Welcome to the nonprofits. For today, we have another science episode, but this one's a little bit different because today we're going to talk about butts as well. Kara, what do you have about butts to tell us about today?
Well, I'll tell you. Scientists recently discovered a fascinating instance of two individual comb jellies fusing into a single body after realizing that one of their specimens appeared to have developed two butts. In the instance described in this article, apparently, overnight, the bodies of two comb jellies had not only fused together, but also their nervous systems and digestive systems were operating
as one entity. The only remaining vestiges of individuality were their transient anuses, which continued to poop independently of one another. This rare phenomenon challenges the traditional concept of what defines an individual organism, revealing the plasticity and adaptability of life forms.
The study of his new insights into how organisms evolve and function when combined, building on historical experiments by those like those by B. R. Coonfield in the nineteen thirties, and these findings contribute to our understanding of marine biology, evolutionary development, as well as transplant research. Oh and this story is from Scientific American by Elizabeth Ann Brown on October seventh, twenty twenty four.
Thanks Kara. Now, I've got to say that I'm going to do my best to not make this a childless ran about butts, because really the story actually had some very interesting topics to be brought up in it. One in particular for me is I have a friend who came home from the hospital today from a liver transplant, so understanding how risky and complicated that process is, this is definitely one of those things I thought that shed
a lot of light on potentials in that field. AJ, could you enlighten us on that.
Now, these frankin jellies may seem like just a creepy, freaky, or even funny creature, something hard to imagine existing in the real worldwide, but this discovery and the research around it could have some major implications in human medical advancements. Their researchers explain that this could help scientists unravel the
mystery of what's called a lot recognition in humans. Just like in Jelly's, this process helps human bodies recognize that a body party transplanted into their bodies doesn't belong to them, and this happens by activating the immune system and triggering the rejection process. So by learning more about the exact processes that the immune system and the body use that leads to rejection could help us develop medications, procedures, or anything that can prevent or lower the rate of organ
rejection in the future. And one of the researchers say that simple organisms hold clues to understanding our own complexities as well as stressures that can benefit our lives.
Thanks Aj, and I really thought that was a great quote. In fact, I was going to use that quote leading up to my next segment with Kara, but I won't have to even say it this time. But taking that quote that AJ brought up, I do think that this is also a reminder in me personally. I was wondering how you felt on it about how we define life
and individuality in the first place. You know, people like to put things in a box and say this is what it means to be a person or this is and then they always want all these little specific easy to fit on, one size fits all. What did you think about what that quote that Aj about simple organisms holding clues to understanding our own complexity.
Well, I liked that quote as well, And you know, I think you bring up a good point too, about how we really have a tendency to center human life as sort of the metric by which we measure anything else in terms of value or meaning or anything like that. And yeah, and in fact, our bodies as humans are not entirely made up of human cells. In fact, the majority of the cells in our body, we have learned,
are not necessarily human. We have a lot of other critters and organisms in and on us at all times, and that is a normal state of affairs. You know, we've learned a lot more about our microbiome in recent years, and it's even been proposed by some people that perhaps bacteria were the first species to domesticate other species, as it were, and maybe we're all going around doing just what they want us to to keep them alive inside
of our bodies. So yeah, I think it's an interesting point and a good example of an organism doing something that we don't normally think of as possible. But that suggests possibility for what we might be able to do with technology and with additional learning, for things like finding ways to prevent transplant patients from rejecting the organs that they're using and things like that, which I think is fantastic.
I also think that to your earlier point, it's kind of interesting that probably the only reason we're talking about this article is because the science communicator who wrote about it in this article framed it in terms of this is a story about this organism with two butts, and we all want to laugh and joke about the two butts and the transient anus. And that was a great strategy to get us reading about research that might otherwise seem pretty dry and uninteresting. And here we are talking
about it on a podcast. So I think that was a win.
On a Halloween episode, no less, you know Halloween, we see we see spiders and bats and black cats as the mascots for spookines. But I was not expecting a jelly with two buttholes to make the cut. But I have to say that the weirdest thing about this calm jelly isn't that it had two bats, but how they work. Okay, you mentioned earlier that they have was called that transient anals, and this means that they're inners, not only forms. It only forms when they need to poop, so after they're
finished defecating, the anals completely disappears. It's gone. You can't see it nowhere to be found, you know. Uh. And in the study they were saying that that they injected dye into the food for the jellies, right, and they fed it to the jellies, and they realized that even though the food was going into one of the jelly's mouth, it was actually going through both of their gastro intestinal systems, and they both pooped out out of the food that, you know, even even though only one of them had
eaten it. So it means that their internal organs completely merged, which I was disgusting and quey. At the same.
Time, I've definitely thought that the idea of I was fascinated and I probably shouldn't admit it by the idea of the transient anus where it was just as I may have mentioned to someone one of you earlier, it felt like playing whack a mole with butts, because you
just never know where it's going to show up. And I thought that was really cool, especially realizing that in spite of all the things that they had in common, they still had retained that aspect of individuality, and I couldn't help but think that I think that's an aspect of originality that as humans, many of us make sure we hold on to our ability to be a transient. But but you know, that's something else entirely. Caroen, did you have something you wanted to say about the whole
idea of this nineteen thirties Coonfield experiments. Did you have any perspective on that?
Well, Yeah, I do think it's a bit creepy personally, And if you read up on the experiments, which I have just only done a cursory review of, it sounds as though the researchers were kind of intentionally inflicting these injuries and then actually connecting these other kinds of jellyfishes together to see if that would work and how it would work. And I find that visual imagery particularly horrifying. It reminds me of some of those horror movies where
they're sewing people together. And what I think is interesting is that in the story about this article, it doesn't tell us that the researchers here intentionally injured the two jellies to see if they would fuse together. It's very vague on how this occurred. But reading some other articles about it, it seems to imply that it may have been intentional, but this article doesn't say that so, and I don't know for sure. I wasn't able to find a full copy of the actual published article about this,
so I will hold off on judgment there. But I think it's interesting that it was probably apparent to the writer of this article that it would be a little bit more horrifying than intended if we mentioned that this was something that was intentionally done to the jellies, And to me, that kind of brings up some questions about sort of the ethical implications of the types of studies
that we do on other kinds of organisms. Of course, this one does sound like it has some very important benefits to humans in terms of the types of medical technology that we could gain from it. I can see how it may have been approved even if it was something that was intentionally done. But at the same time, that's just another aspect of it that kind of gives me the creeps.
Yeah, so on that topic, you know, just like you, I had to go and look for more because it was such an interesting st And I do remember reading on one of the articles that said that they had actually picked up the jelly's from the beach or whatever they were at and the facility and brought them into the facility, and they had gotten injured in the sort of transportation. So I don't think it was necessarily done
on purpose. It is possible, you don't know, But I think the interesting thing that I learned about it was that in the nineteen thirties day at the same facility,
they had done a very similar experiment. So it makes you wonder whether they did do it on purpose, since they had already done that in the past, and it seems like another marine biologist had performed, as I said, performed the same a very similar experiment and found that there was just the result was something that was like what night mirrors are made of, because it was like a sort of Franken jelly that had the bodies of four individual of jelly's with the mouth and the sensory
organs and the butt of a fifth win So it was just very, very creepy and crazy. So yeah, it really does make you wonder whether there was some intention to trying to repeat that same experiment from the nineteen thirties. But you know, since we have much better technology now maybe they were trying to do some more research on the similar aspects that they to what they had found out back then.
You have to consider at least the possibility considering that's the same facility that even though years later, that these things get around. It's not like the marine biologist community is this massive, multi billion number numerical people who just are all isolated, So it wouldn't surprise me. But at the same time, I did notice that the article made a comment about but with modern day you know, rigorous
studies and all that. It framed it as being a more modernized version and a more what we would consider modern day scientific way of doing it that perhaps was done in Konsfield time. Maybe not. Maybe this is just an assumption the article, the writer the article wanted to portray because of the squeamish factor of people going on, what are they doing? So we don't have anything better to do than go around using comb jellies, you know, for the fun of it. But of course this isn't
really for the fun of it. But at the same time, you do bring up an important point, Kara, and that is is that there is an ethics aspect here to be considered. Even in what we consider a simple, simple organism. Because the truth is they talked about this us learning from these simple organisms. I couldn't help it apply what an ultimately social creature. We wouldn't even think of this as being a social animal. But how much more social is it to share your own body with another person
in a quite literal sense. Obviously not something that we can literally do, But what do you think reflects aja on social aspects and our species and our origin as social species? Is this an example social species starting out?
I think that that's really what what's really interesting is that I believe that the reason they were studying these specific jellius is because they are the only animals that we know of so far that have this lack of all recognition, so their bodies cannot separate whether their souls come from a different body within their own same species or not. And every other animal that we know of, including humans, have that ability to do that, and that's
why we have, you know, our organ rejection. But I think that I don't know if if it is exactly sort of like an adaptation, perhaps maybe it helps them survive. And I think that studying this very unique quality could help us humans learn a lot more about about ourselves and about how how we came to be this way, right, and as you said, on a more as we are as a socio species, this could help us with recognizing how how we are individual, how individual we are.
I was just wondering about you, because I definitely think the next time I'm talking to someone who starts talking about the superiority of humans and how they only they do these certain things, I would say that because these start out with wounds there, these are creatures that are harmed who then work together and they both survive in this process. So I think that is very telling. What about you, No.
I completely agree. One of my pet peeves is actually when people kind of talk about being a human almost as if it's the ultimate organism and every other species is sort of defined by its differences as a deficit
in comparison to the way people are. And in fact, I think that's incredibly myopic view, and I mean that in some cases quite literally, and that you know, human vision is not nearly as good as many other species, and yet we tend to talk about our companion animals in terms of things like, oh, well, you know dogs are color blind, and you know this and that, But you know, how often do we talk about the fact that, you know, their sense of smell is so far beyond
ours that we can't even imagine what it would be like to be able to sniff the air and determine how many people were here recently and when they left in which direction they went. And you know, that's just
one example. And this is another one where we've got an animal that, in cases of injury, can actually not just heal itself, but you know, fuse with another to continue to have all of its internal functions continue, which is an incredible So I love that we're kind of thinking about it in terms of, look, how cool these other organisms are and all of the things that we can learn from them, not just how are they similar to or different from us, but actually having a greater
appreciation for them and their existence. And maybe even in the future we'll start to incorporate things like considering their willingness to participate in our experiments and interventions.
Yeah, it's interesting that you mentioned doves being color blind in comparison to humans and how we see ourselves as being above them, right, because humans have only we color receptive cones in our eyes