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At Popular Science, we report and write dozens of science and tech stories every week. And while most of the stuff we stumble across makes it into our articles, we also find plenty of weird facts that we just keep around the office. So we figured, why not share those with you? Welcome to the weirdest thing I learned this week from the editors of Popular Science. I'm Rachel Feltman. I'm Jess Bode. And I'm Belen Cacho. Welcome to the show, Jess!
Would you introduce our guest? Yes. So this is one of my pals from Twitch. We met just by happenstance because I think you raided me once. I was playing a really fun indie game called Superliminal, which is a real, I love that game. It's like a cool puzzle game. And I saw your username and I was like, oh my god, are you a science gamer Twitch person? Because I make a, you know, me and my pal Rachel make this awesome science show. Well, and you have to share what the username is.
Oh, science streams? Also, Twitch Ambassador. They're wonderful. You and your wife run your guys' channel. Tell us a little bit about it. Yeah, so my wife and I, we both run the channel together. Like Jeff said, we have our PhDs in molecular biology from Dartmouth. We have our master's in biology.
from Emory, and we did our postdoctoral work at the University of Pennsylvania, and we believe that science should be accessible to everyone. And so we started a Twitch channel under that premise, and we're here today as Twitch Ambassadors. Yeah, it's so sick you got Ambassador. That's so amazing. It's so shocking. I can't believe it actually happened. You guys deserve it.
You deserve it. To be honest, I don't know what that means, but it sounds really impressive and I'm very happy for you. It's a very prestigious thing. Instead of your Twitch partner badge, which is already a huge deal, you get a... multicolored Twitch partner badge and it's like you're kind of like a liaison between Twitch staff and like Twitch the rest of us. Very cool. It's set up. I believe since 2017 when they started there's 180 ambassadors total. and we're the first and only so far.
Hell yeah. You're like a prefect or head boy. I've been reading a lot of Harry Potter fan fiction lately. I mean, what science, if not magic, but real, right? That is so true. Also, I should clarify for listeners, all the Harry Potter fan fiction I read is super gay and would make J.K. Rowling very mad. Yes. Hell yeah. And it's really better than her. Yeah. Um...
Well, let's get into the weirdest thing I learned this week. On the weirdest thing I learned this week, we start by each offering up a little tease about some kind of fact or story that we found in the course of reading, writing, reporting, etc. and decide which one we just absolutely have to hear more about first.
Then once we've all had time to spin our little science yarns, we reconvene and decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. In a chill way where we often don't actually decide what the weirdest thing we learned this week actually was. Jess, what's your tease? My tease is traffic mimes. No, you don't need to say anything more. Two words. Iconic. Um, my tease is that I'm going to talk about the real Time Lords and ladies.
of the olden days. Uh-huh. And what's your tease? Fruit flies, screaming in fear. oh well just traffic mimes is just so powerful. I think you need to kick this off. I would love to. Okay, so this was a fact that I found while scrolling good old Atlas Obscura, you know, old faithful. Yeah.
And I found a piece written by Abby Cole about mimes directing traffic. And so yesterday I sent my fact into Rachel and I was like, oh, this fact is like cool and funny and relevant. And it's like a cool scientific finding, you know, it's, you know. It was like a great fact. So I was like, Rachel, this is what I want to talk about. And Rachel was like, perfection. So I was like, great. And all that is still true. But.
Mere hours after choosing my fact, I had a traffic-related incident where I really could've used a mime. Everything is fine. I will explain. I'm glad you're fine, but where are the mimes when you need them? That's what I'm saying. They really would have come in handy. So, okay. First, picture this.
Bogota, which I believe how you pronounce the capital of Colombia and South America. It's rush hour. 5 p.m. Cars at a standstill. Trucks honking. Mopeds are weaving in and out of traffic trying to get rid of anything. All of this under the blistering Colombian sun. Everyone's just roasting. People are getting pissed. But then... a breath of fresh air not literally and not like you know
My favorite refreshing beverage when I'm really sweaty, an ice cold, cool blue Gatorade, non-spawn. I love blue Gatorade. My grandma recently, because my grandpa had the flu or something, and he's fine. But my grandma was taking care of him, and she was like, I've been giving him that alligator juice. And I was like, the what? That alligator juice! And I was like, they live in Florida, so I was like, the what?
Is this something in some bootleg beverage? It was just Gatorade. It was merely just Gatorade. Oh, I love it. Which I love. And I think we should all call it alligator Christmas. That alligator dude. Yeah. But yeah, so anyway. your grandparents need to visit Gatorland. What's Gatorland? Gatorland is like a bootleg theme park with just alligators everywhere. They just celebrated their 50-year anniversary last year. Oh my god! Okay, I need to investigate that. Oh my god.
so yeah this was this was not ice cool cool cool blue ice cold cool blue Gatorade or alligator juice or whatever this breath of fresh air He's a fellow in white face paint and black eyeliner and a striped shirt. Yes, a mime. So here in the city... If you honk a bit too aggressively, this mime is going to hold up their little gloves at you in horror. Or, you know, let's say you're doing a little jaywalking.
this mime will do like an exaggerated version of what you're doing to mock you which i love um but also if you do things right Like, you know, a nice little family waits for the walk signal and they go. Like, the mimes will do like a little cartwheel or like applause or some other nonverbal praise. and you know Why? Why not? True. But there is a reason for this, so let's go back to the beginning. Back in like 1994, 1995, this is pre-mime, Bogota had 1,500 traffic-related deaths annually.
which is a lot. And, um, they had just elected a new mayor named Antonis Makis, who fired 1,800 traffic cops. in exchange for 20 mimes. Hell yeah, honestly. Yes, I agree, I agree. uh and this dude okay so he this this new mayor he isn't just like some guy who likes mimes Which maybe he's also that, but who's to say. He had this whole plan. So he was a former professor of math and psychology. So he wanted to use that knowledge to completely transform the city and its traffic problem.
with mimes and really so he was kind of just bummed that like when the government had tried to meet traffic like violent traffic incidents with force like when they try to solve stuff with violence and force um that didn't work which like you know imagine that but he was like you know i'm really sad about this let's find a different way and he said mine uh so in the beginning his mimes had to follow like very strict rules so they held up the only thing they really did was hold up signs that said
correcto and incorrecto. And they would just hold them up. When a mime tells you incorrecto, devastating. I mean, I would be devastated. Yeah. And though simple, or perhaps maybe like because it was simple uh it started to work so by 1998 traffic violence decreased by 50 percent wow which is crazy to think about uh so they added more mimes their ranks climbed to over 400 around the city so still a small percentage because pagoda has seven million people total
But still, the mines were such a success, and they were so drama, they had become kind of famous around the city. Yeah, it's very camp. It's so camp. I love it. uh so that official mime program did end in the late 90s so it went on for like five to seven years ish officially but the people love it so much that they still carry out this tradition 30 years later and it's spread to other latin american countries so uh
Some governments in South America even hand out thumbs up or thumbs down cards to people to encourage folks to like get out there and mime. Which I love. And like, why does this work? So there was a recent behavioral science study looking at this. Researchers think that when people are willing to engage with the mimes and play along, that they're forced to rethink these everyday interactions with their larger community.
they're taking a more active part in their communities, they care more about them, that kind of thing and basically makes folks less passive. and encourage them to engage and care about their community, which makes complete sense. And something I think that a lot of Americans could benefit from too, frankly.
And this is what one behavioral science researcher said about this whole thing is that quote instead of thinking that only politicians can solve the problem or that the problem will never be resolved because that's just the way we are here The mime scheme shows that it's a collective responsibility to change, end quote, which I like a lot. Yeah, that's great. I love that. And I think that that could be a notion brought to.
All culture, not just mime or traffic culture. But, you know, I like this. um and so yeah like i said you can see traffic mimes in other countries now like peru and venezuela and apparently bolivia has traffic zebras like people in like zebra suits like you would get on Halloween or something uh which I guess is also kind of a take on mime culture sure yeah um and okay so back to the U.S. do I think this could work in the U.S.
Maybe. Somebody would shoot the mime. I'm just going to be real. That was my fear. That was my fear. And, you know, like, I think it's important to think about, too, because, like, when they introduced this in Columbia, it was still, like, in... it was still an issue where like violence was a lot of the problem um and so they were still able to implement this but i think it's probably because
you know back in the 90s people elected this mayor because he wanted to fix things with non-violence they were all already kind of like on board with that uh and the mimes were rolled out slowly and it was a gradual influx of traffic mimes and people kind of primed for it And yeah, I would fear for mime safety in America. I do think maybe there could be a nice way to implement something like this. Yeah, yeah. But yeah, like I mentioned at the top of my fact.
This is top of mind for me because a complete and total dickhead locked eyes with me out on the road and sideswiped my car. because he wanted to like merge in front of me despite me being already halfway in front of him and having the right of way and following the traffic laws and signs So, it's all fine. My mirror, my side mirror is a little bit screwed up. Uh, and then he didn't stop. He kept driving even though I know, I know he knows. I know he knows. Uh, however.
i did you know i got really mad but i stayed super calm and i called my mom on my like i didn't even call i like you know i'm doing a classic hand motion like i'm calling my mom on my phone i'm using my car's bluetooth and i'm like mom you'll never believe what just happened you know when in doubt call your mom i got a picture of its license plate and it's like a commercial truck vehicle
Oh, yeah. So I'm like, oh, you're going down, loser. I am going to contact this truck company and be like, hello, you're a driver of license plate. How is your driving? Bad. It sucks. And you need to pay for a new side mirror for me. So anyway. Also, if a mime would have been like... You know, I can't, audio listeners are knocking about venomous, but like, you know, crazy exaggerated movement. Or they could have put the car in a box.
I didn't have those options. It's useful for the mime to be like, what you're doing is clown behavior. Yes. Yes. I'm here to remind you of that. Exactly. So. Anyway, mimerie would have been, like, I would have loved that. But at the very least, hopefully I can get him in trouble at his job. So that's my traffic mime story. Justice for Jess. Um, wow. I'm really, like, the mimes in particular, it's such a wild image.
Totally. I love that. It's interesting, too, the difference between the imagery of what a mime looks like versus what a traffic cop could look like and seeing how long it's all. that's the image that calmed people, right? To lead to that decrease in violence. So it's like, is it the nonverbal stuff? Is it the appearance? Is it a little bit of both? And what was it that really drove people to be like, you know what?
I will take that extra moment. Right. And it was just like so endearing, you know? Yeah. I don't know what it is, but yeah, made people engage with their communities. So nice. All right. We're going to take a quick break and then we'll be back with some more facts. Financial planning can seem really daunting but even taking small steps forward can make a big difference.
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Okay, we're back, and I'm going to share my fact, which, as I said, is about the real-life Time Lords, and especially Time Ladies. of way back when. So I recently came across the story of Ruth Belleville who is known as the Greenwich Time Lady because she literally sold people time or at least She sold people the time, which at the time was very novel. So I need to rewind a little bit to sort of set the scene for Ruth's business. So back in 1675, King Charles II
founded the Royal Observatory. He wanted to get better at navigating the seas. He asked for a small observatory to be built at the highest point in Greenwich Park. Almost a century later, the Royal Astronomer published the first Nautical Almanac, which shared the observatory's findings with seafarers all over the world and allowed them to pinpoint their longitude.
using marine chronometers, which were kind of the first precision timepieces. Timepieces go back thousands of years. It's pretty wild how long back into history people were able to keep time pretty precisely. precision timepieces as we would now consider them. really started because of marine navigation. So you would have this super precise timepiece on a ship that would be set to Greenwich Mean Time, so the time over at the Royal Observatory.
and then you would use the sky and celestial navigation to figure out how different the time was where you were and that would help you calculate your longitude relative to Greenwich, which was huge. That was groundbreaking. People had simply not really done that before, of course. People did incredible navigation. Polynesian wayfarers did amazing celestial navigation.
thousands of years ago but for Europeans this was groundbreaking and all of this sets the scene for the very idea of having like one time that everyone agrees that it is Up until a certain point in the 1800s, every town in the London area kept its own local time based on the position of the sun so for example there was a 16 minute difference between London and Plymouth fast forward to 1833 and the royal observatory started getting into time balls
are exactly what they sound like the first one was like five feet across it was made of a wooden frame covered in leather and it was raised to the top of a 16 foot mat And then basically every day at exactly one o'clock, the observatory would drop the ball so that men who were working out on the Thames
and people who were making timekeeping devices in Clerkenwell could know the time. And yes, this is what the ball drop is referencing. Balls dropping because of a certain time happening used to be a thing. No way! Oh my god. Yeah. People went absolutely nuts for the time bomb. Aw, they loved it. They wanted more time balls. So the observatory built more so that they were visible from more places because again up until this time people told what time it was by the position of the Sun
And in a pre-industrial society, that's really all you need. Why get more precise than that? Sun goes up, sun goes down, sometimes the sun is high in the sky. You know, that really tells you everything you need to know. but now the industrial revolution has happened is happening and suddenly people want to agree on stuff happening at certain times. In particular, railways made this a big problem. Suddenly, if you had a 16 minute difference in what time you agreed it was, huge issue.
like passenger rail wasn't so much a thing yet but for like shipping and business it just started to actually matter So telegraphs meant there was an actual way to share what time it was, so they'd be like, wow, there's not just an unsolvable existential problem, there is actually something we can do about this. And eventually, telegraph signals would control the time balls, which implies it was once just dudes watching really carefully for 1 o'clock to happen.
Wow, respect. So thus began Greenwich Mean Time, first known as Railway Time for this reason. Which is just, I think is really interesting because we now all kind of take for granted that we have this unified time system but it used to be a very new idea. Just to fast forward a little bit before I rewind again, in 1880 this became official law and not just sort of a thing most people did. That happened because people kept showing up to court at the wrong time.
well sorry to me it was 9am I don't know what to tell you over in Plymouth it was 9am what's your issue so they were like okay now we're all agreeing that we use Greenwich Mean Time that is the time so if you have a course date You get there based on Greenwich Mean Time. And yeah, then that was that. In those decades between time starting to matter because of factories and trains and what not, and clocks becoming common, what did people do? Well the answer is kind of goofy.
so in the early 19th century any business that wanted an accurate time in the london area so clock makers for example bank They would basically send an employee to the Royal Observatory to... bang on the door and be like, let me see your clock. Because the Royal Observatory was the keeper of Greenwich Mean Time. They had the high precision chronometer that was referenced by all these ships at sea and that was what Greenwich Mean Time was.
so if you wanted to be sure you were matching Greenwich Me time you had to go see it and then keep in mind most people weren't carrying around accurate timepieces yet they had less advanced clocks very quickly lose their time so you had to reset them over and over again so yeah people just show up they would I assume send their like unpaid interns
what time is it and eventually somebody aren't really fed up about this they were like you can't we can't have all these bank interns and clock making apprentices showing up demanding to know what time it is So they limited their access to once a week on a Monday. Everyone had to show up and get their time for the week and just be satisfied with that. And a man named John Belville, who worked at the Royal Observatory,
or had worked. I've seen some sort of conflicting notes on what actually his title was at this time, but at least for a while he had been an apprentice at the Royal Observatory. And he saw a market for telling people what time it was.
and by the way in 1852 they would come up with a better solution for this than just saying you can't hang on our door more than once a week they put a giant clock on the outside of their gate that they kept up to date Basically they had gotten their first electric clock so that made having multiple clocks that were set to Greenwich Mean Time and all referenced the one really good clock that made that viable.
So eventually it would be just like, look at the big clock on the gate, point to the sign. That's what time it is. But, you know, there were like almost 20 years when... People were demanding to know what time it was and that giant gate clock didn't exist yet. So that's where John Belville comes in. He might have worked at the Royal Observatory at the time. At the very least, he had been an apprentice at the Royal Observatory at some point.
he saw a market for telling people what time it was so in 1836 He started charging people an annual fee to use his pocket watch. He had a very good pocket watch. And once a week, he'd come by and visit them and share the time on his watch, which he kept accurate thanks to his access to the observatory's chronometers. So then everybody else could... What an entrepreneur. Yeah, seriously. Business mastermind.
so yeah they could adjust their own watches accordingly and as a side note I just really love this The guy who like oversaw him at the observatory for some time when he was younger said that he was, quote, steady though not clever. And I'm like, first of all, I just agree. I think this man sounds very clever. But I love that he was described as steady, and then he became literally a professional timekeeper.
So this business thrived until John died in 1856 and by that time the gate clock was up. It was showing people the time. Anyone could get the time via telegraph if they really wanted to. John's 200 subscribers. knew and trusted the pocket watch system. So they asked his widow Maria if she would take up the mantle of selling them the time and she did that for another 36 years before retiring.
Now, by this point, we're in the 1890s. Again, seems very reasonable for this service to just die out with Maria. Telegraph Time was a very established technology. There were commercial firms, one called the Standard Time Company, competing with the post office Telegraph Time to get customers. But it wasn't actually as accurate or reliable as a pocket watch set regularly to the Greenwich Mean Time clock.
And apparently according to historians the post office had a reputation for like not always doing a good job sort of keeping people updated and Maria Belleville would always show up every week. so people were like we need the time lady and they asked her daughter ruth to step in and she did that with the same pocket watch that had belonged to her father which she called arnold after the guy who had made it
She carried it around London every week for another 48 years. She did have haters. At least one hater. This guy named St. John Wynn, who was a director of the Standard Time Company, tried to bring her down. And this is a great story. In 1908, he gave a speech at the United Wards Club, which was then published in the Times.
and he criticized Belleville's business methods. He was like, this is so amusingly out of date. He basically kind of crapped all over London and being like, it's wild that we don't have a better system for this. Do you know how bad it is? It's so bad that here's how people get their time. This is a quote. A woman possessed of a chronometer obtained permission from the astronomer royal at the time. Perhaps no mere man could have been successful.
So first of all, calling Ruth's mother a slut, how dare, to call at the observatory and have it corrected as often as she pleads. The business is carried on to this day by her successor. Still a female, I think. So, hugely offensive. Terrible man. Hate him. He really wanted to promote the Standard Time Company. He simply wanted her business.
And this was printed in the Times. Then a bunch of angry dudes wrote letters to the editor about how it was really egregious that London didn't have a good public system for access to accurate time, which some other major cities did by then. But, twist, all of those angry men writing into the newspapers actually seemed to boost Ruth Belleville's business because People read it and were like, oh, I didn't know there was a lady I could pay to tell me the time.
Or people are like, yeah, that's a great point. Our city is really bad at telling us what time it is. And thank goodness they've given me the name of this reliable woman who will fix that problem for me. apparently it became very fashionable to have this like personal service instead of using the telegraph and if you could afford like thrice weekly updates you were very you know that was very elite
So Ruth had like a great system. She would arrive at the Royal Observatory before nine, at least once a week. she would always refer to her watch as arnold and she would say good morning arnold's four seconds fast today and um somebody would check the watch She would set it, she would get a certificate of accuracy, and then she would go and see her clients.
Now in 1924 the BBC started broadcasting the pips and the sound of Big Ben which meant anyone with a radio could tell what time it was and then in 1936 There was the speaking clock, also called TIM, which meant you could dial the letters TIM and get the time. So by the time Ruth retired in 1940, this was very much
of a bygone era and even though it seems she had clients until the end, there wasn't really anyone scrambling for a replacement for her. Though she only retired because she was 86 and World War II made it unsafe for her to walk the street. And then she passed away a couple of years later, reportedly with Arnold by her side. Yeah, one other thing that I'm not going to get into because Ruth's story ended up being so great that I just spent the whole time reading about it.
There was another pre-clock saturation job called a knocker-upper, which is of course just a very funny sounding thing. And these were people who... would go around knocking on your windows to wake you up before work at the factory. Because again, there was this very awkward time when people were used to relying on the sun for getting up, but now they're moving into cities. They have factory jobs where your boss doesn't care about what time your body thinks it is. And, um,
There were actually, a lot of times when people talk about knock robbers, they'll be like, and alarm clocks were just impossible to get. And that's actually probably not true. Their alarm clocks have existed for thousands of years. There's some wild stuff about water-based alarm clocks that people had in ancient Greece and ancient China.
that being said the sort of like modern mechanical idea of an alarm clock those were probably available and not wildly expensive but they also weren't very reliable and then people weren't used to using alarm clocks so apparently a lot of people would have an alarm clock but then often sleep through it so the knocker-upper would be like no wake up And again, this is a job that sort of went away as... alarm clocks got better people got more used to the industrial schedule
But I love the idea of people just like hoofing it to deal with the concept of time. Honestly, I wish there were still more services that involved a trusted lady coming to your door once a week to update you on something or other.
well it kind of reminds me of like like i don't know like the time being kind of decentralized like that reminds me of like pre-internet stuff and like i don't know i think there's something kind of nice and special about having like less access to stuff like that obviously there's a lot of good reasons to have that stuff but
I don't know, maybe this is just me being nostalgic for time before the internet, but yeah. The old days when you got that hotel wake-up call instead of setting a phone alarm. Yeah, I forgot about that! Wow. You can still do that at most hotels, I think. Maybe we should start doing that again. yeah honestly I think somebody could probably really make a killing like rebranding the wake-up call as like a boutique service
Oh, somebody make that. It could be a gold mine and also really cool and fun. I think I read a romance novel once where the plot was that She was supposed to find a wake-up call service for her boss, but none of them would take him because he was so mean. Oh my god. And then like one morning she did it out of desperation and like... you know, told him what a jerk he was. You know, it's a good plot device. I don't remember if the book was good. Anyway.
bring it back. Agree. In the, uh, billionaire romance novel where all the apparently wake-up calls are still a thing, so. Yeah. They still exist. Alright, we're gonna take one more break and then be back with one more fact. This show is sponsored by Liquid IV. Pretty much everybody knows that it's important to stay hydrated, but just drinking water isn't always enough.
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Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to ZocDoc.com slash weirdest to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash weirdest. ZocDoc.com slash weirdest. The Hoover Dam wasn't built in a day, and the GMC Sierra lineup wasn't built overnight. Like every American achievement, building the Sierra 1500 heavy-duty and EV was A dedication to mastering the art
engineering. That's what this country has done for 250 years, and what GMC has done for over 100. We are professional grade. Visit GMC.com to learn more. Assembled in Flint and Hamtronic, Michigan, and Fort Wayne, Indiana, of U.S. and globally sourced parts. Okay, we're back, and we have one more fact. Belind, what's your- So something that I'm always interested in is how do organisms communicate and what are they talking about, especially if you get to something.
like a bug right it's a bug there's always a question of do they even have a brain and how smart they are can they talk about things that are important So I came across a paper that claims that they have culture. And the researchers are defining culture as preferences that are passed on between generations of information and not genetics.
And so what they did... Bug culture? Bug culture. I love bug culture. So they did mating preferences because that's an easy thing to study. So what they did was they put females and males into different colored dust. and made them look a little bit different. So there was like a blue fly and a pink fly and a yellow fly. And they made them really, you know, like they took a female fly that was unmated. So the males preferred that female fly right away.
They didn't know that it was something about the yellow dust or the blue, but you had a group of naive observer flies, or these are the students that are watching this interaction happen. And they're seeing the males pick the yellow fruit fly or the blue fruit fly. whoever was the more attractive. And it turns out that those individuals that were watching these flies without any other experience beyond just watching them.
then formed this preference. No way. And so they, without any actual stimulus, then preferred the color fly that they watched that was successfully made it with. Unrealistic beauty. yeah about watching in tv right like you're that's what's that told you is beautiful and now that's what you go after now i have to be blue I mean, you know, smurf costumes. We're good. We're good. You're so right.
But so I was really curious to see if this can transmit to something that's more biologically relevant, right? And one thing that I always think is interesting is a fear. Right. To me, if I see a behavior, I'm like, all right, that's either sexual selection. So some reason to be more attracted to a maid or it's some kind of predation risk. How could it have evolved?
So it turns out you can get fruit flies a variety of different predators. You can put them in the same container with them. You can put them in with spiders that will actually end up eating. And you can watch them bounce around like a piece of popcorn kernel in their container trying to escape from the spider. You know, they never actually do, but they are like visibly changing their...
And same with something that doesn't hurt them, but only infects their babies. So if there's a parasitic wasp that infects the offspring of the fruit fly, so the larval state, but is no threat to the adult, the adult still has fundamental behavioral. So the question is, right, can this be transmitted in that cultural sense the same way as that color preference? And so researchers did a variety of genetic experiments as well as physical separations and showed that, yeah, this fear of spiders.
and being afraid of them can be transmitted visually. And it is a maintained behavior in those observer flies. So it's not just a transient where the observer fly watches their fear happening of a spider and they're afraid as long as they see the spider. but rather for days after the experience.
Those flies that never caught the whiff of the predator, but just have seen it or have seen an individual that had been exposed to a predator in the absence of the original predator itself, they show physiological. So they are able to communicate that, yes, there has been a predator threat, and that not only results in a behavioral change, but changes in the germline. So the ovaries of the fruit flies have fundamentally changed. as a result of this exposure wow
And so that has, it makes sense that it's transient, right? Because then you can see, like, you can adapt quickly to the environment depending on what predatory needs are available. If there's no predators, right, you don't have to change anything.
presumably if you're laying at an egg site you're closely related to the individuals laying there so from a genetic fitness standpoint it makes sense but it's just something really cool that it happens in a fruit fly it happens across multiple different phenomena so predation the color preference right and it's this through visual cues which insects are usually thought of as like not really good visual animals minus like the praying mantas
But even for them, they have this built-in search image in their brains that's innate that they look for. And it has this really, really potent level. Wow, that's wild. I love bug culture. And it goes to show, like, what else? in terms of bug culture exists that we don't account for. So I think that's what I find really exciting about these facts as well as not just, it's not just an end game, right? It's like, well, that's in one instance of one organ.
What happens with everything else on a day-to-day basis that's maybe more relevant to what goes on in their lives? And researchers have tested multiple species as well. One really interesting study was if you place two species... the same species side by side and one of one group is dead. the one that's watching has a shortened lifespan. So if they see dead individuals of conspecifics of their same species, those that have seen death...
live a shorter lifespan. Spooky. I see dead fruit flies. But if you put in a different species of fruit fly, so a close relative, right? Not like a house fly even, just a close relative of fruit fly. You put a close relative in that's dead. Doesn't affect them. I think that's not my problem. And it makes sense, right? Like, well, I'm resistant to whatever he died from. I don't need to worry about it. But it's just really cool to be able to have this visual.
inferred in this spread of fear and in the information of it and see how it can be contained, how transient it is, how it's remembered by... And I think it's kind of relevant to today's culture as well, because there's a lot of fears that we may have, and hopefully it's not permanent, right? And so that was my... Wow, I love it. Bug culture. Bug culture. It is wild that they can learn that stuff and pass it down just by like, what?
Right. And so because a lot of the researchers thought maybe it's olfaction, right? A lot of insects smell really well. And it turns out, again, just like building containers, they're side by side. smell each other they can see exactly or the alternative is that they did they'd remove the ability for the insect
And so it's really easy to do because all the receptors are what are called heterodimers. So it's a pair of receptors. One is always... orco one and then you have orco number two through whatever you get to and it's that pair that allows them to smell something so if you get rid of orco one they can't smell a thing and so you can genetically ablate it put them together and you can
result well and it does make me wonder too like you were saying like like what else are they learning by watching like if you know if we're able to just see this one thing like what else do they know and it's something right you're looking for and even like that is Why were you even looking for something like that? Whose idea was it to put dust on them to see it? The reason I liked it so much is because I find it was so clever of an idea.
And then it actually panned out. So it just goes to show, I think, how little we still know about the natural world where it's like, you know, in these papers, we're ranging from 28. too that I was seeing and there's still like this visual transfer of information that is so fundamental to the behavior of the animal, but it's just now being published on. Right. Yeah, and fruit flies are like, we've looked at fruit flies so much. They're such a classic.
model organisms so uh if there's so much we don't know about them wow right it's like a hundred plus years of research and just now it's like oh they're they're talking to each other about I'm not being scared. Uh oh. Yeah. But are they scared of us?
That's what I want to know. I want to make sure they're fine with it. No, that was really cool. Thank you so much for coming on. This has been a great app. And Jess, thanks again for... for coming on the side of the mic always great to have you glad to be here even when my dog is causing a ruckus would you actually both uh remind our listeners
where they can find your Twitch streams? Because Jess, I feel like it's been a while since we plugged. Yes, I would love to. So I stream, I'm Jess Capricorn on Twitch. All one word. And I stream mostly Monday, Wednesday, Thursday nights. And I also publish YouTube videos. And I do a lot of JRPG style stuff. Some Elden Ring stuff. Some Bloodborne stuff. When is this coming out? I think it will have already passed by that time.
Yes, I'm doing a big charity stream, but that will have already happened for reproductive rights. But yeah, so that's what I get up to. We get into some science stuff occasionally, but not as much as Balint does, so please tell us about science streams. Well, first of all, thank you all very much for having me.
This is an absolute blast. This was so fun. We loved having you. I love the show and it's been a blast catching up on some of the older episodes as well. So again, thank y'all for having me. Thank you. We are, so my wife and I run our Twitch stream. streams so s-c-i-a-n-t-s underscore streams and we'll put those in the description and everything
And we, like Jess said, we do science content every day. So Mondays we'll get stuff under the microscope, including 30-million-year-old Amber with insects. Tuesdays we'll build models. Wednesdays we do art. Thursdays... Science News on Friday. You might get a grab bag of anything on Saturday. And then we usually do IRL content on Sunday, going out into the world, doing...
tours, aquariums, and more. Awesome. Definitely think listeners should check that out. The Weirdest Thing I Learned this week is produced by all of our hosts, including me, Rachel Faltman. along with Jess Bodie, who also serves as our audio engineer and editor extraordinaire. Our theme music is by Billy Cadden. Our logo is by Katie Beloff. suggestions, or weird stories to share, tweet us at weirdest underscore thing. This show is sponsored by Liquid Ivy. Just drinking water isn't always enough.
Liquid IV's formula, powered by LIV HydroScience, is sugar-free, delicious, and clinically studied to maintain hydration better than water for up to four hours. Visit liquidiv.com and live more with efficient hydration featuring the new raspberry lemonade hydration multiplier. Get 20% off your first order with code WEIRDEST at checkout. I love Liquid IV's flavors and that they have a few sugar-free options. like raspberry lemonade, which is my personal favorite, or rainbow sherpa.
Break the mold and own your ritual. Just one stick and 16 ounces of water hydrates better than water alone. Give yourself the power of extraordinary hydration from liquid ivy. Get 20% off your first order of Liquid IV when you go to liquidiv.com and use code WEIRDEST at checkout. That's 20% off your order with code WEIRDEST at liquidiv.com. ZocDoc is a free app and website where you can search and compare high-quality in-network doctors and click to instantly book an appointment.
We're talking in-network appointments with more than 100,000 doctors from mental health to dental health, primary care to urgent care, and more. I can honestly say that I don't remember what I did before I started using ZocDoc and I don't want to. Stop putting off those doctor's appointments and go to ZocDoc.com slash weirdest to find and instantly book a top-rated doctor today. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C dot com slash weirdest. ZocDoc dot com slash weirdest.