Hey everybody, we are experiencing some technical difficulties here at This Week in Science. Justin is having some kind of browser issue with our streaming platform and low and behold, out of the blue, it doesn't like him anymore. So I see him, I see him there and he is chatting with us in our little chat area but I don't know where, he did no video, no audio, he's somewhere in the interwebs. We are live, yes. I apologize for the fact that we have no Justin yet. I would love to get a Justin. Yeah, I don't know how to tell Justin how to make the internet work for him. I asked him if his internet was plugged in. One Grouchy Gamer says, Justin, reboot your P.O.S., I know what that means. Very good, very good, too safe. Yeah, maybe a computer reboot needs to happen before the computer will do the thing. Yes, so I love, Fada, thank you reminding everyone to smash the like and the subscribe buttons. The bell thingy, too, if you want to get notifications for when we go live and are missing our third host, ding, ding, ding, ding, like right now you would be getting that notification off the hizze, yeah. But yeah, Justin's still there, he's not commenting now. I don't know what he's doing because there's, oops, there's a message. Remember this message is, he can use everything everywhere, but try a different browser. Try a different browser, I will tell him, good. He said in the private chat, he is working on a workaround. A worker, okay. We're working around, we're working around, and this is how we get around. So there was a lot of science this week, hey Blair, while Justin's waiting, I mean, not waiting, working on his workaround. I mean, do you want to tell me about some, some mink? Oh yeah, we can do that while we're, while we're. Yeah, do you want to tell me about, it's a little pre-show story to wet your science whistles. Yeah, it's a bummer to Justin, I really like this one, but this is about carnivore microbiomes. So a study found a dramatic difference between the microbial diversity in guts of female and male American minks. This is an unexpected sexual distinction in gut microbiomes of carnivores, which has ramifications for future research. So carnivores, they're pretty hard to track, they're very elusive, and so a lot of wildlife research is done by examining poop, they examine the poop to figure out what they've been up to, if they're sick, how old they are, what they've been eating. And so the guts of the carnivores can often tell the story of what they're up to in terms of ecology. Part of the reason for that also is that their guts are very short and simple. Herbivore guts are super long because you have to process things like grass and sticks forever to break down, but carnivore guts are really short, which is the zookeeper in me telling you, this is one of the reasons you, you're a carnivore keeper. Carnivore poop's very stinky, it is some of the stinkiest poop. Herbivore poop, some of the least stinky poop. And this is partially what I believe to be why. It's because the herbivore poop has been ultra, ultra processed. So much has been taken out out of it and it's just grass, right?  It rots differently, but also because it's a shorter gut. So anyway, the facts that they have a shorter gut also means there's less time for the immune system, which is different from males and females to influence microbial diversity, but they still see differences because there are in other cases differences between male and female poop and microbiomes, but that's usually associated with a longer gut because there's less opportunity for that to kind of get mucked up in the process. Yeah. And so this has a huge implication because in the past they would just collect poop and analyze it for whatever they wanted, but now it looks like they're going to have to do DNA extraction to figure out if the sample is male or female before they can do research on the actual poop. So that's kind of the larger implication here is to see they're going to have to figure out what the sex of the quote unquote donor poop is before they sequence it. Why? Why are, I mean, why male and female differences? We don't know. Is this just hormone related? Is, I mean, I don't know anything about mink reproduction. What's their estrus cycle? They're a mammal, but what like, what are they closely related to? Weasels. So badgers, wolverines, martins, ferrets, otters. So basically this just kind of raises more questions. They also found out, which is really cool, that there is no difference in the quality and the sample taken from the poop based on time or temperature, which is really helpful to know that's actually how a lot of this research started. It's helpful to know because a lot of the time you come across a sample, you don't know if it's been five days or five hours or five minutes since the animal. Well, you'd know if it's five minutes because it'd be warm. Nice and warm, nice little warm carnivore poo. Yeah. And so that's really good news. The kind of the bummer news is that they have to add this extra level to fecal research now. That's fascinating. I want to know more. What makes the difference? Why is it different? I mean, I'm actually not surprised it's different, but I am surprised it's different. I don't know. I have another story tonight that's about an unsurprising difference between males and females.  It's the same. It's just, you know, we'll only study male animals because that works for everybody. Because we need the female animals to make more test subjects. So we'll just, yeah. But also that, but also just modern medicine, a lot of human medicine. The research was done on males. Exactly. That's, yeah. We need our good samples. Good morning, Justin. Hi. Good morning. Oh boy. Yo, you get that work around working? Yeah. So the only thing that has changed in my setup is at some point today, my mouse stopped working. I was like, what's going on? And so I did a reset. Turned out Microsoft update. Right. Okay. So somehow it is convinced the live stream site that I am blocking it from camera and mic on my computer. Even though the browser thingy, not a problem. Anywhere else, not a problem. I can use my camera everywhere. I can access it anywhere else on this set again. But thankfully there's another computer in the house. So as long as it's battery lasts, I will be here for the show. Well, let's have it tight 90. And hope that the battery lasts the whole time. Can you tap on your mic? I kind of think. Yeah, good question. Yeah, it may not be the right one. Wait, have you tapped on your mic? Okay. Okay, great. Good. I hit a weird feeling. Is it quiet? Am I quiet? Is that what's happening? It felt, it felt like kind of tinier than normal, which is why I thought it was maybe a laptop mic, but we're good. We have a show. We have all the hosts. It is very exciting. I have a pink beverage. I'm ready to go. Now we can begin. She's going to finish that drink way too soon. We've already talked about poop, so this is great. We can splice that into the show later if you want or not. Let's see. My technical issues obviously prevented me from entering hair and makeup this morning. We don't need you in hair and makeup. Oh, good. All right, everybody. Are we ready for this? I'm ready for this. Let's start the show. Let's do the real, real deal-y bobber doodly-ding, whatever. Let's make it happen. Let's do that thing that she was talking about. All right, everybody. Starting the show in three, two, this is twist. This Week in Science, episode number 858, recorded on Wednesday, January 12th, 2022.  Hey, everyone. I'm Dr. Kiki, and tonight on the show, we will fill your heads with dolphins, sharks, and ponies. But first. Disclaimer, disclaimer, disclaimer.  But what is a current modern human? Mostly hairless ape descendant made up of a collection of odd ape descendants who over time added their genetic makeup to form that which you consider to be you. And what are you? Most philosophers would agree that you are a constructive consciousness, a self-aware squishy brain creature living in a shell of bone, and reliant on a system of anatomical parts, all working together to supply you with a steady diet of human blood upon which to feed. Everything you know of the world beyond is through intermediaries, senses that report back information that is stored, correlated, interconnected, and analyzed within the neural network that is you. And when something goes wrong, when a part malfunctions, when a limb, nerve, or organ begin to fail, it can jeopardize the comfort, quality, safety, and security of squishy brain creature life.  You seek solutions. How best to keep the blood flowing? The senses reporting the anatomical parts operating at optimal levels. At times the solutions are simple. A new pair of glasses, a brace for the knee, medication for an ailment, a vaccine even, to preempt a problem from happening in the first place. And in an extreme situation, you may even need to replace your heart. If you do that new heart, that new part, that new blood pump, regardless of where it originated, becomes yours. Because you are more than a collection of parts.  And your best tool for surviving the world is This Week in Science. Coming up next. I've got the kind of mind that can't get enough. I want a Blair. And a good science to you too, Justin Blair. And everyone out there, welcome to another episode of This Week in Science. We are here through the magic of modern technology. All of us collections of squishy brain folk. We are the model of a modern squishy brain. I really got to figure out how to make that work. One of my favorite musicals. Anyhow, thank you all for joining us for another episode of This Week in Science. And I am so excited to talk about all the science that we brought for the show tonight. So much of it out there in the world. I brought stories about spots on the moon, dark spots on the moon, zoo air, and fingerprints. See at those fingerprints. What do you have, Justin? Oh, that's a great question. I have no idea what I brought. Stories! Yeah, but I'm on the wrong. I'm on the wrong page and they run down. Good, good. Those are the wrong. I was like, those look good stories.  First human ever versus a volcano. My little medieval war ponies. How hemp can prevent COVID. Better government through drug-fueled drinking. And a new segment that I call my problem with that. Oh, I can't wait for that one. Maybe that's one we can all pick up as we move forward this year. My problem with that. Oh, I like it. Okay, Blair, what is in the animal corner? Yes, I have dolphin anatomy, dogs wearing headphones, and spiders wearing hats or pants, depending on where they'd wear them. We'll talk about it. Okay, costuming for spiders. I like it. Well, we all like our little bit of costuming. And I also like our little bit of science here. And all of you, if you have not yet subscribed, make sure that you look for us on all the podcast players, This Week in Science, or TWIS. We are also on Instagram and Twitch and Twitter as TWIS Science. We livestream from Twitch, Facebook, and YouTube. You can find us. And our website is TWIS.org. So we can find all the details that you might want to look for. But now it is time for the science. So let's dive into all these stories that we have teased in the last few moments. All right, we're just going to go right in to pig hearts. Jumping in. We have talked about animal transplants. We've talked about pig hearts. We've talked about all this stuff before on the show. They did it finally. Pig to human transplant. One of my favorite headlines, though, was from The Onion, where they said pig dies well. Anyway, there was a very funny headline from The Onion, which I highly recommend. But anyway, pig heart transplant. What did they do? How did they do it? Why did they do it finally? So it turns out the gentleman who has received this Xeno transplantation is named David Bennett. He's 57 years old and he had advanced heart failure and was not eligible for a heart transplant because he hadn't done things to take care of or taken steps to take care of his body and his heart. Knowing that the researchers petitioned the US FDA to authorize the pig heart transplant. Now the heart came from a company that's called Revivacore. And Revivacore has been working in this area for years. They have been implanting pig hearts into baboons. They have been looking at all sorts of Xeno transplantation possibilities.  So they knocked out three genes that are enzymes that allow pigs to synthesize sugars that our bodies recognizes foreign. And so that gene modification basically gets rid of those sugars so that our body can't latch on to those markers and go, hey, we don't want you, reject, reject. Additionally, there were human genes added, anti-inflammatory genes, genes for blood coagulation and prevention of blood vessel damage and regulatory proteins related to immune and antibody response. And then finally, they removed growth hormone because they don't want the pig heart to continue growing inside of anybody's chest because that can cause heart failure and other problems. So it's just starting to grow. Yeah, it's already a big heart in there. Let's just calm yourself down. So the researchers back in September, we talked about this, the possibility of having these modifications and how they could work in baboons. But now, yes, they have successfully transplanted this heart into this male human, 57-year-old male human. The interesting aspect of these hearts, too, that this heart had to be kept alive and kept happy in a bath of nutrients, and it had to be prepared and ready to be put into the human body. So it was, they stored it in a cocktail that was commercialized by a company out of Sweden called Exvivo. And basically it gets bathed in a nutrient broth that has water hormones, adrenaline, cortisol. And then the fun one, cocaine. Good for the pig heart. Good for the pig heart. Apparently it keeps the pig heart fresh. So this is... Is that true after it goes in also? No, after it goes in.  Suddenly it's the 1980s again. Yeah, I feel like I've been living 40 years in the past. Yeah. So now this gentleman has to be also on a rejection immunosuppressant. It's called KPL-404, and it'll shut down antibody production that basically these antibodies usually lead B cells to talk to T cells to get the immune response going. And this guy's going to be on this immunosuppressant regime for as long as he has this heart. And they're also working on this immunosuppressant KPL-404 as a treatment for rheumatoid arthritis. Lots of interesting aspects here for suppressing the immune system, but in this particular case it's so that the body will want to keep the heart working and in the body, not rejected. So the thing I find most intriguing is at some point, like the very early part of your telling of the story is congratulations, Mr. Bennett. We've figured out your heart problem can be solved by giving you a donor heart. Oh, hey, that's great news. Oh, this is going to work out fine. Yeah. The only thing is you have to, and I don't know the details for sure. I'm just I'm speculating you have to quit smoking. Ah, okay. Oh, yeah. Then you'll live a long time. Okay. Okay. So what else you got? Oh, that's kind of it. No, no, no, no. Come on. Come on. There's got to be something else. Well, there is this like thing where they're looking to put a big heart in a human being for the first time and it's never been tried before. We don't know if it'll work. Yeah, that one. Yeah, that's the one. Do that one. I want that one. We have to take care of himself for the that's the only thing I could think of. And it's I mean, the conversation must have been an interesting one. I mean, this is going to give this gentleman an unknown amount of time. His heart was he was in basically in heart failure. His heart was going to die. It was it was game over for this guy. So it was the choice between game over or go through this procedure and maybe he'll who knows how long he'll last. The baboons that have received these pig hearts have lasted a maximum of nine months, but that wasn't because of heart failure. It was actually because of a lung infection because there has to be the immunosuppressant. And so infections are a bigger problem for animals, people who have these kinds of xenotransplanted organs. So so who knows nine months, six months, three years. I have nobody has any idea how long this will last. This is the first one of its kind. They'd like to do another and they're going to petition the FDA to do again, do this procedure again. And they are also hoping to get a clinical trial started at some point soon so that they can know whether or not all these genetic modifications are necessary so that they can know how long somebody might actually have so that they can get a real idea of yeah how these things work. Yeah, we'll see in nine months or whatever. Yeah. Between this and 3D printing technology, if we could combine those two things so that nobody has to wait for organs. So it would be really. Yeah, we could 3D print the pig and then. But that's kind of what I was thinking too is like I know in an ideal world where you could kind of go sci-fi with it and just imagine that 3D printed organs are perfect. That would be the preferred choice. But in the reality of where the science is actually at, the pig heart is the way to go right now. Yeah, and all of the joking aside, Patrick P, I wonder if he can find troubles now in the chat room. Yeah, yeah. All of the joking is that nine months does not sound like a lot of time to those of us who think time is basically unlimited at the moment. Yeah. If when you're up against the clock ticking down the seconds, you can't think the rest of your life in seconds and minutes, nine months. You can get a lot done. Yeah. Yeah, it's a gift. It's extra. It's yeah. So good luck to this gentleman and we wish him well and we hope he is the first of many and that many lives can be extended with this technology moving forward. Justin, you got a story? Oh gosh, I suppose I do. Oh gosh, golly. Let's see. First human ever just got a little bit older. We're talking about Omo1, whose remains are found in Ethiopia by Leakey in the 60s, is the oldest known Homo sapien that we have found that is the atomically modern human, oldest one we ever found. Until now, we didn't really know how old it was. Scientists have been attempting to accurately date this fossil since they found it and it was thought to be around 195,000 years old. So they've been using chemical fingerprints of volcanic ash layers to try to determine the time it was. Some of that sediment though was kind of hard for them to work with initially. Technology being what it was at the time. An international team of scientists led by University of Cambridge has readdressed the age of Omo1 remains and now it looks like it is the oldest, again, example pushing back the age of our species as well. So the new research saying that this thing's about 230,000, at least 230,000 years old. So it knocked it back 35,000 years at the minimum. So it could be definitely older than that. There's nothing new that they found about the bones themselves. It's the volcanic ash the bones were found in or that it was found below have been more accurately dated. And that volcanic activity that laid down the ash that's on the layer above Omo1 are dated to 230,000 years. That whole relative dating in the fossil record thing. Yeah, so the bones are older. Don't have the maximum age on the bones yet, but it's older than that. But that pushes back humans, modern current modern humans another 35,000 years. Which is significant. That's quite a that's I mean, we're talking millions of years, but still 35,000 years is a significant chunk of time. And I'm saying that as somebody who has not yet achieved 50. So staring down the barrel of it, but still. Yeah. And I guess I guess part of the confusion is they had they had assigned it. It's a very volcanic area. This is Ethiopia. This is Rift Valley. There was a lot of volcanic activity back in the day. And they had assigned that that layer of ash to the wrong volcano and wrong volcanic activity. Turns out the chemical fingerprint is a match for a volcano that's more than 400 kilometers away. So it was it was not the not the closest one. Not the most obvious choice, I suppose. But when you're talking about ash from a volcano, that gets carried through the air laid down. So it's not necessarily obvious all that. That's not going to be as obvious. Yeah. Yeah. So that's that's a major major update. On human origin history. Even older than we thought. And again, we keep getting older. Rift Valley has like because of the volcanic activity, because of the way that valley is laid out and been moving apart. It's not just that that's where human activity was most in the world necessarily at that time. But it is like the ideal place to look for fossils. So it's sort of we keep looking at like it's the oldest. But it's the oldest we've found because we found it in the easiest place to find such things. So there could be somewhere else hiding even older versions of the current modern human. But again, even then, what is a current modern human with this whole braided stream thing? They will continue that. But this is the oldest like us that we have very cool. I love it. Yeah. It's going to be the explorers, the adventurers who go into caves and are digging places that we haven't dug before that are hard to reach that suddenly are going to make the extraordinary finds because they're definitely places. Yeah. It's it's places that were habitable and easy to reach or, you know, nice to live in at one point in time. But maybe not so much right now. Right. You have to think about what things were like in certain places at certain times to figure out where the people were. Yeah. That's cool. Very, very cool. Blair, you want to bring us in? Yes. So I have a very interesting study from Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. And this breakthrough study has found that just like humans, female dolphins have a functional clitoris. So they this is something apparently that's up for debate through most of the animal kingdom. And part of the reason for that is that the human clitoris wasn't fully described by science until the 1990s. So I'm just I'm sad and disappointed by science and the world right now. Okay. Yeah. Well, we were having a conversation in the pre-show about women representation in scientific studies because of a piece of research that came out this week about from linguists looking at gender representation in language texts. And anyway, point being, female females of species are often underrepresented in scientific studies in general, especially in humans, especially in medical research in humans. Women are often left off. And so this isn't that surprising, especially based on cues in our culture about sex and female pleasure in sex. And at least it's not surprising, right? But so that has spread to our understanding of the animal kingdom. And so now it actually takes a research paper to show that a species has a clitoris. So I just kind of wanted to explain how this happened. So first of all, it makes perfect sense for dolphins to have them because they have sex as part of maintaining social bonds. They've also seen females rubbing each other in that area with their snouts, flippers, flukes. So there is, again, lots of kind of anecdotal reasons for this to make sense and just kind of social, understanding social dynamics of dolphins. But they actually had to look at clitorises from deceased dolphins to find out, to kind of find the structural proof that there was feeling in these spaces and that it was a functional thing. So they looked at the present shape and configuration of erectile bodies. They looked at nerve fibers. And just like the human clitoris, the dolphin clitoris has a large area of erectile tissue that fills up with blood and has free nerve endings underneath thinner skin than on other parts of their genitalia. So it's there. They can feel female pleasure is part of sex in dolphins. And researchers also note that there's been little study of the clitoris and female sexual pleasure in nature as a whole. So what I was talking about before is a good reminder to maybe look at that again. You know, just thinking about hyenas off of the top of my head. The alpha female hyenas will actually have enlarged clitoris that resemble a penis. So they're not that different of structures. So it's just, it would be odd for it to not do this. Whatever. Anyway, point being, they've done some research. Hopefully this will help push more research into the female side of sex in the animal kingdom. And it can kind of bring that into the holistic conversation. So it's not just wholly focused on the other side. It seems so, how many times have we had conversations about studies that have finally happened looking at animals and the different species in the animal kingdom? And we're like, that seems so obvious. Yes. If you talk about dolphins, there's always the conversation about how kind of wild and crazy they are. And they talk about though, usually the teenage male dolphins being hyper-aroused and acting girls, women are left out of the conversation across the board. Couple of things on this. I feel like I heard this story already. Like I feel like there's something like this happened. Did we report on a preliminary look at this or something? I don't know. It sounds very familiar. It does not ring a bell to me. It really does to me. I feel like it was even a couple of years ago. There was some talk about this. But I've also seen this where we're talking about the linguists. You see it and we're talking about how medical research is very male-centric. The difference between what is disseminated about childbirth through the medical field and what you can get from midwives, again, the wealth of knowledge about how birthing works and all the little intricacies that go in to preparing for and giving birth versus the medical profession, which is just come in and push. That's what you do. And if you need drugs, we'll give you drugs. That's kind of almost, and then at some point we're just going to give up on the natural process and give you a C-section at ever-increasing rates versus people who've really studied and understand the process. It's dramatic everywhere. So these things need to get, these bridges need to get spanned over the gulfs of knowledge there. Well, understanding more about other mammals, about other relatives of ours, other species, and how things work generally is going to help us understand more about ourselves as well. And understanding more about how the animal kingdom works and why different species work the way they do. I'm also surprised this isn't in the animal corner. Now I'm really intrigued to find out what is going to be in the animal corner. The animal corner bled into the short stories today. There was just too much. I'm like, how did, how did dolphin clitoris not become part of that? And there's, all right, now I can't, can't we do that? Okay, well, now we're going to move on from the functional clitoris in the dolphin to big giant crater on the moon. It's a completely logical leap, isn't it? Yes. Well, let's talk about a big old crater on the south pole of the moon that is, that's called the 8-kin crater. The 8-kin crater, we can't see it from where we are, the face of the moon as we see it, if you look down at the south, the bottom end of the moon, we can see the edges of the crater, but we can't actually see it. The only reason we really know about it is we finally have sent craft up and we've been orbiting and looking at the whole moon. And so we know that this crater is a very large and special feature on the moon. So researchers have been trying to figure out, okay, a big impact like that, what would it have done to the moon? When did it happen? How did it happen? And the fact that it's a giant crater on the moon suggests that it occurred after the molten period of the moon. So there was a period of time where the moon was really, really hot after the big impact that shot the moon out from the earth and other stuff started glomming in and it turned into the moon. That was its own thing. And there was a magma ocean on the moon was just a hot magma body in space. And then it started cooling down, getting a crust. That crust was then bombarded. And the aching crater came to be. But we also have evidence of volcanic activity, these volcanic mares that are up on the northern part of the moon, almost exactly opposite the aching crater. And so there's been this kind of thought of like, oh, are these things related? And so some researchers did simulations. We still have to go look at rocks on the moon, which a Chinese rover might be well placed to be able to do. But we have to, they took a look at the simulation and simulated impacts on the moon. They simulated the ways that different sizes and angles of big impacts would have affected the moon. And they realized that there's one particular angle that a giant asteroid would be bombarding at. And through that, it would hit the crust of the moon, break into it, create a crater. It would get blasted to smithereens, but yes, and it would go, yes, Blair, into the moon. And the asteroid would just burrow itself right in there. But that would also set off magma movement, material movement through the moon that would lead to the creation of these little volcanoes exactly opposite the impact crater. That's crazy and I love it. So something just punched right into the moon and the moon went ouch. And didn't hit it bad enough to toss it out of orbit. Exactly.  Do we know? Maybe the moon used to be somewhere else. Maybe it had a different orbit. I got, yeah. It was much closer. It had been moved. I guess farther. Farther and it got moved in a little bit closer, right? Right? Who knows?  This is, I mean, talk about a nudge. It didn't blow up the moon, but it just added some mass. And so now there might be a big mass, more mass. It just goes to show that the inside of the moon is not just a homogenous, nice moon inside, that there's a lot of stuff in different places. It's all mixed up and there's been a churn. And it's lopsided. And the moon is very likely lopsided, yes. But now, thanks to rovers and spacecraft, we have a chance to investigate this further. But like I said, the next step really will be to look at rocks on the northern side of the moon to see what their signatures are like, to see if anything made it all the way through. Because that would be kind of cool. All right. All right. That's the moon. So tell me about your little war pony. Oh, I could do that. I was going to stick with the moon theme, because I got a moon stamp too.  Okay. Yeah. Let's go with the moon. Bring it. I'm going to stick with the moon, going from moon churn to moon chum. And here's my problem with that, the new segment of the show I created just for the following story. But we'll possibly be using more often in the future as I'm getting older and crankier. And I feel like I start more and more sentences with my problem with that new research from LSU and the University of Florida suggests that more shark attacks occur on average during fuller moon phases. The results of the study have been published in correlative statistical anomaly digest, a magazine that allows researchers to publish papers on correlations they have found between no more than two sets of data that have no known causational relationship. Actually, it was published in frontiers of marine science. And the authors do point out that they lack a causational link and don't know what the results actually illuminate or if they're even significant, but seem convinced that there is a link there. Okay. That said, they do have an abundance of data. Global shark attack record collected over a 55-year period, 1960 to 2015, from the International Shark Attack File, which is housed in the Florida Museum of Natural History at the University of Florida. So shark attacks anywhere, everywhere in the world over a 55-year span, and they found something they think is worth publishing and looking into further. Which is fine. That's what research was expected to do, find a correlation, I guess, of something and look into it further. I have to say, I just am really enjoying watching Blair's face. For all the podcast listeners right now, just I mean, you might have heard the sigh that came out of her. But I'm just, I'm watching her face. Apparently, Blair has a problem with this too. Yeah, keep going. I'm so many. I'm formulating a list, but you continue. Okay, okay. We'll get there. We'll get, we'll absolutely get there. So the researchers found that more shark attacks than average occur during periods of higher lunar illumination and fewer attacks than average occur during periods of lower illumination. So over 50, lower under 50, basically. My problem with that, using illumination. Most shark attacks happen during daylight, anywho. So how bright the moon is makes a very little difference to a shark underwater in the daytime. Which the researchers do clearly state. They say, yes, that doesn't really make sense. Yet then they still suggest that there are in fact, they are in fact seeing shark responses to lunar illumination because they did see a trend. The average tax in the data do tend to trend toward higher illumination. And this is globally, beaches around the world. Consistently, over a long, long time. However, the two highest rates of shark attacks by far happened at the full moon, yes, and at the new moon. That's when there's no illumination whatsoever. Those were the two that had the highest. And the rest of it, yeah, the trend towards more illumination, more shark attacks. But the two highest were the full moon and the new moon. Kind of ruins it. Yeah. It's kind of like when you play Dark Side of the Moon while watching Wizard of Oz. It works. It works. Sometimes, sort of, it does it most of the time. But even if you're on the right precursor to experiencing that sort of an event, by no means are you supposed to record this and then publish it to anybody of you during the album with the movie. Okay. So my problem with that, why focus on the sharks at this point? Why not the humans? What is it about humans that sends us running into the ocean at full and new moons? Uh-huh. It's missing from the data sets no matter how many years, no matter how many attacks, this big data record that they got to do something with. The ratio of humans to sharks in the water isn't recorded at all. Yeah, neither are sharks. You also know that full moons make people act wonky. Right. And so, and it's interesting, there's also this week there was a meta analysis published of a bunch of studies and the researchers suggested that it's not illumination but it's gravitation. So it's the gravitation that affects the tides and that gravitational field, even though we can't consciously sense it, impacts the way that animals and plants sleep move, grow, do things. So you get rid of the illumination. There's my problem with that. I'm just, I'm just reporting to what I have. But here's my problem with that. The new moon in the full moon is the most dramatic tidal changes that take place due to gravitation of gravitational forces. That's true. Yes. But that's not necessarily going to affect a shark either. We're still making that leap of blaming the sharks. That is, however, the two times any newbie surfer worth his wax knows it's time to catch the bomb swell. Right. It's the full moon, the new moon. That's when you got, so it's not really great waves. It's not sharks getting aggro. It's more humans in the ocean. Can I point something else to out? Kiki, put that graph back up, please. If you can, if it's not gone. Nope, I can't do that. So this is what I was thinking and why I was sighing so heavily. Shark attack numbers are not in the hundreds or thousands. So you can say like, oh my god, there was a 20% increase. Yeah. The standard deviation on some of these is one or two. So oh my gosh, there was one more shark attack on the new moon. That's tough for me. That's tough to say. Okay, this was the highest level. There were two attacks in Australia at the new moon. So what this is, what this is, though, these aren't, I think what the data plot you've got up there now is deviation from averages, I believe. Right, and it's super low. There's another one that shows more the numbers. This one. Still under a hundred. In the beginning is, I forgot the number. The beginning part of this chart is the new moon. The last part of this graph is the full moon. And you can see that's where the peaks are. Yeah. And that's also when the most surfers are out. That's also when all of the coastal tidal fisher people, the people who are casting into the waters, that's when they like to go fishing, too. Because that rapid moving water and deeper water tends to bring in more fish, which also might be a reason why there might be extra sharks there. But it doesn't matter because even if the number of sharks is always the same, there's definitely more humans in the water. And when there's more humans in the contact with the area where sharks are causing confusion. And coming into contact with sharks. Yeah. There you go. Yeah. So anyway, what was the thing called? Anyway, that's my problem with that. Very good. Approved. We approve this message. Awesome. That was a lot of fun. Yeah. So if you don't want to have a higher probability of a shark attack, don't go in the water during the new moon or the full moon. No, no, no. That's the problem. It doesn't matter. I'm kidding. No, just stay out of the water completely. That's the only thing. That's also the wrong thing to say. But there's also like this is scientific, method-wise. There is like, okay, you have to start with some kind of knowledge. And there is some sort of knowledge about fish feeding or mating behaviors under moonlight. There is some stuff for them to grab onto. The part of the problem is when you get to asking the question and you've already got your data set and you basically have to ask a question off the data that you already have available, you kind of limit actually having a very informed question that you can ask. Because you're not doing the experiment. It's like the experiment's already been done. What can we make out of it? Right. Here's the data. What can we infer from this? And that's a tougher one scientific method. Yeah, exactly. I mean, this is one of the big arguments about genome-wide association studies and about like using machine learning to pull results out of big data sets. It's okay. The relationships are there already. How do you know you're getting the right one? And literally, if you just took the phases of the moon and any other data report, car accidents, children being born, crimes being committed, you will find that one phase of the moon or another has an average different than the others because that's how numbers work. That's just how numbers work. Not everything happens equally evenly all the time. It just doesn't. So if you took 55 years of new moons and full moons and everything else, you're going to see a statistical average difference in those phases that has nothing to do with the moon. I like it. Quick story before we move into our COVID update. The zoo. Blair, this one is for you. If you step into the zoo and you take a big inhale through the nose smell, how many animals do you think you could identify just from? One.  Well, researchers publishing in current biology this week have published their work two different groups. And it's really great because they were all, they were both, both these groups were working on air DNA, the use of identifying DNA in the air to identify species of animals separately, but then they heard about each other's work. And so then they decided to publish their work at the same time in the same journal. So it's like more replications, more better science. And so this is how, this is when science really starts to work.  But how do you know if that cow DNA is like from that farm or from some farm somewhere nearby that just got blown there on the wind? If you're sniffing tiger DNA, you're probably only getting it from the zoo. So to limit their area and the identification, this, the zoos gave them this awesome environment from which to sample DNA. And they were able to identify the animals in the zoo. So they basically used like a computer cooling fan with an air filter attached to it. And then let it run and that air filter then basically collected all the DNA and then they were able to wash it and do all the DNA sampling from there. And the different studies, they were able to identify over 25 species of mammals and birds, DNA belonging to an Eurasian hedgehog which is endangered in the UK. This was a study at Queen Mary University of London. A team in Copenhagen detected 49 non-human vertebrate species, mammal, bird, reptile, amphibian and fish. These were animals like the okapi, armadillo, even the guppy in a pond in the tropical house. Yeah, that's awesome. That's so great. And they got squirrels and rats and house mice and other fish species that were used as animal feed in the air also. And they checked to make, they really double checked and checked and over checked to make sure contamination wasn't an issue. But they were pretty confident that they were sampling species who live at the zoos through the air. And so why is this, why is this a cool idea? Well, you don't always have zoos. You don't always know what animals are in different places. So for cave ecosystems or jungles or think about just about anywhere, even in urban environments, you could sniff the DNA in the air and potentially identify animals and maybe find animals that we've thought to be extinct. Oh no. The first thing I thought of is like, this looks like thylacine DNA. Yeah. Oh, I was thinking, my immediately went to the Borneo Calimantan monkey cat. Yes. An elusive creature that's been evading jungle cameras for decades now. We will get the monkey cat. I love it. Yeah. So not just a DNA from the cells, right? Things that you leave in the dust and the dirt or in the water, but the air, which is, I think, pretty amazing. I think I think it's just pretty awesome. All right. This is This Week in Science. Thank you for listening to the show. We appreciate you being here with us. If you are enjoying it, please share it with a friend today. All right. We're going to come on back right now and we will be giving our COVID update. So Blair, you have a fun story. Yes. It's a fun one. It's also extremely brief and simple. It's just that in previous studies, researchers have shown that T cells induced by other coronaviruses can recognize SARS-CoV-2 COVID-19. And this new study examines for the first time how the presence of those same T cells at the time of SARS-CoV-2 exposure influences whether you become infected. So that would include T cells that you have due to infection from the common cold. So that is a coronavirus. So this provides a blueprint for a second generation universal vaccine that could prevent infection from current and future SARS-CoV-2 variants, including Omicron, because these T cells protect from COVID a little bit differently. Instead of attaching, going to the spike protein, they actually target internal proteins within the SARS-CoV-2 virus. So they're pretty much good against all the current and hopefully future variants. So this is a small sample study, 52 people. They were all white and European. So again, very preliminary. Lots of variables that need to be tested here, but it would appear that there is something to be learned here. This does not mean you are safe if you got the common cold from COVID. What this means is the methodology that these T cells use to try to protect you from other coronaviruses could be used to make other vaccines, which would be great. Yeah, hopefully it doesn't mean that the cold protects you because you know what that would mean then. It would mean that all the people who never get colds because they wash their hands all the time and are very sanitary and avoid sick people and are really good at it, are the people who are dying. And what we're going to be left with is a population of non-hand washers who always catch colds. Hey, listen. I wash my hands very diligently and I get sick multiple times a year every year. Maybe that's why I haven't caught COVID yet. It's possible. I mean, there's also the...  You have an inflammatory response that possibly could help to protect you as well. I mean, I'm just looking on the bright side here. I don't know. Rick Luvman. Hey. You got it. You don't want to cure for the common cold. No, if we cured the common cold 20 years ago, we'd all be in big trouble. Oh, boy. That's awesome. Justin, what was your story? Oh, just good news. COVID edition. Awesome. I'm ready. Oregon State University researchers identified a potential COVID blocker in hemp because, of course, they did. But um, bump. Thank you, Oregon. As much as it sounds like I'm making it up a story, actually, this looks pretty promising. Findings of the study led by Richard Van Bremen, a researcher with Oregon State's Global Hemp Innovation Center, were published in Journal of Natural Products. Okay. So far, maybe. But they looked at hemp. This is cannabis sativa. And they found a pair of cannabinoid acids within the hemp plant that bind to SARS-CoV-2 spike protein. So it actually attaches itself to the spike protein of the virus. So that blocks a critical step in the process the virus uses to infect people. So the compounds are cannabinoid, arolic acid, CBGA, and cannabidolic acid, CBDA. Yeah. Cannabidgerolic, cannabidiolic, yeah. The spike protein is the same one that is used as the drug target, same drug target used in the vaccines and in the antibody therapy. And as the report points out, a drug target is any molecule that is critical to the process of the disease progressing. Yeah. Disrupt that one molecule if it's critical and the disease cannot progress. In this case, these CBD precursors is basically what these are. Do that job. It's so funny though. It's like at multiple times in this story, a Bremen is going on saying, these are not the controlled substances like THC, the psychoactive ingredient marijuana. The thing researchers are constantly having to explain whenever they're talking about using hemp for anything. And then later on they explain that it's not CBD itself, but these are CBD molecular precursors, chemical precursors. So yes, you're safe. You won't feel mildly relaxed. You can go on being stressed out all day. So the interesting aspect of this, this is just looking at molecules. These molecules that happen to be coming from hemp interact with the spike protein. Awesome. But we don't know whether this is going to work in a human person.  But don't think that that means you are protected against SARS-CoV-2. This is a study that has only shown affinity for the spike protein by these molecules. It is not showing that it's going to keep you safe. This isn't a treatment. This is the earliest stages of research. So I just, we need to say that because people are already just like, Woo! We can't let this go down the bleach or the other roads. And this is one that they have tested that does work on the spike protein. They were looking at another compound in licorice that they haven't tested, but they think it will have similar properties. But I think one of the things that I found very interesting about this, these are precursors that are in some abundance in hemp. We did a story a couple years, two, maybe two years ago. About a researcher that was able to produce CBD via a, I believe he used yeast, someone a bioreactor. And one of the things that was interesting about that story then is, because they're talking about, this is part of research, they're trying to use CBD to do maybe it's a concussion protocol because it has some neuro regenerative properties. Something about CBD and the cannabinoids. So we have, they interact very well with the human system. Whether humans have been interacting with hemp for a long time or hemp just happens to be a plant that interacts with human physiology very well, I don't know. But one of the things that was interesting in that is the many, many hundreds of other CBD like compounds, precursors and the rest, that are produced in much smaller quantities within hemp that don't have a large enough a factor or a placement that can actually be expressed in that biotech-y way and then researched. Because it, and so, and here's a pretty good example of now going back a step from CBD that we've already kind of know has some uses, a precursor that could be utilized as medicine as well. This is a plant that is as much as it's talked about sometimes for the right reasons, sometimes feared for the wrong reasons and the right reasons. All that is a lot of research that needs to be done still onto this plant and the compounds.  I mean, this is, it looks interesting. It's promising possibly, but this is not in humans. This was just in cells. More research needs to be done before people really dive into it as prevention and treatment for SARS-CoV-2. So I just want to say that over and over and over again because it's great cell study. I mean, it's like when we talk about all sorts of other stuff and then we're like, oh, in mice. It'll be ready for the next coronavirus. Yeah, maybe it'll be ready for the next one. Who knows? I mean, this is like licorice, the CBD variants. Like, let's see. Yeah, more research. Let's put more money to it. I know that with the Farm Bill, hemp has a lot more research going going on right now. So that in itself is cool. Oh my goodness. We're not going to talk about any more COVID related stuff other than the fact that today we have reached an all-time high of hospitalizations cases. And it's just not very great. Our healthcare system is imploding. So everybody, please wear your masks. If you can stay home, stay home, please be safe. And like Fauci said, we're probably all going to get it at some point. So yeah, do your best. That, by the way, by the way. But anyway, that is not the attitude. That is not the attitude I want from my Fauci. Sorry. No, okay. I'm sorry, Justin. I know the attitude should have been everybody, talk one for the team and stay home. Oh, talk one for the team? Talk one for the team. Yeah, Netflix and Chill for the next six weeks. Yeah, perfect. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But it's still like when the guy who's the charge of like getting the message out of prevention is just like, smoke them away. I got it. Like that's no, no, you can't. He's done. He's done. He's tried. He's tried everything. He's tried so hard. Just can't. Oh, gosh. This is This Week in Science. Thank you once again for joining us for this episode of our weekly science news talk show. If you would like to help support This Week in Science, you can head over to twist.org, click on our Patreon link and choose your level of support. We have many levels to fit different budgets, $10 and more a month. And you will be thanked by name at the end of the show. I can't wait to read your name. I love doing that. And I love having that list of names and getting it, getting to share it with everybody. So I do hope that you will become a part of keeping this show going. We thank you for your support. We really can't do it without you. And now it is time to come back into the more animalistic part of the show. The show we know and love. There's Animal Corner. What did you get up there? I have a story about a dog. This is actually. A dog. Yes. His name is Baby. No. This is a dog named Coon Coon. This dog is owned by Laura V. Cuella, who's the first author on this new study I'm reporting on today. She moved from Mexico to Hungary to join the Neuroethology of Communication Lab at the Department of Ethology, this La Ronde University. And so when she did that, she wondered whether Coon Coon noticed that people in Budapest spoke a different language than the people in Mexico. We know from previous research that people, and this includes pre-verbal human infants, notice the difference between languages, fundamentally, in their brain. But we don't know if dogs know the difference between languages just by the fact that they sound different. So she designed a brain imaging study to see what was going on in Coon Coon's brain. Coon Coon and 17 other dogs were trained to lay motionless in a brain scanner while wearing headphones. Oh, what good doggies.  They played speech excerpts of the little prince in Spanish and then in Hungarian. All dogs heard only one of the two languages from their owners previously. So one was familiar and one was not. They also played scrambled versions of those excerpts, which I'm sure sounded nightmarish, which sound completely unnatural and nonsensical to test whether they could detect a difference between speech and what they would consider non-speech. What they found was that there were distinct activity patterns in dog's primary auditory cortex if they were listening to speech versus non-speech. They could tell right away if it was real language or if it was muddled up sounds. This distinction was independent from whether that stimuli originated from the film familiar or the unfamiliar language. So when they paired it with the one they were used to or not, they could still tell the difference between speech and non-speech, even if they didn't speak Hungarian. So that's step one. But they could also tell the difference between Spanish and Hungarian. They found language specific activity patterns in their brains in another region, which is the secondary auditory cortex. But the older the dog was, the better they were at distinguishing between familiar and unfamiliar language based on their brain activity. So this suggests that during the time that dogs live with us, they pick up more and more on auditory regularities of the language that they hear every day. And so they're able to distinguish. Okay, that's definitely speech, but it's totally unfamiliar and different. And they're able to distinguish that. I don't know what's happening. It's not language though. So I'm not surprised that they, that dogs can figure out the difference between speech and non-speech. I mean, dogs have, we've talked so many times about how attuned dogs are to human communication, to human wants, needs, you know, the ability to stay with their human as a member of the pack to take, to take instruction that there's definitely the learning of certain words and certain signals. So there's a couple, there's a couple things about this study I want to point out. So one of them is the potential implications, but then I kind of want to poke a hole in the study just for fun because that's what we do here, right? But so the implications here are a non-human can tell there's between languages. Can we do that the opposite way? Not without computer modeling. When we found out that hyraxes have different, what did they have? They had different dialects, depending on where they lived. We couldn't tell that without using a computer. We couldn't tell that just by the, our naked ear that the hyraxes have a different, accent. I lost language here while we're talking about language, language, my brain just shut down completely. Language games. They have different accent or a different way of talking. So this is something that we can't do, I can say with pretty, with quite a bit of confidence. We know chimps, for example, have different quote-unquote languages depending on where they grew up. And we can't tell that without computer modeling. But to be fair, there's not a lot of humans that were raised by these chimps, who have been hearing them every day. So that, so this is the second piece of that. Is this dog specific? Is it domesticated animal specific? Is it across the animal kingdom? Can they tell different human languages? So there's a lot of interesting questions.  All of the pictures I saw of this study had some sort of border collie type dog. Now these dogs are not coincidental. Very smart. Very smart and trainable, and therefore they could be trained to wear a set of headphones and sit in an MRI machine. My dog could not do that. But they're also famous for knowing 200 words border collies, some of them. They're like the dog version of Alex the Parrot. Right. You can say go get Einstein and they'll come back with their Einstein doll. So I think this could be very specific to the subset of dogs that were in this study. Because they are already extremely smart, extremely trainable, extremely focused on humans for those reasons and on top of that can learn the most human words out of pretty much all of the breeds. So there is a weird accidental then diagram of like dogs that you could teach to sit in an MRI machine and dogs that can understand human language well. Right. So if there was a way we could parse that out, I feel like this would be more accurate. Just looking at the study very quickly, their first table in the study names the breeds of the dogs. And from the 19 animals, we have Labradoodle, a mix, Golden Retriever, Border Collie, Cocker Spaniel, Australian Shepherd.  Smart and human focused too. Yeah, very human focused. So I think this is very cool, very interesting, awesome to hear. Certainly something that we can't do in reverse. But it could be between barking in Spain versus. Right, but it could be biased. South Africa. Because of the speed, because of the types of dogs we're looking at. No, absolutely. Yeah. Interesting. So now we just have to get the dogs that don't care about people to see if we can train them. Or they could just care, but like they could care, but also just not really be that interested in doing an experiment. Right. If you could find a way to fit a hat on Sadie, that she could shake off. The less helpful dogs.  That I would believe it. Oh my gosh, I'm imagining a helmet on Sadie and she'll look like Vince Clotho from Ghostbusters, but never mind. Anyway, speaking of helmets, let's talk about hats. Or pants. Or sleeping bags. I don't know. So this is a story about orb weavers from Australia. This is the leaf curling spider. It is a phononathagraphii. And they are a type of orb weaver that is known for curling leaves into their webs. They use that leaf. They shimmy into it with their abdomen. Oh, there we go. So they shimmy into it and they still have their legs sticking out, touching their webs. So they can tell what's going on around them. They can see, they can sense. But that leaf serves a really important purpose. It actually protects them from predators like birds. They are hidden in it. And it also shields them from parasitic wasps, which are famous for laying eggs on the bodies of other insects and spiders, which kill their house. So they're protecting themselves. They actually use spider silk to lift a leaf up from the ground into their web. They put it in the middle of their orb web and then they curl it up and secure it with silk.  And so this is a really interesting study because they only leave that little leaf to eat, really. But what I found even more interesting is that they will actually shack up with their partner. So a lot of spiders we've talked about on the show, the males show up to copulate with the female and that's it. They're lucky to get away with their lives, often not with their genitals, but their lives for the time being. Sometimes they're eaten. It's a whole thing. But in this case, a lot of the time, males and females will form pairs and share their little leaf sleeping bag. The males will move in with the females when she's still young. That's how they do it without getting eaten. And then once she's mature, they'll mate with her. But they still do sometimes cannibalize the males. Of course, it wouldn't be a spider without that. That occurs independently of whether the female has been deprived of food or not. So it's just kind of if she feels like it. If he's bugging her. But after mating, the female actually makes another curled leaf retreat in vegetation away from the web.  So that's where she lays her eggs. Talk about nesting. I love it. Yeah, so they're nesting. They're adapting their environment around them to respond to threats. This is, in my opinion, 100%. Some real tool use being used by these spiders in their webs to augment their webs with something more than the webbing that they create. And so I just, I love this. I think it's so fun that the orb weavers are like, I kind of exposed out here. Oh, there's a leaf down there. What if I just curl it up around nice? I'll still, I'll be out there. I could still tell when stuff's going on. I'm not going to block my face, but I'll be protected. Nice coat or a hat. What do you think? If it's on their abdomen, what do you think it is? Is it pants? Is it skirt? I think I would go further. I would call it shelter. I would call it shelter. And I would say that might mean that orb weavers invented shelter, depending on how long they've been doing this. Before humans, we'd go run into a cave, but building your own shelter. Yeah, they're the original campers, their little tent and...  It sounds like it's partly armor from getting eggs laid in you while you sleep or something horrible happening to you. Yeah. The other interesting thing is that when they're younger, so orb weavers only live a year, by the way, but when they're younger, if they're not strong and big enough to pick up a big, dried leaf, they'll use a fresh, smaller leaf, or sometimes they'll use snail shells or a piece of paper.  I'd love to know a bit more species. That sounds so much more adaptive ability too. Yeah, that's, it's interesting. I mean, yeah, using, I mean, this is tool use, right? If it's used for a purpose, is it instinctual? Is it, you know, when does it happen? I mean, you've talked before about the complexity, the chaotic nature of spider mating, of the males spiraling into the females. And, you know, how order comes from that? Is this one of those things? Or is it, I mean, is this spider planning? Is this something that worked a lot at one point? And then it's just ingrained now because it just worked really well. Do other spider species do this beside these Australian spiders? And you bring up a good point there too about whether or not this is instinct. So I don't know that I, I don't know that spiders go to a spider engineering university to learn how to make their webs, but they all do it. So there, you know, there's something more than just instinct to have web, instinct to have shelter or to wrap thing. There is genetic memory somehow being passed down on how to do things. There is, but there's also adaptive learning throughout their life. So the, the kind of orb weavers that we have here in, in my area, some of those are the ones that take down their web every night and put it back up in the morning. So it's so clean that bugs can't see it and they walk right into it. They also do it usually at face level. And it's so clean that you can't see it, which is the worst. The bane of the world's existence. One day we'll catch one of those humans and when we do, we will eat forever. Oh man.   They will build it somewhere else. And in this case, they change what types of material they use to make their leaf, depending on what they are capable of lifting and what is available. So there's, there's adaptation happening here within their lifespan where they know they're trying to get themselves. It's, it's pretty clear they're getting to a goal. I don't know if it's instincts or something else that's telling them they need to get to that goal, but the fact that they can adapt their procedures to get to where they're going, to get themselves their little shelter, that, that means there's something more than just I put leaf in web. There's something more going on. Yeah. And it's their little bit of shelter, but at the same time, maybe that little bit of leaf or whatever could also be an attractant to an insect or something. I mean, I don't know. Maybe it also helps them eat. They're hiding in there. The insect is like, ooh, what's that? And then they're like, I got you. Yeah. I got you. Yeah. Oh, spiders. The more we learn about the spiders, the more, the more I love them, the more I appreciate all the spiders of the world. I still don't know if I will go into the basement of my childhood home, where all the black, black widow spiders live, under the stairs, you know, but, but I still appreciate them a lot. All right, Justin, it's your turn. What do you have for us now? War ponies? Well, let's do it. So medieval times evoke a number of colorful images and imagining. So mostly a filthy peasants working fields and a general lack of hygiene and scientific understanding.  And while huge sums were spent on breeding and training and keeping horses for combat as much for actual warfare as for local symbols of power and authority, turns out medieval war horses, as you were leading into there, were no more than pony-sized. New study is showing horses during the medieval period just weren't big. Were not that big yet, at least. Team of archaeologists and historians have found that they were not even bred for size. That wasn't even the thing that they were shooting for. Back then, the success for in breeding was for things like temperament. They wanted long-distance raiding, they wanted to be in tournaments, but they just wanted horses that would listen. That was apparently the high bar. And also, maybe the knights weren't as tall. I was going to say, I wonder if people were not as heavy. Yeah, tall, but also the thing I'd be really thinking about would be how heavy. Because especially if people are wearing armor as well. So, okay, so then picture a very robust pony. Like the knight is riding into battle with a Justin stick, heels just inches off the ground, probably lifting them up so as not to drag in the dirt. This is not, this just totally changes the picture of how they have to be portrayed. From now on in every movie, you can have no larger than a pony. So even the tallest, the biggest horse they ever found, and this is from an era of 300, all the way up to 1600 or 1300, the biggest horse they found, it would be considered a small riding horse today. And that's the biggest one ever found in the records from then. But yeah, they were focused on the temperament, just getting horses to pay attention. That's all they really wanted. Knights on ponies, keep that image, make sure that if you see any of those historical documentary reenactment things, you're sure they're not using big horses. So nobody had looked at the bones before to really check and see how big these war horses were? Because we've got stories of like, you know, we look at the horses now and say, these are the breeds that were the war horses of the past. And well, what they do is they put movies, they put the biggest horse out there. That's the war horse. It's the big, powerful, strong horse with a tall night on it and everything like that. But yeah, when they specifically went back and looked for horses that were being bred anywhere, really, but specifically the ones that were being part of breeding programs that would have been used for combat and trained for combat. Not that big. Not that big. Very small horses, in fact. Ponies. They were small, yeah, in small in stature, but maybe stocky so that they could have the weight of the armor like Blair had said. Maybe not. Maybe little stocky ponies. Panting stocky ponies. Yeah. So the image that we have of the war horse did eventually come about in the late 1600s at a time when getting into the time where they started to become more ornamental. You know, there was a period of time there where they may have actually, you know, really been used as war horses for like a little while. But by the time you got the big horses it was over with. The knights riding into battle on horseback, that wasn't a thing. Nobody was doing that anymore. Awesome. But yeah, Serious Question Friday, and you're right, yeah. Average human height was also smaller back then. There's large horses. A little. They had them. Evidently, it's just been too hard to get on. I would think in battle it would be a strategic advantage to be higher up. Yeah, but also then infantry that's on foot. And other than that, it was all infantry, right? So that was the other thing is just having a horse and being able to go places quickly or, you know, send your probably used more internally than they were for an external war in terms of like, you know, those filthy peasants working your farm day and night. It's not because they necessarily wanted to be there. It's they didn't want to get run through with a lance if they didn't go to work that day. So there was a lot of other dynamics. But yeah, that was a huge, so that's going on over there in the UK. Now around the same time period, 500 or 1100, the Highlands of Peru were home to the Wari people. The Wari culture is spread over vast distances, the rugged terrain of the Andes Mountains. And long, long, like huge territory the Wari control. This is before the Incas even existed. New finds from a small site in Peru suggest that these Wari culture may have forged their political alliances and authority by serving drug laced beer to the local elites and other and other villages. That's how you make friends, huh? Hey, I'm new to the neighborhood, want to come over, have some drinks and dinner. Disclaimer, do not do that at home. No, no, no, no, take back that disclaimer. If you are a government and instead of sending the military to go fight another country, maybe send them your best drugs. Maybe like, hey. As long as they know they're drinking drugs. Party instead. Yeah, yeah. No, they weren't like, so a great question, yeah, because it's drug laced beer, right? Yeah. So that is an important point because the drug is a jungle drug that didn't grow right. Like one of the places was 800 kilometers from their capital. They found this outpost. That's where some of this research is done. The drug that they're bringing with them is something that's found deep in the jungles and places far, far away from where this little outpost is. It's something that you can pulverize into a powder. It gives a very strong hallucinogenic out-of-body type experience. It's a very intense drug. Turns out when you mix this drug with beer, which the locals were making, it has a much milder, calming sort of effect where it's like a party thing. Everybody feels good and wants to socialize and talk and feels nice. So basically what they found was that the outpost only inside the Wari's little small outpost, which could have had no more than 100 people in this larger region, was all of the crushed seeds from this hallucinogenic drug. Outside of that was where the local villagers did their brewing and they would find the combinations of this drug and the alcohol. So they would have people come over to specifically do the drug with the alcohol with them at these parties. Now, fantastic. I love that story. Part of what I really love about this story, this is like I think the first time going back into the record, I have heard about drugs being used for any form of recreation. They always are going like, religious ceremony.  They just did ritual worship. No, they went, they partied with the foreigners and they established trade routes based on that and goodwill and everything else. And it's interesting too because that village 800 kilometers away took on all of the cultural adornments of the Wari people, the pottery, the housing styles, all of that. But there was no evidence of enslavement or warfare or bloodshed around it. Just the arrival of the cocktails. That's all it took. We don't need to, we don't need to fight. We don't need to fight. I've got a better idea. Maybe this is why Americans cling to the idea of quote unquote, the first Thanksgiving so hard because if that's actually how it had gone, things might have gone much better. Just would have shared some nice food and drink with your new neighbors. But no, it's not what happened. Food and drug to drink. Yeah. A little hallucination with your new friends. I don't mind. As we dig back in the archaeological record, I'm sure we'll find more evidence of non-ceremonial uses. Yeah. There's going to be a lot more going on. And there actually is within the Wari people. They have a lot of artwork on pottery and other things showing the seed pods from this Dilka plant as well as sort of festivities around it. So they definitely had a party culture and ran an empire of party. Like that. Why, when's the last time you've seen this? When's the last time this is... I don't know, college maybe? Yeah, I was going to say Greek Roe. We're almost to the end of the show here. I have a couple more stories, couple more stories. And I'm so excited about these stories of, let's talk about fingerprints.   If you haven't burned all your fingerprints off accidentally doing, well, I don't know, whatever. How about how Martin scars? Martin scars, whatever. You may have lost some fingerprints depending upon your age, but each and every one of us has unique fingerprints. It's why you can get fingerprinted and put your fingerprints on records so people can identify you. It's a very special, unique marker. And what? Unique, unique-ish. I mean, there's like a, they're pretty, they can be pretty similar, actually. They can be very similar. They're not as unique. They're very, they are very unique with other, you know, they can be used to identify people. So we've got our, we've got the, the radial loops. We've got arches. There are whirls and these different patterns. People have wondered where they come from for a very long time. How did, how, yeah, how did, how did they come about? They come about during embryonic development. They start to form about the third month in utero and they develop and change as the baby is growing. And so they are definitely genetically linked, but which genes control them? Well, some researchers in China decided to take a look at it. And as they dug in to identify the genes that were responsible for fingerprints, they found that they are also, there were a number of genes. One in particular, these is related to limb development. So as the limbs grow, the fingerprints get their shapes. And those loops and arches and whirls, the researchers think might be from the impact of how the growth takes place. And so maybe as the bones grow and push outward, that it, that pressure from the growth of the bones influences the skin and how these ridges and whirls and loops form. So I never realized, I'm looking at my own fingers right now. I never realized, is that normal that you have kind of, you showed us these six different kinds of types of fingerprints you could have that you have the same across all your fingers usually? You don't necessarily have the same across all your fingers. No. It can be different. It depends. But they have, they have found very specific patterns, which is, is kind of cool. So they have discovered that there are particular, particular things, people with whirls in their fingerprints on both of the little fingers tend to have longer little fingers than people who do not. And this correlation is also linked to the genes involved with limb development. Yeah. So there are very specific patterns that tend to pop up more or less frequently depending. And they think that it may be force related that the, like I mentioned, that as the growth takes place, everything stretches and elongates and there's pressure that's involved from that growth. And that might change what the shapes of the fingerprints look like. It might actually influence them. And so that might be why it happens. But there are also congenital disorders that are linked to what they call dermatoglyphic patterns. This is the new word of the day, dermatoglyphic fingerprints or the lines in your palms. Those are dermatoglyphs. So children with Down syndrome are likely to have a single crease running across the palm of their hands. But they're this could also be affected by developmental genes. And so there's a theoretical basis for this kind of pliotropy, the researchers say. Pliotropy being where you have multiple traits affected by similar genes, by the same genes. You know what I've noticed is that the older that I've gotten, my fingerprints have vanished kind of right along with my eyesight. Well, that's what I was going to say. I think I need to go get my glasses so that I can actually see my fingerprints now. Because you know I used to have them and I'm wearing glasses. But I don't know where they went because they're just gone. I used to be able to look at them and see them. So I don't see them anymore. And without the glasses, I barely have hands. Well, maybe you don't get to have fingerprints anymore because we're in the shrinking stage. I don't know. No, not yet. Oh my gosh, not yet. That's fascinating. I want to learn more about fingerprints. Fingerprints are fascinating. I've never looked at mine and now I'm very fingerprint focused. Yeah, it's really interesting. Should I have so many creases in my fingerprints? I have a lot of creases. I love it. I can't see. I can't see. I hope everybody is, except if you're driving, staring at your fingers. Please keep your eyes on the road. Last story for the night, there is some new research into CAR T therapies. So CAR T therapy is therapy where normally T cells, which are immune cells, as we know, get removed from the body and engineered to express a receptor, the CAR receptor. Now, the CAR receptor then identifies or latches onto markers on the outside of cancer cells. And so then CAR T cells, the T cells because they're attached to that receptor that then is attached to a cancer cell, can destroy the cancer cells. And so this is how the CAR T therapy through this genetic engineering enables the treatment of some cancers. This last week in science, researchers have published their work in which they no longer have to take cells out of the body to engineer them to express the CAR protein. They, in their work in mice, this is once again in mice, and so in working in mice, they, from the University of Pennsylvania, they were able to get these CAR cells produced in the body using mRNA, using mRNA, like the Moderna and Pfizer BioNTech vaccines, they injected mRNA to get the T cells in the mice to produce the chimeric antigen receptor, the CAR receptor. And this CAR receptor, what it, what they had it do in this particular study was target the, it's a fibroblast activating protein. And the fibroblast activating protein, what they did is this, in scar tissue formation, fibroblasts, this activating protein is stimulated. This is a problem in cardiac disease. If you have high blood pressure and, and problems with the heart, which they, they made a model of this in the mice. So they gave mice heart problems. The, the, the mice started to produce these fibroids, fibrotic tissue in the heart, scar tissue with this fibroblast activating protein. They did the mRNA treatment. The CAR T cells then latched on to the scar tissue, reduced the scar tissue in the hearts to the point that they were just about like normal hearts. Now the cool thing about this, if you do the take the immune cells out of the body and then put them back into the body procedure, you end up with these T cells, these CAR T cells running around the body and they're there all the time. And this can actually be a problem. And researchers would like it to be more transient. And so with the mRNA, it produces a transient response. And they showed that these CAR T cells, what they're calling FAP CAR positive T cells in mice, they were pretty much gone about a week after injection. They didn't see any more expression. Now there's still a bunch of questions as to how this could work in people, but it could be used not only for this fibroblast activating protein, it can be used to attack cancers, it can be used to attack all sorts of things and to develop just about any novel therapy that you could probably think of. So Justin, yeah, like Justin, you've been talking about this CAR T stuff for a really long time. And I just think like this is the next step that is going to take it to the next level. And we're starting to look at it as like, this is going to make a real difference in people's lives. Combined with the RNA. I mean, it's already been shown to be able to knock out leukemia in a patient within 48 hours. And persist in that case in a way that prevents them from getting it again. One of the things is that had also, there was a percentage of people who would just die from it from going under that procedure. The other part of it was that it cost $2 million for one person to undergo that treatment. And that had to be, that was taking cells out, re-engineering them, like with a shelled out HIV, I think it was, and then reintroducing. Right. And so it's... Yeah, I was gonna say it's limited in location because not every hospital or treatment center is going to have all the equipment that would be necessary for the procedure. And so this, it's almost like the mRNA vaccine. There's your vaccine, you'd maybe come in and have an injection. And you're coming into it. It's not even this facility that's even... You've got a facility, that one facility that can do the treatments, can now package it, send it anywhere. Oh, this is huge. And if you can think about anything, that you... Like any aberrant, what the researchers say, one of the researchers says it's groundbreaking because it's a whole new way of thinking about a therapeutic application, redirecting the T cell to control other aberrant cells. So we think of cancer cells as being aberrant, but what other cells, whether things are potentially going wrong that in the body at different points in time, that can be... And that's... And that's also the thing about the leukemia was that leukemia is white blood cells that have become cancerous. There's...  So it was able to identify, so it can be very strategically targeted. So yeah, fantastic to find out they've got a new, better, cheaper, faster method available in mice. In mice. Yes, in mice. And then that'll be the next step. Can we use this in people and will it help? So it's very exciting. I think we will hear a lot more about this probably in the not too far off future. But the future is coming. It's here. The future that you didn't want to wait for. The end of the show. We made it to the end of the show. We did it. We did it. We made it to the end of the show. Happy anniversary, Blair. Oh, right. I forgot about that. Thanks. Well, I'm glad I brought all the animal stories today then. Oh, you brought the spiders.  You brought it all. Dogs and MRI machines. Always good. Yes. Oh, it's very, very exciting to have you be part of the show and have you being part of the show for such a long time now. The show would not be this great without you. Well, thanks. I wouldn't be the same without the show. So I appreciate that as well. We appreciate you, Blair, so much. So everyone, if you can take some time to wish Blair happy anniversary. It is her 10th anniversary here on Twists. 10 years. She's been with us for 10 years talking about animals, invertebrate sex, all the fun stuff. Spiders, poop. Where do we get you out of high school? 10 years. I wish. Almost. Yeah, it's probably going that far away. That close. Oh, my goodness. Well, we can aim for another 10. Yeah, let's do it. Okay. 10 more years of animals in the pipeline. Yeah, we're not. I got nothing else planned. Everyone, thank you for joining us for this episode. We hope that you've been around for a long time, enjoying Blair's additions to the show. We hope that you will be around for many years to come to continue enjoying Blair's additions to the show. And we're very glad just to have you here with us tonight. So thank you all for another episode and thank you. Here's time for some shout outs to people. Thank you, Fada. Thank you for your help in doing show notes and the, what else? Oh, social media. That's the big one. That is the big one. Thank you so much for that. And Gord and Aran Lore, thank you for your work keeping things decent in the chat rooms. Identity 4, thank you for recording the show. And Rachel, thank you so much for your editing and assistance. I do appreciate it. And to all of you patrons, thank you for your support on Patreon. Oh, I got thanks for you. Thank you, too. Richard Badge, Kent Northcote, Rick Loveman, Pierre Velazzar, Ralphie Figueroa, John Ratnaswamy, Carl Kornfeld, Karen Taze, Woody M.S., Andrea Bissette, Chris Wozniak, Dave Bunn, Vegard Shefstad, Hal Snyder, Donathan Stiles, A.K.A. Don Stilow, John Lee, Ellie Coffin, Maddie Perrengar, Sharma Don Munda, Stephen Albaran, Darryl Myshaks, Jupalak, Andrew Swanson, Fred S.104, Sky Luke, Paul Ronevich, Kevin Reardon, Noodle's Jack, Brian Carrington, Matt Bass, Seanan Nina Lam, John McKee, Greg Riley, Marqueson Flow, Jean Tellier, Steve Leesman, A.K.A. Zima, Ken Hayes, Howard Tan, Christopher Wrappen, Dana Pearson, Richard Brendan Minnish, Johnny Gridley, Kevin Railsback, Romney Day, flying out, Christopher Dreyer, Artyom, Greg Briggs, John Atwood, Hey, Arizona, support, Aaron Lieberman for governor, Rudy Garcia, Dave Wilkinson, Rodney Lewis, Paul, Mallory Sutter, Phillip Shane, Kurt Larson, Craig Landon, Mountain Sloth, Jim Drupose, Sarah Chavez, Sue Doster, Jason Olds, Dave Neighbor, Eric Knapp, E.O. Kevin Parachan, Aaron Luthon, Steve DeBell, Bob Calder, Marjorie, Paul Disney, Patrick Simmerly, Patrick Pecoraro, Tony Steele, Ulysses Adkins, and Jason Roberts. Thank you for all of your support on Patreon. And if you would like to support us on Patreon, head over to twist.org and click on the Patreon link on next week's show. We will be back Wednesday, 8 p.m. Pacific Time, broadcasting live from our YouTube and our Facebook channels and from twist.org slash live. Hey, do you want to listen to us as a podcast?  Just search for This Week in Science wherever podcasts are found. If you enjoyed the show, you can get your friends to subscribe as well. For more information on anything you've heard here today, notes to the stories and links to them will be available on our website, www.twist.org, where you can also sign up for a newsletter. You can also still buy calendars there if you don't have a calendar, right? Are we all out? No? Not all out yet. So you can definitely buy a calendar. It's still January. There's still time. You can also contact us directly. Email Kirsten at kirsten at thisweekinscience.com, Justin at twistminion at gmail.com or me, Blair, at BlairBaz at twist.org. Just be sure to put twist, T-W-I-S in the subject line or your email will be spam filtered into an audio recording that is piped into headphones on the head of a dog. And they'll be able to tell whether it's in English or another language, but they won't know what it means and they won't be able to tell us about it. So, yeah. Darn. So then you can also hit us up on the Twitter where we are at twist science, at Dr. Kiki, at Jackson Fly, and at Blair's Menagerie. We love your feedback. If there's a subject you would like us to cover or address, a suggestion for an interview, a hike who comes tonight, please let us know. We'll be back here next week and we hope you'll join us again for more great science news. And if you've learned anything from the show, remember. It's all in your head. I'm gonna sell my advice. Show them how to sell the robot with a simple device. I'll reverse global warming with a wave of my hand. And all it'll cost you is a couple of grand. Big science is coming your way. So everybody listen to what I say. I use the scientific method for all that it's worth. And I'll broadcast my opinion all over the earth. Cause it's this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, this week in science, this week in science, this week in science, science, science, science. I've got one disclaimer and it shouldn't be news. That what I say may not represent your views, but I've done the calculations and I've got a plan. If you listen to the science, you may just get understand. But we're not trying to threaten your philosophy. To the end of science. No, the end of this week in science. Yes. The end. This is the end. Beautiful friend, the end of this week in science's episode. Hey everybody. Blair's tired. It's because she's been doing this show for 10 years. So she's exhausted. That'll happen. It will happen. Oh my goodness. Hey Blair, remember when you did this cute short, oh wait, we turned it up. How come it's so quiet? Hold on. Oh, cause I turned it way down. That's why this is probably going to... Good science to you all. This is Blair Bazderich for this week in science, coming to your eyes and ears from the Exploratorium in San Francisco, California. Let's go inside and talk about some science news. What's happening? What's happening? What's happening this week in science? A study from Ocelogia has demonstrated plants have long memory. They experimented with a very special plant, this plant, mimosaputica. Mimosas are special because when you touch them, they react. Mimosas can actually get quite big. We went to... Where do we go Blair? The Exploratorium. It's when you still lived in San Francisco. Here at the Museum, we termed them, so they stay nice and square. That was what? Probably 2014 and a few mid-hotties. Let me see. What year is this? Yeah, 2014. Yep. Then we had a fun interview. I love that. It's still one of my favorite studies. They put these plants on a slide and dropped them down 10 feet on a slide.  Yeah, the plants are like, ow. Yeah, but they landed on soft mats. Then the next time that they dropped them, they didn't close up. They were like, oh, I know how this works. They have memory. Let's see. I'm moving further back in time. March, February. Oh, one more page. I'm sure. 300. January. Oh, what? I must have published things at weird times. 282? No. I think I must have published a whole bunch of stuff at an odd time. Yeah, episode, what is this? 354. I don't think that's the first one, but I think it's not close. This is January 26th. Yeah, so that's like the second or third one. Probably the third one. The third one. So it was probably 52. Oh, this was smaller. So apparently, the bowers, the bower birds, they all look different, but they're all open-ended. So there's two ends to it. And they found that if there was an enclosed bower, the female wouldn't even go in because she would think she would be trapped and she couldn't get away. So I don't know if also they look less intimidating, less scary to her. They even said also in there that... I'm watching the video you like very red. They might be doing it just to confuse her and kind of daze her because when they're done... That's the best tactic, leave the girl dazed and confused. When they're done, they just kind of run around back real quick and mate. So I don't know if they're just trying to get their hair confused and dazed enough long enough to just sneak in there. I'm not quite sure. Those simple-minded, feeble-minded female bower birds, they just can't... You're like, yeah. Did you think 352? That was 354. So it must have been 352. Episode 352, it says is 2015. So that's wrong. That's wrong. Is it 252? No. No, that's not right. And these are numbered. That's not right. Let me go back to... Let's see, Firefox. In this episode 19 January 2012, it was Blair's Animal House. Yeah. So that's... So probably it was the week before that was my very first one. So did I... Does it say what I talked about on that one? Which is about our electricity that... Okay, electricity. And studied its effects on... I found forwarding happy meals. The snakes are actually paying attention to the heartbeat and then... Here we go. Win it, stop. They... This may be a burger in there and I can just go away and I've got my toy, which would be fine. That would actually be happier, but sometimes it's just for the toy. But then, yeah, that's like their... That's the reason they want to go there is because they know there's going to be some sort of... We were talking about happy meals, Justin. Branded, movie branded. Other... You know, like no movie branded thing that's going to be in the back. It's going to be bored. I have a very distinct voice. That's like that little toy in the bottom of the cracker jack box. Yeah. Yeah, that's cool. To the bottom box or the toy in the bottom of the cereal box that you have. There's Animal Houses coming up here in a moment. To get to the toy without even eating any of the cereals. Is this the after show? Did she do her first story in the after show? We have a first timer here for stories. Oh, right. Yeah, Blair, our intern, brought a couple of stories today. And so we are going to inter-storifying. Okay, so I actually have two stories about animals. Shocking. But they're both kind of related. They're about energy conservation tools that they discovered this week. And they're both in relation to feeding adaptations in the animals. So the first one is about snakes. And of course, most snakes are constrictors. And that's kind of an extreme adaptation. Not a lot of animals do that. And so they found this week that snakes can sense a prey item's heartbeat. So that way they know how long and how hard to constrict their prey animals. And so they use the least possible energy to get their food that way. So the way they did that is they actually took rats that had been previously euthanized and frozen. They warmed them back up and they placed artificial hearts inside of them. The hearts are basically a fluid filled bulb that they could control. They could turn on or off. They could speed up the heartbeat. They could slow down the heartbeat. And they also fitted the rats with pressure sensors. So they could record constricting strength. And so they actually found that snakes constricted longer and with greater total pressure with rats that had an artificial heart than rats with no heartbeat whatsoever. They also found that when they stopped the heartbeat during the constriction, the snakes abandoned their constriction shortly after they stopped it. So that means they were paying attention to the heartbeat as they were constricting. They also, when they kept the heartbeat going longer than a real live rat would have a heartbeat. If they were being constricted, the snakes continued to squeeze and some of them squeezed for up to 22 minutes, which is the longest ever recorded constriction time with snakes. So that really shows you that the snakes were responding to the heartbeat. And that would be beneficial to them because it turns out that snakes metabolic rate, they can increase up to seven times when they're constricting their prey. That way they can really conserve their energy through their special adaptation there for constricting. So that's really cool. I mean, I would have assumed that snakes could sense a heartbeat, but they actually have some proof here. So that's really neat. Yeah, it seems interesting to me the idea that the snakes are actually paying attention to the heartbeat. And that that was a great first story. I feel bad because I'm listening and in the background I could hear Kai. And then I'm like, you can hear my chair squeak because I came back to the microphone. So obviously I was like, off doing like, Blair's got it. Okay. So your first story, I was already just like, okay, you're in. That's fantastic. So, okay. So that episode was my first one. So the problem is in the on the website under broadcast, they, we don't have show numbers that far back. No, we weren't do, we weren't counting show numbers. But so that was my first time I reported the show before that was the very first time I was around. And so I was just in the background like monitoring the chat and pulling links and stuff. And then I think you introduced me in the after show that first week.  So if I, if I may, what I recall, it was 10 years ago, but what I recall is that in between that first week and the second week, you said like, Oh, do some research. Here's some places to go look at stories and put a couple things that you might find interesting in our Facebook group. And I did that. And then somehow between that and the next week, you were like, bring some stories. Yep. Okay. So you're trying to ease me in through like the kiddie pool. Just like, you know, just put some stories on the Facebook. And then you're like, Oh, sounds like deep end shove. I'm very happy about. Yeah. Well, you did. That was, that was a really, if, if I didn't know, if I just heard this, here's an old thing about the player did about snakes once on the, you know, animal corner would not have guessed that was the first at all. It sounded very comfortable. Varieties, you know, being in the broadcast booth. Yeah, very much. Dan on YouTube says that must have been some confused snakes. Like, why won't it die? The first time my food is acted this way. I also kind of want to know if they eventually stopped the heart and then that the longest recorded constriction event of all time 22 minutes or whatever it was, or if the snake just gave up. The snake gave up. So if I recall correctly, they wanted to see what the outer limit was, how long is a snake willing to squeeze it before they're like, fine, you earned it.  No sunk cost fallacy for me. And they're from Madagascar. Here we go. The largest nocturnal primate and they're actually in the lemur family. And they're so odd looking. They have this especially long pointy bony middle finger and in Madagascar. And if you don't know what an eye is, I would suggest you Google a picture of them. They're really crazy looking animals. A, Y, E, A, Y, E and I, I, and they're from Madagascar. They're the largest nocturnal primate and they're actually in the lemur family. And they're so odd looking. They have this especially long pointy bony middle finger. And in Madagascar, if they if you come across an eye and it points at you with that long finger, it means you're going to die. Oh gosh. It gives you the middle finger. Oh no. Wow. No, they use those fingers to get their food. They eat mostly grubs and they'll, they'll tap on the, on trees and they'll listen for a hollow part. They actually have nerve endings in their fingers that are specialized to feel if it's hollow there too. And that's usually where grubs are. And then they'll use their extremely strong sharp teeth to gnaw through the tree and they use that long finger to poke out those grubs to eat them. Now, those long bony middle fingers, they, because they're so long and skinny, they have a really high surface area to volume ratio. So it has the opportunity to lose a lot of heat through that. And they did thermal imaging. And actually it's funny, I found out they did some of this at the San Francisco Zoo where I work. And they found those middle fingers in the thermal imaging to be almost black most of the time. Now it turns out they actually take those middle fingers and they bend them backwards to, they think to keep them out of the way because they're so bony and skinny, they're very fragile. So when they're not using them, when they're walking, they're bent back. But now they're starting to think that maybe when they bend those back, it's constricting, it's kinking the blood vessels. So it keeps blood from going to their fingers. And they took images of them when they were just walking around and when they were using the fingers to eat. And their temperature in that finger raised four to six degrees Celsius when they were eating versus when they were just walking around. So that's another really cool way that they have this odd adaptation that potentially could have a drawback to it. And they found a way to take away that drawback. And what I think is really interesting about both of these articles is I can't help but wonder if both of these things develop simultaneously in the animal that the eye got the long finger and also the ability to kink that blood vessel at the same time, or if they develop that afterwards to take care of the drawback that presented itself. It's a really interesting question. Yeah. Or whether or not the behavior came later.  I'm a freak. I've got this long finger. Oh, it does this break and get in the way and I got nothing. I wish I did. Oh, I just got a grub. Oh, okay. I can use this. Yeah, I got this great finger. Stop, stop with it. Exactly. Well, and just like with the snakes, I wonder if they were constricting things first and then all of a sudden they could feel the heartbeat and then they found an easier way to do that. Good at it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. What's the edgiest? Aye aye, Blair. Aye aye. Hi, Sadie. Hi, Sadie. I'm going to make you a Vince Clotho helmet for Halloween. The turkey. The turkey can do it. We're going to go from aye aye to Vince Clotho. Come on. Very good. Let's make Sadie for Halloween. I think it would be great. That's great. I love it. It's a great idea. I know just who can do it. Kai. Yes. We just watched the new Ghostbusters this week. Oh, I haven't seen it yet. Very good. I recommend it. I thought it was gonna, we watched it with Kai and the very beginning of the movie, I was like, oh no, it's going to be scary. But then it wasn't too scary. It was actually a really great movie. Just it was good. Yeah. It's good. It was just a good movie. And Paul Rudd has some great lines that are funny. My favorite line, my favorite line that he says is science. He's talking about science being punk rock and he's like science. It's punk rock. It's like the nip. It's the safety pin through the nipple of academia. That's, that's a, you know, it's just because it's Paul Rudd. And I just laughed. It's just because it's Paul Rudd. That's all. Oh, it's funny. Did you go to a theater? No. No. We're living now because it's available streaming. Oh.  Yeah. So now we own all the Ghostbusters movies. Good. Oh yes. Some video games. I just saw that. Oh my God. What was that? So on the hot ones, when celebrities go and eat hot wings of increasing hotness and then they're asked like normal interview questions, kind of. The guys are pretty good interviewer. He asks unusual questions, I think, things that doesn't, that they often don't get asked, but because they're also like in distress, they, I think they answer things more truthfully sometimes than if they were in a normal interview. But Paul Rudd's is considered to be the best one. And I just watched it recently. And I guess he, I will check it out. He has a trick for taking photos of celebrities that Justin is showing you right now. No, what? Those fingers? Yeah. So, yeah. What's happening anymore?  You maybe even put another finger down there a little bit.  And it's just, it's just brilliant. It is like the funny, this is probably not the best one ever, but it's still, it's okay. Yeah. That's the idea.  It looks like a little derriere.  Ooh, now I want to watch Jeff Goldblum being interviewed. Always. Always. I saw the Elijah Wood one. He was like totally unfazed by every, he was just like, yeah, that's pretty hot.  I was like, oh my God, what is wrong with this person? Like, what is happening? I love Elijah Wood. I think he's awesome. I love like everything he's in, but it was definitely, it was like, what is, what's going on with you, buddy? What's that? What is happening? It was wild. Making weird comments. Oh, hot ones. We could, we could eat spicy hot wings and talk about science. Certainly. Spicy tofu wings. Yeah. Well, Paul Rudd ate cauliflower wings. Oh, there you go. Wow. Somebody's a big Paul Rudd fan. No, I just saw it. Okay. Like a few days ago. I'm just seeing Gord's comment. Yes, everybody's going to die whether or not an II points at you or not. It'll happen eventually. Well, true. Think for yourself. Players going to live forever. I'm going for the head-to-jar really even honestly upload my brain to the internet. I'd go for that too. So what we need to do is rewrite the, the fame song for Blair, but make it like, I have to figure it out. I have to figure it out. Something, something. We'll figure it. I got to get all the science words into it. Anti-aging. Blair wants to live forever. She wants to learn how not to die. Blair. Blair. That's the beauty. It's one syllable. Very easy. Yeah, exactly. That'll work. Did I watch? Don't look up. Not yet. No, I meant to do it and I didn't because I still find, I'm still intimidated. Yeah, it's a comedy. It's not funny. Comedy, my foot. There were like two moments that I thought was very funny. It's a comedy that, that, uh, that, that you will get. It is, it is the absolute, uh, what is it? What's the, the, the side gig hustle you got going on? There was a science talk. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. It is the reason for science talk in a nutshell is this movie. That's why you have to see it. And it is funny because you will be going like, oh gosh, exactly. Oh, that's right. But it's not, you know, we're already living into the end times of cringe worthy things. You know, there's, by the way, there is an asteroid the size of the Empire State Building that's going to do a close, uh, buzz of the earth. And you know what the, uh, the, the folks, uh, warning about this, the cosmologists or, uh, astronomers have seen it. You know what they're saying? Look up. Look up. Hey. So it's, you know, it's really happening. So you know, if it rained fish in Texas recently, as it does, as it does occasionally anyhow, but I'm just saying, what? Yeah. So there's a thing called a oceanic funnel. Yep. So you're talking about a sharknado is what you're talking about. I know like a mini sharknado. It was a fish nado. Uh-huh. That can take place. And it drew up. It really did. Yes. This was, I think, sometime last. It happens. I don't understand this physics. No, it seems like it shouldn't be real, but it is. Yeah. Okay. I mean, like what, what kind of thing could happen now that people be like, can you believe it? Because everybody now is pretty much like, oh, did you hear the latest new terrible awful thing that's happening? Oh, yeah. But people are kind of giving up. Like people are not taking Omicron at all seriously. They've not at all.  And it's because of this same kind of, well, we're all going to get it kind of mentality. That's definitely where it's coming from, I feel like, is that because so many vaccinated people are getting it, and to them, a lot of the time, it's basically like a few days of cold symptoms now. I think that, you know, to a certain extent, people are like, well, we're all just going to get sick and that'll be done. That's not really how it works. How it works also. Like, if the entire nation gets sick at the same time, we have healthcare problems. Our healthcare is ready. Our healthcare system is maxing out. And the problem is like, I am hearing firsthand stories about people who are going to the hospital for other things. And then whoops, turns out you have COVID. Now we have to put you in isolation. That doesn't necessarily mean they're on ventilators. They could just have small cold symptoms or be completely asymptomatic. But the stress on the hospital system of having to put somebody in isolation completely changes the way that space operates. Yeah. And that's to protect the person who has a lung transplant next door. And it's also to protect the hospital workers. It's to help, it's to protect everybody. But it's, but it makes it more complicated. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. How's Denmark? How are you feeling about things? Go into the hospital. Oh, yeah. It's a no choice. Sort of a situation, I suppose. He's a situation. Yeah. Yeah. It's it's thankfully being taken more seriously now because it was, it hit very hard. The Omicron variant hit Denmark very hard, very fast. But yeah, that's a little bit of a scary thing to be having a baby in the middle of a pandemic. It raises a whole other layer of thinking about everything ahead of time, let alone after the fact, you know, getting vaccinated while being pregnant is scary. But then not being vaccinated while being pregnant is even scarier. Even scarier. Even scarier. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, due date was now yesterday. Yeah. Yeah. Which is two days ago now here. Yes. So we are in the any minute now territory. Oh, you're now in the let's go for walks. Let's eat some spicy food. Let's do let's do all the things that we don't know if they really work, but they do keep me distracted while I'm waiting for the baby to come. Yeah. So, so yeah, so that's all that's all I'm doing. It's just waiting for Bambinini to get here. You can wait. The Bambinini will come and the Bambinini will take over your life and suddenly you'll be like, what was life before I had the Bambinini? There were the before times and now there's the all-encompassing time. Oh, I'm so excited for you. Yeah. It's very exciting times. But yeah, there is a downside of having to go to a hospital. Yeah. And I don't know if this was a this was a second child situation I might have pushed for being at home or something, but this is the first time so we're going. We have booked at least one night at a maternity hotel. What's that? That is a hotel that has a midwife that you can instead of staying at the hospital, you have your baby and then you run to the maternity hospital and you have your own like room and it's like very hotel-y and they can get some I guess room service food kind of a thing and somebody who can teach you how to what end of the baby to put a diaper on and how to hold them and all that kind of stuff. Because it turns out they do not come with a manual. Each baby is different too. And each baby is going to be very there. There's no quality control on babies. They're like all over the place. Some of them are like, I like to breastfeed. Some of them are like, no way. I like bottles. Other ones are like, I don't like any of it. So some are like, I'm going to sleep eight hours almost immediately. Others are like, I'm not going to sleep more than 90 minutes until I'm eight years old. So even though the hospital has a dedicated maternity ward area kind of a thing, the maternity hotel is still less populated and therefore probably a little more comfortable. Yes. Yeah. And you know, they have nice, I mean, I'm sure they in most maternity hospital wards, they're hospital rooms but they're at least set up for your partner to be with you. And it's not as totally clinical. I mean, they're clinical but I imagine being in a place where there are people still to help you and take care of you while you're going through that right after birth period would be awesome.  What? What? I'm not ready. Don't make me go. I don't know what to do. And then in the end, it's also, yeah, I don't know. There's a part of me that still feels like we might just go home. We might skip the book. Yeah. See how it goes. Yeah. It's just cool. I mean, it's not about you. No, it is. Nothing is about me. Not about you. Nothing is about me. Nor will it be ever again. No. It's okay. Yeah. I could see how, I mean, I've had a few of my friends had babies in the pandemic and I remember them telling me that the best sleep that they got in the first year were the two nights in the hospital before they went home. So that's the only thing I would say is like, I think that might be a really big plus to taking your booking. No, no. See, here's the thing. The other side of this wall, there's now maybe a six-month-old baby, time to get revenge. They're just, you know, those poor people, they're just getting decent amounts of sleep now. They're just got there. And we're going to show up with this little screaming crime, baby. It's like, oh, no. What is that? No idea. Oh, it's all fun. All fair. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Probably now, I don't know if I'll make next week's show or not. Yeah. I was thinking this is the one I would definitely not, you know, like we'd be making. Might be next week. Might be here next week. I might not. Who knows. Yeah. I was two weeks late. So when I had Kai, I was two weeks and and then they still, and then I was still induced. So Kai was like, I'm not coming out. People in this side like, no. The numbers game is that first children and boys specifically tend to be the latest. That combo. So that's your combo. Yeah. That's the combo. So is that like sharks in the full moon or is that like real? Well, so the thing is, the thing is it's there, but then, you know, what is the number? 4% of babies are born on their due date. Right. And then you've got the weeks before. You don't even really know 100% when you conceive. Like that's a whole thing. That doesn't matter when you think they know, but really they don't. Well, they do. They do. They do. And it's not when you conceive, but that's fine. You'll find out that math later. It's a different math. No, it is a different math. I know the figure goes, it goes into the figures. It's part of it. It's not all of it. I know they don't care. They literally don't care. And yeah. No, we think it was on a Thursday, not on the following Wednesday, but it was probably late at night. No, they don't care. And it has nothing to do with how they come up with the number. At all. At all. You think it should. I can see your face. You're like, but that's not the experience my friends had. Doesn't come up. But I am surprised because I feel like we have been like a week ahead of all the, what to expect symptoms the whole time. We've always been like, oh yeah, that was, you know, we're already there. Yep.  There is no more room. You're already a week late. Just a week late. It could be. We just, you know, you just don't know. But yeah. Any day now. Any day. And then I'll text you. I'll send some pictures. You better. Maybe you'll send me a calendar. Oh, yeah. I would like to send you a calendar. I don't have your address in Denmark. I'll send it again. I do have it. No, I don't. I don't know where. I do not have it in Denmark. I don't know what it is. I'll figure it out. I don't know what it is. I'll figure it out. In Denmark. Okay. Okay. Others, I will, yeah, I have to do a big mailing of calendars. So if you send me that address, I'll mail you a calendar in Denmark. All right. Nice. Nice. Yeah. Yeah. Other than that, everything's dark and cold. It's winter. It's Denmark in the winter. Who knew? Today it was lovely. It was 50 degrees and sunny in Portland. It was beautiful. Nice. Lovely day. Lovely day. Lovely day. All right.  Yeah. Blair to bed. Justin on to his day. Me to a good book. Yes. What are you reading? I am reading a fantasy series that I'm enjoying a lot. Okay. Say no more. Yeah. You don't want a fantasy series? Well, I'm actually on the kind of book, I guess if you were. Let's see. It's a series. I don't know how to, how do you pronounce, it's Irish or Gaelic. It's Shanon, S-E-A-N-A-N. Shanon, Shane, I don't know how to pronounce it. She's got a series about a female fairy heroine named October Day who she's a heroine and she goes and solves mysteries and she does blood magic. So she's constantly like cutting herself with knives to do blood magic. No science involved whatsoever. But I am also reading a book called Exercise by Daniel, David Lieberman, Daniel Lieberman who we might be interviewing maybe. And then there's another book. Is he running for some office in Arizona? Not. No. It's the same last name. Yeah. And then there's a book called, excuse me, Partial Truths by James Zimmering, which is how fractions distort our thinking. Partial truths. So it's a math logic book that I'm trying. So I've got fantasy. I've got fact. I've got all sorts of things going on right now. Book, books, books, books, books. Oh, Gordon Ocean. How do you pronounce that? Seanan. Shannon. McGuire. Yes. I mean, it's obviously William. Obviously. Obviously. The way Irish pronunciation works. That's my guess. Yeah. That's, it's just not even worth trying. It could be Sarah. Like, yeah, it's not. No, it's just, yeah, it's, they have the, they're using English language to an extent and they're like, ah, yeah, but we know what that means. Yeah, I don't know how Seanan, I know, I think it's Seanan, but I have no idea. Shannon, I have no clue. I'm just not even, I can't even try anymore.  They're like candy.  And I love it. It's a good mental break. Nothing's real. It takes place in San Francisco. So it's super fun because I know the whole topography and the places that they're visiting and everything. But the whole front of the book is like a list of pronunciations for the names of different fairies and different fey that are in the book. And I just laugh at that because I don't know how to pronounce these things. No clue. But anyway, books, what are you reading, Justin? I am reading the, the, the final, I'm reading Blair's face right now. Blair's face says, good night. Good night. Say good night, Blair. No, you're finished. What are you reading right now? I'm not reading anything right now. I'm about to be reading, I have classes coming up starting next week. Okay. The text, the dreaded textbook. I've got textbooks to read. Yes. I've got some critical language interpretation thing, the literature thing. I've got something about ancient civilization class to learn about the origins of humans or something. Should be interesting to find out. Sounds perfect for you. And then math. I'm going to be reading math class. Math. What kind of math?  That's the booklet. What are you talking about? Oh, okay. It was a throwback. That was a throwback. Yes, yes. Sorry. My brain's deteriorating. You know what? That's what I was really reading. Initially was the deterioration. Yeah. Now I can't talk because I'm starting to deteriorate too. Say good night, Blair. Good night, Blair. I'm going to go read Hocus Pocus by Geronica. Good night, Justin. Good night, Blair. Good night. I don't remember how this works. Good night, Kiki. Good night, Dr. Kiki. Good night, everyone. Thank you, everyone, for joining us. We will be back again next week. It's been a lovely night, morning, whatever time of day it is, for where you are so sciency for us all. Stay safe. Stay well. Stay happy and healthy and whole. And I hope we'll see you next week.