2021 Ig Nobel Prize Grab Bag, Part 2

we wanted to discuss. And Rob I think you're going to kick us off today with the Biology Prize if I'm not wrong, Yes, this is the Biology Prize. It went to Suzanne Shots Robert Ecklund and used fond of aga for analyzing variations in purring, chirping, chattering, trilling, tweeting, murmuring, me owing, moaning, squeaking, hissing, yowling, howling, growling, and other

modes of cat human communication. Those are all cat human communication. Yeah, yeah, so this is so one the couple of questions I tend to ask myself about any Ignoble prize winning study or paper right up, is first of all, why is it funny? And then then secondly, why is it important? Why does it matter? And of course it's pretty obvious why this one. It's funny. It's cats. Anything cats do

has the potential to be hilarious because they are. They are amusing, They are are strange fur babies, are are the weird desert goblins that live in so many of our houses or haunt our yards. I think in many ways, cats are funny, almost exactly to the extent that they appear to take themselves very seriously. Yeah, well so they that's true. But they're also some very silly looking cats.

But yeah, they they do often have this kind of serious demeanor and they it's easy too for us to apply human motivations to their behavior and thinking, oh, well, they're they're covering for a mistake here, they're they're they're trying to, uh, you know, uphold their dignity. Uh. There's a lot we can read into the behaviors of cats, but the the actual scenario with cat, I mean, any

human domestication of another animal species is inherently interesting. That the cat model may be one of the most interesting of all because it is this kind of at times arguably a self domestication. It's this uh this interesting um you know, um balance that is struck between what the cat wants and what the human wants. Um. And you know so many of us live that every day, that that uneasy truce with the feline kind. You're always wondering if your cat really respects you. This is less a

problem for dog owners. Oh I don't know. I mean I I never wonder and I know my cat doesn't respect me. It's but but well we'll get into that. So this this uh, this study or actually it's really a series of studies. Um. You know, they deal with the vocalization of cats. And uh, if if you're not that familiar with cats, if you're not around the much, you might be surprised by this because cats are often pretty quiet. Um, they can be very quiet, very stealthy.

And while the meal is the most famous cat noise and one that is sometimes treated it as kind of kind of a monolithic vocalization, there's actually quite a diversity to the sounds you're liable to hear come out of a cat if you listen enough. So everyone everyone's cat

is different. I mean cats have have can have amazingly different personalities but concerning my own current cat, Mochi, here are some of her most common utterances, so that I might mention these before getting into some of the researchers findings. So first of all, uh, there's there is of course purring. Uh. Mochi will do this while seated close to or on

a human uh, you know, whilst relaxing. There's also the hiss she will generally she'll hiss in other situations, like if she's surprised or something, but uh, straight antually enough, she most commonly hisses after she has just randomly attacked my foot. She'll be near my foot, she will like play by my toe, and then she will recoil and

hiss at me like I did something. One of my most vivid memories of a cat hissing is when I was in college, a friend of mine called me to come over and help deal with an incredibly large spider discovered in the apartment, and the cat in the apartment there was just was just hissing at it, just violently hissing at a at a huge black spider. Interesting again, cats are so so different than they have such such

an interesting personalities. I don't think I've ever heard my cat hiss at a non human entity, but then again, she's she's an indoor cat and it's kind of cut off from most non human entities. My cat Mochi will also do something that we affectionately refer to as the midnight baby parade, sometimes not affectionately, depending on the circumstances.

But this is when she carries a toy or small stuffed animal around the house, generally after we've all gone to bed, and as a kind of repetitive, mournful howling about it about you, like something about the toy has made her sad. Now, based on some of the readings I'll get into, um, I believe it is a communication aimed at us, at us humans, uh, saying hey, I have I have caught you something I have provided, I have a treat for you, or and or I'm teaching

you how to hunt something to that effect. So um, so it's not actually mournful. That's just our read of it. It sounds kind of weird and pathetic, but see it is, but it is a vocal communication of sorts. Finally, Mochi will use what I think of as the bossy mew, a kind of sharp, truncated meal that feels bossy and is often administered when she is ready to be fed and we're being too slow about it. Oh, from Charlie in that same situation, we get the huffs where he

doesn't fully bark, but it's them. Yeah, yeah, I mean, it's it's It's really remarkable when you when you think about it, you know, all these these various communications that are going on between us and these these non human beings in our homes. Now, there are probably some other sounds from Mochi that I'm forgetting, and there's still others that our old cat would make, such as the chirping at birds, which I'll definitely get into. But those are the main ones that are in my life that I

carried into reading about this research. And and again, one of the crazy things about all this is that we can we can anthropomorphize our cats all day, but we're left with with very real questions regarding what these sounds are and what purpose they serve. And on top of that, we're looking at it within the context of domesticated cohabitation

with human beings. Right, so are these sounds that are naturally part of the part of the cat's behavioral repertoire in their ancestral environment, or do they somehow emerge from being domesticated and being partnered with humans. Yeah, so it gets it gets very complicated. So um, the lead author on I think all what five studies that were referenced in the the Ignoble Prize being awarded here, the lead

author and all of them was Susan Shots. And if you're interested in Shots's work, she actually has a book aimed at general readers and cat owners titled The Secret Language of Cats. Um, and I actually picked this up and kind of focused on this more than the individual studies, uh.

In it, she details seventeen different cats sounds, and I'm not going to go through all of them, but it's fascinating how these include sounds that are targeted at seemingly targeted at prey, but also targeted at other cats and targeted at humans. Which ones are we closer to the when they're talking to humans. Is it more like their interactions with prey or more like other cats? It seems

to be like other cats. And I've I've read other research that that that summarizes it, you know, in the same way saying like, well, your cat basically thinks of you as a giant cat, or your cat basically thinks of you as a giant kitten, that sort of thing. So, just rolling through some of the sounds here and what

shots have to say about them. For instance, purring, uh is complex because while it is largely associated with with the cat feeling content, you can also mean that the cat is hungry, that it is pain, that the cat is anxious, or that the cat is giving birth or dying. Oh wow, well that's a range. Yeah. So she writes that purring probably would translate in human language, and she she does a lot of this, like like, if you were to translate this into human language, what is the

cat saying? It probably means something like I am no threat, or please leave everything as it is, or keep doing Oh I can see that. Okay, So whether the cat is happy with what's going on right now and doesn't want to be disturbed, or is in a vulnerable state of some kind and doesn't want to be disturbed, it's basically just kind of like, hey, things are fine. Yeah.

Now I've heard that tidbit about the dying before, and I was was having to think back where i'd heard it, and I think I actually heard about it the first time in a poem titled Purring by Coleman Barks, who uh incidentally, I think we've brought up on the podcast before, because in addition to being a poet of his own work, he is also the the Roomy interpreter, who has sometimes criticized for not being an actual translator in the true

sense of the word. He neither reads nor writes Persian, but rather sort of rephrases the poems of roomi um as English language poems. But anyway, the poem in question is is rather good and has nothing to do with the poetry of of of Roomy or Persia. It's all about cat purring. And this is the key part. Quote here is something I have never heard. A feline purrs and two conditions when deeply content and when mortally wounded to calm themselves reading for the death opening. Oh that's

kind of chilling. Yeah. I've aways found this part of the poem very spot on regarding cats and death, because I feel like Mochi if she gets too cold or if she has some sort of health flare up, she basically says to us, I must now settle down and await the death opening, and we're usually like, no, there's no there's no reason to just accept death. You should maybe you should drink some water instead, You're probably dehydrated. And she's like, no, I would prefer death. Oh yeah yeah.

So is is that in general that cats are likely to have kind of strange relationships with water or is that more specifically your cat? I mean, I've heard that. You know, if you if you look back to where cats come to us from, that you know they have ties to desert environments where they wouldn't have access to a lot of water. But you spend any amount of time on the internet and you see that the cats

are kind of all over the place. There are cats that habitually drink water from faucets and toilets, you know, there are cats that that actually use their fountains. Uh. And there then their households like ours, where I feel like we have we put out various fountains and and bowls of water as kind of a spiritual offering, so that the idea of water is present. So in the end, she gets I think all of her moisture through her wet food, and otherwise I think she would just dry up. Strange, Now,

when it comes to the meals. Shots points out that meals are very often about getting the attention of humans, and there are really a whole suite of mews. Uh. For instance, there's the mew, which is a very high pitched meal probably generally something that translates as a call to attention or help. And then outside of cat human relations, this is also the sound a kitten makes to its mother. So this is a situation where we're we're kind of a giant cat mother to our cats, at least in

some circumstances. Oh, you can almost look at that as a kind of counterpoint to the purring. So if the purring is could sort of be understood as an expression of no need to change what's going on, uh, the meal could be a sort of request for change. Yeah. The squeak, however, is like a shorter, truncated version of this. And I think this is what Mochi is doing when

she is demanding to be fed. Uh. So um, so it's it's not just a general call for attention or help, but a specific one like hey, I am standing next to the food bowl and there is no food. Now. As for the hiss, uh, it's still confounds me. Because uh in shots is writing here. She mostly writes that it is exactly what it sounds like, a warning that says enough, do not come any closer or I will attack you. But again, Mochi regularly does this to me after she bites me. Uh and and I should stress

after I do not retaliate. It's not like I I come at her at that point then she has to hiss at me. I'm just standing there, dumbfound at the whole time. But but who knows. It's also a situation where sometimes they hiss when they're startled. Um. I think there are a lot of videos online of cats hissing at cucumbers that have been secreted behind them, that sort of thing. Oh, now, the chirp and the chatter. This, this is where it gets really interesting. And now this

is something I don't see Mochi doing much. But I had a former cat named Biscuit who would do this a lot while watching birds. Um. I think if you've certainly a lot of cat owners out there are people that have been around cats, especially indoor cats, can relate to this. You know, your cat is watching birds or maybe even some rodents outside the window, and they're very

like drawn into it. They're they're they're enticed by they're kind of hypnotized by the display, and then they kind of they kind of go ch ch chat or a church of church chirp kind of a sound, and kind of kind of like moving their mouths in a weird way, and it does seem like it's almost like they're trying to talk to the bird. I don't know if I've

ever ever seen this happen. It's very interesting. And now shots describes them as as quote these sounds as quote a hunting instinct where the cat attempts to imitate the calls of the prey or the killing bite for example, when a bird or an insect catches the attention of the cat. Wow, I feel like I need to look

up video of this. Yeah, it's either interpretation. I find interesting because first of all, the idea of your cat is sort of trying to speak to the prey or to sound like it, and you know, they're trying to speak to an its own tongue, Like that's inherently weird and interesting. But also this idea that like they're literally chomping at the bit to deliver a killing bite to the neck of that organism out there. It's like, oh, I can't get to you, but if I could, oh,

I would just right into your neck. Okay, Rob, I take it back. I was totally wrong. I just looked up a video of the chattering, and I have seen this before. For some reason, I just didn't connect to what you were saying. Yes, the the chat well, it's like the chattering cinnabite almost. It's just the yeah, the teeth going up and down and the little noise there. I have seen this, and and it is it is

quite strange. I never knew what to make of it. Uh, this is this is what shots also adds inner quote. A cat who sees an unreachable bird chatters and imitates a killing bite in a stereotypical way. The action could serve as a means of stress relief. Some cats also chatter as a means of protest, for example, when they feel they have been mistreated by their humans, or when

they are annoyed. It's kind of like punching the air. Yeah, it's kind of like, oh, I want to eat you and I can't expression, which again especially makes sense for indoor cats who are looking out through the glass at a delicious bird. So anyway, if you want to dive deeper into uh in the actual research. Again, the the Ignoble Prize website has links to all of these all five of these studies that are mentioned in the awards.

But I have to say, The Secret Language of Cats Is is a very interesting book, very readable, and it's not just about like you know, uh, direct one to one sort of you know, translations. It's about like, what are these strange creatures that we live with? Um, you know, how are we supposed to think about them? Uh? And uh?

And she also shares some like personal experience with cats, um about you know, her desire to have a cat as a child and how she didn't get to have one, but then later I believe as an adult that's when cats actually entered her life and her home and uh ended up being a part of her work. Bravo, thank you, thank you. All right, Joe, what what do you have

for us next? Well? I figured, since in the last episode I talked about people slamming their faces into each other while colliding on a on a sidewalk, I should continue the face slamming theme and UH and talk about the Peace Prize, for which was given to Ethan Bisserah, Stephen Nailway, and David Carrier quote for testing the hypothesis that humans evolved beards to protect themselves from punches to

the face. This is fun because we've we've discussed David Carrier's research on the show before, not only related to beards, but to particularly remember the evolution of human fists and the possible connection into punching. Right. So, yeah, Carrier has got this research is part of an arc. Uh, and we've talked about other parts of this arc on the

show before. Um So, David Carrier is a University of Utah biologist and one of his big projects that seems for a few years is the pursuit of a broader theory of human evolution that places a big emphasis on punching people in the face. Uh. Basically the idea that much of the way that human bodies are today was a result of pressure that arose from male fist fighting

and punching to the jaw. So before the beard thing, yeah you mentioned there was he did a study about human hands and try to argue that the current shape of the human hand could be an adaptation for better fist fighting. UM. I think the more common understanding is that the primary evolutionary pressure on the morphology of the human hand is that it was built for dexterity, for

gripping and manipulating object and little fine motor tasks. But I think a lot of carriers research, if I remember it correctly, and this is that it's also getting into the fact that, yes, you need to do all that stuff, but you also need to be able to deliver a punch without robbing yourself of the ability to use that fine dexterity later. Right, Yeah, So, in in support of his broader argument, Carrier has done experiments to show back

with the example to hand. He did some research showing that the shape of the human hand allows for the formation of a tight fist. I think it's the form that he calls the butt trest fist, where the thumb is curled under to protect the fingers and tuck them into the palm um. And this allows the fist to serve as a club which can deliver heavy blows with reduced risk of injury to the hand as compared to a more open handed punch where the fingers and the

thumb are not curled tightly like that. And so I want to say, this may be true that the human hand happen to be good at forming a fist, and I have no reason to doubt their findings that that can help deliver blows with reduced risk of injury to the hand, though I still think it wouldn't necessarily prove that punching behaviors were were the main or even a major part of what the hand evolved for, because I mean, if you want to think about analogies, see if the

same logic holds up. Um, you could find that certain characteristics of the human skull helped protect the brain during headbutting, but that wouldn't necessarily prove that the need to deliver headbuts was a decisive factor in shaping how human skulls are today. So in the past, along these lines, I think I've expressed some skepticism about the idea of of carriers punching focused view of human evolution. I certainly don't

want to be dismissive. I just I just feel a lot of doubts, like it raises a lot of questions for me. One, I was trying if I maybe He's addressed this somewhere, but I was trying to find if there's actually even any evidence that closed fist punching is a natural instinctual behavior in humans, as opposed to a relatively rare modern convention that has to be learned and

enforced by social norms. Because like you you can go if you read, um, you know, like boxing coaches and people say, you know, they talk about how you like have to learn how to make the right kind of fist and if you don't, you could injure your hand. So that's not something that people just do by instinct.

It's something that has to be taught. But but maybe that has been addressed somewhere, And I want to be fair, but I also just think about how, like you know, you can obviously do even more damage in a fight with less risk of injury to yourself by holding a stick or a rock in your hand, uh than by punching with a closed fist. Um. But you know, all of those questions aside, I would of course remain open minded too good evidence in this vein, even though I

got my doubts so uh. In this study, the authors extend the the fist punch morephology question to beards, and the question here would be why do human males tend to grow beards. UM, So the evolutionary pressures driving sexual dimorphism and facial hair are still up for debate, So this is not in any way considered a settled question that you know, it's perfectly good arena for people to h to advance different hypotheses and try to test them.

I think the main hypotheses in this area in the past have been based on social signaling, right, that beards exist primarily to make some kind of impression on other people in the minds of other humans, rather than to serve any kind of mechanical function. So maybe beards are supposed to make you more sexually attractive, though there is some doubt about that one, because I think modern studies do not find that women consistently find beards more attractive.

The prevalence of preferences for beards among heterosexual women tends to be dependent on a lot factors on social context like. For example, one thing I recall reading at some point UM was that average female preferences for facial hair and men tend to follow what's known as a negative frequency dependence model, so that basically, if if your society has more people with beards, more people will find clean shaven men attractive, and if more people are clean shaven, more

people will find bearded men attractive. So it's just whatever is less common but within reason though, right, because you don't want to be too much of an outlier. Um, we can all imagine various facial hair choices that are either you know, just's just too problematic or just too strange.

Like if you're just going to decide to grow like U two uh, like two globs of hair on either side, on either cheek, you know, one cut in the shape of the planet Saturn and the other cutting the shape of of Jupiter like that would that would be kind of strange. I don't know if anyone would really go for that, Robert, I'm finding you incredibly closed minded about cosmic beard sculpting. But anyway, okay, So it's it seems like maybe maybe sexual attraction is not the best signaling hypothesis.

Another possibility is that beards evolved for intra sexual competition among males. Maybe they're supposed to make you look more formidable and dominant and encourage respect and deference. So they're they're supposed to encourage people to think, you know, I am no mere boy. Look at my beard. I am a wise and powerful, full grown man. Listen to me. But it's still an open question. People don't know why

beards evolved. But this research from argues as follows. They say, quote, we hypothesize that beards protect the skin and bones of the face when human males fight by absorbing and dispersing the energy of a blunt impact. Um. So okay. So the points the authors make are uh. They say, you know, there are other cases where hair appears to serve some

kind of defensive function. Uh. For example, the long hair of Alliance, Maine is sometimes thought by biologists who have evolved to protect vulnerable spots like the throat and the jaw from damage during violent encounters. Um. And they point out quote the mandible meaning the jaw. The lower jaw, which is superficially covered by the beard, is one of the most commonly fractured facial bones in interpersonal violence. So

they went on to perform some physical tests. They ran tests to simulate the extent to which a beard would protect a jaw from blunt trauma. And so they described their method as follows. Quote, we tested this hypothesis by measuring impact force and energy absorbed by a fiber epoxy composite which served as a bone analog when it was covered with skin that had thick hair referred to here as furred, versus skin with no hair referred to here

as sheared and plucked. We covered the epoxy compile as it with segments of skin dissected from domestic sheep and used a drop weight impact tester affixed with a load cell to collect force versus time data. Tissue samples were prepared in three conditions, furred, plucked, and sheared. Okay, so they do this experiment and what do they find? Well, in fact, they find that simulated jaws covered in fur were indeed able to absorb more energy than the ones

that were plucked or sheared. They say that peak force was six greater in the plucked versus the furred conditions, and total force was thirty seven percent greater. So what's the difference there, Well, they say that fur provides some degree of padding, it increases the time over which the blow is absorbed, and finally they say quote these data support the hypothesis that human beards protect vulnerable regions of the facial skeleton from damaging strikes. So I feel like, uh,

I thought this was this was interesting. I'm still kind of doubtful about the overall theory, um, just for example, using my analogy from earlier. And by the way, I mean the researchers are aware of this, you know. They say like that many of these traits could have evolved for other reasons, but they're trying to build a cumulative case that sees fist fighting and male physical aggression as a major factor shaping human morphology. So I guess I have some doubts that it it's as big as they

might be suggesting, But I don't know. Um. But to use the analogy from earlier, it could be true that a beard makes it slightly easier to absorb punches to the jaw, And it looks like, based on their experiment, that probably is to to some degree true at least slightly true. And yet that still wouldn't necessarily prove that the need to shield against punches to the jaw is

the primary reason our species has beards. This would be an interesting one to hear from our our various martial arts listeners about because the direction my mind goes in on this and I instantly think about, uh, though the world of like mixed martial arts, which today is like this this highly um uh you know, it's it's a

it's a top you know sport. It's it's a situation where people devote their lives to reaching like peak uh skill, peak conditioning, and it becomes like, um, you know, it comes a game of degrees, right, like what what whatever? You know, little thing you can do to give you an edge. It seems like you would do that thing,

including grow a beard. Uh. And yet when you look at at mixed martial artists, yes, some have beards, some have have I guess pretty robust beards, but you don't see like a universal shift to beards like you might see and say, uh, you know certain evolutionaries situations, but also in certain warfare situations where there's some sort of a design, uh, some sort of an adaptation that gives a clear advantage and then it becomes ubiquitous suddenly everyone

who can adopt it does. Yeah. So that's where my main question would be. But but then again I have to remind myself that by virtue of being this kind of over engineered interpersonal combat sport, perhaps like it's gone beyond the level at which a beard could be at all helpful, Like it just doesn't matter. Maybe like maybe like a beard adaptation. Evolutionarily, you're dealing with with something less than you know, a punch that or or a kick or what have you that has like, uh, you know,

decades of training behind it aimed at just this one thing. Yeah. Another thing that I'm just curious about is is there any kind of evidence that if you actually go back a million years or so, that our ancestors would have been practicing a lot of consistent closed fist punching or

is that a more modern convention of human culture. Yeah, And then once you start using weapons, um, you know, I think you you quickly reach a point where are the technology vastly outweighs any kind of natural armoring we might have via beards. You know, once you get to like the level of the mace like we discussed before, I mean, that's just instant skull putting. Unless there's some sort of a helmet involved. It doesn't matter what kind of hair you have or what kind of beards you're packing.

But I guess the counter argument there is, once you're to the point where you have maces, um, any kind of selection that would have been involved, would have already taken place. So yeah, of course that'd be among anatomically modern humans. Yeah. Well, anyway, though, I do want to come back and say, despite the fact that I am, I still feel some some pretty strong doubts and skepticism

about the fist punch theory. Overall, I do appreciate the research because, of course it's always good to explore alternative explanations, and maybe they will pay out. Maybe a lot of more research will pile up in these columns, um and uh. And then of course also the actual physical findings of the experiment, like show the force absorbing properties of hair or fur, could be useful to future researchers, even if the fist punch hypothesis itself eventually turns out to be

universally ruled incorrect. Absolutely, thank you, thank you, thank you. All right for our final selection here, I thought we might talk about the winner of the Transportation Prize, and this went to Robin Radcliffe at All for determining by experiment, whether it is safer to transport an airborne rhinoceros upside down. Okay, this is a good one. Yeah, yeah, this this was so this one puzzled me at first, because yes, there's something about an upside down rhino suspended from a helicopter

that is initially funny. But then I struggled to explain why it was initially funny. I guess it's just maybe because the rhino is such a grounded animal and the idea of it being upside down in the sky is is is worth a giggle, I guess though, So just to go ahead and get this part out there, like this concerns conservation efforts in Namibia, in Africa UM and the reason the various researchers were tied to Namibia, South Africa, Tanzania, Zimbabwe, Brazil, the UK and the USA UM and it has to

do quite simply with moving, with translocation, moving one rhinoceros from here to there, from one point to another. How do you do that? And what is the best way to do that, not only for the humans doing the moving, but also the technology involved and the animal itself. What is the least stressful method of carrying this out? Okay, so is somebody with no expertise at all in this area.

My mind immediately goes to scenes from Jurassic Park where they're transporting dinosaurs in what looked like giant, giant metal shoe boxes with their holes in the right and uh. And apparently that used to be the way. That was just how you moved a large animal like a rhino around. You would trink it and then as it woke up, you would groggy lee sort of push it into a crate, and then you would close up the crate and then you could transport that crate generally by truck uh to

wherever you needed to take it. But you could of course also air to lift that crate um via helicopter or something, you know, loaded into a cargo plane something of that nature. Okay, So the paper here in question, it was titled the Pulmonary and metabolic effects of suspension by the feet compared with lateral recumbency in immobilized black Rhinoceros captured by aerial darting um and this came out in the Journal of wild Life Diseases. Now, the paper

itself here is pretty technical, getting into you know, a lot. Basically, it focuses a lot on the breathing of the rhinoceros. But I found a lot of wonderful clarity on the topic in a Manga Bay article by Malavica via Waharre in which the author interviews Robin Radcliffe, UM, the lead author and one of the key researchers involved in this

award winning paper. So essentially what happened is the researchers were asked to weigh in on a new practice of translocating rhinos that was being pioneered by UM animal relocation efforts in Namibia and Cornell University veterinarian Robin Radcliffe is rhino expert, so he's exactly the right person to bring

in on this question. So, uh, like we we just mentioned, Yeah, the crate was the the old way of doing it, and uh, interestingly enough, I was looking for pictures of rhinos and crates and one of the top things that came up was a matchbox toy set that features a toy rhino, a toy crate, and then a helicopter for lifting said crate off the ground. The way does the helicopter powered? Uh no, I think it's just like a matchbox thing. But you know this is the use your imagination.

It looks it's a fun kid. You know, it's not a matchbox kid. I'm just only you know, in my household. So my son is not super into vehicles, but like, this toy tells a story. Here's the helicopter, here's the here's the the crate. Here is the rhino. Fly the rhino to safety, says the matchbox label. Wait, Rob, I think maybe the blades do spin. It looks like it's got a handle on the top of the rotor, and I think it's one of those where you can like

spin it by manual force. Either maybe you spin it with just by spinning it with your hand, or you you you pull a cord or something. Okay, yeah, it looks like you do get some spinning action. It's not gonna fly by itself. It's not a drune but um, but it does look fun. Um. But I think the toy here relays some of the challenges involved in this method. And so you know, you look at it. Okay, you have a huge helicopter or you know, you can imagine if it was just using a truck. You still need

a pretty sizeable truck. It's a pretty huge crate, it's a pretty huge animal. Uh. And if you're transporting the rhino by truck, then you need roads to take you where you're going. And if you're going by helicopter. Well, you've got to transport this big grate out there to the location where you're acquiring the animal, and you're gonna need a secondary, smaller copter to trink the rhino and carry the capture team. So so it's a big operation. Yeah,

big operation any way to shake it. But wildlife teams in the video were interested in trying some different methods. They were interested in fine tuning the chopper tactic as well as expediting the whole process. Uh and uh. You know one of the key advantages again if of using a helicopter is it it allows you to move the animal to more remote locations and to do so in a faster manner. Um, you don't have to worry about what can a road take me there? And do I have to how how far do I have to wind

around with this? Uh? This this poor rhino in the trunk right how bumpy is it? Right now? One of the things that that Radcliffe points out, and that has pointed out in that Manga Bay article, is that translocation efforts have something of a checkered history in the past, and there are a lot of factors to consider, um and uh. And therefore you could even consider these Namibia efforts as being kind of a leap of faith, uh that you know, we've got to do something from a

conservation standpoint. Let's try and move the animals to a more secure location, a place where they can they can live and um. But again, there's a lot of stuff you have to consider, and this paper deals with one of them. Because to streamline the translocation by helicopter, Uh, one of the big things you can do is dispense with that crate and try to get them into the air while they're still under you know, they're they're still tranquilized.

Let's try and you know, harness them up in something carrying them in the sky and make a bee line for wherever we're going. Um, hopefully as the animal never even wakes up. Uh. And you know this gonna make it easier not only on the animal itself, but also on the people that have to do the carrying. Okay,

makes sense. So one tactic that has been used is to force a sledge underneath the animal once it's laying on the side, so it's been tranked, it's laying on its side, force a sledge underneath its body, then secure it to the sledge and you airlift that sledge um uh you know, up into the air, take it to another location. I included a photograph of what this looks like for you, Joe. Okay, this already looks strange enough. This is a sideways rhino with four feet hanging out

over the sky. Yep, it looks pretty good, looks stable. It makes a lot of sense. You see, you see exactly how they got there. But but Ratcliffe new from previous studies that this position for the rhino increases what's known as dead space, the volume of ventilated air that does not participate in gas exchange. An extended time in this position means the animal is getting less out of each breath. Okay, so the rhino is not grad at

breathing in this position, right. So this brings us to this this new idea, this this new way of carrying the rhino that was being that's been UH was that was brought up by Annidian conservationist that they brought in Radcliff Radcliffe into UH to study. And that is, while the the rhino is out, you secure all of its legs to harness and you lift it up into the air in an inverted posture. And carry it that way. Okay, so we've gone from upright rhino to sideways rhino to

completely upside down rhino. You're just doing the ninety degree rotate command repeatedly, right, Um, And you know it's it's interesting right because like the rhino normally is standing up and it could you know, it's sometimes going to be on its side, but it's never going to be inverted in the natural world. Like this is a new position for the living rhinoceros. Uh. So that's why they wanted to study, well what does this do to the rhino's breathing? Um?

Is there anything you know essential that we need to know about this before we really roll this out as our chief means of carrying rhinos from one place to another? Okay, well I want to know does it work? Um? The short answer is yes, it does seem to work. Um. Now there's still it still requires a lot of work. That's one thing they really drive home here is that, Um, you know, you're still gonna have to have that second chopper. You're still gonna have to have somebody in there to

to drink the rhino. It's gonna involve a whole team. So it's not like, we've perfectly streamlined this to to something that is not hard. It's still difficult. Um, it's in it's still a stressful situation. Um. But uh so. But Radcliffe was was mainly looking at breathing with the rhino. Here they used a crane instead of a chopper um, and their findings, while not final and all inclusive and also utilizing a small sample size, they stressed, we're certainly encouraging.

So first of all, you don't encounter that increase of dead air. In fact, it might actually improve oxygen intake. But apparently that's that's an issue where the authors are like, well, we didn't have a huge sample size here, so we

shouldn't put as much emphasis on bad aspect of it. Okay, but they at least know that in this small group of animals, hanging upside down was no worse for breathing than lying sideways on a sledge, and it might possibly improve oxygen saturation a little bit, but that's not clear, right, that seems to be the case. And secondly, while some animals would be worse off being transported in an inverted position, the rhino does really well. And in fact, here's a

quote from Vala Bajara's interview with Radcliffe. This is a quote from Radcliffe quote. If you look at the anatomy of the rhino, it has a very heavy, a very large neck and head. When you hang them upside down, the head hangs really low. That does two things. It straightens out the spine and it also straightens out the airway. From a strictly anatomical perspective, it's actually an ideal position for a rhino to be in. It's an ideal endpoint for rhino evolution in in in a million years, the

rhinos will all move around upside down. Yeah, so I love that. It's like, not only is the upside down rhino? Um, Okay, it is? It is in some sense optimal. This is optimal rhinoceros. Here, don't some people have contraptions for flipping themselves upside down for I have no idea if there's anything to this but for some perceived medical benefit or physicotherapy at least or something. Yeah, inversions, you you do. I feel like this is probably something we'd have to

come back to in a full episode. But m yeah, I think there are some studies about it, and there's certainly a lot of claims about it um both uh, you know, certainly within like say the yoga community, but also yeah, you see people who have just advocated being upside down as a as as an effective life choice. Not full time, I guess, but no, no, that'd be

interesting to look into. Maybe maybe we should come back to that now with the rhinos here there there's more work to be done here, uh, such as looking at the circulation of the animal, which I don't think was really a focal point of this particular study, but still it's it's insightful and it's an important study into the effects of transporting. Uh these animals by Chopper and conservation groups are already using the same technique with giant sable

antelope and with the African elephant. Wow. Yeah, So with an upside down rhinoceros, this means when it finally gets set down, makes gentle contact with the ground, does it go horn first? Uh? Well, they have to be very gentle setting it down, you know. Then then then you you don't just drop it. Uh. It's it's like a very very careful game of the claw machine, right right. I should add that another important note about this is that you can't just have any helicopter do this, Like

the rhino is a very heavy animal. So one of the things that Raticlo stresses is that, yeah, you still need two helicopters. You need the smaller helicopter for the trank team, but you need a pretty sizeable helicopter to actually lift this creature, even if there's no crate involved. Oh yeah, but that's not cheap. Okay, here's how to make the image funnier the upside down. Right now, sir is dangling from not a helicopter but a Harrier jet. I don't like that idea. That doesn't sound good. Some

kind of vertical takeoff airplane. Yeah that does somehow, that doesn't sound like it would work. All right, Well, I guess that's it for this episode. Um uh. Like we said before, we're not covering all the winners this this year, but we just looked at four of them. But if you want to find the rest of them, head on over to the Ignobile Prizes website. Uh and they have a full listing of them, along with links to the individual studies. And also there was a webcast of the ceremony.

Oh yeah, yeah, they're usually high jinks of some sort. All love to them, but often some kind of cringe e humor. All right, well, we're gonna go and close it out here in the meantime, If you would like to check out other episodes of Stuff to Blow Your Mind, head on over to wherever you get your podcasts, because wherever that is you'll find this Have to Blow Your

Mind podcast feed. We run core episodes of the show on Tuesdays and Thursdays, Artifact on Wednesdays, listener mail on Mondays, and on Fridays we do a little weird ou cinema. That's our time to set aside most serious considerations and just focus in on a strange film. Huge thanks as

always to our excellent audio producer Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest a topic for the future, just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for My Heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you're listening to your favorite shows. Three three Proper Chara