Regurgitation Celebration

the human vomit, because that's kind of boring. It's about what happens when you look beyond human vomit and when you we re reexamine regurgitation from a larger and it's many merits from a larger biological viewpoint. We're gonna look at regurgitation the way God looks at regurgitation. It's what I'm saying, all right, So let's let's get into regurgitation. But before we look at the animal world for some wonderful examples of it. I can't help but to to look at us as humans here and the ways in

which we were regurgitate and why we do it. Um, you know, certainly it helps when we have eaten something that's rancid, and our stomach needs to get rid of it as soon as possible, because that's ultimately the main reason the humans vomit is because there's something that we we ingested it then we need to get out. And it's a good thing to have. Not all animals can can do this. Um, some animals that eat something bad, it's just kind of it's in there, you know, and

they're gonna have to roll with it. But with humans, we eat something that's good, that's noxious and and potentially dangerous, we can vomit it back up and then reevaluate it and like many animals, eat it again if it deserves re eating. If it deserves re eating, well, that meat left was so good. And now ask your dog about this one, and I'm sure they'll explain, all right, So

that we hate doing it. It's the thing most of the and in many cases, I mean, I can think of a few times in my life where I really needed to vomit, and and a good doubt of vomiting

would have really been beneficial to my well being. Open up to us, tell us when why I don't remember the day I didn't market on the calendar, But you know, maybe you've you're a little under the weather, or you ingested, uh, something you shouldn't have that night before, and then you're you're ill and you don't want to vomit because it's it is a stressful experience. It's like you're it kind of blows you up. You're you're suddenly you're you're you're

just rattling. Your body's rattling, and your your your high energy, and it's, uh, it's an unpleasant experience for this stuff to come out of your mouth and it tastes bad. I mean, anyone, everyone I think is probably vomited this listening to this podcast. If you haven't, I would love to hear why that is the case. But everyone is vomited. You know. It's unpleasant and a lot of times we

avoid doing it even when we should. Well, you know what, if if you ever need to vomit, I'm just here to tell you that I will hold your hair back for you. Well, thank you, sure, But here's something I will never do. I will never premasticate something for you. Okay, So when I'm talking about promostication here, when I'm talking about I'm talking about chewing up food, coating it with my lovely saliva and then depositing it into probably an

infant's mouth, because that's generally how it's been done with humans. Yeah, birds do it, we'll discuss Mice have also been observed to do this, and intimate makes sense for humans to do it. And granted, this is not food that has been swallowed and then properly like regurgitated from the gut. Yeah, there's no bial in it, right, but it has been it has been chewed up. And think of what baby food is. What is baby food but pre chewed food. You're just you just want a robot to show it

instead of a human. Yeah, and it seems kind of gross, but really, I mean this has been done since time immemorial, right, I mean, if you didn't have a blender, pre blender days, you didn't have a grinder, this is what you did. And it actually makes sense because saliva is enzyme rich and this helps to break down food and it also contains antibodies which might coat food proteins, making them less allergenic.

And this is really important because I just read a really interesting article in the New York or it's called the peanut Puzzle, and it looks at the extreme uptick in peanut allergies and kids, and and allergies in general and children. And some of the idea is that um in undeveloped countries you see far less instances of food allergies and kids, and it may because of this premastication

with infants. So if you've got a six month old, they're being exposed to some of these more allergenic foods, but they they're coated so it doesn't really take effect in their bodies. Wow, that that is that's a really

fascinating idea. I mean, that really kind of blew my mind a bit because I guess I wasn't really familiar with the with the longstanding traditions of of chewing food for a human child, though of course I've seen footage of it, you know, now that I think about it, I've seen like clips of of like a mother in Africa, like chewing a bit on something and then and giving that food to the kid, you know, not a straight up,

you know, bird mouth kind of situation. Because I think that's the that's the vision that that we think of when we instantly hear about this. We think of one bird, you know, just wretching into another bird's mouth, And I've seen it played for laughs for disgusting laughs on like an episode of Saturday Night Live once where somebody's food was being chewed for them and spit and do another person's mouth, and you know, everyone just loses it because

that's so gross. But as you explained, I mean, it's it's part of our biological heritage. Yeah, it's just probably not something that you're going to see in America, like you know, in shopping malls, mother's premascating food and then spitting it into the chilren's mouth, unless you are Alicia Silverstone, right, because this happened last year. She was caught on video doing this with her child. People freaked out, but you know there are merits to doing that. Well, they freak

out over over breastfeeding. I think it was was it it was either Covington, Georgia or Conyers, Georgia. Somewhere out there, just outside of Atlanta, a woman was is breastfaiting a child at one of the bigger chain restaurants. I forget which, and I probably shouldn't say it if I did remember,

but somebody called the police. Well, I mean, which is insane. Yes, that is an armed breasts going to get you what if she had been if she'd been chewing her food for the kid, I mean, goodness knows that would that would have been just instant police call right there. Well, what I'd like to think is that some people would be so horrified that they began puking, and then other

people would begin people sypathetic vomiting. Synthetic vomiting, yes, um okay, So so we've seen, you know, the rigurgitation and humans, and then of course when we over eat, over consume, or we eat something rancid, we vomit um. But what about people who vomit for their art? Ah? Yes, the professional regurgitator, the performance vomitter. This was and this is that we've we've briefly mentioned, um, the what were they called the performance um flags, the flashuns, the flatwists or yeah,

the flats flat you artists. Yeah, because he would have this in the in the old circus environment. People were getting up there and they're using their skill to the entertainment of everyone. Everyone finds farting hilarious in the right circumstances and do varying degrees. And then likewise, like I said, vomiting is gross and it's shocking, and like everything that

is gross and shocking, it has a tendency to elicit laughter. Well, Millie Brown is the regurgitation regurgitation artist in question here, and she has one piece that she's done. She's done several apparently, but this one is a contemporary artist. Yeah. Oh, I'm not familiar with her. I'm more familiar with the older like you know, the old photos of Carney Carney regurgitators. No, I mean she does it up. I mean it's pretty much performance artist type of work, although she does use

a canvas. So let me just explain this video to you really quickly because we really don't need to spend a lot of time on this, but it is kind of interesting. Um. She has basically these glasses of different colored liquids. It's the rainbow of colors, and so she takes yellow, she she drinks it, she lets it settle, and then she regurgitates that onto the campus, onto a white campus. No, you think that's you know, odd. She also has two opera singers in the background clad in

all white. Um, and they are seeing my favorite aria by the way, don't pa, And it's you know, this beautiful opera song in this aria, and and and of course she's regurgitating onto the campus. This video is definitely going to go up on the block post that accompanies this episode. So I mean, you know what, I appreciated it because she did put some thought into the colors she used. It is a rainbow of colors. It's not

just brown vomit on a campus, and it's that's thoughtful. Yeah, yeah, that's some color too, because the color makes all the difference. I found that when I recolored an image of the slug, it repulsed me less. So you can sep colorful vomit

would would have the same thing. Yeah you don't know this, but but Robert is still kind of working through the issues with slugs and and finding ways to deal with them because you've been posting on the on slugs a lot and stuff and having to deal with the imagery,

and it helped a little bit. I think I do respect them more as his organisms, especially after I read some and look at I did a post about the question deuced slugs trip on psilocybin when they eat psilocybin mushrooms, and uh, I found all this I didn't find really a definitive definitive advance a on that. But I end up finding some really cool stuff about slug intelligence. And there's some arguments that say that their cognitive abilities are really not that far off from like a rat or

a pigeon. So so if you don't know for sure whether or nothing good, who listen it? But if you look at their their cognitive abilities, yeah, there are a lot smarter than than I gave them credit for. And I'm not sure just how how much how it makes me feel better or if it makes me work. Lets take over the world, Robert Lamb. But we're but back to vonit back to the issue at hand. All right,

let's look at some instances of regurgitation in the insect world. Yes, the insect world, and and the and the world of iractnets UM offers some excellent examples. UM. For instance, spiders arachnets regurgitate this enzyme rich bath of caustic goo. Uh. They either regurgitated onto their prey, and this is in cases where they sort of shred the meat a little They shred it up a little bit and then they vomit onto it and the enzymes break it down, or

they regurgitate into uh, their prey. For instance, the widow spider and many crab spiders forced these enzymes, forced this vomit into a hole that they make in the prey, and then they suck it all back out like a slurpie. So they apply the the the grotesque costic chemical, let it break down and turn everything into this uh, this this meat smoothie, and then they slurp all of it

back up. Yeah, And it's really brilliant the way that they do this because they get this ball is going of ball us is basically a ball of insects, and then uh, you know, they've got to get all the crunchy parts down because they can't spend a lot of energy trying to break this down, so they are vomiting on it and essentially making it a protein shake for themselves, is slurping it back up. Um. But it's it is a very I think it's a very cool problems they're

kind of using. It's a form of external digestion. And you see the same thing with the house fly, of course, and a lot of people are going to be familiar with this from David Cronenberg's adaptation of the fly, which which is of course a marvelous R rated horror film that manages to discussed on of this real level, but also it gets you thinking and and has you know, various cultural overtones as well. One of my favorite films. But one of the traits that the scientist Brundle played

by Jeff Jeff goldbluin to fantastic effect. One of the traits he he gets from the fly is this a feeding uh ability to vomit forth these ensigns onto something he wants to eat. I think he does it onto like some twinkies for this, for this video he's making for his employers, or kind of his diary. Uh vombits under the twinkies. Let's it sort of set for a

second and then sucks it all back up. Okay, So when we describe to you what the houseflay does, I want you to just keep his image in your brain, Like put Jeff Goldbloom's face on this housefly that we talk about. Okay, because consider the housefly. It's flying around your house in your kitchen, driving you nuts. It lands on a piece of food, maybe a little morsel of sugar, and it's got to break it down, so it scrubs the dry food substance with the bristles on the end

of its probostis um. This frees up the food particles shreds it up. Yea. And then the second step is a little bit like when you add hot water to instant oatmeal, only instead of hot water, the housefly adds a mixture of its saliva and digestive juices. Sounds delicious, and that's when it vomits the saliva and digestive material onto its meal. In a few seconds pass where it all the breakdown and then yeah, deffical bloom sex at

all back up. Yeah, I mean it's it's the shredding and the is key here too, because I mean think of think like when you make a smoothie in the morning, Um, you want like small bits. You add a protein powder, not a protein chunk. So that's right, because Unlis, your blade is like a super blade, right, I can really

break that down. Um. So then the fly, uh, if it can't adequately break down food enough or to pass through a tube that leads into its stomach, the fly it sense it's food down a different tube to an intersect called the crop, and then the fly may pass the bubble dissolving food multiple times between the crop and the mouth, back and forth, back and forth, regularly applying fresh saliva, so eventually all of that gets liquefied. It's delightful.

I mean, it's it's it's disgusting from a human point of view, but it makes perfect sense for these these creatures because they're not gonna You look at an animal that's not going to be able to necessarily, you know, chew its food up. It needs to do these things externally, in the same way that we've ternalized a lot of our process eating processes through cooking. Well, I can't cook well, I can't use the kitchen, so fly is gonna depend on it's uh, it's time honored method of external digestion.

You know, there's a part in Charlotte's Web when Um Wilbur the pig meets Charlotte and he's completely disgusted by seeing her knock out her prey and is judging her. And it's really funny because she has this whole exchange with him like you are. So you know, um, living in the rarefied airs over there with your food brought to you. I have to work from my food, and

I'm genetically programmed to do this. So that's awesome. I had either I'd forgotten about that, or maybe I maybe I haven't read Charlotte's Web and I've only seen the movie, and maybe that didn't make it into the movie. I don't remember. It was a nice little exchange. I liked it. My daughter's reading it right now, so um, knee deep in it? All right? So should we take a break here and and then get to more vomit afterwards? All right,

we're back discussing regurgitation. We just talked about our friends the fly, a friend, the spider of the way Charlotte and Brundle take care of their their their lunches. So now we're gonna talk about a few other animals of note and Pico. We're going to talk about the probosis monkey. Well, the probosis meaning nose. This is the guy with the big nose. Yeah. You've probably seen these monkeys before. Uh.

They of course use regurgitation. Yeah, and it's interesting because their use of their up chuck, which they basically they do, consort of a cut chewing kind of a thing. They they vomited it back up into their mouth. They reach you it around a little bit and then they swallow it um and for most like guerrillas, humans, you know, other primates, if this is done on a semi regular basis,

it's considered pathological. It's not natural, and it's pinitually harmful because you're you're just not you don't have the plumbing to really handle that much caustic stuff moving around all the time. Ye I mean, think about us humans, The enamel will just wear off of our teeth if we

were always vomiting exactly. But researchers found and this from a paper that appeared in the Royal Society Biology Letters, they found it that the digestive track of this particular monkey is drastically different from that of humans and gray apes. So what you have when you look inside the the proboscis monkey's mouth, you find a distinct chambered for stomach

where bacterial digestion occurs prior to the glandular stomach. So you end up, you know, having more of this, uh really more what you end up thinking about in terms of the digestion system of a cow. What I really like about this study is is is how it was conducted. Um. The scientists were actually in a boat and they were

on the Kimbot Kenna botanag And River in Malaysia. And so they're sitting there watching these these monkeys from a distance during the early morning the late afternoon for three months vomiting. And they concentrated on twenty three different monkeys

that were videotaped regurgitating and re chewing. And then when this happened, the monkey's abdomen would contract and the primate would stick its tongue outside its person mouth, which I think it's just you know, that's got to be one of those points in your job where you're kind of like, Okay,

I'm on a boat watching regurgitating probostis monkey. Yeah. I mean they already look kind of like Jimmy Duranny anyway, so they you know, they're they're already amusing to watch, and then they have this peculiar way of going about the meal. Yeah, just vomiting on the banks the river. So this brings us around to my favorite vomiting animal really at the moment, because a lot of this is new to me is the is the vulture the turkey vulture. Well,

they're kind of like the Ninja's the experts at vomiting. Yeah, and it's it's really fast. We have an article and how stif works about it, and you should you should definitely check that out if you're you're into this as a topic. But let's let's set the stage. The Turkey vulture, if you're not familiar, is, of course a scavenger haunts the sky, eyes wheeling around and big big circles, uh, looking for some dead prey to go feast stone. They

find a carcass and then it's on. It's time for the meal land and to start tearing apart this rancid thing and eating it. So what do you need in order to live your life on a diet of rancid flesh? Well, first of all, you don't want a lot of feathers around your face getting mucked up, right, and you needed kind of surgically clean up there. Yeah. Um. Second of all,

you probably want some like great a stomach acid. Yeah, I mean think of if you're you're like me, say, I'm not really used to eating certain types of like junk food, I guess, uh, and probably not used to eating a lot of meat. But so if I'm in a situation where I end up really eating more than I should and really choweling down, on on on, just too much redneat. I start feeling a little ill, like

my stomach cannot handle it. I don't have the cast iron stomach that some people have, and the vulture really does. And since have a cast iron stomach, I mean, this animal has evolved to thrive on rancid uh meat that would just sicken and maybe even kill another animal. I mean they've actually shown that the uh, the the enzymes in the vultures gut are capable of handling some pretty horrible pathogens because they have to be, because that's the

nature of what they eat. You're talking about anthrax too, right. They they have found scores of anthrax in their feces. Yeah, the evidence that it passed through um. So yeah. I mean, their their guts, their their acids are so effective that they can break down some of these virus bacteria in the same way that I have. Alina Um can poop the prickly pair pins right out without any problem. I mean, the same way the vulture can poop out the these

anthrax spores that would be problematic to another creature. Christ and conger Um, the one of the co hosts for Stuff Mom Never Told You, has an article about vultures, and in it, she says in a study on white back vultures that pH levels and their stomachs were between A one and a two. That measurement is comparable to gastric and hydrochloric acid from the human stomach, and it's far more corrosive than acid rain, which has a pH

between four and five. It was also more acidic than the stomach contents of other conniverse birds, including carons and barn owls and barne owls. By the way, we've talked about their pellets before. Yes, um, you know they can't really break down the bones or the teeth of what they eat, so they have to regurgitate it into these little pellets. Yeah, quite lovely. Didn't you get some for for the holidays? Oh? No, I was thinking about it.

I was thinking about at one point, and then we did a podcast where I accidentally referred to the pellets as poop, and then I heard from all the owls who are the fan. Yeah, the pellets at the fan, and the owls are rightfully upset with me over that one. But but I'm hoping to please the vultures in this podcast.

I think we're getting everything more or less. Right, Um, So, the thing about their vomiting, when when a vulture does vomit, and again, as we've estab pushed, animals vomit, so the fact that a vulture vomits is not that big of a of a deal. But but there's a there's a lot of there's been a fair amount of thinking about why they do it, because they'll do it when they're threatened, right when they're threatened, and and they want to do

a little bit of defensive vomiting. Now, one thing to keep in mind when a when a when a buzzard, when a turkey vulture is is threatened, it's probably in a situation where it's it's hanging around this dead body. It's hanging around this body, eating and eating and eating its heavy. Yeah, and then suddenly some humans are poking around, or maybe it's a lion, maybe it's some other birds, it's an eagle, something else is suddenly intruding on them, and it's an issue. So what does the vulture do?

The vulture vomits. Now, there are a few different interpretations to take care. One of them is that it's a purely defensive measure. They have all this awful stuff in their gut, all of this uh this ranted meat and just and caustic enzymes. Somebody's messing with you. Spit up hawk of the stuff, Adam, and see what happened, and see how they take it. You know, don't make me vomit acid on you. That's kind of the proposition here.

That's my bumper, bumper sticker on my car back. Another idea is that it empty empty systomach chamber so they can take off because otherwise they're just weighed down with all of that nasty carre. Yeah, because they've been gorging themselves. Meals maybe few and far between for a vulture, so when it's available, they eat and eat and eat. And if you've got to take off in a hurry, you may have to lighten the lobe. So that's another theory.

But the third theory is the grossest and and and really the most magnificent, and that is the situation where all right, I'm a buzzard, I'm just stuffing myself and all this meat, and so suddenly there's just like this eagle showing up, or there's a or there's a coyote or something getting a little too close to my business. And uh, I'm I'm a bird, so I know that other animals may want to eat me. I'm I'm a prey animal too many. Uh so what can I do

to save myself? Well? Sure, okay, maybe I could spit some half it on them, all right, that might work. It's pretty vile stuff. Or I could just lighten the load and try to get away. But vultures can be kind of gaky, you know. It's not like there, it's not like they're able to just instantly just shoot off like a rocket. So the theory here is that when they vomited forth this this ransomness, they're actually providing a bribe.

They're saying, don't eat me. Who eat this? And and certainly like it was in one of the sources I was looking at, I believe this was on the Turkey vulture website, the Vulture Vulture Society dot homestead dot com. They have a lot of cool facts about them. They pointed out the eagles eat it right up. The eagles presented with some vulture vomit. Doubere like, yeah, that looks great that thanks for preparing that for me. Maybe that's

like fog off to them. They're like, oh, delicacy. Yeah maybe, so I'd like to imagine the turkey buzzard saying though, like, if you keep me alive, I can regurgitate ten meals as many as you want. If you kill me, you only get one. Yeah, I mean it's also like, if you you know, here is something here, go ahead and eat this. You can eat this, or you can try and fight me to the death. And I have claws and I have a beak, and I might not be the most furious creature on on the planet, but I'm

a harder meal. Here's the easy meal. So why not yet? Why don't you have it? I know it's already digested for you. Yeah, already toted. Yeah, I don't know. That's a nice little peace offering. Um, so you know what we have not thrown into the mix. Here's urine. Oh yeah, and uh, this just would not be a complete podcast talking about vultures in volment without the urine. It's just like a bonus that you get to have your end

in this podcast as well. And this is uh, you know, we talked about how you don't want feathers generally around the head because it needs to sort of remain surgically clear. So they can go in after some meat and get it all dirty. But of course they're also going to be stepping through some pretty rancid stuff as well. So to disinfect their legs, they'll urinate down their legs and uh and and and I find that there's a certain

gross but that admirable um economy to that. It's incredibly practical, right, because you're getting rid of some of the lingering pathogens that that you've been trumping along with. I like to think of that. Somewhere out there there is a performance artist who that does some sort of vulture urinating canvas. I don't know. You know, you expect all this from a vulture, right, because they're not very cute looking. They're sort of dastardly looking. You expect that they urinate themselves

and they vomit up piece meals. But there are other creatures out there that have some pretty smooth moves themselves. Yeah, and they don't necessarily look the part at first glance. For instance, the fulmer, which means foul goal because it essentially looks like a seagull and it's one of these these these the type of birds that makes its home.

And you know, Rocky little purchases that they find on cliff sides, and if something comes and messes with them and poses a threat, they will projectile vomit at their at at the intruder. And this is a straight up there's no if hands and butts about it. They're projectile vomiting to cause a distress to their attacker. You know, I kind of thought about them as the kittens of the bird world because they are white feathered and there.

They're cute looking, I will say it, and you just don't expect this sort of filth that comes projectile vomiting from their mouth. Yeah, it's orange, It stinks of rotten fish, and it's like really oily and sticky, Like it didn't come off all that easy, uh Like for a human. If you're climbing up there checking out birds and you get vomited on, you're gonna have to go home and you know, really shower and scribe to get it off.

If you're a bird and you're messing with a former, then you've got this awful stuff on your on your feathers, and you can actually interfere with your ability to fly. So not only annoying, but potentially lethal weapon in that regard and if you were a bird and you recovered this, and you should take to the water. The gut oil of the full more chick causes the birds to lose their buoyancy and they drown. So it's kind of like death vomit. Yea death vomit orange death vomit from the

foul goals that look like kitten birds. Yeah, now that's speaking of kittens that we we should bring it back around though to two again, to humans and uh and our expectations of vomit versus animal expectations and even children because as adult humans we end up with this idea that you know, vomit is to be avoided at all costs. Then you invite a dog into your house and the dog is vomiting and eating its own vomit, or you bring in a cat which just goes off like a

time bomb all the time. Just vomit becomes a part of your your daily life. And then if you have a child, then even more so, they're just constantly vomiting. It's true. I've been vomitated on in spectacular ways. I have to say. Yeah, my my mom is a kindergarten teacher and and she I once mentioned it to her about children vomiting, because we have My nephew vomited in the back of the car when we were taking them

somewhere and just happened all of a sudden. The other one, uh my, the niece, she was complaining of stomach problems, but then he vomited and it was a huge mess. And I mentioned to my mom and she's like, oh, yeah, kids, those age you know, like kindergarten age, kids, first grade, they just vomit all the time. They'll just be doing something, They'll be coloring and then just vomit. It's true, and they just keep going. They just pop a breath mat

and keep going. And then eventually they get a little older and they begin to believe this, this lie that vomiting isn't the part of who we are, and boy are they wrong. So there you have it, vomit Um. We would love to hear your stories on vomit if you are things that you would like to share with us, um, your encounters with vomit in the Alien Kingdom, preferably not just that time that you objected and it was spectacular,

but but more of it. Just sort of telling stories of vomit animals that you've seen that seemed to be engaging in weak agrotation and in a unique or fashion a cool way, let us know about it. You can find us on Facebook, you can find us on tumbler we are stuff to blow your mind and both of those, and on Twitter we go by the handle blow the Mind, and you can always drop us a line at below the Mind at discovery dot com for more on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how Stuff Works dot com