2: honorees are very recent studies other times they may just
Speaker 2: be decades old. So sometimes we'll get excited for the
Speaker 2: Ignobells and we're like, oh, yeah, yeah, that's something we
Speaker 2: covered that years ago.
Speaker 3: There is one paper this year about like a guy
Speaker 3: who documented his own fingernails growing for decades and it
Speaker 3: has been a while, but I know we covered that
Speaker 3: on the show. Oh I think maybe we did an
Speaker 3: episode about fingernails or something where we got into this.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, So they cast a wide net, both in
Speaker 2: time and space. Yeah, And sometimes I think, you know,
Speaker 2: you're talking about the different ways papers are funny. Sometimes
Speaker 2: it's about the methodology alone. For instance, earlier that this
Speaker 2: was not an Ignobel winner yet. But earlier this year
Speaker 2: I chatted with Rusalind Dakin about hummingbirds and one and
Speaker 2: then you know, hummingbirds perfectly natural thing to study, fascinating creatures.
Speaker 2: But one of the studies they were doing with the
Speaker 2: methodology that they employed, involved putting little necklaces around their necks,
Speaker 2: and like, that is in and of itself hilarious. Right,
Speaker 2: anytime we put little bits of clothing or something even
Speaker 2: akin to clothing on an animal for scientific purposes, it's
Speaker 2: going to cause us to giggle. On some level where
Speaker 2: it's going to make me giggle. Anyway, serious scientists may disagree.
Speaker 3: Why did you make a diaper for category pillar as well?
Speaker 3: It was for science?
Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly. So, as always, or as recently has been
Speaker 2: the case, we are not going to discuss all the winners. Again,
Speaker 2: go to improbable dot com if you want to go
Speaker 2: through and explore all the different honorees this year, but
Speaker 2: we are going to pick and choose a few and
Speaker 2: we're going to discuss them over the course of a
Speaker 2: couple of episodes this week.
Speaker 3: All right, well, Rob, I know you looked into this
Speaker 3: year's Nutrition Prize. Do you want to start with that one?
Speaker 2: Yeah? Yeah, This this one was pretty fun. This was
Speaker 2: probably the first one I selected. It went to a
Speaker 2: paper by Danielle Deddy, Gabriel h. She Nagabeto, Roger Meek
Speaker 2: and Luca Luisselli. And it is the title of the
Speaker 2: paper published an African Journal of Ecology was Opportunistic foraging
Speaker 2: Strategy of rainbow lizards at a seaside resort in Togo.
Speaker 2: And the paper in question was a Nigerian, Togalese, Italian
Speaker 2: French production and was awarded quote for studying the extent
Speaker 2: to which a certain kind of lizard chooses to eat
Speaker 2: certain kinds of pizza, and it published in twenty twenty three.
Speaker 3: I feel like this is a big step up in
Speaker 3: the world of pizza. Rat pizza, pigeon, pizza. Lizard is
Speaker 3: just the next place it had to go.
Speaker 2: Right, right, It's obvious why this one. Any non human
Speaker 2: animal eating pizza is just inherently funny, And I don't know,
Speaker 2: it's hard to really describe why this is the case.
Speaker 2: I mean, the word pizza itself can be funny given
Speaker 2: certain contexts, and on top of that, I don't know,
Speaker 2: there's something just very comedic about a slice of pizza.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I don't know if it's if it's
Speaker 2: inherent to the slice of pizza, or is it just
Speaker 2: the way that we often use the slice of pizza
Speaker 2: right pizza.
Speaker 3: I think it's because pizza is very far from a
Speaker 3: food found in nature. If a bird comes and plucks
Speaker 3: a grape off of your plate, that's not that funny.
Speaker 3: It's a little bit funny. If it comes and plucks
Speaker 3: a French fry off your plate, that's funnier than a grape,
Speaker 3: because the bird in nature would never encounter a fried
Speaker 3: piece of potato, but it's still basically just a piece
Speaker 3: of potato. Something has happened to it. A pizza is
Speaker 3: a whole production. You have made a dough, you have
Speaker 3: made a sauce, you have you know, you have created
Speaker 3: cheese out of milk and probably added some other things
Speaker 3: to it. It's all this stuff coming together and producing
Speaker 3: this very synthetic, technological product. And the fact that an
Speaker 3: animal is taking your pizza away. I think that's what's
Speaker 3: funny about it.
Speaker 2: I think you're right. But yeah, plus the triangular slice
Speaker 2: that especially screams unnatural, man made, but you know, pizza
Speaker 2: rat doesn't care. Pizza rat is going to drag that
Speaker 2: slice away for its own, its own consumption. So this study,
Speaker 2: again that doesn't involve rats. It involves rainbow lizards a
Speaker 2: gama agama, and in particular, we're dealing with rainbow lizards
Speaker 2: in urban African environments, so in cities, in towns, or
Speaker 2: very specific to this particular study, at beach resorts, and
Speaker 2: so lizards eating pizzas. This is even more hilarious. You know,
Speaker 2: we're clearly getting into teenage mutant into turtle territory. Here
Speaker 2: brings to mind not only the pizza loving Turtles themselves,
Speaker 2: but also fellow mutant Mondo Gecko. I don't know how
Speaker 2: many episodes of the old cartoon Mondo Gecko actually factored
Speaker 2: into I included an image of this particular character for
Speaker 2: you here, Joe, obviously a half human, half lizard hybrid
Speaker 2: with a lot of attitude.
Speaker 3: Oh man, So I was into the Turtles when I
Speaker 3: was younger, But I don't know if I genuinely remember
Speaker 3: this guy or not. I'm getting that tingling half memory
Speaker 3: feeling right now, but it could be a false positive.
Speaker 2: Yeah. I did not have time to go back and
Speaker 2: watch any of these episodes in full, but I did
Speaker 2: notice that there is an episode titled Michelangelo Meets Mondo Gecko,
Speaker 2: and one of the pizza's reference in the episode is
Speaker 2: locks and cream cheese. Just a reminder i'd forgotten this,
Speaker 2: but the teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cartoon program frequently mentioned
Speaker 2: gross sounding pizzas that the Turtles were ordering, or into,
Speaker 2: or had consumed like the day before. See.
Speaker 3: I always thought of them as just getting your standard
Speaker 3: pepperoni pizza or cheese pizza. That's what they show in
Speaker 3: the ads for the show.
Speaker 2: Right, right, But no, they were ordering all sorts of
Speaker 2: strange pizzas. And I did a short detour in my
Speaker 2: research here, and I discovered a YouTuber somebody who goes
Speaker 2: by the name of Kirk Cooks that's with a K,
Speaker 2: and apparently on YouTube over the course of I don't know,
Speaker 2: multiple episodes, maybe even years, this guy cooked all sixty
Speaker 2: seven pizzas mentioned on the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle series,
Speaker 2: So things like anchovies and butterscotch ice cream, pepperoni and marshmallow,
Speaker 2: pickled herring, and caramel fudge, and of course locks and
Speaker 2: cream cheese, which I just referenced.
Speaker 3: Clearly the most reasonable of all.
Speaker 2: The Yeah, I did check out that episode, and that
Speaker 2: was that was what the host was said, like, this
Speaker 2: one had the possibility to actually be pretty good, and
Speaker 2: it seems like they were pleased with it.
Speaker 3: That's the most reasonable of the ones you mentioned, because
Speaker 3: it's the only one that doesn't have candy on it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, a number of them had some sort of like
Speaker 2: gross candy candy situation going on, And I did not
Speaker 2: watch all of these reviews, but I can only assume
Speaker 2: that the grosser ones were indeed gross, So I mean
Speaker 2: that was part of the humor of the turtles being
Speaker 2: into these strange pizza orders.
Speaker 3: Wait, Rob, do you personally I mean, hey, we don't
Speaker 3: shame people for the foods they like here. You know,
Speaker 3: a lot of strange sound foods are delicious. But Rob,
Speaker 3: do you personally have like a standard pizza topping that
Speaker 3: you can't stomach?
Speaker 2: Ooh? I mean, I mean there are things that are
Speaker 2: not in my diet anymore, but in terms of toppings
Speaker 2: that I just that I've historically had an issue with.
Speaker 2: I think I was a little cranky about pineapple for
Speaker 2: a while, but I think I had pineapple on a
Speaker 2: pizza not too long ago, though to be clear, it
Speaker 2: was not the sort of classic ham in pineapple combo,
Speaker 2: and I think I ended up liking it. So I
Speaker 2: suspect that my problem was not with pineapple on a
Speaker 2: pizza but fruit meat combos. Okay, because there were other
Speaker 2: like fruit meat combos back when I ate meat that
Speaker 2: I also didn't like, like prostudo and melon like some
Speaker 2: people love that. I just never it was never for me.
Speaker 3: I can see that I'm not the biggest pineapple guy either.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not opposed to sweet flavors on a pizza,
Speaker 3: but pineapple is like so sweet and so juicy, it
Speaker 3: just seems a little over the top for me. The
Speaker 3: big one that I can't do that a lot of
Speaker 3: people love is not a topping, but an alternate sauce,
Speaker 3: And people love these barbecue chicken pizzas with barbecue sauce
Speaker 3: is the pia. I can't deal with barbecue sauce and
Speaker 3: the sauce. That's just that's not doing it for me.
Speaker 2: I remember having some of those, like California Pizza kitchen
Speaker 2: type thing, and I liked it back in the day.
Speaker 2: I think I can take some barbecue sauce out of context.
Speaker 3: Apparently I can't. I just can't hang all right.
Speaker 2: So getting back to the actual study here, we've firmly
Speaker 2: established why it is funny. You know, it's lizards eating pizza.
Speaker 2: Why does it matter? Well, despite being hilarious, the study
Speaker 2: here too is certainly a valid inquiry. As we've discussed
Speaker 2: on the show before, human cities, especially greatly alter the
Speaker 2: lifestyles and diets of the creatures that continue to thrive
Speaker 2: in them, and for most of you listeners, this is
Speaker 2: instantly going to bring to mind things like pigeons and
Speaker 2: rats obviously, but it also concerns all manner of creatures
Speaker 2: that find ways to thrive in human augmented environments. Highly
Speaker 2: adaptable creatures with varied opportunistic diets often do quite well.
Speaker 2: And in parts of Africa that means rainbow lizards. You
Speaker 2: know what they're eating from our refuse why and then
Speaker 2: what it's doing to their health and door behavior is
Speaker 2: totally worth studying. If for no other reason you might
Speaker 2: think of it as like they're eating pizza because of us,
Speaker 2: it's kind of our responsibility to figure out why this
Speaker 2: is happening and what are the ramifications.
Speaker 3: Yeah, entirely makes sense, and I would think that you
Speaker 3: could also probably learn some interesting things about the lizard
Speaker 3: and about its relationship to its environment by studying what
Speaker 3: kinds of pizza it likes best.
Speaker 2: Exactly exactly now, Joe, I included an image of a
Speaker 2: gama agama for you right here, the rainbow lizard. I
Speaker 2: do encourage listeners out there when it is safe to
Speaker 2: do a search as well, so that you can see
Speaker 2: this creature.
Speaker 3: It is.
Speaker 2: It's quite a stunning lizard. You can understand why was
Speaker 2: subsequently introduced into Florida. Via the reptile trade. Like it's
Speaker 2: a gorgeous lizard.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, it's striking, bright orange head.
Speaker 2: Bright orange head, dark body. Yeah. So they're also known
Speaker 2: as the common agama and the red headed rock agama.
Speaker 2: It's found throughout most of Sub Saharan Africa, which is
Speaker 2: a considerable range. It's endemic to a number of Sub
Speaker 2: Saharan African countries and has also again unfortunately, been introduced
Speaker 2: into Florida via the reptile trade. They're primarily insectivores. They
Speaker 2: live in social groups built around feuding lead males and
Speaker 2: apparently the conflict between these males. It's more pronounced in
Speaker 2: urban environments because they're kind of constricted in their territory,
Speaker 2: so they can't spread out as much and they grow
Speaker 2: to around thirty centimeters or eleven point eight inches in length.
Speaker 2: Now in the paper, the authors point out that the
Speaker 2: species has high ecological plasticity, especially so far as thermal
Speaker 2: ecology and foraging strategy goes. So in rural areas they're
Speaker 2: strictly diurnal, but in urban areas they apparently make use
Speaker 2: of artificial lighting to become nocturnal foragers. And apparently most
Speaker 2: of this has to do with keeping their body temperature up,
Speaker 2: taking advantage of those lights to stay warm in the night,
Speaker 2: and continuing to hunt. Oh interesting at first. When I
Speaker 2: first read it, I thought, oh, well, you know, insects
Speaker 2: drawned with lights, and maybe that's a part of it.
Speaker 2: I didn't read that specifically, but it seems like thermal
Speaker 2: regulation is the main feature here now. In addition to
Speaker 2: eating insects, though, it has for a while been observed
Speaker 2: that they will sometimes eat certain bread based foods, and
Speaker 2: this led directly into this study that considered that asked
Speaker 2: the question what sort of pizzas do they prefer? And
Speaker 2: this took place at a particular seaside resort in Togo.
Speaker 2: I'm going to read from the paper here. After having
Speaker 2: opportunistically observed an adult male quote stealing a piece of
Speaker 2: four cheese pizza from tourists by climbing a table, we
Speaker 2: decided to investigate whether this behavior was occasional or usual
Speaker 2: in this rainbow lizard population. So again, observations of adult
Speaker 2: lizards not only you know, dining on thrown away slices
Speaker 2: of pizza or you know, pizza bones in a garbage can,
Speaker 2: but just straight up stealing slices of pizza pizza rat
Speaker 2: style from human tourists.
Speaker 3: That's a bold lizard. Yeah, has become accustomed to our
Speaker 3: delicious foods.
Speaker 2: Yeah. So the researchers here decided to do a little
Speaker 2: taste test. They set up feeding stations for the lizards
Speaker 2: that featured two different pizza selections, so a little bit
Speaker 2: of a you know, like a pizza bar scenario, but
Speaker 2: with only two choices. One choice was the four cheese pizza,
Speaker 2: which they had already been observed stealing, and the others
Speaker 2: was a four seasons pizza. I don't know about you,
Speaker 2: Joe was not super familiar with this, but it's apparently
Speaker 2: traditional in many areas. It's divided into four sections, So
Speaker 2: one quarter of the pizza is artichoke hearts for spring,
Speaker 2: and then another quarter is basil and tomatoes for summer,
Speaker 2: and then another quarter is mushrooms for autumn, and then
Speaker 2: another section is ham for winter.
Speaker 3: I just looked it up. No, I've never had one
Speaker 3: of these before.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, you know, sound I guess it sounds
Speaker 2: fine to me. I have no objections, but but you know,
Speaker 2: we'll get to what the lizards think. So the lizards
Speaker 2: here had a choice between a cheese pizza and a
Speaker 2: mostly veggie pizza, but one that also featured a little
Speaker 2: bit of meat, and all of the rainbow lizards observed
Speaker 2: went purely for the four cheese pizza.
Speaker 3: Interesting. I wonder, why could that be visual differences or
Speaker 3: it's actually like nutritionally preferable to them, or.
Speaker 2: I wonder, Yeah, the authors here right that this suggests
Speaker 2: quote that they may have some chemical cues attracting them,
Speaker 2: or that the specific four cheeses type may provide nutrients
Speaker 2: that are more easily digested, which I mean that also,
Speaker 2: I realized sounds a little crazy, right because we're talking
Speaker 2: about cheese here, we're talking about a dairy product, and
Speaker 2: it's you know, it's one thing to talk about mammals
Speaker 2: consuming dairy even when they shouldn't, such as you know,
Speaker 2: giving a cat a saucer of milk. Yes, they do
Speaker 2: it in the cartoons and in the movies all the time,
Speaker 2: but I think most of us know by this point
Speaker 2: you're not supposed to do that. But these are lizards, right,
Speaker 2: Why would lizards need cheese? Why would lizards need milk?
Speaker 2: In fact, I was looking around and like, in general,
Speaker 2: pet owners who have lizards are generally reminded, do not
Speaker 2: feed your lizard milk. Do not give your lizard cheese.
Speaker 2: They don't need it, they can't handle it.
Speaker 3: Interesting, okay, But then did the researchers like study like,
Speaker 3: were the lizards who were eating this pizza like in
Speaker 3: bad health?
Speaker 1: No?
Speaker 2: Apparently, so this is definitely one of those areas where
Speaker 2: more research is required. But it seemed to be this
Speaker 2: be the case that the pizza eating lizards were doing. Okay,
Speaker 2: it's not like they were getting bloated on pizza and
Speaker 2: then just like you know, dying in the sun or anything.
Speaker 2: They seem to be in good overall health. And it
Speaker 2: seemed like one of the leading hypotheses here is that
Speaker 2: they're perhaps benefiting from a high fat, high calorie energy
Speaker 2: boost when they eat this cheese pizza, specifically the cheese here.
Speaker 2: As for like the bread itself, I don't. I don't.
Speaker 2: I'm not to understand that that has any like real impact.
Speaker 2: But maybe that's the main way that these lizards, lizards
Speaker 2: have been observed to obtain cheese like this off of
Speaker 2: a you know, a type of food that has spread
Speaker 2: around the world, like invasive pet lizard species. In this case, the.
Speaker 3: Pizza rob I've found a slightly related story. Would you
Speaker 3: like to hear about it? It's only sort of related.
Speaker 3: It's not about lizards eating pizza, but it's close.
Speaker 2: Hey, it's close. Even then, we should definitely explore it.
Speaker 3: Okay, So did you know that one of the most
Speaker 3: extreme cases of constipation ever documented in nature was caused
Speaker 3: by a lizard eating at a pizza parlor?
Speaker 2: Wow? This absolutely sounds unreal.
Speaker 3: To be clear, we have no evidence that the lizard
Speaker 3: was eating pizza itself, but I guess we can't be sure.
Speaker 3: But part of the cursed concoction that this lizard consumed
Speaker 3: seems to have been sand contaminated with pizza grease and
Speaker 3: some other stuff, including other lizards that may also have
Speaker 3: been eating pizza grease and greasy sand. So yeah, delicious, right.
Speaker 3: So here My source is a press release on the
Speaker 3: website of the Florida Museum of Natural History from April
Speaker 3: twenty twenty by Halle Marchesi, and the story goes like this,
Speaker 3: Some researchers at the University of Florida and at the
Speaker 3: Florida Museum came into possession of a remarkable specimen, an
Speaker 3: adult female northern curly tailed lizard. The species is Leocephalus caronadus,
Speaker 3: and this northern curly tailed lizard was so constipated when
Speaker 3: they found it that the mass of impassable poop in
Speaker 3: its digestive tract had become almost eighty percent of the
Speaker 3: animal's total body mass. I think the exact figure was
Speaker 3: seventy eight point five percent. Yikes, so more poop than lizard.
Speaker 2: Wow. Wow. I mean, the only thing that even comes
Speaker 2: close to this were examples we've discussed of specific scorpion
Speaker 2: species that lose their ability to poop if they have
Speaker 2: to eject their tail and therefore cannot poop for the
Speaker 2: rest of their lives. But that this sounds even more impressive.
Speaker 3: So at the time, and I don't know if this
Speaker 3: has been surpassed since, but I kind of doubt it.
Speaker 3: The authors believed this was the largest feces to body
Speaker 3: mass ratio ever recorded in a living animal, so it
Speaker 3: was the most constipated a live animal had ever been
Speaker 3: as far as we have documented. Obviously, we can't know
Speaker 3: what has happened out there in nature, but the most
Speaker 3: constipated animal we've ever seen.
Speaker 2: Do you think this? I'm imagining the cinematic moment where
Speaker 2: the researchers suddenly get really serious and one is like,
Speaker 2: you know, I think this is it. I think this
Speaker 2: is the largest feces to body mass ratio ever recorded.
Speaker 2: I think it's happening.
Speaker 3: Oh, I think I'm about to describe that moments. So
Speaker 3: one of the researchers, a PhD candidate at the time
Speaker 3: named Natalie Klaunch, is quoted in this press release saying
Speaker 3: that when they caught the lizard, they first assumed because
Speaker 3: it was an adult female, they first assumed it was
Speaker 3: about to lay eggs quote, but when we went to
Speaker 3: feel for eggs, it just felt like it was full
Speaker 3: of silly putty. So they did a CT scan of
Speaker 3: the lizard and they discovered it had this gigantic fecal
Speaker 3: bullus stuck in its digestive system. And again, the bullus
Speaker 3: to body mass ratio was huge. It was so far
Speaker 3: past the previous record that it was crazy. The previous
Speaker 3: record was in a Burmese python, and this ratio was
Speaker 3: six roughly six times greater than that. Edward Stanley, director
Speaker 3: of the Florida Museum's Digital Discovery and Dissemination Laboratory, said, quote,
Speaker 3: I was blown away by how little room there was
Speaker 3: left for all the other organs. If you look at
Speaker 3: the three D model, it has only a tiny space
Speaker 3: left over in its ribcage for the heart, lungs, and liver.
Speaker 3: So the sad part of this story is that unfortunately
Speaker 3: this condition was not survivable for the lizard. The lizard
Speaker 3: was humanely euthanized. But how did it get so constipated. Well,
Speaker 3: this lizard had been feeding in the parking lot next
Speaker 3: to the grease collection bin outside of a pizza parlor
Speaker 3: in Cocoa Beach, Florida, and the researchers think that this
Speaker 3: lizard was probably hunting insects and other smaller lizards that
Speaker 3: were drawn to the pizza grease, and as a result,
Speaker 3: it was ingesting a lot of greasy sand. It had
Speaker 3: probably eaten a bunch of insects. I think they said
Speaker 3: it had eaten another lizard in a knoll and a
Speaker 3: bunch of grease soaked sand along with these other meals,
Speaker 3: and this turned into the bullus that it couldn't pass. Now, Rob,
Speaker 3: you were just speaking about invasive lizards in Florida. The
Speaker 3: northern curly tail lizards originally native to Cuba, the Bahamas,
Speaker 3: and the Cayman Islands are also not originally to Florida.
Speaker 3: They were intentionally introduced to Florida in the nineteen forties
Speaker 3: in an attempt to control agricultural pests. How many times
Speaker 3: have we heard that story they were brought into control.
Speaker 3: I think it was sugar cane pests, and as so
Speaker 3: often happens, they became a problem in their own right,
Speaker 3: out competing and threatening native lizard species and contributing to
Speaker 3: a decline in the native diversity of reptiles in Florida.
Speaker 3: Apparently they are especially at risk for getting blocked up
Speaker 3: intestines because their diet is so diverse, and they will
Speaker 3: eat all kinds of things they find in human environments.
Speaker 3: To quote Claunch in that article, quote from bits of
Speaker 3: fish to cheese and crackers. So again, we don't know
Speaker 3: for sure that this lizard was actually eating pizza. It
Speaker 3: was eating in the parking lot next to the pizza parlor,
Speaker 3: But I don't know cheese and crackers. Is that too
Speaker 3: far off from pizza or be happening.
Speaker 2: Let's not ignore the possibility that it just right up
Speaker 2: ordered and a bug in sand pizza from this place,
Speaker 2: turtle style yea, and consumed it. In the parking lot
Speaker 2: and paid the paid the ultimate price.
Speaker 3: A Sicilian style with extra sand. So the article emphasizes
Speaker 3: how unlikely it is that you would find a lizard
Speaker 3: this constipated alive in the wild, because usually they end
Speaker 3: up usually they're only going to eat small amounts of
Speaker 3: sand as they consume prey. It seems like this one
Speaker 3: must have eaten a lot of grease contaminated sand, and
Speaker 3: when they do get constipated, they become sluggish, so it's
Speaker 3: pretty easy for predators to pick them off, but that
Speaker 3: had not yet happened to this one. Though. I do
Speaker 3: wonder this is not anything that the sources were suggesting.
Speaker 3: I'm just just guessing here. Would those predators now have
Speaker 3: a higher likelihood of also getting constipated. You got to
Speaker 3: wonder if if you're a bird or something and you
Speaker 3: eat a lizard that is actually like eighty percent fecal
Speaker 3: bullus made of largely, you know, pizza, grease, and sand,
Speaker 3: do you get constipated with pizza, grease, and sand.
Speaker 2: Oh? I don't know. I mean, I guess in this scenario,
Speaker 2: the predator in question, be it a like a raptor
Speaker 2: or what have you, has to end up consuming the
Speaker 2: lizard hole and not rupturing it in a way that
Speaker 2: might turn it off, like if you were to rupture
Speaker 2: the creature with your talons and then realize it's basically
Speaker 2: one big lump of pooh. I you know, I don't
Speaker 2: don't know my raptors well enough to whether that would
Speaker 2: be at a turrent if the raptor might say, actually,
Speaker 2: I'm in way over my head here and I'll just
Speaker 2: leave this one. B maybe I'll only eat a part
Speaker 2: of it, or you know how that ends up going down.
Speaker 2: I know that, Like, there are various predators who you know,
Speaker 2: that do not want to consume the fecal matter of
Speaker 2: their prey, like I believe. I remember reading that Komodo dragons,
Speaker 2: for example, might like swing the animals around like to
Speaker 2: dislodge in intestines that may have fecal matter inside them.
Speaker 2: So even if you're eating most of the animal, you
Speaker 2: might not eat it home. But then again, there are
Speaker 2: also plenty of examples of animals that absolutely do eat
Speaker 2: their prey hole and then either it all passes through
Speaker 2: or you know, some of it gets you know, barfed
Speaker 2: back up again and the rest continues. The journey.
Speaker 3: Researchers who made this discovery? Are you listening? Do you
Speaker 3: have any insight on this? I would love to know more?
Speaker 3: Right and tell us what's going on in Florida? Contact
Speaker 3: at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
Speaker 2: All right, well, what do you have as a selection? Joe?
Speaker 2: Which is the first that you decided to pick off
Speaker 2: the list? Here?
Speaker 3: Okay? I decided today to talk about the twenty twenty
Speaker 3: five Psychology Prize. This year's Psychology Prize was presented to
Speaker 3: Marson Zagenkowski of the University of Warsaw in Poland and
Speaker 3: Jill Jiniak of the University of Western Australia. Quote for
Speaker 3: investigating what happens when you tell narcissists or anyone else
Speaker 3: that they are intelligent? So the name of the winning paper,
Speaker 3: published in twenty twenty one in the journal Intelligence perhaps
Speaker 3: emphasizes what's funny about this more than the ceremony language does.
Speaker 3: It's called telling people they are intelligent correlates with the
Speaker 3: feeling of narcissistic uniqueness, the influence of IQ feedback on
Speaker 3: temporary state narcissism.
Speaker 2: Okay, So the basic idea of being that by telling
Speaker 2: someone they're smart, you could at the very least induce
Speaker 2: temporary narcissism in them.
Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. This is a part of a long running
Speaker 3: tradition where it's a study where what's funny about it
Speaker 3: is that the result seems ridiculously obvious. If you tell somebody, oh, wow,
Speaker 3: our tests confirm that you are much smarter than other people,
Speaker 3: it will tend to increase their feelings that they are
Speaker 3: special and unique, at least temporarily.
Speaker 2: Right until you do the next dumb thing and then
Speaker 2: you're like, ooh, maybe that finding was off.
Speaker 3: So many Ignobel winners over the years, especially in psychology,
Speaker 3: have this quality. What's funny about them is that they
Speaker 3: find something that seems really obvious. It's like, well, I
Speaker 3: could have told you that. This is also a common
Speaker 3: refrain from the comments section underneath any write up of
Speaker 3: a new finding, especially from the social sciences, something in
Speaker 3: economics or political science or psychology. You know, people just
Speaker 3: chiming in to say that's obvious. You didn't need an
Speaker 3: experiment to tell you that. I've made this point many
Speaker 3: times on the show before, including in previous Ignobel episodes,
Speaker 3: but I just want to do my brief speech on
Speaker 3: this again right now. To the extent people actually mean
Speaker 3: this kind of thing when they say it. I think
Speaker 3: this point of view really misunderstands the purpose of most experiments,
Speaker 3: and it misses the value of science. The whole reason
Speaker 3: we have experimental science is to test what we think
Speaker 3: will happen against what actually happens. So we have a
Speaker 3: hypothesis and we subject it to an experiment. Sometimes the
Speaker 3: results apport the hypothesis, sometimes they don't. So if you
Speaker 3: say I have an intuition about how this experiment will
Speaker 3: come out, therefore you shouldn't run an experiment, that essentially
Speaker 3: reduces to saying that we shouldn't have experimental science at all.
Speaker 3: It's like saying, however, I assume the world works based
Speaker 3: on just living my life and getting a vibe is
Speaker 3: good enough. We don't need to look any deeper. Now.
Speaker 3: That doesn't mean, on the other hand, that every scientific
Speaker 3: experiment and every paper published is amazingly valuable. You know,
Speaker 3: there are some phenomena that are probably not the most
Speaker 3: important things in nature to study, though sometimes you don't
Speaker 3: realize how important something is until after you study it.
Speaker 3: And of course I would say that the most important
Speaker 3: criticism you could make of a study is if its
Speaker 3: design is poor meaning, it could be generating false knowledge.
Speaker 3: But I would argue that just looking at the result
Speaker 3: and saying I could have told you that is not
Speaker 3: a good criticism of research, because the history of science
Speaker 3: is full of counterintuitive things where a lay person would
Speaker 3: assume an experiment would find one thing, and instead it
Speaker 3: finds the opposite. Even in psychology, there are tons of
Speaker 3: results that violate a lay person's intuition and have proven robust,
Speaker 3: meaning they've been replicated many times by independent teams of researchers,
Speaker 3: and we've talked about a bunch of these on the
Speaker 3: show before. Just in the domain of psychology, I think
Speaker 3: about the great example that it is a super common
Speaker 3: lay intuition that we are really good at spotting lies
Speaker 3: and liars. Most people think that they can tell when
Speaker 3: somebody is lying to them by I don't know, reading
Speaker 3: facial expressions or verbal cues. Tests show over and over
Speaker 3: again that Nope, our intuitions here are very misguided. We
Speaker 3: grossly overestimate our ability to tell when people are lying
Speaker 3: to us. In the same vein rob remember those episodes
Speaker 3: we did on authenticity last year, it's very common lay
Speaker 3: intuition that we can tell when people are being inauthentic
Speaker 3: when not really being themselves. Turns out if you test this,
Speaker 3: like if you compare other people's ratings of Johnny's authenticity
Speaker 3: to Johnny's own rating of how authentic he's being in
Speaker 3: an interaction, the correlation tends to be pretty low. We
Speaker 3: think we can tell, but actually we're not very good
Speaker 3: at it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it just turns out we're all jerks.
Speaker 3: And I could go on and on listing a bunch
Speaker 3: of things like this. There are just so many things
Speaker 3: that we think based on intuition and life experience, and
Speaker 3: when we test those assumptions, some are broadly confirmed. Sometimes
Speaker 3: lay intuition is right, other times it's wrong, and it
Speaker 3: gets contradicted in interesting ways. And this final point is
Speaker 3: very important. Sometimes the process of investigating the assumption with
Speaker 3: an experiment, even if it confirms our intuition, it reveals
Speaker 3: new ways of thinking about the issue, and it leads
Speaker 3: us to ask new questions we didn't think of before.
Speaker 3: So I'll get off my soapbox now, but I just
Speaker 3: do want to reiterate this thing. I probably end up
Speaker 3: saying this most years when we talk about the ignobels
Speaker 3: in one way or another. I could have told you
Speaker 3: that is not a good criticism.
Speaker 2: Now, another criticism that often is leveled at the sorts
Speaker 2: of papers that are honored in the ig Nobel Prizes
Speaker 2: is like, well, this is not an important study. It's
Speaker 2: not answering important questions or solving important problems. It's not
Speaker 2: big enough, and like this tends to I don't know,
Speaker 2: it kind of comes back to that saying, you know
Speaker 2: that the modern scientists there they're standing on the backs
Speaker 2: of giants, which is true, but they're also standing on
Speaker 2: a lot of gnomes and halflings and other smaller Like
Speaker 2: there's a lot of small studies in science that are
Speaker 2: just necessary stepping stones and the whole ordeal. Again, I
Speaker 2: think if we just think about science, is this thing
Speaker 2: like this, this focused lamp that we need to shine
Speaker 2: onto various problems, Like sometimes it is that, but it
Speaker 2: also is about the like the larger you know, full
Speaker 2: lantern elimination.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that's true. I mean there are a lot of
Speaker 3: things going on. A lot of experiments that don't seem
Speaker 3: very exciting to the layperson are just laying important groundwork,
Speaker 3: like testing a tool or a concept to see if
Speaker 3: it is valid and thus can it be used in
Speaker 3: further research or making establishing a small establishing something in
Speaker 3: a small setting to see is it worth investigating with
Speaker 3: a more high powered study, right or again, as is
Speaker 3: often the case, you know, looking into things that might
Speaker 3: be of interest to the researcher, but a lot of
Speaker 3: people would say, well why does this matter? And you
Speaker 3: don't always know why it might matter. Maybe it doesn't
Speaker 3: end up mattering to the whole world that much. And
Speaker 3: then other times things could have very squarely been seen
Speaker 3: when they were first being studied and the why does
Speaker 3: this matter category, and then they turned out to be
Speaker 3: a huge significance.
Speaker 2: Right right, I mean figuring out why lizards certain lizards
Speaker 2: eat certain pizzas. It's probably not going to cure cancer.
Speaker 2: But ultimately, with science you never know exactactly you know,
Speaker 2: what discovery leads to another discovery. It's not I mean,
Speaker 2: it's not incompletely impossible. All right, Well let's get back
Speaker 2: to these narcissists.
Speaker 3: Right, So this study, I don't think this is going
Speaker 3: to cure cancer, but I do think it is interesting.
Speaker 3: So again the paper is called telling people their intelligent
Speaker 3: correlates with the feeling of narcissistic uniqueness. The influence of
Speaker 3: IQ Feedback on Temporary State Narcissism. And again this is
Speaker 3: by Marson Zegenkowski and Jill E. Geniak, published in the
Speaker 3: journal Intelligence twenty twenty one. So the authors begin by
Speaker 3: making a statement that will take a little bit of unpacking,
Speaker 3: but that statement is a statement about the background research
Speaker 3: stuff that has already been established before they started their
Speaker 3: paper here, and that background research finding is that what's
Speaker 3: called grandiose narcissism is positively correlated with self assessed intelligence
Speaker 3: or SAI. Now let's define terms here, starting with psychological
Speaker 3: concept of narcissism. It is defined in the Encyclopedia of
Speaker 3: Social Psychology as follows quote. Narcissism in its extreme forms
Speaker 3: is considered a personality disorder. It is defined as a
Speaker 3: syndrome or combination of characteristics that includes the following a
Speaker 3: pervasive pattern of grandiosity, self importance, and perceived uniqueness, a
Speaker 3: preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success and power, exhibitionism and
Speaker 3: attention seeking, emotional reactivity, especially to threats to self esteem,
Speaker 3: displays of entitlement and the expectation of special treatment from others,
Speaker 3: and an unwillingness or inability to show empathy. So that's
Speaker 3: a lot of different things. It's hard to say that
Speaker 3: all in one short phrase, but I would say, for
Speaker 3: simplicity's sake, you can think of narcissism as an extreme
Speaker 3: form of self centeredness that manifests in a host of
Speaker 3: characteristic behaviors, these kind of behavior clusters that we see
Speaker 3: happening together again and again. And those behaviors include the
Speaker 3: need for praise, attention and adoration, the lack of empathy
Speaker 3: for others, the sense of entitlement and a desire for
Speaker 3: special treatment, and so forth.
Speaker 2: Now, but before anybody self diagnosis too much, just remember
Speaker 2: all those things can occur to varying levels in just
Speaker 2: about any of us. We're talking about, you know, all
Speaker 2: the all the lights burning at the same time here, right.
Speaker 3: And there's also a difference this paper will address between
Speaker 3: trait narcissism and state narcissism. You know, you can in
Speaker 3: a particular you can get into a particular state where
Speaker 3: you show more of certain narcissistic tendencies than you would
Speaker 3: in the rest of your life, for example.
Speaker 2: And that's an I think that's important to note because
Speaker 2: just you know, as a reminder that you know you
Speaker 2: can get into this narcissistic state without being like a
Speaker 2: narcissist all the time. You know, it's kind of without
Speaker 2: thinking like, oh, I'm not a narcissist. I could never
Speaker 2: be like that. Well you could at least at least
Speaker 2: in bursts, and therefore you know it pays to watch
Speaker 2: out for that in your own behavior.
Speaker 3: But there is also a special thing, which is where
Speaker 3: you see this syndrome where somebody pretty consistently displays all
Speaker 3: of these traits and they cluster together and like that.
Speaker 3: That's sort of a type of person. So that that's
Speaker 3: narcissism in general. But what about the grandiose part. Grandiose narcissism.
Speaker 3: Grandiose narcissism is one of two main types of narcissism
Speaker 3: identified by the authors. These are grandiose narcissism and vulnerable narcissism.
Speaker 3: For a succinct distinction here, I found another paper from
Speaker 3: twenty eighteen in Frontiers and Psychology called vulnerable and grandiose
Speaker 3: narcissism are differently associated with ability and trait emotional intelligence.
Speaker 3: And note that the first listed of the four authors
Speaker 3: on this paper here was the same as the Ignobel paper.
Speaker 3: That's Marson Zagenkowski The authors make the distinction as follows quote.
Speaker 3: Grandiose narcissism is characterized by high self esteem, interpersonal dominance,
Speaker 3: and a tendency to overestimate one's capabilities, whereas vulnerable narcissism
Speaker 3: presents defensive, avoidant, and hyper sensitive attitude in interpersonal relations. So,
Speaker 3: based on these definitions, I would say that your grandiose
Speaker 3: narcissist is probably the most stereotypical type of egomaniac, all
Speaker 3: of the typical self obsessed and self privileging narcissistic traits,
Speaker 3: but with an emphasis on really high opinion of your
Speaker 3: own abilities and powers and an orientation toward personally getting ahead, competitiveness, dominance,
Speaker 3: and self aggrandize.
Speaker 2: All right, yeah, this is your kind of classic. The
Speaker 2: Emperor has no close sort of narcissism, right.
Speaker 3: So that's the grandiose narcissism. The other definition from the
Speaker 3: opening statement would be self assessed intelligence, which is pretty straightforward.
Speaker 3: It's not how smart you actually are, but how smart
Speaker 3: you think you are. So again, the background knowledge is
Speaker 3: that people who score high in grandiose narcissism also tend
Speaker 3: to rate their own intelligence very highly. And as a
Speaker 3: side note, I think it's worth exploring for a minute
Speaker 3: the idea that having high confidence in your own intelligence.
Speaker 3: You know, at first, when I think about that, I
Speaker 3: have a negative reaction to that, and they're like, Oh,
Speaker 3: that's pompous, that's no good, which I don't think I'm
Speaker 3: wrong in thinking that. But also it's worth noting that
Speaker 3: having high confidence in your own intelligence can have both
Speaker 3: good and bad consequences. In terms of good consequences, studies
Speaker 3: have found that even if you can't for actual intelligence
Speaker 3: or actual ability, higher self assessed intelligence is correlated with
Speaker 3: some desirable outcomes, like greater feelings of well being, and
Speaker 3: some studies have found it correlated with better academic achievements.
Speaker 3: So there are some benefits to seeing yourself as smart,
Speaker 3: whether or not you're actually smart, and there could be
Speaker 3: a lot of reasons for this. For example, one possibility
Speaker 3: is just, even beyond the narrow domain of intelligence, just
Speaker 3: generally believing I can do this whatever the domain allows
Speaker 3: you to take more risks and actually pursuing goals and
Speaker 3: developing your own skills compared to someone who is actually
Speaker 3: at the starting point just as capable as you, but
Speaker 3: feels I cannot do this and thus doesn't take any
Speaker 3: risks on development or skill attainment, doesn't get opportunities for
Speaker 3: success and so forth. As you know, as the saying goes,
Speaker 3: some percent of success is showing up, and in some cases,
Speaker 3: believing I am very smart helps motivate you to show up,
Speaker 3: whether or not you're right about that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, that makes sense.
Speaker 3: On the other hand, if we should absolutely note that
Speaker 3: there are major downsides to high self assessed intelligence. For example,
Speaker 3: if you go through life thinking I am very smart,
Speaker 3: I would argue it makes you more likely to fool
Speaker 3: yourself into dangerous misguided certainty, makes you more subject to
Speaker 3: intellectual hubris. It can prevent you from paying attention to
Speaker 3: good advice from others. One big thing you see with
Speaker 3: people high in grandiose, narcissistic traits who rate their own
Speaker 3: intelligence very highly is that they do not take feedback
Speaker 3: that contradicts them. So if a piece of information contradicts
Speaker 3: their view or contradicts their way of understanding the world
Speaker 3: or their view of themself, they attack the new information
Speaker 3: or they attack the person delivering the new information, rather
Speaker 3: than incorporating that information as feedback and updating their model.
Speaker 3: And this is one reason it can be so dangerous
Speaker 3: to have grandiose narcissists in like leadership and authority positions,
Speaker 3: and they do often end up there. You know, this
Speaker 3: is a personality type that specifically is set up to
Speaker 3: reject information that is threatening to their ego.
Speaker 2: And it's just curious that this does kind of get
Speaker 2: back to what you were talking about earlier about the
Speaker 2: basic mission of science to sometimes explore things that we
Speaker 2: feel are to one level or another already settled in
Speaker 2: our own mind.
Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, you can find out you were on Yeah,
Speaker 3: And it's good to pay attention when you get that
Speaker 3: signal and not just say, oh, that can't be right,
Speaker 3: that's not already what I think right. A few more
Speaker 3: interesting facts from the introduction to this paper, just little
Speaker 3: tidbits here. One is that we may have talked about
Speaker 3: this on the show before, but the so called better
Speaker 3: than average effect most people believe their own intelligence is
Speaker 3: above average. It's interesting giving people an intelligence test tends
Speaker 3: to reduce our level of overestimation of our own intelligence.
Speaker 3: And so this occurs not even at the getting your
Speaker 3: score on the test stage, like you just take the
Speaker 3: problem solving portion of the test, and this experience of
Speaker 3: the task itself reduces people's overconfidence about their own intelligence.
Speaker 3: It's something about the process, like having to solve the problems.
Speaker 3: And finally, though on average we are we're all likely
Speaker 3: to overestimate our own intelligence, some people overestimate their intelligence
Speaker 3: more than everybody else, particularly people who score high in
Speaker 3: the traite narcissism. But anyway, coming back to the main
Speaker 3: thrust of the paper here, yes, grandiose narcissism is correlated
Speaker 3: positively with self assessed intelligence. It is typically assumed in
Speaker 3: the scientific literature that the direction of causation here flows
Speaker 3: from the narcarcissism to the self assessed intelligence. In other words,
Speaker 3: because I have a narcissistic personality, I think I am
Speaker 3: very smart. I think I'm smarter than other people. But
Speaker 3: the central question the authors are asking in this paper is,
Speaker 3: to some extent, could the causation be going the other
Speaker 3: way or could it be going in both directions? Could
Speaker 3: it be that something causes me to think that I
Speaker 3: am very smart, thus I become more likely to exhibit
Speaker 3: narcissistic traits. So the authors designed an experiment with three
Speaker 3: hundred and sixty four subjects where they measured the effects
Speaker 3: of giving the subjects IQ tests and then randomly telling
Speaker 3: the subjects either that they performed better than average or
Speaker 3: that they performed worse than average. The subjects also took
Speaker 3: standard inventories to measure the presence of particular narcissistic personality
Speaker 3: traits or state traits, you know, things that could just
Speaker 3: indicate being in a narcissistic state of mind temporarily. Specifically,
Speaker 3: the authors were looking to see if there were temporary
Speaker 3: boosts to traits of what's called narcissistic admiration, which quote
Speaker 3: is characterized by striving for uniqueness, grandiose fantasies, and charming behavior.
Speaker 3: And the authors found that feedback from the IQ test,
Speaker 3: which to be clear, was random it's not actually reflective
Speaker 3: of performance, did positively correlate with people's self assessed intelligence.
Speaker 3: So if you tell somebody that they did better than
Speaker 3: average on this IQ test, it did also make them
Speaker 3: see themselves as smarter, And it also temporarily increased one
Speaker 3: particular subscale of narcissistic admiration, but not the others. The
Speaker 3: one part of narcissism that it did increase, at least temporarily,
Speaker 3: was known as striving for uniqueness, which the authors characterize
Speaker 3: as the feeling of being special, bragging about one's abilities,
Speaker 3: and the enjoyment of one's successes. So the core hypothesis
Speaker 3: there was that it was a kind of mixed result.
Speaker 3: Actually did not find that telling people they did well
Speaker 3: on an IQ test increased all aspects of narcissistic admiration,
Speaker 3: but it did significantly increase one aspect of it. Also,
Speaker 3: the people who were told that they did below average
Speaker 3: on the test reported lower self assessed intelligence afterwards, so
Speaker 3: the effect went both ways, and they tested lower on
Speaker 3: temporary measures of the same narcissism subscale striving for uniqueness.
Speaker 3: So the authors say, we conclude that IQ feedback may
Speaker 3: shape people's beliefs about their intelligence, and that lay concepts
Speaker 3: of intelligence might incorporate some narcissistic elements, such as the
Speaker 3: feeling of being uniquely special. So, like any good research,
Speaker 3: this raises more questions. If it's true that being told
Speaker 3: you did well on this IQ test causes at least
Speaker 3: a temporary increase in, but not all, components of state narcissism.
Speaker 3: Is it possible that things like this could have an
Speaker 3: additive effect over time. Could it be that various types
Speaker 3: of positive feedback about intelligence could be contributing to the
Speaker 3: narcissism of the world. In other words, like, not only
Speaker 3: are people high in narcissistic traits going around with an
Speaker 3: inflated view of their own intelligence. We already know that
Speaker 3: is true, but perhaps people all over, regular people too
Speaker 3: are being pushed in a more narcissistic direction by getting
Speaker 3: various kinds of lavish and unearned praise about how smart
Speaker 3: they are. I think there are a lot of ways
Speaker 3: this can happen, but I'm just thinking, like every time
Speaker 3: they ask chat GPT a question, it starts the answer with, Wow,
Speaker 3: that's a great question. You are so curious and thoughtful
Speaker 3: for asking that. You know it is so special. And
Speaker 3: to be clear, like this is not to proven finding
Speaker 3: of the paper, but I think it's a really interesting
Speaker 3: question that it raises and something that would be a
Speaker 3: good subject for future research.
Speaker 2: Oh now, now I'm worried about those of us who
Speaker 2: I don't do this every episode obviously, but who periodically
Speaker 2: interview people for a podcast, because what is kind of
Speaker 2: like a go to response when you ask a question, Sometimes,
Speaker 2: whether it's a good question or not, the interview subject
Speaker 2: will say that's a good question or that's a great question.
Speaker 2: And even though I, deep down, you know, know that
Speaker 2: that wasn't necessarily a great question, am I letting that
Speaker 2: sink in? Am I on some level? Am I saying yeah,
Speaker 2: that was a great question. I'm a great interviewer.
Speaker 3: I know the feeling. Rob Yeah, No, I mean there
Speaker 3: are so many ways that we have to be sensitive
Speaker 3: to the fact that in a you know, if you're
Speaker 3: dealing with nice and polite people, they might be kind
Speaker 3: of buttering you up, or maybe even maybe some people
Speaker 3: are intentionally manipulating you. But even put that aside, people
Speaker 3: who are buttering you up to manipulate you on purpose, Yeah,
Speaker 3: lots of just pleasant, happy interactions could potentially, like if
Speaker 3: this does actually have a kind of additive effect on
Speaker 3: personality over time. We don't know that it does, but
Speaker 3: if it does, could be encouraging people to become more
Speaker 3: narcissistic in certain ways. Now, I don't know if that
Speaker 3: were actually the case. I don't know what the remedy
Speaker 3: would be. I don't know if we should be going
Speaker 3: around negging each other all the time. That seems wrong too.
Speaker 2: The world needs to be a little more negative. It's
Speaker 2: our only hope. Yeah, it's kind of difficult to suss
Speaker 2: out what you do with that. I mean, I guess,
Speaker 2: I guess there are some definite application points for you know, balancing,
Speaker 2: you know, praise and like, you know, in in the
Speaker 2: teaching environments and in the home environment, we'll.
Speaker 3: Be giving being given positive encouragement, a lot of positive encouragement,
Speaker 3: but also just very straightforward feedback. Yeah, it's like, you know, yeah,
Speaker 3: you can do this. Here's what you didn't do right
Speaker 3: this time. You can try again, you can make progress,
Speaker 3: You're doing well. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 3: I'm not trying to tell teachers how to teach. I
Speaker 3: don't know what. I don't know what actually works. But yeah,
Speaker 3: so I think this does raise a lot of interesting questions,
Speaker 3: and obviously I think the investigation of the subject does
Speaker 3: not end here, Like there are more questions to ask,
Speaker 3: Like we were talking about earlier, a couple more interesting
Speaker 3: elements I wanted to mention from the paper. One that
Speaker 3: I thought was actually quite funny was subjects who got
Speaker 3: positive feedback, who you know, were told you did better
Speaker 3: than average, rated the test as more valid than those
Speaker 3: who got negative feedback. Yeah, something's wrong with that test.
Speaker 3: And then also I'm coming back to not just regular people,
Speaker 3: but specifically people who showed higher narcissism. Narcissism generally caused
Speaker 3: people to rate their own intelligence more highly, but this
Speaker 3: was especially true in the condition where subjects got negative
Speaker 3: feedback when they were told that they had done worse
Speaker 3: on average. This seems to indicate a very important role
Speaker 3: of narcissistic behavior patterns in ego protection. This seems to
Speaker 3: be a lot of what narcissism is about. Narcissism means
Speaker 3: that you are more likely to ignore and discount feedback
Speaker 3: that reflects poorly on yourself, and so it is especially
Speaker 3: important in maintaining a high self assessment in the face
Speaker 3: of ego threatening information. It's kind of the narcissistic superpower
Speaker 3: is just like, you know, you don't get discouraged when
Speaker 3: you do bad on a test. It's like the test
Speaker 3: was wrong.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, because you have to you have to deflect
Speaker 2: against these things. You could negatively impact the swollen ego
Speaker 2: here yeah yeah. Where in reality like that, the ego
Speaker 2: swelling probably needs to go down a little bit. Yeah yeah,
Speaker 2: it needs a needs a bit more balance here. This
Speaker 2: is the the the engorged bladder needs to be drained.
Speaker 3: Yeah, And I guess another way to think about it
Speaker 3: is just that this paper exists somewhere within the domain
Speaker 3: of trying to understand both the functioning but also the
Speaker 3: positives and negatives of self assessment. That you know that
Speaker 3: there are good things, there are like empowering things that
Speaker 3: can come out of positive self assessment, and there are
Speaker 3: also negative and destructive things that can come out of it,
Speaker 3: and a lot of maybe, uh, self cultivation and living
Speaker 3: the good life is about trying to understand how these
Speaker 3: things work in your own mind and balance them correctly,
Speaker 3: to empower yourself with enough positive self assessment that like
Speaker 3: you feel you feel like you can do things and
Speaker 3: you can you know, pursue opportunities and take risks and
Speaker 3: stuff like that, but also not puffing yourself up and
Speaker 3: thinking you're better than other people.
Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, like you have to be at least
Speaker 2: a little over confident at times to try new things,
Speaker 2: to take risks. I mean to a certain extent. It's like,
Speaker 2: how many podcast episodes would we not have even done
Speaker 2: had we not been maybe a little over confident at times,
Speaker 2: you know, or just open to the idea that's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: let's see what happens if we say we're going to
Speaker 2: do an episode on X, Y or Z, you know,
Speaker 2: and then you sort it out. Then you see what
Speaker 2: your capabilities are, you see what the resources are, and
Speaker 2: you find a landing spot.
Speaker 3: Yeah, okay, that's all I've got on the Psychology Prize
Speaker 3: this year. But Rob, you also looked into the twenty
Speaker 3: twenty five Aviation Prize, right, yes.
Speaker 2: Yes, this one went to another multinational paper, this one
Speaker 2: by Francesco Sanchez, Mariana Melcon, Karmi Corene, and Barry Pinchot
Speaker 2: for Ethanol ingestion affects flight performance and echolocation in Egyptian
Speaker 2: fruit Bats, published in Behavioral Processes back in twenty ten,
Speaker 2: So yeah, slightly older paper here. Why is it funny? Well,
Speaker 2: it is a story about fruit bats getting drunk off
Speaker 2: of fermented fruit. So it's a perfect combination of two
Speaker 2: inherently funny things, drunken animals and just fruit bats. Just
Speaker 2: fruit bats in and of themselves. I don't know, I'm
Speaker 2: maybe there are a few of us out there, but
Speaker 2: I just find the idea of a fruit bat hilarious.
Speaker 2: And then fruit bats in the wild are at least
Speaker 2: extremely amusing to observe.
Speaker 3: I do think certain kinds of fruit bats are among
Speaker 3: the funniest and cutest looking animals in nature.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there's you know, there's like an adorable awkwardness to
Speaker 2: them at times. I don't know. I observed one in
Speaker 2: Indonesia like dive bombing a discarded bit of ban by
Speaker 2: the beach, and it was I don't know, it's just there.
Speaker 2: There was an innocence to what they were up to.
Speaker 3: There's a little bit of puppy about them, yeah, but
Speaker 3: also a little bit of raggedy rat.
Speaker 2: Yeah. And while they're clearly not vampire bats, I think
Speaker 2: it is always hilarious. Sometimes they kind of stand in
Speaker 2: for vampire bats and movies. Yeah. So yeah, So it's
Speaker 2: obvious why this is funny. As for like why it
Speaker 2: matters and why it's a study at all. Well, the
Speaker 2: consumption of ethyl alcohol and ripe fruits has been documented
Speaker 2: in various creatures. We've talked about this in the show before.
Speaker 2: I believe, various primates, various birds, Malaysian tree shrews, moose, elephants,
Speaker 2: and various insects. I think mainly you're looking at cases
Speaker 2: of the ones anyway that were coming up from me
Speaker 2: or like fruit flies. But then also there are cases
Speaker 2: with bees and nectar, so we're not talking about a
Speaker 2: weird totally like what if scenario, like what if blue
Speaker 2: whales drink red bull? You know, it's like because you know,
Speaker 2: fruit bats, being of rougivores, are certainly exposed to ethyl
Speaker 2: alcohol via ripe fruits, or at least potential to consume them,
Speaker 2: and ethyl alcohol is present in all fleshy fruits when
Speaker 2: those fruits have ripened sufficiently, And of course it also
Speaker 2: goes without saying that this is the foundational principle behind
Speaker 2: human alcoholic beverages as well. So the study in question
Speaker 2: here looked at the Egyptian fruit bat, that is Rosettis agypticus,
Speaker 2: which certainly can be found in Egypt along the expanse
Speaker 2: of the Nile River, but its range includes large areas
Speaker 2: throughout Africa, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, and the Indian subcontinent,
Speaker 2: so that they are not just found in Egypt. The
Speaker 2: researchers here had previously found that the marginal value of
Speaker 2: food for Egyptian fruit bats decreases when its ethanol content
Speaker 2: exceeds one percent. They hypothesize that if ingested food containing
Speaker 2: more than one percent ethanol would be toxic today, these
Speaker 2: bats probably causing an abriation that would then affect flight
Speaker 2: and echolocation skills. And they predicted that this might be
Speaker 2: the reason why Egyptian fruit bats had previously been observed
Speaker 2: to avoid highly ripened fruits. So this is another case
Speaker 2: where this is not highlighting something that had not been
Speaker 2: already observed to some degree, like Egyptian fruit bats seem
Speaker 2: to not really go for the hard stuff, and the
Speaker 2: idea might be, well, maybe they don't want to get
Speaker 2: slashed on super right fruit because they have to fly
Speaker 2: everywhere and that could get them into problems.
Speaker 3: Right. Nature makes wine, but I'm not going to drink
Speaker 3: it because I've got to.
Speaker 2: Drive home right right, so you know, And in the
Speaker 2: paper the authors here discuss in abriation in various animals
Speaker 2: driving home that numerous studies have pointed to animals displaying
Speaker 2: decreased coordination and other negative physiological effects that can result
Speaker 2: in reduced fitness via greater susceptibility to predation as well
Speaker 2: as like fatal and debilitating accidents. And you know, sometimes
Speaker 2: we humans have to be reminded. But this is also
Speaker 2: this also can be the result of alcohol consumption and
Speaker 2: human beings as well. We may like how it makes
Speaker 2: us feel, but it can certainly make us more susceptible
Speaker 2: to injury via accident in many different ways. And I
Speaker 2: suppose you know, it would also make you more susceptible
Speaker 2: to predation in cases where an animal predator was already
Speaker 2: in play. If there's a tiger in your backyard already,
Speaker 2: you know, maybe you should limit it to two beers
Speaker 2: if you're having a backyard barbecue. That just sounds like
Speaker 2: reasonable advice.
Speaker 3: Well, you know, I don't think I've ever thought about
Speaker 3: it like this before, but I just realized that probably
Speaker 3: a lot of unnecessary and dangerous human wild animal interactions
Speaker 3: are fueled by alcohol on the humans part. Like when
Speaker 3: you see a video of somebody approaching a wild you know,
Speaker 3: going up to a snake and trying to grab it
Speaker 3: or go you know whatever. I've been a lot of
Speaker 3: a lot of these cases. Some of these people might
Speaker 3: be a few beers in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well they have very possible. I mean, certainly humans
Speaker 2: don't have to imbibe in order to do stupid things,
Speaker 2: but you know it probably helps, so so yeah, I
Speaker 2: think basically this all drives home the fact that like
Speaker 2: the changes that take place inside a human being are
Speaker 2: also going to be present to some degree within a bat. Yes,
Speaker 2: we cannot fully put ourselves within the mind of the bat,
Speaker 2: but we can see how this might play out. The
Speaker 2: authors here point out that you know alcohol, alcohol effects
Speaker 2: multiple tissues and functions. It can impact cognition, reaction time, coordination, reflexes,
Speaker 2: and nerve transmission. It can make a human being trip
Speaker 2: over something in their house and hurt themselves. And we're
Speaker 2: just walking, we're not flying, and seeing the world through
Speaker 2: through our screeches and then the reception of those screeches.
Speaker 2: So with the bats here, the researchers found that yeah,
Speaker 2: Egyptian fruit bats took longer to fly between the two
Speaker 2: landing st in this study. I believe they use like
Speaker 2: a hallway. So this is not like you know out
Speaker 2: in the wild. It's in an artificial testing environment after
Speaker 2: being fed ethanol containing food, and this, they argue, indicates
Speaker 2: that the deterrence perceived in Egyptian fruit bats for ethanol
Speaker 2: rich fruit is justified and that its ingestion can result
Speaker 2: in impaired flight and reduce decolocation skills. So again, this
Speaker 2: is one of those things that yes, it kind of
Speaker 2: sounds like a no brainer. If a bat gets drunk,
Speaker 2: it's not going to fly as well, it's not going
Speaker 2: to echo locate as well. But this study seem to
Speaker 2: bear that out as well, because again, this would hurt
Speaker 2: the bat's ability to effectively fly from one location to
Speaker 2: the next safely, which they're having to do through, you know,
Speaker 2: in a varied environment with all sorts of factors tree, limbs, buildings, rocks,
Speaker 2: and so forth, and this could potentially make them more
Speaker 2: susceptible to predation as well. And Egyptian fruit bats have
Speaker 2: many predators, including various raptors and owls. Also the genet
Speaker 2: which is a cat like non feline carnivore, so it's
Speaker 2: ultimately more related to something like a bentarong as opposed
Speaker 2: to a cat. But you look at it and it's
Speaker 2: very much a feline like form and you know it
Speaker 2: is and for it, the Egyptian fruit bat is on
Speaker 2: the menu. So again like this is a study that, yeah,
Speaker 2: it is humorous, but I also I think the study
Speaker 2: is worth highlighting as well because the examples of animals
Speaker 2: that seem to readily engage in high alcohol ripe fruit consumption,
Speaker 2: like well of course, you know humans in our own way,
Speaker 2: but also chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas. This often overshadows cases
Speaker 2: of animals that tend to avoid such fruits, which includes
Speaker 2: not only Egyptian fruit bats, but orengtex They have also
Speaker 2: been observed in the wild to avoid these super ripe
Speaker 2: ethanol rich fruits. So good role model for the teetotalers
Speaker 2: and the sober curious.
Speaker 3: I guess, I guess it's an interesting question if there
Speaker 3: are any generalizations you could make about the biological or
Speaker 3: ecological factors that would cause an animal to be more
Speaker 3: open to consuming ethanol in nature versus less open to it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, you know, I don't have the hard facts, but
Speaker 2: just thinking in general about like what does an Egyptian
Speaker 2: fruit bat and an orangutank have in common? I mean, well,
Speaker 2: you know, the Egyptian the orangutank does not fly, but
Speaker 2: the orangutank does live among the tree limbs. Then there
Speaker 2: could be an argument made that, yeah, this is there's
Speaker 2: maybe sort of a fine tuning of your abilities that
Speaker 2: needs to be in place here, otherwise you're going to plummet.
Speaker 3: But then against from the ground.
Speaker 2: Yeah yeah, But then again, I mean many other cases
Speaker 2: are going to involve situations where yeah, you could, you
Speaker 2: could easily make the argument that, well, this is an
Speaker 2: animal that has its predators, it has its environmental hazards,
Speaker 2: and you know, any change to its physiological state via
Speaker 2: the consumption of alcohol is going to be to its detriment.
Speaker 2: But then I guess there's also a case to be made.
Speaker 2: There's probably some exploration to be made anyway about available fruit,
Speaker 2: you know, does it what are its options? Like is
Speaker 2: there a case where there's just suddenly a glut of
Speaker 2: super ripe fruit and that is just what is available, Like,
Speaker 2: that's the biomass you have to consume and then you
Speaker 2: just have to roll with the consequences or do you
Speaker 2: have stuff to choose from? And can you do you
Speaker 2: have the freedom then to say no, thank you to
Speaker 2: the boozy fruit because I would prefer not to glide
Speaker 2: into the side of a tree. Certainly something we could
Speaker 2: come back to on the show with a deeper dive.
Speaker 2: But again I think that often more emphasis is put
Speaker 2: on the fact that there are animals that get drunk
Speaker 2: off of fruit as opposed to looking at those that
Speaker 2: avoid it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, interesting, totally, all right, Well does that do it
Speaker 3: for part one of our twenty twenty five Nobel exploration.
Speaker 2: It certainly is, but hey, we'll be back on Thursday
Speaker 2: with another look at this year's winners for the twenty
Speaker 2: twenty five Ignobel Prizes, so we hope you'll join us then.
Speaker 2: In the meantime, we'd like to remind everyone out there
Speaker 2: that Stuff to Blow Your Mind is primarily a science
Speaker 2: and culture podcast, with core episodes on Tuesdays and Thursdays,
Speaker 2: a short form episode on Wednesdays, and on Fridays. We
Speaker 2: set aside most serious concerns to just talk about a
Speaker 2: weird film on Weird House Cinema.
Speaker 3: Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer JJ Posway.
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