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