SciShow Tangents - Camouflage

Episode Date: November 26, 2024

Now you see it, now you don't - this episode is a true trick for the senses as we uncover the hidden wonders of Camouflage! From human ingenuity (?) to animal creativity, misdirection and subterfuge abound in this episode, so keep your eyes peeled, it's not one you'll want to miss!SciShow Tangents is on YouTube! Go to www.youtube.com/scishowtangents to check out this episode with the added bonus of seeing our faces! Head to www.patreon.com/SciShowTangents to find out how you can help support SciShow Tangents, and see all the cool perks you’ll get in return, like bonus episodes and a monthly newsletter! A big thank you to Patreon subscriber Garth Riley for helping to make the show possible!And go to https://store.dftba.com/collections/scishow-tangents to buy some great Tangents merch!Follow us on Twitter @SciShowTangents, where we’ll tweet out topics for upcoming episodes and you can ask the science couch questions! While you're at it, check out the Tangents crew on Twitter: Ceri: @ceriley Sam: @im_sam_schultz Hank: @hankgreen[This, That, or the Other: Disappearing Acts]Stripes painted on ships and planesPainting planes pinkYehudi lights on planeshttps://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_mariner/vol19/tnm_19_171-192.pdfhttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC1634902/https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/552503/the-secret-lives-of-color-by-kassia-st-clair/https://books.google.com/books?id=heS0lbYrpAwC&pg=PA56&dq=yehudi+lights&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjHg8TLg6KJAxX5DkQIHUDFHHcQ6AF6BAgJEAI#v=onepage&q=yehudi%20lights&f=falsehttps://books.google.com/books?id=DUkl5bH6k6EC&pg=PA62#v=onepage&q&f=falsehttps://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0042698902002675#:~:text=In%20the%20Purkinje%20shift%2C%20the,versus%20red%20into%20apparent%20motion.[Trivia Question]Color combinations of Bargibant's pygmy seahorseshttps://www.fishbase.se/summary/Hippocampus-bargibantihttps://oceana.org/marine-life/pygmy-seahorse/https://owlcation.com/stem/Camouflage-in-Animals-Pygmy-Seahorses[Fact Off]Trashline orb-weaver spiders that build self-portraits for camouflage https://web.archive.org/web/20160829062900/http://blog.perunature.com:80/2012/12/new-species-of-decoy-spider-likely.htmlhttps://phys.org/news/2012-12-species-spider-fake-decoys.htmlhttps://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/trashline-orbweavershttps://academic.oup.com/beheco/article-abstract/10/4/372/2252323Picture examples of stabilimenta: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StabilimentumTricking mice with scent camouflage by adding too much wheat smellhttps://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.abe4164https://www.nature.com/articles/s41893-023-01127-3https://www.sciencenews.org/article/camouflaging-wheat-smell-pest-control[Ask the Science Couch]Color-changing biology in invertebrates like octopuses vs. vertebrates like chameleonshttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC5804272/https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms7368https://link.springer.com/article/10.1039/c0pp00199fhttps://ocean.si.edu/ocean-life/invertebrates/how-octopuses-and-squids-change-colorhttps://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2936158/Patreon bonus: Non-visual-spectrum camouflage or other senses https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.860137https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rstb.2008.0228https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00049-004-0274-4https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rsif.2019.0183[Butt One More Thing]Caterpillars, spiders, and moths that camouflage themselves as bird poophttps://entnemdept.ufl.edu/creatures/citrus/giantswallowtail.htmhttps://nhpbs.org/natureworks/viceroy.htmhttps://www.newscientist.com/article/dn28124-zoologger-a-spider-that-looks-and-smells-like-bird-droppings/https://australian.museum/learn/animals/spiders/bird-dropping-spider/https://boingboing.net/2019/11/14/macrocilix-maia-a-moth-that-e.html

You're listening to a Complexly Podcast. Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents. It's the lately competitive scienceitive Science Knowledge Showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green, and joining me this week, as always, is science expert, Sarri Riley. Hello. And also our resident everyman, Sam Schultz. Hello.

I've got an important question for the two of you because today, the day that we're recording this is not a stressful day at all that I'm trying to distract ourselves from. It's election day when we're recording this, so we don't know what's going to happen, and you do. But instead, what should they turn into a Lego set? Oh, they've turned everything into a Lego set.

No, not everything. There should be things that aren't Lego sets yet. You could just say like, my house or my dog. A little Hank Lego would be great. Yeah? It couldn't be your house though, because then people would figure out where you lived. Well, that wouldn't be a Lego set, it'd just be a mini-fig, and also that would be great. Yeah? It couldn't be your house though, because then people would figure out where you lived. Well that wouldn't be a Lego set, it would just be a mini-fig.

And also that would be a huge honor. A YouTube collectible mini-fig set with Hank. I thought you meant like a full size, like one of those ten, it's more than ten thousand pieces, it's like a Lego land, sculptures of Hank. Yeah, I know a guy who got one of those made of him, and it was a big deal. Who was it, the Incredible Hulk?, and it was a big deal. Who was it, the Incredible Hulk? I think it was Jonathan Colton.

I was on a cruise. I was on the Joko cruise. Ah. And there was a Lego artist, and I believe he made a full-sized Joko. When your hair changed, the guy who made it would have been like, oh, come on. And then he would have had to go make you new hair.

They just make new hair. That'd be very easy to do. Click it off. Click it back on. Yeah. There is a cat Lego set. There's famously a cat Lego set. The tuxedo cat Lego set. Yes, that's a good cat.

I want it to be my cat though. Yeah. The set name is my cat. And don't buy someone else's. This is just Hank's cat. Please don't buy this. I know too much about Legos. This is my issue. I know too many.

I think, so you know they came out with that Mario Lego set with a rotating background. Cowards play. Oh, wow. I think what you shouldn't have is a full scale Rainbow Road Lego set complete with small cars that you can then structurally build soundly. And then it is infringing on hot wheels territory where you build the track and then get to play

and race on it. And I think that would be a very cool Lego set. This year they're doing Mario car Legos. So are they your wish? Yeah, that's the next that's the next thing. See, I know too much about Legos. Are they really? You can't name a thing. Yeah. All right, I got it. Babylon 5. Take that, Sam. They haven't made that because nobody will buy it.

I want weird space stuff. I'm tired of all this Star Wars nonsense. Less weird, I would buy an infinite amount of Star Trek Legos. I would love to have little Star Trek Legos. Star Trek Legos? They're in the domain of Playmobil, which I don't fuck with Playmobil. Are they really? They're Playmobil licensed? Is that why you can't make Star Trek Legos? That's why you can't make a Star Trek Lego.

Playmobil is bad. Huge mistake! Pair them out! Yeah. That's so embarrassing for you! Yeah, I always think that when people do like a Mega Bloks partnership, it's like, what are you thinking? I'm so embarrassing for you. Yeah, I always think that when people do like a mega blocks partnership is like, what are you thinking? Sorry this happened to you Your deal makes me think less a spongewap squarepants frankly that he has the mega blocks

You do know a lot about this Sam. I do Hank. I'm secretly quite a toy collector I'm not supposed to tell anybody that but I know I am secretly quite a toy collector. I'm not supposed to tell anybody that but I know There's a YouTube video called how to make a Lego Hank Green minifiguring I think that's what you know, you've made it Wikipedia article old hat How many 300,000. Oh my God. When's it from? Two years ago.

Oh, wow. Hey, what the world. Next time somebody gives me a hard time on Twitter, I'm going to be like, do you do you have a Lego minifiguring tutorial video that has 300,000 views? I think not. You say I'm a nobody just because, wow, it's very short. It's 22 seconds long. Oh, that does look like you, Hank. That is really good.

I love it. Well, that's not how I expected this to go at all. Anyway, I'd like a Battlestar Galactica Lego. Moving on. Every week here on SciShow Tensions, we get together to try to one-up a maze and delight each other with science facts while also trying to stay on topic Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank buts Hank buts Hank buts

Jangle it around the pouch Which I will be awarding at the end of the episode, and one of them will be crowned the winner now. As always, we're gonna introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week. Thankfully, it's not me, because I didn't make one, it's from Sam. Today we're talking about camouflage,

which helps a thing remain unseen. And I know the first question on everyone's lips is, why can't fur be green? There's lots of green stuff in the world, for example, grass and trees. And if only squirrels could match with those, they'd be hidden as they please. But instead, most mammals are gray and brown or orange if they're bold, but never green, I'm sad to say, like moss or leaves or mold. And lots of guys out there are green, think lizards, frogs and snakes, which makes me wonder if furs even tried to be green for heaven's sakes. And I hear you saying tree bark is brown in the

winter and the spring, but there's that rabbit that's white in the winter. So your argument doesn't mean a thing. Picture a squirrel verdant green in summer that turns to brown in fall. He'd never be caught while scampering around. He'd be the most powerful squirrel of all. So turn green, all you mammals out there. You know it's the right thing to do. My next advice is for the birds. You guys should really all be blue. Sam, you gotta put that one in the Hall of Fame.

That one's gotta be in the book. That's so good. Okay, thank you. That's straight kids book territory. It's so good. Okay, thank you. That's straight kids book territory. It's gotta be. Yeah, you're right. That was adorable. And the topic for the day is camouflage.

But before we talk about what that is, we're gonna take a quick break and then be back to Define Camouflage. Welcome back, everybody. Camouflage, which gotta be French, but I guess we'll find out about that in a second. Sari, what is it? It is French. There's a French word that means disguise. We don't get a lot of French words, I feel like.

They're all Germanic, right? Yeah, Proto-Indo-European languages. Yeah, we're not doing any Sisho Tangents, Deja Vu or Croissant. So, camouflage. And it goes back in French, probably to camoflare, which meant disguise, like an older Parisian slang. And from before that, we're kind of unsure. There's an Italian word, camuffaire, I don't know how to say it, which also means to disguise. That is also of uncertain origin, which might be a contraction of the phrase capo mafe, which means to muffle the head, kind of sinister, but to

like, put like that, put a sack over somebody's head, or it could be from the word, the French word camo flat, which meant a puff of smoke, or blowing smoke into someone's face. So kind of how- To escape. To escape, yeah. How Team Rocket always escapes. That's a wild thing to have a word for.

Well, what is the word again? Camouflette. Well, they can't possibly pronounce that T. Yeah, they don't say T. Ta-ta-ta. Yeah, that's my English diction. Camouflette. Yeah, and then we just kind of stole it from them

because we were trying to use a lot of words to describe That concept of disguises, especially during military inventions Yeah, I'm looking at the the world use of the word camouflage and it does not exist until World War one And then it just shoots up because it's like we need a word for this thing that we are doing now. Before when we did war, we just, like, we didn't need to hide because you couldn't kill anybody without being close up to them. Why are there so many French words in war? Is it because of Napoleon? Well, there was lots of, I mean, I imagine there's lots of like, there was lots of English people and French people being closer to each other during wars,

because that's when there would be conflict. They would be close to each other. Yeah, okay. I don't know, not a historian. I'm the science expert of the podcast. I don't pretend to know anything about diplomatic relations. I love that this is a word that didn't exist. We needed a word for it for human war use

and then we were like, all right, Mozz, you get that too. It is really hard to describe what it is without saying a billion words. Like you blend in, it's like blending in with a thing that you're against to hide. Right? Looking like the around.

Yeah. We got. Looking like they're around with fun colors that were painted on you or a thing that you've put on top of you. Yeah. Yeah, right. And so, yeah, I guess they're the engineered materials and then we started using it to describe animals because that was a good.

They're kind of always doing it. Yeah, they use it to hide a lot of the times. Yeah, what did we call that before? Did we just not have a word for what animals tried to hide? We couldn't see it very well. Good at hiding color. Exactly. Yeah.

A good at hiding color is what that guy is. I imagine we just used... We just described it and said it was a behavioral thing or an aspect of it. You can say that in pretty few words. That moth is good at hiding on trees. He's tree colored. That chameleon changes color.

That would be a hard one to describe before you have the word camouflage, frankly. Yeah, I'm glad we have it. They really came into their own with the invention of the word camouflage. Thanks, war. That's us. What would we do without you? Yeah, I'm glad they really came into their own with the invention of the word camouflage. Thanks war That's us. What would we do without you? We'd say color-changing little guy Yeah, so so do we I feel like there's a pretty cut-and-dried definition I'm sure that there are times when it's like not entirely clear whether or not they're doing it, but it's the it that they're doing is pretty clear.

The it that they're doing is some sort of visual hiding strategy and there's color matching. Does it have to be visual? Can I send camouflage myself? Can I? Okay, yes. You can acoustic camouflage, you can send camouflage, you can do other forms of... You can hide a flavor with another flavor, you can taste camouflage. Is that camouflage? If you wrap a gusher in a piece of ham?

Like parents will blend up a bunch of spinach in a food, you know, and hide it so the kids will eat the spinach. Green juice. The concept of green juice. Sort of its taste. I got green juice adjacent. Yes. Yes. What if I like sneeze but I go, did I camouflage too? That's camouflage too. Yep.

You know, I think we can say whatever we want. I think there are other words that scientists use for that. Any sort of like hiding behavior, crypsis, I think is one of them, which means an organism concealing themselves. And so I think a lot of the times that we dive deeper into camouflage, unless you add on an extra word, like if you're just talking about camouflage, no modifier, you're assuming it's a visual color matching strategy,

counter shading strategy, something to do with the visual appearance of the cloak that you're wrapping yourself in or the moth that's sitting on the tree. That makes a lot of sense, Sari. And if we didn't have war, we'd probably just call it like concealing coloration. Yeah, or that word you just said, crypsis. Yeah, that one was good. Visual crypsis.

Visual crypsis? Well, that one was good. Visual crypsis. Visual crypsis? What the hell does it spell, crypsis, for me? C-R-Y-P-S-I-S, like crypt. That's what I'm going to name my winery. It actually sounds kind of gross now that I think about it. People will be like, it's not a disease. Well, it works with the seller, kind of. If you had a haunted winery, you could absolutely call it the Crypsis.

Yeah, haunted winery. We're the Crypsisters, and welcome to... Crypsis. Crypsis. Vineyard. All right. I feel like I know what it is, camouflage. And now, that means we're going to move on to the quiz portion of our show.

Our game this week is called Disappearing Acts. In the hunt for perfect camouflage, militaries around the world have come up with some pretty wild paint jobs and modifications for their vehicles. And while these camos have come and gone for some good reasons, there was science behind some of them. And I'm going to introduce you to three of the weirdest forms of camouflage of all time while asking you some trivia questions. So number one, during World War I, the US and the UK would paint their ships

in a bizarre pattern of black and white stripes intended to confuse potential attackers by breaking up the outline of the boats. We still use this today when they have to put a test model of a new car that they don't wanna release the body shape of, but they still have to put it on the test track, and so journalists are gonna take pictures of it, so they make them all stripy.

What was the name though, and continues to be the name of that camouflage? Dazzle, Daze, or Bamboozle, or Dave? Oh. Dave. The secret fourth. You know, Dave. The secret forth. You know, like Dave the Zebra. This is a call back to an ancient episode of Holy fucking Science.

Where my very, well, was it my wife? My wife was on the episode. I can't remember if she talked about this or not. But I'm pretty sure it's called Dazzle. That's my guess. I'm also pretty sure it's called dazzle. That's my guess. I'm also pretty sure it's called dazzle That's good for you guys because I definitely did not know but it is dazzle dazzle camouflage does not at all look subtle But it isn't to hide the thing

It's to obscure the distance the direction and their speed so that enemies would struggle to fire Correctly on them. You can't tell which direction the ships pointed, you don't know where it's going. The idea was inspired by a characteristic called disruptive coloration, and yes, zebras and skunks do this. Essentially, instead of evolving camouflaging visuals, the animals evolved high contrast patterns intended to confuse the predators. And a 2006 study using moths found that disruptive coloration did effectively reduce predation for the moths, especially on backgrounds that did not visually match.

Assel looks cool as hell. I don't want my battleship to be this colored if I got to pick if I was captain. It can be pretty disorienting to look at it. It's like a thing that they can do like fun houses sometimes. Like Meow, I think Meow Wolf has a room like this where you're like going and you're like, I can't tell where the edge of the room is. I think this Wolf has a room like this where you go in and you're like, I can't tell where the edge of the room is.

I think this would be my wartime job. I would go paint a ship, paint some stripes. I don't want to do anything else. That would be a great wartime job. I like sit on a little wooden platform with a newsboy cap and some overalls and go, Hey sir, need your ship painted. Riley, you painted all the stripes straight. What the heck are you thinking?

That just looks like a cool boat. Yeah. Second question. In the early 1940s, the British Royal Navy experimented with painting their planes and ships a color called Mount Batten Pink. Why would they choose this seemingly pretty conspicuous color? A ship of oak? Oh, sorry. Planes and ships. And there are three things that they could be.

Oh, okay. One, to confuse the radar that was used at the time. Two, to disguise the vehicles at dawn and dusk and see because light pink is very hard to see at distance. One to MC. Wow. The radar doesn't, that doesn't make sense to me because that doesn't matter what color it is, I don't think.

Does it? Yeah, this pink mess with the radio waves in some way. I feel like no, I feel like it's separate in the spectrum of waves bouncing around. What I like about this game is that it is kind of also got dazzle camouflage. I can't quite tell what the hell this game is. It's a lot of different games all combined. But the other two, like the other two almost seem like the same thing where it's like pink would be hard to see at dawn and dusk, but also,

I guess, hard to see far away. I'm going to guess disguise at dawn and dusk because like sunrise, sunset, kind of in that if you're on the horizon, if you're coming on a plane, then it's kind of hard to see. I guess I just think for a plane that makes sense, but how fast does a boat go? Does it go too slow for it to time it out right to get to be dawn and dusk? I don't know think for a plane that makes sense, but how fast does a boat go? Does it go too slow for it to time it out, right? To get to be dawn and dusk? I don't know how fast a boat goes. So I'm gonna guess the last one. The pink is harder to see. That's one of them, right?

Oh, pink is harder to see. Yeah. Pink is harder to see at dawn and dusk or pink is harder to see at a distance? At a distance. Oh, there's two hard at a distance. It's too hard to see. There's two hard to see.

Hard to see with radar, hard to see at dawn dusk. Hard to see at dusk. Yeah Hard to see at dawn dusk. I'm going to go with at a distance. And Sarah, you were dawn and dusk? I was dawn and dusk. Sarah is correct. So this is named after a guy named Lord Mountbatten who first used it for his fleet. It was actually, it was kind of a more of a light purple color when he first did it.

And you can see how that might blend into a sunset. It's not necessarily super intimidating to see the pink destroyer on the horizon, but many British ships and planes were painted this color. But studies on the effectiveness of Mount Batten Pink as a camouflage are scarce. One factor involved could be what's called the Purkinje effect, which I've always

called the Purkinje effect. So I'm really learning something here today. But apparently, according to the guide here, that's Purkinje. But this is in low light conditions, human eyes perceive more light on the blue end of the spectrum as they perceive that as brighter compared to red or green lights. So anything with too much red in it, like pink warships would be darker and higher contrast, and that's actually easier to see in dim light. So that's a thing to keep in your mind. Ultimately, this was replaced only a few years

into its use with gray, because that's better. It's just a better camouflage. I think if a pink airplane was flying at me, I'd be like, what does this guy know that I don't know? I would be intimidated. Yeah. What does Lord Mountbatten know?

Yes. I guess he had a bad day one day when some planes flew in at dawn and dusk. He mixed up his paint colors. He wanted the gray one and then spilled some red inside and then shoot just had to use it up. Get a paint. It's wartime.

Resources are scant. Everyone's going to make fun of me at the war. Then he just leaned in. He said, this shit's hard to see. So fuck you guys. I'm winning this war. There was a period of time where pink was a very masculine color, too. So instead of the baby blue, baby pink, be like, this is the manliest fighter jet ever

seen in war. They will cower before my pink plane. Now we have to do everything in matte black because that's apparently the manly color. That or whatever the Cybertruck chrome is. Well, they make like those dude wipes with camo packaging, you know? So camo is also a manly color. Only the packaging is camo? That's disappointing.

I think so. I don't know. Yeah, that is disappointing. You're right. And think of that. I'm sure they're trying to crack it over there. We can do better. We can be like big dude wipes and they could be camo all the way through.

Yeah. If I'm wiping my butt with a white thing, it's like I'm surrendering. I'll never surrender. No. You don't want to acknowledge that your poop is smearing on it. You got to like blend it into the camo. I got to dominate this number two.

Yeah. Very weird, everyone. Number three, during World War II, the, I almost said World War III, which let's hope. During World War III. We're all doing great as we're recording this very fun podcast. During World War Two, the US fitted some aircraft with a form of camouflage called Yihndi lights

on the front of planes. What was the purpose of these lights? A, to look like stars when flying at night. B, to raise the brightness of the plane to match the sky, or C, to cast shadows on the plane that distorted the plane's outline. I feel like the name doesn't help much. It doesn't.

But the light to match the sky, that's pretty ingenious, I think. But there's such, well, there's, well, cause the sky, cause you know, you see a plane at night a little darker than the sky. Well I guess maybe you could turn it up and down to match like how dark it was, but I guess how would you know? You'd have to look behind you and be like, that looks like about this bright. You need a buddy plane in front of you to be like, turn down your light please. Jim, Jim, light down.

Yeah, a buddy plane. And then he needs a buddy plane and then where does it end? The star thing is so stupid. There's no way you'd see it look at it and say that's a shooting star. That's two shooting stars. That moves. That's a car in the sky. Must very suspicious. And then casting shadows on the plane. This seems like you still got a light on your plane. That still doesn't seem very helpful.

I feel like it falls in the realm of camouflage and the way that it is a visual trick that I don't quite understand. I think I'm going to go with the distorting the outline thing, because I know that is a technique for camouflage, is if you just can't quite focus on something, then that does get in. I'm going to go with the match the sky behind the night sky brightness.

Well, the answer is to raise the brightness of the plane to match the sky. I told you a smart thing. Which is so cool because planes can be a little bit like the sky has a little bit of light in it. It's got a little light up there. It's got a little light in there. So it's actually the Yehudi lights and not Yehudi. I just looked it up and I was like, I got to figure out why's actually the Yehudi lights and not Yehundi. I just looked it up. And I was like, I got to figure out why they're called Yehudi lights. And y'all, it was a meme. It was a weird meme that has something to do with a radio show with Bob Hope and his sidekick,

Jerry Colonna. It's an ancient meme. And it's in reference to a violinist whose last name was Yehudi, but apparently they just kept making fun of this guy's name and they kept like the guy kept saying, who's Yehudi? Who's Yehudi? And it was funny enough that it caught on and everybody couldn't shut up about it. And it became like a slang term for a guy who wasn't there for some reason. And I really would love to get deeper into it, but doesn't seem like it'd be useful to do

since it's not a word that we use for anything anymore. But there was a time when Bob Hope had all of America in his grasp. What I'm hearing is Bob Hope and his sidekick Jerry were the McElroy brothers of their day. And your hoodie was Matt Doyle when they had just done it. They did it first. Nothing is original content. That's a bit of a deep cut, but some people came along with us, Sari.

Yeah. So they did it to reduce the contrast between the planes and this guy. More advanced radar made this obsolete in the late 1940s, but some military contractors have experimented with them to supplement other kinds of camouflage since then. For example, the McDonnell Douglas added your hoodie lights to the underside of its F-4 Phantom jet in the 70s to complement its radar evading shape. How would it know what's up, how bright the sky was though? They did their best? They did their best. its radar evading shape. How would it know what's up, how bright the sky was though?

They did their best. They did their best. Okay. LAUGHING Squids do this too. Oh, yeah. They like, will light themselves up a little bit, so when you're looking up at them,

they're basically the color of the top of the ocean. Yeah, counter-illumination. Mm-hmm. Of a lot of deep sea animals, too. Because otherwise you're just imposing shadow, and things that you want to eat will see you. They had to add a bunch of lights so that they will be spread out all over the,

like a bunch of dimmer lights to be spread out all over the airplane. Yeah, they're doing this back in time. They didn't have the light technology we have now. Just a bunch of LEDs now. So easy. And that means that it's a tie game. Congratulations to both of you.

Next up, we're gonna take a short break and then it will be ready for the fact off. Our panelists have brought in science facts to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. And after they've finished their facts, I will judge them and award Hank bucks however I see fit. But to decide who goes first, I have a trivia question. Bargabants, pygmy seahorses. I think I did that right. Uh-huh. Are tiny.

Yeah. And they're shy and they're adorable and they are camouflage geniuses. They live in a type of coral called Gorgonian coral or sea fans, which have brightly colored branches covered in distinct contrastingly colored polyps. Pop off the tip of one of those branches, give it a curly-cute tail and a snub nose, and you've got yourself a pygmy seahorse. They perfectly match the base and polyp colors of their coral homes.

They're so indistinguishable their discovery was an accident. A researcher in 1969 fished up a sea fan to examine it and didn't notice its tiny inhabitants until he was back at the museum studying it. Oh, they were dead. They were fine, everybody. They did fine. It was fine. They were happy.

They were healthy. They were, I don't know how it went, but all I could say they're still alive to this day. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. You've seen them with your own eyes. I'd feel so bad that that was me. I feel like I killed them.

Are these the only ones? So the question, though, is how many different color combinations do you think these aquatic introverts come in? How many colors of coral are there? About a million. About a million. Sam's going to say these things mathematically, they really stack up. So I think it could be about one million. One with six zeros, is Sam's call?

You're laughing now, Sari, but you're going to see it. You're going to win, yeah. Well, I'm mostly laughing because my strategy was about the number of different trolley right crawler combos there are. Oh, that's great. Three. Nice. They're small.

They look like they're fruity. It's somewhere between a million and three. I bet you it's in between. I bet you it's not two or a million and one. It's exactly in between. That would be a real... That would be something. Yeah, if it was exactly 500,000.

The answer, oh my god, you guys, is two. Is it a million and one? Oh. You really made it sound like it was going to be a bunch. The funniest possible number. Wait, I didn't hear what it was. What was it? It's two. It's two. Wow, Sam's having hard experience, but delayed by 30 seconds. So there's two.

There's purple with pink bumps, which are called tubercles, by the way. This is the same as the fruit for tuberculosis. Or there's yellow with orange tubercles, depending on the coloration of their host Gorgonian coral. OK, I bet there is a blue with green tubercles to match the truly bright crawlers. We just haven't found it yet. Wow. Just haven't found it yet.

This is the best trivia question ever. It did make me say Gorgonian bar big bar, barbie, bar, bargevance. Bargevant. Bargevant and it made me say, made me say tubercle several times. Well, that means that Sarah gets to go first. Okay. Cannot top the trivia question, unfortunately, with my fact. So there are around 3,000 species of orb weaver spiders, which have a wide variety of web building strategies,

but they're all kind of generally circular. Those yellow and black garden spiders that you see or that I would like run my face into accidentally across North and Central America are type of orb weaver, but some of them get a little fancier and weave non-sticky web decorations, which are more formally called a stabilimentum, I think because there was a theory way back that it caused some stability, and now we've

thrown that out the window. Some of these web decorations look really beautiful and elaborate, like zigzags or spirals, and some of them are trash. And specifically, the spider webs of the genus Cyclosa, which have the common name trash line or weavers, integrate all kinds of trash into their decorations, including dry husks of insects or leaf litter or other just kind of dirt junk that they find or gets trapped in their web. And we are still sort of guessing what these web decorations could be for. But some researchers think that this trash collecting behavior is for camouflage, since the tannish brown spider can hunker down and hide from predators in its trash line.

And instead of seeing a spider sitting in the center of a web, it sort of looks like a streak of bird poop just kind of splattered it. So that is cool. But some trash line orb weavers take this camouflage to an even bigger extreme. They arrange that debris into a self portrait of sorts, a big body with anywhere from four to eight spindly legs sticking off of it. In a December 2012 blog post, researchers reported what they thought was a new species of trash flying orb weavers when they found 25 of these self-portrait creating spiders and they talked with other experts and I don't think they gathered enough evidence to formally publish and name the

discovery or at least I am not entrenched enough in arachnid literature to find it. But the little orb weavers are around a quarter of an inch big, while the decoys are almost a full inch big, and the spiders kind of hide in the corner and wiggle the web a little bit of the fake decoy. So it looks like a giant monster spider is wiggling around in this whole performance art. And the researchers think that the predator they're hiding from are paper wasps who then attack the bigger trash effigy, assuming it's the real deal. And that is just the plain weirdest form of camouflage. I think I've gotten better at rationalizing that camouflage is a result of natural selection and gradual complex evolutions.

All these patterns are random and just get selected for. But this is like a little spider without a mirror, learned what it looks like, and then made a big version of himself in the middle of the web. And that is so wild. Yeah, he doesn't know what it looks like. It's just the shape that worked best. And so somehow the instinct picked out like the instincts developed over generations to make a thing that looked most spider-like.

What? But then the wasp destroys the net, the web, which seems bad. But I guess it's better than dying. Or does it get- It's better than dying. Okay. So does this spend its whole life doing this, or when it knows that something around is going to eat it, or what?

I think it just does. I think that's what they're trying to weigh of like when does it make sense to invest all this energy building a big fake spider. They found like egg cases scattered among the trash line or I don't know if they've found it within these spider mimics or whatever. But it could be I assume it's a survival strategy like the trade off is it's a survival strategy. Like the trade off is it takes a bunch of energy and time to make this thing, but you don't die and you get a pass on your genes.

And that's usually how natural selection works. And yes, like Hank said, it's just, I don't know, the instinct to put trash in a shape. In a certain shape. Yeah. In a certain shape and then your babies are safer. I've seen this before, but I don't know if it's sunk in how freaking weird it is. I love it.

I mean, it's not really camouflaged because the spider isn't camouflaging itself. And making a scarecrow. So you lose, Sari. It's hiding! It's hiding in the corner of its trash, larger self. But yes, it is less, like it's not, I don't know, putting the leaves on a stump. It's weird, there's not a word for it.

Self-portrait mimicry bait. We need another war, come on, let's go. Yeah, let's go. Give me a new word. All right, Sam, what do you got? Hey, wheat, People love growing wheat. Oh, I love wheat. It's so versatile.

You can make it into bread. You can feed it to other animals. You can probably do lots of other things with it too that I didn't look up. But you know what else loves to eat wheat? Mice. The battle between man and mouse over wheat has probably been going on forever.

We go to all that work to sow it and grow it, and those nasty little freeloaders get to eat their fill of planted grain, doing billions of dollars of damage to our precious wheat industry in the process. So what do we do? Well, we poison them mostly, but spreading poison around a field has some issues too, like you might just poison some endangered native species

that are in your field too. And there's only so much poison to spread every time you spread poison, and basically an endless number of mice. So once a round of poison is eaten, there's always more mice to keep eating your wheat, and then you have to spread more poison and back and forth. So poisoning isn't a perfect solution, but it's sort of the only one we got. Until 2023, when scientists in Australia had an idea inspired by a conservation technique using smell based camouflage. So New Zealand has several types of ground nesting birds, and it also has lots of invasive predators like house cats, which ground nesting birds

are super vulnerable to. So conservationists in New Zealand started to apply bird odors to places where there were not birds. And then predators would like hunt down these dummy scents where there were no birds. And then those predators started to associate the smell of birds with the smell of not, they're not as a bird here. So no bird is what they thought a bird smelled like. So the birds were camouflaged basically by smelling like birds. The cat smelled it, thought not a bird, and it seemed to work. The current model shows that flightless bird populations are on track to increase 127% over the next 25 years.

So back to Australia and the wheat. The scientists knew that the mice were identifying grains of wheat by the scent of the wheat germ oil inside of them. So they divided up a field into plots that were sown and un-sown, basically like planted and unplanted fields. And they would spray wheat germ oil on the un-sown plots with the hope that the mice would smell the wheat germ, go to the unplanted field, and then start to think, when I smell this smell, it means there is no seeds to be had. But it didn't work. So what did work though.

That's the first strategy. You try and convince mice that the thing that smells like food doesn't actually mean food. And mice are like, that's not, nope, it might. It's probably worth checking. The mice kept checking. But what did work was actually kind of even easier. So in some of the plots that they were testing,

they planted grain and sprayed the field with the wheat germ oil. And in those fields, they saw a 63% reduction in seed loss because there was just too much information. So the mice didn't know where to look for the grain. So they would dig the hole. They were just like tire themselves out looking for the grain and they couldn't find as much of it.

So what they discovered could be an ecological solution to pest damage, but more importantly, because of the way the world works, this solution is also, I think more cost effective than spreading and re-spreading poison. So probably maybe sometime people will actually start using. What do we do in the U S about mice with wheat? Do we just let them eat it?

I don't know. We probably put poison down if I had to guess, but I don't know. I feel I have, I don't know. I feel like we just, I feel like we just like solve that problem at some point, but I guess not. No, I don't know when they're, when they're in the field, I don't know. I feel like we just like solve that problem at some point, but I guess not. No, I don't know. When they're in the field, I don't know. But it does seem like you don't hear about that problem a lot. When you do, it is always like Australia. So maybe we know, we're not telling anybody else. We've already been spraying the wheat smell, maybe.

And America's like, oh, cool idea, guys. No, I don't know. Should totally do that. We only live in Montana where the most weed in the whole entire universe is grown. So we can go ask somebody, I guess. Sounds honestly like I'm glad it's not my job is how I feel. And trying to control mice from eating your wheat sounds real miserable. But I guess if you know mice, they're you can't get rid of mice. They're mice. They're too little. They're everywhere.

They're the most everywhere thing ever. I think bacteria would have something to say about that. What? The mice are the most everywhere thing everywhere. Bacteria had given them a run for it. But like, there's bacteria in mice and in me, but there's no mice in me. Yeah. Well, I hope not. I hope not. There's no mice in mice either. And the bacteria only needs to eat such a little amount of grain. We can let them have a little bit. Yes, I agree.

We can also let them eat the mice and the people and everything. I think that I love them both. And also, they're both very non-traditional camouflages, but Ceres is just so weird to be a spider making a giant self-portrait. Without knowing, without a thought in your head. It's tragic that they don't know. I don't like that. Some of them are better than others, which really frustrates me.

Why can I look at spider self-portraits and be like, that one sucks, and that one's good? Yeah, the juried art show of these spider self-portraits. Congratulations, Sari Riley. And now. Thank you. Now, it's time for... For our next episode, we ask a question to our couch of finally owned scientific minds.

The Freak on Patreon. I'm so glad we finally got a question from The Freak. Yeah, we've been waiting. And Moody Bookworm 7856 on YouTube asked, how did octopus slash cuttlefish and chameleons both end up evolving very similar methods of being able to change their color to match the environment. Is it because stuff can only do so much stuff? Is that why also hair can't be green? Because stuff can only do so much stuff. I don't have a good answer for you about the green hair, Sam, except that like melanin

has only figured out how to be a few different colors. Stuff can only do so much stuff. Yeah. And this, I feel like there are some parts of it where it's similar, but also some parts where it's pretty different between cuttlefish and chameleons. Yeah, it's like a similar thing they do, but a different, not

a similar method of doing it. I think that there might be part of it that is similar, but there's also part of it that's not. There's a bunch of different ways. Like there isn't just one way that they change color, which is cool and weird. But am I hunting? I made a video about this like eight years ago, so. Yeah, I mean, you're hunting in the right direction,

and that's basically it. All of what you have said collectively, I think is correct. So this is the biological term, if want to learn about things like this. It's called convergent evolution. That's when you have animals or any sort of living thing that evolved in similar ways despite not being closely genetically related to each other. So broad picture, birds and bats both

have wings, even though bats are mammals and birds are birds. Sicilians, the like, what are they amphibians? Like the slimy amphibians lost their legs, snakes lost their legs, they both kind of slither. They're not really super closely related. Why didn't mammals ever lose their legs? Why isn't there a little mammal snake? We could have slithered, but it's still time. Someone's got to have their legs on the way out already. Somebody's got to be pretty close. That's what I'm trying to think of. Yeah, who's the mammal with the littlest legs? Like an armadillo's got pretty tiny legs. Pretty tiny legs. They're just rolling around Sonic the Hedgehog style, eventually.

And they just got to stretch out long now. Yeah. Like an anteater has to lose its legs, and then it'll be extra long. But cephalopods are just particularly weird. So invertebrates, vertebrates having convergent evolution has also happened with eyes. So octopuses and vertebrates both have similar eyes, despite not being super closely related, in that we have an iris that can let in more or less light,

a circular lens, a circular lens, a retina with photoreceptors on it. Hank was saying, even though it's at a big picture similar, if you look at a squid eye, if you look at a human eye, it's like, wow, those are shockingly close if you actually go in at a cellular level. It's like, okay, they're pretty different. The most logical solution to how these two things came to be is not that they evolved from a common ancestor that had a lens containing eye.

It is that these mechanisms evolved twice by chance and selective pressure and the fact that we both exist in this world and need to see things to survive. That's kind of what happened with these cells called chromatophores that take many different shapes and sizes but are basically cells within the skin of different animals from arthropods to reptiles like chameleons to invertebrates like cephalopods that help them change colors. They have different pigments in various sub chambers of these cells and various sacs and they're controlled by different muscles and they're all slightly different. Then those are how these animals change their colors in

different, sometimes in an emotional way, sometimes to match their background and the mechanisms by which they do that is slightly different. But they both use chromatophores. They both use chromatophores, yes. They convergently evolved on chromatophores because it's just a good way to do things where you have like a cell that gets big or small

and that lets you control color. Yeah, a cell that holds pigment, kind of. I think my sense is that in a chameleon, it is not big or small. So it is, there is an upper cell layer that has erythritophore cells. So specifically like crystalline structures in their top cell layer.

And then when the skin is relaxed versus like muscles are contracted, then those crystals are distributed differently. And so they reflect different amounts of light around. Wild. And that is what allows our eyes to perceive them differently. Whereas in a cephalopod, so like in an octopus,

their chromatophores contain sacks filled with pigment. And then they have muscles, more like you were describing, muscles that contract or relax to change the size and shape of those pigment-filled sacks. I don't know, kind of like mixing paint. If you have more dark brown mixed in with like your red, then it will look darker versus if there's less dark paint, less black mixed in with the red.

Yeah, almost like a TV screen where they'll have different chromatophores, different color, and if you want to get green, you got to do the yellow and the blue. Yeah, that is a better way of describing it than paint mixing. Whatever. Red and brown was an interesting choice. Well, I was trying to be realistic because they're either brown or orange or red or yellow. They're all like in this warm, huge thing, but not good for not good for the science communication visualization.

You know, it's it's it's always a game of compromises Cool well, I mean that makes that makes sense like the thing where we do or it happens over and over again, I've But but then you when you look close you're like actually this is a totally different thing But then sometimes you look close and it's like oh my god, they evolved the same protein But then sometimes you look close and it's like, oh my God, they evolved the same protein. Like it was just, which can actually happen because it evolved from the same protein that their common ancestor had, which I think is very cool and weird.

The way that like a bunch of different plants separately evolved caffeine, which is just a molecule, has a pesticide, which is why tea and coffee both have caffeine even though they are not closely related plants Wow, I never thought about that before and a bunch of others like the other ones guarana Also independently evolved caffeine. I haven't thought about guarana. I remember that drink balls

An energy drink called balls. I've had tune in those on a dog. This is a LLS Bawls, I think oh Bawls. Okay, and I had guarana in it. Okay. Well, we should we should get some balls Maybe they only had it imbued. I don't know According to Wikipedia the sodas name has an unclear provenance It's like camouflage. All right. And now for our listeners on Patreon, we're going to answer a bonus science couch question. Sam, what's our second question? Okay. Burk-a-d-ma-kor asked a question similarly to their name a confusing question.

What about camouflage that's not in the visual spectrum? Like radar or lasers? Like lidar? Or thermal vision? Sonar? Ooh. If you want to hear that question as well as enjoy all new episodes totally ad-free, head over to Patreon. That's patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents. At our $8 a month

tier, you get new episodes ad-free and extended shenanigans as we answer a bonus SciShow question every episode. Thank you to all of our patrons. We're very grateful for your support. If you want to ask the SciShow your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShow Tangents or check out our YouTube community tab where we send out the topics for upcoming episodes every week, or join us on our SciShow Tangents Patreon. Thank you to at Kurn-um-beem-a on YouTube, Cody Smiley — Hard name, eh? — to what I do, Cody Smiley on Patreon, and everybody else who asked us your questions

for this episode. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's so easy to do that. First, you can go to patreon.com slash SciShow Tangents to become a Patreon and get access to our extended ad-free episodes. Shout out to Patreon, less acre for their support. Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen so that we can read them and feel good about ourselves, or bad, whichever way you want us to feel. And finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, you can just tell people

about us. Thank you for joining us. I've been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is created by all of us and produced by Jess Stempert. Our associate producer is Eve Schmidt. Our editor is Seth Glicksman.

Our social media organizer is Julia Buzz-Bazio. Our editorial assistant is Javooki Chakravarti. Today's game was written by Daniel Kamisky. Our sound design is by Joseph Tunamedish. Our executive producers are Nicole Swinney and me, Hank Green. And of course, we could not make an E this without our patrons on Patreon. Thank you, and remember, the mind is not a vessel to be filled, but a fire to be lighted. But one more thing. Lots of little critters camouflage themselves as bird poop to avoid predators.

For example, the visorid caterpillar and giant swallowaterpillar both look like slimy brown and white logs. There are several species with the common name Bird Dung Spider because they curl up to look and sometimes even smell like a poop splat. And the moth Macrocylix Maya takes it to the next level because its wings look like two flies eating bird poop. No. No. No. No. That wouldn't help you in all situations. Cause it's still like, there's bugs.

Yeah. But I guess it must work there. Like that's a nasty bug. I wouldn't eat that bug if you paid me. Now a moss on the other hand, yum yum. That's so weird you guys. That's such a strange thing. It's so weird. I that's such a strange thing it's so it's so weird I can't believe not like everyone doesn't know it. Especially with the little red and the zigzag

that looks like a little fly leg sticking out. It's got little legs. It's got the red eyes the perfect color of the red eyes. It's got a little shine like a little counter shading that looks like it's three-dimensional. This is the scariest episode we've ever done.