Science Friday - Cephalopod Week 2019, Climate and Microbes, Puppy Eyes, Wave Energy. June 21, 2019, Part 1

Episode Date: June 21, 2019

For eight glorious days during the end of June, Science Friday honors the mighty mollusks of the ocean—Cephalopod Week returns for the sixth year! And we’re cephalo-brating with a tidal wave of ways for you to participate. This year, we want to know your favorite cephalopod. Is it the charismatic giant Pacific octopus or the long-lived chambered nautilus? Science Friday digital producer Lauren Young and biologist Diana Li add their own favorite cephalopods to the ultimate undersea showdown. They talk about the bizarre defenses of the blanket octopus, speedy squid getaways, and octopuses that play with LEGOs. We may refer to Earth as “our planet,” but it really belongs to the microbes. All the plants and animals on Earth are relatively new additions to the planetary ecosystem. But despite living basically everywhere on the planet, and playing a role in many of the processes that affect the climate, the connection between microbes and the climate is often ignored. That needs to change, says a consensus statement published this week by researchers in the journal Nature Reviews: Microbiology. Take the issue of methane emissions from agriculture, particularly beef production. “The methane doesn’t come from the cows,” said David Mark Welch, director of the Division of Research at the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole. “It comes from microbes in the cows.” In a similar way, emissions coming from rice paddies aren’t caused by the rice—they are caused by microbes living in stagnant water around the rice. David Mark Welch, one of the co-authors of the consensus statement, joins Ira to discuss the deep connections between microorganisms and the climate, and why scientists and policymakers should pay more attention to microbes in the climate arena. If you’ve ever suspected your dog of looking extra cute to get a bite of your steak or pizza, it’s probably because you couldn’t resist their puppy dog eyes. Over time, dogs have evolved to make their eyes look bigger and more baby-like. In a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Science, researchers have discovered that dogs have muscles around their eyes that help them make puppy dog eyes at you. They also found that wolves, the wild ancestor of the dog, don’t have these muscles. Anne Burrows, one of the researchers in their study, joins Ira to discuss how dogs have evolved these muscles and why people are so susceptible to their big, sad-looking eyes. Sarah-Elizabeth Byosiere also joins to talk about other ways that dogs have evolved to strengthen the human-dog bond. A renewable energy project planned off the coast of Newport is taking a step forward. Oregon State University has submitted a final license application for a wave energy testing facility with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. If built, it would be the largest of its kind in the United States. Oregon’s potential to use the motion of the waves to generate electricity is very high. But nationally, the development of wave energy has lagged behind other green energy sources. Part of the delay is the time and expense involved in permitting new technology. Not only do companies have to pay to develop this kind of clean tech, they also have to go through a lengthy and expensive permitting process before being allowed to see if their ideas work in the real world. This is where Oregon State University’s PacWave South Project comes in. The university plans to create a wave energy testing facility about six miles off the Oregon Coast. The idea is that energy developers will be able to by-pass the permitting and just pay the University to test their wave energy converters in the water. Subscribe to this podcast. Plus, to stay updated on all things science, sign up for Science Friday's newsletters.

Hello, podcasters. Ira here with some exciting news. Cephalopod Week is here. Even better, I'm giving you the chance to join the Cephaloparty by sponsoring some virtual cephalopods. Let me explain. Our talented team has built a sea of support on our website, giving each of you with the chance to sponsor a virtual Cephalopod for a mere $8 donation. With each gift, you will get to pick from one of eight beautifully illustrated sea creatures, which we will post to our site along with your first name and city. So just head to ScienceFriety.com slash SquidSupport to donate and join our Sea of Support. Again, go to ScienceFriday.com slash squid support to sponsor a cephalopod and support our public radio program. And thanks. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.

A little bit later in the hour, dogs. You know, they have been evolving along. alongside humans for thousands of years, and not only have they become friendlier and more dependent on people, they've even developed a secret weapon to manipulate us. Their puppy dog eyes. You know what I'm talking about. Well, we're going to talk about that a little bit later. But first, scientists searching for planets in other solar systems have done it again.

They have found the most Earth-like exoplanet to date, according to something called the Earth's similarity index. Here to explain why planet hunters are looking so hard at small, cool stars, plus other slight good, good, short subjects, and sciences. Gizmodo, staff writer Ryan Mandelbaum. Always good to have you. Always great to be here, Ira, how you doing? Let's talk about this planet. How can we know it's actually Earth-like?

Well, so this is around T-Garden Star. There's scientists who are able to find this planet in a survey. It has an orbit of approximately 4.91 days. the other star is around 11.4 days. And the way that you determine if it's Earth-like is if it kind of looks like Earth and how big it is and how much it weighs, and if it's in the part around the star where the temperature would be nice. Sounds like a duck, you know.

Maybe. Well, so is there really an Earth similarity index that passes? You have to check off all those boxes? Yeah, I mean, the Earth similarity index is something scientists use basically to determine how close an exoplanet is to the Earth. But, of course, that comes with a caveat that it doesn't. take into account how the star might affect the planet's atmosphere. So just because a planet might have, you know, 70 degree Fahrenheit temperatures,

doesn't mean that it's actually going to be a habitable planet. So this star is small and cold. Why is that the new thing now looking for a cold one? Well, if we could find an Earth-like planet, I don't think we care what starts around, but these red dwarf stars have just proven to be a host of these Earth-like exoplanets. Even Proxima Centauri, our closest neighbor, seems to have an Earth-like exoplanet around it. And so this is just a really great way to look for these stars and a really great sort of direction to go. And just to be clear, this exoplanet was not found by the Kepler mission, right?

No, no, this is the Carmenes Telescope in Spain. Okay, let's go back to Earth a little bit. A village in Norway, this is amazing, wants to live without time. How would that work? I've been trying to figure that out myself. So I spoke to the guy behind it, Kiel Obe Hefetting, and what he said in this town of Samroy, they want to get rid of clocks.

And that's because they live north of the Arctic Circle. So the sun doesn't rise every day. It sun rises once a year, and it sets once a year. And so he had this idea. You know, everybody's so caught up in their schedules, and we don't make time for anybody anymore. So let's just get rid of the clocks. You know, maybe in the middle of the night, you can go gardening at 4 a.m. there.

So they thought, why don't we just do that? Yeah, you know, when I was in Antarctica where it was six months of daylight, that's what people did. They were going, you know, going at 11 o'clock a night, they started doing things. But when you're in Antarctica, you're not really, you know, doing commerce or business. You have to pay attention to the clock. How do they deal with that? Well, you know, Ira, we live in a society that relies on, clock, so it doesn't work so well.

You know, he, Carl, Kellow and I, when we were speaking, he said, I only had 20 minutes because he had to go catch a plane. And you can't catch a plane if you don't have a clock. But the other thing is that, you know, scientifically, we just don't, that probably wouldn't work out so well. We were, we evolved in a place with 24-hour cycles, so. And we have circadian rhythm. We have, exactly.

And our, you know, all sorts of things rely on the circadian rhythm. I mean, our sleep cycles, our hormonal cycles, we have body temperature, gastrointestinal tract. I mean, it is important to maintain a rhythm. But even so, there are people who live almost total dark, you know, in the Arctic circle, total darkness in the wintertime. How do they know what that, what happens to their circadian rhythm? We don't look into that. I think there was research of a guy who lived in a cave for a long time, and he still maintained approximately, not exactly, but approximately a 24-hour calendar. Our schedule.

Let's get out of the cave and look, well, maybe a strange skull, get to this strange skull that is finally identified, and what is it? Oh, I love this. It's a hybrid between a narwhal and a beluga. So these two Arctic cetaceans, they, sometime in the 80s, the hunters came across this strange animal. It had a beluga's flipper and narwhal's tail, and they killed it. They gave the skull to some scientists, and now DNA evidence has indeed revealed that the skull was a hybrid between a narwhal and a beluga. I mean, it's crazy.

So you can't have that happen. They can be a hybrid. Yeah. In fact, cetaceans, like whales, they do it. They hybrid with one another, and we don't know exactly what happened, but we do know that the Baluga was the male, the narwhal was the female, and the two species have been seen traveling in pods with one another, so what probably happened was a, you know, they say a young male beluga probably got caught up with a big pot of narwhals, and, you know, one of the female

narwhals allowed him to be the father. And this skull has been sitting on somebody's desk on their shelf for old decades. That's right. It's been in this, well, it's been long hypothesized to be this hybrid, because if you look at it, it really does look like Baluga, sort of, they have regular teeth, narwhals have these long, single-tooth horns, and it does have, its teeth are spayed outwards, like, almost like a cross between a bluga and a narwhal, but it lived to be an adult, so it clearly did find. Is this, how shall I put, potentially bad news? Especially enough, climate change brings Norwalks and Balugas closer together. Sure. The study authors did tell me that this seems to be a one-off case. We don't know.

Hybrids generally could be bad news because if a rare species doesn't find a mate, then they pick some other species and they produce unfit offspring, and that's obviously bad. Finally, San Francisco wants to make a statement about e-cigarettes. San Francisco is poised to be the first city in the United States. United States to ban e-cigarettes, or at least until the FDA will review e-cigarettes. It's an interesting situation. You might know that vaping is really popular among teens right now.

I think it's one in five teens have said that they use these e-cigarettes, and it's been called one of the country's biggest public health challenges. Now, will this work? We don't know. I don't know. We'll watch out. You know, as they say, as goes California, so goes the nation. Right.

Yeah. And it's interesting is that Jewell, the industry-leading e-cigarette companies, and it's interesting, cigarette company is actually based in San Francisco. They're partially owned by the tobacco giant Altria. So obviously they're not happy with this, and they're trying to fight the base. But, you know. Oh, yeah. That is interesting. We'll pay attention.

Thank you, Ryan. Thanks so much for having me, Ira. Ryan Mandelbaum, staff writer at Gizmoto here in New York. Now it's time to check in on the state of science. This is KERNO. New York, Iowa Public Radio News. Local science stories of now. national significance. And you know, when you hear the term renewable energy, you might think of what?

The usual suspects, solar, wind, hydropower, even geothermal. But there's also one that has almost unlimited potential that we don't hear much about. And that's the power of ocean waves. Wave energy has an estimated efficiency of as much as 50%. But efforts to harvest it have been very slow in the U.S. Now we propose project off the coast of Ory. Oregon hopes to boost wave energy development. Here with the story is Jess Burns, producer and reporter for Oregon Public Broadcasting Science and Environment Team. She joins us from Ashland.

Welcome to Science Friday. Hey, thank you. And you're welcome. So what exactly is this thing OSU is trying to build? Yeah, so Oregon State University wants to build a wave energy testing facility. This isn't a building. This is an area of the ocean about six, six. miles offshore, 2.5 square miles, so a big chunk.

And in that, they would have the ability for wave energy developers that are developing these devices to come in and test their buoys and their devices, all different kinds of configurations there. And the kind of important thing here is that there are going to be undersea electric transmission lines that are going to connect back to shore. And so basically these wave energy developers will be able to plug up to five each of these devices into a cable and then test, you know, how they interact together, how much electricity they're producing, just how well they do out in the ocean environment. So they're like giving them an underwater maker space to figure out how to do anything. Yeah, yeah, exactly.

That is cool. So you can hook up all the cables and do all kinds of underwater testing for wave energy. What kind of technologies are we talking about for harvesting wave energy? Is it like wind turbines or what kinds of, how do you make electricity from ocean waves? Well, you can make it through wind turbines out in the ocean. You can do tidal energy. This specific project is actually capturing the motion of the waves, using the kind of kinetic energy and the waves to generate electricity. Yeah, you know, there's all different kinds of concepts.

out there. This is a pretty early tech, so, you know, companies are just emerging with these. A couple that I've seen. One is kind of the one you would think about that it would be a buoy floating on top of the water, anchored to the ocean floor, and then the up and down of the waves would be captured and then transmitted into electricity. Another one I saw that I thought was really interesting was, I guess, picture like a large piece of spaghetti floating on top of the ocean. and it's tethered on both ends, so it's attached on both ends. And basically, as that noodle is floating, and the waves are moving it, it's moving up and down, left and right, and basically you would convert that motion into electricity.

So just kind of noodles on top of the ocean was another one I just thought was just an interesting concept. That does sound good. Why is Oregon a good place to test out this technology? We got a lot of waves. The wind blows, there's big ocean storms, you know, there's a lot of wave energy potential. I actually spoke with the project manager for the OSU project. Justin Clure, he told me that the coast of Oregon is actually kind of the ultimate testing ground for this kind of energy technology. When you look at the environment off the coast of Oregon, it is one of the more harsher, you know, wave climates in the world.

and if you can get past an Oregon winter with the technology and prove that you can not only survive but also generate, you know, electricity, that would be the ultimate goal. You know, people have objected to wind power offshore. What kind of opposition might you see with wave energy? Well, I anticipate just based on other projects and marine areas off of the coast of Oregon that the fishing industry is going to get involved in this. And, you know, Oregon has a thriving fishing industry, dungeness crabs, salmon, pink shrimp.

And so anything that impacts kind of where fishermen can go and where they can fish, they definitely kind of voice their concerns. OSU has said that they're going to allow fishing. I've run out of time. Okay. But we get the picture, Just Burns Science and Environment Reporter at Oregon Public Broadcasting. We're going to take a break and come back. We're going to talk about, well, dogs. Stay with us.

This is Science Friday. I am Ira Flato. If you've looked down while you're eating and saw two big dog eyes longingly stare at you, I have seen this many times with my grand dogs. You know the full power of puppy dog eyes. You might have even been compelled to share a piece of your steak or your pizza. Who can say no after a dog has activated. It's sad eyes.

My next guest is here to talk about how dogs evolved to have puppy dog eyes and why they are so important to the human dog bond. And Burroughs is a professor of anatomy at Duquesne University in Pittsburgh, and she joins us via Skype. And if you have any questions about how dogs have evolved to be our animal sidekicks, our number is 844-8255. You can also tweet us at SciFri. Welcome to Science Friday.

Thank you so much for having me. So you have a study about how dogs make puppy dog eyes. What did you find? What we found was that a large range of dog breeds all had this muscle around the eyebrow that lifts that eyebrow up, except for the husky. And then we found that none of the wolves that we looked at had this muscle. So that result with the husky not having it was really interesting because they're considered to be an ancient breed more closely related to the wolf than many other dog breeds. Why would they not evolve it? Why would the wolf not have it?

Well, they probably have some very tiny representation of this muscle that I just couldn't see with my naked eye because you typically don't evolve something from nothing. So they must have something there that just doesn't function in the same way. as it does in the dog. You know, we normally think of evolution as taking thousands and thousands and thousands of years. So if we're talking about people and dogs together and the dogs evolving over time, it must have not been that long ago. Well, it seems like around 30 to 35,000 years ago, across the globe, people started domesticating

these dogs. And they were probably choosing first for traits that were not. non-aggressive. So maybe this cute little eyebrow lift kind of came along with those non-aggressive behavioral traits, the smaller teeth, the smaller snout, and just kind of rode along with it. But it is a fast selective breeding evolution for sure. And so it stayed with the dogs because I guess people then bred more dogs who raised their eyebrows at them. Sure. It seems that over selective breeding that people did with these dogs, that whether we were conscious of it or not, we were selecting for that really cute eyebrow lift. And it sort of reminds me a little bit of what it was like looking at my infants when they would lift their little eyebrows up. It just triggers this nurturing, caregiving response when we see it.

Is there any breed or breeds of dogs that do it more have mastered? this more than other dogs? That's a good question, and that's what my psychology colleagues are doing now is looking at a broader range of dog breeds. We only really looked at the mutts, the chihuahua, the toy breeds. We didn't really get a broad representation, but if the results of the Husky not having this muscle are applicable to most ancient breeds, that would be really, interesting to get that footage and see if they do this movement or more likely they don't do

this movement. That's a great idea. I'd like to bring on another guest who was an animal behavior researcher. Sarah Elizabeth Biosiere is director of the Thinking Dog Center at CUNY Hunter College here in New York. She's here with me in the studio. Welcome to Science Friday. Hi. Thank you for having me. Just tell me with the Thinking Dog Center. It's a canine cognition center. So we ask New York City. dog owners to come in, bring in their pets, and they play our problem-solving and training games, get fun certificates. It's pretty enriching. Now, so you study animal behavior. Yes. Why do you think dogs have evolved to have these muscles that they? Well, dogs are

extremely unique in the sense that they have, they interact with us on a daily basis, and that's different from a lot of other animals. They live in the home with us. We take them for walks. We have this really cool and unique bond with them. And so it makes sense that, They have certain physiological features or traits or behaviors that would help them facilitate interaction with us. Let me go to the phones because I have a question that's leading up to what I would like to ask. Michael in Oakland, California, welcome to Science Friday. So if there is a special muscle required for this, maybe this is somewhat sideways. But I had heard several years ago that the fact that the young of most or all mammalian species have the,

these adorable sort of big eyes relative to the size of their faces and so forth, it's actually itself an evolved thing so that we will pay attention and bond to them and that we have a similar reaction to animals of other species as we do to our own young because we've all evolved this same response to this same set of features in all of our young. Yeah, yeah. Sarah is nodding her head, yes. Yes, no, exactly. We have these cool features that dogs and other animals have.

So large eyes, large forehead. We often call them petamorphic features, meaning that they look like infants. And they're probably somehow hitching a ride or hijacking an emotional response that we have already for our young, but just exacerbating it with other animal species. Yeah, and do you agree with that? I do. The eyes are just outgrowths of the brain. So mammals are classified partially by having much larger brains than reptiles. So those eyes, as Sarah said, are sort of hitchhiking along with the brain.

But it really does hijack our emotions. And we think of that as cute. 844-724-8255. 844-724-8255. You can also tweet us at SciFri. I have seen research in recent years about dog bonding with humans. and how important the eyes are for you to make eye contact with a dog, Sarah? Yeah, so we have these cool studies that have been done on oxytocin, this love hormone.

And it seems to be, at least with dogs, that we have some evidence that when you mutually gaze at your dog, so you're looking into their eyes, that your oxytocin increases. And we also have some evidence that suggests that the oxytocin levels in the dogs are also increasing, whether or not this is a causal relationship or how this all works, we still have to figure out, but we do have this positive love feeling that we get from looking into the eyes of our dogs, and it seems like our dogs do too. There's another question about that, Sarah, that the dog uses its eyes not just to sort of beg for food,

the scraps at the table, but when it wants to ask you something, right, take me for a walk, let me outside. It has learned how to do that also. Yes, it seems to be, I mean, I have my dog, and he certainly uses his eyes to communicate with me in a variety of different ways. And so maybe because we are such a visual species, the dogs have, in a sense of all these features or traits to hack into that. And what would you like to know more? What are you studying more about this trait in dogs? Well, what my lab is doing now is looking at the micro anatomy of the musculature in the dogs and wolves to see exactly how it functions,

whether they can hold their facial contractions longer than wolves or vice versa. So that's specifically what my lab is doing now, but I wanted to mention that some years ago we did this same study on horses and found that horses make this movement too. So we are wondering if this movement is just part of domestication in general, whether we select a series of eye movements that we interpret as being cute, when we domesticate mammals in general. So those are two different pathways that we're aiming for right now.

So is it more the eyebrow that the dog is doing than movement of the eye, sort of the forehead of the dog? Right. They're moving that. If you look in the mirror and make a worried face, you can see the inner part of your eyebrow go up. that's where we're finding this muscle and this movement in the dog. So it's not the entire eye changing shape, but just this portion of the eyebrow. But when you look in a dog's eyeball, it has typically a bigger white area to the eye than many other mammals.

And that may help increase the color contrast to the eye and make you focus on the eye more, just like a person's eye. Sarah Elizabeth, you agree with that. Yes, for sure, definitely. It would be very interesting to see what other dog kind of caned species like dingoes, for example, or rewilded dog, how their eye morphology or ibroma morphology maps on. You know, with dogs, you see them, they follow you with their eyes, they make sure to make eye contact. I understand that wolves don't make eye contact specifically. Is that one of the differences, Ann? we did find when we took the video footage of wolves and domestic dogs that wolves not only didn't make this eye movement, they were hesitant.

They just didn't make eye contact with the humans doing the work in general. You know, we humans, we use our eyebrows, I think, without even thinking about it. You know, when somebody says something weird, we raise our eyebrows or when we're laughing, we do that. I guess that's why maybe subconsciously we're aware of when the dog does that. What do you think, Sarah? Yeah, for sure. It's extremely interesting. And it might be the case that, for example, this is a feature that comes about from looking at us.

So maybe by having to look up higher to look at a human, these muscles start to kind of come about. And then there are other features that link to this, for example, hacking onto these pathways. Could dogs have chosen us for our eyebrows? potentially, I don't know. We can do some science. That's an interesting idea. What do you think, Anne? Could they have chosen us because we reflect their own eyebrows? I think that would be a really interesting experiment because clearly dogs and humans have co-evolved. They have influenced our social behavior as well. Let's see if we can go to the phones because a lot of dog people are phoning in.

Kate in Langdon, New Hampshire. Hi, Kate. I'm really interested in this show because I've had Huskies for 45 years and one of the things I really like about them is that they're really independent but they're very hard to train because they don't care about approval. You know, they don't care if you tell them they're a good dog or you know and they don't want affection. They're not particularly wanting of affection so the whole idea that they don't have the eyebrow raise is very really interesting in terms of that. So you're saying your huskies never look at you with their

eyebrows and give that dog's face? I don't see that. They do look at me, and especially when they get older and they're more food motivated, they want food and they look at me for food. But because I've only had huskies, I'm not really sure what the eyebrow raise is, you know. But I think it goes along with the fact that they don't, they're not particularly driven by affection or approval or, you know, even food until they get older. You know, you can't bribe them with anything. That's interesting.

That's it. Let me ask you, thanks for calling Kate. What do you think of that? I can second that. I have a Husky mix, and you cannot make her feel bad about anything, and she does not like to be held. So she doesn't put her head in your lap and raise its eyebrow and do all those things the other cute dogs do?

Not very often. Sarah? That's interesting. It also maps on a little bit with some of the oxytocin research that we've been seeing that owners that report that they have a stronger bond or relationship with their dog also seem to have a greater magnitude increase of this oxytocin. So potentially this is something that might happen, and maybe it is breed specific. I reflect out. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios. Talking about dogs and their reaction to humans and how they use those eyebrows.

Here's an interesting tweet from Kip, who says, With regards to dog eyebrows, do dogs use this with other dogs? Or is it expression only to get human attention? Wow. And have you ever seen dogs do it with other dogs? That's one of our step. to research agendas is to film dogs interacting with one another. Anecdotally, I watch dogs very carefully in dog parks when I'm out there,

and I've never seen a dog do this to another dog. I have seen dogs turn and look at their humans and do it, but never dog on dog. That's not proof, but it's anecdotal. Sarah, you're agreeing. Yeah, vision is different in dogs, so potentially there are different ways that they see the world. Their acuity is less refined than ours. So for something as minute, does a little detail in the eyebrows to increase the white around the eyes, it may be more likely that it's co-evolved with humans or for human use rather than for interacting with other dogs. But they could still potentially

still use it. You also study dog bowing. What is dog bowing? What does that tell us about how they have evolved? Dog playbows are this position you've probably seen. it at home if you have a dog, the forearms go down, the back is curved, the butt goes up, and the tail starts wagging. And this tells us a little bit about how dogs play or mediate their social interactions, at least with other dogs. There is some research with humans, but I focus on dog-dog interactions. Oh, you mean this is what they do dogs do other dogs. Instead of the eyebrows, they do the bowing. They do the bow. Huh. That's interesting, Ann, have you heard about that?

I have heard of that, and that makes perfect sense, the explanation about the small face movement. Let's see if I can get one more call before we have to go. Let's go to Tyler in Stockton, California. Hi, Tyler. Hi, Tyler. I had heard through either another podcast or another source that one reason that wolves have more upright ears than dogs is due to domestication causing a lowering of ptachron, and the earlier caller was referring to her husband. which I know have more upright ears not necessarily making eye contact and that might somehow be related.

In terms of the hormones, I'm not so familiar with that, but there are these really cool experiments happening in Siberian foxes where we've seen that even over a short period of time when you select for affectionate behaviors that you see morphological changes. You get floppy ears like you do in dogs. You get curly tails. You get color changes. So by selecting for certain behavioral traits, we are seeing that, there are anatomical changes that are associated with that. Well, anything else that you would like to know in your further studies?

I'd be interested to see if Anne has anything more to say in the future about feral dogs as well. Do they have these eyebrows? How do they communicate with humans? Do you think they still need it? That's a good idea. I mean, we've reached out and gotten some coyotes and foxes, but not feral dogs. That's a really interesting question. that I would like to put on my list.

And you'll come back and tell us because we'd like to know and we've run out of time. Sarah Elizabeth Biosi Air, is director of the Thinking Dog Center, and she's adjunct professor at CUNY Hunter College here in New York. Thank you. That's very fascinating stuff that you're doing. And also Ann Burroughs, Professor of Anatomy, Department of Physical Therapy at Duke Cane University in Pittsburgh. Thank you. Thank you for having me.

And we will love to have you all back. We're going to take a break. and when we come back, well, we're going to talk about microbes. A lot of stuff that make up most of our planet. So stay with us. We'll be right back after this break. This is Science Friday. I'm Ira Flato.

Despite what you may have been told, this really isn't our planet. All the plants and animals on Earth are relatively new additions. The planet really belongs to the microbes. There are more microbes on Earth than any. else. But despite living basically everywhere and playing a role in many of the processes that affect the climate, the connection between microbes and the climate isn't talked about that much. And that, my next guest says, needs to change. David Mark Welch is director at the Division of Research at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, and he's one of the co-authors of a consensus

statement about the importance of microbes in the climate equation. It was published this week in the journal Nature Reviews Microbiology. He joins me from WCAI in Woods Hole. Welcome to Science Friday. Thank you, Aura. So you have people signing on to this consensus document. Why do we need this sort of warning statement? Well, as you said in your intro, we really have not appreciated the role that microbes play

in the world. and particularly the role that microbes are going to be playing with a changing climate. So we need to become more aware of that, both on the level of policymakers, scientists, and just individuals. So make me a little bit more aware right now. Let's talk about some of the ways first. How do microbes affect the climate? Sure. Well, you know, as you said, there are tremendous number of microbes in the world.

about 90% of all of the weight, the mass of everything in the ocean are microbes. Microbes are everywhere, and they're carrying out all of the major sort of biophysical processes that create the atmosphere. Essentially, all of the oxygen that we are able to breathe is here because of microbes originally. Microbes both release carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and they absorb carbon dioxide. Microbes are responsible for absorbing about 50% of all of the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. They create methane and they eat methane. They create nitrous oxide and they eat nitrous oxide.

Those are both additional harmful greenhouse gases in addition to carbon dioxide. So microbes are playing a critical role in determining what the climate is like. And as we force the climate into new directions, those microbes are going to react to that forcing. and we really don't have any idea what they're going to do. So when we talk about methane, cows producing methane or rice patties making greenhouse gases, it's not those objects that are doing it. It's the microbes that live with them that are doing. Exactly. And that's part of why we need to have a greater understanding at the individual and policy level of what's going on there. We talk about cows producing methane. As you say, cows don't produce methane.

It's microbes inside the cows that are producing the methane, and there may be ways, therefore, of altering the amount of methane that those communities produce. The same with nitrous oxide and methane that are both produced in rice patties and other sorts of agricultural areas. There may be ways that we can modify what the microbes are doing in order to mitigate the changes of climate. Are we talking about breeding or modifying microbes that would suck in more CO2, then give off the... greenhouse gases? It wouldn't even necessarily need to be breeding individual microbes. And this is one of the things I hope comes through in the article is we're not so much talking about individual microbes as microbial communities. So if you pick up a little bit of soil or a little bit of seawater, there are millions of microbes in that drop of seawater. But more importantly, there are many,

many different species of microbes, and they're all interacting in different ways. So there are microbes, these microbes that produce nitrous oxide and other microbes that eat nitrous oxide. Can we, you know, help the microorganisms that are eating the nitrous oxide? Can we help the ones that are eating the methane to shift that balance in a more beneficial direction? Tell us exactly what this consensus document is calling for. It's primarily calling for a greater awareness of microbes in the environment, the role that they play in changing the climate, and the role that climate change will play in changing those microbial populations.

It's really written at a scientific American sort of level. It is an open access article, and I would encourage people to download it and take a look at it. There are call-out boxes that define certain terms that people might not be familiar with. just an attempt to educate themselves about microbes in the environment. You know, we love to talk about the microbiome here and we usually focus on our bodies, but you're saying there are so many different microbiomes living in the soil, living in the ocean, living in our bodies that we don't get enough, we don't talk about enough. Exactly, exactly. I think that, you know, we have learned, and certainly your show has brought this up many times

about the importance of microbes in the human microbiome. I think we still make the mistake of thinking that there are, you know, there are a few bacteria out there and most of them are bad. That's why we wash our hands and clean our surfaces. If we clean the surfaces, we'll get rid of the microbes. Now we think there are some good microbes and we worry about the balance of good and bad in our own stomach. That same sort of dynamic is happening all over the planet. There are these complex microbial communities, and small changes to those communities can end up having very large effects on things like the production of methane. carbon dioxide or nitrous oxide.

Yeah, because we have all been taught that microbes, they're all bad things, but some of them are very useful to us. I think really most of it. I mean, there are a small number of disease-causing bacteria and viruses, and a tremendously huge number, probably millions of different species of bacteria alone, and that's not including all the other sorts of microbes, the archaea, the protist small fungi. So where do you go with this document? What's going to happen to it?

How many signers are you looking for? Well, this is one of a number of papers that will be coming out around this scientist's warning to humanity concept of pointing out the different sorts of changes that will be coming about because of climate change and the things that we need to do to address them. We hope that this leads to a greater appreciation of microbes in the environment, both on the part of policymakers, scientists and individuals. I'd like to thank you for taking time to be with us today, David. Sure, thank you very much, I heard. This is a fantastic show you do. Thank you very much. Very important work.

Thank you. David Mark Welch is Director of the Division of Research at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, and talking about this very interesting paper he's put out. The summer solstice is upon us. The kids are done with school. But what makes the third week in June most notable for us? It's time for the mighty mollusks to take over Science Friday. That's right. It's the kickoff to Cephalopod Week, and I know what you're thinking.

What more is there to know? Well, this whole week we'll be filling it with cephalopod surprises. Here to tell us about all of the fun is Science Friday's digital producer, Lauren Young, our number one cephalopod aficionado. Welcome to Science Friday back. Hey, Ira, happy Sepulapod week. Of course. And Diana Lee, a biologist and science communicator at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station in Monterey, California.

Welcome to Science Friday. Hi, it's great to be back, Ira. Nice to have you back. Lauren, we've been celebrating the cephalopon. Well, I can't believe it. It's six years now. Okay, for the newbies among us, give us a rundown of what cephalopod Week is. Absolutely.

So Cephalopod Week is our annual eight-day celebration of my favorite group of ocean creatures, including the squid, the cuddle octopus, chambered nautilus, and all so many more. During Slephopod week, we all come together and share our love for these incredible invertebrates and geek out about them. So we at Science Friday have a bunch of things to do for you. We've got a bunch of upcoming stories and videos, activities that you can participate in. We actually already have a new video up right now about the fascinating brain of the octopus and how they move those nimble arms of theirs. And so I didn't know this, but each of those eight arms can actually smell and taste. No.

Isn't that bizarre? It's crazy. These researchers are studying how the octopus processes the information with 3D cameras and by letting them play with Legos. It's so much fun. You can check out the video and watch them wrangle with Legos at ScienceFriday.com slash Cephalopod Week. I watched that already. Them splashing around in the tank with Legos.

I wonder if they have a favorite. And we want people to participate, right? We're putting out an open call to our listeners this year. Yes. So it's really going to be a cephalopart. So please join in on all the festivities at our hashtag at hashtag Staphylpod Week. And this year we're doing something else. If you can record a voice memo telling us what is your favorite stepopod and why.

It's really easy to do. All you need is any voice recording app on your smart device and just record that and email it to Voices at ScienceFriy.com. Or you can leave us a message at 567, 243, 2456. You can just leave us a message there. and we want your best argument for your favorite cephalopod. And at the end of the week, we'll do a fun little montage so everyone can listen and decide. All right, as long as you're asking everybody for their favorite cephalopod,

well, it's only fair that I ask what your favorite cephalopon. Sure. So ebbs and flows with my mood a little bit, but right now I'm obsessed with something I saw on our Cephalpod Week Facebook group, the blanket octopus. So the females are really big and absolutely gorgeous, but you don't really want to mess with them because they can pluck out the venomous tentacles of the Portuguese Manawar, and they use them like weapons.

And when the female blanket octopus is alarmed, they'll stretch out their arms and unfurl this kind of gauzy cape of webbing behind them, casting a shadow over their predators. So to me, they're kind of like the ultimate superheroes of the sepulopod world, soaring through the ocean. It's pretty great. And it's great. Okay, Diana Lee, let me get you to respond to that question.

What is your favorite teflopod? I know you study squid, right? Yes. I'm a very squid-centric person right now. And there are so many squids to choose from. I always love to bring up the big fin squid or the long-arm squid. It's one of those weird deep-sea creatures, and it can be in total length up to like eight meters long. And what makes it so cool is that it has these huge, huge fins on one side of its body,

just undulating so calmly and so great. gracefully, but then as you keep looking down this animal as it extends into the deep ocean on our earth, it has these arms that kind of have this like elbowy looking hinge and then just like meters of arms dangling, hanging, waiting to maybe ensnare something unsuspecting. And just to think about like, we see people and other mammals on land every day, but don't forget that there are these incredible, weird, mysterious creatures on our own planet. that looks so alien, and we could celebrate them this whole week and just get really excited, so it's got to be that big friend squid for me. I'm Ira Flato. This is Science Friday from WNYC Studios, talking about the kickoff of Cephalopod weekend.

I want to ask you, Dan, you just got your Ph.D. degree, and you were an official squidologist now? Pretty much. I wish I could talk to them and have them talk to me, but this is the second best thing. And you study squid locomotion you had a study out of how squid make a speedy getaway in cold water. Tell us about that. Yeah, so I have a new study out in the Journal of Experimental Biology with the cover photos. So I have, you know, my cover squid cover girls on this cover. And basically, this is about the California market squid. Although they sound a little more common, less extreme than that big fin squid I just talked about,

they in themselves are no less fascinating. And you might recognize them from your dinner plate. Calamari fried calamari, that's probably them. But they in cold water, not only in cold water, but when that cold water has really, really low oxygen, a lot of them can tolerate that and still make those getaways, even though they're a little less speedy and a little less big, they can still make those big escapes.

And that's that oxygen at 5% saturation, which is about six times lower than the top of Mount Everest. So that's super impressive, really extreme. And not only do they tolerate that, they can recover once more oxygen becomes available. So they live in this dynamic Monterey Bay habitat off of California. And they are exposed to all sorts of oxygen levels, and they are super adapted to dealing with that stress in a way that I just think is mind-blowing. Yeah, I can see that. And Lauren, if you want to hear more about Diana's research and lots of other SEPS scientists, we have some in-person events, right? Yeah, Diana is actually going to be part of our Sephalopod movie night in Sacramento tonight.

I hear she's got actually some fun squid balloon racing games, which sounds pretty fun. Yes, that is true. I'm very jealous. And we have a bunch of other movie nights throughout the week in 10 different locations, including San Antonio, Seattle, Los Angeles. So we'll be screening those brand new Cephalopod films and chatting with scientists on stage, going on squitty scavenger hunts and things, and adventuring after hours in aquariums. It's going to be a lot of fun. So make sure you get your tickets at ScienceFriiday.com slash Cephalopod Week.

And we're also doing something else to this year that's really special, Ira. I don't know if you remember that Science Friday video, that inspired Ceplepot Week, where is the octopus? Still my favorite. Yeah, it's so great. Well, the scientist, Roger Hanlon, who captured that viral video of the octopus camouflaging in an out of the seabed is going to be a part of our Reddit AMA with a panel of other Cephalopod researchers. So that'll be on Monday at 1 p.m. Eastern on the Ask Science subreddit. So you can ask all your burning cephalopod questions then.

And remind us where we can learn all about this. Yes. So check everything out at ScienceFriiday.com slash Cephalod Week. We'll be posting things there. And also, of course, chime in on our hashtag, hashtag Cephalod week. One last question for you, Diana. What got you so interested in studying squid? Well, I believe some of my friends listening have heard me say this so many times, but at the risk of boring them on national radio, I will say it again. So I didn't grow up with a lot of going out into nature. That wasn't quite my childhood. But what happened was in high school in 11th grade.

I went to a Shins concert, and the merch they were selling included this t-shirt on which they had drawn this squid. And I just thought it looked so cool, so strange. Not anything I really thought about before. I wondered, why do squids look like that? How can they live in the ocean where obviously, like, humans don't live there? And I just had this kind of, you know, squiddy light bulb moment in my head that then through college, I took biology classes and realized, you know, people can get paid to study squids and just learn about them and share exciting news about them. So that led me on this path of doing research and going to grad school and getting a PhD in the topics. So you never know what things are going to lead you to in your life.

One last quick question. So you're not squeamish about eating calamari then. No. No. I definitely have my favorite recipes. And I love to share them. Well, I'm not the best at making them, but when people make it really well, I can appreciate them as the eater. And I think one of the coolest things about when I talk to people about squid is I get to hear about people's family recipes and how they make squids.

and it just kind of brings it full circle for me and so many ways to appreciate the animal. We've come full circle. And to talk about the events, again, you can get tickets at ScienceFriety.com slash cephalopod week. I want to thank both my guest, Diana Lee, biologist at Stanford University's Hopkins Marine Station, and Lauren Young, our number one cephalopod aficionado.

Thanks, Ira. She's our digital producer. That's about all the time we have today. We had technical engineering help today from Rich Kim, Sarah Fishman and Kevin Wolf. We're active all week on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, all those different places. And again, last time, if you want to know how to get your tickets for our big event, Cephalopod Week, science Friday.com slash cephalopod week up there on our website, all kinds of fun stuff.

And make sure you check out if you haven't seen it for the 10th time. Where's the octopus on our website? Have a happy summer solstice and show your Stripes Day, too. I'm Ira Flato in New York.