Futility Closet - 248-Smoky the War Dog

Starting point is 00:00:00 Welcome to the Futility Closet podcast, forgotten stories from the pages of history. Visit us online to sample more than 10,000 quirky curiosities from Jules Verne's greeting to the submarine to Burma Shave's free trip to Mars. This is episode 248. I'm Greg Ross. And I'm Sharon Ross. In 1944, an American soldier discovered a Yorkshire terrier in an abandoned foxhole in New Guinea. Adopted by an army photographer, she embarked on a series of colorful adventures that won the hearts of the humans around her. In today's show, we'll tell the story of Smokey the Dog,

Starting point is 00:00:45 one of the most endearing characters of World War II. We'll also contemplate chicken spectacles and puzzle over a gratified diner. In February 1944, an American soldier named Ed Downey was driving through the jungle of New Guinea when his Jeep broke down. He raised the hoodey was driving through the jungle of New Guinea when his jeep broke down. He raised the hood and was looking at the engine when he heard a whimpering sound in the tall grass behind him. He followed it to an abandoned foxhole. At the bottom were a pair of dark eyes looking up at him imploringly from a mop of golden hair. It was a dog, a tiny dog, and there was no telling how she'd come to be there.

Starting point is 00:01:22 It was only by chance that Downey's jeep had broken down within earshot of the hole. The dog may have spent days trapped there, and she wouldn't have lasted much longer without water. He pulled her out, got the Jeep started, and drove back to the Nadzab Air Base, where he was a member of the ground crew. He gave the dog to a Sergeant Dare, who needed money to re-enter a poker game, so Dare sold her, for two pounds Australian, to Corporal William Wynn, a 20-year-old aerial photographer with the 26th Photo Reconnaissance Squadron. Wynne loved dogs. He'd grown up playing with and training them in his native Cleveland. He called the new dog Smokey and sat down to learn something about her. To begin with, she was tiny. She appeared to be full-grown, but she stood only

Starting point is 00:02:00 seven inches tall and weighed four pounds. But it was clear from the start that she had a keen intelligence and a giant personality. He had no idea what breed she might be, but there was an elegance in her bearing that suggested she had a real pedigree. As they became friends, he thought she might get along better in the camp if he could teach her the rules and make her popular with the men. He sensed right away that she'd been trained before. She was quick to learn and eager to please. The first trick he taught her, playing dead, was a big hit with his friends at the squadron's photo lab, and they quickly taught her to sit in a film tray as it made its way through the darkroom. As the men got to know her,

Starting point is 00:02:33 Smokey became a sort of mascot for the whole unit. At softball games, she would chase balls that were nearly as big as she was. At one game, she caught up to a ground ball just as the fielder bent to catch it, and he came up with a glove full of dog. Wynn said much later, Smokey, in anybody else's hands, probably would have been just another dog. But because of my desire to train her, she became something special. At first, emotionally, I was trying not to get too close to her. I'd lost a couple of buddies, and I didn't want to get too close because the hazards were so great, and I'd just get upset all over again. But as time passed, we formed a special bond and everything became concentrating on the dog. She came first and I was doing things for her. The dog became more of an obsession to bring her through this and myself too.

Starting point is 00:03:13 A few weeks after Smokey's arrival, Yank Magazine, a U.S. military weekly, launched a competition to find the best mascot in the Southwest Pacific Theater of Operations. Wynn decided to enter Smokey. He'd been working on her obedience training because she had a habit of chasing huge butterflies into the jungle. He put his helmet on the ground, she hopped into it, and he took a famous photo that I'll put in the show notes. He wrote that Smokey's key responsibility was morale. She won the contest, beating out 400 other entrants,

Starting point is 00:03:40 but they had to bring the news to Wynn in the hospital, where he was ill with dengue fever. They brought along Smokey as well, and as she greeted the other patients, she had a noticeable effect on the victims of combat fatigue. They seemed to perk up at her appearance, and she lightened the mood with her presence and personality. Seeing this, the nurses asked if Smokey might come along on their rounds, and Wynn agreed. She slept on his cot, and they collected her at seven each morning, toured the wards all day, and returned her to him in the evening. No one knew it at the time, but Smokey was acting as a therapy dog. Today it's understood that the very presence of a dog can transform the atmosphere of a hospital,

Starting point is 00:04:13 and socializing and playing with an animal can help to draw soldiers out of their trauma. As this effect was noticed, patriotic dog owners began to offer their pets to spend time with injured soldiers, and by 1947, civilians had donated about 700 dogs to hospitals. Smokey's war duties came to an end when Wynne was discharged. His unit was headed north to Hollandia in the Dutch East Indies, closer to the enemy than they'd ever been before. Wynne made the journey by ship, but to spare Smokey a long voyage, he got a pilot friend to take her in his plane. After his tropical fever and the rough sea voyage, the doctor offered Wynn two weeks of recuperative leave in Brisbane, Australia. He wanted to take Smokey with him, but military regulations forbade taking anything other than official war animals on

Starting point is 00:04:55 military transports. So he taught Smokey to keep silent, stowed her in his haversack, and hitched a ride in a C-47 with a crew who were heading south. They reached Australia safely, and he smuggled Smokey through customs. Brisbane's 60 degrees seemed freezing after New Guinea, so after a cold night under army-issue blankets, he found a hobby shop and bought a green woolen tablecloth designed for a card table. Then he found a Red Cross office with a sewing machine, presented Smokey, and explained what he wanted. They made a jacket for her with a corporal stripes, the shield of the Fifth Air Force, and a good conduct ribbon. After a request by a Red Cross worker named Barbara Wood Smith,

Starting point is 00:05:34 Smokey also made some appearances in local hospital wards, and since Wynne was healthy now, he could accompany her and they could do tricks together. They started at the U.S. 109th Fleet Naval Hospital and visited eight wards on the first day. In each ward, they ran through their whole repertoire of tricks. Smokey demonstrated her obedience, she played dead, she sang a duet with Wynn, and she wove a figure eight around his feet. She was such a hit that they repeated the performance at the 42nd General Army Hospital, and Smokey came away with an American Red Cross badge and a WAC lapel badge added to her jacket.

Starting point is 00:06:00 In late spring, it was time to return to their unit, which was now headed for the island of Biak, where a desperate fight was going on with the Japanese. Wynne and Smokey shared a sweltering tent, and they had to make frequent dashes to the island's caves during Japanese bombing runs. Smokey would tense and bark when the air raid siren sounded, and sometimes it seemed she could sense the incoming planes even before the warning came. It was on Biak that Wynne finally learned Smokey's breed.

Starting point is 00:06:23 A staff sergeant showed him the April 1944 issue of National Geographic, which contained a photo of a Yorkshire terrier. It matched Smokey unmistakably. Yorkies had been bred to hunt vermin in Yorkshire, and they were still practically unknown in America. It was still a mystery how one had found her way into a foxhole in New Guinea. In late August, Wynne began flying as an aerial photographer with the 3rd Air-Sea Rescue Squadron at Biak,

Starting point is 00:06:44 searching for pilots who had gone down in the fighting. His friends joked about who would inherit Smokey if he didn't return, and it seemed to him that they didn't really care about her well-being, so he told them that she'd be coming with him. From then on, he would stash her in her haversack and hang her in the aircraft when he went flying, and the air crews began to see her as a good luck charm. the air crews began to see her as a good luck charm. During this time, he got another odd clue to Smokey's past. At one point, in exasperation, he said, Holy Christmas, and she jumped up and down excitedly. It wasn't clear what that meant. Did she know the word Christmas? Wynn tried saying it again, and she leapt about. But she also leapt about when he said sport or rover, so it was still a mystery. Her intelligence and friendly spirit still made her popular everywhere, and he began to think of offering a show to support the troops' morale.

Starting point is 00:07:26 He used what time he could to teach Smokey a new series of tricks, but they were constantly interrupted by wartime business. In January 1945, the squadron headed for the Philippines. Wynn and Smokey traveled on the deck of an LST, a giant flat-bottomed vessel designed to deliver heavy vehicles directly onto a beach. to deliver heavy vehicles directly onto a beach. As far as anyone knew, this was Smokey's first time aboard a ship, but she had admirable sea legs, found all the new smells fascinating, and ate like a horse. As they entered the Sulu Sea, the quiet was shattered when the Japanese attacked their convoy with kamikaze planes. Winn dove into a space between a ventilator and a jeep,

Starting point is 00:07:59 cupped Smokey's ears, and tried to reassure her. He found out afterward that the only casualties on the ship had been within a 10-foot radius of the two of them, and they were both unhurt. They waited ashore at Lingayen Gulf and headed for an airbase inland that had just been seized from the enemy, and he and Smokey took up residence in a palm-fetched hut. It was at Lingayen Gulf that Smokey had her finest exploit. A sergeant named Bob Gap approached Wynn one day. He needed to run a telephone line across one of the airstrip's main taxiways to establish communications with three squadrons. They couldn't string the wires up on poles because planes would run into them. There was a culvert that ran under the taxiway, but

Starting point is 00:08:33 digging it up would expose the workers to enemy attacks and put the taxiway out of commission for three days. Gap had once seen a news report about a similar problem in Alaska in which workers had tied a length of string to a cat's collar and send it through a pipe. Could Smokey do that? Wynn agreed to let her try. The culvert was a tunnel, eight inches wide, that ran for 70 feet under the taxiway. They tied a length of lightweight string to Smokey's collar, and Wynn fed her into one end of the culvert. Then he went to the other end and called to her. He could see only darkness, but Gap told him that the string was steadily disappearing into the culvert. The tunnel was choked with sand and soil in many places, which would leave Smokey only a few inches to get by, and they had to hope that no centipedes, scorpions, or snakes were living

Starting point is 00:09:12 inside it. But as he peered into the darkness, eventually Wynn could make out Smokey's eyes working toward him, and after two minutes, she scrambled out into his arms. She got a stake as a reward for that, and she was credited with saving 250 men and 40 planes that otherwise would have been targeted by enemy warplanes. While he was working on this, he received an invitation from Barbara Woodhull Smith to perform at Santo Tomas University in Manila. Smokey was a hit there, much as she'd been in Australia. They performed in 15 wards without a mishap, even dancing the jitterbug, and they even appeared on the weekly Red Cross radio show at Smith's invitation. One of the world's leading press agencies syndicated a story,

Starting point is 00:09:48 and scores of soldiers began to show Wynn letters and news clippings from home about the squadron's wonder dog. Toward the end of July 1945, they were told they would be moving to Okinawa and then to join the battle for Japan. Smokey would be the only animal who was permitted to go. But as they were underway, word came of the atomic bombings, and shortly afterward, Japan surrendered. With the war over, news spread that the famous war dog had arrived on the island, and Wynne and Smokey finally got to perform their stage act at a serviceman's hall run by the Red Cross. To musical accompaniment, Smokey walked a double-wire tightrope blindfolded, slid down a mahogany slide, bounced on a rolling barrel, and rode a tiny scooter that

Starting point is 00:10:25 Wynne had made for her. She leapt through a bamboo hoop and rearranged five standing letters to spell her name, S-M-O-K-Y. The fanfare at the end was drowned out by cheering and applause. They might have hoped that that was their last wartime adventure together, but as the squadron was departing for Korea, a typhoon struck the island in the middle of the night, snatching off their tent and whirling Smokey away in Wynynn's cot. She managed to cling to it as he ran along beneath her, but she sailed 50 feet through the air before the cot dropped low enough for him to grab it. Her miraculous luck held out, and she wasn't hurt. In South Korea, orders were posted that no dog or mascot could travel back to the U.S. on a War Department ship. But after all

Starting point is 00:11:04 they'd been through together, Wynn was determined to take Smokey home with him. He got her to hide in the case of an oxygen mask, and they departed Inchon on November 1st, 1945. The captain wasn't pleased when he discovered he had a dog aboard, but Wynn pleaded that he'd been too sick to respond to the warning, and the captain relented. After their homecoming, Wynn and Smokey became celebrities in America. He rebuilt her performing kit, and the two of them began to appear on radio and television programs and in print media, before live audiences, and at a local hospital, and they shot promotional films for animal shelters. Wynn married his girlfriend, Margie, in September 1946,

Starting point is 00:11:37 and for a brief time became a professional dog trainer in Hollywood. But eventually he returned to Cleveland and took a job as a photographer. On February 21, 1957, he came home from work and found Smokey apparently asleep, but he found she had passed away. After a chance meeting 14 years earlier, they had traveled thousands of miles together, chased butterflies, sang, slept, swam, and danced. He buried her in a.30 caliber ammunition box in the woodland that surrounds the city. He called her an instrument of love. Smokey the dog is the most decorated war dog in the history of the United States military. She's credited with 12 combat missions and 8 battle stars,

Starting point is 00:12:15 and with wind she survived 150 air raids, a kamikaze attack, and a typhoon. There are 11 monuments to her in the United States, 3 in Australia, and 1 in France. The World Dog Authority, Maxwell Riddle, who met Smokey on her return from the war, called her the greatest dog I ever knew and far greater than any I have read about. On Veterans Day 2005, a life-size sculpture of Smokey was unveiled at the site of her burial. She's sitting in a GI helmet atop a two-ton block of granite. Bill Wynn was still carrying her blanket at the age of 92. He lives today in Richland County, Ohio, with a dog named Smokey II.

Starting point is 00:12:52 There's an odd addendum to this story. During Smokey's lifetime, Wynn never learned how she had found her way into that foxhole. But when her obituary was published, he got a call from a woman named Grace Guderian. She had served as a lieutenant nurse in a New Guinea field hospital during the war and had lost a female Yorkshire Terrier there in early 1944. Her fiancé had bought it from a dealer in Brisbane and given it to her as a Christmas gift, and she had named the dog Christmas. The dog had disappeared during a performance by Bob Hope at Dobodura, New Guinea, so possibly Christmas had got caught up in that show's retinue and traveled with it to Nadzab, 180 miles away, where she'd run off and got stuck in the foxhole.

Starting point is 00:13:28 That might explain why Smokey had reacted so excitedly to the word Christmas. It was her real name. The odd thing about the story is that Grace Guderian lived only a few blocks from William Wynn in Cleveland. That seems like a huge coincidence, that one of them had lost a dog in New Guinea, the other had found it, and then they had both taken up residence independently 8,000 miles away and a few blocks apart. On the other hand, if Smokey and Christmas weren't the same dog, then we have to explain how it was that two purebred female Yorkshire Terriers of the same age went missing 180 miles apart in New Guinea in

Starting point is 00:14:00 February 1944. The breeder who had sold the puppy to Grace Guderian's fiancée in Brisbane had made a great show of its pedigree and class. It seems unlikely that two such dogs would be lost in New Guinea at the same time. But only Smokey knew the truth. In episode 242, I discussed the color known as Schoss pink or Baker Miller pink, which was used by a college football team in their visitor locker room with the idea that exposure to the color would weaken the opposing team. David Fletcher wrote, in regards to episode 242, I kept expecting you to reference the pop science book Drunk Tank Pink, but it never came up. It is worth a look. And Andrew Bushnell said, I was surprised you didn't mention the other name for Baker Miller Pink. It's also called Drunk Tank Pink. Adam Alter wrote a book about it several

Starting point is 00:14:56 years ago. I had come across this color name and book in my original research, but it seemed to me that the name Drunk Tank Pink hadn't caught on quite as well as Baker Miller Pink had. I was also pursuing mostly the sports team angle of the story for 242, so hadn't had time to check out this book, but I did get a hold of it for this follow-up, thanks to David and Andrew's recommendations. Adam Alter, an associate professor of marketing and psychology at New York University's Stern School of Business, published in 2012, Drunk Tank Pink and Other Unexpected Forces That Shape How We Think, Feel, and Behave. One of the chapters in this fairly wide-ranging book is on color, and in the prologue, Alter focuses on the story of Baker Miller, or Drunk Tank Pink,

Starting point is 00:15:41 starting with the 1979 publication of Alexander Shoss's article on the effects of pink and two experiments in which men showed weaker hand or arm strength after staring at bright pink pieces of cardboard versus deep blue ones. I hadn't realized that Shoss had been touting the amazing properties of the color in public lectures, including one filmed for TV, in which Alter says, a muscle-bound Mr. of the color at the U.S. Naval Corrections Center that I had discussed in episode 242, where painting a holding cell pink seemed to greatly calm the new inmates, sparked a widespread interest in the color and its possible uses. Various detention facilities experimented with pink,

Starting point is 00:16:30 and charity workers claimed that donors gave two or three times larger donations when the workers wore pink uniforms. Public housing units reported significant drops in violent behaviors after painting their interiors pink, and bus companies claimed pink seats reduced vandalism. Underdog boxers started wearing pink trunks in the boxing ring, and the coach of the NFL Dallas Cowboys called Shoss to ask if he should try the pink locker room trick himself. Belief in the color was so strong that Alter, who spoke to Shoss when writing his book, said that despite what Alter called weaker evidence for the color's effects found by researchers in the 1990s, Shoss still called the color a non-drug anesthetic

Starting point is 00:17:10 and was still receiving dozens of inquiries about the color each year. That's amazing. It makes you wonder if that idea got abroad enough broadly in the culture that it would have some sort of placebo effect and people would just start believing it. Right, if you hear that pink is going to make you weak, you just... It just will. Yeah. On the topic of colors effects on teams, we heard from Atina, who declined to give any

Starting point is 00:17:33 pronunciation help for her name, but said, I'm looking forward to hearing it mispronounced by my favorite podcasters. I just finished listening to your last podcast episode where you told a story about a pink locker room at Kinnick Stadium. This story reminded me of the theory I've heard about the effects of colors in the game League of Legends, where two teams, Red and Blue, compete with each other. It has been argued that Red makes players more aggressive and more prone to taking risks, while Blue makes players calmer and better at careful planning. The same effect has been observed in other games and regular sports.

Starting point is 00:18:06 I thought you might find this interesting. And Atina sent a 2015 video from The Game Theorist that covered several studies that have been done on some of the effects of colors in sports and games, particularly red versus blue, as those colors are used in many team video games as well as some competitive sports. This video presented

Starting point is 00:18:25 a lot of information that I'd never heard of before, and from both it and some extra research that I did, I learned that there often seems to be a small but significant advantage for red teams. For example, an analysis of 1,347 matches involving top players of the video game Unreal Tournament 2004 found that the red teams won almost 55% of the time. In the 2004 Summer Olympics, athletes randomly assigned to wear red outperformed athletes who had been assigned blue, especially in hand-to-hand events like boxing and wrestling, again winning about 55% of their matches. And the effect was even more pronounced when the competitors were more evenly matched. When the opponents were seated identically, the one wearing red won 62% of the matches.

Starting point is 00:19:10 In the Euro 2004 Association Football Tournament, teams wore different colored shirts in different matches, and analysis of five teams that had worn both red shirts and other colored shirts found that all five played better when wearing the red shirts, mostly because they scored more goals when wearing red. To explain these types of findings, evolutionary explanations are often offered of how red coloration in animals is associated with higher testosterone levels and male dominance and aggression. So theoretically, putting male athletes or video game players in red increases their feelings of dominance and aggression, giving them a small psychological advantage that can be especially seen in closely matched competitions. Another possible explanation is that the effect of the

Starting point is 00:19:54 color is not on the red competitors themselves, but rather on their opponents or even a sports referees, who may perceive the red-clad players differently. One study that examined this possibility had 42 Taekwondo referees watch videos of red and blue-clad opponents sparring. The videos were identical, except that the clothing colors were digitally reversed between the two sets, so that the fighter that half the referees saw in blue became the fighter in red for the other half, and vice versa. For both videos, the refs awarded the fighter in red for the other half, and vice versa. For both videos, the refs awarded the fighter in red an average of eight points compared to the average of seven points awarded to the fighter in blue. So the same fighter was awarded more points when he was seen in red than when he

Starting point is 00:20:35 was in blue. It seems odd that people are contending both that red might be inducing aggression and that pink induces passivity, because red and pink are quite similar colors. Hmm. I guess it's that if the red is inducing aggression, it's in the people wearing it that it possibly makes them feel more dominant. But then it also seems to maybe subdue a little bit their opponents. Or intimidate. Or intimidate their opponents, which is maybe not that different from the effect of the pink.

Starting point is 00:21:04 That makes sense. intimidate their opponents, which is maybe not that different from the effect of the pink. That makes sense. The situation that Atina mentioned for League of Legends seems a little more complicated. Analyses on some different sets of data for this video game have found that the blue teams win substantially more games than the red teams. In the 2014 North American Summer Playoffs, the blue side won a whopping 79.3% of the games. Now, it's been claimed that the blue teams win more often because they're using better long-term strategies versus the red team's more short-term aggressive strategies. And this does fit in with some

Starting point is 00:21:36 other research on red versus other colors. For example, Alter and others report studies where students perform more poorly on different sorts of tests, such as solving anagrams, number sequences, or analogies, after being exposed to red through either red inks, the first page of a test booklet, or the color of a computer screen, versus other colors. Alter states that researchers have found that red appears to activate the right frontal cortex with a pattern of activity that usually indicates avoidance motivation, or a state where you might be more focused on avoiding failure than on achieving success. And this state of mind is not optimal for solving problems that require insight,

Starting point is 00:22:14 creativity, or sustained mental effort, but is associated with increased vigilance, and so might prime better performance on tasks requiring attention to detail. While other studies have found that blue may boost other types of cognitive tasks, such as creative thinking or thinking more long-term. It seems plausible to me that heightened vigilance might convey a noticeable advantage in some video games, while improved long-term strategic thinking might be more of an advantage in others. But the difference between the two colors in League of Legends seemed a bit too pronounced to me compared to with the other research on colors, which seems to find smaller effects. So I tried to look into it a bit, but I was hampered by not being at all

Starting point is 00:22:54 familiar with the game or even this whole genre of games. I did see that there is a certain amount of discussion of this topic on the web, including those who say that the game's publisher acknowledges that the blue team does seem to win more often than the red. And there seem to be several theories advanced as to why this might be so, involving various aspects of the game's design that seem to actually differ for the two teams. So I hesitate to chalk this one up to simply the colors. I can't help noticing, too, that those two colors, red and blue, have been adopted in recent years by the two major American political parties. I'm not making any point at all there. It's just an observation. That's actually a good point. And I don't know if anybody's looked into, would California be perceived differently if it were called a red state instead of a blue state?

Starting point is 00:23:40 Is calling it a blue state just by the color somehow? You would hope not. state is calling it a blue state just by the color somehow. You would hope not. I don't know if anybody's looked into that. Wow. So all that was just a very shallow dip into the pool of the possible effects of colors on humans. I'm not even going to get into any of the other studies on colors, like those, for example, that suggest that athletes wearing black uniforms receive significantly more penalties, or whether you can influence humans with colored lights by trying, for example, to prevent suicide or crime with blue lighting. I've mentioned before on this show that research into factors that affect human behavior can be pretty tricky. Humans can be affected by

Starting point is 00:24:20 many different factors simultaneously, sometimes in seemingly contradictory ways, and you can never hold all the other variables constant when trying to study them. And it's tempting to look for biological or evolutionary reasons for why humans might react the way they do to different colors, but I think it's very challenging to control for different cultural or other social factors that could also be at play. As with other research topics on the effects of something on human behavior, color is rather more complicated and wide-reaching than I can cover effectively in this format or under our time constraints. So I think I'm going to leave it here with regards to humans and the effects that colors might or might not have on them. But I will mention a couple of interesting studies involving animals. The results of the study on the 2004 Olympics and the apparent effect

Starting point is 00:25:06 of red uniforms in sports spurred some researchers at Dartmouth College to check out the effect in a different primate. Researchers went to Cayo Santiago, a small island off of Puerto Rico that has a free-ranging population of over a thousand rhesus monkeys, which was already a really interesting new fact for me. In this study, a male and a female experimenter would find an isolated adult male rhesus macaque, and they would approach it simultaneously. The researchers wore different colored hats and shirts so that in each condition, one was wearing red, blue, or green, and the other was wearing a different color. They would kneel down and simultaneously show the monkey apple slices, which they would then put down and then step back from. The monkeys

Starting point is 00:25:49 would grab one slice and run off to eat it. The results showed that the monkeys didn't seem to much care whether the apple was presented by a male or a female, and they didn't show a significant difference when choosing between those presented by blue versus green clad researchers. But they did take considerably fewer apple slices from a person dressed in red, which the researchers took as more evidence that for primates, red signals dominance, and thus in competitive situations, there may be an evolved predisposition to behave more submissively towards opponents who exhibit more red. Good to know, I guess, if you don't want monkeys taking your food.

Starting point is 00:26:25 So that was primates. Jeff Callender in Hampshire, UK put me onto the idea that red may also have an effect in chickens. He wrote, you mentioned that there might be dubious research concerning pink and a lowering of aggressive behavior. There was a famous case study used with MBAs involving chickens and pink contact lenses used to stop them pecking each other that I thought you might find interesting. Ironically, after much development effort, I believe it was found that pink light bulbs were as good and a much cheaper alternative. I believe it was based on a true story, but not sure. Jeff was referring to a marketing case study published in 1975 by Harvard Business Review for marketing contact lenses for chickens.

Starting point is 00:27:05 I've mentioned before that the things I learn on this job never cease to amaze me. Apparently, it is quite a problem for those who raise chickens that chickens can be very aggressive toward each other to the point that they can end up killing each other. It's thought that once one chicken draws blood on another, the whole flock may turn on the wounded chicken. So one solution that has actually been tried for this problem is having the chickens wear red eyeglasses or contact lenses, on the idea that it will mask the sight of blood. I won't go into more details of the practices of having chickens wear lenses or glasses, as I found them pretty gruesome,

Starting point is 00:27:40 but there will be links in the show notes for anyone who doesn't get quite as upset as I do about animal suffering. Chicken spectacles were mass-produced and sold widely in the U.S. starting in the early 1900s. Whether they were effective because the red color decreased the perception of blood, or because they simply hindered the vision of the chicken for what was in front of it, or for some other reason, wasn't clear to me. But I did find a 2013 study that tried to very systematically examine the effects of different colored lights on hens' behavior. Mostly it seemed because LED lights are increasingly being used in raising chickens, and it would be helpful to know if different colored lights have any effects on them. This study found that green lights seemed to increase the hens' exploratory behaviors,

Starting point is 00:28:22 and interestingly, red lights significantly reduced their aggressive behaviors towards the other chickens. In this study, very few serious fights were observed in any of the lighting conditions, so it wasn't the case that the red light was masking blood, thus ruling out that explanation. But it did somehow cause the hens to exhibit significantly fewer instances of aggressively pecking at each other. Also, the red lights were confirmed to accelerate the sexual development of the hens, which apparently had been previously noted by others. So whatever the effect of red might be for primates, it also seems to have some kind of effect in chickens. And I have a couple of quick corrections to episode 242. Jackie Colpian wrote, Love the episode. Couple of corrections.

Starting point is 00:29:06 Your reference to legendary coach Bo Schembechler papering the locker room was so Bo. The pronunciation of Bo's last name is Schembechler, and he was head coach of U of M football. Emphasis on the of. Thanks for the entertaining podcasts. So thanks for those corrections, Jackie. My apologies to the late Mr. Schembechler for

Starting point is 00:29:25 choosing the wrong pronunciation of his last name of the ones that I was able to find on the internet, and my apologies to all U of M alumni for using the apparently incorrect abbreviation of UM for their school that I saw in a Detroit Free Press article. We often have to rely on what we can find in other sources, so we do appreciate corrections when we get something wrong. Thanks so much to everyone who writes to us. I'm always sorry that we can't read all the email that we get on the show, but we do appreciate hearing what you have to say. So please keep sending your emails to us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. podcast at futilitycloset.com. It's Greg's turn to try to solve a lateral thinking puzzle. I'm going to give him an odd sounding situation and he's going to work out what's going on,

Starting point is 00:30:13 asking only yes or no questions. This puzzle comes from Anne Jorik in Germany. A group of people, all adults, walks into a restaurant. They get seated and the waitress hands each of them their Wow. Does it matter where this happened? No. Okay. A group of people is all I know about this. All adults. This is the first time I have been given a menu.

Starting point is 00:30:46 Does this have something to do with that person's age? No. Oh, really? Okay. So that's one person out of the group. So we're really focusing on one person. Right. There's nothing remarkable about the others. Correct. That one person has been in a restaurant before. Yes. And wasn't given a menu. That's correct. See, I want to say that it was like a kid and...

Starting point is 00:31:14 Nope. They're all adults. You know what I mean? Like the server expected the parent... Right. And the person has been in restaurants while she's been an adult. Yes. And ordered food?

Starting point is 00:31:24 Yes. That was served? Yes. Okay, ordered food without seeing the menu? That's correct. Does that have anything to do with sightedness? Yes. Ah, so she couldn't see the menu before or wouldn't have been able to. That's correct. And the server didn't give, can I say her? I don't know why. It's her, yeah. A menu because they expected that she wouldn't be able to use it. That's correct. And then something's changed in the interim that's enabled her evidently, like the server can see that she can-

Starting point is 00:31:52 That is incorrect. Oh, all right. But I'm on the right track. You're on the right track. So she still couldn't see a menu? That is correct. In fact, she's just been given a menu. Yes.

Starting point is 00:32:01 And can't read it? Can I say that? That is incorrect. Is it Braille? It is a menu. Yes. And can't read it? Can I say that? That is incorrect. Is it Braille? It is Braille. Yes. The person is blind and was offered a menu in Braille in the restaurant. Anne based this on a post that she saw on Reddit.

Starting point is 00:32:14 The poster wrote, my sister has been in this world for 18 years and today is the first time she has been offered a menu at a restaurant and showed a photo of her sister reading her menu in Braille. That's great. So thanks so much to Anne for that really sweet puzzle. And if anyone else has a puzzle they'd like to have us try, please send it to podcast at futilitycloset.com. Futility Closet is supported entirely by our incredible listeners. If you would like to help support our celebration of the quirky and the curious, you can find a donate button in the support us section of the website at futilitycloset.com.

Starting point is 00:32:49 Or you can join our Patreon campaign, where you'll also get outtakes, more discussions on some of the stories, extralateral thinking puzzles, and peeks behind the scenes of the show. You can find our Patreon page at patreon.com slash futilitycloset, or see our website for the link. At our website, you'll also find over 10,000 bite-sized distractions, the Futility Closet store, information about the Futility Closet books, and the show notes for the podcast, with the links and references for the topics we've covered.

Starting point is 00:33:19 If you have any questions or comments, please email us at podcast at futilitycloset.com. All the music you hear in our shows was written and performed by my extremely talented brother-in-law, Doug Ross. Thanks for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.

Futility Closet - 248-Smoky the War Dog

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