Ig Nobels 2017: Crocodile Slots, Twins & Old Ears

This is really a continuation of us observing the prizes. That being said, if there was ever a multipart episode that you could just drop in at any point, it's this one. This is a bag yeah, because because basically we're just taking the ten different winners for the two thousand seventeen Ignoble prizes, we divvy them up and we're each like taking the lead on a different study discussing why it's cool, why it's funny, and exactly what the signs.

In the last episode, we talked about liquid cats, cave bugs, and digury do therapy, along with weird coffee mugs, and now we're gonna get into even weirder stuff. Okay, So the first prize we're going to discuss today is the Economics Prize, ordered to Matthew Rocklough and Nancy Greer quote for their experiments to see how contact with a live crocodile affects a person's willingness to gamble. Okay, this sounds like something out of a out of a James Bond

film right here. I'm imagining that this is like, I don't know, based in Louisiana or Florida or something where live crocodiles are a common sighting and then you may go gambling it. Based in Australia, you can gamble and you can handle saltwater crocodile. Right, Yeah, So the paper is called never Smile at a crocodile. Betting on electronic

gaming machines is intensified by reptile induced arousal. Actually, there, we should put an asterisk on the statement in that title there, because that that's partially true depending on what kind of gambler you are and some other things about you. It was published in the Journal of Gambling Studies in and so there are a lot of slot machines studies. That the whole episode that right, and I think we

could do more. Robert and I have talked about doing episodes entirely on rat slot machine studies or I mean, there's just tons of research on slot machines, and there's a reason for the slot machines or as the literature refers to them, electronic gaming machines or e g m s. They're kind of a perfect predator. They're like brilliantly designed to exploit vulnerabilities in human psychology and risk management behavior, gambling with e g m s tends to produce this

state of what's known as autonomic arousal. You and I would just probably call this excitement, you know, physiological sensation of excitement in the body that the brain tends to interpret sometimes in the case of gambling, interprets as a lucky streak, which keeps you gambling, and it leads to this vicious cycle where it's more and more arousing and you just keep wanting to bet more and more money.

Autonomic arousal not to be confused with reptile induced arousal. Well, no, I mean, reptiles could create a state of aucomic arousal, but yeah, not one and the same thing one could lead to the other. So I think e g M s are an interesting thing to study, and this kind of research really matters because they fit into a similar category. Uh that that I would put social media interface design in this this successful technology design that is actually better at its job than is good for us. What do

y'all think about that? With like social media interfaces that I would say, it's a great success story in terms of designing technology. But success doesn't necessarily mean morally good or good for our lives. Well, I think we When I think of a slot machine, I instantly think of like somebody that's kind of shackled there to the machine and they're just pushing buttons, uh, And there's this idea that it's going to pay off for them, and then maybe it does pay off a little bit, and then

they keep going. And with with social media, you do see a some more situation. Someone has their phone out, they're constantly checking this feed or that feed, this social media appor that or another. And the win in this case, I guess would be somebody contacting them directly or some sort of response. Howbody like that I get on my or you might even you might even have a real win. You could have a meaningful interaction with somebody you care about on social media, or you might come across an

interesting article that you're glad you read. Those are the little winds, but maybe it just keeps you playing. After that, we're speaking more little on our is social media making us crazy? Episode from last year? And I think, yeah, if I remember correctly, the literature basically assumes and they're still looking into this of course that like the same parts of our brain that are lit up by gambling or lit up by social media. I think I think

that's a highly successful and correct analogy. Uh so for social media interfaces that the job they're trying to achieve generally is maximizing time on site. They want to keep you on that platform as long as possible and keep you looking at stuff and clicking on ads and all that. Is that why we do those hour long Facebook lives every Friday? I don't, Well, that's why Facebook wants us doing those things. Yeah, I don't know what our reason is.

Maybe we're just slaves to the machine. But you didn't know that. Basically, Yeah, the machine says you need to do this, and we basically turned it around and said, Okay, we'll do it, but if we're gonna do right, we'll change it from the inside. Sure, yeah, that's what we're doing. We're changing the machine. Man. But the electronic gaming machines, I would put them in the same category. But instead what they're seeking is not maximizing time on site, but

maximizing time on machine. Because when they maximize time on machine, this tends toward infinity of losses for the player. It leads to playing two extinctions industry term. Basically, the machine getting all your cash and then making you come back to play again when you've got more are draining the

host dry of its precious blood. So unless you want to make gambling illegal or something, one of the best defenses against this type of machine is for independent researchers to study the psychology of gaming, basically to understand how these machines exploit our brains, so we can build up defense behaviors that people could employ independently to resist the machines, or maybe so you could impose regulations on what types

of things these machines can do. Well, like what one of the issues that we got into before was what happens when a machine is speaking to you in a human voice or using other kind of anthropomorphic forms, like if if you were to pass a lot and says, look, you can have slot machines, but they can't look like beautiful women. They can't look like cartoon characters. That's they can't be a cowboy that says, howdy, partner, put coins

in me. And that is actually a meaningful thing because studies have shown that you might spend more money in a slot machine that seems more humanoid and less mechanical. So the tons of studies like this, there's just a prolific slot machine research. This is one example that is maybe the weirdest one I've ever come across, but I like it. So Rock Lofting Career decided to study this strange condition. What happens when you have the opportunity to gamble on an e g M after you've just held

a saltwater crocodile. The so the subjects are tourists at the Kurana Saltwater Crocodile Farm in Kowonga, Queensland, Australia. It was a hundred and three subjects, forty one of them female, uh ages eighteen to sixty six. And here's the experiment

under two different conditions. Subjects would be given money. They'll give you twenty bucks, and then they ask you to play a laptop simulated e g M sort of a slot machine simulator written in visual basic on a laptop computer where you would get to gamble with the money they just gave you. And the two different conditions were this, you could either play this game or right before you walk into the crocodile farm or right after you have cradled a one meter long saltwater crocodile in your hands.

So there are some independent variables going into this. Right you've got obviously the control condition and the test condition did you just walk in or have you handled a crocodile, and so that is supposed to correspond to your level of arousal. They did a galvanic skin conductance test to to sort of check this and say, okay, we're people actually showing physiological signs of arousal, and they determined yeah,

people who held crocodiles were physiologically aroused. But the other independent variables would be problem gaming status, like do do you have any of the risk factors for being a problem gambler or affective state? Are you having negative feelings right now, and so they'd established that by a questionnaire UH that they administer at the time of the test, like are you having emotions that we'd usually classify as negative affect or positive affect? And then the deependit variables.

This is what they were seeing. Was was coming out from those variables was bet size, how much you bet, speed of betting, how asty bet, and final payouts like what what's your your bottom line at the end of the game. And the results they found where that compared to people in the control group, holding a crocodile could

affect problem gamblers in a couple of different ways. If you held a crocodile and had negative emotions, you actually placed lower than average bets on the e g M. So if you're somebody who's at risk for problem gambling, they hand you a crocodile and you don't like it and you have negative emotions, you'll actually it will tamp

down your problem gambling behaviors. You're less likely to spend more interesting But if you are a problem gambler or have these you know, risk factors for problem gambling, and you hold a crocodile and you don't have negative feelings about it, you actually place much higher than average bets on the e g M. That's what I imagined would happen, That there's some kind of like I held this dangerous animal and everything turned out okay, so now I'm willing

to take more risks. Well, So here's how the researchers interpreted it. I'll see what you guys think about this. The way they interpreted it is that they're going on what's known as the two factor model of effective states.

So the way they think affective states tend to happen is that we first of all experience physiological arousal, like there are feelings in the body that tell you something of emotional significance is happening, and then secondary to that, you cognitively think about it and give it some kind of meaning or significance or cause. So what would happen, say if, um, you suddenly a car is driving head

on at you in the highways. First you have the feelings in your body there's some kind of arousal, and then you use your sense data and your thoughts to kind of say, okay, here's why that's happening. I'm afraid because a car is coming at me um. And so what that means, though, is that the feelings of arousal in the body are not necessarily linked to their actual causes. It's just something that we sort of figure you're out

secondary to having the feeling. And so the way that might work in a gambler is if you do something dangerous or something arousing, like holding a dangerous reptile, you can you get this physiological sense of arousal. But the gambler who doesn't have fear emotions really about that animal or any other kind of negative emotions, can just interpret that free floating arousal as a lucky streak. So it's like, I'm pumped up by what just happened, and I'm that

means I'm good to go. Let's gamble. I'm I just had the crocodile. I'm ready to drop some cash. Yeah, it's content content free arousal that you can interpret in any schema you want. And for the problem gambler, that schema may very well be the feeling of luckiness or the feeling of being on a roll. So I gotta ask you, then, how well do you think Kenny Rogers the gambler would do based on his crocodile experience was it. Maybe here's the thing he maybe he was talking about

a crocodile. You've got to know when to hold the crocodile and when to run. See, that would actually be more specific. I've got issues with Kenny Rogers the Gambler who doesn't because I think it fits into this category of advice that is not actually specific enough to matter. There. There's tons of advice like that out in the world. You'll read these, you know, inspirational quotes. People have whole books like this where they offer advice, but the advice

is actually completely generic. It's essentially like telling somebody you should figure out what the right thing to do is. It's like a fortune cookie. Yeah, and so in the in the song, it's you've got to know when to hold them, no, when to fold them. That's not advice. Advice would be telling me what to judge that on, Like how should I know when to hold them? Uh, this is completely an aside. But if you want some fun, look up the video of him performing that song on

The Muppet Show in the eighties. Now he does he does give us some advice. You never count your money. I want you sitting at the table that Okay, I'll give him that. That is specific advice. I'll take that. But you've got to know when to hold them, no one to fold them. That's not advice, that's just generic fortune teller stuff. But anyway, I wanted to come back to the study because there are some masterisks we should

put on this. Number one is I want to clarify that this only seemed to be the case for problem gamblers, So like holding the crocodile, just for normal people who do who did not have these risk factors for being a problem gambler, did not seem to intensify betting, and uh, like these would be people for whom gambling is not a novel experience, but maybe holding a crocodile is, whereas from for me, holding a crocodile is the novel experience,

as is using a slot machine. Right, so you you probably would not place higher bets or or have intensified gambling or reward seeking behaviors after holding a crocodile, or likewise, somebody who had a strict rule like, yeah, I play the slot machines when I go to the casino, but I only spend five dollars and once that's gone. I'm done, and I never break that rule. Right. Yeah, So people who don't exhibit these behaviors, this doesn't apply to them. It does seem to apply to people who are risk

for problem gambling. But there is a limitation to the study. Essentially that they did not have a lot of people in their sample group who showed problem gambling behaviors or or risk factors. So one thing would be that they should probably try to replicate this to have more confidence in the in the result with a larger sample group that has more problem gamblers, and it just to make sure that they're getting a real effect and this isn't

just noise. Now. Remember also, the thing is that even among the problem gamblers, it was only when you don't have any negative moods or negative feelings about holding the crocodile that it leads to these intensified behaviors. If you have these negative moods, you report it actually kind of seems to moderate your gambling behavior. And so that sets up this quote I want to read from the paper.

Quote in some low intensity negative moods, such as boredom or mild anxiety, contribute to large bets among at risk players. Whereas high autonomic arousal without negative moods also produces relatively large wagers. Taken together, the results suggest that betting among at risk players may be motivated both by attempts to alleviate low arousal dysphoric moods and by high arousal induced positive expectations of winning money. Yeah, totally. This lines up

with the social media thing as well. I think, yeah, that makes sense. So it's like when you when you're a problem gambler and you participate in these gambling behaviors, it seems you may be trying to counteract basically like low level unpleasantness and seeking high arousal, high reward pleas

you know, high high pleasure interactions. Right, But if you're like absolutely in the pits emotionally, you're probably not going to be likely to gamble as much as that the person who's just sort of low level and happy, right, a little bit anxious, a little bit bored, that's the target show. Yeah, So what's the what what's the overall takeaway from this? Is there any kind of crocodile based regulation that might be employed to help problem gambling? Well,

I wouldn't say crocodile based. I mean, I think it. Studies like this actually do matter, like that, this is the kind of thing that can help us understand the psychological states that lead to problem gambling and can help people either individually can help people come up with strategies to avoid problem gambling behaviors if they know, like, Okay,

here's the state I'm in when I'm vulnerable. I know when I'm in that state, I should, uh, you know, not be around electronic gaming machines or something like that.

Like you can devise behaviors to protect yourself from your own impulses, or you could also devise regulations on society, like if we find out that in general, people are just much more susceptible to electronic gaming machines under certain psychological conditions, you could try to keep gaming machines from being around in places where you would expect people to be in those conditions. Or you end up you end up having just like some sort of a B S

question that pops up on the screen. Uh, please write your depression level and if you and if you and if you ad it too appropriately, then it won't let you play right, And then you do it again and you just click the number that's required, like an age gate. They have a test in the machine to see if you're okay or you having kind of like no, no

real strong negative emotions, but experiencing high arousal. I don't know how you test for that, but but if you detect that, it's like you better not gamble right now. I mean, if you wanted to do it physiologically, you could actually do a galvanic skin conductance test, you know, like you could test for arousal with a physical test and not a questionnaire. Yeah, I can see that, you like, put your arm into a cuff of some sort and test.

It's like you're too aroused. You can't, can't play right now. But then you come back to the again, to the the question, how much energy, how much effort, how much design are slot machine makers going to be willing to put into you know, basically protecting the host organs? Well, of course, I mean when we did our last slot machine episode, we had somebody right in who worked for a gaming design company and they were like, you know, I think you you were a little too harsh on us.

You were a little too negative about slot machines. You know, I don't want to demonize them too much, because I can understand, like, under plenty of conditions, they might just be a fun thing people do, Like if they've got certain limits on how much they bet, it might just be a cool recreational activity. I don't have a problem with that, but I think we should recognize that certain people have conditions that make them vulnerable to this and

that can be incredibly destructive in their lives. Well, I think one of the things that we observed in that episode is that the origins of the slot machine were very mundane and fun. It was about, uh, administering a prize in a simple game, not unlike you know, like a trivia machine or something in bars today. But the machine, as machines do, uh, they they evolved, They took on more advanced forms, they were designed to take on more

advanced forms. They became better and better at at carrying out their their key bit of programming, which was, you know, drain the sucker of its coin, the original Facebook algorithm. Have you guys noticed this trend in video games lately when you're in like an immersive world video game, that there is almost always a gambling component to it, Like if you're in like Skyrim you can gamble. If you're in Red Dead Redemption, you can gamble. I'm trying to

remember what the most recent one. Oh, the Witcher. I was playing one of those Witcher games. It's like, everywhere you go you can sit down and gamble. I would say that the games like that incorporate gambling elements even

outside of the gaming within the gaming things. So in a lot of these games, you can walk up to a slot machine and play it, or you can play cards, but also when you're in the world, there are variable reward payouts where, for example, if your achievements yeah yeah, you know, you might kill certain enemies or something, and they've got goodies they give you when you loot them, and you notice you don't get the same thing every time.

It's not guaranteed. It's variable payouts, just like a slot machine, and the variable payouts are a psychological hack. The variable payouts make us think like, oh, it could be really big next time. I'm gonna keep doing it. That's what leads to grinding and video games. Yeah, yeah, I think I wonder though, if there's something about the actual placing of gambling into those games that psychologically gets players to play longer. Yeah, I think that could very well be.

All right. On that note, we're going to take a break and when we come back, we're going to jump into the Cognition prize. Alright, we're back cognition. You say, what have we got here? We have a paper titled is that Me or My Twin? Lack of self face recognition advantage in identical Twins. I saw this and as we were doing the research for this yesterday a headline popped up that was related to this. Apparently, Uh, you know, when your phone does facial recognition as a way to unlock,

like as as a password, it has trouble with identical twins. Yeah, so I wonder if what you're about to reveal to us is related in a way. In a way, So, this is a paper that came out in and it's from a an Italian and Spanish team and it was published in p Los one it. Uh, Before we get into it, I do want to just touch basically on the idea of identical twins. And uh, we've had some episodes in the past. I've dealt with twins a little bit, but I don't know, like I can't remember we've done

a deep dive. I know that we have some identical twins out there listening to the show. I know that we have parents of identical twins, siblings of identical twins, etcetera. For a lot of us, though, our main point of reference for identical twins ends up being fiction because how many of example, how many examples can you think of of, like weird twins or twins with a paranormal link. Yeah, it's played up for the uncanny nous. I mean they push it to creepy links and things like The Shining

or Dead Ringers. Yeah. Uh, and I and I say this, I mean I have written stories about creepy twins before, because they it does become a useful way of examining yourself, examining identity, uh, at least if you're out an outside or if you're not an identical twin. Likewise, I'm glad you mentioned dead Ringers because you also see it used over and over again in films. Sometimes it feels like just pure actor or director vanity, Like let's have this

actor play two characters. Why have one James Franco when you can have to James Franco is playing slightly different James Franco twins. Yeah, yeah, I immediately thought of that. That recent movie about the Crab Brothers legend where Tom Hardy plays both the oh yeah, he plays he plays identical twins. Uh. There was the recent Fargo season they

had identical twins played by the same actor. It's done so many times that you get tired of it after a while, unless there's a really compelling reason to have identical twins played by single actor. I just got to throw in that one of my favorite words in all of science is the word for identical twins, the monozygotic twins. Yeah, the monosygotic twinka. It is utilized in this paper quite a bit now on top of so so basically it comes down to the idea that for us non twins,

identical twins are a way to unravel ourselves. They perplex us and they toy with our sense of self perception. And as the researchers on this, uh, this paper, this two thousand fIF paper point out, science has generally overlooked the conundrum of self facial recognition in identical twins. We have a lot of twin studies out there, but there hasn't been a lot of papers that have looked at. What happens when an identical twin looks at a photograph

or image of representation of their own face. Do they experience some kind of cognitive dissonance? Yeah, because consider for for the for the rest of us, for those of us who are not identical twins. Um, self facial recognition is is a major thing, and it may be a cognitive prerequisite for theory of mind, our ability to imagine the mind state of others. Because just think of all the times you've looked in a mirror, you've taken a selfie, or if you've looked at a picture of yourself and

you think, ah, who's that handsome devil? You know? And then you answer that question, you you tell yourself who that handsome devil is? Yeah? Why why is he making a smile like that? What's that twinkle in his eyes? Um, it's the evil twin? Well, you know, I'm I'm painting in in in shades of vanity here, But there's a there's a basic cognitive process that's going on when you do that. You are identifying yourself and thinking about who

you are. Well, I mean people respond in hilarious, obsessive ways to their own reflection when you notice it, like, uh, you know, there's a reason that a lot of places will put mirrors near elevators where people need to wait for things. People just time flies. When you're looking in a mirror, you can obsessively gaze into this image, right, rather than worry about the people that are next to

you in the elevator. Yeah, and there's a there's a similar uh, cognitive process going on when you look at any face. You look at a loved one's face, you look at a stranger's face. There's still this theory of mind exercise that's going on. And what you're saying, who is that handsome devil or who is that person with you know, some brarow on, you know, whatever the case may be, You're looking at the face and you're trying to figure out who they are, at least insofar as

it relates to you. I've had like the opposite experience with this, and I don't want to take us too far off track, but when I used to ride the train, the windows on the train were curved in such a way that when you saw your own reflection in it, your face was distorted a little bit, and it would look like my forehead had ridges or something, or like it was just it's kind of like a fun house mirror, and I'm yeah, clings, that was exactly what it looked

like to me. Yeah, and uh, it was fascinating. I would sit there and look at it for for the whole ride and just kind of wonderment, like what if I actually did look like that? You know. So there is a weird sort of obsessiveness with our own uh reflection, but also like just a slight variation on it. Yeah, I mean, I think you see this in in skype calls and FaceTime calls where everyone's looking at their own picture instead of the camera. Maybe they're looking at other

people's pictures. I noticed it with my son because he's just when I when I put him on FaceTime calls with relatives, he's just captivated by the own little, the little version of his own face, and he's not even thinking about the call, much less someone on the other line. And this underlines a basic reality. Our own face grabs and retains attention longer than any other face out there, uh, you know, loved one, stranger, etcetera. And this, according to

the researchers, occurs with both upright and inverted faces. So we process upright faces faster usually, but we also have the similar process that goes on when the face is upside down. In fact, our ability to recognize our own face holds true even in cases of severe face blindness, accept in cases of just really catastrophic neurological or psychiatric disorder. Another fun word the term there, I guess would be

auto prosopagnosia. Prosopagnosia is face blindness. Yes, so even in cases of severe face blindness, again, your own face is still going to um have a special place in uh in in facial recognition. Okay, but there is a So what we're getting at here is with the twins in particular,

they lack the ability to recognize their own face. And these these twins that have a similar face to them, well, I mean basically it comes comes down to the fact that it's going to mess with this system because the basic fact here is that if you have an identical twin, then looking at your own face, looking at a representation of your own face, it's not instantly going to be

your face. It could be your twins face. And and so we're looking at this to see like what's different without identical twins, and then what this reveals about our own about everyone else's facial recognition process. Now, there are a few other factors you have to take into account, so, uh, self face processing is a right hemisphere um exercise, and it's impaired in individuals with schizotypal traits. Also, extroverts, who typically have better social skills, they recognize a higher number

of faces than introverts. Lower face recognition is associated with increased social phobia. So in all of this, personality plays a role in facial recognition as well, twin or not. So this is good because it gives me a reason to explain to my wife why I mix up like actors and actresses all the time, because she's like, you just think everybody looks alike, and well, no, it's because actually I have lower face recognition because of my increased

social phobia. So, given all of of what we've discussed so far, uh monosa gottic twins they pose an interesting exception to the uniqueness of the self face because again, when we see a representation of our own face, we instantly know who that is. There's no room for doubt, and the idea here with an identical twin, there's going to be at least a little room for doubt, you know. Granted, if one has an evil goatee or something, it's gonna

throw things out the window a bit. But for the most part, uh, this is this is interesting to look at because it turns things on its on there on its head a little bit. So. Past predictions have been made related to this that twins might have trouble with self identification as they identify more as a duo. Also, identical twins might sometimes mistake photos of their twin or

their self. That's been the previous thinking on this. Also, another past study indicated that while humans can you usually identify themselves in a mirror by age two, uh, you, there have been cases where two year old twins discriminate their own faces from the face of their co twins only of exposed to the facial stimuli for a longer period of time, So there might be a delay at least. And studies have looked at young twins and their ability

to work out these faces. But prior to this study, no one had really looked at the ability of adult twins to tell their faces apart. Okay, so what do

we find out all right. Well, basically, the the overall aim of the paper, according to them is quote in the light of these premises, the main objective of the present study was to examine at both configural that's based on the whole face and featural that's based on details of the face processing levels, whether despite their physical similarity, twins would be better at recognizing their own face compared

to their co twin faces. So what they did is they presented groups of twins with upright and inverted images of their faces, those of a twin and a control image of a non twin, so just some other person. They used tin monosygonic right handed gender balanced healthy twin couples that's the exact wording from the paper, and tin right handed gender balanced healthy controls all white Caucasians in Rome, where they where the study was held, and the control

participants the non twins. Using the study for balance, they were matched with sex matched close friends or relatives, all people they've known at least three years, so there'd be a level of familiarity. This resulted in two days of tests. First they did personality tests, then they did the facial tests, and these were the results. Identical twins they said, seem to lack the self identification advantage. However, the absence of the self advantage depends on how much the twins report

that they physically resemble each other. Okay, so adult twins can't pick themselves out of a lineup as easily as most adults can, but this is mitigated by whether they look all that much like their identical twin. Right, Yeah, I want to drive home that it is. We're not saying that twins can't tell each other apart in there, but that there is not basically not as easily. It also depends on their anxious and avoid an attachment style.

And they found out that quote self and co twin faces share very similar featural, configural and matching processes, but differ with respect to the higher order stages of face processing. So this is a study. Honestly, there's so many studies that the Igno Bell covers that I'm like, yeah, that's of course that the nobles chose that one or their studies that come out and you're like, oh, I can't wait till they feature this one. They give this one,

they need noble prize. I I honestly didn't see what was that funny about this one is Yeah, it seems like right exactly. I guess maybe it's the idea of looking at your own face upside down again, Like if we had watched the ceremony this year, I imagine they would have done some kind of visual gag or whatever you know, related to this specifics. But it doesn't seem to have an inherent gag quality to it. There's no crocodile being held already using a gambling machine. There's a

liquid cats. Yeah, so it's I have trouble figuring out. I mean, I'm glad they highlighted it. It's a case where yeah, it's a cool study and I'm glad more eyes are on it because it does it is important. Uh. The take home here is again not that twins are freaky or anything. Rather, we're looking at a slight tweaking of the basic visual, safe self faced recognition, and it

illuminates what's going on in all of us now. The researchers also argue that their findings match up with the self referrent phenotype matching theory that we recognize our kin by implicitly or explicitly comparing the similarity of other people's appearance to our own. So that's another potential takeome from the from the study. And again, I know we have some identical twins out there, We have parents of identical twins,

family members and friends of identical twins. We would obviously love to hear from all of you about this particular paper, and we'd like to hear from evil twins as well. Yeah, evil twins jump in. All right, let's take one more break, and when we get back, I'm going to talk to you guys about big years. Alright, we're back. This potato has big ears. Oh that's interesting that you went there. So there is actually a variety of slang around the

world for talking about big ears, whether it's potatoes. Yeah, well no, but in the UK, Uh, they are sometimes called bat ears. I had not heard that before, or wing nut, which I thought wing nut was a completely different thing. I assume that this is talking about big ears on humans, not on other animals. Yeah, yeah, uh. And Hindus seem to find big ears desirable because of comparisons to the elephant god Ganesha. The French compare big ears to cabbage, Hungarians compare them to donkey ears, and

the Polish compare them to pig ears. Now, this is interesting. The Chinese believe that long ears predict prosperity and longevity. And this is the most important to this paper that I'm about to present to you and its purposes. I also want to say, all of those like statements about various societies around the world, I didn't look that up that came out of this original paper here. This is yet another Ignoble winner. It is the Anatomy Prize winner

for the article why do you old men have big ears? Oh? Man? Because it's true? Right? It turns out it is true, but it's this is why it's funny, right. The idea is that it's one of these things that we all assume, but it does turn out that there's there's some reality to it. They've done lots of measurements, so let's get into it. I'm trying to picture pig ears and I can't what a pig ears look like. Oh, they're they're big and flopped. Well, sometimes they're floppy, It depends on

the pig. Yeah. Oh, they're kind of like dog ear, they're kind of like pit bull ears. Yeah yeah. Um. So the idea for this paper actually came about this way. Nineteen members of the Thames Faculty of the Royal College of General Practitioners. We're just sitting around brainstorming and the first question that came up to them was why do we old men have big ears? And then they realized they were like, well, wait a minute, actually, we need to confirm that old men's ears are bigger and they

get bigger in the first place. So this study was conducted by Dr James A. Heath Cut and he was a general practitioner in Bromley at the time. This is in the nineties. The paper was published in So they asked routine patients who were coming in for surgery consultations if it was okay if they measured their ears as part of this research along with it. When the group was thirty plus years old, from either sex and from any racial group that came in. Interestingly, none refused. Everybody

was cool, measure my ears. This sounds fun and they recorded this along with the patient's age, and at this time they got two hundred and six people to participate in. The study showed that as these participants got older, their ears grew on an average of point to two millimeters a year. What the study didn't explain is why ears keep growing when the rest of the body stops. That seems to be odd, right. The thing about this study

is it doesn't explain another thing. What if you're a taller person and like Robert, Robert is taller than I am. Robert's taller than Joe. So what if Robert has longer ears simply because he's taller, and then as he gets older? You know, so there's some discrepancies that they didn't really fill in here with you long legs, big ears, yeah, and well, and plus when you get older, you're gonna be more stooped over, whereas the ears are not going

to get stooped over to go. So I could see that being the illusion of like, oh, this this old person, they're shrinking except for their ears, which there's there's no limited sight. Yeah. Uh. And they also didn't answer, for instance, like all of the elderly people that they checked their ears, they were all English because they're all in this one small spot, so they hadn't didn't really replicate it across cultures or ethnicities. Right, So this study was actually replicated

in Japan in nine and they found the same thing. Yes, ear length still correlates with age, even when it is corrected for height. But still there's all these alternative interpretations that remain. So for instance, are people who are young now when they turn old, are they also going to see their ears age in the same way. Is ear length changing and getting bigger as you get older? Is it environmental? And if it's environmental, what could be responsible

for big years. One of the questions was literally the idea that the people who were older at the time that they were doing this study, when they were younger, it was more common for their parents to box or scrub their children's ears, so they thought, well, maybe that

could have affected it. I mean, my guess on the size would just be flesh drooping effects, yeah, or something that related to the way the ear grows, like the inner um, the inner portions of the ear kind of growing out the ear like a tree, like every year he gets a new ring. Yeah. I mean, maybe that's how aliens will categorize human captives that they alright, measure the ears, see how old this one is. But heath Cut didn't really account for any of that in his study,

So I turned to another UH analysis of this. Because the study is over twenty years old, I looked at Alice Sheryl Caswell's research on this for Improbable Research, so the organization that puts out the ignobles. So this is where it came about from. So Alice addresses in her paper. First of all, the original study is very patriarchal because it focuses on men. Now that's only in the title. She acknowledges that the Japanese and subsequent German studies confirmed

that old women have big ears too. But I do want to point out that is just poor phrasing of the British study. It was clear that they didn't discriminate on participants based on gender. I think they were just using the old men term jokingly because talking about yeah, they had based the entire study on this joke on his hook, Yeah exactly. Now, the German study was conducted in two thousand and seven, and they used photos instead of measuring like real ears. I imagine they must have

been to scale these photos. They they used photos of one thousand, four hundred and forty eight years and they measured them in fifteen different ways, and they found that female ears show a lesser increase than those of men. So so far, across these three studies we've learned that yes, people's ears grow as they get older. Yes, women's ears also grow along with men's ears, but that it seems like, at least in the German study, that female ears have

lesser increase. So that is really the gist of all of these studies. I think they're awarding an older study, you know, because Alice came along and was like, hey, wait a minute, this deserves a second look. Now, why is it funny? Well, because of the whole hook of the whole old men have big ears thing, we all just assume that to be true. Nobody ever thought you'd sit down and actually measure people's ears with a ruler or like a what do you call it, like a

tape measure or something like that. Right, but it does seem to be actually important and the reason why there's still questions to be answered. We still don't know why ears keep going when the rest of the body stops, right, and then the gender difference in the rate of growth seems like that's it's something important as well, especially in

terms of just understanding human biology and anatomy. Well, you know it also you have to wonder too about ear rings and piercings and various you know, which is gonna It's gonna vary from culture to culture. But in many cases you're going to have more females than males using the piercings. And is that going to increase length of of low? And I think of about like my friends in the punk scene who got like lots of ear rings and got like big gage is placed in their

lobes and how their ears look. Now that could be an effect as well. So there you go with some environmental possibilities. I don't know about boxing or scrubbing though. Yeah, so we're potentially looking though at sort of accidental body modification of the human ear, sort of like cultural long term modification. Or we're looking at at some sort of gender dimorphism of of Homo sapiens where men end up having longer ears over time. Yeah, I'm inclined to agree

with Joe. I mean, I haven't done the research, but I would assume that it's similar to like why you get bags under your eyes, right, Like over time, the um facia underneath your skin just loosens and the you know it droops basically, And so I think the ears are probably the same, like the cartilage around the ears stay I would imagine stays the same, but the other stuff starts drooping down. Yeah, all right, so there you have it. We've covered this episode the use of saltwater

crocodiles on problem gamblers. We've looked at facial recognition and twins, and then the size of old man ears. So if you have any anecdotes or maybe some of your own research to share with us on these topics, you can find us on Facebook. We're on Twitter, we're on tumbler, and we're on Instagram. We've also got our fantastic Facebook discussion group. Yeah, the discussion module. You can find it

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