SciShow Tangents - Dragons

Episode Date: January 15, 2019

Some small, magical corner of your heart wants dragons to be real, right? Well... sorry. They’re not. But this week, we wanted to celebrate some science adjacent to dragons, from fruit and animals named after them to giant flying predators that probably terrified humans.Sources:[Truth or Fail]http://www.bbc.com/earth/story/20150320-meet-two-new-dragon-millipede-species-first-described-in-laoshttp://jrscience.wcp.muohio.edu/fieldcourses04/PapersCostaRicaArticles/TheFunctionalityandEvolut.html[Fact Off]Fire Hawks:Haast’s Eagles:[Ask the Science Couch]https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/phenomena/2015/04/30/how-this-beetle-creates-500-explosions-per-second-in-its-bum/[Butt One More Thing]https://www.wired.com/2013/12/the-secret-underwater-world-of-dragons/

Hello and welcome to SciShow Tangents, the lightly competitive knowledge showcase starring some of the geniuses that make the YouTube series SciShow happen today. We're joined, as always, by Sari Riley. Hello. Script editor extraordinaire. What is your tagline? Not a Furby. That's good.

Stefan Shin, producer of SciShow, is also here. Hi. Welcome. Oh, my tagline is, the jury's out. And Sam Schultz, producer of SciShow Kids, is with us as well. You got a tagline for us? Am a furry. Furby.

Let me say it again. Revealed. My secret. I meant to say Furby. Stop eating sweet tarts during the podcast. You can't eat sweet tarts while people are listening to you. And I'm Hank Green, made mostly of white claw.

Ooh. Wow. You should cut back. 7% white claw. Did you know that a human is 7% blood by weight? Yes, because you said that right before we started the podcast. Well, glad to have shared that knowledge that I found on the internet using Google. I didn't find it out by taking all of the blood out of a person and weighing it.

And putting it back in. They're like therapies, I think, designed to put people to deep sleep by taking out blood and then reintroducing it, I think. Yep. What kind of deep sleep? Why? I think it's as like a protective condition. So if you're in a very intense injury or something, like you would pass out. And so they want to slow down your metabolism everywhere else too.

So they can fix you. So they can fix you. So they would just take out your blood to induce that, I think. Oh, and cool it down. Yeah. They cool it down and put it back in the colder. Probably. Maybe that's it.

They take it out and put it like a saline solution. They replace it. Why would they do that? I want my blood to do blood things. No, not while you're in this state of suspended animation. They just replace, what if they replaced it with like something fun like Jell-O? Oh, sure. Yeah, I bet that would work.

That's great. That sounds really hard to get out. What else would be fun to have my blood replaced with? Cup of Joe. Cup of Joe. Mountain Dews. Yeah. A nacho cheese.

A nacho cheese. That's what I was thinking. A nacho cheese. Shoot it out your nose. You'd have nacho cheese in one arm, Mountain Dew in the other. Yes. A party machine. I'm a party machine.

Okay, well, this is going very well. Thanks for listening to SciShow. Okay. So, if you're not familiar, usually we get to the point a little faster, but every week on SciShow Tangents, we get together to try to one-up, amaze, and delight each other with science facts.

We're playing for glory, but we're also keeping score and awarding Hank bucks to the people who achieve greatness here on SciShow Tangents. We do everything we can to stay on topic, but judging by the first five minutes of this podcast, we will not be great at that. So if someone goes on a tangent, we can to stay on topic, but judging by the first five minutes of this podcast, we will not be great at that. So if someone goes on a tangent, we can charge them a Hank buck if we do not deem it worthy.

Now, as always, to introduce this week's topic with a traditional science poem, it's Steffi. Hello. Whether it's red and fruity or just a green cutie. A capsule for space travel or just a fly with some big ass eyes. But alas, tonight there won't be any dungeons because here we're just going to talk about dragons. All right. Didn't rhyme, but it said a dungeon. Got close enough.

Yeah. Yeah. Sure. What was the thing about capsules? Oh, the space X dragon capsule. Oh, okay. What was the thing about capsules? Oh, the space X dragon capsule. Oh, okay. Gotcha. All right.

I've arrived. The topic of the day is dragons, which is a little weird for a science podcast because they don't exist, at least on this planet. Well, I mean, there are things that we call dragons. So a dragon in my head is a thing that has two legs, two arms, and two wings, which is impossible. You can't have that. All vertebrates are tetrapodal. There are no six-limbed vertebrates. Two legs and two arms?

Two arms, though? Yeah, just the river. I've never seen... I always think of them as having four legs, I suppose. Four legs. Six of one half. I guess, yeah. The topic of the day is dragons.

There are a number of dragon-like things out there. There's a lot of reptiles that we call dragons. There are birds that act in dragon-like ways. There are dragonflies. So we're going to talk about, I assume, lots of different things. And we're going to start out with... Which is when one of our panelists has prepared three different science facts for us to listen to, but only one of them is real.

The rest of us get to try and figure out, either with a deduction or a wild guess, which is the true fact. And if we do, we get a Hank Buck. If we don't, then the presenter of the facts gets a Hank Buck, who is this week's Sari Reilly. You got some dragon facts for us? Okay. Fact number one. Sea dragons are in the same family as seahorses and pipefish, and in 2015, scientists discovered a new reddish-pink species

that they called the ruby sea dragon, which lives at least twice as deep in the ocean as the other two, like 70 meters down. It probably uses its red coloring as camouflage because red wavelengths of light don't penetrate into the deep ocean, and it gets this color from a symbiotic relationship with tiny dinoflagellates specifically the ones that make red tides and produce neurotoxins that can harm fish and so it's not only making the sea dragon red but it gives them like a toxic shell as an additional protection from predators right okay that's fact number one ruby sea dragons fact number two dragon millipedes are a group of arthropods with long spindly legs and sometimes spikes on their back, so they look pretty intimidating. And in 2007, we discovered the shocking pink dragon millipede, which is exactly that. It's really bright pink.

This is an adaptation that researchers call a posmetism, which is basically a warning signal that says, don't eat me, to potential predators, like poison dark frogs. And these millipedes smell faintly like almonds because they have glands that produce hydrogen cyanide, which means they're very poisonous. Okay. And fact number three, dragon fruit has a bright pink outside and either white or pink flesh with black seeds. It's really delicious. True. It grows in tropical regions like Southeast Asia

and has different names in different regions. The word dragon fruit specifically comes from Asia because of a surprising medical use. Komodo dragons also lived in Southeast Asia. They're in Indonesia and have venom that causes lots of bleeding and prevents clotting in their bite victims. And people found that mushed up dragon fruit skin has a blood coagulating compound. So it's not an anti-venom, but it helps counteract the effects and can prolong life after a dragon attack.

So dragon fruit, is that why they call it dragon fruit? Yes. Because it's useful when you got bit by a dragon. Yep. Whoa. Those. Fake.

Yeah. Those all sound like shit Sari a dragon. Yep. Whoa. Those. Fake. Yeah. Those all sound like shit Sari made up. Everything. I know the shocking pink thing is real. That's a real creature. But I don't know about all the other stuff. Yeah.

Wow. Smelling like almonds. So we've got ruby sea dragons, a reddish species of sea dragon that has red tide in them. Ruby sea dragons, a reddish species of sea dragon that has red tide in them. Pink dragon millipede, which smell like almonds and have hydrogen cyanide in them. Dragon fruit is called dragon fruit because you smear it on your dragon bite. Right. And what does it do? It coagulates something. It coagulates your blood.

Yeah. I'm pretty sure that Komodo dragons do have an anticoagulant in their bite. Yes. So it does make you bleed a lot. And that's one of the problems. One of the many problems that you encounter having been bitten byant in their bite. Yes. So it does make you bleed a lot and that's one of the problems. One of the many problems that you encounter having been bitten

by a Komodo dragon. Right. It's a long list. What else? Well, the first one is that you currently have a Komodo dragon on you. By eating it.

Yeah. That's like the number one problem is that you've got one bite, another one might be forthcoming, followed by the one that eventually is the one that eats you. Huh?

Yeah. They're not that big, are they? They do seem mean. Oh, yeah. They totally could eat people. Really? 100%. Oh, okay.

Yeah, and then also they have a bunch of other... Their mouths are very dirty. Gross and dirty. That's fake. It is? They're not very dirty? At all? You don't get infections?

Nope, it's all venom. It's all venom? Yeah. I thought it was both. No, people... It was like a big misconception, and it was like scattered across zoos and museums. But I think it's because researchers observed the bodies of prey that Komodo dragons had hunted down.

And I think just because they lost a lot of blood, went into shock, that meant that their immune systems were probably less good. And so they showed signs of infection. But when they actually analyzed Komodo dragons' mouths, they didn't find more bacteria than anywhere else. Their immune systems were probably less good, and so they showed signs of infection. But when they actually analyzed Komodo dragon's mouths, they didn't find more bacteria than anywhere else. Wow. What a valuable service you've done. Well, you know, I bet there's still a lot of bacteria in there.

Yeah. It's a wet place. Not an above average. It's warm and wet. You know, meat eater's mouth. Yeah, no more than our mouths. So I feel like it's totally a toinkos. I said toinkos. One of those good old

toinkos. 100% a toinkos. Yeah, I have nothing to go on. You have suitably stumped me. Like a three sided coin. Yeah. Okay. I'm going to go with the pink dragon millipede myself. That's what I'm going to go with the pink dragon millipede myself. That's what I'm going to go with.

I want the almond millipede. Oh, you're also taking the millipede. Okay, well, that's cool. Teaming up. I want the dragon thing, the fish. The dragon fish? Is that what it's called? Sea dragon?

Sea dragon, to be real. But I think it's the millipede. Well, then I want to go, I'm not going to. I can't put all our eggs in that basket. If you both are going to go with millipede, I'm going with dragon fruit. Well, then maybe I should go with the ruby sea dragon. Do what you want to do. I'll go with the pink dragon millipede.

Millipede, millipede, fruit. It is the millipede. Oh! I got one of them that are going to shut out. I know, I had a panic all of a sudden. I was like, you all got my true fact so I didn't think it was the red tide I didn't want to say this out loud because like how would that

survive in the deep sea with no red wavelengths of light oh a nice little logic puzzle yeah tricky I felt like I wanted to suck one of those guys into it alright so I mean why do they call it dragon fruit Sari?

I have no idea it looks like a dragon I think it looks kind of like a dragon like an egg I think like a dragon egg kind of like fiery but I just made all of that stuff up the Komodo dragon venom is real it's a thing

anticoagulants in it yeah the Komodo dragon venom is real. It's a thing. I did a lot of research on that. It has anticoagulants in it. Yeah. The Komodo dragon venom has anticoagulants, but the dragon fruit, it's just fruit. It tastes good. Some of it is sour. Some of it's sweet. Okay.

Yeah. In the same fruit. That's what we're all asking for. It's sour and sweet in the same package. I never had dragon fruit. Well, that's the most fruits are that way. I've had. Sour Patch Kids.

Apples. Yes. I was going to say I've had Starbursts that are dragon fruit flavored and that's as close as I've ever had dragon fruit. Well, that's the most... Most fruits are that way. I've had... Sour Patch Kids. Apples. Yes. I was going to say, I've had Starbursts that are dragon fruit flavored and that's as close as I've ever gotten. Wow. I don't know.

There are two. I don't know how to prepare that. You just chop the outside off. Oh, a dragon... I thought you were talking about a Starburst. A Starburst, I do know. I was like, yeah, you got to hit the wrapper off.

I do know how to prepare it. Yeah. I know how to prepare a Starburst. A dragon fruit. So tell us about this millipede that I failed to guess correctly. There isn't that much more to say about it. It just is that.

So this thing where things are super bright colored. Yeah. Because most things are like, I'm tasty, so I'm going to hide. But then you can be like, actually, anti that. I am confident. I am confident. I am strong. I am independent and also very poisonous because you can tell because you can see me.

I'm not trying to hide. So clearly there's something wrong with me. That's super weird because it feels like the easy thing would to be like, I am very bright, but also don't produce cyanide. I just scare people into thinking that I'm bad. But really, I would be quite tasty. But I guess if you try one, then you're like, oh. I can eat this.

Yeah. Yeah. I have no idea why it is a biological thing, but it is consistent across the animal. Like, poison dart frogs,

butterflies, I don't know, wasps, anything with black and yellow coloration is basically this. It's like, hello,

I've got warning colors. Huh. Are there things that just have warning colors but are pretending? There are. There's like, hello, I've got warning colors. Are there things that just have warning colors but are pretending? There are. There's like, what are they called? Sweet bees or something like that?

Sugar bees. Sweat bees. Sweat bees. Yeah, there are. And there are also like some that intentionally mimic like very closely other species that are not the same species of them and look very close.

Right. In butterflies, especially. So you're going to want to be memorable so that like, I see you, you're bright pink. I try to eat you. It was bad. From then on, I don't try to eat bright pink things again. Right. So you don't want to be like bland and boring and nothing.

Yeah. You want to be something that's different. Right. You want to stand out. Okay. Yeah. And like there are some species where standing out is bad. So I think that katydids have a pink mutation in them.

And so normally they're green to camouflage and then sometimes they're pink. And that's really easy for predators to find. But predators in North America aren't used to seeing brightly colored insects. So they're probably just like, oh, look, an easy to find snack. I'm going to eat it.

But when it's within an ecosystem of other tropical creatures, other brightly colored creatures, they see bright pink and they're like, ah, stay away. I tried that once before. Yeah.

Have you ever eaten something that like is bad for you? A lot of times. Blazing wings. No, no, not like that. What did you say? The blazing wings from Buffalo Wild Wings.

Yeah, no, not like that. Something that like turned out to not be food like the time that I ate those pine nuts that weren't pine nuts. Yeah. It's like you know

when you eat something that has poison in it. I mean, I once had a banana that wasn't the normal kind of banana. It was from my

mother-in-law's backyard and it was like way not ripe yet. And it made my whole mouth numb for like a day. Do you know if that particular kind of banana when rip, would not have done that? Yeah.

If you wait for it to get ripe, they're actually quite tasty. But I guess like hydrogen cyanide doesn't taste that bad. It just kills you. It smells like almonds. It does smell like almonds. Cyanide's sweet, isn't it? I think it's like mildly bitter. Yeah.

I guess it doesn't always give off an odor and not everyone can detect it. But. Oh. And if you put it in an apple, then then you don't really notice the taste, apparently, because that's why poisoned apples are a thing. Oh, they were cyanide apples? Yeah. Robert Oppenheimer tried to kill his professor that way. The guy who was the head of the Manhattan Project.

Wow. What? That seems like a really bad thing on your resume. Yeah, that's a good old tangent that I'm happy to go on. Robert Oppenheimer tried to kill his professor with a poisoned apple. Was it grade related? And I think that it was like pressure related. Like he was just freaking out.

And they found out he was discovered. And they were like, don't do that. And that was it. It was just like treated as like a mental health problem, not as like a crime. Which is not, I feel like, we give people second chances sometimes and sometimes we don't. And that's interesting to me. And then it's also interesting to me that he went on to do so many like, I'm using the word great in the sense of like very big things. And was the leader of very many people and seen as that leader and respected as that leader

even after having made this like tremendous mistake. He had a bad day. Almost being a murderer. Yeah. Guys, if you ever are mad at me, don't try to kill me with an apple that's poisoned.

Also, I don't eat apples because they give me lots of gas. Corn dog. Don't poison a corn dog. I will totally eat that. We are going to, I promise, keep talking about dragons.

But first, we're going to go to the treasure hoard. Like a dragon does. So let's check and see how we're doing with regard to Hank Bucks. Sarah, you have one because I am bad. I was very close to not having one at all. I have zero. I would have had one, but don't. How are you doing, Stefan? Got two over here.

Domination. Woo. And Sam. I have one. I feel comfortable with that. Yeah. Oh, I feel comfortable no matter what. With nothing.

Yeah. So now it is time for the fact off, which I'm very excited about. I've been sitting on this fact for like two days. I'm so excited to share it with you. Two panelists bring science fact to present to the others in an attempt to blow their minds. The other two each have a Hank Buck to award to the fact that they like the most.

So Sam and I have each brought a fact about dragons and the person to go first, who is it? What is it? Who has played Dungeons and Dragons most recently. I haven't played Dungeons and Dragons in like four years. Oh, come on. When was the last time you played D&D? Oh, it was like a year and a half ago, which is sad, but that's how long ago it was.

Okay. Yeah. I guess I'll go first. I really want to play D&D so bad. I'm going to guarantee you that you do not have time because I do not have time. It's a time-consuming thing, and I have a baby, and I go to bed at 10 o'clock. When you're a grown-up, you don't have time to do anything anymore. That's right.

All right. So Sam gets time to present his fact to us, and you're a grown-up, you don't have time to do anything anymore. That's right. All right. So, Sam gets time to present his fact to us, and we're all going to listen, and I'm going to have a better fact than him. Oh, what? You don't know that? Fingers crossed. Oh. Okay. So, basically, a dragon is just a mean bird who starts fires.

Well, here is potentially a dragon's closest real world counterpart. potentially a dragon's closest real world counterpart. During fire season in northern Australia, groups of opportunistic kites and falcons will flock to wildfires and catch the snakes and little creatures that run away from the wildfires. These bird flocks are called fire hawks, and according to eyewitness accounts of indigenous people, firefighters, and park rangers going back generations, some of these birds will pick up sticks, fly them up into the air,

sticks that are on fire, fly them up into the air, and drop them in patches of grass that aren't burning in order to flush out more prey. Aboriginal people have ancient stories about birds starting fires, but there's an autobiography published by an indigenous activist in 1964 that brought the behavior into more of the mainstream knowledge. So some ornithologists say

that it's possible that it happens because birds can drop rocks on eggs to break eggs or use tools in other ways. Or sometimes they use bait to catch fish, birds do. Starting in 2016, there have been several research expeditions to try and find photographic evidence of birds doing this,

but so far nobody's found any. But if it's true, it could mean that birds started using fire before human beings did. But nobody knows if it's true or not. They don't know how to make it, though. They can only steal the fire. They can only steal it, yeah.

Sam's fact is maybe something happens. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of eyewitness accounts. There's tons of eyewitness accounts steal it. Sam's fact is maybe something happens. Yeah. Well, there's a lot of eyewitness accounts. There's tons of eyewitness accounts of it. Yeah. So technically ASMR is like a maybe something happens. Yeah. And that has a really scientific name.

Oh, something happens. Yeah, and I hate it. That's great. That's wonderful. So one thing that I did read was that not they've never had a tourist say that they've seen a bird start a fire like this

so they think that it's like you have to be really close to forest fires it's like really rare specific times you have to spend all your time like in the bush

and then it'll happen every now and then or it could be an accident because the birds pick up a stick that's on fire instead of a snake and then they're like

ugh and then they drop it on the thing. It bit me. So, yeah, it might happen. It seems like maybe they would find a picture of it. Oh, man. That's great. I want them to find a picture of it.

Me too. I mean, this is a fairly common thing for people to do to sort of control their habitat in this way, especially because grasslands, oftentimes burning forests in order especially because grasslands... Oftentimes, burning forests in order to encourage grasslands, which are better for our preferred prey species, and also

are worse for our enemies, our competitive predatory species, because they live in the forest, and we want to be able to see them coming. Oh, we have houses. They can't burn our houses down. Not yet, at least. Oh, we have houses. They can't burn our houses down. Yeah, yeah. Not yet, at least.

So, yeah, I mean, it's, more and more, there's nothing that's unique to humans. We just have all of the things. Yeah.

Like, all the animals can do something, but we can do all of the things. Well, there was a, this year, in May, there was an expedition to try to find

picture, photographic evidence of this, but I couldn't find the results of it. So they must not have found any. You had to call them on the phone and be like, hey, tell me about your dragon fire. I should have done that.

Yeah. That's it. All right. It's my turn now. When you say dragon, I start out the exact same way. What is the thing that exists for us? It's basically something that can fly, but it can kill you. But that doesn't really exist

outside of the story of a Greek poet getting bonked on the head when a tortoise got dropped by an eagle and some very other unlucky occurrences, which I'd be happy to get into later. There aren't a lot of birds that fly and kill people or any, but there is a Maori legend

of a massive bird that would eat humans that turned out to be absolutely true when fossils of Haast's eagle were discovered. It went extinct just 400 years ago and it 100%

could have eaten people and almost definitely did. It weighed over 30 pounds, had talons bigger than your feet, stood about as tall as a man's waist, and was the apex predator in New Zealand.

It preyed primarily on the various species of moa, the largest of which weighed over 500 pounds. Once people became available, Haast's eagle almost certainly ate them as well. Oh, no.

So people arrived in New Zealand around 600 years ago. Haast's eagle went extinct around 400 years ago, along with all of the species of moa, which were a large flightless bird, which basically were in like the cow ecological niche. Wait, how much did they weigh? 500 pounds were the largest ones. 500 pound bird? The walking birds. Yeah.

The flightless birds. And that is what the host's eagle ate. And that is why it got so big, because its primary food was basically a bird cow. Yeah. And so they found these giant pelvises of moa with eagle talon marks in them. So it would come from the side and hit them in the back to try and like paralyze them basically, and then go for the neck to kill them. And because we are also bipedal, just like Moa, and because we're roughly the same size as like a small one, they're pretty sure that when humans arrived on the scene, like this was the apex

predator and we were eaten by them the same way we would be eaten by like a tiger or a mountain lion or a bear in like a non-New Zealand biome. So yeah, a 33-pound eagle that its talons were like this big. So like its feet were like as big as our feet. And standing up, it was as tall as like my waist, like a tall guy's waist. But still like small relative to its prey. Like that's bonkers. So yeah, they could hit at 50 miles per hour. Right. But still like small relative to its prey. Like that's bonkers. So yeah, they could hit at 50 miles per hour. What?

So it's like a 30 pound knife hitting you at 50 miles per hour. How do we know that? Do we like model this? We've seen the gouges in the pelvis of a moa fossil. And so they can tell like speed and impact. Yeah. Estimate that based on how deep the gouges are. Yeah. Pretty freaking cool. moa fossil. And so they can tell like speed and impact or estimate that based on

how deep the gouges are. Yeah. Pretty freaking cool. Moas look like ostriches with hot legs. Sam googled a moa and has decided that they look like

ostriches with hot legs. So definitely if I was a bird and I saw that on the ground I would think a person I would think ah there's a little bird with hot legs.

What does hot legs mean? Like Cindy Crawford? Look at this one. Look at those legs. It's got nice calves. Yeah, those are good calves. Big, beefy upper leg. That's what I look for in legs, too.

I mean, I definitely want to eat one. That's what the Maori did when they arrived in New Zealand. Wait, did they arrive there from where? Other places in the South Pacific. So we ate them too. We ate the moa, yes. We probably didn't eat Haast's eagle. Haast's eagle probably went extinct not by human predation,

but because we ate all the moa and that's what kept them alive. So there were probably around 30 or 40,000. Like there weren't that many of these eagles because they were so specialized to this one place where there were no like placental vertebrates. Like there were no placental mammals. So the birds were taking up all of the ecological niches, and that included the apex predator. So like having an apex predator that is a bird is very strange. And so, and a very sort of island characteristic because other places had mammals to do that. That's weird.

I didn't even think about the evolution of it, but an eagle or an eagle relative just had to have arrived there and then started getting bigger. And the weird thing is they figured out what the relative of this eagle was, and it's a small eagle. It's like it increased in weight over, I think it was 800,000 years to a million years. It increased in weight 15 times. What? And they were like, they're super big and beefy.

And so they were perch predators. So they were like, they're super big and beefy. And so they were perch predators. So they were like in the jungles. So they wouldn't fly like you see like an eagle flying and like diving into the water. And they would perch and like fly from perch to perch looking for something to get. So they weren't like sores. They were flappers. So like almost more like a turkey, but with like knives on its feet. Give Hank your stupid money.

Bye. My birds might be smart enough to start fires, but whatever. Yours just got really big. I got a really big bird. Kills people. Yeah, definitely a human eating bird.

Yeah. It's basically a dragon. As close as we got. Yeah. All right. Divvy up the Hank books. I'm actually going to give it to Sam. Look at that. got. Yeah. All right. Divvy up the Hank books. I'm actually going to give it to Sam.

Look at that. Wow. Even though there's a chance that it's just being reported but it's not an actual thing. The idea of birds setting fires is... Yeah.

That's pretty nifty. Yeah. Seems like you could teach a bird to set fires. Yeah. And you probably shouldn't do that. Don't do that.

That's great though. That's a great mystery novel. How was he murdered? He taught his falcon to burn houses down. Oh, that would be cool. It would be cool. I'm going to give it

to a passenger pigeon. Just like give a little thing. You're going to give your Hank Buck to a passenger pigeon? No, give the fire to it. Just, yeah. But I will give my Hank Buck to Hank because

the evolutionary aspect of it is what got me. That is really cool. The cool idea of this bird just got really big. Yeah. And recently. Because it was like,

I need to eat a moa. Oh boy, food. Yeah. Got super big. We thought they were related to big eagles, but it turns out they're related to like

fairly small eagles. And that they're like, their talon size has grown from like five centimeters to over 30. That's crazy. I love it.

I love it. I don't know how big that is. How big is a centimeter? From like a half a foot to like three. No. No. Oh, the size of your foot. Oof.

Yeah. And now it's time to ask the science couch. Stefan, do you want to ask the science couch a question from Megan? I sure do. Okay. I'm over here on the science couch. I'm going to do my best.

I'm going to do my best too. It's a dragon, so. At Shetshug asks, what would have to happen for something that's alive to be able to breathe out or create fire and not incinerate itself

and destroy its own mouth? Mmm. I think this would be a fun thought experiment. Yeah. So there isn't anything that breathes fire, right? No.

Because like, but I felt like I had to ask. Yeah. Which is pretty amazing. Like that's how amazing biology is. Doesn't seem like it should be possible. I mean, in How to Train Your Dragon,

here's how it works. Mm-hmm. There's, they got, they don't explain how like the Night Fury thing works, but there's one that has like, it breathes out a gas

and then it's got like a fire starter in its face. And that's pretty cool. Kind of like a flame. So you gotta have, or you could mix together two compounds that undergo some tremendous exothermic reaction. That's how I would imagine it would go.

Because you can't have them mixed inside you because then they'd explode. You'd have to mix them as they're coming out of your mouth. You just have a couple glands. Other creatures have multiple glands in their mouths that secrete things. Or in their butts. Or in their butts.

Because there is a beetle that does that. Okay, tell me about the beetles. Yeah, they're called bombardier beetles. So they're these beetles with fiery butts, thousand degrees, and it's all, it is shooting out multiple chemicals. So they have different chambers within their bodies. One of them has hydroquinones in it. And one of them has

hydrogen peroxide in it. I think they also have enzymes in some sort of adjacent chambers, like catalase, which is hydrogen peroxide, I think, catalyzes that decomposition into different gases. And so it spews these liquids all at once, from what I understand. And it spurts out this very hot, very caustic fluid. And so you can watch videos of a frog eating them. And then it puffs out in its stomach. Or you can hear a noise or something like that a while later. I don't know why the frog

isn't just incinerated but it like vomits it up and I think the frog later dies. Yeah. The frog later dies. If it gets that hot how is it not setting things on fire? Yeah that was my thought like if you have like dry leaf

litter and you drop something a thousand degrees Celsius it's gonna catch on fire. I think that was my thought. Like if you have like dry leaf litter and you drop something a thousand degrees Celsius, it's going to catch on fire. I think it's just misty. So it, I don't know, maybe it would catch something on fire, but I love it. It is like maybe an aerosolized thing.

Or maybe it lives someplace really wet where things don't catch on fire very easily. Because like if it did live somewhere dry and it did this, it would die all the time. It would just burn everything down. Right. And have nowhere did this, it would die all the time. It would just burn everything down and have nowhere to live. It would die all the time and take everything else with it.

Yeah. It would just do its defense mechanism and then be like, I have to run as fast as I can now! Everybody go, go, go! Bruce Willis jumping out of a helicopter at the last second. That's cute. I mean, we expel flammable gases from our butts. Not that hot, though. Yeah, we're basically reverse dragons.

But if I was a dragon, I would not want to spew out methane or a gas, because then you have an uncontrolled fire burst. Right. The gas is just going to spread. I would rather, yeah, have ethanol. Fart out ethanol. Well, yeah. Fart out liquid ethanol.

That's not farting. Liquid farts, yeah. So you need ethanol diarrhea. Yeah. Great. Great. Okay. Who won this episode of SciShow Tangents?

Not me. I think we have another tie. We have another tie. We have another tie. I have one. Sari has one. Sam has two and Stephen has two. You guys keep tying.

We're the smart boys. Oh, I shouldn't have given you my Hank butt. I know, right? Yeah. You could have given it to me and then we would have tied. Our problem is

that we're taking pity on each other. No, I could have thrown it in the trash. That's true. I didn't have to give it to Hank. Yeah, that's not fair. We can't feel bad for each other anymore. We have to crush each other. Yeah, that's really thrown it in the trash. That's true. I didn't have to give it to Hank. Yeah, that's not fair. We can't feel bad for each other anymore.

We have to crush each other. Yeah, that's really what it's all about. Yeah. And now it's time for our sign-off before our final butt fact. If you like this show and you want to help us out, it's really easy to do that. First, you can leave us a review wherever you listen. That's super helpful and lets us know what you think about the show. You can also tweet out your favorite moment from this episode.

And that way we'll be like, oh, yeah, that was really great. Thanks. Thank you to at Rage Against Twit and at Vision Bond and everyone else who tweeted us your questions. Finally, if you want to show your love for SciShow Tangents, just tell people about the show because it's so fun. And people will say, thanks for telling me about that podcast. It was so dumb. I loved it. Thanks for listening to us.

I have been Hank Green. I've been Sari Reilly. I've been Stefan Chin. And I've been Sam Schultz. SciShow Tangents is a co-production of Complexly and WNYC Studios. It's produced by us and Caitlin Hoffmeister. Our art and music are by Hiroko Matsushima and Joseph Tuna-Medish. Our social media organizer is Victoria Bongiorno.

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. Dragonfly nymphs can pull water into their anuses, and then they clench really hard to shoot it back out, which hydraulically propels them forwards, which helps them get around or maybe catch some prey.

Oh, yeah. You got little jet butts.