Pterosaurs: Not Flying Dinosaurs

ahead of his time. Why hasn't there been a movie called batching it? I I don't know. That's actually pretty obvious. The fact that it was around as a word in the eighties makes me even more surprised that there's not a movie called batching it that, like the protagonist has to put on like a car wash to save their business or something like that. Yeah, Owen Wilson, what did he do? Well? He would just be the star batching it imagine, right, I guess. So could that guy be

any more charming than he is? He's pretty charming. Speaking of charming, Chuck, let me introduce you to a wonderful little beast named Ketze Colatus North ropy. Mhm are you are you familiar? So ketzo colatus is named after the Aztec flying serpent god quetzal Coat, right, so it makes sense.

But this guy was a real thing. Not to put down the Aztecs beliefs or anything like that, but this is a verifiable beast at one point, particularly in the late Cretaceous period, and it's what you would probably call a pterodactyl. But if you call it a pterodactyl, you'd be dead wrong, pal. What it really is is a

terrace sore. And there's a lot of misunderstandings that we're going to sort through, but the most important point is that this east right here is twenty ft tall, as tall as a giraffe, and it had a wingspan akin to about an F sixteen fighter jet. And it was a bad mama jama. That's that for ding. That's good. I like it. I didn't even use the way back machine, just trimmed the fat. Gone, oh you do. You don't even need that old clunky thing anymore. We just use

our imaginations. Were not actually in the Cretaceous period like we would be if we had used the way back machine. Okay, uh yeah, these terra starts with the p of course, a silent p um that is from Greek meaning winged lizards. And that's pretty on point because they were reptiles. They were not dinosaurs. Yes, big big distinction here. They're close, it's like a sister to a dinosaur. Perhaps they're from the same claude, which is arcasaurs, but it's a really

wide claude. And all that means is that they have in the very remote asked some single common ancestor with dinosaurs. Yeah, and they were. They were around roughly the same time period and definitely and went away in the same fashion. So it's it's normal, i think for people to say, look at that pterodactyl, look at that flying dinosaur, even though neither one of those is necessarily correct. Yeah, So, just to get this across one more time, pterosaurs were

not flying dinosaurs. They were flying reptiles, but they weren't dinosaurs. They weren't birds either, And to confuse things even further, there were birds around at the time of the dinosaurs and the time of the pterosaurs. And to confuse things even further, there were such things as actual flying dinosaurs we call them velociraptors, right, and these vertebrates. Actually we're flying long before birds and bats by like millions and millions of years. Yeah, think this How Stuff Works article.

This is a good one. I gotta give big ups to Clint um pump Free. Yeah, pretty good. Yeah, it sounds like an action how Stuff Works writer chest be Frock. You know, uh um but he he said, I think eighty million years difference. Eighty million years before. Yeah, I mean that's that's a lot of years it is. Um. So there's a lot of like confusing stuff flying around.

And I think there's one other thing we should probably address right out of the gate is that you you you shouldn't call them pterod actyls, even though a lot of people do. Pterod Actyls are actually a specific genus of pterosaurs. Um, So to call all pterosaurs pterod actyls would be incorrect. But you could call all pterod actyls pterosaurs, okay. Yeah.

And and technically, like if you have seen this this thing in movies a lot that they say that's a pterodactyl, what you've probably been looking at this whole time is one of the the species. And there you know, potentially up to two hundred of these species right now. I think they've identified about a hundred hundred thirty ish. But a tara uh tara no done is how you'd say it. I that's what I would have gone, like, Tara no

down right. That's probably what you've been seeing in movies all this time that you've been saying, that's a pterodactyl. Like if you if you look up an image search of the Torontodon, you'll say that that's a pterodactyl because I saw it in King Kong. Yeah, it's like this giant wing beast with kind of short, stubby legs and a huge wing span and like a weird crest on its head in a long pointy beak. A pterodactyl. Everybody knows what a pterodactyl is. Don't be an idiot. Yeah,

you saw in King Konge. Saw the same thing in Jurassic Park three in two thousand one. Right, things hadn't changed all that much. But in that time span, it's actually kind of surprising because our under standing of um tara stars had increased dramatically, and yet we were still just basically thinking of them exclusively as pterod actyls, which isn't the case. Yeah, there was a paleontologist named O. C.

Marsh who, Uh, it's a pretty good name for a paleontologist. Uh. He collected these first fossils and what is now and was then Western Kansas in the late eight hundreds, like eighteen seventy, and they've been well. I was about to say, they've been digging up lots of these since then. They sort of have, but uh, not nearly as many as other types of fossils, because these fossils are really highly breakable and dissolvable and uh, they're they're tough to get

a hold of and keeping one piece throughout the process. Yeah, we should, we should talk about that. Like, one of the reasons there is so little understanding of tara stars is because they don't fossilize very well now because their bones were not designed to be fossilized. They were designed to allow these giant reptiles to fly. They didn't say like, oh, we need to be designed to leave our mark later. No,

it's like we want to fly right exactly. So early on, I think the first tarodon or the first terrasaur Um specimen was found in the late eighteenth century in Germany Um and by the time O. C. Marsh was digging them up a hundred years later in Kansas Um. They've they've been discovered, but they'd also just kind of been abandoned because there were very few follow up fossils that were identified, right, So when O. C. Marsh started to

dig him up, this is a big deal. And because he was finding virtually all of the same species, the taranodon um, that became the common conception of the the what the terrasaar is. But it was coupled with an earlier named Pterodactyl that had been given to the the entire uh species or the entire group by George Cuvier and I think eighteen twelve. Yeah, and that first fossil you're talking about, no one knows. No one got credit

for that, for digging that thing up. But like you said, it was in Germany in a lime in limestone, like a hundred and fifty million year old limestone late in the eighteenth century that eventually found its way to a man with a great name, uh Cosimo Alessandro Collini. Man. When I first came across this in his article, I was like, I'm looking forward to hearing Chuck say that

guy's name that's him. He was Italian go figure, and he was a natural scientist, and he, like many others to follow, for a long time, didn't really know what it was, since since he they found that in an ancient lagoon with all kinds of seafaring creatures, he understandably thought it was a seafaring creature. Yeah. And some of the best perverse preserved fossils that we have of these things are found in things like lagoons where something happened

to them. They died, suddenly quickly fell into a like a body of water um which probably broke their fall a little bit. They landed at the muck. Then we're covered up potentially in some anaerobic um in an anaerobic state, and eventually became fossilized very gently. That's what it takes to to fossilize a terra star. Yeah. And Cuvier, who um kind of got it all wrong by calling it

a pterodactyl for everyone in the future. He was actually the same dude though, who did say, actually, I think those are wings, not paddles, and that was, you know, a big breakthrough. Yeah, And the reason he called them pterodactyls it means wing finger in the Greek. Right, so tara saw means winged lizard and pterodactyl means wing finger because as we'll see, the the front edge of the wing, the leading edge of the wing is actually an extraordinarily

long pinky. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. I think so too. It that's a good way to lead up to a break too, don't you think? Agreed? Let's go. Well, now we're on the road, driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two from Josh can chuck. It's stuff you should know. All right, Okay, we're back. I feel like we kind of jumbled things up like a bunch of terra star bones. Sure, so let's reset here, shall we? Should we reset with the

head let's the head crests. If you've seen a movie like Jurassic Park, and you saw what you thought was a pterodactyl and that and he had that beautiful looking he or she, well maybe maybe he, because now they think maybe only the males. But these head crests, uh, these things were sort of one of the staples of of many, if not all, of these species. But they were all really different and some fantastic looking, and they're not exactly sure. There's still a lot of debate over

what they use these big crests for. Yeah, they thought maybe they use them as a rudder in the air to steer with and the flying around. It does make sense, um. Some people thought that they may be used them as a marine rudder. Maybe they used them for defense because they were like made of horn and bone covered with skin, and they think possibly they had coloring to them, maybe they had feathers or light for They're not quite sure.

But because there's just such a lack of understanding, and because tara saur fossils are so few and far between, it's still basically anybody's guess what they were used for. But then I think in Germany, I'm not exactly certain when this was discovered, but a email TerraSAR was discovered um a and it had a or I should say she had an egg in her um overducts. Still, so it was the only terra star to ever be positively identified by sex um in the history of the world.

And she lacked that headcrest, so it really lent support to the idea that it was males only, kind of like how a peacock has the very bright feathers and the p hen does not. They think that maybe it's the same thing or more kin to like antlers in Dear or Moose. They're males are the ones that have the antlers, and they think they use it maybe a little bit for defense, but mostly to say, hey, I'm a dude and I'm looking for some action. Check out the sides of my antlers. They think it was probably

the same with Tira sars now. Yeah, and these things, like, uh, it's amazing when you look up these pictures. Some of them are just really fantastically colored. Some of them are really big, like that Tapahara imperator. Yeah, if you look up one terrace are during this episode, make it this guy. Yeah, this is cool. This thing looks like it literally has a sailboat sail on top of its head. It's and like if the coloring is anywhere remotely like what the

artist's conceptions are, it just must have been something to see. Yeah, that nicktosaurus is pretty interesting too. Um, this this one didn't seem to have any sort of it looked like a sail, uh without the sail, Like, what do you call the frame of the sail. I'm sure there's some great name for it, the uh the timber, the timber, sure, but these I mean it's they liken it in this article. Uh, the pump does two television into a and they are

really big and look only clunky to me. Yeah, I mean it would be good for skewering, I guess, but it could also be terrible for screwing. Like if you were hunting or spearing fish with it, you could probably catch a lot of fish, but you couldn't get the fish off because it's they're just these antenna We're just way too tall and long. Yeah. And then this terra dusto is really um, you should look at that one

up to it's pretty amazing. This one looks like this one looks like if a dinosaur mated with a pelican and a toothbrush. Yeah. I saw one person described it as a toothbrush with wings. Yeah. The like the lower jaw has like a thousand really long small needle like teeth, and it looks like this big toothbrushy underbyte. Yeah, and it does. Like when you look at it, you're like, oh, it's clearly gotta be related to a pelican. Again, it's not.

Pelicans and birden birds are around during the time of dinosaurs, and if birds are anything, they're actually the real flying dinosaurs.

But it does look a lot like it, and it makes sense that it would because from what we're learning about Tera saurs now these days, is that a lot of them were ocean going, that they had the goods to fly across an entire ocean over the course of a few days, like maybe an albatross would um, and that they would fly low, some of them and skim the surface of these ancient oceans in on Earth and scoop up marine life with their with their jaws, with

their lower jaw, just like a pelican would um. So what's what's even more interesting about that, besides the idea that this is going on a hundred million years ago, is that pelicans are not related to these things, so that this this trait, this behavior, this characteristic evolved more than one time. You know what I'm saying. I find that fascinating Rather than saying, oh, pelicans descended from that, Actually they didn't. That's just two different branches of the

same tree developing into something very similar. And what they call it um yeah or no convert convergent evolution. I think yes, it is it's conversion evolution, when like a trait or behave of your characteristic develops separately among different branches of the tree, rather than developing once and then

descendants all have that same trait. Yeah. And although they did certainly love a good seafood meal, uh, they used to think that was sort of all they ate, and now new research suggests that they do eat or did eat, uh, all kinds of things, even tiny dinosaurs. Yeah. The way that they're they describe them now is that it's just like birds. Right, You've got birds that eat all sorts of different things that fill all sorts of different ecological niches.

That's what they're coming to to the conclusion about with terasaurs, Which I mean, Chuck, this is like a huge sea change from what it was even back in the nineteen fifties or sixties or seventies, and we thought there were just a few species, and it turns out there were a ton of different ones and a lot of variety and a lot of diversity. And now we're starting to kind of get a handle on that. Yeah, and they think they were probably able after they hatched to fly

pretty quickly to take care of themselves pretty quickly. Um and, like you mentioned, they're flying they believe now? Was they were kind of built for the long haul. Um did. Weren't super fast, but could you know, like a long distance jet liner? Right? But some of them there were small, Some of them were smallest songbirds, and I imagine they were flitty. Yeah. I can't remember the name of one, but there was one that was extremely tiny, a very tiny,

little little flying pterosaur. Could you imagine anything more frightening than what you would call a pterodactyl the size of a robin? Yeah? I imagine a hundred of those, or it could look kind of cool like the little UFOs and batteries not included, remember those. I didn't see that movie. Do you remember like the ads or anything from it? Though? No? It was basically Cocoon, but set in a tenement and um and with UFOs rather than the actual aliens. Okay,

it was very similar though, huh. I think Donna Michi was in both. Maybe why not? He had that market cornered. If you can get your hands on Donna Michi, you put him in your movie, buddy, Yeah for sure. So okay, where are we at, Chuck? Well? I think we can go we can hop over to um the fact that for many years people thought we've already mentioned birds, but bats was the other thing that people confused them with.

There was a an anatoby professor named Samuel Thomas von Summering, and in the eighteen hundreds he incorrectly suggested that these were bats. Another paleon Teller's named Harry Seeley even wrote a book called Dragons of the Sky in which he said birds were the descendants of these uh. And it's a it's understandable why these dudes were wrong. They were doing the best they could. And when you look at those wings, uh, it looks you know, that membrane, it

looks like it would be a bat swing. But there are there are some differences. Yeah, there's some big differences. And you like a bat in particular, I could see confusing it with right, like an ancient bat, because with a bat, you have four digits, and three of those digits form the bones in the wing, and you've got one little digit wiggling free, so a bat can climb around with its index fingers. Right, with a terra star, you have three digits that are free and then the pinky.

The fourth digit is the one that forms that long sometimes ten long bone that's the front ende of the wing. But they had three uh, they had three fingers free.

And this is really significant because before they used to think and if you go back and you look at how pterodactyls were drawn in like the middle of the twentieth century, UM, when they weren't in flight, they're probably standing on their back legs, and they realized that this is probably not how terasaurs stood that instead, because the the the their foe arms were far more powerful than their back legs, they were probably quadrupeds, which meant that

they um walked on all four legs using putting most of their weight on their front way legs with their front floor arms, with their three free digits, and their their wings tucked off to the side. Um. And they look kind of like like a cartoon bulldog walks, is what I'm seeing. That's what they think now, Like a cartoon bulldog, not a real one. Right, well, I mean a real bulldog doesn't walk quite like a cartoon bulldog. Cartoon bulldogs more exaggerated and pronounced. You know what I mean,

It's a cartoon. Should we take another break? All right, we'll do that, and then we'll talk a little bit about how they fly and and other good stuff. Right after this terrasaurs, Well, now we're on the road driving in your truck. Want to learn a thing or two

from Josh can chuck. It's stuff you should know, all right, all right, So you mentioned they were quadrupedal mhm, four footed, four footed, and initially they thought that they would like birds because we see birds do it, and it's probably especially back in the eighteen hundreds, it was, uh, maybe they're all working off the notion of the easiest solution is probably correct because they would see a bird hop off those back legs and think, well, this is clearly

what ptero dactyls did. Yeah, yeah, and I never thought about that, But that's like exctuly what a bird does. It jumps up in the air from its back legs and flaps its wings and then provides lift from that point on using its wings. Yeah. I'd never really thought about that, but that's how birds fly. Yeah, they hop around and if they want to. And and it's funny.

One of the other articles you sent, uh, one of those guys believed the palion Tallers believes that it even evolved into flying that they used to hop around on four legs, and eventually they started jumping higher and higher and then started flapping and then before you knew what they were flying. Yeah, maybe they went from leaping to

gliding to flying. Um, And they don't know. Again, they haven't found what you would call a proto um terrace star like whatever was the link between ancient reptiles and terrasaurs. But um, that's kind of the current guess right now is that they evolved from some small light lizard that was good at jumping. Yeah, and there they one of the big keys and finding out and I don't think

you said this how strong their arms were. Yeah, that that sort of was a big breakthrough because when you think of like, you think it all comes from the legs because they're jumping. But because they found more fossils, they realized they were a quadrupedal and they said, man, they actually have incredibly strong arms and shoulders and these little tiny feet. So not only are the quadrupedal, but a lot of that initial hopping lift may come from

the arms and not the legs at all. So they think, now what they do is so it's just basically pushed themselves off their front arms and legs to an extent, and it just basically hop up into the air and then start flapping their wings rather than like a bird jumping off of their back legs. Is that what you mean? Yeah? And then but most of that comes from the from the arms and shoulders rather than the feet, and the feet I think just sort of drag behind. Uh and

perhaps maybe helped with steering, Is that right? Uh? Yeah? And they so there you can actually divide terosaurs into two groups depending on when they they were around. One started around a hundred and fifty million years ago, and then one came later. And the first groups had long tails. So if you look at old drawings of pterot actyls, you'll frequently see with kind of like a long forked devil's tail, you know, and that it's actually kind of accurate.

They think that the original ones had longer tails to learn to steer in the air. But then as they got more and more UM adapted to flying gracefully, they lost their tails. So the later ones, the ones that were around UM when the Cretaceous period ended suddenly UM mostly called oz dar kids, which is not an easy word to pronounce um that that they had they had lost their tails because they had developed other methods of

of changing how they fly midflight. So like they because the wing member rain was connected to their ankle from their shoulder um with their finger uh kind of providing the front of the wing, if they altered the angle of their wristbone where they moved their ankle in and out, it would change the actual dynamics of their wing and they could dive and lift and do all sorts of

other things. Which is this is a big sea change in our understanding of terasaurs too, because they used to think that they basically had to run and jump off of a cliff to gain flight. Yeah, because they were so weird looking and so weirdly um developed in different ways, huge heads, enormous beaks, big head crests, small, puny, little withered feet, you know, like um like um Mr Burne's hands or yeah, that's a good one, or um David Cross and the Titanica uh segment on Mr Show like that, right,

that's like a terrastaur's leg. So it didn't make any sense how they flew. But now that we're starting to learn more and more about them, we're like, oh, actually they had a lot of really really interesting adaptations, um, not the least of which was their bones. Yeah, I mean are all of their bones hollow or just those

wing bones all of them? Wow? I mean that made them incredibly light obviously, but that also ended up being one of the problems and trying to get fossils of these guys, because they just they were very highly uh destructible, non fossilizeable, non fossilizable. Do you remember a fossil episode that was like one of the better old ones if you ask me, Yeah, I agree, I learned, I learned a lot on that. Yeah, we should trot that out in the selects soon. That's a great idea, would be

a good one. Um. They also thought if they were on water, uh, like they had just had a little snack on a on a lake, that they would use those wings as paddles and just get going that way, pushing off the surface and then flapping until they were, you know, shaking it off above the above the water, right, exactly a lot like marine birds do today. Right. So those bones, um, like you you kind of hit it

on the head. They are extor they were extremely light, right, They they were about a millimeter thick, something like the thickness of a playing card I saw. But it is super nuts, especially considering that these things were holding up like a bird that was up to twenty ft tall, right, or not a bird, a TerraSAR man. I just averted so much email chuck, Uh, like a millimeter thick bone wall. But the way that their bones were made, they were made of cross sections of basically like plywood, so they

were really strong. And then if you cut their bone in two and looked down the hollow tube, you would see that there are little struts criss crossing to provide even more internal support for those bones. So you could have a twenty foot tall uh terra Star that could actually fly because it was that light. I saw one um one of the as dark kids. Uh was it was something like had a twenty foot wingspan, but it

probably didn't weigh any more than twenty pounds. Yeah. And some of these, I mean, what were the largest ones liket in wingspan? Yeah, so about like ten to fifteen meters in wingspan. Um, like the size of like a jet plane, like a fighter jet. I just flew in my first private jet. Oh yeah, how was it? Uh?

You know, what. First of all, I've always wanted to fly on a private jet, but never thought I would have cause to um, because you know, unless you're extremely wealthy, you only do that if you get invited to for some strange reason, Like you don't just book it. You you should be on high alert if you're some wealthy person invites you on the private jet. Uh. And it was awesome. It was as awesome as you think, And the most awesome part of it was the just the

sheer lack of hassle. Yeah, like you Like, I parked my car at the little tiny airport here in De Cabb County. Uh, walked across the parking lot and into the lobby and there's literally a guy standing there, a captain, and he was like, are you Chuck, And I said yes, and he said right this way, and he walked out the back door and there's a plane and they say watch your head. You get on it. And he says,

you're ready to go. That's was it just you? No, no, no, that was like uh five of us on an eight seater. Everybody was waiting for you. Uh. Yeah. I was the last person to get there, and I was a little stressed. But then I thought, wait a minute, that's the other perk is they don't leave you yea, like there. I mean there's a schedule, but it's really late. But it was cool. I mean they're the one we were on.

Was I mean, it's not roomy, so it's not like Air Force one or anything, like you feel like you can just walk around. But like when I was standing, I'm five ft ten and if I said completely straight, my head would brush the ceiling a little bit. Mhm. But uh, and you're just like private but no t s A like you just you just walk on. They fly you there and then you get off and you're

right there. It's like this just the lack of hassle, and all I could think of was like, man, it must be great to be a billionaire sure and never have to deal with an airport again. Yeah, but yeah, it was kind of cool. But then also once you're up there, you're kind of like, well, you know, it's it's it's not like life changing. Yeah you you me, Actually I've never flown on one. You me flew on one and you said basically the exact same thing you did that. Just the the lack of hassle and how

fast you get somewhere. Yeah, Um, is just just beyond amazing. Yeah. I mean it takes away hours and hours of airport crap. I know, you start to develop like that terrible sensation where your eyes hurt for some weird reason to even know you haven't even gotten on the plane yet. Like there's a lot of stuff that I'd be happy to

leave behind. Yeah. And it also when you're going to take off, because just because it's small, it feels like you're going as fast as you're going, whereas in a in a jumbo jet, it really doesn't right, Like I was kind of like, man, we're going fast. So oh hey, so um, speaking of you, me and flying, I have an update. Okay, do you remember the story about the

Russia visas that we failed to get? I told her that I told that story and she was like, you said, we we forgot And I was like, yeah, we did, right, and she's like, no, we asked like five different people, five different times, and we're told we didn't need visas. So I wanted to let you know, Chuck, that we actually are as buttoned up as you think. We were just misinformed. We got that great email from a new listener that was like, listen to some dumb story about

some guy, and it's dumb visa. I was like, oh, welcome to the show, brother, Yeah you should probably door. Was that that guy? That one guy? Okay, yeah, he's very turned off by your side about your visa story. Yeah whatever, So anyway, thanks for indulging the private jet convo. Yeah, I'll bet that guy loved the private jet. It'll probably never happen again. But it was basically like writing around on a on a tarrasaur. So that's how I wedged

it in there. Nice work, that's nice. So, um, I'm trying to think of what else, Like Tara Saurs kind of bring out the little entertain year old to me. I don't know if you've noticed, but I'm wearing my um little outdoor archaeologist boots. I see that white white pull up cruise socks, and I'm just a total little nerd. You keep dusting everything in here too. I'm not even like one of those dinosaur nerds, but some just getting into researching dinosaurs. Does it do that to YouTube? Just

kind of draws out like the little kid? I think so, And I think probably because at least when I was in you and I were growing up. I feel like public schools just like did such a poor job of talking about these periods. Oh yeah, you know, yeah I remember that. But I also remember dinosaurs being kind of huge in the eighties. Uh yeah, at least they were in Ohio. M does that an Ohio thing? I don't know, I'm trying to remember. I mean, Jurassic Park obviously changed

everything as far but when was that nineties? Yeah? Early nineties. Yeah, but I feel like dinosaurs are pretty popular among the kids before that. Maybe maybe I'm wrong, Maybe I hit my head and don't realize it. I don't know. I know kids. I mean, my daughter loves dinosaurs, So it's a thing. Yeah, it definitely is a thing. Um, and it's getting to be even more of a thing the more we learn about terrasaurs too. It was just somebody called that the twenty one century the golden age of

terrasaur research. So they're expecting big things from the field. Yeah, and like you said, hopefully they can find that proto terroristaur and that's when the community really gets all excited when they can make those links. Hey, you know, it's speaking of the community. I read this article in National geographic and God bless him. I can't remember the guy who wrote it, but it's called white Terrasaurs were the

Weirdest Wonders on Wings. It's a great article, and um, the guy basically just got into all like the dirty laundry of the terrastar paleontology community. And apparently they're very well known among paleontologists for just despising each other. Like the terrastaur paleontologists don't like each other, talk smack about each other publicly, and just snipe at one another a lot, which just makes the whole thing even that much more fascinating,

you know, Like they're real competitive and real backbity interesting. Yeah, and in this case that's a good thing, Yeah, because they keep pushing one another. Agreed, You got anything else? Now? Are we done with terrasaurs? I don't have anything else, I don't think. Okay, Well, if you want to know more about tarasaurs, go to your local natural history history museum and say, hey, tell me about that pterodactyl. See if you can stump them. Uh. And since I said stump,

it's time for listener mail. I'm gonna call this one. Which one is this one? Oh? Um foot binding. I believe we did this in a select episode. It was it's one of our older ones, but a really good one. I think I agreed, and this goes like this. Hey guys, I'm assumed to be grad student from uh Guangdong, China and have been a listener for a couple of years now. This is my first time writing in and it's about

foot binding. I talked to my grandmother after listening, remembering she told me that her grandmother had bound her feet. I asked if great great Grandma had trouble walking, and she said she had never even wobbled a little bit. Because it turns out she never made her own little shoes. She just bought toddler shoes for herself. That's called making lemons. No, that's called making lemonade out of lemons with your feet.

That's right, she said. Great great Grandma came from a wealthy family, and bound feet were more of a symbol of your family wealth, meaning you don't have to do farming chores and catering to the male foot fetish at that time. We are not exactly sure when she was born, but we do know that when her daughter, my great grandmother, was born in nineteen fourteen. She made sure that her feet were never bound. She also put all of her kids through high school, which is very remarkable back then.

Oh yeah, footbinding is certainly not something that I am proud of. To think that I'm just five generations away from having to get my own feet bound. That's supposed to sitting here writing you guys right now, it just says uh to me, how far we've gone. Thanks for the show. By the way, in the Draft podcast, Josh was having trouble pronouncing Q I n G honesty. Q may be roughly pronounced as t S, not exactly the same, So just say sing next time, that would do. I didn't.

I don't even think I tried that one. I tried every other phoneyme except for sing uh. And this is best regards from Ruoi. Thank you very much. Ruoi. That's pretty cool and like nice sense of perspective to um. If you want to get in touch with us with an awesome story like Ruoe did, you can catch up with us on social media. Just go to our website Stuff you Should Know dot com uh and you will

find all of our social media links there. And if you want to send us a good old fashioned email, Wrap it up, smack it on the bottom, and send it off to Stuff podcast at how stuff works dot com. For more on this and thousands of other topics, is it how stuff works dot com.