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Listener Questions #27 · Daniel and Kelly’s Extraordinary Universe

• 0:07
  Speaker 1: One mom gives birth to two species. Hit the news today, Evolution,
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: You're crazy. That's all I have to say.
• 0:16
  Speaker 2: Do physicists see the universe in their mind's eye or
• 0:20
  Speaker 2: is it easier to understand it if they're mentally blind.
• 0:25
  Speaker 1: Might's live on your face and make there at night?
• 0:28
  Speaker 1: Why would evolution do that? It's just not right.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Whatever questions keep you up at night, Daniel and Kelly's
• 0:35
  Speaker 2: answers will make it all right.
• 0:38
  Speaker 1: Or it'll creepy out even more. Welcome to Daniel and
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: Kelly's Extraordinary Universe.
• 0:55
  Speaker 2: Hi. I'm Daniel, I'm a particle physicist, and I think
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: the universe is beautiful and creepy.
• 1:01
  Speaker 1: Hi. I'm Kelly Winnersmith. I study parasites and space, and
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: I think the universe is also beautiful and creepy. And
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: sometimes creepy is beautiful and it's all complicated.
• 1:13
  Speaker 2: Have you met a parasite, Kelly where you're like, hmm,
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: that's too gross. I wish this didn't exist in the universe.
• 1:19
  Speaker 2: Or can you find some beauty in every single riggly, crawling,
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: disgusting thing.
• 1:25
  Speaker 1: I can find some beauty in everything, but I would
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: rather not be in the room with ascris lumbricoids. It's
• 1:33
  Speaker 1: a really long, really thick nematod. It really grosses me out.
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: And when we talked about screwworm a couple of weeks back,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: maybe come a month's back now.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: I'm still scarred from that conversation.
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: Yes, well, I looked at the photos and that.
• 1:48
  Speaker 2: Was don't do that, people, no nobody else do that.
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: We actually had a listener writers to say they did that,
• 1:52
  Speaker 1: and they were like, I should have listened to you
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: when you told me not to.
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: I have not googled screwworm, and I think I've protected
• 1:59
  Speaker 2: my men health for that reason.
• 2:01
  Speaker 1: Yes, yeah, do not google screwworm. It is super gross. So, yeah,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: there's some parasites that I don't want to be in
• 2:06
  Speaker 1: the room with. I once watched a presentation. I was
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: studying a parasite that lives on the brains of California, killyfish,
• 2:12
  Speaker 1: and so I spent like literally all day working with brains.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: But then I was watching an anthropology talk and they
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: went to a country that was like selling monkey brains,
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: and there was a table filled with monkey brains and
• 2:24
  Speaker 1: I was looking at just the picture and the room
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: started to spin. WHOA, and I was like, I'm gonna
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: throw up, and I was like, but I can't have
• 2:31
  Speaker 1: everybody see me throwing up over brains. I work on brains,
• 2:34
  Speaker 1: and anyway, I like just kind of looked down and
• 2:38
  Speaker 1: hoped nobody could see me, and I managed to get
• 2:40
  Speaker 1: through it. But it's weird the things that set us off.
• 2:43
  Speaker 2: The universe certainly sets us off, and I have the
• 2:46
  Speaker 2: same kind of reaction to, you know, astrophysical stuff. On
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: one hand, a supernova is amazing. On the other hand,
• 2:52
  Speaker 2: it could like sterilize a whole portion of the galaxy
• 2:55
  Speaker 2: with incredible radiation. Right, it's terrifying. The universe is beautiful
• 3:00
  Speaker 2: and incredible, but also violent and destructive and crazy. So
• 3:05
  Speaker 2: it is an extraordinary universe we live in, isn't it.
• 3:08
  Speaker 1: It is? And it's also, i gotta say, a confusing
• 3:11
  Speaker 1: universe we live in. And that kind of brings us
• 3:15
  Speaker 1: to our first question, which was really hard to unpack.
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: This question was an amazing question from a listener, Jamie,
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: who often writes us and sends us articles to be
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: like does this make any sense? And it's always fun
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: to dig in and this paper was particularly fun. So
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: the headline is one mother for two species via obligate
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: cross species cloning in ants.
• 3:43
  Speaker 2: Well, one mom keeping birth to two different species. Thought
• 3:46
  Speaker 2: that was impossible. Anyway, let's hear Jamie's question and then
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: dig in.
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: Hello, professors, this is Jamie Feffer from Westfield, New Jersey.
• 3:55
  Speaker 3: I would be grateful for your help understanding an article
• 3:58
  Speaker 3: that I read in the New York Time. It reports
• 4:01
  Speaker 3: on a study in Nature where scientists said that queens
• 4:05
  Speaker 3: from one species of ant produced male offspring of a
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: different species.
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: The scientist then said that it's like a human having chimp.
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: Babies and then using the babies as a source of sperm,
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: for giving birth to human chimp hybrids as a source
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: of labor.
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: What on earth is going on here? Please? It sounds
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: like a chapter from one of professor Kelly's books. Thank
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: you very much.
• 4:29
  Speaker 2: All right, Kelly, so set us up for why this
• 4:33
  Speaker 2: is a fascinating question. My understanding of what a species
• 4:37
  Speaker 2: means is that individuals can mate and give birth to
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: like live offspring that isn't sterile. And so how can
• 4:43
  Speaker 2: you give birth to two different species? How's that possible?
• 4:46
  Speaker 1: Yeah? It's crazy, right, So okay, so you can get
• 4:49
  Speaker 1: like a donkey and a horse, they can mate together
• 4:52
  Speaker 1: and make a mule, and the mule is sterile. And
• 4:55
  Speaker 1: so you can get like pretty distantly related species that
• 4:58
  Speaker 1: mate and produce something different, like for.
• 5:01
  Speaker 2: Example, my dog has Chihuahua and German shepherd ancestry, and
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: nobody knows how that happened. And I also won't suggest
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: googling that, but you know it did happen and he exists.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah, right, don't think too hard about it.
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: But so those are different breeds, not different species, and
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: so that the equivalent here would be like you know,
• 5:21
  Speaker 1: so I gave birth to two human children, it would
• 5:25
  Speaker 1: be like I gave birth to one human children and
• 5:28
  Speaker 1: then the next one was a chimpanzee. And and that's
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: confusing and unexpected.
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: I mean, you always expect every child is going to
• 5:36
  Speaker 2: be different, but not that different, that's.
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: Right, that's right, that's pretty different. And the species, so
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: we're talking about ants in this example, and species one,
• 5:44
  Speaker 1: this is the species that gives birth to two species.
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: She the queens not only give birth to their own species,
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: as you would expect, but they're also able to give
• 5:54
  Speaker 1: birth to males of a different species that they've been
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: separated from for five million years.
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: Wow. All right, so this is like dogs give birth
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: to dogs and occasionally a cat.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: Yes, right, I mean I don't know how long dogs
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: and cats diverge. That's probably more than five million years.
• 6:12
  Speaker 1: But yes, your point stands, and so okay, so here's
• 6:15
  Speaker 1: what's happening. So first, aunt mating systems are crazy, right,
• 6:21
  Speaker 1: and we're not going to go into loads of detail
• 6:23
  Speaker 1: because it's super complicated. But what you need to know
• 6:27
  Speaker 1: is that females are diploids. So what that means is
• 6:30
  Speaker 1: that they have two sets of chromosomes, just like humans.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: We have two sets of chromosomes, right, But to make males,
• 6:37
  Speaker 1: they only have one set of chromosomes. So a female
• 6:42
  Speaker 1: doesn't have to mate with another male. If she wants
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: to lay dude eggs, she just takes one set of
• 6:47
  Speaker 1: her chromosomes, sticks them in the egg, and now you've
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: got males. So she doesn't have to mate. She can
• 6:53
  Speaker 1: make males on her own.
• 6:54
  Speaker 2: But to make a female she needs a contribution from
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: another member of her species.
• 6:58
  Speaker 1: That's right, So to make a female worker, she needs
• 7:01
  Speaker 1: to mate with another male.
• 7:02
  Speaker 2: But having these complicated relationships between the parents and the kids,
• 7:05
  Speaker 2: doesn't that mean that like the siblings relationships are complicated,
• 7:09
  Speaker 2: and like your evolutionary interests are intermingled in complicated ways.
• 7:13
  Speaker 2: If I remember, like aunts have really complicated sibling math.
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah they do, Okay, So the bottom line is that
• 7:20
  Speaker 1: the sisters share about seventy five percent of their genetic
• 7:23
  Speaker 1: material with each other, whereas usually sisters share about fifty percent.
• 7:27
  Speaker 2: So like human sisters share fifty percent, you're saying.
• 7:29
  Speaker 1: That's right, yeah, and aunt sisters share seventy five percent.
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: And we think that this plays a role and why
• 7:36
  Speaker 1: ant colonies work so well together. So you can think
• 7:39
  Speaker 1: of aunt colonies as like a super organism. You've got
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: the queen who's laying a bunch of eggs, and then
• 7:44
  Speaker 1: all of the females work to support the queen, and
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: you would maybe not expect such selfless behavior unless individuals
• 7:53
  Speaker 1: were super closely related to each other, which means that
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: when the queen is making a lot more babies, they're
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: essentially making individuals who are very genetically similar to you.
• 8:02
  Speaker 1: And so from a genetic standpoint and from an evolutionary standpoint,
• 8:05
  Speaker 1: this is great news. So maybe you're willing to not
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: mate because your mom is making so many super genetically
• 8:11
  Speaker 1: related sisters and it's awesome. Does that kind of make sense?
• 8:13
  Speaker 2: Mm hmmm, that makes sense. Yeah, Okay, so that explains
• 8:16
  Speaker 2: like how the siblings are related to each other. Why
• 8:18
  Speaker 2: don't we need to understand that to understand how you
• 8:20
  Speaker 2: can give birth to another kind of species?
• 8:22
  Speaker 1: Okay, So the thing that you want to know is
• 8:25
  Speaker 1: that this ant that was all over the news recently,
• 8:28
  Speaker 1: when she's giving birth to a new species, she's giving
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: birth to sons in particular. Okay, And so here's what happened.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: If you're in Europe and in Asia, you will find
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: these two species of ants. One of them is called
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: Mezsor ibericus, and one is Mesor structor. But we're never
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: going to keep those straight, so I'm going to call
• 8:49
  Speaker 1: them species one that's Ibericus and species two structor. All right,
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: In part of their range they overlap, and in part
• 8:58
  Speaker 1: of their range they don't. So there's some areas where
• 9:01
  Speaker 1: you just find species one, some areas where you just
• 9:04
  Speaker 1: find species two, and some areas where you find colonies
• 9:07
  Speaker 1: of species one and species two. In addition to all
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: of the ant reproductive weirdness with the females being diploid
• 9:15
  Speaker 1: and the males being haploid, this system has another weird trait,
• 9:20
  Speaker 1: which is called sperm parasitism. So here's what happens. The
• 9:26
  Speaker 1: workers in the nest are females, but instead of mom
• 9:32
  Speaker 1: mating with a male of her species, mom mates with
• 9:36
  Speaker 1: a male of a different species. Right, so they're closely
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: related enough that they can still mate with each other,
• 9:42
  Speaker 1: but they produce I believe, infertile offspring that become workers.
• 9:48
  Speaker 1: And so why would that evolve. The reason we think
• 9:50
  Speaker 1: that that evolved is because, yes, it's nice that all
• 9:53
  Speaker 1: the sisters are seventy five percent related to each other.
• 9:56
  Speaker 1: But every once in a while, one of the workers
• 9:58
  Speaker 1: will get it in their head and I'm being super
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: anthromorphic here, but they'll get it in their heads that
• 10:03
  Speaker 1: maybe it would be better if they just laid their
• 10:05
  Speaker 1: own eggs. And now you've got a competitor with the queen.
• 10:09
  Speaker 1: But if all of your workers are these hybrids that
• 10:13
  Speaker 1: are sterile, they can't make their own eggs anymore. And
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: so the queen essentially has this extra layer of control
• 10:21
  Speaker 1: over her colony because none of her workers are even
• 10:25
  Speaker 1: able to compete with her. It's just not even a question. Yeah,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: And so there are you know, a handful of different
• 10:31
  Speaker 1: ant species we know of that do this thing called
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: sperm parasitism, where they make these hybrid sterile workers by
• 10:38
  Speaker 1: mating with males of a different species.
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: And why exactly is it called parasitism?
• 10:43
  Speaker 1: I think the idea is that so for species two,
• 10:46
  Speaker 1: the males that are impregnating the queen, they're essentially wasting
• 10:51
  Speaker 1: their sperm, so they impregnate the queen of species one,
• 10:56
  Speaker 1: and all of those offspring are sterile, so they don't
• 10:58
  Speaker 1: go anywhere. So the males of species two have made
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: this sperm, paid the cost to make it, and it's
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: genetically evolutionarily not going to end up, you know, contributing
• 11:08
  Speaker 1: to more offspring for them.
• 11:09
  Speaker 2: And when Jamie asked you this question, do you think
• 11:11
  Speaker 2: he knew there was a parasite angle on it or
• 11:13
  Speaker 2: is that just like a happy bonus for everybody.
• 11:15
  Speaker 1: I don't know. It might have just been a happy bonus,
• 11:17
  Speaker 1: but I'm excited either way. Jamie knows us pretty well,
• 11:21
  Speaker 1: so maybe this was a gift for me.
• 11:22
  Speaker 2: I didn't realize that even sperms can be parasites. That's incredible.
• 11:25
  Speaker 1: Oh no, no, no, the sperm is being parasitized. Oh right, yeah, yeah,
• 11:30
  Speaker 1: So the queen is essentially like extracting the sperm for
• 11:34
  Speaker 1: her own purposes. Wow, but not benefiting species too?
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: Is there an evil cackle that happens along the way?
• 11:39
  Speaker 2: You think.
• 11:43
  Speaker 1: I won't, but there's little ants, So it's gotta be
• 11:45
  Speaker 1: a little high pitched voice. Try that, Daniel.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: I can't do that. I can't do that.
• 11:53
  Speaker 1: Okay, Well, all right, so that was amazing. That's already weird. Okay.
• 11:57
  Speaker 1: But so for species one, it has now actually become
• 12:01
  Speaker 1: a requirement that the queen mates with another species. She
• 12:04
  Speaker 1: can't produce these workers anymore unless she finds species two males.
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: The thing you thought you were going to do just
• 12:13
  Speaker 2: once turns out to be a habit, and then now
• 12:15
  Speaker 2: you can't live without it.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: I know that's right. We've all been there, and so
• 12:19
  Speaker 1: for me it's coffee, But.
• 12:22
  Speaker 2: So for other people it's sperm paraticism.
• 12:24
  Speaker 1: That's right. That's right to each their own right. So okay,
• 12:29
  Speaker 1: so you might remember that I told you that there
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: are areas where you only find species one or you
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: only find species two. Right, So if species one has
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: to mate with species two, how does species one manage
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: to persist far away from species two? And there's one
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: spot where it's known that there's one thousand kilometers between
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: the nearest Species one and Species two nests. All right,
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: so there's no queens of species two in the area.
• 12:56
  Speaker 1: But if you find a Species one nest and you
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: dig it up, you'll find that there are still hybrid
• 13:04
  Speaker 1: individuals in there. So there's still the hybrid workers. And
• 13:07
  Speaker 1: so the question is how the heck is she managing
• 13:10
  Speaker 1: to produce these hybrids when there's no males of species
• 13:14
  Speaker 1: two around. Yeah, the answer is going to be that
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: she makes species two males, which is crazy. Right, So
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: let's go through the process that the scientists went through
• 13:23
  Speaker 1: to sort of study this. So first they opened up
• 13:25
  Speaker 1: species one nests and they looked very carefully at everybody
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: who was in there in an area where you shouldn't
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: find any Species two, and they did find some Species
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: two males in the nest, and they were like, okay,
• 13:40
  Speaker 1: that's really weird. And so then they looked at the
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: genetic information inside of species two and they found that
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: Species two had mitochondria from species one. And if you
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: know anything about mitochondria, you might remember that mitochondria are
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: only inherited from mom. So that means that these species
• 14:01
  Speaker 1: two males must have come from a mom of species
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: one because they've got her mitochondria. And they went over
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: to areas where you find species two normally like in
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: their own sort of colony, and they confirmed species two
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: males usually have mitochondria from species two moms. And so
• 14:22
  Speaker 1: this was weird.
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: So you can tell the difference between species two males
• 14:26
  Speaker 2: that come from species one or species two by their mitochondria.
• 14:30
  Speaker 1: Yes, wow, yeah, very cool. But they wanted to make
• 14:33
  Speaker 1: one hundred percent sure that the queens were the ones
• 14:35
  Speaker 1: who were laying the eggs that had the males, and
• 14:38
  Speaker 1: so they took queens and workers and they brought them
• 14:42
  Speaker 1: into the lab, and some of the workers that they
• 14:45
  Speaker 1: brought into the lab these were from species one. They
• 14:47
  Speaker 1: went ahead and they did lay some of their own eggs,
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: and what they found was that nine percent of the
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: eggs made by queens of species one produced males of
• 14:57
  Speaker 1: species two. Amazing, right, were weird. And when the workers
• 15:01
  Speaker 1: of species one made some eggs, none of them were
• 15:04
  Speaker 1: species two. It's just the queen who's doing this, Okay.
• 15:08
  Speaker 1: So then they monitored a colony that they brought into
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: the lab for a year and a half, and they
• 15:15
  Speaker 1: found that the mom produced Species one and Species two males.
• 15:19
  Speaker 1: They both survived to reproductive age, and they looked genetically
• 15:23
  Speaker 1: and they confirmed, Okay, one queen is definitely making species
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: one and Species two males. How is she doing that?
• 15:32
  Speaker 1: So one possibility here is that a lot of invertebrates
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: are able to store sperm, so you can mate with
• 15:39
  Speaker 1: a male, and a couple months later you can be like, oh,
• 15:42
  Speaker 1: I'm gonna take that sperm that I was storing, and
• 15:45
  Speaker 1: now I'm gonna fertilize my eggs, and even though there's
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: no males around, I can go ahead and have some
• 15:50
  Speaker 1: extra babies.
• 15:51
  Speaker 2: I didn't know it lasted that long. I thought I
• 15:53
  Speaker 2: had a short life span, like twenty four hours or
• 15:55
  Speaker 2: forty eight hours or something.
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I don't know exactly how long it is, but it's
• 15:58
  Speaker 1: more than twenty four or forty eight hours. But by
• 16:00
  Speaker 1: having them in the lab for eighteen months, they were
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: able to, like pretty conclusively say, Okay, the females probably
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: aren't like flying one thousand kilometers to go find a
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: Species two male, mating with him and then coming back
• 16:13
  Speaker 1: like she's been in the lab the whole.
• 16:14
  Speaker 2: Time, or maybe they're like actually aliens and have wormhole
• 16:17
  Speaker 2: technology and they're like teleporting over there. That's right, not
• 16:21
  Speaker 2: a hypothesis they considered.
• 16:22
  Speaker 1: No, you know, they didn't have a physicist on the team, probably,
• 16:25
  Speaker 1: and I.
• 16:26
  Speaker 2: Know that you always need a physicist, right, maybe maybe
• 16:30
  Speaker 2: maybe Are you not even going to agree with me
• 16:32
  Speaker 2: on that one?
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah?
• 16:33
  Speaker 2: Heads your bed on that one, all right?
• 16:35
  Speaker 1: Probably almost certainly.
• 16:36
  Speaker 2: At least we should consider having a physicist on every project.
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: Sure, right, And are you going to consider having a
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: biologist on every project to make sure you all stay
• 16:44
  Speaker 1: down to Earth?
• 16:44
  Speaker 2: I already do? Oh, I already do, of course, okay, okay,
• 16:49
  Speaker 2: all right. So they saw this essentially happened in the
• 16:52
  Speaker 2: lab and controlled conditions, so they knew that she was
• 16:55
  Speaker 2: actually generating species to herself.
• 16:57
  Speaker 1: Yes, right. They also looked at like genetic diverse of
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: species two males in their native range and in these
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: species one nests, and they were very low diversity, which
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: you would expect, you know, if there was something weird happening,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: and the males were just like a very small subset
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: of their genes were being passed through species one over time.
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: So here is what they think is happening. Females are
• 17:22
  Speaker 1: somehow cloning males and all cloning means. And you might
• 17:27
  Speaker 1: remember this from a past conversation where we talked about cloning,
• 17:30
  Speaker 1: like in our episode about the dire wolf that was
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: made by Colossal. So essentially, what you do is you
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: take an egg and you like extract the genetic information
• 17:40
  Speaker 1: from the egg, except you can leave the mitochondria in there,
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: and then you put new genetic information into that egg,
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: and then what hatches is the species or the individual
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: associated with the new genetic information. Does that make sense?
• 17:53
  Speaker 1: So somehow the females seem to be taking genetic information
• 17:58
  Speaker 1: from species two, plopping it into their own eggs, and
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: producing species two males. They don't know exactly how that's happening,
• 18:06
  Speaker 1: but the way that it could work in theory is
• 18:08
  Speaker 1: that you've got a queen from species one in an
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: area where the species overlap, She mates with the male
• 18:14
  Speaker 1: from species two and stores that sperm. She migrates away
• 18:20
  Speaker 1: from the area where the species overlap and goes and
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: starts her new colonies somewhere completely different. She uses that
• 18:26
  Speaker 1: sperm to make males, and then she mates with those
• 18:29
  Speaker 1: males to get her hybrid workers.
• 18:32
  Speaker 2: That's pretty ikey though, she's like meeting with her own sons.
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, I mean nature. Yeah, has a lot of
• 18:38
  Speaker 1: uncomfortable stuff happening.
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: I'm sure we can find some beauty in that. Also.
• 18:42
  Speaker 1: Nope, and so moving on and so hard. No so
• 18:48
  Speaker 1: uh okay. So she's got she can mate with these
• 18:50
  Speaker 1: males that she made, and now she's got her hybrid workers.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: But when it's time to make a queen a new queen,
• 18:57
  Speaker 1: she can mate with the other male that are of
• 19:01
  Speaker 1: her species, and then those queens can mate with the
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: males of species two that are already in the colony
• 19:08
  Speaker 1: with them. They can acquire that sperm, and then they
• 19:12
  Speaker 1: can bring that sperm with them even farther away from
• 19:16
  Speaker 1: the initial area that they live, so even farther away
• 19:18
  Speaker 1: from where you usually find species two.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: So this is a mechanism for extending your colonies beyond
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: the boundaries of species too. They like need species too,
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: but it's not always available, so they evolve this mechanism
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: to basically cut them out of the loop and make
• 19:33
  Speaker 2: them themselves right.
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: Yes, and then they also have this amazing ability to like,
• 19:38
  Speaker 1: instead of combining genetic information, they just take the male's
• 19:42
  Speaker 1: genetic information and like and clone them, which is totally crazy.
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: And to be honest, the authors were very clear, we
• 19:48
  Speaker 1: do not know the mechanism to explain what's happening here,
• 19:51
  Speaker 1: and so this is just like a hypothetical. But they
• 19:53
  Speaker 1: compared it to domestication. It's kind of like domesticating species
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: two and sort of taking it with you for your
• 19:59
  Speaker 1: own purposes. And I'm not quite sure that I buy
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: the comparison, but it's an interesting way to think about it.
• 20:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that is fascinating. They're sort of raising it and
• 20:05
  Speaker 2: co opting it for their own purposes in that sense.
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: But when we domesticate cats, there's no like interbreeding. Yeah,
• 20:13
  Speaker 2: I mean not usually that I'm aware of.
• 20:16
  Speaker 1: Oh oh more, absolutely not.
• 20:18
  Speaker 2: Okay, I mean when people say cat lady, I don't
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: think that's what they mean.
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: Right, Oh goshh not safe for work. So the authors
• 20:26
  Speaker 1: propose a new word, changing the subject. The new word
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: is xenoparis, meaning they quote need to produce individuals of
• 20:33
  Speaker 1: another species as part of their life cycle.
• 20:36
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 20:36
  Speaker 1: Zeno means like strange or different, and parody means like
• 20:39
  Speaker 1: to give birth, so anyway giving birth to something different.
• 20:42
  Speaker 2: So does this mean we should again broaden our concept
• 20:45
  Speaker 2: of what a species is. That the lines are even
• 20:48
  Speaker 2: fuzzier than we thought before. The biology is amazing us
• 20:51
  Speaker 2: and how messy it is again.
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: So you let's hold that answer because I am working
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: on a whole episode on how do you define species?
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: And all of the weird things evolution does that makes
• 21:03
  Speaker 1: our job really difficult. It's going to be like a
• 21:06
  Speaker 1: philosophical discussion, which I think will be right up your alley. Yep, yeah, yes,
• 21:09
  Speaker 1: So tune in for the answer in a future episode,
• 21:13
  Speaker 1: and let's see if Jamie feels like I managed to
• 21:17
  Speaker 1: figure this paper out.
• 21:19
  Speaker 2: Wow, all right, let's hear from Jamie.
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: Thanks Jamie, thank you very much for explaining the article.
• 21:25
  Speaker 3: I'm glad there was at least some form of parasitism
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: in there. For Professor Kelly, I look forward to your
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: episode on defining a species.
• 21:34
  Speaker 4: A story like this makes me wonder if maybe our.
• 21:36
  Speaker 3: Categories are too rigid, or perhaps they don't apply to
• 21:39
  Speaker 3: all creatures equally. Thanks, though, I'm really grateful for the explanation.
• 22:03
  Speaker 1: All right, So from ants to ant Fantasia, which I
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: you know, reliably produced incorrectly. I'm sure.
• 22:12
  Speaker 2: Me ouch on that one there, Kelly, all right, so
• 22:15
  Speaker 2: we are answering questions today. We love getting questions from listeners.
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: If you have a question about the nature of the universe,
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: or really anything about this beautiful, incredible, disgusting cosmic violence
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: that we have and that we live in, please write
• 22:29
  Speaker 2: to us to questions at to Daniel and Kelly dot org.
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: We will get back to you. And here's a question
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: about visual imagery in the mind and how it enables
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: or disables people to do physics.
• 22:41
  Speaker 5: Hi, Daniel and Kelly. I recently found out that I
• 22:44
  Speaker 5: have a trait called a fantasia, which is the inability
• 22:48
  Speaker 5: to consciously pull up visual imagery in my mind. I
• 22:53
  Speaker 5: do dream, though, but finding out others can picture an
• 22:56
  Speaker 5: apple in their head with their eyes open or closed
• 23:00
  Speaker 5: was mind blowing. And I've gone most of my adult
• 23:03
  Speaker 5: life without even knowing this. Imagine my continued surprise when
• 23:07
  Speaker 5: I discovered that it's not limited to visual information, but
• 23:10
  Speaker 5: can also include auditory smell, and even taste. I enjoy
• 23:15
  Speaker 5: reading sci fi and fantasy, but my experience in your
• 23:18
  Speaker 5: experience must be worlds apart. And that leads me to
• 23:22
  Speaker 5: my question, as a physicist, how do you use imagery
• 23:27
  Speaker 5: on a day to day basis, are you writing equations
• 23:30
  Speaker 5: on a chalkboard? And if so, are you holding the chalk?
• 23:34
  Speaker 1: Thanks so much, Oh my gosh, this is such a
• 23:37
  Speaker 1: fascinating question. And this question reminded me of Temple grand
• 23:41
  Speaker 1: And so when we got our son's autism diagnosis, I
• 23:44
  Speaker 1: read every biography I could find written or autobiography written
• 23:49
  Speaker 1: by someone who's autistic, so that I could try to
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: understand what his life would be like. And I guess
• 23:53
  Speaker 1: Temple Grandon has this amazing ability to sort of imagine
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: what it's like to be So she works with livestock
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: and tries to create ways to make their lives better
• 24:04
  Speaker 1: and have more humane practices. And she's amazingly good at
• 24:07
  Speaker 1: like envisioning what it must be like to be a
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: cow and what it is that they're seeing. And she
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: clearly can imagine things way better than I can. And
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: it sounds like this listener is on the other side
• 24:18
  Speaker 1: where they're able to envision even less than I can.
• 24:22
  Speaker 1: And I think this spectrum is totally fascinating.
• 24:25
  Speaker 2: It is really amazing, and it's something we only understood
• 24:28
  Speaker 2: like in the last you know, ten or fifteen years,
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: that there is a variation between people and their mental imagery. Essentially,
• 24:35
  Speaker 2: we've been communicating with each other about this kind of
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: stuff for thousands of years and not realizing that we're
• 24:41
  Speaker 2: having very different experiences internally. And I read this excellent
• 24:45
  Speaker 2: article in The New Yorker very recently about a fantasia
• 24:48
  Speaker 2: from late October. Really recommend it, and it begins with
• 24:52
  Speaker 2: the story of a physicist who, in his late thirties
• 24:56
  Speaker 2: or early forties, finally realizes that when everybody else is
• 25:00
  Speaker 2: talking about having images in their minds, they're being literal
• 25:03
  Speaker 2: about it. He thought forever that everyone was just sort
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: of like using metaphors like I mean, you say you're
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: thinking about that, you're seeing that in your mind, but
• 25:11
  Speaker 2: you're not literally like seeing it, right, And it was
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: only like recently the dude is like totally grown up
• 25:18
  Speaker 2: when he realized people are being literal, that some people
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: can close their eyes and imagine an apple from yesterday
• 25:25
  Speaker 2: and like see it'd be green and shimmery, and you know,
• 25:29
  Speaker 2: really visualize these things. He thought everybody was being figurative.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: What do you think it would be like to realize
• 25:34
  Speaker 1: that as an adult? I mean, I think animal behaviors
• 25:37
  Speaker 1: think about this kind of stuff. All the time, like
• 25:39
  Speaker 1: you know, that animal could do something I can't, But
• 25:41
  Speaker 1: it must have been a crazy moment to realize.
• 25:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think everybody is a little different. And
• 25:46
  Speaker 2: as you're growing up, you discover like, wow, everybody thinks
• 25:49
  Speaker 2: that swimming is fun and I hate the beach, Or
• 25:52
  Speaker 2: everybody else loves chocolate but I think it's gross. Or
• 25:55
  Speaker 2: watermelon tastes like cilantro. So it's not unusual to find
• 25:59
  Speaker 2: something that makes you different. But it is amazing how
• 26:02
  Speaker 2: such fundamental parts of what we think about the human
• 26:05
  Speaker 2: experience can be different from person to person. And you know,
• 26:08
  Speaker 2: this is a question like philosophers have been debating for
• 26:11
  Speaker 2: thousands of years, like what is it like to be
• 26:13
  Speaker 2: a bat? Do we see the same color red? And
• 26:16
  Speaker 2: so sort of incredible that it's only recently people have
• 26:19
  Speaker 2: been studying this in detail. And this article goes into
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: the history of the study of it, which is only
• 26:26
  Speaker 2: about one hundred and fifty years old. Does a guy
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: Francis Galton, who's also sort of a famous eugenicist, Yeah,
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: did some early research and found a bunch of examples
• 26:35
  Speaker 2: of scientists who he says, quote, have feeble powers of
• 26:39
  Speaker 2: visual representation, so scientists in particular tend to not be
• 26:44
  Speaker 2: able to imagine things in their minds, which I think is,
• 26:48
  Speaker 2: you know, the impetus for today's question. And that's surprising
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: because it feels like visual imagery is so important to physics.
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: Like think of the story of Einstein coming up with relativity.
• 27:00
  Speaker 2: He says that he was imagining, or trying to imagine,
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: pulling up alongside a photon, and in realizing that that
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: was impossible, he understood how photons have no reference frame.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: And Einstein's work is filled with these examples of trains
• 27:12
  Speaker 2: and passing each other in light, and clearly he's imagining
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: visual situations right. And in chemistry there's lots of examples
• 27:19
  Speaker 2: like how did somebody figure out the structure of benzene?
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: They had like a dream of a snake biting its
• 27:24
  Speaker 2: own tail. It's like very vivid visual imagery. So it's
• 27:28
  Speaker 2: easy to imagine that having vivid mental imagery would be
• 27:32
  Speaker 2: essential for doing science. Right.
• 27:33
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but Galton was wrong about a lot of things.
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: Was a lot of things, a lot of important things.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Was he wrong about this too?
• 27:42
  Speaker 2: So we don't have enough data to know and the
• 27:45
  Speaker 2: fields has really gone back and forth, like in the
• 27:48
  Speaker 2: early nineteen hundreds, the widespread belief among psychologists was that
• 27:53
  Speaker 2: mental imagery didn't exist. There's a movement of behaviorism led
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: by a guy named JB. Watson who says, quote, what
• 28:01
  Speaker 2: does a person mean when he closes his eyes or
• 28:04
  Speaker 2: ears and says, I see the house where I was born? Touching,
• 28:08
  Speaker 2: of course, but sheer bunk. We are merely dramatizing. The
• 28:11
  Speaker 2: behaviorist finds no proof of imagery in all of this.
• 28:15
  Speaker 2: So psychiatrists felt like, no, you're not really feeling these things.
• 28:18
  Speaker 2: You're not really seeing these things, which is bizarre because
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: some of them must have been experiencing it, right. But
• 28:23
  Speaker 2: you know, that was just the movement. It's science is
• 28:26
  Speaker 2: weird that way. It follows these trends and these fads,
• 28:28
  Speaker 2: and eventually it zigzags towards the truth. But it can
• 28:31
  Speaker 2: go down some weird rabbit.
• 28:33
  Speaker 1: Holes, yeah, and it can get stuck in them for
• 28:34
  Speaker 1: a while.
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: Yeah. And so it was only the early two thousands
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: when a Scotsman had a cardiac procedure and after that
• 28:42
  Speaker 2: discovered he could no longer picture anything like he used
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: to be able to. And then he had this procedure
• 28:49
  Speaker 2: done and all of a sudden, he like couldn't have
• 28:51
  Speaker 2: a mental image of you know, his wife's face when
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: she wasn't there. He like lost this ability.
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: What was the tie in with the cardiac procedure. Did
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: part of his brain not get enough oxygen as part
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: of the procedure.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, So he went to a neurologist, and this neurologist
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: had always been interested in this kind of stuff anyway,
• 29:09
  Speaker 2: and did a study and showed that part of this
• 29:11
  Speaker 2: guy's brain had been like weakened, probably because of this
• 29:15
  Speaker 2: cardiac event, and he was trying to call these mental
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: images up, but that part of his brain was not activating.
• 29:21
  Speaker 2: So he found the part of the brain that was
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: like activating when other people were making mental images, and
• 29:26
  Speaker 2: in this guy was now failing. Wow, And so he
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: wrote an article about it. It is like a new discovery.
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: And then a bunch of people wrote in and they
• 29:34
  Speaker 2: were like, oh, my gosh, that describes my experience. And
• 29:38
  Speaker 2: so it turned out this wasn't just like one random
• 29:40
  Speaker 2: scotsman who had an injury, but it was fairly common,
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: and so he decided to call this afhantasia. Fantasia was
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: defined by Aristotle as the ability to conjure an image
• 29:50
  Speaker 2: in your imagination, so a fantasia meaning you can't do it.
• 29:54
  Speaker 2: And Carl Zimmer wrote an article about this in Discover
• 29:58
  Speaker 2: magazine which got a lot more attention, and that a
• 30:00
  Speaker 2: lot more people wrote in and they were like, wow,
• 30:02
  Speaker 2: this is actually quite widespread.
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Huge Curl Zimmer fan.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: Let me just say, I know, and I love when
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: science journalism helps propel the science right gets the right
• 30:13
  Speaker 2: attention to it. People were like, hey, everybody should know
• 30:15
  Speaker 2: about this. This is kind of a thing. And a
• 30:18
  Speaker 2: lot of people, it turns out, discover that they have
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: this condition only when reading about it or hearing about
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: it described on the radio. Like their whole lives. They
• 30:27
  Speaker 2: had heard people talk about picturing things or imagining things,
• 30:30
  Speaker 2: or visualizing beaches or whatever, and they just assumed that
• 30:34
  Speaker 2: these were idioms, that they were like kind of being
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: a hyperbologic they were exaggerating, really that they weren't really
• 30:40
  Speaker 2: seeing it. And only when hearing this described that this
• 30:44
  Speaker 2: was a condition that you could have, that they'd been
• 30:46
  Speaker 2: deeply and profoundly misunderstanding everybody else's experience.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: I wonder if they're more likely to doodle, because if
• 30:53
  Speaker 1: I'm trying to keep track of things in my head.
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: But I couldn't do that. I feel like I'd want
• 30:57
  Speaker 1: to doodle it out on paper to keep. And anyway,
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: I'm getting this. This is amazing, No.
• 31:00
  Speaker 2: It's fascinating. And in the article they interview some artists,
• 31:04
  Speaker 2: and there are some artists who have a fantasia, and
• 31:07
  Speaker 2: they hear other artists say like, the picture didn't come
• 31:10
  Speaker 2: out as crisply as it does in my mind. And
• 31:12
  Speaker 2: these artists with a fantastic are like, what are you
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: talking about? And there's the opposite condition called hyper fantasia,
• 31:19
  Speaker 2: where you have exceptionally detailed mental images, which sounds awesome,
• 31:24
  Speaker 2: but some people describe it as like graphic and inescapable,
• 31:28
  Speaker 2: you know where you like, if you watch a horror movie,
• 31:30
  Speaker 2: you just like can't escape having those terrible scenes in
• 31:33
  Speaker 2: your mind. You know, we don't fade the same way
• 31:36
  Speaker 2: we do for others.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: I can totally imagine that not being good. Like those
• 31:39
  Speaker 1: pictures of Screwworm that I looked at, I've kind of
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: forgotten them. It would be awful if I could still
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: see them right now.
• 31:45
  Speaker 2: Yeah, somebody with hyperfantagia said that. For example, if somebody
• 31:49
  Speaker 2: just like mentions skateboarding. Then he gets like an avalanche
• 31:53
  Speaker 2: of vivid memories of every skateboarding experience he's ever had,
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: being like stuck in virtual reality and having like a
• 31:59
  Speaker 2: three sixty degree video of a thousand skateboarding experiences forced
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: on you. So they're sort of at the mercy of
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: what people say because his brain is so visual.
• 32:09
  Speaker 1: That feels like two problems though, like being able to
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: really visualize something and having too many memories coming in.
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: That seems like two things.
• 32:18
  Speaker 2: Yeah, exactly, So this is something we're still understanding. It's like,
• 32:20
  Speaker 2: it's the brain, so it's complicated. But it's amazing to
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: me that it's only recently we've even recognized that this
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: is an issue, that there really is a difference. And
• 32:29
  Speaker 2: there's this meme that's going around now online. You've probably
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: seen it, which shows like a person with like a
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: crisp image of an apple in their mind and then
• 32:36
  Speaker 2: gradations all the way down to a person with no
• 32:38
  Speaker 2: image at all. And you should look at that and
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: you should ask yourself, like what do I see in
• 32:42
  Speaker 2: my mind's eye? And there really is a huge spectrum.
• 32:44
  Speaker 2: There are people who just cannot visualize stuff in their brains,
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: and people can have like exceptionally crisp photo quality images
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: in their minds, which might feel weird to you as well.
• 32:54
  Speaker 2: And I thought about this myself, and I'm a very
• 32:56
  Speaker 2: visual person. I can really imagine a crisp apple, not
• 33:00
  Speaker 2: quite photorealistic, but with a lot of detail. How about you, Kelly,
• 33:03
  Speaker 2: what kind of images do you see in your mind?
• 33:05
  Speaker 1: I think of somewhere in between. Definitely not photorealistic, but
• 33:09
  Speaker 1: I can see stuff.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: And this is fascinatingly connected to thinking about science, because
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: we talked earlier about how it might be really important
• 33:17
  Speaker 2: to have these visuals in your mind to do science.
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: But Oliver Sacks did this fascinating experience which you'd love, Kelly,
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: because it involved self experimentation. He had almost no mental imagery,
• 33:27
  Speaker 2: but then he decided to take heroic quantities of anphetamines,
• 33:31
  Speaker 2: and while he was doing this, he could see images
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: in his mind. It like activated this part of his
• 33:35
  Speaker 2: brain so he could do it, But then he could
• 33:38
  Speaker 2: no longer think about abstract stuff, so it was sort
• 33:42
  Speaker 2: of trade off. So it might be the people who
• 33:44
  Speaker 2: are exceptionally visual can't think as abstractly, and people who
• 33:49
  Speaker 2: think better abstractly can't think as visually, and so to
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: the question like what's crucial for doing physics, it might
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: be that not being construed by visual imagery makes you
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: better thinking about complex things like eleven dimensional manifolds that
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: you need to solve string theory. Right, Maybe being unshackled
• 34:10
  Speaker 2: from the reality of our intuition for the dominance of
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: our physical world and its implied limitations makes it easier
• 34:18
  Speaker 2: to think about complex numbers and all sorts of crazy things,
• 34:21
  Speaker 2: which a lot of us find counterintuitive because we don't
• 34:23
  Speaker 2: see them reflected in our reality. And so I think
• 34:26
  Speaker 2: the answer to the question is that there's a whole
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: spectrum of experience, and there's different kinds of physicists. Like
• 34:32
  Speaker 2: for me, when I think about physics, I think very geometrically,
• 34:36
  Speaker 2: even if we're talking about like weird abstract math, I
• 34:38
  Speaker 2: like see it in my mind as shapes, like fitting
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: together or not fitting together, or clicking or pulling on
• 34:44
  Speaker 2: each other. Like when I think about quantum fields, it's
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: very visual and geometric. And I always struggled with equations,
• 34:50
  Speaker 2: Like I can do the math, obviously, I know how
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: to manipulate equations, but I don't think in terms of equations.
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: I don't look at an equation and understand intuitively, have
• 34:58
  Speaker 2: to translate it in to sort of geometric concepts in
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: order to understand how the pieces are pulling on each
• 35:04
  Speaker 2: other and how they interplay with each other. So I
• 35:07
  Speaker 2: think this is probably a whole different spectrum, and different
• 35:09
  Speaker 2: kinds of brains are good at different kinds of things.
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: And I'm glad that we have a diversity of brains
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: in physics and in biology and in the world.
• 35:17
  Speaker 1: Absolutely, But now you've got me wanting a survey of
• 35:20
  Speaker 1: different fields and having them do that that like right
• 35:24
  Speaker 1: gradient of photorealistic apple to like hazy apple, and seeing
• 35:27
  Speaker 1: if different kinds of fields have different average scores on
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: that test.
• 35:31
  Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, it would be fascinating exactly. But it's
• 35:34
  Speaker 2: good that we have all these different kinds of brains.
• 35:37
  Speaker 2: I wonder how hereditary it is, you know, I like, yeah,
• 35:39
  Speaker 2: if you have apple pictures as parents, does that mean
• 35:43
  Speaker 2: you can picture apples? And if not? And how random
• 35:46
  Speaker 2: it is? Anyway, It's amazing the way the world is
• 35:49
  Speaker 2: and the way we image it, and how bad we
• 35:51
  Speaker 2: are at understanding other people's internal experience and what else
• 35:55
  Speaker 2: are we not understanding because we're using these clumsy.
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: Words within our own species, right, and then you try
• 36:01
  Speaker 1: to figure out what's happening with another species, and it's
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: amazing we understand anything at all.
• 36:06
  Speaker 2: Yeah, Okay, we're back and we're answering questions from you,
• 36:29
  Speaker 2: from listeners just like you, who had a moment of
• 36:32
  Speaker 2: curiosity that they couldn't scratch themselves, and so they wrote
• 36:35
  Speaker 2: to us, and we are here to scratch that itch.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Well, speaking of scratching, we're going to talk about little
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: mites that live on your face.
• 36:42
  Speaker 2: Oh boy?
• 36:44
  Speaker 1: All right, So Luner on Discord had this question for us.
• 36:49
  Speaker 6: Good morning, Daniel and Kelly.
• 36:51
  Speaker 2: How are you?
• 36:51
  Speaker 6: This is a Lunar from Discord. So my question is
• 36:54
  Speaker 6: pretty simple. Why does a thing like demo dex folliculorum
• 36:58
  Speaker 6: actually exist? I understand nature is strange and life is beautiful,
• 37:03
  Speaker 6: but why do these things exist? Why do I now
• 37:06
  Speaker 6: know that there are ity bitty little mites living on
• 37:11
  Speaker 6: my face and getting jiggy with it all through the night.
• 37:14
  Speaker 6: It kind of sort of makes me want to bathe
• 37:17
  Speaker 6: in pesticide. So can someone put my mind at ease
• 37:21
  Speaker 6: and just let me know, let us know, let the
• 37:25
  Speaker 6: people know that these things aren't causing us any harm,
• 37:28
  Speaker 6: and they might just very well be living out their
• 37:31
  Speaker 6: best life. So what's up with these little face invaders? Thanks?
• 37:36
  Speaker 2: You know, I'm a big believer in scientific education and
• 37:39
  Speaker 2: knowing stuff, but wow, I'm not sure I really want
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: to know about all the growth stuff that lives on
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: my face.
• 37:44
  Speaker 1: Too bad? Here it comes, okay. So, Demodex is a
• 37:48
  Speaker 1: genus of mites, and mites are related to erechnids, so
• 37:52
  Speaker 1: they're related to spiders and takes, but like they're their
• 37:54
  Speaker 1: own sort of thing, and they live on our faces.
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: There are two species that you tell to find on
• 38:00
  Speaker 1: your face, Demodex follicularum and Demodex brevis follicularum. Lives in
• 38:07
  Speaker 1: like our smaller hair follicles and like your eyelashes and stuff,
• 38:11
  Speaker 1: and so your hair follicles are like you know, the
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: holes where the hair shaft sort of goes in there.
• 38:15
  Speaker 1: They live inside of them. There're a social species, and
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: they eat skin cells that they find in there. The
• 38:22
  Speaker 1: other species usually lives near oil glands and stuff in
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: hair follicles also, and they're eating like the greasy stuff
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: that are oil glands make.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: So that mean that they're really small. They're like smaller
• 38:34
  Speaker 2: than the width of a hair, so they can like
• 38:35
  Speaker 2: crawl into these follicles and have a snack.
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: Super tiny, you can't see them. They're less than half
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: a millimeter. The brevist one is particularly small, so without
• 38:44
  Speaker 1: a microscope you can't see them. You can't feel them.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: But if you have clear visual imagery, now you're thinking
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: about them and you're imagining them crawling all over your face.
• 38:53
  Speaker 1: Oh but they save the crawling over your face for nighttime.
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: So right now they are in your pores eating their
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: dead skin buffet and their greas buffet.
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: All you can eat dead skin buffet.
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: Whoo. But when you fall asleep, they come out of
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: your pores and your follicles and they made on your face.
• 39:17
  Speaker 2: They made on your face.
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: Wow, on your face.
• 39:21
  Speaker 2: I guess for some people that's good news, you know,
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: to eat your own. I don't know. There are so
• 39:26
  Speaker 2: many jokes we could make here, but we're not going
• 39:28
  Speaker 2: to because you're already imagining them, so we don't have to.
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right. Okay, So we had a listener
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: ask us in the past, how do pinworms know it's nighttime?
• 39:38
  Speaker 1: How do face mites know it's nighttime? I looked this up,
• 39:42
  Speaker 1: and first of all, it turns out they can detect lights,
• 39:44
  Speaker 1: so probably even from inside your hair follicles, they can
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: tell if the lights are on or the lights are off, so.
• 39:49
  Speaker 2: They can just like notice it's getting dark, and they're like, ooh,
• 39:52
  Speaker 2: it's time for some romance.
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: That's right, that's right.
• 39:55
  Speaker 2: Somebody's turned down the lights, putting on the insect, putting
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: on the algorithms.
• 39:59
  Speaker 1: Right, try, I'll stop.
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: So we are keeping that, Matt, that's gold.
• 40:05
  Speaker 1: Oh no, all right, okay, So it could be the light.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: But they also and this is sort of interesting. A
• 40:10
  Speaker 1: couple episodes back, many episodes back, now, maybe we talked
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: about circadian rhythms, and we talked about how circadian rhythms
• 40:17
  Speaker 1: are this like interplay between proteins that are made by
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: your genes, and some of them are made more at night,
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: and some of them are made more during the day,
• 40:25
  Speaker 1: and they help you keep these twenty four hour cycles.
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: Somebody looked a group of researchers looked at the genome
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: of demodecs that live on our face, and they're missing
• 40:34
  Speaker 1: a lot of the genes that you'd need to make
• 40:36
  Speaker 1: the proteins that make circadian clocks, and so they think
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: that actually the mites are sort of bathed in the
• 40:44
  Speaker 1: melatonin that we make, and so instead of trying to
• 40:47
  Speaker 1: do their own circadian clocks, they're like, oh, the human
• 40:50
  Speaker 1: is oozing melatonin. Time for them to go to bed,
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: time for me to get it on, and so they
• 40:56
  Speaker 1: don't need to do it on their own anyway. That's
• 40:58
  Speaker 1: just a hypothesis. But there are other parasites that sort
• 41:00
  Speaker 1: of queue into what host hormones are doing and use
• 41:04
  Speaker 1: that information for their own purposes.
• 41:05
  Speaker 2: So they don't have their own internal clock, but they
• 41:08
  Speaker 2: have all these external triggers that tell them like when
• 41:11
  Speaker 2: it's algreen.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: Time exactly exactly, can't.
• 41:16
  Speaker 2: Get enough of your face baby?
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: Oh got all right, that's enough, that's enough. Okay. So
• 41:23
  Speaker 1: so where do your mites come from? This is an
• 41:26
  Speaker 1: interesting question. So actually most people, by the time their
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: adults have mites, right, and a lot of kids have
• 41:32
  Speaker 1: mites too, And so somebody did a study to try
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: to figure out So imagine that you have a family
• 41:37
  Speaker 1: living together. You have two moms and two kids. The
• 41:41
  Speaker 1: two kids, if they were breastfed by one of the moms,
• 41:44
  Speaker 1: they are much more likely to have her mites than
• 41:48
  Speaker 1: the mites from the other mom, because another place where
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: you find these mites is on nipples, and so the mites,
• 41:54
  Speaker 1: you know, probably like jump off the nipples and onto
• 41:57
  Speaker 1: your face, and so you get your face mites from
• 41:59
  Speaker 1: your mom. And if you were to look at the
• 42:02
  Speaker 1: other mom in that couple, her face mites probably are
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: more like her mom's face mites. Does that all make sense? Yes,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: something else you can thank your mom for.
• 42:14
  Speaker 2: And are these bad in any way or are they
• 42:16
  Speaker 2: good or are they just totally neutral?
• 42:18
  Speaker 1: Yeah? Good question. So other species have demodex mites too,
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: some of them can be sort of parasite like, but
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: it looks like our mites are usually not a problem,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: and maybe they're sort of evolving in a trajectory away
• 42:31
  Speaker 1: from parasitism. But for most of us, we've got these
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: mites on our face will never notice it. But if
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: you end up being immuno compromised, sometimes you will start
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: having problems with these mites. If you're immunocompromised, it seems
• 42:43
  Speaker 1: like they're able to reproduce even more, and if you
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: have roseaesia, they can make your skin feel even more uncomfortable.
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: They don't cause the roseasia. But if you already have
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: like a problem with your skin getting irritated, having a
• 42:57
  Speaker 1: bunch of mites on your face is probably not going
• 42:59
  Speaker 1: to help any thing. They also contribute to what I
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: think is called here's here's another opportunity for me to
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: mispronounce something. Love it bleferitis. Have you heard of bleferitis?
• 43:11
  Speaker 2: Daniel, never heard of it? Or maybe it's not pronounced
• 43:13
  Speaker 2: that way, but it doesn't ring a bell.
• 43:16
  Speaker 1: Okay, it's probably not pronounced that way. But so it's
• 43:19
  Speaker 1: essentially like, you get this like crusty stuff on your eyelids,
• 43:22
  Speaker 1: and they think that the mites living in your eyelashes
• 43:25
  Speaker 1: could be contributing to that. And this tends to particularly
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: be a problem in elderly folks, and so you know,
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: this also could maybe be an immuneo compromise sort of
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: situation contributing to it. But for most of us, the
• 43:37
  Speaker 1: mites aren't bad.
• 43:38
  Speaker 2: It's amazing you're gonna have this whole ecosystem living on
• 43:40
  Speaker 2: your face and snacking on your skin and not really
• 43:43
  Speaker 2: hurting you at all. They're just like friendly neighbors. Yeah,
• 43:46
  Speaker 2: are they benefit to help clean stuff up? Like all
• 43:49
  Speaker 2: this dead skin? Would it be bad? If you didn't
• 43:51
  Speaker 2: have somebody munching on it.
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: No, I don't think so. I didn't. I didn't come
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: across anything saying that the mites are helpful. And you know,
• 43:58
  Speaker 1: especially these days were we've got like soaps to wash
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: our face, we've got ways to exfoliate. I don't think
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: we really they're not really contributing to the cleanliness of
• 44:07
  Speaker 1: our faces. And you see similar things happening in dogs.
• 44:10
  Speaker 1: So dog species have their own demodex mites. And sometimes
• 44:14
  Speaker 1: you'll get bold patches on puppies because their immune systems
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: aren't good yet, they're just developing, and those bold patches
• 44:20
  Speaker 1: will be areas where the mites are sort of getting
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: out of control. But if you just wait long enough,
• 44:24
  Speaker 1: in a lot of cases, it'll clear up because the
• 44:26
  Speaker 1: puppies immune system will mature and they'll get those mite
• 44:29
  Speaker 1: populations back under control and that patch will sort of
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: grow back in again.
• 44:33
  Speaker 2: Wow.
• 44:34
  Speaker 1: But Daniel, I bet you are wondering does demodex poop?
• 44:42
  Speaker 2: I was wondering if we could complete the dk EU
• 44:45
  Speaker 2: bingo and have either poop or cannibalism. So which way
• 44:49
  Speaker 2: are we going?
• 44:50
  Speaker 1: We're going poop?
• 44:50
  Speaker 2: All right?
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: I didn't find any evidence that they eat each other.
• 44:54
  Speaker 1: And so for a long time, the going knowledge was
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: that demodexs do don't poop. They store up all of
• 45:02
  Speaker 1: the waste that they make. They only live about three weeks.
• 45:05
  Speaker 1: And so actually, if you live to be about seventy
• 45:08
  Speaker 1: three years old and your demodex each live three weeks,
• 45:11
  Speaker 1: you're probably host to something like twelve hundred generations of
• 45:16
  Speaker 1: mites wow, throughout your life, which is just crazy.
• 45:18
  Speaker 2: But I have an input output question. They have inputs, Yeah,
• 45:21
  Speaker 2: they have no outputs. Are they just getting bigger and
• 45:24
  Speaker 2: bigger and bigger or what's going on?
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: Well, so the idea was, you know, three weeks is
• 45:28
  Speaker 1: not a long time. They just they store it. They
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: do get a little bit bigger, and then when they die,
• 45:32
  Speaker 1: they just kind of like you know, release everything.
• 45:36
  Speaker 2: So they just like die in the big poopy corpse
• 45:38
  Speaker 2: in your face.
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right, that's right. But actually, some very good
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: slew thing in twenty twenty two with some great photos
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: found an anus. Yay, this is why you fund basic
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: science people.
• 45:54
  Speaker 2: I want to use very powerful telescopes to look for
• 45:56
  Speaker 2: tiny anuses.
• 45:58
  Speaker 1: Well, tiny anuses have been found. They also found a
• 46:01
  Speaker 1: tiny penis on their head, so that's where the males
• 46:04
  Speaker 1: have their their wieners. So anyway, all kinds of important information,
• 46:09
  Speaker 1: but we haven't actually answered the listener's question yet, which is.
• 46:13
  Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, I have lust track. What was the question again?
• 46:16
  Speaker 1: Why why would you have this horrible thing? And I
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: actually I feel like it's obvious, like we are a
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: super abundant species. We are very close to our offspring,
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: you know, sometimes they sleep next to us, we breastfeed them.
• 46:32
  Speaker 1: It is very easy to imagine transmitting this, you know,
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: parasite or symbiant if it's not bad for us, like
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: this this critter from one organism to another. We are
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: a super abundant species. And you know, they're so tiny
• 46:45
  Speaker 1: that we don't even know they're there, so we're not
• 46:47
  Speaker 1: attacking them or anything like that. I mean, it seems
• 46:50
  Speaker 1: to me like we are a great ecosystem for a
• 46:54
  Speaker 1: little critter like.
• 46:55
  Speaker 2: This, And so you know, so you're why not basically.
• 46:58
  Speaker 1: Yeah, that's right. Yeah. Evolution and fills any niche that
• 47:01
  Speaker 1: it can find that it's got a path to, and
• 47:04
  Speaker 1: our faces were one of those paths.
• 47:07
  Speaker 2: And is there like a whole ecosystem, there are there
• 47:09
  Speaker 2: predators that gobble these things or do they live a
• 47:12
  Speaker 2: predator freed lifestyle.
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: I don't know, that's a question.
• 47:16
  Speaker 2: Because they sound delicious.
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: Sure, I feel like they probably have parasites also that
• 47:24
  Speaker 1: infect them.
• 47:24
  Speaker 2: Or something might exactly, maybe they have face mites.
• 47:27
  Speaker 1: Maybe they do have face mites.
• 47:29
  Speaker 2: It's face mites all the way down, isn't it.
• 47:31
  Speaker 1: Oh my gosh, we figured it out. Yeah. So I
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: didn't find any stories about them having parasites or predators,
• 47:39
  Speaker 1: but I would love to know. And you know, we
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: are probably their biggest problem when we wash and exfoliate
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: our faces, but they hang in there inside our pores.
• 47:49
  Speaker 2: Well, we have brought you up to speed to the
• 47:50
  Speaker 2: forefront of human knowledge on face mites. Let's check in
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: with our listener and see if we have scratched the
• 47:57
  Speaker 2: lunars itch.
• 47:59
  Speaker 6: All right, hey, thank you very much for that excellent answer, Kelly,
• 48:03
  Speaker 6: and I greatly appreciate knowing that these little creatures are
• 48:09
  Speaker 6: just simply getting by. It's still a little bit weird
• 48:13
  Speaker 6: to know that they get up some interesting nocturnal activity.
• 48:17
  Speaker 6: At least someone's having fun. And thank you very much, Daniel.
• 48:21
  Speaker 6: I will never listen to Berry White the same way
• 48:24
  Speaker 6: again without having this certain mental image of little nights
• 48:28
  Speaker 6: and their heads having fun on my face. Thanks a lot, guys,
• 48:32
  Speaker 6: I appreciate it. Keep up the good works, you guys rock.
• 48:36
  Speaker 1: Thank you so much everybody for your questions. We appreciate
• 48:39
  Speaker 1: them so much. There are so many topics that I
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: would love to have the time to dig into, and
• 48:43
  Speaker 1: when you ask about them, I get to I appreciate
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: you all so much.
• 48:48
  Speaker 2: We do. We love hearing from you. I love opening
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: my email in the morning and seeing all the incredible
• 48:53
  Speaker 2: diversity of curiosity and questions and wondering and joy. We
• 48:57
  Speaker 2: love hearing from you. That makes this podcast conversation between
• 49:01
  Speaker 2: us and you, not just between me and Kelly. So
• 49:04
  Speaker 2: thanks everyone for joining in.
• 49:06
  Speaker 1: Thank you until next time. Daniel and Kelly's Extraordinary Universe
• 49:17
  Speaker 1: is produced by iHeartRadio. We would love to hear from you,
• 49:20
  Speaker 1: We really would.
• 49:21
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• 49:24
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• 49:26
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• 49:33
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