. . . to another episode of No Such Thing As A Fish, a weekly podcast coming to you from the QI offices in Covent Garden. My name is Dan Schreiber. I'm sitting here with James Harkin, Andrew Hunter-Murray, and Anna Chizinski. And once again, we have gathered round the microphones, only this time not with our four favourite facts from the last seven days, but with the best four facts sent in by you, the listener. And so, in no particular order, here we go.
Starting with fact number one, and that is you, Chisinski. Yeah, my fact was tweeted into us by someone called Owen Nelligan. So thanks for this, Owen. This fact is that the person who invented the lie detector married the first person he interrogated with it. Did he say...
will you eventually marry me? And she said no, and then it came up as a lie. Well, it's so close to that. According to a book about the history of lie detection and polygraphs, he, so this is a guy called John Augustus Larson, and he was using a lie detector to interrogate.
Margaret Taylor and it was about a diamond ring that she'd had stolen and so the result of the interrogation was that her diamond ring was found and returned to her and she was so grateful that she volunteered her services to him to play criminal in other lie detection test and then after about a year apparently he had her on the lie detection test and he said do you love me and she said no and it came up as a lie and that's bullshit it sounds not true
No, no, I really don't. Oh, well, if the machine's saying it, sorry. If the machine's saying it, I must do. Do you take this man to be your lawfully wedded husband? No. Sorry. Because it made news, the fact that they got... married it was headline news at the time uh the san francisco examiner had it on its front page it said inventor of lie detector traps bride they had their wedding as well with all the police force
And they played a prank on them basically immediately after the ceremony. They beat them up. They handcuffed them and they packed them into a paddy wagon and just abandoned them in a countryside. Just left them. It's a classic police prank.
So I'm a bit confused about him inventing this thing. John Augustus, the man who married the woman he interrogated. Yes. So the invention of the line detector involves several stages, I guess. But what he did was he integrated a test for blood pressure that had already been invented.
by someone called William Marston. And he integrated that with a way to measure your pulse, your respiration and your skin conductivity and put that all together. And then that was what became called the polygraph. So there are lots of different people who might have invented it. it. Yes. If only we had a way of telling who was the real one. And you say someone called William Marston, but William Marston is hugely famous in the world of comic books because he's the inventor of Wonder Woman.
Oh, yeah. Yeah. So the inventor of the lie detector also, well, the inventor of one of the stages of the lie detector also created Wonder Woman. And it was his wife, Elizabeth, who helped him sort of connect the dots about the idea of emotion. and blood pressure being combined as a thing that you could tell people's emotions from, I guess, for truth or false. How did he trap her?
With the, I assume... The lasso, probably. The lasso of truth, which... Wonder Woman has a lasso, and anyone caught in it can't lie. She has a lie detector. Yeah, that's her weapon. That's not a lie detector, though, is it? If you can't lie, that's not a lie detector.
because every single thing you say will be the truth. It's just a lie preventer. Yeah, that's true. Just very quickly on William Marston, he had a really odd relationship because they're not sure who Wonder Woman was properly based on. They think that it was his wife, Elizabeth, but also they think it was this other lady.
called olive turns out that they had an open relationship and they're based on both so just a little nugget there he lived with both women didn't he yeah he did yeah yeah which of those two is the one who wore the weird outfit
One of them wore the outfit, but the other one had a golden lasso. I see. He wasn't a very creative man at all. He was a bit of a self-promoter, wasn't he? I think that's why we associate him with the polygraph these days. So there was a Gillette advert in 1938, which he appeared on.
who say that the company's razors were better than the competition by using the polygraph. Yeah, he sort of hooked people up to it. Which razor's best? Is it Gillette or Wilkinson sword? And presumably if they said Wilkinson sword... They'd probably cut it.
Because polygraphs don't actually work, do they? No, this is the thing. It's amazing. These things are complete crocs. So they don't work, but they're still used, or are they not used anymore? They're not used. But am I right in saying in court they don't necessarily take them as solid evidence? They do. They do on Jeremy Kyle, though.
Right. But they're used in lots of other processes. So there was an article this week about how Trump's having real problems with getting a border control force up. So he wanted to increase the US border control by thousands. And actually, their numbers are decreasing at the moment, the US border control.
and one of the reasons for that is that two-thirds of them fail the lie detector test that you have to pass to get into US border control. I didn't know you... Do you need to pass one to become president? I do not believe so. So if you are a particularly guilty person just in general, you might fail a lie detector test just because...
you think of what would happen if you had told a lie or if you had committed the crime that they're asking you about. So that will cause you a spike in blood pressure or a spike in temperature or a spike in your heart rate or whatever. And also...
you can normalize the responses so if they're asking you control questions at the beginning and you let's say you bite your tongue or you you know stab the inside of your leg with a fork or whatever while that's happening then that will cause a big spike and i think well those spikes are normal when he's
answering those control questions. So later on, when we're asking him about the murder, you might have the same spike and they'll say, well, no, you didn't do it. Do you think they'll be suspicious because you bring a fork into the polygraph test? Yeah, they might. Bleeding out of your mouth for all that gum biting. Mr. Murray, is it true that you stole all the forks from the canteen?
Yeah. So on the guide that this fact is about, he solved the crime that he was put in charge of solving. So it was this mystery on the campus of the University of California over who was stealing lots of the students' possessions. So Margaret Taylor, who he married, had a...
diamond ring stolen and he figured out who it was because he did a lie detector test on all of these students and this is how it worked it ended up working apparently to prove that the lie detector test would work forevermore the way it worked was he sat someone down who was called helen
Graham and asked her if she'd taken the money. She exploded with rage, tore all of her equipment off, ran over to the recording device to tear it up and said it was outrageous that anyone was allowed to use that. She had to be restrained and said that otherwise she would have beaten the officer in the... face so it sounds like she did it and she did then admit later on so that's how they work they just send you flying into a raid i think that is how they work isn't it like
Really, the only way that a polygraph could possibly work in a court of law is by making you admit to something, right? Because people think they work. Yeah. Yeah, so they then become truthful. So there was, this was supposedly a method they used in BC era.
to determine whether someone was lying or not. Supposedly in India this was used. What you would do is you'd get a donkey and you'd cover its tail in soot, right? And then you'd put the donkey in a tent, okay? And this is a dark tent and it's at night that you do this. And then you put the suspected liar... in there and you say we've got a magic donkey and you
You have to grab the tail of the donkey when you're in there, and if it brays, we'll know that you committed the crime. But actually, what it is, is if they come out and they haven't got soot all over their hands... then you know that they didn't even grab the donkey's tail in the first place. So that's how they tell that you're the wrong one. There's a story that Charles Napier did that, who's one of the inventors of logarithms, but he did it with a chicken.
So he had a dark room, put soot on his cock, and then asked people... Andy. I knew you were going to say it, but I'm so pleased when you did. No, he did a dark room, put soot on his chicken, and then told people it was a magic chicken. And again, it was the people without sooted hands who he knew were guilty. Yeah, but actually, even if I was innocent, I wouldn't take the risk of the chicken actually being magic. Because you do...
It could be a magic chicken who's just got it in for you. Yeah, exactly. That chicken's always hated me. Because you do assume that if you pull a donkey's tail, it probably will bray. And I think even in the illogical days of the BC... era. People knew that they might do that even if they hadn't committed the crime. What are we meant to say for the BC era? What's the correct way of saying it? This was before the time of Christ? Yeah, sure. Before the common era.
I think. Yeah. What's the E in the BCE era? James said it a second ago. He just said it literally. Wow. But we could switch those two sentences right. Do you want to know another method of telling the truth? Yes, please. Which era is it from? This is from the AD era. exactly yeah what does ad stand for So this is in China. When you're being prosecuted, you have to hold a mouthful of rice during the prosecutor's speech. Now, it was believed that when people are anxious, they stop salivating.
And you know that feeling of having a dry mouth when you're nervous. So if the rice was dry by the time the prosecutor finished speaking... it was believed that you were guilty because you hadn't been salivating and the prosecutor's talking about your crime. Which is unreliable because actually they could have just taken lots of ecstasy, for instance. Yeah, that's true. Does that give you a dry mouth? Yeah, I've heard, yeah.
Do you know who invented the first way of measuring your pulse? That must be a before common era thing, isn't it? It's not. So actually, maybe it's the first way that... This book I was reading claimed. So it was Galileo, apparently. But it's really clever. So at the time, people didn't have watches where you could, you know, obviously check someone's pulse against the ticking of your watch. You'd check it by the sundial.
Full day. So he invented this thing called the pulsologium. And what he did was he rigged up this pendulum. So he hung this pendulum up and then he got the pendulum going and it was attached to a... thread so it was swinging and attached to this thread that he could pull on to make it longer or shorter and he'd have the pendulum in one hand with his hand on that thread and then he'd test someone's pulse with the other hand and he'd make the string longer or shorter until
it was exactly in time with that person's pulse and that's a really accurate way of measuring it because the length of the pendulum tells you how fast their pulse is going and then you know if that's normal. Isn't that really clever? That is really cool. That is. He was pretty clever wasn't he? He was okay. Yeah. method where...
So this is a test they tried in the 1980s. Basically, there were loads of different lie detector tests, and they hope that they're going to get a really accurate one at some point. There's a test called P300, which is basically that after you see a very distinct image, your brain... would have a little burst of activity at 300 milliseconds after you see it, right? Right. So the idea was if someone had committed a crime, let's say I mugged someone who was wearing an orange suit. Right.
and I saw that suit again later, my brain would register that same burst of activity. But then an orange suit is quite unusual, so I think if I saw an orange suit, I would also be... This is the problem. And you have to find things that the criminals saw and that are unique. So maybe he works in an orange suit factory and he won't register the same thing. And actually criminals wear orange boiler suits, don't they? Yeah.
That's true. So he might just be worried about the prospect of going into prison for a crime he didn't commit. So that did not work, basically. So is the logic there that if you know that that test's happening, if you commit a crime, you should do it in a place with no distinguishing features? Like Slough. Yeah.
Stop the podcast! Stop the podcast! Hey everyone, this week's episode of Fish is sponsored by Monzo. Yes, that's right. So it's like any high street bank, but unlike many other banks, Monzo has pots.
You know this, Andy, because you're with Monzo, aren't you? I certainly am. And I'm looking at my Monzo now, and it's very intuitive. You can set up a pot. Let's say you want to have one of the bills, or let's say you're putting aside tax because you know you're going to need it come the end of January, whatever it is.
put it in a pot and you can name your pots different things you can have little characters for your pots you can date lock them you can put targets on them it's really powerful when it adds up so many pots have you got andy i've got lots of pots I've got three. Look, I'm a fan of personal admin. It makes it fun, all right?
Well, here's the thing as well, is that I'm someone who's terrible at that kind of stuff. So they've thought of this. As soon as money hits your account, whatever you have assigned to go percentage-wise from that cash that comes in, it immediately disappears into the pods and does all of the organizing.
It's very simple, and if you search Monzo Potts, you can see what all the fuss is about. Well yep, as Andy says, and as Andy uses, do search Monzo Potts. And just to say, if you are thinking of setting up your Monzo current account, you must be 16 plus and a UK resident. T's and C's apply And on with the show On with the podcast Stop the podcast Stop the podcast
Hello everybody, we are sponsored this week by the RSPCA. Yes, very specifically by an amazing program they're running called the Animal Futures The Big Conversation where they are looking for 10,000 people around the UK to get involved in the... Biggest ever discussion that's been about animal welfare.
Yes, you could be one of the special chosen 10,000 because you get to choose yourself. And who wouldn't choose themselves, especially when the idea is that you go online and you give your opinion about stuff, which we all want to do all the time. And these are your thoughts. and views on this really important subject of animal futures and how we use animals in technology, in farming, in the wild, and just generally. So if you have any thoughts on that, do get involved. That's right.
And this is only running until the 28th of February. So get in quick, get your ideas in there, because what they're trying to do is imagine potential scenarios for animals for the year 2050. It's really, really important research and you can... part of it so simply head to the rspca website find animal futures the big conversation and become one of the golden 10 000.
Yes, and it will aim to make industry and government change. So you're not just shouting into the void for once. Do it now. OK, on with the podcast. On with the show. Okay, it is time for fact number two, and that is Andy. My fact is that Liechtenstein has roughly two companies for every person who lives there.
So this is a fact from a guy called Richard Smith at Richard A.V. Smith. So probably we're not saying that these people all own two companies, are we? No, we're not, because a lot of the companies are from overseas, but they're registered in Liechtenstein because it's a...
They make all their money from extremely dubious financial arrangements. They don't make all their money, or indeed any of their money, from dubious arrangements, I'm sure. Just in case the liars are listening. I'm sure they make a lot of their money from... practices that are frowned on in the wider international community, but which happen to be legal in Liechtenstein. But they make money on false teeth, don't they?
There's an old QI fact that they're the biggest exporters of false teeth in the world. I think China might be about to overtake them. But listen, it's been punching above its weight for some time. They've got 35,000 people. It's amazing that they export more than China. How many of the companies are false teeth factories? Almost all of them, actually, yeah. There's very little tax haven stuff going on. Are we talking teeth with gums? Like, as in full sets of...
Dentures. So not individual teeth. Well, I guess it depends, doesn't it? I think it's dentures. I think it's one company that makes all these dentures. I think it's in Lichtenstein. It's a funny old place, isn't it? It's an amazing little place, yeah. I mean, it's named after the guy who bought it.
That's pretty amazing. And the family who still are the royalty there are the descendants of him. So it's still the Lichtenstein family. You just never see that because they never use their surname. So weird. It's like Queen Elizabeth. You know, you rarely see Windsor. Oh, is she not called? England. So it's 160 square kilometers, which is 174th the size of Yorkshire. Whoa!
I mean, I don't know how big Yorkshire is, but... It's quite big. Yorkshire's quite big. But it's smaller than, like, England, for instance. Yeah. Yeah. I read a really good fact in Lonely Planet about Liechtenstein, which is that their last military engagement was in... 1866. It's the last time they sent soldiers out. So 80 soldiers went out and...
81 returned. They made a friend and brought one back. Well, what is a friend other than someone that you've captured? No, it's an Italian guy who's just like, I love you guys. You're really fun. I'll come back to Liechtenstein. Stockholm syndrome to me. In 2007, 170 Swiss troops marched into Liechtenstein by accident on a training exercise. They crossed the border. So basically, it's their army going into another...
country, which could be kind of a bad thing, I guess. But the truth is that Lichtenstein's defense is actually looked after by Switzerland. Lichtenstein doesn't really have an army of its own. That's such a confusing... defense attack strategy that's going through your head. So you could march in, and then if anyone stops you... Stop hitting yourself! They've done it a few times, actually. They threw grenades into Liechtenstein, I think...
the late 60s really and another time they set a bit on fire with flamethrowers they started a forest fire they did ring to apologize after the 2007 one didn't they i think they they went in lichtenstein didn't notice they ran away again quickly after they realized and then they called the next day to say i'm really sorry we accidentally invaded you and the minister of the interior said it's no problem at all these things happen so that happened again in 2002
When British Marines invaded Spain by mistake, thinking that they were practicing invading Gibraltar, despite the fact Gibraltar has a massive rock sticking out of it, and they said, well, the beach is very confusing, actually. So they stormed ashore, they had assault rifles, they had mortars. They took up a defensive position just to face a couple of Spanish fishermen and a couple of local policemen who said...
Gibraltar's over there, look. And the MOD later on said, it was clearly an embarrassing and unfortunate incident. They made their apologies and left. But when they said Gibraltar's over there... Does that mean the army asked for directions? No, I don't think they did. I think the Spanish police must have known that they were doing a training exercise. Rather than assuming they were being invaded by Britain. Although apologising and leaving is a very British way.
to invade somewhere. Sorry. The ruler, Prince of Liechtenstein, is the wealthiest monarch in Europe. Wow.
in the billions isn't he he's five billion i think because they're both in the billions yeah well the queen's because the queen the crown wealth doesn't actually count towards the queen's personal wealth officially otherwise obviously she be well up there yeah um but yeah he's he's loaded but people love him so in july 2012 lichtenstein did a bit of a turkey and they there was a referendum i think we can call it that there was a referendum
on whether the prince should have all of his powers extended and whether he should have the power to veto the results of any future referendum. And 76% of the country said yes. Yeah, we think if there are ever referenda in future, you should be allowed to overrule them immediately. So they love the guy. Yeah, they do. And he's an interesting character because during that period he threatened to just leave.
I think that was why they voted. He said, if it goes the other way, I'm just going to leave. I'm going to take all my money. I'm going to take the name of the country with me. You have to think of a new name. I'm taking back that Italian who came back with the army. I'm taking everything. And he... Because they had another referendum where they wanted to talk about abortion and whether it should be legal, because it's illegal in Liechtenstein. And they said, we want it legal. And he just went...
No, sorry. I'm overruling that. It's not happening. He once a year throws a big party for everyone in Liechtenstein to come to the palaces. But actually 20-odd percent of those wanted him to leave the country. Yeah. The people invited to this party. We'll put them over near the toilets. He doesn't hold grudges like that. 36,000 people invited to the same party. And it's supposed to be a garden party on his lawn, so I just wonder how big his lawn is. I guess if you own Liechtenstein
the whole thing is your garden. So it's just like, that's the party, wherever you are. So just stay at home. Yeah. Well, how do you not attend the party then if you're annoyed about the referendum? That's why everyone attends the party. 30,000 isn't that many though, is it? Like if you think about a football...
game that's like man united game would have what 70 000 or something i guess it's quite a lot i'm thinking of my flat now so i think his garden is probably bigger than your flat but not by much i know what you're saying yeah i've never been to your flat No. Oh, sorry. Yeah, we had a party. I'm afraid not the whole population of the podcast was invited. Okay. It is time for fact number three. And that is my fact. My fact was sent in by Luke Haynes. That was on email.
In 47 BC, there was a giant robot, Cleopatra, walking the streets of Alexandria, squirting milk from her breasts onto the heads of onlookers. Okay. Yes. This was sent to you personally, was it? to all of us but i i think it was edged towards me in the email um and do you stand by it well i did when i read it and sent it to you and let you all research it and now uh having googled it i can't find any evidence that it's real it appears
and a New Statesman article. And it's delivered at the top of the piece, very confidently, as if it's fact. And I just can't seem to find it anywhere else. But I still stand by it. Okay, so I read a review of a book called Cleopatra Alive by Stacey Schiff. Yes. But the review was by Mary Beard, who I think we do trust as a classicist. And she wrote about a famous procession in... of the god Dionysus in the 3rd century BC by...
Ptolemy II, so that's before Cleopatra, and they wrote that there were floats and one of the floats had a large statue which stood up mechanically without anyone laying a hand on it and sat back down again when it had poured a libation of milk. so I don't know if this is the same thing or even if that's true but I you know that is from a good source yep
but it seems to me like maybe two things have been conflated. I don't know, though. Was it a statue of Cleopatra? Because that would be truly extraordinary 300 years before she was born. Well, it might not have been before the first Cleopatra, because Cleopatra was actually Cleopatra VII. Yes. one who is famous you know for for um having affairs with julius caesar and mark energy and things like that she was the seventh you know how she hooked up with caesar tender
It was like their version of Tinder, and this is how it worked. She was married at the time to her brother, as was customary. So she actually married both of her brothers, both called Ptolemy, and she engineered the death of both of them as well. I smell it.
sitcom um no so she decided that she wanted uh to hang out with Caesar because he's a very powerful man I wanted to have a bit of flirting with him and she was having a feud with her husband and see Ptolemy uh and Caesar was Ptolemy's enemy sorry which Ptolemy are we talking about we're talking about Ptolemy her brother or Ptolemy her other brother she really had a type didn't she filling in the profile of the dating agency must be six foot called Ptolemy my brother
Yeah, it was Ptolemy her brother. Which one? Her other brother. Her other one. Right. Anyway, he said, you obviously can't see Caesar because he's my enemy. And so she had herself wrapped up in a carpet and smuggled into Caesar's personal quarters. And then I think this is a famous depiction of her. She's always unrolled in films of Cleopatra, isn't she? I love that. It's so fun, the idea.
of being unrolled from a carpet onto the floor. You know what? It sounds like fun, but I reckon when you do it, it's not going to be much fun. Because the carpet will be round by the end of the rolling process, but as it gets closer and closer towards your body as you're being unrolled, obviously the carpet will be more in your... and you'll be sort of bumping over the floor. You're going to be bumping. It's going to be...
That's if you haven't suffocated in the carpet. Maybe there's a delay. That would have been such an anticlimax if just a dead clear patch was rolled down in front of Caesar. Roll her back up. Weren't they ferociously inbred then?
were all marrying their siblings yes yeah but she wasn't having babies with them it was all about keeping power that would be disgusting right yeah it was all about keeping power so she married one of the ptolemies when he was 10 and that was so that he could be the co-ruler oh okay But the thing is, I don't think they were particularly against having sex with each other. I loved it. Cleopatra had only six great-great-grandparents out of a possible 16. Wow.
Wow. Wow. But on the plus side, she had a lot of extra toes. Is that a plus? Toes aren't that useful. I feel like I've just got enough. It would make the game of this little piggy goes to market go on a long time. This little piggy married its brother. Who was also called Ptolemy. Ptolemy. Just speaking of toes, um...
I found out a thing a while ago, ancient Egypt. This is sort of going into robots. Ancient Egypt, they actually worked out how to make a strap-on... toe for people who'd lost a toe so that it worked so that they could continue to walk like an Egyptian that's a terrible joke that's a terrible joke no so it's amazing they found it's the oldest use of augmenting a human prosthetic where
they were able to walk again and they found that it's because it's a leather and wooden thing that they would strap onto the toe. The flexibility of it was up to 86%, which meant that it literally worked like how a normal toe would function. It wasn't, that was like, they must have had.
prototype models and refined it and refined it. So the flexibility allowed them perfect gait for what they had before. There's a specific rule in American football that you're not allowed to kick the ball with an artificial toe. Really? Why? Because it's spring-loaded or something? Well, basically, they...
Pretty much all the rules in American football are because people have done something and then they have to make a rule against it. But one of the best kickers of all time, I think he just got his record beaten for the longest ever kick, didn't have any toes on one of his feet.
had a special like fake toe made so that he could kick properly uh and it shouldn't really have helped him in any way if you look at it it shouldn't have helped but obviously his um opponents didn't like the idea and so they banned it That's really petty. Yeah, that's a shame. As if that. Can I just say, this prosthetic toad dates back between the time of 950 and 710 BC. It's really old. Yeah, it's really advanced technology. I have another thing from around 950 BC. Oh, yeah. Okay, so...
This is an automaton by King Mu of Zhu in China. I've probably pronounced that wrong, but that's how it looks. He had an engineer called Yanxi, and Yanxi gave him a human-shaped figure. which walked with rapid strides, moved its head up and down, and touched its chin and began singing in tune. Okay, this was supposedly 950 BC. Wow. And it...
The king obviously thought it was amazing. But then as the performance was drawing to an end, the robot winked its eye and made advances to the ladies of the audience. And so the king demanded that it be broken down. until it was proved that it was actually an automaton because he thought it was some kind of alive thing. Also, it was an automaton. I assumed the climax was going to be that that was obviously just a sleazy man. Just painted himself silver.
Well, I mean, it's a story from ancient China, so maybe it's not even true. In the BC era. They did have amazing things in the 18th century. So these are automata, which are... So the recorder, we have drawings of them and things like this. So there was one called the Volcanson Duck, built by a Frenchman called Jacques de Volcanson in 1738. It could stretch its wings. It could smooth its feathers. It could splash around in water. It could stretch out and take corn from your hand.
And then it produced realistic, horrible-smelling duck droppings. Wow. And this was an automaton. It was unbelievable. And sometimes when he was making it perform in front of ladies, de Verconson would put it in a little skirt. I'm not sure why. Yeah. What was the purpose that it served? Was it useful? No, entertainment. It just provided you with duck droppings. Yeah, but that's all ducks do, to be fair.
And more ducks. You can eat them. That's true. I don't know. I think if you have one of the greatest engineers in France coming to you with his new invention, then all it is is a bit of metal that produces duck droppings. You might be disappointed.
they're actually not even real duck droppings they're artificial duck droppings was it for people you know when people can't commit to a child those weird people who buy one of those strange lifelike dolls instead was it for people who couldn't commit to having a real pet duck yeah yeah that was it yeah that's very thoughtful invention
So just back to Cleopatra quickly, she was pretty wild. She seemed to have a lot of fun in her life, according to, well, the contemporary records. When she got into a carpet warehouse, sometimes they wouldn't find her for weeks. Imagine her at the Oscars as well. And Cleopatra's not appeared, and weirdly, the red carpet hasn't been delivered either. Oh my God, what's happening here?
That should have been like, was it Elizabeth Taylor who played Cleopatra? She should have arrived like that, shouldn't she? That would have been amazing. Stop the podcast. Stop the podcast. Hello everybody, we are sponsored this week by the RSPCA. Yes, very specifically by an amazing program they're running called the Animal Futures The Big Conversation, where they are looking for 10,000 people around the UK to get involved in the biggest ever discussion that's been about animal welfare.
Yes, you could be one of the special chosen 10,000 because you get to choose yourself. And who wouldn't choose themselves, especially when the idea is that you go online and you give your opinion about stuff, which we all want to do all the time. And these are your thoughts. and views on this really important subject of animal futures and how we use animals in technology, in farming, in the wild, and just generally. So if you have any thoughts on that, do get involved. That's right.
And this is only running until the 28th of February. So get in quick, get your ideas in there, because what they're trying to do is imagine potential scenarios for animals for the year 2050. It's really, really important research, and you can be part of it. it. So simply head to the RSPCA website, find Animal Futures, The Big Conversation and become one of the golden 10,000.
Yes, and it will aim to make industry and government change. So you're not just shouting into the void for once. Do it now. OK, on with the podcast. On with the show. Okay, it is time for our final fact of the show, and that is James. Okay, my fact this week came on Twitter through at... flock of words, and it is that manatees control their buoyancy through flatulence. Very clever. There's loads of good ways that animals...
control their buoyancy. Because if you think about it, if you're living in water, you want to decide how high and low you're going to be, don't you? Yeah. So cuttlefish have a bone with holes in it. Okay, cuttlebone it's known as. The hollow structure contains both liquid and gas, and the cuttlefish can change its density by varying the quantity of liquid within its bones. What? That is amazing. Isn't that amazing? Yeah, that's incredible.
Do we do anything like that as humans? No, we go up and down stairs. Yeah, but do we do anything on the way? I mean, I fart a bit. Well, think about it this way. If you're in a swimming pool... Yeah. And you hold your breath. Actually, you wouldn't sink under the water. You'll be naturally buoyant. Yes. And then if you let all the air out, you naturally go down. Right. OK.
Antarctic krill do things a bit like humans. They don't have these bones like cuttlefish and they don't fart like manatees. But what they do is they kind of tread water all the time. So they're always kind of moving their little swimming legs back. to make sure that they stay at the right level. That sounds so annoying. I know, imagine that your whole life you're just treading water. Oh, that's a horrible metaphor, isn't it? But they migrate, I think daily. They migrate and they don't migrate.
across, they migrate down and up And they move to different bits of the water column, as it's called, depending on food and light and heat and this kind of thing. So that's how animals know where to hunt them. Are we sure they do that because of that and not just they're trying to get to the surface and then they're so knackered they give up?
up and they drop back down to the bottom again. I don't know. That sounds more plausible. I was reading that manatees, they have to hold their breath to be underwater, so they constantly have to come up and re-oxygenate. And they can take a lot of... in one big breath, it's something like 90% of the oxygen just gets re...
They change 90% of the air in their lungs in a single breath. In a single breath. Humans only change about a tenth in a single breath. Wow. Yeah. So what they do, though, is when they go to sleep, they go down and they effectively do a form of sleepwalking, but sleep sleeping.
sorry sleep swimming sleep swimming where they they come to the surface and they take in breath but they're still asleep and then go back down wow yeah it's just like a bit of are they definitely still asleep yeah because i can't tell it's like a half awake it's
they say it's as close yeah exactly it's it's as close to yeah it's like if you know that you got up in the middle of the night to check the the clock to see what time it was or it was 4 a.m and then went back to sleep but you can remember that it's having a conscious memory but sort of
of also being still asleep. Oh, I see. Kind of thing. Why don't you keep your clock just within view of your bed so that you don't have to get up every time you need to know? Because my clock is my iPhone, so you've got to press the button to turn it on to have a look. I see, I see. Yeah, it's a bit more complicated.
That must be so annoying because they can only last about 20 minutes underwater max without going out for air. Well, they nap all the time. They don't have a long period of sleep. They're not like eight hours in the evening. They just nap in small little doses all the time.
Lazy, aren't they? Manatees. Yeah. I've seen them. They just kind of, I don't know. Have you seen them up close? Yeah. Oh, they look so cool. They are quite cool. I saw them in a sea center and also in the wild. And in a sea center, they all have like scars on them. a few years ago from where boats have hit them yeah apparently 90% I think are scarred from boats wow but they just kind of they're like cows that's because they're called sea cows sometimes aren't they and they just kind of
go around the sea just grazing and then sleeping for a bit. What do you want them to do? Build milk-squirting robots? But they look... like they're really fat and like they've got loads of blubber to survive in cold waters and they haven't it turns out they're all intestines because they're herbivores so they have to eat loads and loads of plants they eat about a tenth of their weight in plants every day
And so they have to constantly be grazing and constantly be digesting, which is where they get all the methane for their flatulence from. But... The lack of blubber means they can't survive in cold waters. So they have to migrate when it gets cold in winter. And sometimes they swim into the, you know, the warm water outlets of power plants and things like this. Yeah. Because you get hundreds of manatees in Florida just converging. In fact, did you...
Obviously in 2015, they got, I think, 19 manatees got stuck in a pipe, in a drainage pipe in Florida. Did the first one go in and then the next one tried to save him? Can you imagine how annoying... That was the first one. Why wasn't he shouting back and going, back up, guys, back up? Did they get out? Yeah, they all got out. They were fine. They were a bit dazed. They had to go in and put them on stretchers.
Really? It's amazing seeing them. Yeah, they cut the pipe open. Oh, okay, right. There's a manatee hotline that you can call in Florida. To talk to manatees in your area. Well, because obviously there's a lot of interesting rules.
that happen in florida with manatees the stuff about you're not allowed to touch a manatee there was a case where dad almost went to jail because there was a photo of him touching a manatee that's illegal um no i don't mean disgusting touch like literally touching a manatee yeah i know okay i don't think
anyone was thinking i thought your face suggested that's what i was saying no it wasn't at all okay but thank you for clarifying but so one one thing that they often get is phone calls um from people saying that um we've got huge problems the the manatees are huge danger by the shore and often what that is is that manatees actually mate uh very close uh just off the coast of florida and they do it in mass groups and it looks like there's a struggle going on like because the water is going crazy
So Nadia Gordon, she's a marine mammal biologist with the state agency in Florida. And she says the call we usually get is there's a mom manatee and all the babies are trying to save it. But then in actuality, the large female can have up to 20 something males trying to bring.
read the one female and that's what's going on so it looks like they're in serious trouble and that's a lot of the phone calls so that's what happens you get all the males who are trying to mate with the female and the female's in the middle and all the males are trying to get at her but they don't have claws or horns or anything like that
out her arms or anything so they're just kind of bumping each other so it's kind of like if you're in a nightclub and there was a load of men trying to get towards a woman but they had their arms by their sides and they're kind of bumping each other
It would be a bit like that. That's the weirdest simile, because no one's ever been in that situation in a nightclub where all the men have their arms tied to their sides and are bumping towards the one within the room. But I think clubs would be more enjoyable for women if that were the case. They certainly would.
I can imagine that. I can imagine it. I like that. I would go to that club. But what happens, obviously, is that the one who's best at barging people out of the way gets the girl. But then the other ones, what do they do? Well, actually, they tend to just try and mate with each other. Do they? Yeah. Right. Also, in a way, everyone wins. Well, in a way. In a way. Everyone else has come joint second there, I think.
so you can so obviously they were mistaken for a mermaid we think in columbus's journal he said he'd seen a mermaid what the locals refer to as a mermaid and we think it's a manatee and you can kind of see why they look if you look into their eyes There's something very human about their faces. Well, they don't have eyelashes. Exactly, just like humans. And their eye muscles close in a circular motion like an aperture on a camera.
Right. Whoa. So there are some differences, obviously, between the human and the manatee. Or you've got really weird boyfriends in your head. They have large pendulous breasts. They do. There we go. That's where the name manatee comes from. It's an old Carib word meaning breast. Ah.
Okay. And Columbus, when he saw them, he did say that they rose well out of the sea, but they're not so beautiful as they're said to be. No. For their faces had some masculine traits. And they had scars where they'd been hit by boats. Yeah, they had no eyelashes. On the other hand, those breasts were very pendulous. They have been at sea for a long time. That's true, I guess. And they are terrible in bed.
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