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Tardigrades: Nature's Cuddly, Indestructible Microanimal · Stuff You Should Know

0:01
Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff you Should Know from house Stuff Works
0:04
Speaker 1: dot com. Hey, and welcome to the podcast on Josh
0:13
Speaker 1: Clark with Charles W. Chuck Bryant, and Jerry. This is
0:17
Speaker 1: stuff you should know about Toward Grades. Uh never heard
0:23
Speaker 1: of these little guys, and now they have shot into
0:28
Speaker 1: the top five alongside the octopus and uh, what's the
0:34
Speaker 1: other one that I jellyfish? Jellyfish. These little dudes. Want
0:39
Speaker 1: to hug them. I might be hugging them right now,
0:42
Speaker 1: you could well, probably not, probably not, But I love them.
0:45
Speaker 1: They're cute them, they're tiny that not hardly anybody knows
0:52
Speaker 1: what they are. I would say they're I would say
0:55
Speaker 1: of people listening, do not know what this is? Really?
0:58
Speaker 1: So I was under the US and that they were
1:00
Speaker 1: kind of a big hit on the internet within the
1:03
Speaker 1: last couple of years. Well, I'm not happy to that stuff.
1:06
Speaker 1: So maybe, okay, it might have been a part of
1:08
Speaker 1: a meme. I don't know what political meme. Yeah, I
1:11
Speaker 1: think I think tart grades had a had a moment.
1:14
Speaker 1: But it turns out that they they've been around for
1:17
Speaker 1: much longer than the Internet. Yeah, yeah, hundreds of millions
1:22
Speaker 1: of years. Yeah, somewhere around the neighborhood of six hundred
1:25
Speaker 1: million years, which would make them Precambrian explosion, which makes
1:29
Speaker 1: them really old PC. Yeah, so before we get into that,
1:34
Speaker 1: let's tell you what we're talking about. A tart of
1:37
Speaker 1: grade also known as a water bear. Cute name. This
1:41
Speaker 1: is my favorite moss piglet um pigmy rhinoceros pigmy armadillo.
1:49
Speaker 1: I don't like armadillos ever since our lepers episode. UM.
1:55
Speaker 1: They are a little tiny micro scopic animals, animals, multicellular
2:04
Speaker 1: animals that UM reproduce sexually. In a lot of cases
2:10
Speaker 1: that UM are well, they're animals. They're not just like,
2:14
Speaker 1: they're not bacteria and that viruses. They're not bugs. They're
2:17
Speaker 1: very very small. They get to be about a half
2:19
Speaker 1: to one millimeter in size depending on the species. And UM.
2:24
Speaker 1: They're also super cute depending on your view of things. Yes,
2:30
Speaker 1: first thing you should do, if you're at home or
2:34
Speaker 1: if you're not driving, let's say, is pull at your
2:37
Speaker 1: phone or your or your desktop, pull out your desktop
2:43
Speaker 1: and look up charted grade and just look at a
2:45
Speaker 1: little picture of it, and you know, so you know
2:48
Speaker 1: what we're talking about. UM, if you ask me. People
2:51
Speaker 1: liking it to a panda bear. I don't quite get that,
2:54
Speaker 1: although the have Have Have you seen the picture of the
2:55
Speaker 1: one on its back? No, I don't think I did.
2:58
Speaker 1: Very cute. Looks like you just wants to maratches a
3:00
Speaker 1: little belly. But it looks to me like if moth
3:04
Speaker 1: caterpillar and a naked mole rat and unholy union. That
3:09
Speaker 1: was awesome. That was the best analogy of that. That's
3:13
Speaker 1: kind of what looks like to me, um holy, I think, yeah,
3:17
Speaker 1: they managed to do it somehow. Tells uh the name
3:25
Speaker 1: tarte grade is from Latin and it actually means slow walker,
3:29
Speaker 1: which is cute in and of itself, and that supposedly
3:32
Speaker 1: was named by um. This Italian scientists named Lazaro Spitzani.
3:41
Speaker 1: Tell him the name of his book. I love this name.
3:45
Speaker 1: His book was Oh boy, Opa scorely de Fistia and Nimala.
3:51
Speaker 1: The bield not bad, not bad. You didn't raise your
3:56
Speaker 1: your fingers though, that's right. But he named this guy
4:00
Speaker 1: he found this well, he didn't discover it. Apparently before him.
4:03
Speaker 1: In seventeen seventy three, a German pastor name Johan all
4:06
Speaker 1: Goes from gets Uh discovered it. But he is the
4:12
Speaker 1: one Spottsani is the one who named it uh, which
4:17
Speaker 1: means slow stepper. Yeah. And the reason he called it
4:19
Speaker 1: that is because if you look under a microscope at
4:22
Speaker 1: all the stuff, which was all the rage in the
4:24
Speaker 1: late eighteenth century, look at all this stuff. After why
4:27
Speaker 1: was his name Anton von Leavin hook Am I saying
4:30
Speaker 1: that correctly? I don't remember. I'm pretty sure. Um. After
4:34
Speaker 1: he started to invent microscopes, and they there you spread,
4:38
Speaker 1: people started looking at what was in debris and rain gutters.
4:42
Speaker 1: The added water to it, and they found that when
4:44
Speaker 1: you add water to stuff that was just dried up
4:46
Speaker 1: dust and a rain gutter, all of a sudden you
4:49
Speaker 1: saw that there was a bunch of things that came
4:50
Speaker 1: to life. And most of those things move around really
4:54
Speaker 1: really fast, just starting about like, oh, it's over here,
4:57
Speaker 1: let's go over there. I want to go over there.
4:58
Speaker 1: They have like very short engine spans, right tartar grades
5:03
Speaker 1: lumber about. They kind of fall and flip over a
5:07
Speaker 1: lot as they're climbing over like pieces of dust and
5:10
Speaker 1: other particles. Um. And they move much more slowly and
5:14
Speaker 1: and I guess deliberately compared to their other microscopic friends
5:19
Speaker 1: in the in the rain got or debris, so that's
5:21
Speaker 1: where they got their name. Um. They have eight legs,
5:26
Speaker 1: a little little short, little stubby legs right into their
5:29
Speaker 1: rear legs are inverted right, so they're facing forward instead
5:35
Speaker 1: of backward, and they face backwards. They face backwards instead
5:40
Speaker 1: of forward. And all their legs have little claws at
5:42
Speaker 1: the end right for climbing, for climbing, and the first
5:47
Speaker 1: three pairs of legs are used for swimming. The back
5:50
Speaker 1: are you're used for climbing only in rudder work the
5:55
Speaker 1: front with battle and they steer with the rear they
5:57
Speaker 1: make dream hands. Uh. And what are they climbing over? Well,
6:01
Speaker 1: it depends. You can find them all over the place, um,
6:05
Speaker 1: but mainly if they're on dry land, they're they're living
6:08
Speaker 1: in moss, fallen leaves, um, stuff that you would find
6:11
Speaker 1: in a gutter lichen. Yeah, yeah, things that typically um
6:15
Speaker 1: have moisture in them because water bears tartar grades UM
6:20
Speaker 1: survive when they're surrounded by moisture. Right when they're amid moisture, freshwater,
6:27
Speaker 1: salt water doesn't matter, No, it doesn't inventil the kind
6:30
Speaker 1: of course. Right. So there they apparently originated in the
6:34
Speaker 1: sea because the species of tartar grades that are marine
6:39
Speaker 1: based are the least evolved, I guess you'd put it. Then, Yeah,
6:44
Speaker 1: you've got freshwater ones, and then you've got ones that
6:47
Speaker 1: are terrestrial that you can find on land, and those
6:49
Speaker 1: are the ones that live in lichens and moss and
6:51
Speaker 1: stuff like that. Um, and all of them again are
6:56
Speaker 1: part of this branch of the family tree that's its
7:00
Speaker 1: own phylum. Tarta grata is a phylum. And this article
7:05
Speaker 1: makes the point that, um, if you look at humans,
7:08
Speaker 1: where where we share a phylum Cordata with like snakes
7:14
Speaker 1: and um, every other vertebrate on Earth. Right, these guys
7:20
Speaker 1: have their own file there, in their own club. They
7:22
Speaker 1: really are. So that says two things. That they're a
7:25
Speaker 1: very ancient line and that there's a ton of them,
7:28
Speaker 1: a lot of them. Yeah. And there are there's water
7:31
Speaker 1: bears everywhere. Yeah, and we mentioned that they're animals. And
7:33
Speaker 1: if you look at a picture, it's probably from them all.
7:35
Speaker 1: Not probably, it's definitely from a microscope. And so you
7:39
Speaker 1: know you think that again like it's just some sort
7:41
Speaker 1: of bacteria or something, um, but it's not. It is
7:45
Speaker 1: an animal. It has a brain as a nervous system,
7:48
Speaker 1: It has a little stomach and little tiny intestines, has
7:51
Speaker 1: a little tiny anus, little tiny esophagus, and uh, they
7:56
Speaker 1: don't have heart and lungs or veins. Because I was
8:00
Speaker 1: gonna say open source, they are open uh hemail, as
8:04
Speaker 1: the lady on the internet said, which means that gas
8:07
Speaker 1: exchange and nutrient exchange happens because every cell in the
8:14
Speaker 1: tartar grades body is touching the the interior body cavity.
8:19
Speaker 1: So as food and air goes through the mouth and
8:23
Speaker 1: out his tiny venus, right, Um, those nutrients and those
8:28
Speaker 1: gases get to get passed into the cells that get
8:32
Speaker 1: pass that that it passes by. Yeah, it's like a
8:34
Speaker 1: studio apartment. It's actually extremely efficient. Sure. So they're about
8:38
Speaker 1: a thousand species or more of tartar grades um. Six
8:43
Speaker 1: hundred or so on land, about three hundred marine and
8:46
Speaker 1: about a hundred in the fresh water. Um. They lay eggs,
8:51
Speaker 1: some of them have sex, some of them don't. Some
8:55
Speaker 1: of them self fertilize. Yeah, that's pretty interesting stuff. Else,
9:00
Speaker 1: they eat the fluids of plants or they some of
9:04
Speaker 1: them are carnivores. Yeah, the fluids of animals. There's always
9:07
Speaker 1: got to be fluid. Yeah, they have like a piercing
9:09
Speaker 1: mouth part. I believe that can pierce cell wall and
9:12
Speaker 1: just suck the fluids and proteins and stuff out of
9:15
Speaker 1: a cell. And depending on the species that cell, maybe
9:18
Speaker 1: plant based, or it may be animal based, including other
9:21
Speaker 1: tartar grades, which is decidedly less cute cannibalism. Sure so,
9:27
Speaker 1: if you're sitting there right now and you're thinking, I
9:30
Speaker 1: don't see how this rivals and octopus, these are just tiny,
9:33
Speaker 1: little maybe kind of cute, but tiny little animals. What's
9:37
Speaker 1: the big whoop? Uh? Right after this break, we'll tell
9:41
Speaker 1: you what the big wholp is. All Right, we're back
10:04
Speaker 1: with the big whoop about tartar grades. Despite the size
10:07
Speaker 1: of these things, how big were they? Again? Uh? In
10:11
Speaker 1: a if you look at a magazine article, they're about
10:13
Speaker 1: half the size of a period at the end of
10:16
Speaker 1: a sentence. That's a what's a magazine? No? No, that's true,
10:22
Speaker 1: you say that, but it's true. That's a good way
10:25
Speaker 1: to put it though. So they're that tiny, and they
10:29
Speaker 1: are one of the toughest, most resilient creatures on the
10:34
Speaker 1: planet Earth. Period they're probably the most resilient animal or
10:39
Speaker 1: organism on Earth. Amazing. All right, let's talk about it.
10:43
Speaker 1: Let's talk about temperature. Yeah, they like it that like
10:47
Speaker 1: seventy degrees and nothing else. Right, So, well, what's weird
10:50
Speaker 1: is there's this longstanding tradition and biology of trying to
10:54
Speaker 1: kill tartar grades under really not so conditions. Let's see
10:59
Speaker 1: what these little guy can take. Basically, I'm not quite
11:01
Speaker 1: sure how it started, but somebody figured out um fairly
11:06
Speaker 1: fairly early on that they could withstand amazingly cold temperatures. Right,
11:12
Speaker 1: so we're talking like down to basically absolute zero, a
11:16
Speaker 1: couple just a couple of degrees above absolute zero. And
11:20
Speaker 1: to understand how crazy that anything could survive at absolute zero.
11:25
Speaker 1: That's where like atomic movement based ceases, because absolute zero
11:31
Speaker 1: there's no movement of atoms or molecules any longer, right,
11:34
Speaker 1: because that's what he does. Heat energies the movement of
11:36
Speaker 1: atoms and molecules, so cold, by contrast, is the cessation
11:40
Speaker 1: or the lesser movement of atoms. Right, we're talking negative
11:44
Speaker 1: to seventy two celsius negative fahrenheit. So targe grades have
11:49
Speaker 1: been kept at that temperature for twenty hours and then
11:54
Speaker 1: thought out and they said that's what you got. You
11:59
Speaker 1: got a tickto this is great. I think I fell
12:01
Speaker 1: the fly on my shoulder. Uh yeah, seemingly unharmed. Um.
12:07
Speaker 1: They put them on ice uh at negative two hundred
12:10
Speaker 1: celsius and not absolute zero, but they've iced them down
12:13
Speaker 1: for years in a row, thought them out. They were
12:18
Speaker 1: right back to normal. Amazing. Then on the other side,
12:22
Speaker 1: they've exposed them to extraordinarily hot temperatures like a hundred
12:26
Speaker 1: and fifty degrees celsius and um, we should say so
12:31
Speaker 1: the fact that they're surviving that's like, wow, fifty degrees celsius.
12:34
Speaker 1: That's hot. Absolute zero, that's cold. The reason why it's
12:39
Speaker 1: so incredibly just mind boggling that Tarte grades can survive
12:44
Speaker 1: this and still be animals is that they appear to
12:48
Speaker 1: be the only life that can survive these conditions. The
12:51
Speaker 1: reason why is if you freeze and your multicellular your
12:55
Speaker 1: cells are liable to freeze themselves, and there's gonna be
12:58
Speaker 1: all sorts of cellular damage when the ice crystals form
13:01
Speaker 1: in your cells, they're gonna rupture yourselves because ice expands
13:05
Speaker 1: when it freezes. Right. It's also less to yes, we
13:09
Speaker 1: did a frostbite frost. So the fact that they can
13:13
Speaker 1: come back to life after being exposed to these really
13:15
Speaker 1: cold temperatures means that they've got something going on that's
13:18
Speaker 1: keeping their cells from rupturing. Science has no idea why.
13:22
Speaker 1: On the other hand, with heat, tremendous heat. When you
13:25
Speaker 1: are you expose a cell to a hundred and fifty
13:28
Speaker 1: egrees celsius, which is above the boiling point of water,
13:30
Speaker 1: right you are, your proteins are gonna unfold and pool
13:36
Speaker 1: and coagulate and be totally useless. So you can't come
13:40
Speaker 1: back to life because all of the processes and the
13:43
Speaker 1: building blocks of life are useless in your body, and
13:46
Speaker 1: you would have to start from scratch, which is tough
13:48
Speaker 1: to catch up to when you're trying to to come
13:51
Speaker 1: back alive from being exposed to high temperatures. Tarte grades
13:55
Speaker 1: do it all right. So they flash freeze them, They
13:57
Speaker 1: freeze them for years, They boil them, they try and
14:01
Speaker 1: smash them to the tune of fifty eight hundred pounds
14:05
Speaker 1: per square inch of pressure. And the Tartar grade was like,
14:09
Speaker 1: bring it, yeah, no problem. And we're talking about pressures
14:13
Speaker 1: that are six times greater than the greatest pressures found
14:16
Speaker 1: anywhere on Earth. And they withstand it. Uh, they blasted them.
14:21
Speaker 1: They tried to suffocate them. They prepped tiny little hands
14:24
Speaker 1: around their throat. They put on tiny black gloves first
14:28
Speaker 1: so they didn't leave any of it. Now, they tried
14:30
Speaker 1: to suffocate him with carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, sulfur dioxide,
14:36
Speaker 1: nitrogen UM. They've shot them with gamma raise what the
14:42
Speaker 1: X rays. Yeah, they found there was a French study
14:46
Speaker 1: that found that um. It took five hundred and seventy
14:50
Speaker 1: thousand room Gin's I think that's how you say it
14:54
Speaker 1: to kill fifty of the tartar grades in a sample
14:57
Speaker 1: but still lived. And that's five hundred and seventy thousand.
15:01
Speaker 1: It takes five hundred to kill a human, but it
15:05
Speaker 1: took five hundred and seventy thousand to kill half, just
15:08
Speaker 1: half of the tartar grades in a sample. Yeah, they
15:10
Speaker 1: shot them up into space and I think about half
15:12
Speaker 1: of those lived, right, So they literally, like he said,
15:16
Speaker 1: they're trying to come up with newer and more creative
15:18
Speaker 1: ways to kill these things. And the tartar grades take
15:22
Speaker 1: all comers basically. And there they have a couple of mechanisms. Again,
15:27
Speaker 1: science is trying to figure out one how their cells
15:29
Speaker 1: keep from freezing in a way that they would rupture
15:32
Speaker 1: or how their proteins keep from unfolding. But like that
15:36
Speaker 1: kind of radiation exposure should do all sorts of horrible things.
15:41
Speaker 1: You should go listen to our radiation sickness episode. That
15:43
Speaker 1: was a good one, But it should do all sorts
15:45
Speaker 1: of horrible things, like break up the n A. But
15:48
Speaker 1: apparently they have some sort of mechanism to prevent this
15:51
Speaker 1: from happening, right while they have a mechanism to stitch
15:54
Speaker 1: it back together. And apparently they also produce a protein
15:58
Speaker 1: called de s up that UH acts as a shield
16:01
Speaker 1: that wraps itself around DNA and and basically shields the
16:05
Speaker 1: DNA from radiation exposure to begin with. So um, they
16:10
Speaker 1: have all these these natural processes, but they also have
16:14
Speaker 1: passive processes as well that that include basically like going
16:20
Speaker 1: into a state of suspended animation depending on the conditions. Yeah,
16:24
Speaker 1: there are two things called um uh an oxybiosis and cryptobiosis.
16:30
Speaker 1: Those are two of the three states where these things live. Um.
16:33
Speaker 1: The other one is just the active state, which is
16:35
Speaker 1: just a regular living normal charter grade. That's where they're
16:39
Speaker 1: doing all their daily life basically, which I don't think
16:42
Speaker 1: we mentioned. You know, there's not a lot to that part. No,
16:46
Speaker 1: And apparently researchers are like, we have no idea what
16:48
Speaker 1: role they play in ecosis. Yeah, that's kind of what
16:50
Speaker 1: I was wondering, Like, they're indestructible. They're gonna be the
16:53
Speaker 1: only thing left maybe after our nuclear annihilation or global
16:57
Speaker 1: warming has wiped us off the face of the earth. Uh,
17:00
Speaker 1: but why nobody knows? Who knows? Maybe they're going to
17:03
Speaker 1: grow up and be big boys one day. Well No,
17:05
Speaker 1: that's a really great question though, because if you think
17:07
Speaker 1: about it, you're like, why would these things be able
17:10
Speaker 1: to withstand pressure six times greater than what's present on Earth,
17:14
Speaker 1: or radiation like you would never find on Earth, or
17:17
Speaker 1: temperatures like you would never doesn't make any sense until
17:21
Speaker 1: you stop and think, like, there doesn't have to be
17:23
Speaker 1: a reason. It could just be that they have strategies
17:26
Speaker 1: that they used to defend themselves against certain conditions on
17:29
Speaker 1: Earth that are just just totally unrelatedly, also happened to
17:34
Speaker 1: cover these other conditions that we humans try to launch
17:37
Speaker 1: them into that a tartar grade would never would never
17:40
Speaker 1: evolve to take on. But they can still withstand it.
17:45
Speaker 1: Like you asked the tartar grade and They're like, We're
17:47
Speaker 1: just trying to survive dude, right, Like, why you have
17:49
Speaker 1: to lay a purpose on it? What's with your hangups?
17:52
Speaker 1: So the first one I mentioned, the an oxybiosis set
17:56
Speaker 1: s whim. If you like starve them of oxygen, they
17:59
Speaker 1: will puff up, uh in a little ball and stay
18:02
Speaker 1: that way. Basically, Yeah, I guess they lose their ability
18:07
Speaker 1: to um regulate fluid transmission in and out of their cells,
18:12
Speaker 1: and fluid rushes in and they puff up and they
18:16
Speaker 1: can stay that way I think for a few days,
18:17
Speaker 1: and then after that they die. But not bad. A
18:21
Speaker 1: few days of being completely saturated with water not bad. Uh.
18:25
Speaker 1: The other one that's really amazing though, is a cryptobiosis.
18:28
Speaker 1: So uh, we said that they do need this water. Um.
18:32
Speaker 1: If they doesn't mean they have to live in the water,
18:35
Speaker 1: but they need water. Um. But if this water eventually
18:38
Speaker 1: goes away and you dry them up, they pull in
18:41
Speaker 1: their feet, they pull in their head, and they basically
18:47
Speaker 1: stop metabolizing. They go into this weird state of suspended
18:49
Speaker 1: animation where they say, all right, I'm I'm basically you
18:53
Speaker 1: think I'm dead. By all accounts, I look like I
18:55
Speaker 1: would be dead, but I'm not and it's called a
18:58
Speaker 1: ton state to you in yeah, or tune. I think
19:01
Speaker 1: it might be tuned because it was it's short for
19:04
Speaker 1: um tune conform. It's got a it's a German word
19:08
Speaker 1: with an oom lot over the oh. So wouldn't it
19:10
Speaker 1: be a two? Well, it's like turn trench in form,
19:14
Speaker 1: tune in form. But I'm gonna call it a ton state.
19:18
Speaker 1: Uh Okay, So this this ton state or tuned state,
19:23
Speaker 1: that's how I'm going to say it. Uh. Their metabolism
19:27
Speaker 1: solows down to like point zero five percent of its
19:30
Speaker 1: normal rate. Right. And there was a researcher in the
19:34
Speaker 1: forties in Italy who said that she revived a sample
19:40
Speaker 1: of tartar grades from a sample of dry moss that
19:43
Speaker 1: had been collected like a hundred and twenty years before. Well,
19:47
Speaker 1: apparently no one's ever recreated that one, but they have
19:52
Speaker 1: found that a tartar grade can survive in this teen
19:55
Speaker 1: state for at least thirty two years. Some Japanese researchers
20:00
Speaker 1: took moss that was collected from Antarctica in three and
20:04
Speaker 1: in two thousand and fifteen, they opened up the sample
20:08
Speaker 1: and where they rehydrated it, and they found that some
20:11
Speaker 1: tartar grades came alive. It's almost like it freeze, dries
20:14
Speaker 1: itself and just needs to have, you know, add water.
20:19
Speaker 1: And they're like, all right, what what happened over the
20:22
Speaker 1: last thirty years? Right exactly? This president The thing is, though,
20:25
Speaker 1: is if something dries out, it loses it's of its water,
20:29
Speaker 1: it's moisture from its body. I think, Okay, if something
20:34
Speaker 1: drives out like that, like your DNA needs water to
20:37
Speaker 1: If DNA stays dry, it starts to deteriorate pretty quickly.
20:42
Speaker 1: So again, nothing is supposed to be able to survive
20:45
Speaker 1: thirty years of that state, right. Um, So this has
20:50
Speaker 1: just got researchers puzzled as well, like how are they
20:52
Speaker 1: doing this kind of thing? Apparently they have um proteins
20:57
Speaker 1: that helped stitch DNA back together, So I guess they
21:01
Speaker 1: start to come out of the tune state and one
21:03
Speaker 1: of the first things they do is stitch back this
21:05
Speaker 1: their d n A they get up the little sew machine. Yeah,
21:09
Speaker 1: well there's this one dude, and we'll take a break
21:12
Speaker 1: and talk about his a seeming obsession, uh with these
21:16
Speaker 1: little fellows right after this. Alright, so if you want
21:40
Speaker 1: to know everything, you want, need to know about a
21:43
Speaker 1: charter grade, you should sit down and have coffee with
21:47
Speaker 1: unc Chapel Hill Coatar. Heels uh with this? Is he
21:52
Speaker 1: a professor? He's just he's a prof Thomas Boothby. This
21:58
Speaker 1: dude seems like he go to like every article I
22:02
Speaker 1: read featured him as the main uh Interviewee. Well, he
22:07
Speaker 1: likes to talk tartar grade. He does. He has a
22:11
Speaker 1: button that he wears all the time. Said, asked me
22:13
Speaker 1: about tartar grade. People like what, Uh so, Yeah, I don't,
22:17
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm sure it's not an obsession. But he
22:19
Speaker 1: is stricken with him as I am. And Um, he's
22:23
Speaker 1: trying to figure out like how and why they're able
22:27
Speaker 1: to do all these amazing things. Um, probably more on
22:31
Speaker 1: the how than the why. He's why. He seems to
22:35
Speaker 1: do a lot of I don't know. He leaves that
22:37
Speaker 1: to the philosophy professors. Yeah, exactly so what Thomas Boothby
22:42
Speaker 1: made his name not in the way that he would
22:45
Speaker 1: necessarily like when he was leading a team I think
22:48
Speaker 1: in two thousand fourteen, maybe maybe two fift that that
22:54
Speaker 1: did a genetic scan of a species of water bears
22:58
Speaker 1: and found some really surprising results, Right, they found that
23:02
Speaker 1: something like seventeen percent and change of genes in the
23:08
Speaker 1: water bears were associated with other things like fungi, bacteria, viruses,
23:15
Speaker 1: that they had all these DNA stitched up with theirs,
23:19
Speaker 1: and that the the assumption was that that was how
23:23
Speaker 1: the Tarte grades were able to do all these amazing
23:26
Speaker 1: things and survive in all these ways because they were
23:28
Speaker 1: borrowing talents and traits and characteristics of unicellular life and
23:34
Speaker 1: non living life like viruses, and that that's how they
23:38
Speaker 1: were able to to survive these extreme conditions. Yeah, but
23:43
Speaker 1: it's uh, the kind of ended up being a watch.
23:48
Speaker 1: Like he got really excited and thought, oh my gosh,
23:50
Speaker 1: they've got all this stuff, but it turns out they
23:52
Speaker 1: were just contaminated through poor experimentation. They they assumed that
23:57
Speaker 1: there was lateral gene transfer that was going on. It
24:00
Speaker 1: turns out that yeah, they had a contaminated sample. And
24:04
Speaker 1: hats off to Thomas S. Boothby because he's not like, Okay,
24:06
Speaker 1: I'm gonna go hide for the next decade like he's
24:09
Speaker 1: he was like, Hey, it happens. It's science, man. We've
24:13
Speaker 1: gotten increasingly sophisticated machines and the increasingly sophisticated machines found
24:18
Speaker 1: that our sample is contaminated. Let's get back to work.
24:21
Speaker 1: So the Japanese researchers that follow up on a different
24:24
Speaker 1: type of tarted grade one of the hardiest around um
24:29
Speaker 1: Resuma tourists pantasma. Basically, I was hoping that's what it was,
24:36
Speaker 1: but it was like ramas odious, very natus. Here it
24:42
Speaker 1: comes this, uh, and that's one of the hardiest of all.
24:46
Speaker 1: It's a land species. Um, the land are much more hardier.
24:49
Speaker 1: I think we already said that, right, And well there's
24:52
Speaker 1: your why, Chuck that one of the reasons why these
24:55
Speaker 1: the land um species have have evolved is because they
24:59
Speaker 1: have too They don't have these stable conditions that the
25:03
Speaker 1: marine and aquatic ones do. Right. Yeah, So, um, they
25:07
Speaker 1: tested the res ramas odious are very an odous species,
25:13
Speaker 1: and they found that they had about one percent of
25:16
Speaker 1: foreign genes involved in them, which is about normal because
25:20
Speaker 1: lateral gene transfer can happen at that rate. It's just
25:23
Speaker 1: sort of average. All right. So, like you said, he
25:27
Speaker 1: held us head high and said, all right, no big deal.
25:30
Speaker 1: We're going to continue to search for the reasons why
25:32
Speaker 1: these little dudes are so hardy. One of the things
25:35
Speaker 1: that they found that was pretty unique is um ice
25:39
Speaker 1: is a big deal. And we talked a little bit
25:41
Speaker 1: a few minutes ago harkening back to the frost bite
25:44
Speaker 1: where ice crystals form inside a cell, tearing apart that DNA.
25:48
Speaker 1: And there are some animals that make an anti fee
25:50
Speaker 1: freeze like protein like fish. Some fish do that to
25:55
Speaker 1: keep it from freezing. And they thought, well, maybe the
25:57
Speaker 1: chart grade is doing that, and they don't think it is.
26:00
Speaker 1: They think it can just handle it basically a right, like,
26:04
Speaker 1: maybe it's just freezing the outside of the cells and
26:06
Speaker 1: not the inside like some weird mechanism they don't understand.
26:10
Speaker 1: But it's definitely not producing in any freeze like some
26:12
Speaker 1: of these fish are. It's just like, bring bring it on,
26:15
Speaker 1: little ice. I can take it. I can take that problem.
26:18
Speaker 1: And again with radiation exposure they have they've they've been
26:22
Speaker 1: found to have proteins that shield DNA and the ability
26:25
Speaker 1: to stitch DNA back together. Right, Yeah, so you got
26:29
Speaker 1: that covered. Yeah, And I think you alluded to it earlier. Um,
26:33
Speaker 1: it may not be the case of the Tartar grade
26:36
Speaker 1: has all these different things to survive these environments, but
26:40
Speaker 1: maybe two or three little tricks that are just you
26:43
Speaker 1: can apply to different ways of survival. So it's not
26:47
Speaker 1: like they're evolving to go fly through space colonize new plants.
26:52
Speaker 1: That's a question that a lot of people come up
26:54
Speaker 1: with once they learn about tartar grades, is like, well,
26:56
Speaker 1: wait a minute, are these things like aliens? Did they
26:59
Speaker 1: come on an ast roid and basically gets spread like
27:02
Speaker 1: seed here on Earth? Um, they could survive space, some
27:07
Speaker 1: of them could conceivably, but um, they would burn up
27:10
Speaker 1: on re entry, so probably not. So were they on
27:14
Speaker 1: on the back of an asteroid, they would, Yeah, they'd
27:17
Speaker 1: burn up because fire apparently can kill a charter grade
27:20
Speaker 1: I guess. Yeah. And those space experiments, they were inside
27:24
Speaker 1: the satellite, inside the capsule, protected from re entry until
27:28
Speaker 1: they were out in space, and then they were exposed
27:31
Speaker 1: to solar radiation and then they were put back in
27:34
Speaker 1: the capsule and brought back to Earth and sound. Yeah. So,
27:38
Speaker 1: like the thing he found in common was with the
27:41
Speaker 1: heat and the cold, the common length there is an
27:44
Speaker 1: ability to repair DNA, and so maybe that's the sort
27:47
Speaker 1: of common denominator here. They're just good at it, and
27:52
Speaker 1: they're good at it because they have to be or
27:53
Speaker 1: else they wouldn't be around. Yeah, they were forced into it. Yeah,
27:58
Speaker 1: it's a pretty nihilistic you. I like it. There is
28:02
Speaker 1: another thing that stood out to me. I just love
28:05
Speaker 1: so um. At the pressures they can withstand, the fatty
28:09
Speaker 1: membranes of their cells should be as solid as cold butter,
28:15
Speaker 1: and again should stop functioning at those pressures, or should
28:19
Speaker 1: kill them. They bounce back solid as cold butter. Yeah,
28:24
Speaker 1: I mean think about it. Like, normally, fatty membranes that
28:27
Speaker 1: make up cells, they're basically in a liquid state cold butter.
28:31
Speaker 1: That's not good for cellular function. Yeah. It's also not
28:34
Speaker 1: good when they give it to you at a restaurant,
28:36
Speaker 1: I know, to put on the bread. You know the
28:38
Speaker 1: key to that stick it under your arm. Well, I
28:41
Speaker 1: just hold it in my hands, and you want you're
28:44
Speaker 1: gonna want to get greedy and try to do two
28:46
Speaker 1: it once, don't. It slows it down more than it
28:50
Speaker 1: longer than it takes to do two separately. And then
28:52
Speaker 1: you got butter on your hands. No, No, I mean
28:54
Speaker 1: you get the little foil rap kind. Oh I'm talking
28:58
Speaker 1: about I served you a dish with cold you leave. Yeah,
29:01
Speaker 1: I'm talking about like a you know, a real restaurant
29:04
Speaker 1: that just has butter in a dish. That's That's what
29:06
Speaker 1: I'm saying. You leave that restaurant. That's not a real
29:09
Speaker 1: restaurant if somebody, somebody's not paying attention to detail or
29:13
Speaker 1: even the worst or the little cold butter balls that
29:16
Speaker 1: they've scooped, and it's just took that in your cheek
29:19
Speaker 1: and it's not spreadable. It's useless. Yeah, it just rolls
29:24
Speaker 1: around when you try to put it in a nerf gun.
29:27
Speaker 1: I never heard, man, have you seen those things lately?
29:29
Speaker 1: By the way, I was watching the kid's chair on
29:32
Speaker 1: the other day and try not to get to like
29:36
Speaker 1: hysterical about stuff. But the nerf guns these days, they're
29:40
Speaker 1: they're like assault weapons. I guess I do. Like so
29:46
Speaker 1: it doesn't count, Yeah, I know, but it's I don't know.
29:48
Speaker 1: It's clearly made me think, like, huh, well, they're clearly
29:52
Speaker 1: indoctrinating young children as young as possible. You like this
29:56
Speaker 1: nerve gun, you're gonna love anyway? Uh Wow, that took
30:01
Speaker 1: a weird turn at the end, Yeah, didn't it. If
30:03
Speaker 1: you want to know more about tarte grades or guns,
30:06
Speaker 1: you can type those words into the search part how
30:08
Speaker 1: stuff works dot com and since I said, whatever, it's
30:10
Speaker 1: time for listener mail, I'm gonna call this Aaron Sorkin rebuttal.
30:18
Speaker 1: This from Mark Frost. Hey, guys, had a comment to
30:20
Speaker 1: about Chuck's professed dislike of Aaron Sorkin. Was that you
30:24
Speaker 1: I thought that was me? That was me? Did you?
30:27
Speaker 1: Did you gang up? Yeah? Okay? My wife and I
30:30
Speaker 1: are definitely fans, But I want to put a different
30:32
Speaker 1: perspective out there for you to consider. I don't think
30:34
Speaker 1: anyone is supposed to consider his writing to be conversational.
30:39
Speaker 1: I would kind of liken it to a musical or
30:41
Speaker 1: the place of Shakespeare, and he says, I'm not equating
30:44
Speaker 1: Shakespeare with Sorkin. Musicals aren't how people talk. Shakespeare was
30:48
Speaker 1: definitely not representing how people talk. Back then, uh, for
30:52
Speaker 1: Willie the Sheik, it was a poetic language filled with
30:56
Speaker 1: metaphors that turns a lot of people off even today.
30:59
Speaker 1: But like with musicals, it's a stylized way of showing
31:02
Speaker 1: what people are feeling and thinking. Realizing that, yes, people
31:05
Speaker 1: don't talk that way actually makes me enjoy it more.
31:07
Speaker 1: In some ways, it makes things more compact, and that
31:11
Speaker 1: it can express feelings ideas more quickly. We can often
31:14
Speaker 1: do so with more do so more entertainingly. Uh as
31:17
Speaker 1: the people are way more quick witted than you would
31:19
Speaker 1: be in real life. But suspending your disbelief makes it
31:22
Speaker 1: enjoyable for me, at least. I think that's the problem
31:24
Speaker 1: I have with it. It it prevents me from suspending disbelief. Yeah,
31:29
Speaker 1: me too. I definitely like to Steve Jobs movie, which
31:32
Speaker 1: we both liked. Right. You liked it, okay, I did.
31:36
Speaker 1: I actually liked how clearly artificial the construction of it was.
31:39
Speaker 1: It seemed very much like a play in several acts.
31:41
Speaker 1: I agree with you there, sir. I did not feel
31:43
Speaker 1: like anything that was attempting to show real events or
31:45
Speaker 1: real sequences, but rather to condense a lot of what
31:48
Speaker 1: happened during periods of his life into specific scenes. I
31:53
Speaker 1: agree with all that. Then those scenes packed in the
31:55
Speaker 1: drama emotions from the time they had. Uh. We also
31:59
Speaker 1: just finished news Room, News news Room, and love that anyway.
32:05
Speaker 1: People are always up in their own opinions, um, and
32:08
Speaker 1: I tend to agree with most of your film thoughts,
32:11
Speaker 1: just not this one. I love both your show and
32:14
Speaker 1: you guys will continue to do so. That is Mark Frost.
32:18
Speaker 1: Thanks Mark. That was very well well written, well thought out. Thanks. Yeah,
32:23
Speaker 1: I get it. People love Aaron Sarkin. Yeah, I love
32:26
Speaker 1: all that West Wing and stuff like that. Have you
32:28
Speaker 1: seen The Night Manager? No? What is that man? Where
32:32
Speaker 1: do they hear about that? Everywhere? The John Lacarre adaptation
32:37
Speaker 1: with m oh Dr House and uh, actually it's really good.
32:46
Speaker 1: Is it a movie? It's like a sixth part mini series.
32:49
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I like this. It's very good. Check it out.
32:51
Speaker 1: You will like it a lot. Promise. All right, that's
32:54
Speaker 1: got Josh is guaranteed. You also said it like Soyland.
32:59
Speaker 1: I didn't say that, did I? Okay, I'm just kidding.
33:02
Speaker 1: You thought you were making me think I was losing
33:03
Speaker 1: my mind. If you want to get in touch with
33:06
Speaker 1: Chuck and me, you can tweet to us s Y
33:07
Speaker 1: s K podcast or Josh I'm Clark, Facebook us at
33:10
Speaker 1: Charles W. Chuck Bryant, or Stuff you Should Know, Send
33:13
Speaker 1: us an emails the Stuff podcast at how stuff Works
33:15
Speaker 1: dot com. Hit us up at her home on the
33:17
Speaker 1: web Stuff you Should Know dot com for more on
33:24
Speaker 1: this and thousands of other topics. Is it how stuff
33:26
Speaker 1: Works dot com