How Vestigial Organs Work

with kidnappers. No, it's just good policy. Jerry probably understands. Who'd you think? I don't know that finger they sent was pointed in our direction. I know that well, Jerry, from all of us here at How Stuff Works, we miss you and we wish you'd the best of luck. That breeding too holds up so Chuck, yes, you were correcting me. I think we should get this out on the air as well. Vestigial organs. You have to say it like you're all like you're eating a meat ball. Vestigial. Yeah, sure,

well you so you're saying it's vestigial. It's not vestigile. No, vestigialstial. I'm a vestigial fan, alrighty, and you're the correct fan. I'm not a fan of either. I just for once looked up the pronunciation of something. So how are you feeling about vestigial organs? Are you liking it? Uh? Yeah, I mean I thought it was good. Organs is a little misleading. It should be just be like body parts,

I think, yeah, vestigial parts. It can also be traits behaviors. Yeah, you know, like what about what's like the go to vestigial trait? Oh, the palmer grass brief X. Yeah, it's a great one. Yeah, that's one of the first things they test on a baby. Yeah, it says a lot about the baby. It's like, can you hold onto my

fingers and lift your little body? Yeah, So we just go ahead and say human babies are born with the ability where if there if the palm of their hand is um stimulated, you know, you like, tell it a joke or give it some candy or something like that. Um, the baby will grasp onto the finger just reflexively, and the baby grasps so hard, and we're talking like newboards. The baby grasps with enough strength that it can you you could pick the baby up with your finger and

it'll dangle from your hand and look very cute. Of babies, I think they said. So that doesn't make any sense. Why would a baby be able to do that? So they can hang on to your furry coat as you run through the jungle. That's the uh, that is the predominant answer amongst science. Yeah, and uh, Ruby grabs my beard like it's rope. Yeah, I remember you saying that, and pulls herself up my chest, so it's like it's like a little animal. Yeah. Apparently have you ever tickled

her feet? Because they grasped with those two had leg hair pinched by little feet. Man already, boy, having a kid sounds like a lot of fun. That's right. Your beard, your leg hair getting climbed on. It's all worth it those, isn't it. I don't know. We'll see good for you, chucker. I'll let you know in eighteen years. So uh so, um uh what is that called again? The palmer grass reflects and the one that's also from the feet. That's a vestigial trait. It's something that used to serve a

purpose further back on our ancestral line. It still serves a purpose in things like um primates, higher apes, UM, but it doesn't in humans anymore. The thing about it, though, is that the whole idea of vestigial organs, vestigial body parts, of vestigial traits is gives a tremendous amount of credence. In fact, it's one of like the the main points of the theory of evolution that we have these traits left over because if you trace our ancestry back far enough, um,

chimps and we had a common ancestor. Yeah, And if you trace it back even further, snakes and we had a common ancestor and so on and so on. These are just remnants from that distant past when we needed things, uh like uh, a tailbone to support a tail sure, or you know, to be able to grasp your mom's for the moment you're you're born basically so you can hang on. And there's a couple of different definitions to UM. If you asked Darwin, he will say that it doesn't

necessarily mean that it has no function now. It just means that it doesn't have served the original purpose that it once did. And that's a huge point because UM vestigial organs is a flashpoint between creationists and scientists. Yeah, huge, man, I had no idea, but it's like a it's like a battlefield, but in that in that battle between creationism

and science. Yeah, I looked that up about the conflict of religion in the vestigial organs and uh, at least some of the sites I went to said that we're fine with vestigial organs and we think that after God created Adam and Eve that they may have changed over the years. So I didn't run into that at all. Yeah.

I saw a bunch of sites that said that that they can co exist basically and said that we agree there could be a loss of genetic information over the years, or that Adam and Eve uh were created and changed as well, but it was just all God's work hand. Yeah, which I mean the scientists would be like, no, still disagree, but I like the way you're thinking. Generally, the sites I ran into were just like, no, evolution is flat

out wrong. I think one of them said that, um, and there is no such thing as a vestigial vestigial organ. The very fact that you're saying that there are vestigial organs because of evolution begs the question and you like, the whole idea is that we don't understand what these organs are for, not that they're useless. God wouldn't put anything useless in the human body, right and science? Um does face palm. Yeah, well so it I mean, it goes on and on. It's not they're not neither sides

winning this. But I was very um, I was. I was surprised to find that this was a like, you know, you just kind of stumble onto a social war or a battle of the or I knew that that war was being waged, but I didn't realize that this is one of the I don't field. It was just really interesting to me. But you mentioned Darwin Man, Yeah, he

was not the first person to point out vestigial organs. No, and we should point people to our Charles Darwin episode that in the Natural Selection is what we did and those I am very proud of those two because he was a fascinating guy. Whether or not you agree with us all that science science junk. You may also want to go listen to our Enlightenment episode. It kind of

ties in. Yeah, agreed, So, like you said, he was not in the first dude, Um, there was another guy in name Robert Vida Scheim, who said he had a big list, running list going that had up to ninety parts that he claimed were vestigil and a lot of those were proved not to be, and even some of the ones. You might as well go ahead and talk about the appendix a little bit, because everyone for a long time said, we don't need the appendix. It does nothing in our bodies. We can just take it out

and suffer no ill consequences. Yeah. So the idea is, well, if you can take it out and not die, then what's the point. Yeah, then it's vestigial. And I write an article and you're like, you kind of have to be careful saying stuff like that, because I can cut my leg off and not die. But I still could have used it, sure, you know, and with the appendix. For for many years, like you said, after successful appendectomy, after successful appendectomy, um, there were there was this predominant

idea that it was just this useless organ. One of the reasons why um it was officially labeled vestigial right out of the gate is because you can find it elsewhere in the animal kingdom, which is another big part of the definition of a vestigial organ. Is functioning organ in the animal kingdom. Correct, Yeah, so you you can find the same thing elsewhere in the animal kingdom, and

it it's it performs a more robust function. So with the appendix, in particular for animals that have of a m diet high in fiber, this serves as an extra like digestive tract or an extra part of the digestive tract um in humans that has no role in digestion whatsoever. So scientifically speaking, it's lost its original purpose. Yeah, which

people long thought when we used to be plant eating. Uh, for the most part, plant eating people's that that's what the appendix aided in digestion and cellulose when you ate a lot of plants. But now we don't eat plants, so we don't need it. So it's just a little a little sad sack. It is pretty sad looking compared to compared to a chimp's mighty appendix. This is uh, this is sad. But chuck, they have found and this is pretty much the story for almost all of us.

To Jill Organs, there's really only two that remain where we're just like, we have no idea what these do. Yeah, um, but but with the appendix. We've come to find that either it performed this role simultaneously to um chewing cud for us, or it evolved to perform this role, so it's not totally useless. It's like, don't cut me out, and I'm I'm doing something. But it's a store for um beneficial bacteria. Yeah, it's basically a reserve in case you get really sick with diarrhea or some other gut

infection and and it vacates all that good bacteria. Then you have this appendix waiting in the wings to say, hey, I've got this, I'll reboot your system. Stand by, I'm gonna spit them up right, and it's spits bacteria into your gut. But they say, because we have medicines that take care of all that stuff, that we never need the appendix, right, because we have medicine now to do

that perform that same function essentially. Yeah, and I mean that that makes a that's a pretty pro Western medicine concept though, Like if you um, if you take a bunch of antibiotics, you're probably going to be able to use your appendix to repopulate the floora in your gut, you know what I mean? Because antibiotics go through and they just like laid a waste all bacteria beneficial or otherwise.

And you know, so after a round of antibiotics, if your appendix is functioning, and you should probably be able theoretically to recover better than if you've had your appendix removed.

So we mayn't even know that our appendix is functioning. No, but Molly Edmonds comes up with an evil genius idea, and she doesn't know vertly say that we should try it, but she suggests that at the end, the only way to really tell if we need an appendix is to start taking them out of people in um, the undeveloped world, who have less access to the same health care that we have. I think what she meant was study people who have had appendectomies, not necessarily like just bring people in,

like what happens, and if they have an appendicitis. I'm hopefully that's a pretty routine procedure and that it can be removed. But that's another thing that people argue, like, no, this thing is useless. Not only not only does it not chew cud for us any longer, um, it can become really infected and kill you and so we should just take appendixes out. That was the predominant thought. And I think that you're kind of slowing it down lately. Yeah, like, uh, well,

we should talk about wisdom teeth. I was just about to bring those up. You want to take a break first, or you want to keep coming with wisdom teeth? Break? Stop you stop? Stop you alright? So I teased everyone with wisdom teeth. Ah, there was have heard Duck Dennis say, you know, you should just always take out your wisdom teeth, and others say, well know if your mouth has enough room,

like not everyone needs their wisdom teeth outright. But this goes back to the evolution as well, Like we needed back when we ate roots and tuberds and plants and we had bigger jaws, we had room for those teeth

and we needed them. See that. To me, wisdom teeth are the definitive evidence of vestigial organs as as support for the theory of evolution, because our jaws don't they're not shaped like they were before because our diet has changed, our skulls have changed shape, and so there's not room for that third moler that there used to be room for, which is why it grows in all messed up a k A impacted. Yeah, we needed uh once we started cooking food and vegetables and making them soft, unless you're

on the Paleo diet and you eat raw edgies. Yes, but if you're rich and you're on the paleod diet, you probably pay for somebody to chew them up first, since at them in your mouth. That's what rich people on paleot so. Uh. Yeah, so now we don't need those those teeth, and so clearly that's an example of a vestigial body parts. Correct. But yes, but not only do we not need them, there's no room for them in most people's jaws. I just think, like, there you go,

that's it. Drop drop the mic right there. Yeah, we talked about this before, but I had might not know. Sixteen. I think they're seventeen. How old are you? Like, Yeah, I feel like it's usually in that range. Whenever I hear about someone that's older that has their wisdom teeth, then it just I don't know, it seems like an outlier. Yeah, yeah, I think it's about the normal age, like in your teen's late teens. Mentally, yeah, kind of like tonsils. I

don't know many adults who have their tonsils removed. No, I'm sure it happens. But then I mean, now that you've brought up tonsils, this is a rabbit hole. So that's another thing that that um, a lot of people say, just go ahead and get room moved. The thing is is, if history is taught as anything, just getting vestigial organs removed electively is not a good move. Just in case if they are getting infected a lot and they threaten your health, yeah, you probably should get your tonsils removed.

But just as wisdom teeth to me are definitive evidence that, um, we've evolved and have vestigial organs, so to our tonsils, because no one has any real idea why we have tonsils, and as a matter of fact, they can harm our health. Yeah, this one article you since says they are supposedly the first line of defense against inhaled pathogens. That's the best they can come up with. I like it, Yeah, I guess, but that's a pretty weak system. I mean, like there's

this kind of it rings the edges. I mean, it's not even like a net. No, we should be able, we should evolve a net, you know, a throat net, a throat net that falls to the side when we need like food to go through, but when we're just breathing, Like, yeah, if you're dieting, you can have the throat net shut and everything will just bounce back up. Yeah, that'd be great. It's a great idea. They're uh, you know, chewing up food and spitting it out as a weight loss method

is dangerous, but some people think that, Hey it makes sense. Man, I just want to taste it. Uh what else? Oh, I like the goose bumps. That's a good one. Yeah, that's one of my favores too, because when you get scared or chili, you'll get you'll see the goose bumps. What are they called the erector peli. Goose bumps is so much more fun. Well, the erector peli are the muscles that give you goose bumps. It's kind of like the Marines Awajima raising the flag. These muscles do that

to your hair follicles, right, and you get goosebumps. Yeah, and that is left over from when we wanted to uh, we're animals and we wanted to appear larger. We could puff up our fur in defense or to hold in to keep yourself warm. You know, the air gets trapped in between the hair when it stands up. And if you think about it, when you have a adrenaline running through your veins and you're scared or you're you've got the fight or flight thing going on, you can get goosebumps.

Same thing with when you're cold, get goosebumps left over from when we have for I never get goosebumps, really well, I'm never cold. The only time I get him is when I like a I get the creepy sugar you know. Um, and that doesn't happen much either. That's because the horror movie industry is just really stinks. Man. No more goose bumps. I'm working my way through that list that the Grabster prepared for us. So nice of him. You've been on

a horror kick? Yeah, have you seen pre October horror kick? Even Yeah, right when it started to get a little even slightly cool, you got a blankie out and you and you may snuggle up and watch horror movies. That's great. Um, Emily won't watch him at all, which is very disappointing. Well, yeah, I mean you it will be in the room. But like she's like not paying that much attention, and I'm like,

why are you watching? But um, I saw a Pontypool on the grabster's recommendation has a very good creative movie. Have you seen it? No, so I haven't seen that one. It's on Netflix, and I don't think it's ever been off Netflix in the history of Netflix. I think it's

always been there. See. The problem is because Emily doesn't watch him in then I'm saying, well, I'd like to spend a couple of hours alone tonight with Ponty Pool, which happens enough with sports, so horror in there, and all of a sudden, what's the point of being married? You know? I think that's that's that's good if you chuck, that's upstanding choosing your wife over horror movies. Yeah, I'll watch Nashville. Actually that's not true. You won't watch Nashville. No,

I'll be in the room when it's on. But again, I'm not watching. I've never seen it. Am I missing it? No? Even she's like it's so terrible, but still watches it. It's one of those why do people do the things they do? You know? Speaking of tangents like the one we're on now I listened to our pez episode. It is tangent city. Yeah, I mean even as far as our normal stuff goes, it is tangential. We could call our tangents vestigial material. Yeah, serves a purpose kind of

some some people like it, some people hate it, hate it. Uh. So we brought up the tailbone earlier. Um, the cock is it coxas I thought it was cossacks. Cossacks, I'll go with that. Um, that is not the same thing as when you were born with a tiny little tail bump that can happen, but that's an atavism. Yeah, Um, not the same thing as the cocksack. Cossacks. Well, it's

attached to the cossacks. So the cossacks is itself a vestigial thing, right, Yeah, Like we don't need that bone, and those bones are found in other animals that have tails, and it's where the muscles connect to to control the tail and everything. Right, Yeah, so we don't need that. But then some people are even born with with an actual tail. And then, like you said, that's an ad of his, which is a relic that appears once in a while rather than in most people. But that's the

only difference isn't it. I think so, And I was gonna say we should do an episode on that, but I looked at our article and I don't know, there's not a lot to it. So there you go. We just did atavism, I guess so. But with the cossacks, um, some folks think that there is in fact a reason that it. Kind of the best I could see is that it acts like as the holder of things in that area, kind of cinches everything up, like the anus and other organs in that area. Is that right? Um? Yeah, Yeah,

that's that's the best they could come up with. But they've removed cossacks from people before, and you know, the anus didn't pro lapse or anything like that from what I understand. Yet, they're just taking time. That's a horror movie waiting to happen. I have never seen, or at least I've never noticed Darwin's point on someone's ear. It's a no. I know what they are, but I've never noticed that anyone had one. Yeah, but that's not the ones I've seen online. Is is a literal extra bump

that looks like an elf mine's going downward. Yeah, the ones I've seen on the outside online I've never seen in real life, is what I'm saying. So it's called the Darwin's point, right, And they're just saying like it's left over from when our ears used to be bigger and weird. Yeah, like when we had to listen out for stuff. Yeah, ears a weird period. If you really look at them, I think supposedly people who can wiggle their ears that's a sign of less evolution. That's your forehead,

my ears. My ears are wriggling too, No, just your four Well, your forehead's wiggling too. I really can't wiggle my ears really well. I must be tired because I can do them like one at a time and do the Star Spangled banner to it. Can you raise both eyebrows individually? Oh that's pretty good. I can also rule my tongue. Can you do this? Yeah? I can do the clover too, but I can't. I can't do I can't raise my left eyebrow by itself, which is weird.

You can do your right now. You just look very suspicious of me, right, I don't believe you, but your eyebrow. I wish you guys could all see this. Oh yeah, it's scintillating. Also, with the ear. There are there there are muscles in the ear that uh, we say we don't need anymore because we don't need to move them to locate things like, uh, like a satellite dish. That's why. That's why if you like not everybody can wiggle their ears, and people who can have an atavistic trait, which is

that muscle group is still left over. Yeah, And there's a lot of different muscle groups that pop up um as far as vestigial organs go. Um, there's one called the subclavius muscle, which is up here in your chest around your upper arms and chest um. And that's supposedly left over from when we could walk on all fours or mostly walked on all fours. Now some people have it and some don't. Is it something you can see or is it give you the ability to, like, you know,

how muscle dudes bounce their pecks. I'm sure the ones with subclavio muscles are aces that that's so gross. There's um, there's a pal mayris and a plant harris um muscle that we don't need anymore. So much so that if you are having some sort of muscle or tendon surgery, the doctor will go in and harvest those for use elsewhere in your body. So you can like move your forehead like Reuben Kincaid and in the Partridge family, remember him, he could like separate his forehead from his hair. What

was it? Just a trick he did? Yeah, I don't remember that. It was his thing. The guy couldn't act, He wasn't an actor. He could just basically move his hair from where where it was normally too, like halfway back his head, um on his head with his own just muscle, or with his hands with his muscles. See. I worked at the job, a commercial job with with punch from chips once and um, yeah, he did a trick where he did it with his hands, but it was so like it looked like it was a two pay. Yeah.

The way he could move it with his hands, it was really like imagine if you could do that without his hands. Yeah, that's what Ruben Kincaid could do. I got a great picture of him acting like he was arresting me. He had like put me up against the police car and had a hand behind my back. Yeah, he's a nice guy. He sounds like he's still loved being punched too. Man. I gotta tell you, well, I mean like that was it for him. Yeah, But like the other guy, John was in his trailer the whole

time for the most part. What were you doing? It was Chips had that um that reboot TV movie, like I don't know, probably fifteen or sixteen years ago, and they did a promo for the movie that I were on in the art department. Um, and John stayed in his trailer and punch was all about like the ladies in the neighborhood. He was like hanging out, let's go. Let's Yeah. He still got a lot out of it, you could tell, which is good for him, you know. Alright,

let's take a break. Okay, we'll talk about some more vestigil organs. All Right, we're back. What else you got, Oh, we can keep going. So, Um, I've found a couple of articles. One was from I O nine that was pretty helpful. Yeah, it's a great website. I found another one on Discover magazine. They had even more. Um, there's some people have neck ribs. Have you heard of this? What neck rib? Talk about a throat net? This is like a neck rib. Basically, you've got your highest ribs

up here. You're clavical not the mick rib, which I think we can all agree because they're less delicious than the mic rib. Okay, so if you right here, that's your clavical yah, yeah, that's your top rib. People have higher ribs. They go into the neck. Yeah, they go from your your neckbone and an angle above that, and those are called neck ribs. And they think that that's left over from reptilian ancestors. Are those the people that have really long necks or does that not matter? I didn't,

I didn't notice that sinuses. Yeah, that's another one. It's like there's no reason for us. Yeah, well they think there are reasons. Uh. They enhance our voices. Uh, they make our skull not so heavy, and they think that One theory is that they help with the mucus help humidify the air we breathe in so it's not so dry. However, a lot of other people say, I don't know about

that stuff. We may not need this is at all know And they think that if if you look around the animal kingdom, sinus has found in other animals, um are most useful, and ones that have something called the um the merrow nasal organ, which is like a pheromone sending organ. We have them, which is another vestigial thing. It's in our septums. It's on either side of our

septum um, but it's not connected to our brain. So we can sense pheromones, but we can't actually sense them because the vero valmarrow nasal organ that's a tough one to say. Um, it's just not it's not connected anymore,

So how do we sense it? We don't remember that one thing we talked about this before, There was like that one um that one TV show had people like smell shirts of other people and ended up like choosing mates based on it, and it turned out those people had the most varied immune systems from our own, So we would make more us children, right Exactly. The thing is is there's we don't have any way as far

as science knows to actually sense pheromones. We have the means to do it, but we can't actually like pull the trigger on it, because that that organ isn't connected to our brains anymore, but it's located around the scientuses and then in other animals, the scinuses um contain muscles for moving whiskers and a lot of olfactory receptors for sensing smells interesting, but in humans they just get infected up.

I was thinking if I were a mad scientist of like the human centipede ilk, that's probably what I try to do. Oh, you wouldn't just put someone's head in the person's butt in front of them over and over. Yeah, I wouldn't. That seems like a waste of time. I would, Uh, I would. I would try to connect the um vomero nasal organ to the brain. Yeah, or maybe bring back all of the original purposes of our vestigial parts. Okay, that's pretty issous. So just one thing at a time,

all right. Yeah, I would use anesthetic and um, I would make sure the pudding cups were top notch for recovery. What's the top notch pudding cup consist of? Just a good brand? Yeah? You just don't want an off brand, you know what I mean? Sure, Like if you haven't heard of it, or there's a boy wearing overalls and no shoes on the on the label, Yeah, like Uncle Dance pudding cups. You don't want that pudding cup? Uh? What else do we have in here? Oh? Yeah, here's one.

What's it called the third eyelid? Yeah, of course, there's another name for it, Chuck. It is the um go ahead plaka semilunaris. Yeah, I think that's perfect. Actually, so you know a little almond. H that's something else. It's the thing next to that, right, and this, uh, I think was when in your eye we should say it's

your third eyelid. Yeah, it's it's from reptiles and amphibians and birds, and I think i've seen this in lizards and things when they have like you know, it's sort of it's it's clear, like a membrane that watches over their eye and goes back, but it moves horizontally rather vertically like our eyelids. So this is a leftover trait from when we could do that, because that was probably pretty neat to do. Yes, Oh man, can you imagine

how free if you could do that. So we've got the tissue, we just apparently don't have the muscles to move it any longer. Did you? Were you one of those kids that would turn their upper eyelids inside out? I never knew how they did it. I couldn't do it either. It was just freak show. Yeah. I always admired them deeply for it, but I couldn't do it there. It was always just some creepy boy trying to get a girl's attention, usually like tap tap her on the shoulder.

I don't think I ever saw a girl do it, of course not. It's always a boy, yeah, because girls are smarter. Yeah, but yeah tap brothers fellers. She turned around and scream yeah uh and then everybody laugh. But then we'd go have uncle dance pudding cups. Because I went to public school, we got taken to task for for me saying dumb guys and an email that it was like, I'm just kind of kidding around, even though I do think women are generally smarter and guys do

a lot of dumb stuff that women don't do. Just relax, you know, did someone really need to take up the mantle for men? I know it's kind of like men have a pretty good here on earth. Agreed. I think you can get away with saying dumb guy here there. Agreed. All right, Well, there's a couple of more body hair in general. I think we did a whole show in that,

didn't we or did we? I don't remember, Uh, there's it seems like it, because didn't we talk about like the water Ape theory, I think so well recap it the water ap theory. I think there's this idea that humans actually um lost their body here because we went in the water for a little while after we as we were evolving from apes, lost our hair there because we didn't need it, and then came out of the water.

If I'm just totally going from memory, so we won't hold you to that, um, but essentially aside from your eyebrows, which keep sweat out of your eyes, which is pretty good function, and I guess hair on your head which will keep your head warm. Um, and the hair and your nose you used to it like traps, gnats and yeah, juju fruits and whatever is trying to get up there. I think generally they're referring to like leg hair and back hair and arm hair. There really is no use

for that any longer. Yeah, but we still have it. Yeah, there's no use for back hair, I can assure you. I agree, Man, Yeah, kind of stinks, but we still have it. It's evolving out. It seems like either that are a lot more dudes wax than I realized. Yeah, I need I haven't done that in a while. Have you done waxing? Before. H Yeah, Emily would get a little at home kit. She'll just clean up my neckline a little bit. But I don't have a super hairy back.

It's just sort of up top there. I've never tried waxing you. You usually just like uses matches, what burns it? I mean that would work, but it's stinky. Yeah, oh yeah, and that would stink, so you're like, yeah, we have to do it outside. Uh. And then male nipples we I know, we did a show on this um and

it's really pretty simple. We have nipples because women have nipples, not for the same function, but because we're made of the same uh stew essentially right, exactly, Like there's this single um plan or blueprint or whatever for humans, and nipples emerged before sex differentiation takes place. So everybody has nipples. And I found from researching this there's actually um useless

tiny ovaries attached to men's um uh prostates. Oh really yes, And there's supposedly um the beginnings of little vast deference nodules on women's ovaries totally useless. So yeah, sex differentiates. So we have ovaries, we have like ovary like overrets. Yeah. Wow, Yeah, I had never knew that it's crazy, it's true or over retest. Yeah, there you go, that's more appropriate. I think, Um well, there are other animals too, I mean it's

not just humans. Um well, that's another thing. Yeah, that an ostrich has wings but they don't fly, same with penguins still have the wings. That's true. It's vestigial, but this lend's further credence too. Vestigial organs as evidence for evolution. Yeah. Or we did our podcast on cave dwellers and some of those have non functioning eyes. It's like, why are they still there at all? And seriously go listen to that one. That was one of my favorites. It's a

tuck deep in the archives. It's called biospeleology was the name for that one. Yeah, I think we did too. I think we did one on cave dwellers specifically, even and then we do one on caves. Maybe I'll bet we did, because you went caving after we did caves, So I think we did too. It's really getting tough now to remember all these episodes. And then there's another one.

Two whales and snakes actually have pelvis bones donate them because they don't have legs, but at some point they may have before um and creationists thanks to uh uh paper that came out. It said it was a scientific paper. But the guy in in doing interviews with media's like, yeah, we're having to totally rethink this, like maybe it's not vestigial. They found that it actually enhances and aids and sex. Um.

But that, I mean that could be a secondary thing. Interesting. Yeah, and get this, this is one extra thing that I heard. I think it was on Fresh Air. There was a woman who wrote a book about dolphins and dolphin research, and specifically this researcher who used to take a lot of acid with dolphins that he would also give acid to and try to teach English language too. He would give dolphins LSD. That's not nice. Um, you have to hear this thing on on fresh Air. It's mind blowing.

But the they believe that dolphins evolved from wolves. What Yeah, it's kind of like that water ache theory for humans that like some wolves just started hanging out in the water and eventually evolved into dolphins. Wow. I definitely need to hear that. Yeah, that's pretty amazing. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that's right. You're there. I blacked out while I was listening to it and form that false memory. But I'm pretty sure that was in that interview LD somebody

was on LSD. Yeah. Maybe, Well, if you want to learn more about vestigial organs, type that word those words into the search bar at how stuff works dot com. You don't have anything else, do you know? Uh? And since I said search barts, time for listener mail. Uh, no, sir, it is time for Facebook questions. So occasionally I will have gotten not a lot of great listener mails lately, and so we will throw out ask us some questions

on Facebook. For the next couple of episodes, we're gonna read some of these an answer, So pick at your own will my friend, I'll go ahead and start with Matt Thurman says, would you ever consider live shows in the UK? Matt, not only would we consider it, we actively want to and we are hoping to at some point. So it's not the easiest thing in the world to pull off. You know, we have to book a ship

to sail over there, not a night ship either. It'll take a while, but I mean, um, we have a pretty good idea that London might be a good talent to hold old show in in the UK. But if you have a recommendation of other places to do too, let us know we're actively looking. I think we could get support in London and uh in Ireland and maybe even Scotland. So we would like to hear from people on that. Okay, I got another one. This one's from Avery W. Krouse. What is a controversial topic you haven't

covered yet that you're a little hesitant to do? What's yours? Remember it used to be scientology for both of us, and now we're just like it's done. Yeah. Uh for me, it's breastfeeding. I really want to do it and we will eventually, but we have to like really know what we're talking about because it is a horn's nest. Yeah. Mine would be uh vaccines, Oh man, I wouldn't want to touch that with a tempo pole. Sure, all right?

I got one from Matthew Matsuto. Keep meaning to write you guys and ask whatever happened to the young man who was helping come up with ideas for stuff you should know? Can't remember his name. That was Sam and uh Sam is in college now and we haven't heard from Sam. So Sam, if you're listening or Sam's Mom, if you're listening, we would love an update. But I even wrote letters of recommendation for Sam and he's in school, so maybe he's all grows up now and doesn't need

us anymore. He's fine, we'll see. Remember he was in our TV show as well. Yeah, he played at player. He's the bat Boy. That's right. That was great. So yeah, if you've ever wondered what Sam looked like, and you can figure out how to get your hands on the what was that one Make It Rain? To Believe? Make It Rain? Episode? Check out The bat Boy and you will see Sam from the famous Summer of Sam. That was the same day the unions shut us down and we had to leave for it. Man, what a day. Uh.

Here's one from Dave malin Chuck. This is a question for you. When is Chuck's Beer going to get its own podcast? Now? Come on, people like your beard? Yeah you want to hear let's hear the Beard's voice at least. So okay, it's a bit regurgitating right now, we'll get used to that. Dave Mallen. Uh, this is from Mike Uh, mikel Duff Mickel Duff. He says, how much do you guys personally remember from podcasts you've done. Um, well, I

think we kind of demonstrate it today, not a lot. No, it's really weird because, like they say, the brain is has a basically an infinite capacity to remember stuff, but like old stuff is getting crammed out as new stuff gets pushed in these days, and that's it hasn't always been that way. Yeah, it's been that way for like a year and a half maybe two year. Yeah. I always like to say that I think I remember about as much as the average listener might, like a few

tidbits here and there from each topic. But like anytime a hardcore listener comes up to us and wants to talk to about something, or even an average listener it comes up and just heard something from like two thousand thirteen, I'm like, sorry, I have to go back and research again. Yeah, and then we'll hold this conversation. But that'd be like going up to KNA and being like, remember that joke you told him that monologue three years ago. It's just

not fair, you know. Yeah, he didn't have something funny and charming to say instead of, uh, go ahead, your next this is a great one. I don't have an answer for it. But we're going to get to the bottom of this. Is from Brian Geppert. Why do coupons have a cash value listed at the bottom smile emoticon? Do they? Yeah? It's they're like worth one one hundredth of a cent. The actual coupon itself is wow. So he could trade that in I guess or stores. Can

you know what I mean? Interesting? That's probably it, But well we'll look into that. You know what I heard recently that you know, when you go to the grocery store and they'll have a drive to like, hey, would you like to donate a dollar or whatever? Not, Supposedly they just gather that up as a big massive tax

right off. Is that true? Yeah? And I mean the the charity is going to ultimately get that, but the store is getting all the right off and your one dollar gets bundled in with not even necessarily that one drive. They may bundle it in with other drives, and who knows where that dollar is actually going. You should not that's pretty sneak. You should not feel bad about saying

not today when they ask you. But you should also take it as an impetus to go donate yourself or go do some volunteering or something like that as a reminder rather than actually being pressured to giving a dollar for that grocery stores tax right off, which is disgusting. You to get your name on a balloon piece of paper that they shape like a hot air balloon. All right, let's do like two more. Uh. This is from Shane Elliott when you guys gonna do a blooper real? Shurely,

Jerry has stored them up in the archives. Uh, my friend Jerry about once a season. I don't like telling people this, why because they're going to hack in and find it. Yeah, Jerry does a blooper real and only we can hear it, and you will never ever hear although I think we could. We could sell them for a dollar apiece and probably get rich. I got the last one. This one's from Marco Rippola. Which one of you is the Batman and which one is Robin? And

Marco you've been looking at it all wrong. Yeah, you should have asked which one is the Joker and which one is the penguin? WHOA Yeah, great answer, and we're not going to answer. I love that. I got nothing more. If you want to get in touch with us, you can post questions any day or night on our Facebook page at Facebook dot com slash stuff you Should Know. You can tweet to us at s y s K Podcasts.

You can email us directly at stuff podcast at house stuff works dot com, and, as always, join us at our super awesome home on the web, Stuff you Should Know dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, how stuff works dot com