SciShow Tangents - Dirt

Episode Date: May 4, 2021

A wiser man than me once said “worms make the dirt and the first makes the Earth.” And that’s true. Join us as we learn about the stuff everything on earth walks, sits, and poops on all day, every day! Thanks, dirt!Head to the link below 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! https://www.patreon.com/SciShowTangentsA big thank you to Patreon subscriber Eclectic Bunny for helping to make the show possible!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: @slamschultz Hank: @hankgreenIf you want to learn more about any of our main topics, check out these links:[Fact Off]Desert of Mainehttps://www.nytimes.com/2006/09/22/travel/escapes/22down.htmlhttps://www.atlasobscura.com/places/the-desert-of-maine-freeport-mainehttps://www.smithsonianmag.com/travel/why-desert-middle-maine-180951555/https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/usa/maine/articles/the-true-story-of-how-maine-got-its-desert/Panic grass in geothermal dirthttps://schaechter.asmblog.org/schaechter/2009/10/all-for-one-and-one-for-all.htmlhttps://www.montana.edu/news/629/yellowstone-plant-reveals-secret-for-tolerating-high-temperatureshttps://science.sciencemag.org/content/315/5811/513https://science.sciencemag.org/content/316/5822/201.1https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10583964/https://www.nps.gov/grte/learn/historyculture/upload/JFMeadow_Dissertation-red.pdf[Ask the Science Couch]Rubbing dirt in woundhttps://www.popsci.com/science/article/2013-05/antibacterial-clays-can-kill-antibiotic-resistant-e-coli-and-mrsa/https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2013-05/asu-amw051713.php/https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0064068https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/04/200427125205.htmhttps://www.freep.com/story/sports/mlb/tigers/2016/07/16/sports-rub-some-dirt-on-it/87184302/[Butt One More Thing]Pink fairy armadillohttps://www.wired.com/2014/01/absurd-creature-of-the-week-pink-fairy-armadillo-crawls-out-of-the-desert-and-into-our-hearts/

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase. I'm your host, Hank Green, and joining me this week as always is science expert, Sari Reilly. Hello. How's space? Oh, you know, I haven't thought about space lately. I'm sure it's vast and empty and probably doing just fine. I don't think Sari cares about space, right? Well, I think Sari cares about space. I'm pretty sure I've heard her say, I don't care about space. I probably have. Relative to other things, like I am more excited about science on Earth than science in space, like relatively speaking.

So I don't pay attention except for when space is doing something particularly exciting, like a Mars rover or something. Can I propose to you that if things are going bad on Earth, that's just sort of Earth, you know? Like, it's messy here. But if things start going bad in space, it's all over.

Like, if you're like, what's the sun doing? Like, the moment you're saying, what's the sun doing? That's a bad day. That's kind of the end. If space begins to destabilize in any measurable way, like we're all about to evaporate. That's the thing though about astronomers. And to be clear, I love astronomers,

but whenever something weird happens in space, they're very vocal about it because space is largely the same to me. Very, very the same. Very the same. And so when something something weird happens everyone's talking about it so i'm sure that with my with my mild interest in space and and my large like what's the opposite of a fall i follow astronomers talking about things so they will be yelling and i will be in the know if something happens in space without having to study it myself. And that feels like the perfect relationship to me.

Isn't it just always like, here's another ball of gas that does this thing instead. Yeah. The thing, there is a kind of frustrating thing about astronomers where they're like, we found a new type of star. And I'm like, that means nothing to me. It's more green by two percent yeah and also we're joined by our resident everyman sam schultz sam how is everything except science oh it's not great it's been better you guys gotta come help us i know we don't want you to but you have to okay that's like that's a good point.

That's very true. Every week here on Tangents, we get together to try to one-up a maze and delight each other with science facts while trying to stay on topic. Our panelists are playing for glory and for Hank Bucks, which I will be awarding as we play. At the end of every episode,

one of them will be crowned the winner. And now, as always, we introduce this week's topic with the traditional science poem this week from me. These are rocks. My fingers hurt. I came here for some good soft dirt. No, clay is sticky. That won't work. I came here for some good soft dirt. Mud's too wet. It's on my shirt. I came here for some good soft dirt. I need a pickaxe. This is chert. I came here for some good soft dirt. I want to push my hands in it, squish and plant my plants in it, find happy, healthy ants in it, and dirty up my pants in it. Black and loamy smells so sweet, so sweet like a well-cooked perfect beet.

The thing we think of when we say earth, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt, dirt. I love that. That's like the new uh kids book of the year all kids will be shouting dirt dirt dirt dirt in my pants with it is that what you said no dirty up my pants with it that's pretty close to what i said you know it's what dirt you dirty your pants with it. I just love that I was like, oh, chert. What is chert? That's a rock.

It's a kind of rock. Pre-dirt. It's actually post-dirt. It's sedimentary. Oh, excuse me. It could be dirt again, right? Eventually. Yeah, you're right.

You're right. Cycles dirt. Yeah. Sari, legitimately, because I don't think I could answer this question, what the fuck is dirt? So to define dirt, I first need to define soil. Oh, no, they're not the same. They're similar, but from what I can tell, soil scientists prefer you call it soil and then dirt is displaced soil. Oh, so soil is like, I'm here doing my soil thing.

And then you grab it and you put it in your hand and like, I'm dirt now. Yeah. Yep, exactly. Yeah. If you like, once you track soil into the house, that's like, oh man, that's dirt. Yeah. But outside it's doing its soil thing. So whenever there's like a bag of soil at the garden store, that's like oh man that's dirt yeah but outside it's doing its soil thing so whenever

there's like a bag of soil at the at the garden store that's a lie yeah that's dirt i think yeah displaced but what they have in common is that there are comprised of solids so like a mixture of minerals and organic matter that's either in the middle of decomposing or decomposed into very small particles. Liquids, like water, but also other things. And gases, because there's also little pockets in the soil of sometimes nitrogen gas, but oxygen gas. Other things that are in the's, like, the soil ecosystem, which is, as Hank listed, ants and worms and microorganisms. Hank didn't list it. He only listed ants.

He listed ants. I guess he didn't list ants. Yeah, it rhymed with pants. Okay. Can a list be one? No. Oh. Yeah, you can have a list of one.

Sari, what is a list be one? No. Oh. Yeah, you can have a list of one. Sari, what is a list? Anyway, ants, fungi, plant stuff, that's all in soil. And then as you start going down further, you're not in soil anymore. So like the top layer is mostly leaf litter and humus, not humus, but it's decomposed organic matter. And then below that where you like germinate seeds is topsoil. So I would say those two layers of the sandwich still soil. And then below those are mostly like sand and silt. And it's like starts getting rockier. And then the further down you go, the rockier it gets.

And then you're out of soil territory completely. Dirt is complex is the main thing. Dirt is not just like I'm just hanging out and like you dirt doesn't exist without life. It is a it is a byproduct of of a living ecosystem. It is a byproduct of a living ecosystem. Yeah, and it's such a byproduct of a living ecosystem that it requires us humans or our domesticated animals to move it from outside to somewhere else for us to call it dirt. We have to get it under our fingernails. And it's like, why are your fingernails so dirty? And no one has ever said, my fingernails are soily.

I've soiled my fingernails. Yeah, they would say that. Soiled is weird because you do not need soil to soil something. No. Poop can do it. The job just finds. It's the main way that I hear about things being soiled. But there is poop in soil.

I hear about things being soiled. But there is poop in soil. And speaking of the two meanings of soil, they come from the same root, but they diverged around the 13th or 12th century, which I thought was interesting. So they both come from the root sed, to sit, or the Proto-Indo-European sodio, which means sit. Oh, interesting. Why is soil from sit? Because you sit on the ground? Because you sit on it? I think it went to like a pigsty.

So like soil is the defiled, like the poopy version, came from like pigsty or tub, like to wallow. And then from there, it went to defile or to like splatter with mud or make dirty and then as far as like soil the the earth material that you touch that's soft it came from area or place or ground so like you can sit on the ground and it's like an area. And so I guess if you referred to soil as like a pigsty or soil as ground that you own or can like trot on. Right, right, right. Then those are the two. The two.

That's where it diverged. What about dirt? Oh, dirt? Dirt? I don't know where dirt came from. We just decided to start using it around 1300 to the 15th century. So that's like pretty late. 1400s.

Yeah. So dirt came after soil. Okay. And it was after we were using the words earth and mud. Oh, yes. I think. The thinking man word for dirt. And then we were like, dirt is anything gross.

Like poop was dirt. But now I think moving into modern times dirt is more specifically synonymous with soil and so now it is time to move on to the quiz portion of our show where we have more rhymes for our time again well it's a different kind of rhyme time oh okay we got two different versions of rhyme time one where i just make you say words and then one that's much more the wait wait don't tell me, hey, you have to come up with the last word of the rhyme. Yes, rhyme time has diverged, just like dirt and soil or whatever.

Evolution is taking place, and now they are two completely different species. All right, it's rhyme time 2.0, or is it called Guess That Rhyme? I don't know what it's called. So I will tell you a poem. It is four couplets, and you will have to tell me the last word of the poem. And it is what the poem is discussing. And now we will begin. The dirt and dry lands faces the constant threat, that drought will leave it even more unwet. And over time, with rain clouds inert, those dry lands may turn into desert. But lo, our hero enters on a quest, though we may

know it as a pest. The mounds it builds keep moisture tight, for the savior of dry lands is the mighty... Termite. Termite. That's correct. You probably don't want to find termites in your house or anywhere near your home because they will eat all of the wood that your house is made out of. But there are also termites that build their own mounds out of soil and saliva and dung. And those mounds are remarkable structures on their own, but they also are a tremendous aid to the drylands of Africa, South America, and Asia, where the mounds store nutrients and moisture and help water get into the soil. And scientists have found that drylands are better able to survive as drylands, meaning they don't turn into deserts, with less rain when they have termite mounds.

It's possible that other mound builders like ants and prairie dogs may also help their ecosystem in a similar way. Wow. But they don't really know how they're doing it? Yeah, no, not really. Like, the main thing is that they do. How it exactly works, I don't know. Well, I didn't even try to guess.

I was like, mole doesn't rhyme with any of those words. I was waiting for erosion, and then I was like, oh no, pivot, pivot. All right, poem number two. Petrichor is the smell of dirt that's rained on, the product of bacteria living within our lawn. But though we know the source of the scent, we know less about the purpose for which it is meant. But one recent result suggests a goal universal to attract animals that aid in bacterial dispersal and so it's possible that this earthly petrichor is used to drive the spread of bacterial

spores yeah these are smart people ones they are yeah that's the best is ultimately if you want to blame someone this is all all Deboki's doing. It's not me at all. I've been writing for Deboki for like two years now for Crash Course Organic Chemistry, so we are on the same wavelength. I'm much more at Hank's speed. So, you know, petrichor, it's that smell when there's lots of rain. And it's due to an organic compound called geosmin, which is made by microbes, particularly the bacteria Streptomyces. And while some insects

like fruit flies are turned off by geosmin, potentially to avoid toxins, there are other animals that are drawn to it, like the springtail, which is an arthropod, but it is not an insect. And when studying the relationship between springtails and streptomyces, researchers found that the springtails were drawn to the smell of geosmin, possibly because it helped them find food. And in exchange, the streptomyces would use the springtails as a vehicle

to attach their spores to. Oh, pollinating. Yeah, streptomyces is like, hey, it's wet over here, there might be food. And the springtails are like, yes, excellent. And then the streptomyces is like, hey, it's wet over here. There might be food. And the springtails are like, yes, excellent. And then the Sheptimices is like, ding, carry my baby. Yeah. A little bus to school.

Is that the thing that people like, that maybe people evolved to be able to smell it so good because it helps them find water back in? Yeah. Yeah, I think we've talked about that on a previous episode, that geosmin is weirdly one of the things we are best at smelling. In the whole world. All right.

Last poem. Come on back, Sam. To explore the boundaries of our next frontier, we apply the lessons of our earthly sphere, like how microbes and fungi break down rock to release the nutrients for future plant stocks. But can they succeed in microgravity? Well, let's fly them up to see their activity. And so we've sent microbes into the void to see if they can mine very old... Asteroids? No. That is correct.

I'm sorry, I should have waited. It's okay. Yeah, it didn't seem like he was close. Oh, okay. Yeah, you're supposed to count. I think the rule officially of this game is that Hank is supposed to count to three and we try to say it at the same time. Did you have it?

No. Okay. Not at all. In the year 2020, the BioAsteroid experiment was launched with SpaceX delivering bioreactors to the ISS that held pieces of a 4.5 billion year old chondrite asteroid. Aboard the ISS, the asteroid pieces would be mixed with various combinations of the bacteria Sphingomonas desiccabilis and the fungus Penicillum simplicissimum, I think. These microbes have been tested in other biomining experiments, and the goal of the experiment was to see whether they can help us extract material from asteroids in microgravity and maybe even break the rock down into soil.

Shouldn't just start flinging bacteria out into the cosmos, should we? It definitely is the plot of bad science fiction stories. All right, well, Sari Reilly has racked up some points, but who knows what will happen when we come back from our short break for the Fact Off. Welcome back, everyone. It's time for the fact off. Our panelists have brought a science fact to present to me in an attempt to blow my mind. After you have presented your facts, I will judge them and award the Hank Bucks any way I see fit.

And to decide who goes first, I have a trivia question for you. A Crater on Mars and the Dokuchev Award for Soil Science are both named for Vasily Dokuchev, a Russian scientist credited with laying the groundwork for modern soil science. Among his contributions to the field is his system for describing the natural soil forming factors how many factors are included in dokachev's factors for soil formation so these are like the things that are necessary and a part of the formation of soil sarah's counting on her fingers she might have an idea i'm just guessing mean, you're guessing with the counting, though.

So, like, what is one of them? Poop. I love that. So it comes from poop. Yeah. Imagine the conversation we just had. Uh-huh. And then just, like, think of how to categorize those.

That's all I do is, like, I try to categorize. Okay, so, like, okay, poop is different from organic matter decaying. So that's two right there, which is different from rocks breaking down. That's giving you these for free, Sam. No, I'm already making my own list. So I'm not even listening to your list. Okay. Well, so these factors, I'll give you hints here.

All of those are one of them. Oh, shit. So like your starting material is one of the factors. But then there are other things that are necessary for that starting material to become soil. I'm going to go first. Okay. I'm going to name all the ones I think it is. Water.

Wind. Wildlife. The three W's of soil formation. Okay. The history of the area, like what you just said, the starting point, and the X factor. Five. Okay. Sam's going for five five i'll go with four i would also got water wind and then starting material i guess and then the z factor for zappy sunlight or like whatever energy input into the system oh shit i didn't think of that one doesn't

matter sam got it right exactly correctly with five they are the climate of the area the relief which means topography so like the yeah the relief of the area the organisms so the life the parent material so whatever you started with that was there in the first place, and time. None of you thought about time, but that is a very important factor. Time is the X factor. That's the X factor, time. Sari, I'm going to go first this time. I'm going to be brave.

Is that okay with you? Yeah, you've got the X factor, Sam. Time is on your side. In 1797, a man named William Tuttle bought 300 acres of farmland in southern Maine near Portland. This was 300 acres of good, honest dirt, and he turned that dirt into a thriving farm and ranch. So for the next few decades, William Tuttle and his family farmed the land, mainly growing potatoes, and they raised animals like sheep and cattle that grazed on the land. potatoes and they raised animals like sheep and cattle that grazed on the land. But the Tuttles were making a couple of classic farming errors, overgrazing and failure to rotate their crops.

So when animals graze, they pull up plant roots and plant roots help keep soil in place. And as we just learned, if you don't have soil in place, it's just dirt. So if you have too many animals grazing, they pull up the roots and the soil can wash away or blow away or just go away in general. And when crops are growing, they draw minerals from soil. So different crops need different minerals and deposit different minerals back into the dirt. And farmers have like very complicated systems of crop rotation where they'll plant something in the dirt to put something back and then they will put something else to grow something

else. And if they don't rotate the crops, especially in the age before lots of chemical fertilizers and stuff like that, like William Tuttle is living in 1700s, then the soil will again blow away, wash away, whatever. So the Tuttle's were doing both of these things. And one day they noticed something weird. The soil was eroding and in places where it was eroding, what was left behind was sand. And that's because the Tuttle's had another problem besides overgrazing and mineral depleted soil.

And that problem started tens of thousands of years ago when glaciers were slowly scraping across Maine and they were so heavy that they're making huge divots all across like glaciers are wont to do. And when the glaciers cleared out, they left behind these huge holes. And then sand, for some reason, tons and tons and tons of sand blew into and collected in Maine. So southern Maine is like the most sandy part of Maine too. And there are sand deposits that get to be like 80 feet deep under the topsoil. So back in the 1800s, not millions of years ago, the sandy patches under the soil at the Tuttle's farm started to widen, but the Tuttle's kept trying to farm the land until the sand claimed 40 acres,

and then they abandoned it in 1890, which was almost exactly 100 years after William Tuttle had first bought the land. So the farm sat abandoned for a long time and dunes built up and the buildings and farm equipment that they left behind sunk completely into the sand and just disappeared under the sand. And it kind of became like a local curiosity until 1919 when it officially became a tourist trap. A guy named Henry Goldrup bought it for $300 and capitalizing on the fact that it was so sandy and that it was also usually 20 degrees hotter there than the actual temperature of whatever the actual temperature was.

He named it the Desert of Maine. And he bought like a live camel and he got like all kinds of desert props and stuff. So now a day is i suppose that camel's probably dead and there's just a fiberglass camel but you can still go there and take a tram tour of this ruined farm that is now a desert and visit like a museum and make sand art and camp and still nothing really looks like it's growing there except for these pine trees which have figured out a way to grow by i guess finding a solid layer underneath all of that sand and they grow 50 feet trunks up through all the sand and then just their little tippy tops are poking out the top of it but they're

really 50 feet tall and dirt under the sand oh wow that's cool and that's the desert of maine you have to know that maine is not a very desert-y place for that to be impressive. Oh, yeah. This is like right on the sea and everything. Yeah. It's a wet place, but there's just too much sand. There's nothing in the dirt. Yeah. In the articles I was reading, it takes pains to mention how wet it is in that particular area. And it can rain and rain all it wants to, but nothing's happening. That's, I mean, that's gotta be so disappointing. Imagine being a farmer and being like, you know, I got a farm. This is my farmland that I bought.

It's growing things just fine. And then you're like, oh, it's 80 feet of sand with like a one inch layer on top of it. There's plenty of other farming happening in the area. They made it work. I think the Tuttles just did kind of a bad job of farming. Sari, what do you have for us? So as we've been talking about, dirt isn't just annoying dust. It's microorganisms and insects and fungi and minerals and water and gases and plant roots.

So that means there's a lot of variety of dirt, even just on Earth. And some of the most extreme dirt is the geothermal soil in Yellowstone National Park. Extreme dirt! Yeah. A little local science story where you do not want to be walking bare feet or planting carrot seeds or dirtying your pants in it because temperature-wise, it gets up to 65

degrees Celsius or 149 degrees Fahrenheit. And mineral-wise, there's a lot of silicon, and it's generally pretty basic in pH. That's more normal, but the temperature and the hot water and steam make it seem like a place where the soil ecosystem would be kind of barren because it's just too hot for anything to exist. Instead, though, it does what ecosystems do best and thrives thanks to symbioses. So there's a species of panic grass called Dichanthellium lenugiosum. I did my best. And it's named panic grass because it's in the panicum genus, coming from the Latin word panicum, meaning ear of millet, which is like a type of grain. Not directly related to the Latin

panicus, meaning terror derived from the god Pan and scary noises. It's a different panic, grain boring panic. And so this not terrified panic grass would normally have its roots shrivel at anything above 38 degrees Celsius or 100 degrees Fahrenheit. But there's also a fungus called Curvularia protuberata, which tangles itself into plant roots and cell structures. And the fungus helps the plant absorb more nutrients and water, like extra roots. And the plant shares its food and resources with the fungus. And at first, scientists thought that was the end of the story. Together, this plant and fungus could live in harmony and survive hot temperatures and drought and odd mineral combinations. But in 2007, they dug deeper and found out that there's actually a virus that infects the fungus that attaches to the plant, an RNA virus called curvularia thermal tolerance

virus. And without the protein in encodes, the whole heat tolerant mutualism wouldn't happen and the plant and fungus would both shrivel. We don't know the exact mechanism. When the fungus is infected, we think it could make compounds that help dissipate heat somehow or signal the plant to protect itself and therefore the fungus from stress. And that's cool on its own, like this three-way symbiosis, but it may also be important research as the climate warms because a fungus plus a virus conferring stress tolerance, and particularly with higher temperatures, plants may be important in future crop hybrids.

So just in case we need a little doom and gloom on the end of that fact, cool that it exists, but also may become agriculturally necessary. How does a three-way mutualism in an extreme soil evolve? I have no idea. That seems tricky. It just seems like a weird thing. Three crazy kids just made it work. That's right.

Just like us. Yeah. Which one are you two? I want to be the virus. That one's the little guy. I feel like Hank is the plant. I might be the plant. Well, I don't know.

It may be that you're the plant i might be the plant well i don't know it may be that you're the plant and i'm the fungus sarah's like stately and elegant and then you're just like hey i'm the panic grass yeah yeah that makes sense too and now it is time for me to choose between sam with his bad farming practices and odd geological events from ancient uh history combining to create a desert in coastal southern maine despite the fact that it is quite rainy and wet there or sari with a plant a fungus and a virus joining forces to be able to survive in the high temperature soil of yellowstone national park and it was a deep deficit to try and remove yourself from salmon. I think that you just didn't make it out.

I'm going to put a toilet flushing sound in right now. It's me going down the crapper. It's time to ask the science couch where we've got a listener question for a couch of finely honed scientific minds. It's from at Shed Tyler and at Magniloquent Mel. Both ask, there's an expression to rub or throw some dirt on it in reference to treating a small wound.

Is that actually a practical method of wound dressing? First of all, I've never heard rub some dirt on it. You haven't? No. Oh, I've never heard it some dirt on it. You haven't? No. Oh. I've never heard it.

It's like a get hurt on the football field kind of thing. Yeah, I didn't play outside with enough people. No one would have yelled rub some dirt in it to me. And four, we say smack it with a frog. You can treat wounds with frog skin. So that's true. Better smack it with a frog. Don't actually. You don't know what's on that frog.

No. Also, probably don't rub some dirt in it. Now, I know that people have used mud as a wound dressing,

but I can't imagine that it's better than anything that we currently have. We've said dirt has poop in it like 10 times in this episode.

Yeah, and one of the things you don't want in your body is poop. Unless it's like where it's supposed to be. And even then, you don't want it for very long. Yeah, you gotta of the things you don't want in your body is poop. Unless it's like where it's supposed to be. And even then you don't want it for very long.

Yeah, you gotta get it out. You evacuate that. It's true, it's true. Once it's poop, I think let's get rid of it. On the offset, do not rub dirt in your wounds. Unsterilized soil can lead to infection

and even sterilized soil, if you killed all the stuff in it, why would you do that really when there are better medical treatments out there couldn't find anything as to where it comes from idiom wise but i assume that it's from using clay which is not quite dirt as as a wound dressing like kink said clay differs from dirt because of i think the type of minerals that it includes besides like you can look at clay and be like it's used for pottery and it's stickier and it's wet and it's more solid. But, like, chemically, that means that there's more, like, silicon compounds, aluminum compounds, magnesium compounds, and water.

But also there could be potassium, sodium, and calcium. But also there could be potassium, sodium, and calcium. So a handful of different chemicals that basically make it like clumpier and like the moist clay that we're used to. And clay has been used as early as 5,000 years ago to heal wounds because you didn't really have much first aid technology, but like clay was something that was moldable. It was cool and could like stick onto a surface. And around 1600 BC, the Ebers papyrus, which is recognized as the world's oldest medical text, recommended using clay for ailments like tapeworm, hookworm, dysentery, diarrhea, wounds, and abscesses. And so I think for quite a while it was used as a topical treatment.

I don't really know what you're supposed to do with diarrhea and clay. Plug it up your butt. Yeah, I guess plug it up your butt. Well, if you want to ask the Science Couch your question, you can follow us on Twitter at SciShowTangents, where we'll tweet out the topics for upcoming episodes every week. Thank you to at Charlotte Lee or Charlotte Lee. I'm not sure.

At Rima Rose and everybody else who tweeted us your question for this episode. If you like this show and you want to help us out, here's a way you can do it. Go to Patreon.com slash SciShowTangents and become a patron to get access to our newsletter and our bonus episodes. We just recorded our bonus episodes we just recorded our bonus episode today for the for this month uh we talked about the future of science we got real yeah we did get real you know maybe we came out of it not feeling as better as we had anticipated yeah rough way to start your tuesday morning Sorry, Sam. But I think it's all very important stuff and was a great chat to have with you guys. So thanks for having it with me.

And you can have that if you go to patreon.com slash scishowtangents. Second, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. That's very helpful and helps us know what you like about the show. And finally, if you want to show your love for the show, 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 Caitlin Hoffmeister and Sam Schultz, who also edits a lot of these episodes. Our social media organizer is Paola Garcia Prieto. Our editorial assistant is Deboki Chakravarti. Our sound design is by Joseph Tuna-Medish. And we couldn't make any of 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. The pink fairy armadillo is a cute pink little armadillo from Argentina whose shell is connected to its spinal column through a thin membrane and gets its pinkish hue from the blood vessels that are visible through the shell. So since the shell is so thin, that means it's not really super strong armor and it probably isn't very helpful in terms of protection like maybe other armadillo shells are but it still does come in handy because they are a burrowing creature and when they when the pink fairy armadillo burrows it has a special butt plate that it uses to push back against the dirt that it has

just dug up to compact the walls and build itself a little house with its butt. Wow! I've never looked at a pink fairy armadillo's butt, but I am now and it's spectacular! It's big and flat for making a house.